"Even as America's families have been battered by spiraling health care costs, health insurance companies and their executives have reaped windfall profits from a broken system."  -- Barack Obama July 2009

"It’s smoke and mirrors.  It’s bogus.  And it’s all too familiar.  Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, "Take one of these, and call us in a decade."  Well, not this time.  The fact is, the insurance industry is making this last-ditch effort to stop reform even as costs continue to rise and our health care dollars continue to be poured into their profits, bonuses, and administrative costs that do nothing to make us healthy -- that often actually go toward figuring out how to avoid covering people."

The last thing I will say, though -- let me say this about health care and the health care debate, because I think it also bears on a whole lot of other issues.  If you look at the package that we've presented -- and there's some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating.  For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your -- if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you're not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making.  And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge. [emphasis added]

SAWYER: A lot of people think you must say at the end of the day, this is not who I was in 2008, these deals with Nebraska, with Florida…

OBAMA: Let’s hold on a second, Diane.  I mean, I think that this gets into a big mush.  So let’s just clarify.  I didn’t make a bunch of deals.  There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked.  So that’s point number one.

Couric:  As you know, people were pretty disgusted by deals that were made up on Capitol Hill like the one given to Ben Nelson to win his support.  If the White House was so involved, was this done with your blessing?  But…

Emanuel:  Look, we were involved in the legislation all the way through.

Couric:  Were you involved in that?

Emanuel:  Yeah. I’m not gonna go through all of it…

Couric:  But in the Ben Nelson deal?

Emanuel:  We were helpful in getting the bill off the Senate floor.  And in retrospect the things -- as I said to you just earlier, things you woulda done different.

So let’s just clarify.  I didn’t make a bunch of deals.  There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked.

As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country's biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals.

The plans, being tested in places like San Diego, New York and Chicago, are likely to appeal especially to small businesses that already provide insurance to their employees, but are concerned about the ever-spiraling cost of coverage.

But large employers, as well, are starting to show some interest, and insurers and consultants expect that, over time, businesses of all sizes will gravitate toward these plans in an effort to cut costs.

The tradeoff, they say, is that more Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks.  That could come as a surprise to many who remember the repeated assurances from Obama and other officials that consumers would retain a variety of health-care choices.

But companies may be able to reduce their premiums by as much as 15 percent, the insurers say, by offering the more limited plans.

"We didn't think that we were going to cover 30 million people for free."

"I said at the time it wasn't going to happen tomorrow, it wasn't going to happen next year.  It took us decades to get into a position where our health care costs were going up 6, 7, 10 percent a year.  And so our goal is to slowly bring down those costs."

The Obama administration is trying to quiet talk about so-called "death panels" after The New York Times reported Sunday that a new Medicare regulation includes incentives for end-of-life-care planning.

The Medicare policy will pay doctors for holding end-of-life-care discussions with patients, according to the Times.  A similar provision was dropped from the new healthcare reform law after Republicans accused the administration of withholding care from the sick, elderly and disabled.

However, an administration spokesman said the regulation, which is less specific than the reform law’s draft language, is actually a continuation of a policy enacted under former President George W. Bush.

"The only thing new here is a regulation allowing the discussions … to happen in the context of the new annual wellness visit created by [ObamaCare]," Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin told The Wall Street Journal.

In 2003, Medicare added a consultation visit for seniors new to the program, according to the Journal. Another 2008 law, enacted under Bush, said the visit can include "end-of-life" planning discussions.

Sarah Palin, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, sparked controversy last summer when she said the reform law’s end-of-life provision would create "death panels," in which "government bureaucrats" would decide who receives care.