White House: Health Care Financial Benefits Outweigh Costs
Senior adviser Valerie Jarrett defends reform law, hails strategy on Iran.
March 28, 2010— -- As a result of President Obama's health care reform law, "business will come out way ahead," President Obama's senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said this morning in an exclusive interview on "This Week."
Asked about recent news that a number of companies will have to write off significant sums of money as a result of the health care reform law, Jarrett told ABC News' Jake Tapper, "What they are going to have to write off is nothing compared to the enormous financial benefits to those very same companies by health insurance reform.
"It will bring down their costs substantially," she said. "On balance, business will come out way ahead."
Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss., vehemently disagreed on "This Week."
"We've now learned that big corporations are going to have to take $14 billion worth of write-offs ... that nobody knew about," he said.
"How many jobs are those $14 billion of losses on corporate balance sheets, how many jobs are they going to cost?" Barbour asked.
"We're going to learn a lot more about this deal ... [and as] people find out these sorts of things, this bill is going to become even more unpopular," Barbour said.
The White House strategy on Iran is working, Jarrett said. She insisted that "Iran will back down."
Asked about reports this morning that Iran is "is preparing to build" new nuclear facilities, Jarrett told Tapper that the administration would continue to use diplomatic tools to push Iran into compliance with United Nations resolutions.
"We are going to continue to put pressure on Iran," she said. "We're going to have a coalition that will really put pressure on Iran and will stop them from doing what they are trying to do."
Jarrett insisted that progress had been made since Obama took office.
"Over the last year, what we've seen when the president came into office, there was a unified Iran. Now we're seeing a lot of divisions within the country," she said. "And we're seeing steady progress in terms of a world coalition that will put that pressure on Iran."
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