Continues. Is tomoining us now daschle. Welcome. Talk a little bit about what you brought to the table as far as the creation of the Affordable Care act. Guest i had more of an advisory role. I have the opportunity to talk to my former colleagues and members of the administration. I wrote a book which laid out a lot of the principles. It was a very transformational time and it still is. Host give us your sense about problems with the Affordable Care act. Talk about the main problems and how they can be addressed. Guest i think the main problem is still the execution of the website itself. The fundamentals are to contain costs and to improve quality. There is no question we know we cannot continue with the Current System as it exists. We have 50 Million People uninsured. 25,000 people every year die because they have no insurance. We can do a lot better. This is a chance to address that in a meaningful way. It will take some time that we are getting there. We have to continue to be patient. Host what about the signup problems with the website . Guest it is getting better. Massachusetts started theres in 2006 had 123 people that signed up in the first month. It has now been and enormous success. 90 of the people would say lets keep it, i dare say. They had the same kind of which is were experience at the national site. One stateerent scale, to a nation. Guest but we can learn from that. Some of it was avoidable. It is unfortunate we do not catch this earlier. That does not deny. We have to make our system better. All of those who criticize and really find fault are not providing the kind of opportunities for alternatives. What is it we do if we do not do this . What solutions are there that might provide a better solution than what we are looking at today . None of the critics that i have seen are being forthcoming in that regard. Host what about the initial enrollment numbers . Guest in those exchanges where the states are operating are pretty good. I think we will see if i am continue as we meet the deadline. The American People want to be able to make their decisions in a slow and careful way. When i was helping my mother with Medicare Part d almost 10 years ago, we had a lot of the same challenges to figure out the best plan and how she might be affected by this. We had a lot of the glitches but we worked through those glitches and my mother made a good decision with regard to her medicare decision. It is provided in large measure because of the approach we use with the aca, that is working extremely well. Host a lot of success depends on those young, healthy people. Guest it is a deal they cannot refuse. They can sign up on their parents plan. They had in our was opportunities to be given special treatment. They can sign up for a catastrophic plan up until they are 30 years old. They will get assistance. There is innermost opportunity to take responsibility and to do the right thing. People ask me, is health care a right in any country . I think it is a moral right. With that comes a responsibility. My republican friends talk about the importance of citizen responsibility, but then argue there is no need when it comes to health. I think the responsibility is an important part of american citizenship. Taking responsibility to ensure youre not a burden to society ought to be one of those requirements of american citizenship. Host our guest is tom daschle an talking about the Affordable Care act rollout. For democrats. 2025853881 for republicans. 2025853882 for independents. How would you rate the leadership of the president on the rollout . Guest this has never been done in 100 years. We have tried and tried and failed and failed over 100 years. Administration for some of the glitches . Of course. We need to take responsibility when things go right away and things go wrong. I also give them great credit and with that comes a lot of challenge and opportunity for mistakes, because we have never done it before. Will he get it right eventually . Will we get it right eventually . I have no doubt. They are taking on the heavy lifting to do this. I am more optimistic than a lot of people are. Host ron from new jersey, good morning. Caller mr. Daschle, i really like you. I have never seen such desperation as the republicans seem to have to kill this law. Ollowems they want to fin brothersagenda. The president asked for help and their words nowhere to be found. Forgot to say sticker shock. That is their latest word. I congratulate you and the democrats working hard on this law. I think they are trying to turn people against themselves to get the insurance. They are desperate. Thank you. Needs a think this city real injection of bipartisanship. I just came back from a week in japan. The japanese have been shaking their heads wondering how the city came this dysfunctional. How is it we cannot address the basic challenges Like Health Care and all of the Economic Issues we have been grappling with, including the budget. We have a responsibility to get the job done. Start governing the way our people and our Founding Fathers expected. I think that is required of all of us. From new york. Ff caller thank you. Hubris jumped into my head. There is a huge disingenuousness from the democrats. They talk like they are for the people but when it all comes all threeu owning branches of government the biggest tall tale in the Health Care Debacle is the dog that did not bark. Pharmaceuticals and Insurance Companies are saying this is not a good thing because it was lining their pockets. Guest i would just say if you look at the record, i wrote a book on how the law was enacted. I did a lot of research and found there was enormous reduce a patient by all the stakeholders. They were invited to the white house and to hearings. They discussed this matter at great length. Is not accurate to say they do not have an opportunity to express themselves. There were 350 amendments and almost half of them were republican amendments that were ultimately passed in the committee. There is a misunderstanding to i regrete to which it was so partisan at the end. We have to find ways to do better in reaching common ground. I am disappointed we did not see more bipartisanship in the process. Host there were no bipartisan votes. Guest there were republican amendments on the floor that were passed. At the end of the day, we do not see any republican support for the bill. Caller i just want to tell you how much i appreciate as a republican that we are trying to Plan National health care put into place. Taxpayer,earold taxpayer, iyearold am scared to death that might Health Care Fees are so high anyway and they are going to double or triple. I am now in a position that i cannot afford to pay that. Light toow has the come in. I am scared to death of the irs. I have been paying all along. I have been paying for 40 years. And now the irs coming down on top of me. I cannot pay my Health Care Fee and they take a little assets i have left. I am very frightened about that. Could you please address that . Goes too many of the concerns you raised. To provide more security and more opportunities for choice. Right now, you had many people who could not get insurance because of preexisting conditions or they were dropped from their Insurance Plan because they had reached annual our lifetime limits. They were charged much higher fees if they were a woman or older. The law attempts to address all of these disparities in a meaningful way. If you cannot afford to pay for the premiums, the government is going to help you pay those premiums. We have to go through this process to convince you and others that are skeptical about what it may mean for them and the implications they have going forward. I am hopeful and confident that we are going to do a lot better job than we have done in the past, in large measure because of the detections in this law. Host there is a publication from south dakota, an oped. Tomcolumn says, only daschle can save the Affordable Care act. President nominated me. There are some issues involving a car that i had used that i did not realize was a taxable source of income. In never occurred to me it was shared with a friend. I found out and i paid the taxes. It became a far more obligated political controversy then i thought was deserved. I decided i would remove myself from consideration. And an dear friend enormously successful journalist and pioneer in native american journalism. I am flattered and honored by his comments. It needs our country and our congress and the American People to be working together to come up with a better understanding of the implications for health going forward. I think the one thing most people agree with is that we know we have a cost problem. When i was born, health was 4 of gdp. If a monkey to have great grandchildren, it will be 32 of gdp if i am lucky to have greatgrandchildren, it will be 32 of gdp. We can do better than this. This is our first installment in doing just that. We are not anywhere close to being finished. Host let me take the idea of his point. How would you allout the Affordable Care act . Guest i am not going to second guess the administration. What was important was to include all of the players and to test, test, test. We probably could have done a better job at both of those things. Are we going to learn from lessons past and tried to do a better job of ensuring that we understand the complicated nature of this in a way that will allow us to work in a much more effective way . I think we are on that track today. I do not think we will reach the 100 goal. Were going to be in a better position by the end of the year. That is the expectation of the American People. Host our previous guest was concerned about missing deadlines. Guest it is no excuse to do nothing and to further complicate the problem by decimating the actuarial tables and all the things the Insurance Companies and others have counted on to make sure this is going to work in the long term. We do not want to create even more problems going forward. Just as we would do in the private sector if the same circumstances resented themselves. Host will the be a problem as far as actuarials . Our previous guest said rates have already been determined. Guest the president did a smart thing. He said we will let two other factors weigh in. The Insurance Companies will have to make that decision. The commissioners will have to weigh if a problem exists. Wethe extent that it does, are not going to change it. Host some have rejected the idea. Guest i am not surprised. There is uncertainty about what the mix will be and the balance of the actuarial cac relations required to meet the premium expectations. Host here is troy from st. Paul, minnesota. Caller i went on the minnesota site