specifically majority leader steny hoyer, of targeting him because of his no vote on the health bill. bear in mind, he said his no vote was because had didn t go far enough, he wanted the public option. massa making the stunning revelation on radio this sunday. mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill. and this administration and this house leadership have said, quote unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. and now they ve gotten rid of me and it will pass. joining us now to talk about these allegations and where the house dems stand on getting the 216 votes needed to pass this bill, majority leader steny hoyer. a pleasure. thank you for joining us. you bet. how do you react to this? all this the health care or let s start with mr. massa and we ll move on to health care shortly. well, i think clearly mr. massa s incorrect.
pass a bees of legislation? i think we will have. i think that clearly we need to we re still working on what thes reconciliation bill can do and what it will include. and then we ll have to inform members of that. and see what their view is. but my thought is that we will get the votes. the reasons we ll get the votes is because most americans believe that the health care system needs reform. and it needs significant reform. it was just a poll that the economists did that shows for the first time in a few months that a majority of americans responded that we need to do this comprehensive reform bill. and very frankly, when you ask about the internals, and by that i mean individual provisions within the bill, you get very, very strong support for these individual provisions. i think people have been as we all have have been upset with the process which seems to be very contentious and
with you, the objective of making sure that we have a competitive, transparent system wherein there will not be monopolies. in fact, as you know, we just passed legislation through the house of representatives to withdraw the antitrust protection from insurance companies. so that insurance companies cannot collude in terms of setting prices or making their determinations. we think that was an important bill. some republicans, frankly, spoke against it. but it passed with over 400 votes. with that said, the senate listen, you and i are in agreement on a lot of these things. at the same time, that antitrust exemption was not repealed in the senate bill, which will be the bill coming through through reconciliation. in other words, i applaud the effort made in the house. do you think that will be installed in the final version of this legislation? it may not be in the version of the legislation. it was not it was in our legislation, but we passed it as
divisive, and it has been. that s unfortunate. but i think when they focus on what the bill does, the cost savings to them, and to our country, and the reforms that they bring in terms of preexisting conditions, and annual caps, and lifetime caps, and the reforms that they ll bring in terms of accountable organizations to make them more efficient and effective, and the focus on wellness and the focus on getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse, when you go through those provisions in the bill, most americans respond, yes, that makes sense. and it does make sense. on the other hand, there are a couple of things that stand out. and you mention the polls. there s a gallup poll that came out this afternoon that basically has the opinion tied. so in this particular poll, we all know the sampling, i ll call that a tie, being a wall street person, statistics. that s the same number.
vote to pass the bill because of a republican who said he was going to retire, but decided to postpone his retirement until he could get his no vote in. the following day, congressman massa said he would now resign before the election, not citing the cancer that he was citing on wednesday, but now citing sexual allegations made against him leaked to the media. at that time he said the ethics probe was behind him stepping down, backing away from the health reasons a couple days prior. didn t want to put his family through it. sunday he changes his story again with that radio clip. i won t subject you to more retelling of all this, but i will ask you, why do you think there are so many different reasons offered up by this man and is it possible that all of them could be true? well, i suppose all of them you asked me is it possible that all of them are true. i think mr. massa may think all of them are true. the fact remains that there were allegation also made. the proper venue for th