Coming soon to a tv machine near you, mississippi. Coming soon. Now its time for the last word with lawrence odonnell. Have a great night. Today, the president tried to stop the panic among some Congressional Democrats over the Affordable Care act. There is no doubt that people are frustrated and we should have done a better job. The president is going to announce some kind of fix. Some sort of fix. Administrative fix to the Affordable Care act. I understand why folks are frustrated. If you like your plan, you really can keep the plan. At least for a while. Today were going to extend that principle. Trying to keep his original promise. Insurers can keep their plan into 2014. Thats on me. We should have done a better job. President obama gets an earful from fellow democrats. We believe this needs to be fixed. I think we can get it fixed. They are worried now about the midterm elections. What we have to do for the fix is thread the needle. When it comes to this Health Care Law, there is no way to fix this. What we should not do is what the republicans want to do. The upton bill. The upton bill is a very dangerous bill. Is not a good bill. John boehner has called the upton bill a targeted strike. What is unacceptable is what the republicans want to do. What is it that you want to do . Scrap this law once and for all. We cant go back to the status quo. The website will get fixed. This will get better. It is going to work. The Health Care Law has survived a lot. The bill is passed. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. It can be upheld. I am your father. The Health Care Law has survived a lot. The mood among democrats has gone from nervous to panicked. Is that it . Is it over . Is that your understanding . Absolutely not. Weve got to move forward on this. President obama gave an emergency state of the Union Address today, which was all about the state of the Affordable Care act. Nothing the president says in his next scheduled state of the Union Address will matter, if the problems he discussed today are not solved before then. We fumbled the rollout on this Health Care Law. This is something thats really important to me and its really important to millions of americans who have been waiting for a really long time to try to get health care because they dont have it. And, you know, i am very frustrated. But im also somebody who, if i fumbled the ball, you know, im going to wait until i get the next play. Then im going to try to run as hard as i can and do right by the team. Ultimately im the head of this team. We did fumble the ball on it. What im going to do is make sure that we get it fixed. The president , who is not running for reelection, did everything he could to take the politic. Cal pressure off the people who are. Congressional democrats. There is no doubt that our failure to roll out the aca smoothly has put a burden on democrats, whether theyre running or not. Because they stood up and supported this effort through thick and thin. And, you know, i feel deeply responsible for making it harder for them rather than easier for them to continue to promote the core values that i think led him to support this thing in the first place. President obama said the criticism he has been facing has been, quote, deserved. He also said he understands how some people must feel when they receive notices that their Health Insurance policy has been canceled. I completely get how upsetting this could be for a lot of americans, particularly after assurances they heard from me that if they had a plan that they liked, they could keep it. And to those americans, i hear you loud and clear. I said that i would do everything we can to fix this morning. Today im offering an idea to help do it. Insurers can extend plans that otherwise could be cancelled in 2014 and americans whose plans have been canceled can choose to reenroll in the same kind of plan. What were essentially saying is that the Affordable Care act is not going to be the factor in what happens with folks in the individual market. Asking the question that went to the heart of what todays press conference was all about. You said while the law was being debated if you like your plan, you can keep t you said after the law was implemented or signed, if you like your plan, you can keep it. Americans believed you, sar, when you said to them over and over. Do you not believe, sir, the American People deserve a deeper, more transparent accountablity from you over and over when your policy staff and you were alerted that billions of americans would fall into the very gap youre trying to administratively fix now . President obama admitted that the final technical, legal language the, the legislative language in the law did not match his rhetoric. With respect to the pledge i made that if you like your plan, you can keep it, i think and ive said in interviews that there is no doubt that the way i put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate. It was not because of my intention not to deliver on that commitment and that promise. We put a grandfather clause into the law. But it was insufficient. Keep in mind that the individual market accounts for 5 of the population. So when i said you can keep your health care, im looking at folks who have got employer based health care, folks who have medicare, medicaid. And that accounts for the vast majority of americans. And then for people who dont have any Health Insurance at all, obviously, that didnt apply. My commitment to them was youre going to be able to get Affordable Health care for the first time. You have an individual market that accounts for about 5 of the population and our working assumption was my working assumption was that the majority of those folks would find better policies at lower costs or the same costs in the marketplaces and that there the universe of folks who potentially would not find a better deal in the marketplaces, the grandfather clause would work sufficiently for them. And it didnt. And, again, thats on us. Which is why were thats on me. And thats why im trying to fix it. Joining me now, host of msnbcs up with steve on the weekends and msnbc analyst, eugene robinson. I thought the president answered major garrets question very well. I thought it made perfect sense but im not the test audience. How do you think that sounded to voters out there, who just arent quite sure whats happening this week . I dont think ended up not being accurate was possibly the best phrase he could have used. But actually, i think it probably came off pretty well to average voters. Everybody loves a good mea culpa. I think he was officially contrite. At the same time, sufficiently resolute in saying im not going to turn my back on 40 million americans who dont have health care insurance. Were going to move this forward, fix it. Right now were going to fix this one problem and maybe there will be other problems we need to fix. We certainly need to get the website fixed but were going to move ahead with it. I think people will be more receptive than not to that sort of measure. Steve, i think i may be too steeped in legislative language and the difference between legislative languages and speeches. I ignore speeches, hate to cover them. I consider it inaccurate rhetoric, pretty much, all the time. But the other big audience for today were Congressional Democrats, house and senate. What do we know as of now about how calm they are staying for the next 24 hours or so . Yeah. Well, first of all, i think theyre much more attuned to sort of what the voters, not steeped in the legislative language either are, theyre much more tuned into that and hearing what voters say are confusion, chaos, stories about cancellation. Building panic amongst their constituents and overwhelming desire of democrats is to be seen going on the record and doing something about this. Theres talk about whether that means putting exactly what the president talked about today into legislative language that fred upton, the republican from michigan is offering. The question tomorrow will be how Many Democrats will peel off and vote for this republican plan in the house tomorrow. At the same time, Mary Landrieu, more moderate democratic senator from louisiana who wants to press ahead with her own plan in the senate, jeff me are. Kley, dianne feinstein. Open question about whether they would get a vote there. Lets say fred upton passes the house and Mary Landrieu passes the senate. At least one of those is a gigantic if. Those are two bills. It ends up whether this is just posturing where everybody wants to get on the record hey, huge problem caused by the president and i voted for x. I voted for x. Whether that gets merged into any legislation is another question. Word coming out of the meeting is that most are content with what the president has suggested as a fix. Theres something the president said in his News Conference today that explained why the politics of this is always incredibly difficult. He said when you legislate in the health care area, you then own all the problems in the health care area. Lets listen to how he put it. Look one thing that i understood, one reason it hasnt been done and its very difficult to do is that anything thats going on thats tough in a health care market, if you initiated a reform, can be attributed to your law. And so what we want to do is to be able to say to these folks, you know what . The Affordable Care act is not going to be the reason why insurers have to cancel your plan. Gene, that is exactly one of the major reasons why this kind of legislation has always been radioactive and why the democrats ultimately backed out of it in 1994 with the clintons. They realized if we do this, every single negative thing that will then happen in the Insurance Market will be attributed to us. Thats exactly right, lawrence. And negative things happen all the time. Yes. And always were happening. Exactly. I dont know about you insurance rates, but mine go up every year, it seems. And the benefits change and theres Something Else i dont like, some new requirement or some new hoop that has to be jumped through to get make this happen or make that happen. That happens all the time. And, in fact, peoples policies get canceled all the time because these are yeartoyear policies and a lot of these cutrate policies were going to bite the dust regardless of the Affordable Care act. Nonetheless, this big change happened, this big piece of legislation and it all gets blamed on that. We are hearing the president and other democrats say things now for the first time that they could have been saying in their speeches in the last few years but havent. Including today, the president saying that we always knew this was going to be complicated. Lets listen to the way he said that today. We always knew that these marketplaces creating a place where people can shop and through competition get a better deal or the Health Insurance that their families need, we always knew that that was going to be complicated and everybody was going to be paying a lot of attention to it. And we should have done a better job getting that right on day one, not day 28 or day 40. I am confident that by the time we look back on this next year that people are going to say this is working well. And its helping a lot of people. Steve, we always knew it was going to be complicated. That was left out of the all the big public speeches trying to sell this thing, which is understandable. Bill and Hillary Clinton made it very clear that it was going to be complicated when they were trying to legislate in this arena and they got absolutely nothing as a result. And i think if you look back at the way the clinton speeches worked back then, they were part of what ended up turning people off because they feared this is going to be very complicated. Thats the story going all the way back to harry truman. In the abstract when theres no reform proposal, democrats always win the health care debate. Which party would you rather have health care . People always say democrats. And then they try to and they say socialization, Government Health care, oh, my god and that rhetoric takes over. Yeah, this was more complicated than we thought. They do own it right now. What hes saying at the end is very true. There is still a possibility, distinct possibility, a good possibility that ultimately six months, a year from now youll have a viable risk pool that will be created. Youll have these exchanges up and running across the country where people can buy competitively priced insurance, the whole vision of the law. What is happening basically in massachusetts right now can still happen across the country. I dont want to put i dont want to turn this into just blaming republicans. When obama says they fumbled the ball, hes right. This is ultimately the administrations responsibility for how botched the rollout and the website has been. I dont think what they anticipated was that 3 1 2 years after this law was enacted they wouldnt have gotten even the tiniest ounce of cooperation from republicans. When you compare that to massachusetts, when it became the law of the land in massachusetts, it stopped becoming a partisan issue. And there was a coming together of both sides to make the law work, to put Public Service campaigns together, to get people to vote, to get civic organizations engaged. Something we havent seen because this has been a contested political issue since march 2010. Thats not the only reason. The administration deserves a ton of blame here and the future of this thing is in doubt right now. I would say thats an element of it. If they didnt fully anticipate that, im not sure they should have. I dont know how they could have possibly not fully anticipated relentless republican operation every day on this. I actually dont think the future of obama care is in doubt. It will be the law. At least tas long as obama is president. It will be a bumpy first year. The net result is that there will end up being, by march, fewer people in the risk pool or in the exchanges, rather, than were anticipated. It might not be the same mix that was anticipated. Rates might not be as low as they thought. So, it could be a bumpy first year. But there will be a second year and a third year. Steve and eugene, thank you both for joining me tonight. Coming up, how all this started this week with the words of bill clinton. And why did he say that . Later joining me to discuss the policies, new fixes being thrown around in the house and senate and the president s idea. And, of course, torontos mayor has worked his way back in the rewrite tonight. He had to rewrite himself today after he said something very special at an impromptu News Conference this morning. We have gotten msnbc sencensorso because with power ports. And wifi. And inseat entertainment, for everyone on board, now when you fly, time flies too. Flight Attendant sir, were about to land. vo were adding a brand new plane, with all this, every week. Its just one way were building the new american. With an ultrathin coating and fast absorbing advil ion core™ technology, it stops pain before it gets worse. Nothing works faster. New fast acting advil. Look for it in the white box. Bigger, tougher messes was better leverage, he created a magic eraser with an attachable handy grip. It gives you the leverage you need to tackle tough kitchen messes and big bathroom grime, too. Mr. Cleans new magic eraser handy grip. An unnamed democrat told nbc news, quote, bill clinton sure didnt make it easy. Las known definitely for its traffic, congestion, for the smog. But there are a lot of people that do ride the bus. And now that the buses are running on natural gas, they dont throw out as much pollution into the air. So i feel good. I feel like im doing my part to help out the environment. dad just feather it out. son ok. Feather it out. dad all right. Thats ok. dad put it in second, put it in second. dad slow it down. Put the clutch in, break it, break it. dad just like i showed you. Dad, you didnt show me, you showed him. Dad, hes gonna wreck the car dad hes not gonna wreck the car. dad no fighting in the road, please. dad put your blinker on. son you didnt even give me a chance dad ok. mom vo we got the new subaru because nothing could break our old one. dad ok. son what the heck . Let go of my seat mom vo i hope the same goes for my husband. dad you guys are doing a great job. Seriously. announcer love a car that lasts. Love. Its what makes a subaru, a subaru. I think that the president should honor the commitment he made to those people. It has been two very, very long days since that comment by bill clinton landed in washington. Today, michael smerconished asked jay carney if president obama has spoken to bill clinton since then. I dont have any calls between the two president s to readout. They speak very frequently. President bill clinton has been extremely supportive of the Affordable Care act. I know how this works, being a journalist for 21 years. But if you look at that interview, everything he said about the Affordable Care act was positive, including we are better off without it i mean with it than without it. President clinton knows of what he speaks. As far as you know they havent it sounds like. He has been very supportive of the Affordable Care act and i think youve seen him again, and again and again say so. Joining me now, Washington Post political reporter nia malik henderson. Why cant jay carney simply say whether barack obama has been on the phone with bill clinton . Whats the problem there . What we take away from that is apparently bill clinton has been enormously supportive of the Affordable Care act. Really . But it doesnt sound like it, right, from that call i mean, from that conversation that he had on that