tavis: good evening from los angeles. lost in much of the debate over health care reform is a clear understanding of what that healthcare bill actually means for every day americans. first up tonight, a conversation about the impact of health care reform with ceci connolly is with "the washington post." also tonight, the emmy-winning actress dana delany is here tonight. you can catch her in the new film "multiple sarcasms." we have bled to have joined us. that is coming up right now -- we are happy you have joined us. >> there are so many things that walmart is looking forward to doing, like helping people live better. but mostly we're looking forward to helping build stronger communities and relationships, because with your help, the best is yet to come. >> nationwide insurance proudly

supports tavis smiley. tavis and nationwide insurance, working to improve financial literacy and the economic empowerment that comes with it. >> ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] ♪ tavis: ceci connolly is the national health care correspondent for "the washington post." she is one of the lead authors for a new book. she joins us tonight from chicago. it's good to have you on this program. >> great to be with you. tavis: hell is that something

that that has been debated for your and -- how is it that something that has been debated for a year and half could be so misunderstood by so many americans? how is that possible? >> it is probably my fault, right? i did not explain it well enough for the past year and a half. seriously, tavis, it is a very complicated subject. healthcare represents 16 of the u.s. economy. we now spend $2.50 trillion on health care this year alone, and is also a very personal issue. unlike something remind have a debate about the debt limits or even afghanistan, those are subjects that may not touch each and everyone of us personally every single day. healthcare does. so that is why it is such an emotional issue. it is such a complicated, confusing issue. tavis: the more complex the issue is, more simplistic you

have to be in your formulation ñ that every day americans get it. to my mind, the white house did not do a good job of that, and neither did those in congress who supported it. what is your sense of how they explain the complex in a way that everyday people can get it so that it is possible? i said all the time where that complex things are broken down for people like me who would not otherwise get it. çhow did the powers that be due on explaining this complex matter? >> i would certainly agree with you that they did not do a great job of explaining our selling this effort for much of that past year and a half. they did a pretty good job of articulating the problem. everyone understood right away we have so many millions of people in this country who do not have any health insurance. everybody gets the notion that healthcare is too expensive and costs are rising too quickly, but when it came to the proposed solutions, that is where it

started getting complicated. if you think back to last summer, about a year or so ago, june or july, into that really rough august of 2009, that is when the white house lost control of the message. part of the reason it did was, they let reporters like meat write endlessly about the inside congress minutia, tedious process kind of story, and it took president obama coming back and be engaging in september 2009 with that joint address to congress, which was really a speech to the whole nation, to kind of get it back on track a little bit. then of course, fast forward to took the president and his own, articulate message to really get it back on track. tavis: so i will put you on the spot now. we'll talk about the potential supreme court challenges in a moment, but now that is the new

law of the land, it means what for everyday americans? >> lots of things for everyday americans, some of them different. the very first thing it does been for just about everybody in this country is that, come 2014, you must carry health insurance. very similar to the way that in this country, everybody wants to drive a car must have auto insurance. so in 2014, that will be a requirement. if you don't, you will face a penalty. there will be some exceptions for people who really cannot afford it, and of course, illegal immigrants are not part of this conversation for the most part, but just about everybody else. now you stop and think about, small businesses will be able for tax credit so that they can purchase or contribute to the cost of health insurance for their employees. many millions more americans will be eligible for that program known as9> medicaid, whh offers almost free health

insurance to the very lowest income people in our country. many other people will be eligible for these discounts. i like to think of them as vouchers or credits that they can go and purchase the health insurance. depending on where you are on the income level, at the very high income level, those folks are also going to be facing some higher taxes. so it is a mixed bag. a lot of changes coming, but it will be coming in increments. not everything will happen overnight. it will be a step-by-step implementation. tavis: this book, since you and your colleagues are first of the gate with what the health-care law now means for us, there are a number of things that you all share with us that we did not know about the back story, the sausage making of this process, fzl if you will. in no particular order, take me inside the white house when the

president learned that democrats are going to lose that kennedy's seat in massachusetts, and how that might impact the alternate vote. tavis>> it was january 19 of tht year. it was to replace the sea of senator kennedy, who had died. we are adding in some delicious irony. ted kennedy, of course, was health care in this country for such a long time in his career, really for decades. january 19, about 6:30 p.m., president obama now realizes that this seat is going to go to republican by the name of scott brown. it will fall at democratic hands. president obama summons to the oval office vice-president biting, his chief of staff, rahm emanuel, and most importantly, nancy pelosi, the speaker of the house, and harry reid, the

senate majority leader. he calls them in an essentially looks at read in pelosi in says what are going to do? suddenly it they will not have the 60 democrats in the senate. they will not have that filibuster-proof majority. what is going to happen to health care? reid once the house to pass the senate bill. pelosi says that is never going to fly in my house. they are talking over each other. the president can hardly even get in a word, and finally he snaps, which is pretty and characteristic for this president to even momentarily lose his cool. he says i understand that, nancy, what is your suggestion? they are really kind of break at that moment, not knowing if or how they are going to be able to rescue what has become his signature issue. tavis: one of the things i complained about throughout this process is what the white house did not do a more aggressive job

of writing its own bill as opposed to leaving it up to the devices of those on the hill, which is one of the ways this thing got bogged down in the process. that is my own assessment. iraq pickup the book "landmarks " and i find that lo and behold, rahm emanuel was behind the scene directing the process. tell me more. >> you are right. the original white house strategy was, we do not want to repeat the mistakes of the clinton era. obama intentionally set i am not writing the bill. let's keep a distance. as i am sure you were observing last summer, when all of a sudden time is dragging out up on capitol hill and nothing is happening, it's to be late july, early august when things are looking very bleak. rahm emanuel does gather a very small secret team inside the white house, including his

brother who was a physician and very involved in that effort, and brings them together in a room in the white house late one day and says we have to start drafting our own bill. if max baucus, the senate finance committee chairman does not act soon, and it was looking rather grim then, rahm emanuel was determined they would take the bill straight to the senate floor. what happened, and i think this was part of his strategy all along, that actually did not have to do that. they just needed the threat of that to get some action going. tavis: you in your colleagues argued in this booklet that the -- in this book that the president was the only one in washington who thought that this deabill really was going to be passed with bipartisan support. >> is an interesting trade about president obama, and i am sure you have watched this in him over the years as well. he does not like partisanship,

and i think that he genuinely believes in his ability to convince> if i were a cynic, i could say that a lot of time was wasted in trying to get bipartisan support when a lot of us thought that was never going to happen. but the flip side, that cynicism, it would not be just

republicans he was trying to lock down. he was trying to lock down enough democrats to get the thing passed. >> absolutely. many of the efforts that were taken that maybe were interpreted as trying to get some republican votes also had a lot to do with some of those centrist or moderate democrats, especially in the senate, but to some extent in the house as well. i am thinking in the senate about joe;8 lieberman of connecticut, the third-party candidate, ben nelson from nebraska. he was no. 60. he was the final vote that they vote. senators lincoln and landry, also conservative democrats that took a long time to bring along. we are seeing this again in congress on things like regulatory reform, climate change legislation. it is always difficult getting those centrist democrats on board. some people would say throw the

bill out there and let them filibuster it, but president obama wanted to take a different approach. tavis: two quick questions before my time runs out. it is a lot of the land, but how much of this is going to be challenged in the court system? >> i am not a lawyer, but i certainly have spoken to a fair number of constitutional experts withstand the challenges in terms of whether or not it is constitutional. in particular, that individual mandate that we started out talking about, because they say that it is within the purview of the federal government. but we will see that play out. i think honestly, the more serious challenges are political rather than legal. tavis: i know if any of these three persons were on the program and i were to ask this question, i can tell you what their answer might be, but let me ask you. this is the biggest winner here, obama, pelosi, reid, and i know

they would say the american people are the big winners, but inside the beltway, who is the big winner, now that this thing has passed? >> i guess i will call it a draw between pelosi and obama, for what -- for somewhat different reasons. pelosi achieve what the speaker of the house has been able to achieve. obama, the same port so many presidents who have gone before. but it did inside the beltway was make people realize he is a bit tougher it and has more perseverance and more patience than people expected, and he was able to pull this off. her ability to marshal the troops in the house, not once, but twice. politically speaking, no matter how you feel about the actual contents of the bill, politically speaking, it was an amazing achievement for her. >> the first speaker to do it, and the first woman to be

speaker, so read that anyway you want. her name is ceciúh& connolly, ad she and her colleagues at "the washington post" were first out what this bill means. it is called landmark "." thanks for coming on the program. >> but next, emmy-winning actress dana delany. stay with us. tavis: dana delany is a two-time emmy award winning actress who has startered in "china beach" d "desperate housewives." here is a scene from "multiple sarcasms."

>> it scares me. >> is just a stupid outline of a play. it is not even a place yet. tavis: dana, nice to have you on. >> thank you. tavis: i was online and saw some great photographs of you at the correspondents' dinner. i am seeing a lot of debate. >> i would say obama beat him. the last time i saw jay there, it was clinton, and clinton be him, too. tavis: i heard obama was really funny, too. >> i sat by one of his speech

writers and he wasmá/ listenind saying yes, you got a laugh. tavis: it is such a huge ticket, everybody wants to go every year. >> i was there with the creative coalition. which lobbied congress for public funding and that kind of thing. fact that in a country that professes high culture, that funding for arts programs is abysmal? >> it is sad. i grew up in the public school with art programs. kind of like that show "," i was in the glee club. it is proven that if you have arts in school, you do better in in arts and sciences. tavis: that message is real, but it is not a new message. when you have large, kids tend

to do better. is the message getting through now with this congress? >> i think that certainly the president and first lady are behind it. it is a matter of money. where do we get the money? we have a very inventive chairman, and he is finding money where nobody found it before. tavis: so tell me?5añ about this movie. i messed up in rehearsal for this. "multiple sarcasms." tell me about the movie. >> is set in the 1970's. i grew up in the 1970's, and i love those movies where you have a drama, comedy, is just like life. it is a good kind of midlife crisis in the 1970's. i play the long-suffering wife.

tavis: did you have to work hard to get into character? >> no, not at all. i have never been married. tavis: your co-star, a great actor. >> tim hutton. we really like working together, so he called me up and said he had a movie that he thought would be right for me. i said send me the script, and i was shooting two days later. tavis: i guess when you have been around this business for a while, you can say that with ease. how have you processed movies and tv shows? >> it takes a while. when you are younger, you take it personally. i am at the point where i say, what is next? i do not take anything personally now, at all. i am just happy i get to work.

tavis: not a bad thing in this town. i could offer detail, but i am not. you have turned down a number of notable roles on television, and reading are conversation, i was like, she turned that down? >> i am an idiot. tavis: i am thinking of at least three things that went on to be major hits. i am not going to name them, but what is your process for what you want to do and what you do not want to do? >> several things. i don't like to repeat myself, so if it is a role i have already done, i do not want to play that role again. other times, there are certain people involved that i know are going to be a problem, artistic things, and i do not want to do

that. at the time, and hopefully it all works out in the end. tavis: a minute ago, you said you do not take things personally when they do not work. when you turn down something that does in fact become a hit, even though you had principal reasons for not doing it, do you say, maybe i should have? >> yes, of course. i have had those 3:00 a.m. moments when you are lying in bed and wondered what did i do? sometimes you do it when you are ready to do it. tavis: how did you end up turning down the character bree three times? >> i turned it down once. my agent kept keeping it alive, which they should not have done. tavis: that is what agents do.

how does that happen? how do you end up turning something down and then ending up on the show seasons later? >> i was very lucky. i had just done a show called " pasadena" which i love. it did not last very long. marc cherry somehow found the right formula of comedy, drama, and mystery. somehow he found the right balance there. then i was lucky that three years into the show he called me up and ask if i was ready to come on now. that is really unusual in hollywood. tavis: even though you have reasons for not doing it, no matter how much time you take explaining it to the producers, it is just not right for me right now, there are folks in this town who say you will never

work in this town again with me. >> i3rf don't take it personall, but they do. [laughter] tavis: did that ever factor into your process, turning something down but it being someone you would not want to offend? >> i have learned to really communicate why you are doing it. i have had directors come up to me and say big mistake, wasn't that? tavis: being on "desperate housewives, " your character has gone through some serious iterations on this show. >> i feeza!a-e9$(lc@&c+ a bonus of not being on the show originally. before it leaves are so iconic, i think the director is careful not to -- the four leads are so iconic, the director is careful not to mess with that.

i became a stalker and ended up in the loony bin, and now i am gay. [laughter] ufznot that you become gay becae you are in the loony bin. tavis: only in hollywood can you go through that many iterations of where -- of one character in one show. >> i never expected to have so much fun as i have had on that show. multiple sarcasms" starring in dana delany. that is our show for tonight. you can access our radio podcast on our website at pbs.org. as always, keep the faith. >> no, don't. i know.

you, take care of him. jjñ>> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org tavis: hi, i am tavis smiley. joining me next time with alice walker. >> there are so many things that walmart is looking forward to doing, like helping people live better. but mostly we're looking forward to helping build stronger communities and relationships, because with your help, the best is yet to come. >> nationwide insurance proudly supports tavis smiley. tavis and nationwide insurance, working to improve financial literacy and the economic

0ymñempowerment that comes with. >> ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- jó♪