neither organization is awlind either side in this national discussion. and our truth squad guru josh levs. let's get started. how many americans are uninsu uninsured. >> everything we look at, this is one of the most complicated issues. take a look at what people have been saying. >> nearly 46 million americans don't have health insurance coverage today. >> you take owl illegal aliens and people that have the ability to buy insurance but choose not to buy it, don't you get down to about 8 billion -- or 8 million? and the sans yes to that one. >> it's a great way to start off this hour because it shows you, 46 million, but really only 8 million. i would love to give you a solid answer. unfortunately the reality here is there is is no one who knows. so any time you hear a number like that used, you've got a pour a bunch of salt on it in your mind, but i want to help

you understand where all these numbers are um coming from bra this is at the crux of this debate in this country. this is what we get from the census. i spoke with the census direct tlichlt is a report that says 45.7 million people inside this country are uninsured for all of 2007. that's where that comes from, but that same report, most people don't realize, drew, this same report specifically says it's probably not that high. that the health insurance is likely to be underreported. i called them, they said you know, it's probably not as high as 46 million. then you have a conservative group that opposes president obama's stance and his plan, you can see right there. they said wait a second, what about at people in this country who can afford it if they wanted to, could get on medicare or medicaid or one of those other program, various other factors. let's show what they came up with, they get down to 8 million there. can we show that from the specific research institute. they said it goes down to 8

million for chronically uninsured. there are other groups who say no, you know what? it's higher. so we had to land on this verdict for the single most complex, being in in dispute. if you take away one thing, it's th this. people talk about lots of millions, we honest lir do not have a definitive answer about how many millions are truly insured, unless you and i want to knock on doors all over the country. >> yet these politicians will definitively state one or the another like a hard number. >> exactly. >> all the numbers prerecession, so all the people losing their aren't counted in any of these? >> exactly. you have all these people losing jobs, losing hey, it's probably gone up from whatever it was. >> illegal immigrants, josh. it's a big argument, there's 20 million, 30 million, 11 million illegal immigrants. is this part of the 46 million? >> yes, there are some among the 46 million who are immigrant,

the census doesn't know exactly how many are illegal immigrants, but the other question we investigated in the truth squad is whether this health care plan will cover illegal immigrants or if it's designed do that. false. simply. when you look at what is in this plan, it does specifically say it will not cover illegal immigrants. however, drew it also won't solve the current problem with illegal immigrants going to hospital emergency rooms to get that care. >> that's something we forget. health care is not denied to anybody in an emergency room situation, that's part of the problem, we've got huge bills at emergency rooms we've got it pay for. >> that's part of the reason. >> let's move on to this controversy. will the health care plan lead to rationing. >> you know? this is another place where we're hearing both sides, let's take a look. >> my concern is being able to be denied the proper coverage, i'm concerned about the rationing of health care. i'm concerned about not being

able to get the health care for my elderly parents. >> now let's take a look at the flip side from vice president joe biden. >> when you tell me i can't get insurance because of a precondition, that's rationing to me. >> to him that is rationing. i will tell you, our own sanjay gupta said there is rationing going on right now. when you look at the system inside the insurance system. so we looked at this question. will the current health care reform lead to ragging? here's our verdict, unfortunately, we had to land on in dispute on this, because we cannot tell you, this is what we were talking about earlier, drew, we can't know for sure what will lead to anything. so it is possible it will lead to some level of rationing, some groups think it will the government says it won't. we have to keep an eye and see what happens. >> we're dealing with the facts as we know it and the questio questionses as we get them. sheer question about whether the government will determine how much doctors charge. >> that's a question about

mandates, a lot of people have been asking us in the "newsroom," will there be a mandate that you can only charge this amount of money for any fee service you provide? this is what the the white house said president obama wants? >> we cannot envision a scenario in which we live with anything that doesn't provide choice and competition in a private insurance market that allows people to get the best deal possible on both the price and quality if they enter a private health insurance market. >> so their stance is what he wants to see is competition. therefore, it would not be a specific charge. but let me just show you some points private groups are making. i have this on the screen for you, too. this is the other side of the argument. one group out there, for example, america's health insurance plans, this is group that represents health insurance companies. they're trying say the new government-run plan were to offer artificially low premiums over time it could be a step toward a single payer system. their argument boils down to this, if the government ends up

taking over, ultimately there might be really one system in the country. you can see on the next screen where we go with this. that might potentially in some people's view, lead to their being a way they could set a price because ultimately if the government has that much control, there could be a way to say you know what, there's only one way of charging. but the american medical association on the other opposite side the health and human services secretary would be required to establish payment rates only under the public health insurance option. so they're saying no, if you're under had you been like health insurance are option, the government could set a rate, everybody else, you industrial competition. i can tell you that the bill does not at all call for setting rates t does not say anything about mandating any charges, so under the bill the way it's written, that's not supposed to happen, drew. >> there's so many sub texts to this, because if you have the government paying one rate and private insurers paying another rate, that's not going to square in the market either, that's part of the problem as well. >> well, the theory vi that competition benefits everyone. >> great. this might be the most

farfetched plan we've this week. it's whether people will be denied care for their eyes until their partially blind. >> have you heard that one? >> i heard that, i didn't believe it. >> let me show you actually. we got this on a facebook message someone sent us. florence maccie wrote us, i got a zurk e-mail that said the new health bill will not help a person with macular degeneration until they lost the vision with one eye first. we looked into this, other people are getting this as well. i'm just going to get straight to the verdict here. it's actually really simple it not going to do that. the bill does not say it is going to do that at all, but dr drew, we can end this here. the point is that there are a lot of e-mails going around out there, people are hearing claims and need to be very suspicious when they're in there. >> that's why we're here and cnn.com has that health care page to answer some of these questions. we'll answer a lot more including a huge one which is kind of at the center of this debate, pre-existing conditions,

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from brink's home securi, you can now expect from broadview security - for home and business. broadview secuty - the next generation of brink's home security. call now. question about pre-existing conditions has come up in a lot of town hall meetings, whether or not you can be denied insurance because of a pre-existing health condition it came up monday in this town hall meeting in dallas.

>> will the proposed health reforms offer better ways to help individuals manage chronic conditions? now you mentioned that the market is moving to address it, but i think it would be fair to say slowly. so would the market provide coverage for pre-existing conditions? >> angie holan is at politifact.com, politifact does not have a political affiliation. get that out of the way. >> thank you. >> what is a pre-existing condition? >> pre-exist conditions are pretty much any illness that someone may have when they have to switch insurance, we looked into this on the issue of pregnancy. sometimes pregnancy is a pre-existing condition. now, i should say if you have insurance through a large employer and you're moving to another employer, usually there's no problem, the problem is when you go into what's called the individual market. and you have to buy insurance on your own. then these pre-exist iing

conditions can exclude you from coverage. the new legislation proposes to say that they can't do this, that they must accept everyone regardless of preconditions. >> and in pregnancy included. >> pregnancy included, that's right. >> very good. well, we're hearing a lot of talk about the health co-ops as an option. when what is a co-op, we've asked elizabeth cohen to look at this, and she broke it down with poppy harlow. let's listen to that. >> let's look at what the characteristics of a co-op. first of all, what it is it is not a private insurance company it a nonprofit organization. the patients elect a governing board and their tens of thousands of members. so they don't have the need to turn a profit in the same way that big companies do. but you know, i called the two biggest co-ops in the country, there's one in seattle and one in minnesota, i said there's 46 million uninsured people, co-ops are getting a lot of attention will they help the uninsured,

they both of them, said, no, not necessarily. we still charge premiums that are about the average of what other insurance policies charge and so and we also will sometimes deny people from pre-existing conditions. so co-ops, some people would say, are really not the answer because they provide competition, they might lower the price of insurance in their geographical area but they're certainly not charity, that's for sure. >> angie, what have you guys learned about co-ops? will they work? >> what is interesting, we haven't fact checked co-office yet because we just don't know enough what a national co-op would look like. would it have a lot of barri bargaining power? or not that much? would it be national or regional? so we just don't know. we're waiting for more details, the salient point seems to be it's not government run. it's member run, but other than that, we're waiting for details like everybody else. >> thanks a lot.

we're just a couple of minutes away now, including the latest on hurricane bill for our top story, we'll debunk the biggest myths and concessions in this health care debate and answer for questions with josh levs. >> >> i was just looking for one asking about abortion, whether it will ultimately cover it under whatever plan could make it through congress. we'll break that down. aries whod assistance getting around their homes. there is a medicare benefit that may qualify you for a new power chair or scooter at little or no cost to you.

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hurricane bill is head iing north, expected to skirt the coast of this evening. taliban forces already taking revenge against afghans who voted in thursday's presidential election. two women in the taliban stronghold of kandahar had their index fingers cut off. preliminary election results are expected early next month. senator charles schumer wants the u.n. to condemn libya for the heroes welcome it gave it a convicted terrorist, he was serving life in prison for the bombing of pan am 33 over locker bit. he was released from prison and greeted like a conquering hero when he returned to libya. it's clear the libyan government

still has a love affair with terrorism. we're going to check the stories again, but our special continues, answering all of your questions, whether they come to us on the phone, the internet, wherever, on health care. and health care reform. josh levs is kind of the funnel for all of those questions. josh? >> i peel like a funnel sometimes. we got this one from gene, answer coming up. will the current health care infrastructure be overwhelmed?

there's a lot of conflicts claims about the what president wants to bring to health care. whether the government decide what care i can get? >> there's nothing in the bill

that says government will decide what care you get, but the sticking point here would be the public insurance plan which would be a government-run plan, would it be deciding what it covers and what it doesn't cover? certainly it would. the other thing is that the government will set minimum benefit standards and that's just a minimum. health plans can then offer as much as coverage aas they want beyond that. >> what about private insurance, how they fit into thisy will they eventually be illegal? >> no. this was actually a misinterpretation of something in the bill about individual health plans that would be grandfathered in. the provision said if you buy your own insurance on your own, your plachb is grandfathered in no matter what type of benefit level it is, and that was just completely misconstrued. >> we are talking about the government being involved in kind of controlling health care because of the size.

if there was a government-run plan, i wonder if you have any thoughts on that because we're talking about the predictive nature of this, but if that government plan eventually grew to be so huge, would it basically direct all the care in all these plans? >> well, that's certainly the concern. you know, we looked at a couple of different studyies and it depends on how the public plan is structured. there's concern that if it's rates that are similar to medicare rates that private plans won't be able to compete with that. but the house plan, as amended by the energy and commerce committee says that rates would be negotiated, putting their premiums more in line with private plans. so it remains to be seen how this public plan is structured. >> on medicare, if there's a government plan, there already is one called medicare, would medicare go away? would that be slashed? >> there's no plan for that at all, the claim we've seen people make is that medicare benefits

would be slashed and we've said that that's false. there's actually proposed savings to get out of medicare, out of projected increases in payments. >> okay. thanks, lauer lori, for all that we're going to be talk about the dental care provisions, we talked about eye care, now dental care, we're going to be look at the top stories in about ten minutes.

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okay. this is where our town hall opens up, we've got josh levs in the truth squad, lori robinson, and angie holen from politifact.com, answering questions about this health care stuff. let's talk now about dental care. a woman who visited a free dental clinic here in atlanta, she's afraid, your, that reform will only provide dental coverage to people under 21. true, false? >> i think it's criminal because the average person i said earlier, dental care is not a priority when you're trying to pay your mortgage. i think that they can take into

consideration those persons who are not in that age group still have to work. those people who's not in that age group will have health problems as a result of not having access to adequate dental care. she's pretty sure, this isn't going to cover here. >> thelma has a point here. let me just show you the basic idea. because the cnn truth squad has looked into this. the basic public plan does include dental only for those under 21. so it's true over 21 you would not have dental care under that plan, but you could pay extra and get dental care, it's really pretty much like anyone with private insurance that works for a company, you have a health care and you can choose to pay extra for dental care, so yes, under the public plan, not automatically be, there but something would be available, but it would cost extra. so you can see where she's coming from on. >> that details to be filled out later. >> true but incomplete.

it is true, under 21 is left out, but the facts is you can still get it if you want to pay some extra money. >> let's open it up. what else? >> angie and lori, i'm going show your web pages, we'll get to some questions for you. cnn.com/healthcare. a lot of stuff for to you check out. factcheck.org is where you can get a lot of great fact checking on health care and also politifact.com, both agencies doing a great job. our brethren in the world of facts checking, we're glad as many people are doing it as possible. let's get straight to these questions. lori, we'll start off with one from jessica who wants to know about abortion and whether or not it will be covered by this plan? >> well, it certainly could be covered, both the house and senate bills allow the so-called public plan and other private plans offered through the

insurance exchange to cover abortion. there is some language that was add to the house bill saying that public funds couldn't be used to pay for them. this a bit of a controversial point. people who are low and moderate income would get subsidies to buy coverage either through the public plan or one of the private plans in the exchange and if that plan covers abortion, how do you sep right out this money, the federal subsidies from whatever the individual is paying on their own? that has become a very controversial point. anti-abortion groups definitely want some more explicit language in the bill saying that any plan that is purchased with federal subsidies can't cover abortions. >> that's very interesting because i believe i heard some congressmen saying this would not cover abortion. have you heard that? >> somewhere saying they feel ultimately it won't, right. >> we don't know for sure. there's nothing in either bill that says abortions will be covered, but they could be. there's certainly that allowance. >> there's nothing that says it

exempts it. >> yes. >> that's part of what is complex. let's remind everyone, there is no final bill in either chamber but a house bill is on line and senate bill is on line. a lot of what is happening right now is this kind of thing at town halls and here, where people with specific concerns are weighing in so hopefully in their view, things will be tweaked before there is a final bill. >> this is a an important hotbed issue. angie, are you finding the same thing? >> we looked into the abortion issue and a committee in congress took up the toish try and craft a compromise that they called abortion neutral. and the idea here is that if you would like abortion services covered, you would selects that plan, but you would also, if you didn't like abortion, you would have plans without that option and you could select that one. now, does that satisfy everybody? i don't think so. but their goal is abortion neutral. >> i want to get to at lot of

you, your viewer question, we'll post links to everything we're talking about here after the show, 5:00, so you'll be able to see the fact checks on these issues. a question from jean, we gut a similar question from a lot of people. will the current health care infrastructure be overwhelmed. a lot of people are hearing that millions of people will be uninsured. as it is, you wait in the doctor's office sometimes for an hour. when you looked at this in politifact, is there any the infrastructure to handle all these people suddenly being insured? >> that's an interesting question. certainly the obama administration is concerned about that, they are directeding a lot more resources to encourage general practice titi, people who see families and general doctors, so they're putting resources into that. now the other point is this bill will roll out in -- i accident want to say phases, but it's going to take a while to get it going. so there may be, it may be stretched over time.

but the question is a good question and it is a genuine concern. >> it would mean a lot more doctors, potentially, a lot more doctors, as it is, need for nurses and other medical workers out there. so i guess it could trigger some jobs in that sense. and a lot more paying for doctors then, right? >> part of this is to cut costs. if you're going to have increasing amounts of people getting health care, that's going to be increasing amount of dollars going to health care. >> and the part of reform that's popular with doctors and insurance companies is this individual mandate that would require people to purchase insurance, so the health care secreta sector is supportive of more customers in a way. >> let me bring lori back in here because i want to ask you a question here, we've gotten from oliver. this interesting, it's about this idea of competition. he wants to know why can't health insurance be purchased across state line. lawmakers talk about this. is that something that could happen? there might be this national level of competition?

is that something we can expect? >> i don't know if we'll expect it or not. it was something that was proposed during the presidential campaign, actually by john mccain. one of the problems now is there's so many different rules state by state, whether it's about pre-existing conditions or what you can turn people down for or how you can change what they have to pay based on age or health status. there's so many different rules state by state that that makes it pretty difficult to do right now. the senate bill, they're going to structure these insurance are exchanges state by state, the house bill seems to suggest it will be federal but it remains to be seen exactly that would be implemented. >> do we have time for one more? we've been talking in recent days, you and i have talked about this, about this suggestion that potentially, the white house, if it wanted to might be able to push its health care plan through without a lot of support for republicans. so the question we're getting right here is it's interesting.

why does president obama insist on a bipartisan approval of his headache plan public option if the democrats have enough votes to get it done? do you think that will happen? >> this isn't strictly a fact checking question, it's more of a political question. but i have been reading a lot of the coverage on this. and general thinking even among democratic supporters is that it's not clear that all 60 senators are firmly committed to the public option. in fact, it seems like a few of them are not. so i think time is going to have to tell on this issue. >> okay. we do have something that is up the fact checker's alley coming up, that is how much it will ultimately cost the country to do this? asking how many billions it could cost the country. i know both of yore agencies have looked into that a's have we. >>

great time. me too. you know, i just got out of a bad relatio... it's okay. thanks. goodnight. goodnight. (door crashes in, alarm sounds) get out! (phone rings) hello? this is rick with broadview security. is everything all right? no, my ex-boyfriend just kicked in the front door. i'm sending help right now. thank you. (announcer) brink's home security is now broadview security. call now to install the standard system for just $99. the proven technology of broadview security system delivers rapid response from highly-trained professionals, 24 hours a day. call now to get the $99 installation, plus a second keypad installed free. and, you could save up to 20% on your homeowner's insurance. call now-- and get the system installed for just $99. broadview security for your home or business - the next generation of brink's home security. call now.

hurricane bill is expected to skirt new england and then

head towards nova scotia. baghdad's bombers may have had inside help. at least 100 people died in these attacks including 32 foreign ministerry employees. the foreign minister is saying an investigation has begun to determine if any iraqi security officers actually helped those bombers. and in kentucky, they are busing prisoners to other prisons following a riot near lexington. inmates at the north point training center threw lock rocks at guards set fires, leaving several buildings in ruins, there were no serious injuries. okay. back to health care, we're answering all your question, including these that josh has for us next. >> there's a lot of buzzword flying around, some of them might make a real impact in the country and how health care plays out here. we're going to hear about health exchanges. we'll show you right now,

cnn.com and also facebook and twitter at joshlevscnn. we're going get in all we can by the end of the hour.

let's go ahead and continue with our checking the facts on this health care reform. we've got lori robinson from factcheck.org, angie holen from politifact and josh levs. next question, please? >> they're flying in, let's zoomment to screen right here. this one comes from alek who asks how many more billions will it cost the have government administer the public option? what have you found so far?

>> what we are finding is the details of the public option are being negotiated right now or even if it will exist and that's a question, too. so the answer right now is it depends on how it's structured, it depends on the kind of bargain power it's going to have, so right now, we just can't say. >> lori, are you on par with that? >> definitely. we can't too much, up in the air about how thing will be structu structured. >> one thing we know is the cbo has said it's going to keep scoring these bills as it studies them until ultimately they can say we found one, this person is revenue neutral and that's apparently the version of the health care bill that ultimately be passed. and. >> and of course the big problem with this, josh, is anything they come up with in washington you have to put in the multiplying factor, they say it's going to cost $80 billion a year, it's probably 200. because everything costs that much. >> it could hike up. >> could hike up? >> let's talk about terms flying around, too. this one is interesting.

james wrote us. i'll scroll down a little bit. i didn't think people understand how health exchanges work. this might southbound mundane, angie to you first, the reason it's so important is this a central buzzword in this whole debate about health care. the idea of how a he calth exchange would work. >> the structure of the plan is that employer provided insurance stays in place. so people who get their insurance through work would continue as usual, but everyone else who has to buy shurchs on their own would buy insurance on the exchange. like lori said the house version is a national exchange. so they could go into this exchange, it will probably be on their computer and they'll be able to look at what kind of option they would want. they can compare prices. and one of those options will be the public option that we've discussed so much. but they don't have to buy the p public option. they can buy private insurance. experts say the public option

maybe the cheapest but there will be other option from private insurers that offer premium coverage or extended coverage. >> it boils down to competition, right? is that part of this system that ideally hear the way it's described in washington will benefit people by increasing competition. >> and also they're going to put the regulations that will rule out excludeing people for pre-existing conditions. that's connected to the exchange as well. >> lori, you guys look for holes in the argument, are you hearing about any holes in this idea of an exchange that maybe it won't be prove to be what we're hearing it would be? >> no, i don't think so. the other thing about how it would work that i would just add small businesses will also be eligible to enter the exchange and possibly more businesses over time and they would basically pick a level of benefits under the house bill, they would pick your basic plan or enhanced or a premium level

and then among that sort of level of coverage, there would be a public plan option and private plan options as well. so employees would pick among those. >> josh, i just wanted to add, this is where the people who criticize the plan get nerve ou because they say that the public option could have unfair advantage and will overwhelm its competitors, so that's where a lot of controversy is coming in, they say there won't be genuine competition, the government will have the advantage. >> drew, that's what you and i have been talking about a lot, a lot of it as predict will overwhelm the system, we can't tell you factually. >> we throw out these terms that keep popping um, but this national exchange idea, would that not, lori, require changes in state law, basically the states would have to feed their power to the federal government before a national exchange insurance sales could take place. true? >> and you know, that kind of relates to these other insurance

regulations with pre-existing conditions and saying you know, you have to take everyone and you can't reject someone based on pre-existing conditions. that kind of overrides state laws on those issues. so the undercurrent sheer states give up power to the federal government potentially to solve this national health care problem. >> potentially, yes. >> i think we have time for one more. at least we can started on it now and spend the rest of the hour on this. let's zoom back in. another term that keeps coming up, this one, a lot of people very concerned about. this one from medicare. set to reduce reimbursement, i'm not sure this is addressed by any of the bills. let's start with lori and then angie as well. when what are you finding so far? >> well, both bills try to get savings out of medicare, the house bill is more explicit at this point in getting savings out of projected increases for payments for medical services except for payments to doctors, actually there. is a scheduled cut in payments

to doctors and the house bill gets rid of that so they're actually increasing some spending for medicare in payments for doctors. >> i know a lot of vurts care about this. angie, i want to brng you in politifact, you guys looked at this question, would benefits ultimately be reduced, but you gave that a half true in your truthometer when you look at what ultimately could happen to medicare. tell us about that? >> that's right. what we found is there are measures in the bill to introduce cost savings to medicare. they're trying to steer medicare away from deeper service where it's procedure by procedure paid and to steer more towards paying for good outcome. now, the democrats say they can cut about $500 billion by doing this. went to experts and said from the patient's end, will

everything still look at exactly the same after they do this? and the experts said, you know, probably, the basics will be the same but some of the details will be different and especially in a program called medicare advantage that the private insurance companies run. there should be a number of changes there. so that's why we rated it half true. >> it was interesting. you guys were saying it is possible, particularly because of the cuts to medicare advantage, there might ultimately be benefits that are reduced. and that brings us back to what we cannot fact check which is the future.

there's a quick reminder, we continue to answer your kwets on this show about health care reform and we've been answering them all hour long. but we want to turn now to a texas town hall meeting. if there a one that town hall shows us is you have plenty of opinions and you want them to be

heard. we want to share one view with you. this man went to republican joe barton's meeting in marques, texas. >> i don't care about if they're republican, constitutional, libertarian or democrats, i want somebody that would do what is right. this country is a democracy and as john ruskin said, there ain't no free lunch. but let's don't put down these working people. i'm 75, glad to be alive. but i've paid my way with several job, college, whatever and there's nothing wrong with that old nasty four letter word are, work. you'll hear there's no jobs.

i agree there's no positions. there's a lot of jobs. and a lot of these people right here, you mendy women, you had a job, you didn't have a position. >> okay. >> another thing, you tell the president and even you, sir, you can't put a steering wheel on the american people. >> that's just darn good stuff. lori robinson, angie holan and josh levs. what kind of feedback are we getting? >> what about mental health? is it going to be fully covered? britney writes something similar? she's concerned about whether mental illness will be covered. lori, i know you said you were looking at this issue s mental in here and do we know how it might play out in terms of that kind of coverage?

>> i'm sorry, i did not have time to take a look at it and i'm not sure if that's part of what the bill said should be in the essential minimum benefits standard. >> you know, it just comes across to me, we're talking about all these individual concerns that people have, it's almost like one size does not fit all in this health care reform. i'm wondering if there's drafed legislation that could possibly cover, mental health, dental health, eye care it just seems like too big a thing to get their hands around to put in one tiny bill. >> josh, when you look at the bill, where it lays out what will be considered essential bin fit, it's very generalized language, it's not very specific at all. so particular procedures or particular prescription drugs, it's not laid out in the legislation. that stuff is going to have to come later. >> angie, do you think that will mean that if this does pass or if health care reform does pass,

then you're going to have somebody, bureaucrat or somebody trying to decipher whether or not a particular procedure is or isn't covered based on the reading of the legislation? >> well -- >> or further legislation? >> well, what the house bill do does, they say there will be a health choice commissioner who will set minimum standards, so i do think someone from the government will set the minimum standard, but then above and beyond that is where we're going see a lot of diversity, swel a public option that ufrs the minimum standard, if that passes. and then, of course, the private insurers who can offer minimum plans and enhanced or premium plans. >> yeah. and that freaks a lot of people out. josh? >> it does. >> one of the many things freaking a lot of people out about this. but i will tell you also, obviously a lot of people writing us messages about how many they want health care reform and want something it to go through. i'll tell you the next thing, i'll toss it at both of you.

let's go to that screen again, so everyone can see how to weigh in. you have the blog, facebook, twitter joshlevscnn. theser really online forums where people are listening to each other, responding to each other, having conversations. let's zoom in because this a big topic, a the lo of people are writing all these things and real question boils down to, why should we trust the government on this? why should we think our government as prone to special interests as is it is, would be any different from from what is there now. it talks about t.a.r.p. money being misused. fact checka and politifact, hav you had responses to this whole idea where people say wait a second, look at the government's track record, is it good, is it bad, should we trust it going into this? >> based on our reader e-mail, i think that there are two camp, the people who don't trust

government and then there are the people who don't trust big business, especially the health insurance companies. so i think people dend to fall into one of those two camps. and know, each side has answers to the other. the people who say that government is messy and inefficient or the people who like government will say medicare runs great. people who are in medicare, like medicare a whole lot but the debate just seems to go on and on and never stops. >> let me toss that as lori, too. what is your factcheck take on that whole idea about the government taking on something that is a massive bureaucracy? >> like angie said, it's really a matter of opinion. we can't answer that question for people. our reader e-mail has definitely been the same type of thing, there are people who don't trust the government and people who don't trust big business, mainly insurance companies in this case. so we're seeing those two main

opinions and then lots of opinions in between. but you know, we can tell you a bunch of facts about what the bill will do. it's going to be up to the reader to decide whether to trust the government or not. >> we all have more facts to look into, we're going to get to the mental health one after the show and look into t let me just remind everyone, that cnn.com/shark where you go for all sorts of factcheck. i have links to our guest's website, factcheck.org and politifact.com. everybody trying to break things down and give answer based on. >> that and a lot of uncertainty about the versions in the house, senate, senate conference group trying to come up with something and obama administration appears to be backing away from its strong support early on of the public option, even steny hoyer has said may we don't need that public option. i want to go back angie holan

with politifact.com. is public option off the table now? >> i am really fascinated by the diversity of opinion on the public option, just this week, we've seen more comment aary an editorials from people who support health care reform and like the public option, but say it's not the only way to get done what they weren't to get done. they say don't get sidetracked on the public option. you can achieve the same goals other ways. so a lot of people, some people say it's absolutely necessary. some people say it's not that important and then on the other side. i think the people who oppose the public option, some of them are intrigued by the idea of co-op co-ops, but people who don't like the public aurngs some of them say, no, the co-op is just the same thing under a different name. so there's a huge diversity of opinions. >> let's talk about costs now. what kind of new taxes because it's going to cost money are going to be used to pay for

this? >> okay. well, for the co-on, we don't know what kind of setup they would require, presumably they would need some sort of up front money but we don't know. now the overall health care reform, there need to be some new tax revenues according to the democrats. and there are different ideas, again. obama has said, president obama has said he wants to limit the deductions for the healthiest people. their tax deduction, the house proposes a surcharge on the wealthy. now that's different from obama's plan and then the senate finance committee, again, we're waiting on them. we don't know what sort of tax new tax measure that they will settle on. so and people, many people believe that the senate finance committee will be crucial and there's an unknown there. >> yeah. a lot of unknowns across the board. incumbent to thank you guys for answering the questions so far. we'll be answering them all the

time at cnn.com and on politifact.org and angie holan with politifact.org, i should thank you. we will continue to look at this issue all through this month, this crucial month here at cnn when we're looking at health care reform. i'm drew griffin, the next hour of "cnn newsroom" is just a few minutes away.