near you, mississippi. coming soon. now it's time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. 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 we're going to extend that principle. >> trying to keep his original promise. >> insurers can keep their plan into 2014. >> that's 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 mid-term 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 can't 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. we've 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 that's really important to me and it's really important to millions of americans who have been waiting for a really long time to try to get health care because they don't have it. and, you know, i am very frustrated. but i'm also somebody who, if i fumbled the ball, you know, i'm going to wait until i get the next play. then i'm going to try to run as hard as i can and do right by the team. ultimately i'm the head of this team. we did fumble the ball on it. what i'm going to do is make sure that we get it fixed. >> the president, who is not running for re-election, 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 they're 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 i'm 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 we're 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 today's 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 you're 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 i've 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, i'm 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 don't have any health insurance at all, obviously, that didn't apply. my commitment to them was you're 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 didn't. and, again, that's on us. which is why we're -- that's on me. and that's why i'm trying to fix it. >> joining me now, host of msnbc's "up with steve" on the weekends and msnbc analyst, eugene robinson. i thought the president answered major garret's question very well. i thought it made perfect sense but i'm not the test audience. how do you think that sounded to voters out there, who just aren't quite sure what's happening this week? >> i don't 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 i'm not going to turn my back on 40 million americans who don't have health care insurance. we're going to move this forward, fix it. right now we're 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 we're 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 they're much more attuned to sort of what the voters, not steeped in the legislative language either are, they're 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. there's 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.

let's 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. there's 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. let's listen to how he put it. look one thing that i understood, one reason it hasn't

been done and it's very difficult to do is that anything that's going on that's 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. >> that's exactly right, lawrence. and negative things happen all the time. >> yes. and always were happening. >> exactly.

i don't know about you insurance rates, but mine go up every year, it seems. and the benefits change and there's something else i don't 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, people's policies get canceled all the time because these are year-to-year policies and a lot of these cut-rate 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 haven't. including today, the president saying that we always knew this was going to be complicated. let's 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 it's 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. >> that's the story going all the way back to harry truman. in the abstract when there's 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 he's 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 you'll have a viable risk pool that will be created. you'll 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 don't want to put -- i don't want to turn this into just blaming republicans. when obama says they fumbled the ball, he's right. this is ultimately the administration's responsibility for how botched the rollout and

the website has been. i don't think what they anticipated was that 3 1/2 years after this law was enacted they wouldn't 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 haven't seen because this has been a contested political issue since march 2010. that's 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 that's an element of it. if they didn't fully anticipate that, i'm not sure they should have. >> i don't know how they could have possibly not fully anticipated relentless republican operation every day on this. >> i actually don't think the future of obama care is in

doubt. it will be the law. at least as 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, toronto's mayor has worked his way back in the

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an unnamed democrat told nbc news, quote, bill clinton sure didn't make it easy. ♪

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>> 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 don't have any calls between the two presidents 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 haven't it sounds like.

>> he has been very supportive of the affordable care act and i think you've seen him again, and again and again say so. >> joining me now, washington post political reporter nia malik henderson. why can't jay carney simply say whether barack obama has been on the phone with bill clinton? what's 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 doesn't sound like it, right, from that call -- i mean, from that conversation that he had on that internet talk show. boy, i would like to have a read-out from that, who called who, how long it was. >> yeah? >> what they said. if barack obama said back off, bill. that's the problem. i think they've had with this relationship. it's more like they're sort of

frenemies and at times obama has called in the calvary in the form of bill clinton. whoa remember, of course, 2012, bill clinton at the dnc convention but not helpful, i think, with this -- >> lawrence, it may not have been a phone call. he may have passed him a note during study period. i mean, we don't know. but, you know, obviously i think bill clinton, who loves to -- you know, he loves to muse. >> yes. >> and mole about issues and he loves to do the big thinking things and sometimes when you do that, you get off-script or you don't make the most political point of the moment. i do think we can talk about policy and what's up or not with the aca. but a key political point here is that bill clinton and hillary

clinton really have to be rooting for obama care to succeed. why? because if it fails, the last thing she wants to talk about in a 2016 campaign is health care, what to do about it. she doesn't want to have to go through this again. she doesn't want the baggage of a failed obama care program to have to contend with. even more importantly, we're all old enough here -- maybe nia isn't, but we're all old enough to remember back to 1993 when hillary clinton was in charge of health care reform and there's no polite way to say this. she really messed it up. it made it difficult to deal with health care reform for two years -- for two decades. they don't want to have to relive that history, the last time she got big into a polish. they have to be rooting for obama care for all the right reasons and in terms of political reasons to do well in the next six months to a year. >> it seems like hillary clinton learned the same lesson from her failure in 1994 in health care that president obama learned

from it. and because, in fact, nia is not old enough to remember -- >> i do remember. >> -- the debates of 1993 and '94. >> i read about it in history books. >> i'm going to show her something she might have learned in history class. a little piece of bill clinton trying to sell his health care reform bill in 1993 to a joint session of congress. let's listen to this. >> over the long run, we can all win. but some will have to pay more in the short run. nevertheless, the vast majority of the americans watching this tonight will pay the same or less for health care coverage that will be the same or better than the coverage they have tonight. that is the central reality. >> okay. now i want to go to the 2007 presidential campaign and see what hillary clinton did to disstill that statement where bill clinton says some people might pay more. it's going to be a little complicated. let's see how hillary clinton put it when she was running for

president. >> there will be no new bureaucracies. you can keep the doctors you know and trust. you keep the insurance you have, if you like it. >> nia, that sounds an awful lot like barack obama. >> exactly. he must have been watching these youtube clips from hillary clinton. you're exactly right. you had complicated bill back in the '90s explaining it. and then you had hillary clinton clearly learning this lesson to make it simple, to sell this thing. that's what president obama had to do. we'll see, going forward whether or not this works and the fixes they're going to make. for clinton, her challenge -- on one hand, you're right. she has to root for obama's success but she also has to figure out a way to separate herself. you're starting to see them figure out how to do that. >> she can't do -- but she can't do that yet. she can't -- there will be a time for that. but the bigger question for her is, in terms of separation, what

does she want to do as president? what is -- it's always a hard thing when you run from the same party. >> yep. >> after somebody has been there for two terms. what do you come along -- >> what are you doing differently? >> is she going to talk about the economy, competence and leadership qualities? what is she going to bring to the table, and her vision for why she should be president other than her own quality. >> meaning she would be an historic candidate. >> strong, competent person, smart person. >> she has checked off all the boxes. she was secretary of state. so we'll have to see. she has a real challenge ahead of her. >> david, you make the point that hillary clinton should be rooting for the success of the affordable care act which, by the way, i'm sure she is. >> yeah. >> isn't that politically -- how does that leave congressional democrats? does their fate turn on that same issue? should they be rooting for and doing everything they can for the success of the affordable care act or for them, for the election?

does there come a moment when they have to separate? >> democrats -- i should say politicians. this is true for both parties -- often seem to have the political memories of a fruit fly. you know, they really think they -- they act every day as if they're about to die the next day. right? so this week, they say oh, my god, look what's happening. because we have an election in a year and nothing else is going to happen between now and then. they're kind of starting to run for the hills or at least look for the hills because they see obama's numbers dropping and they never have patients. ultimately, whatever they manage to do in terms of the landrieu bill in the senate and all that sort of stuff, they're going to have to -- they're going to live or die by whether this thing works. we won't know six months, ten months or a year whether it's really working as well as obama wants it to. >> david corn and nia-malik henderson thank you for joining me tonight. >> thank you, lawrence.

whether the affordable care act will actually work. rewrite tonight, toronto's mayor rob ford in his own words. this time we had to get special permission from the msnbc censors to allow us to use rob ford's own words. that's coming up. okay ladies, whenever you're ready.

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and so what we want to be able to do is say to these

folks, you know what? the affordable care act is not going to be the reason you have to change your plan. but the insurance companies may want to come back and say we want to charge you 20% more than we did last year or we're not going to cover prescription drugs now. but that's in the nature of the market that existed earlier. >> joining me now, policy analyst and washington post column ezra klein. the president has found very clear and understandable ways of explaining some of the more complicated parts of what's happening in the health care marketplace, something he didn't do earlier in his speeches when he was selling this bill. but what you heard today from the white house about how the president hopes to fix this situation, what's your reading of how that will work? >> it isn't a fix. in part, it's not a fix because the situation actually isn't that broken. what's broken is another part of the law. so, what he said today, the new policies coming out, you're

basically dealing with an optional opportunity for insurers to keep putting forward plans that won't be profitable for them any longer. the president really rolled over on insurance today and they're responding to a new set of rules that the affordable care act rolls out. the fact that it's up to them -- for a lot of them it's not profitable to do so. they would simply have to send out the cancellation notices a year later and restructure plans in the meantime. the problem ultimately is that the fundamental machinery of the law mainly healthcare.gov and the digital architecture it stands atop is that it is still not working. it is that fundamental problem where people having their plans being canceled, if they can't see that now. i think fundamentally the white house is trying to buy time until those people can see that. >> let's listen to what the president said about how this fix won't solve every problem.

>> this fix won't solve every problem for every person. but it's going to help a lot of people. doing more will require work with congress. and i've said from the beginning i'm willing to work with democrats and republicans to fix problems as they arise. this is an example of what i was talking about. we can always make this law work better. >> and, ezra, of course, as you know, congress is stepping forward with a variety of plans. run through them for us, if you can. the upton plan, republican plan in the house and landrieu plan in the senate. >> it would permit not only insurers to keep the plans that they have, it would also allow them to offer new plans, nonaffordable act compliance, it could charge the old much more than the young, the sick much more than the healthy, continue selling those. those would now count as grandfather plans under the affordable care act. you're essentially gutting the

consumer protections of the bill. you have legislation out of senator landrieu's office -- unlike president obama and upton, that would actually solve the problem of people losing their plans. the downside from that, aside from being a pretty grifs mandate, you're now keeping millions of people, a lot of whom are healthier and in better shape from going into the affordable care act's marketplaces and, by nature, that means you have higher premiums. and i think what you see there -- this is an important thing for folks to understand, that these plan cancellations are related intrinsically to the market being a very verks bad market, discrimination against the sick, healthy profit against the old, against women and any time you try to ratchet that back, any time you try to keep what is happening now, you're permitting that kind of discrimination on some level to continue. >> i want to listen to something

the president said today about how complicated it actually is to compare, even on a good website that works very well, to compare complicated health insurance policies online. anyone out there who has tried to do this sort of thing in brochures and otherwise knows this is difficult. as the president put it, it's not like buying an itunes song online. let's listen to this. >> another mistake we made, i think, is underestimating the difficulties of people purchasing insurance online and shopping for a lot of options with a lot of costs and lot of different benefits and plans and somehow expecting that that would would be very smooth. and then they've also got to try to apply for tax credits on the website. i just want people to know what their options are in a clear way. and, you know, buying health insurance is never going to be like buying a song on itunes. you know, it's just a much more

complicated transaction. but i think we can continue to make it better. >> ezra, one thing that i think people have lost in washington is the simple kind of historic fact on this kind of legislation. it would always, always be followed up six months later, a year later, sometimes a couple of times with what they would call technical corrections bills, because problems exactly like this would arise all the time and they were expected to arise. and that's when congress would come together in a much more bipartisan way because the thinking was we've got a thing that isn't working. let's get it technically correct, even those that aren't thrilled about it. >> i think back to the medicare prescription drug experience that launched back in '05. for three weeks after it begins. republicans say they didn't launch it initially is yom kippur, it would have been

disrespectful to launch it on the jewish holiday. now democrats are in control and senator herb cole is there. he says, you know what? this is now -- whatever we think we now need to come together to make this work for seniors. then senator hillary clinton said as long as it's here, my staff has created a terrific brochure to help people learn more about it. that is the spirit you don't have in congress now. the idea that even if we don't all agree about how the government is working, it should be doing the best job it can be, given the laws that are on the books currently. >> ezra klein, thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> thank you. coming up, the mayor of toronto is back and we're going to show you him in a way you've never seen him before. and i know you think you've seen everything there is to see about the mayor of toronto. but you haven't. not until you see this. and the kids -- the kids cannot

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ladies and gentlemen, i want to apologize for my graphic remarks this morning. >> what? rob ford apologizing for his graphic remarks? what? when has rob ford ever apologized for graphic remarks or any remarks? what could he have possibly said this morning that he had to apologize for with his wife standing beside him? >> the revelations yesterday of cocaine, escorts, prostitution, has pushed me over the line. and i used unforgivable

language. and, again, i apologize. >> okay. so, overnight, there were some new allegations about cocaine and escorts and prostitution and the mayor telling a woman on his staff that he wanted to eat -- well, you know what? according to msnbc standards, i cannot finish that sentence. but we have gotten special permission from msnbc standards to allow mayor rob ford and only mayor rob ford to say on tv what mayor rob ford said today on live canadian tv. the only thing msnbc standards has asked of us is that we warn you that you are about to hear something you have never heard before in your life. >> due to mature subject matter, viewer discretion is advised. >> oh, yeah, and get the kids out of the room. this could absolutely destroy any kids's ability to grow up to be mayor of any city except the

city of toronto. here is how mayor rob ford's day started. >> mayor ford, any comment? >> mayor ford? >> give me a second. >> mayor ford, can you talk to -- >> you know what? i couldn't -- >> if you could just give us a second. >> a comment yesterday because i couldn't read the documents that was released. unfortunately -- it's unfortunate i have to take the legal action. i don't appreciate people calling atlanta a prostitute. never had a prostitute here. i'm very happily married at home. this is very disturbing against my wife. unfortunately, i have to take legal action. i have to take legal action against the waiter that said i was doing lines at the beer market. that is outright lies.

that is not true. you know what? whatever it hurts my wife when they're calling a friend of mine a prostitute. atlanta is not a prostitute. she's a friend and it makes me sick how people are saying this. so, unfortunately, i have no other choice. i'm the last one to take legal action. i can't -- i can't put up with it anymore. so i've named the names. litigation will be starting shortly. i've had enough. i warned you guys yesterday be careful what you wrote. that's all i have to say for now. the next thing i want to call mayor brittania in hamilton and tell him we're going to have to spank the little tiger cats. >> i know, spank the little tiger cats sounds like something, you know, dirty in canadian. but it's actually not. the tiger cats are the football team in hamilton, ontario. mayor ford's beloved argonauts are playing the tiger cats sunday in toronto.

mayor ford was not forced to apologize for anything you just heard him say. it is everything that he is about to say that became the basis for this afternoon's uncharacteristic apology. for his graphic remarks. now, remember, you've been warned. >> the last thing was olivia, it says that i wanted to eat her -- i never said that in my life to her. i would never do that. i'm happily married. i have more than enough to eat at home. thank you very much. >> it's all right. it's all right. >> oh, my god! are you kidding me? >> we might have been live. >> i love that guy. >> the laughter has just died down here in the studio. that was being covered live on canadian television. and presented quite a challenge to some canadian tv reporters who tried to summarize what

canada just heard. >> i -- i know we're up live right now, but i don't know if we can -- i -- mayor ford speaking as mayor ford does, very plainly. as he said in council yesterday, he f'd up and now using language that i don't think we can broadcast that on tv but we just broadcast that on tv. another unbelievable day here at toronto city council. >> oh, the luckiest political reporters in the world. and so later today in his apology for what you just saw, for what the mayor then called his unforgivable language, he explained how he crossed that verbal line. >> today, i acted on complete impulse in my remarks. >> okay. so, mayor ford uncharacteristically acted on

impulse for once instead of using his usual calm, careful approach to public speaking. >> have you purchased illegal drugs in the last two years? >> yes, i have. >> mayor ford ended his apology press conference today with this. >> i would ask you, please, please respect my family's privacy. thank you very much. >> any questions, sir? >> whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! >> i didn't hit you. >> yes, you did. >> moving you out of the way.

>> it's getting dangerous. >> okay. so one place to start, respecting the mayor's family's privacy, in particular his wife's privacy would be for the mayor to not have his wife standing silently beside him at his next apology press conference and maybe the mayor should stop talking about how much he has to eat at home. >> said that i wanted to eat her -- i never said that in my life to her. i would never do that. i'm happily married. i have more than enough to eat at home. thank you very much. the american dream is of a better future, a confident retirement. those dreams, there's just no way we're going to let them die.

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the republicans do not have a better idea on health care reform. here next, and he's going to keep it clean, unlike the mayor of toronto. i have a cold with this annoying runny nose. [ sniffles ] i better take something. [ male announcer ] dayquil cold and flu doesn't treat that. it doesn't? [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus fights your worst cold symptoms plus has a fast-acting antihistamine. oh what a relief it is! hands for holding. feet, kicking. better things than the joint pain and swelling of moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. if you're trying to manage your ra, now may be the time to ask about xeljanz. xeljanz (tofacitinib) is a small pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers have happened in patients taking xeljanz. don't start taking xeljanz if you have any kind of infection, unless ok with your doctor.

tears in the stomach or intestines, low blood cell counts and higher liver tests and cholesterol levels have happened. your doctor should perform blood tests, including certain liver tests, before you start and while you are taking xeljanz. tell your doctor if you have been to a region where certain fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, and if you are pregnant, or plan to be. taken twice daily, xeljanz can reduce the joint pain and swelling of moderate to severe ra, even without methotrexate. ask if xeljanz is right for you. when i see sometimes folks up on capitol hill and republicans, in particular, who have been suggesting repeal, repeal, let's get rid of this thing, i keep on asking, what is it that you want to do? >> today the conservative editorial board of the wall street journal said republicans

have an opportunity to poach the health care issue that liberals have dominated for decades instead of a backward looking promise to let americans hold on to what they had. republicans could offer the opportunity to buy a new plan that they like. and then, of course, the republicans on the hill, all they talked about all day was just repealing obama care. >> yeah. look, you don't poach an issue by doing nothing. and i think we're seeing the one silver lining to all those re, re, re-repeal efforts. and they don't have the alternative. we know this is not about fixing, doing the technical improvements that congress used to do. this is about sabotage. >> you're talking about repeal, you're talking about not any longer allowing kids up to the age of 26 to stay in their parents' policies. popular stuff that's already been working in this law. >> that's absolutely right. those things, when you poll them, are still very popular. it is true, as a political matter if you're a cynic that republicans have helped washington and the media look at

5% of the market and treat that as if it were obama care. it's a cynical victory. when you look at the pre-existing condition screening, the gender parody, millenials and twenty-somethings, all those things are popular and a lot of health care policy experts say they work. >> one thing politically from the republicans that the democrats are going to be able to rely on as long as the affordable care act is going through its struggle period is that the republicans will not offer any reasonable alternative. >> yes. >> any describable alternative. >> they can't. tea party folks have a basic view which is we pretend we want states and local governments to do things. when we find out that 76,000 people got coverage, that's bad. we don't want anyone to get covered. that is still for them on what was a bad week for the president, it is still a very weak message from them, i think. >> ari melber gets tonight's last word.

thanks for keeping it clean after that mayor of toronto. we crossed a line there. >> you got it. counterpunch. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews in chicago. let me start tonight with this. president obama took back the health care fight today. he unleashed a brisk combination of both defense and offense. he declared people who had their own health insurance before his bill became law had a chance to reup with their current plans. a total failure to present even the outline of their own plan to save the country's 40 million uninsured from life in the emergency room. can the president regain control of the fight?