August 19, 2009 CNN

Part 1

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KING: In Raleigh, North Carolina, Elizabeth Edwards, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, primarily focusing on health care issues. She's the wife of the former Democratic vice presidential candidate, John Edwards, and "The New York Times" best-selling author of "Resilience."

And Madison, Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson, who was the secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush and is the former Republican governor of Wisconsin.

Elizabeth, in an interview last month, you said you thought substantial -- substantive health care reform would be enacted.

Do you stand by that?

ELIZABETH EDWARDS, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS, AUTHOR, "RESILIENCE": I still do. I'm incredibly optimistic. And I think the American people are still in favor of health care reform, despite the assault they've had of a lot of hyperbole and misstatements. And people know, in their real lives, that -- that they need -- that they're going to need change -- we're going to need change in health care, nationally and in their own communities and in their own families. KING: Tommy, in an interview with Dr. Val Jones, the CEO of Better Health -- that's a medical blog or education network -- in February, you said you can bet your bottom dollar that the health care system that we know today is going to be changed so considerably that I doubt you'd recognize it a year from now.

Do you stand by that?

TOMMY THOMPSON, FORMER SECRETARY HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES: I stand by it because it already has many changes. In the stimulus package, there was a comparative equivalences. There's $20 billion set aside for electronic medical records. There is a lot of other projects that have been already passed that's going to transform health care in the future.

The truth of the matter is and I think the question you're getting at is what about the Barack Obama legislation and what the Democrats are doing in Congress?

I think the Democrats are going to have a very difficult time passing a comprehensive bill unless they want to bring in the Republicans and scale back and have a really comprehensive bipartisan bill. And that's what I'm hoping they will, because I believe that Elizabeth and I both agree that there needs to be comprehensive health care reform in America.

But the kind of comprehensive health care reform is what really is going to be the most important item. And I hope that it's a bipartisan one that I think can be passed energetically and have a great deal of support in the country.

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Not exactly a surprise, is it? This administration has set new records for greed and self-interest:

WASHINGTON — Shortly after leaving his job as U.S. energy secretary in early 2005, Spencer Abraham took a $60,000-a-year post as a director of Occidental Petroleum, which soon became the first firm in 20 years to ship oil to the U.S. from Libya.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge accepted director's fees and consulting work from several firms seeking contracts with his old agency.

Tommy Thompson, the former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has consulted, lobbied or worked as an employee for 42 companies since leaving office in January 2005.

All told, 17 of 24 former Bush Cabinet members have taken positions with at least 119 companies, including 65 firms that lobby the government and 40 that lobby the agencies they headed, a liberal-leaning watchdog group said in a report Monday.

Melanie Sloan, the executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that the group's six-month investigation "has shown that most of these former Bush administration officials have cannily leveraged their time spent in the public sector'' and "made a mint on the backs of American taxpayers."

"It may be legal, but it is certainly not honorable," she said.