to go to your side and say, so if you re a house democrat in a swing district and you wake up to politico with this headline, what exactly are you thinking? this was about how the money people and some strategist think. democrats are like, see the house? we re never going to win that. that may be what you think but to say it out loud? candy, i don t think if i m waking up in the morning and i call steve israel, i don t think steve israel will say we ve ceded the house. the rcc is the minority party, they don t have the advantages of controlling the house of representatives. you have a number of seats out there that i think potentially become very contested. as we saw it in 2012 when, as you recall, democrats were supposed to lose seats in the senate and instead ended up picking them up. it is highly unpredictable and these races often come down to quality of the candidates. one telltale sign virginia cd-10.
cd-10. congressman frank wolf announced he was not going to run again but democrats can t recruit a top-flight candidate for a district that ought to be an easy pick-up. this is verifying what democratic would-be candidates are learning around the country. there is no question that from the beginning 2014 was going to be tough for democrats. the reality is, as voting patterns have become more polarized by age and race, mid-term electorate is older around whiter when 65% of whites over 45 are voting republican. this is always going to be an uphill climb for the democrats. when you look the senate battlefield, the seven romney-won seats with democratic senators are really the key political battlefield of 2014 whether democrats can defend them and those also tend to be with the exceptions of north carolina and louisiana, most of them are older around whiter states. that s going to be a very tough road for democrats an they are going to need really every
monica, basil, thank you both. more problems could be on the way for our nation s health care providers. there is a new medical coding system set to go into effect this fall but some worry it could make it much more difficult for patients to see their doctors and could even push some doctors out of business. garrett tenney has details from chicago. good to see you. what is this new billing system about and why should patients be concerned about it? reporter: yeah, uma, the new system is icd-10. this is a set of codes used by doctors to track what ailments you have and used by insurers to determine how much they will pay for specific treatment. this new system, it is very precisely coded. it has more than 68,000 codes for very specific diagnosis. for example, if someone gets burned by flaming water skis there is a code for precisely that. this current system, icd-9, has only 14,000 codes.
many others believe icd-10 will help improve medical care. initially doctors have the cost of new equipment, software, training. the biggest concern though is the major billing disruptions are expected to come when it is first rolled out. many doctors, at least initially likely don t be fully paid by insurers for as much as six months. those pushing for the updated system though, they say those concerns are overexaggerated and this change is long overdue. icd-9 is over 30 years old and we make the statement, that you wouldn t continue to use medical equipment that s 30 years old. it s outdated. same thing happened to our code set. reporter: several members of congress have introduced bills aimed at preventing icd-10 from being implemented. so far those have not gained any traction. uma? lots of changes on the way. thank you very much. reporter: certainly. jon: talk about needing doctors,