Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/despite-breakthrough-in-congress-wrangling-persists-over-health-reform Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript With Congress showing some progress Wednesday in the health care reform debate, journalists discuss the political hurdles that must be cleared to reach a final deal. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. GWEN IFILL: House Democrats scored a partial breakthrough today in the battle over health care reform. At the same time, senators reported their own progress toward compromise, as the president hit the road again to sell his plan.NewsHour health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser has our lead story. BETTY ANN BOWSER: They'd been at loggerheads for days with the leadership of their own party, but members of the Blue Dogs, the fiscally conservative House Democrats, worked out a deal today to move a bill forward in the Energy and Commerce Committee.Arkansas Congressman Mike Ross said it would cut the cost of the House bill by $100 billion and still include a possible public option plan run by the government. REP. MIKE ROSS, D-Ark.: We protected small businesses, and we ensured that the public option is on a level playing field, it's optional for people, won't be mandated on anybody, and that it's done in a way by demanding that the public option compete with private plans by negotiating rates with providers instead of mandating Medicare rates on providers, saving a lot of rural hospitals across this country. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Part of the agreement stipulates there will still be no vote by the full House until September, and Ross warned the deal does not guarantee passage.There was also movement in the Senate, where members of the Finance Committee were told by the Congressional Budget Office that their health care reform proposals would come in at under a trillion dollars. That's the number the senators have been trying to get to for weeks.Committee Chairman Max Baucus said the CBO issued new figures last night. SEN. MAX BAUCUS, D-Mont.: The report is encouraging. The current draft of the bill scores below $900 billion over 10 years, covers 95 percent of all Americans by 2015, and is fully offset. BETTY ANN BOWSER: The Finance Committee has reportedly dropped a public option plan, in favor of non-profit cooperatives to compete with private insurers. But one negotiator, Democrat Kent Conrad, acknowledged obstacles remain. SEN. KENT CONRAD, D- N.D.: If I had to describe the two or three things that I think are most challenging, one is the affordability question, for people who have insurance offered to them at their place of employment but it's insurance they can't afford, that is a significant concern.Second would be Medicaid, and the expansion of Medicaid, and what the reaction of governors will be to additional state requirements.