Host: Cenk Uygur

Guest: Representative John Yarmuth (D - KY)

Transcribed by: Alexander Hammer

CENK: Now we're going to talk a little health care reform. We touched on it before; Rahm Emanuel has said some very questionable things. The man we're going to talk to now is Representative John Yarmuth, from the 3rd district of Kentcky. Representative Yarmuth, welcome to The Young Turks.

YARMUTH: Hey Cenk, good to be with you.

CENK : It's great to have you. So, let's start with Rahm Emanuel's comments. He came out and said that the public option was basically negotiable, and basically indicating to the Wall Street Journal that he almost wanted to negotiate it away. One, what do you think about those comments?

YARMUTH: Well, we actually were talking with Rahm just a little while ago. He came up to the Hill and talked with the Democratic Caucus and said there's no ambivalence, that he was in a room with five reporters, that he was - that he did not say what he was - the way it was characterized, and that President Obama is committed to a public option, and that's the way they're going to proceed. So, we're taking him at his word. At least on the House side, I think it would be almost impossible to get a bill out of the House without a strong public option on it. We're committed to that, we think it's incredibly vital to create a kind of competitive environment in which we can not only provide coverage to everybody, but can have some control over costs and make health care affordable.

CENK: Representative Yarmuth, what do you think? Did Rahm Emanuel there go off the reservation, or did he accidentally slip up and give the real White House strategy?

YARMUTH: Well, I don't know. I mean, one of the things that's been consistent about the White House in this process and in others has been their willingness to kind of defer to Congress on the details. You know, they want to set broad principles and let Congress draft legislation, and I think that's the way it should be and it's very appropriate, but at some point when you get to a fundamental element of a major reform package - I mean, this is the most important thing this Congress, or probably any Congress, will ever do. You really can't leave room for doubt. If Barack is not very, very strong on this, and forceful, and make sure that not just the House members, but also the leadership of the Senate understands he feels that this is vital, then the special interest groups will work their way, and that's the real risk here.

CENK: And now, Bernie Sanders has come out and said that a lot of progressive Democrats in the Senate will not vote for a plan that does not have the public option; he has basically drawn a line in the sand. You mentioned earlier that you didn't think it could get past the House either. Is that getting close to a line in the sand for House Democrats as well?

YARMUTH: I really think it is. I mean you have three committees that have worked very, very hard on this package, Ways & Means, which I'm on, and Energy & Commerce, and Education & Labor. All three chairmen are strongly in favor of the public option, so is the Speaker of the House, all of the leadership is. Progressive Caucus with about 80 members said tonight at our caucus meeting that they would not support - they want to support a single payer option. They say they won't vote for anything unless there's a `robust public option' as they put it, and even the Blue Dogs who represented tonight said they want to make sure that the public option is such that everybody is on a level playing field, but they did not express opposition to a public option. So I think it's virtually impossible for anything to come out of the House without one, and again, what I - you probably had this repeated many, many times on your show, but I say it all the time: The option is - the alternative to a public option is trusting the insurance companies to fix the system, and that is something I don't think anybody in this country is willing to do.

CENK: You know, there are two schools of thought here. One is a healthcare bill is so important that you should get one no matter what, and that you've got to strike a deal at some point, and if it means a deal without a public option then so be it, and that if you draw a line in the sand and say, "Hey, you know what, we're not going to have one without a public option", that you might not have one period, and that that's too dangerous a game to play. The other school of thought is, "Hey, if you don't have the public option, you didn't really reform the system, you gave the people half a loaf, and that might be worse than no loaf at all, because then, you're going to have higher bills anyway, and higher taxes because of universal coverage, and then people are going to get disenchanted." Which of those schools of thought are you more inclined towards?

YARMUTH: Well, I think you've painted the scenario extremely well on the options. If we don't have a public option and we do strive to move towards universal coverage, all you're doing is, throwing millions - well, billions and billions worth of new customers into the private sector where the insurance companies can continue to do everything that they've done. Now they've said that if we give them all these new customers that they will not - they will cease the process of rating for pre-existing conditions and medical history and gender and all of those things, but we know with their history of such that they will find ways around that. The insurance market is not a very competitive market. There are like 25 states where one insurance company controls more than half of the business in that state. In my state of Kentucky, WellPoint has 59 percent of all the private insurance in the state. So that's not a very competitive environment, and the insurance industry is the only one, other than Major League Baseball, that's exempt from the anti-trust laws. So how can we expect the competitive environment that's going to provide the kind of coverage we want, the kind of cost-containment that we have to have, unless we provide competition? And the only place that competition can come from is from a public option. So, I think there's a real risk for the sake of getting a bill in doing something that's only going to make the problem worse, and is going to force us at some point to undo an even bigger problem.

CENK: Do you think that the Democrats played the politics of this a little wrong by starting out with the public option, which in fact was actually a compromise already away from single payer health care, and that--?

YARMUTH: Yeah (laughter), I've said this many times Cenk, you're right on point. I think we made a mistake, and I'm a co-sponsor of HR 676 by the way, and I think that no matter what we do now eventually, we're going to end up in a single payer system, but I think you're right. By taking it off the table we made this proposal, which is really a hybrid system, look like the extreme liberal position and the status quo as being kind of a reasonable alternative in some people's minds, but not most people's minds, because the polls show overwhelming support, 70 percent or higher, for a public option. But I think if we had left the single payer out - on the table, let that be debated, then this would have been, what we're looking at now, would have been a very, very attractive compromise for virtually everyone.

CENK: We're talking to Representative John Yarmuth from the 3rd district of Kentucky. Representative Yarmuth, finally, are you worried that if the Obama administration compromises on this, again, away from the public option, and into a system like the trigger, that won't work in your opinion, that it is an indication that they will compromise over and over again, on critical issues, and that we've got a rough four years ahead in terms of too many compromises with the right-wing in this country.

YARMUTH: Well, you know, I would say, that that is a fear of mine, although it is kind of hard to put this debate in that context because this is the single most important issue we will every have to deal with. So, I think if you compromise on the most important thing you will ever have to deal with, and there are going to be compromises made in all sorts of areas as we work through this bill, on how we pay for it, and the coverage set up and so forth, but if you compromise on the fundamental structure, which is making sure that there is competition to bring down costs and that consumers have a choice of the private - between the private sector and a public option - unless we do that, then I would say there is a - there would be some kind of a credibility gap as we move forward, a major credibility gap. Again, this is kind of - this is the Super Bowl of legislation; this is Wimbledon; this is the U.S. Open if you're in a golf context or the Masters. This is the most important thing we'll do. So, the stakes are extremely high, and compromise has its place, but not here when you're dealing with something that affects every one of the American people and affects the future of our economy, the future of our Treasury. You've got to do the right thing this time, you really can't compromise, unless you believe a compromise is the most effective policy. The American people don't feel that way, the President doesn't feel that way and I don't think leadership in Congress feels that way.

CENK: Congressman Yarmuth from Kentucky, very clear on the issue. Thank you so much for joining us on The Young Turks.

[Emphasis added throughout the interview]