on our broadcast tonight, sound and fury. all the big players from both sides together for an extraordinary all-day session on health care, but what happened in there? the cover-up. why were unarmed citizens shot by new orleans police after katrina? there is a dramatic new development in case. under the weather. it's happening again in the northeast. another pounding, and this one might stay a while. the final moments of the trainer who lost her life to a killer ale at seaworld. and now the questions begin. and the contender, the americ figure skater making a name for herself on and off the ice, and she's all of 17. "nightly news" begins now. captions paid for by nbc-universal television good evening. if you were so inclined, you could have spent your whole day watching live television coverage of a health care summit from washington. it featured around one table and in one room the president of the united states and leaders of congress from both parties. the white house pushed for it because they feel their man, the president, is good at this sort of thing. and while it was a live tv show, it also may ha a big impact on the future of health care for every american or things could keep going the way they have been. we begin our coverage tonight with our white house correspondent savannah guthrie. good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. leading up to this summit, senior aides here said they didn't expect it to change everything. the question tonight is, did it change anything? with just a short walk across the street to blair house -- >> looking forward to listening. >> reporter: the all-day televised summit showed the long way the president has to go to bridge the divide over health care. >> i hope that this isn't political theater where we are just laying to the cameras and criticizing each other. >> reporter: the democrats' strategy appeared to be reasonable. >> we are actually quite close. there is not a lot of difference. >> we may be closer together than people really think. >> i think we agree with most of them. >> reporter: but republicans disagreed about agreeing. distancing themselves from the democrats' bill. >> there are some fundamental differences between us here that we cannot paper over. >> we don't think all the answers lie in washington regulatingll of this. >> there is a reason why we all voted no. >> reporter: looking to resuscitate his key domestic initiative, the president invited 39 members of congress selected by the republican and democratic congressional leadership, to debate the fine points of health care policy. how to pay for it, who should be covered, how to rein in escalating health care costs. >> i would like the republicans to do a little soul searching and find out are there some things that you would be willing to embrace that get to this core problem of 30 million people without health insurance. >> reporter: not every disagreement today was on substance. >> at this point the republicans have 22 minutes, the democrats 52 minutes. let's try to have as much balance as we can. >> i'm just going back and forth here, mitch. >> reporter: tonight the key differenceemains, whether to do a big comprehensive health care bill or proceed bit by bit. >> our country's too big, too complicated, too decentralized for washington, a few of us here to write a few rules about remaking 17% of the economy all at once. >> an incremental approach is like a swimmer who is 50 feet offshore drowning and you throw him a 10-foot rope. >> reporter: in a reprise of the 2008 campaign, senator john mccain accused the president of negotiating the bill behind closed doors. >> what we got was a process that you and i both said we would change in washington. >> we're not campaigning anymore. the election is over. >> i'm reminded of that every day. >> reporter: well, with no major breakthroughs, the president hinted at the close of the session he is looking to democrats now to go forward and the voters will have the final verdict on what they do, brian. >> all right, savannah guthrie on the white house lawn. this discussion, this fight over what to do about reforming health care has been going on now for a year. question is, what will it take to close this deal? kelly o'donnell is in our washington bureau tonight with more on that part of the story. kelly, good evening. >> reporter: that's really it, brian. what can come of this summit? so mh of the attention is finding a way for democrats and republicans to work together on health care reform, but the pressure is really on democrats. the test is whether they can trust each other's promises to get something passed. while the president was host and referee today, speaker of the house nancy pelosi must be the closer. >> what we do here must be relevant to their lives. the yays are 218. >> reporter: why? under the rules, the house needs to take the next step, voting on the senate's version of health care reform before taking up the fixes talked about today. and that's a very hard sell. no republican will vote for it. >> we just can't afford this. that's t ultimate, that's the ultimate problem here. >> reporter: and democrats in the house do not all agree. their internal party differences could be enough to derail reform. the issues? cost. >> the cost issue is legitimate and whether we can afford it or not, we'll be discussing that. >> reporter: a package estimated around $900 billion over ten years. that's too expensive for a group of about 50 conservative-leaning democrats. >> health inflation is driving us off a cliff. >> reporter: you heard about the cadillac tax on high-value health insurance plans that might affect union and middle class workers. many democrats can't stomach that and then face voters in november. >> so this will take courage to do. >> reporter: and then there are the social issues. immigration and abortion. some house democrats insist no taxpayer money go to insurance plans that cover abortion. a view shared by republicans who raised it with the president today. >> this bill that we have before us begins for the first time in 30 years, allows for the taxpayer funding of abortion. >> reporter: so it makes this so hard for house democrats is they could be pushed to cast a politically tough vote that might be unpopular in their home districts, not knowing if the senate will follow through, make some of the improvements and back them up. brian? >> that's the trick. kelly o'donnell with that end of this story in our newsroom in washington. kelly, thanks. then there's this. all during this health care debate we heard about this country over and over. some say canada should be a model for health care. yet others warn that america could become canada and they don't mean that in a good way. later on in this broadcast tonight, we'll have a close-up look at health care here in canada. now we switch to a big story out of new orleans where the police chief said today he is shocked by a guilty plea that has rocked that city. a veteran officer admitted taking part in an elaborate cover-up to hide what happened when police killed two unarmed people on a bridge during those frantic days after hurricane katrina. we get more tonight from our justice correspondent pete williams. >> reporter: it became a symbol of post katrina chaos, witnessed by an nbc news camera crew. for reasons still unclear, an emergency call went out as six people were crossing a bridge over the city's industrial canal headed to a surmarket. two others were going to see their brother, a dentist. police arrived in a rented truck and dozens of shots were fired. when it was over, two people were dead and four were wounded, all shot by police who had first said they were defending themselves. it turned out the victims were unarmed. seven policemen were put on trial in state court, but the charges were dropped. then wednesday a dramatic break in the case. michael lohman, a new orleans police veteran of 22 years admitted he knew the police fired without justification and he helped engineer a cover-up. relatives of one of the men killed, ronald madison say it's what they've been hoping for. >> we've been pushing for this a long time. >> reporter: today the police chief says he is shocked. >> michael lohman deserves to go to jail, and any other officers who participated in this cover-up should also go to prison. >> reporter: but the president of a police watch dog group says the guilty plea could help unravel police cover-ups of others, suspicious deaths following katrina. >> there was an instantaneous decision to protect officers and cover up that misconduct. that is an indication of a culture within the police department that's going to have to be changed. >> reporter: federal prosecutors say they expect more charges from the bridge shooting in the weeks to come, and that their inveigation of new orleans police won't stop there. pete williams, nbc news, at the justice department. back here in vancouver, while today felt like one of the warmest so far of these games, back east, another massive storm is churning along a string of big metropolitan areas. high winds, heavy rains, big snow, dangerous conditions along a big stretch of the east coast. the wet snow in new york causing big problems already. a local news viewer sent in a picture of a tree that fell on a bus on fifth avenue shutting down traffic. and a man was killed by a fallen branch while walking in central park. weather channel's mike seidel is further upstate in binghamton, new york, tonight. good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. it's a swirling snowstorm near upstate. what makes this so different from the epic storms earli this season tonight it's moving west toward the coast, not north and east like most storms do. it's blown a lot of warm air off the atlantic and raining in vermont and new hampshire and all southern new england getting heavy rainfall. we have flood warnings from another one to two inches of rain from parts of maine into new hampshire and boston. it's been raining as far west as albany. back where it's snowing, one to two inches per hour tonight and winds gusting 30 to 40 miles per hour. by tomorrow morning expect power outages. how much more snowfalls? some totals will mean two feet or more with drifting and blowing snow. new york city, another six inches of slush. there were hundreds of flight cancellations and more flight problems tomorrow. good news for philadelphia and washington coming off their snowiest seasons on record, they will be spared the worst of this storm. brian? >> mike seidel who is never happy unless he is out in it. he is out in it in binghamton, w york. thanks. on wall street today, the dow finished down 53 points, well off the lows of the day. when "nightly news" continues on a thursday evening, more on the death of that trainer at seaworld. the new questions popping up about keeping those huge predators in captivity. and later, power and poise. wer your bad cholesterol but your good cholesterol and triglycerides are still out of line? then you may not be seeing the whole picture. ask your doctor about trilipix. statin to lower bad cholesterol, along with diet, adding trilipix can lower fatty triglycerides and raise good cholesterol to help improve all three cholesterol numbers. trilipix has not been shown to prevent heart attacks or stroke more than a statin alone. trilipix is not for everyone, including people with liver, gallbladder, or severe kidney disease, or nursing women. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you are pregnant or may become pregnant. blood tests are needed before and during treatment to check for liver problems. contact your doctor if you develop unexplained muscle pain or weakness, as this can be a sign of a rare but serious side effect. this risk may be increased when trilipix is used with a statin. if you cannot affo your medication, call 1-866-4-trilipix for more information. trilipix. there's more to cholesterol. get the picture. but we've got the ammunition she needs: omnaris. 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