Maine Owl

HOWARD DEAN: You're going to be forced to buy health insurance from a company that‘s going to take, on average, 27 percent of your money so they can pay CEOs $20 million a yearly and so they can return have return on equity in their shareholders. And there's no choice about that. If you don't get that insurance, you're going to get—you‘re going to get a fine.

So, this is—this is a bill that was fundamentally written by staffers who are friendly to the insurance industry. Held up so—and was friendly to the insurance industry by senators who take a lot of money from the insurance industry. And it is not health care reform. I think it's too bad it's just come to this. ...

DEAN: No, absolutely not. You can‘t vote for a bill like this in good conscience. It caused too much money. It isn‘t health care reform. It's not even insurance reform.

Take, for example, this—there‘s a lot of talk about people who have pre-existing conditions can get health insurance. Well, not exactly. The fine print in the Senate says about health care industry—the health care industry gets to charge you three times as much if you‘re older than if you‘re younger. And they get to write the rules. That‘s in the Senate bill.

This bill is no longer reform.

O'DONNELL: And, Howard, quickly, it would be a bill filled with things that were not in the Obama campaign, filled with taxes that were not mentioned in the Obama campaign, an individual mandate that President Obama campaigned against and other items.

So, how do you score the Obama campaign promise versus the way this bill looks at this point?

FINEMAN: That's ancient history for all the Democrats now, Lawrence. They want a bill, almost any bill. If it has some of those core provisions in it, they'll gladly take it, if they can get it.