Worst kind of behavior from iran. Generally it wont prevent all of their bad behavior. When it comes to the tough sell we welcome the scrutiny and even skepticism of everybody across the country and across the world as they consider this agreement. We continue to be confident, upon looking at the details once they have been released that we will be able to make a strong case about how the president havent just achieved his goal but how the International Community has achieved the important goal of preventing them from obtaining a nuclear weapon. When it comes to a tough sell i think the part will be on the part of the republicans as they try to take the deal. It will be a tough sell to say we should back away from an international agreement. Why should we throw away the best possible avenue for preventing iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. That will be a tough sell to suggest we should undermine the sanctions that have been put in place thus far. It will be a tough a tough sell to say we should foreclose the diplomatic action and only choose a military action. We will have ability to advocate for this agreement and it will be a tough sell on the part of republicans to just walk away from it. The chairman of the house and Homeland Security Committee Told us that the same entity that was behind the hack and was behind another tack earlier this year thats about 80 Million People. Has the white house learned of this . Have you all been briefed of this . What of this . What does that say about possible chinese invasion into u. S. Security . I dont have any more information to discuss publicly about who may have been responsible for the cyber breach. There are about three weeks left until congress leaves for its august recess and then only a few weeks after that until the end of the fiscal year. Does the president believe that budget negotiations and sequestration need to start before the august recess . Cheryl, we certainly believe they should not wait until the last minute to fulfill their basic responsibility. This is the most fundamental response ability that any Congress Half which is to pass a budget for this federal government of the United States. Theres no reason that congress should wait until the last minute and risk or have people worried about the possibility of a government shutdown. We are hopeful that republicans will sit down with democrats who have indicated an openness and desire to try to begin these negotiations. That is where the negotiations should take place on capitol hill. That is after all that has proven to be, the most effective way for democrats and republicans to resolve their differences and to strike the kind of bipartisan agreement necessary. Honestly the administration will be they need to find some common ground. It sounds like a tall order right now but its something that they have been able to achieve in the past and we hope they can do it again this time. We we hope they will do it without having to suffer through, or put the country through, a government a government shutdown. Have you heard anything from republicans about why they dont want to start now . I havent. Have you . Earlier today greece reached an agreement. You think that is good for the United States and for greece . We had a little bit of a betting pool whether or not someone would ask about this today. So someone is excited. You prove them wrong today. The United States welcome the agreement that was reached today between greece and its creditors. The agreement reflects a commitment by greases creditors to provide mental support and help create a path for their return to growth and debt sustainability. It also includes a commitment by greece to make reform. What we have long identified as the potential solution is one that was focused on a package of reform and financing that would put them back on a path of Economic Growth and debt sustainability. This seems to be a credible step in that direction. There are important decisions and steps that need to be taken, but we are hopeful that all sides will make the difficult decisions and follow through on the important things that need to get done. Yes maam, in the back. Hi nicole. You been mentioning the need to work on bipartisan fashion. This was a yearlong process of the fiduciary committee to look at the issue. Is that your starting part point . Have you talked to them about that . There have been a number of conversations that have taken place between senior figures in the administration and members of congress who are interested in this issue. The president hosted at least one of those conversations. I believe theres only one piece of legislation that the administration has signaled our strong support for and that is the legislation that was put forward by senators emily. We would not limit the discussion just to that piece of legislation. We are open to additional conversations with other members of congress who have ideas of ways we can reform our criminal Justice System and make it more fair. The president is not just open to those discussions, hes looking forward to them. We certainly are interested in entertaining conversation with other members of congress that have ideas as well. There was a suggestion they are not likely to confirm a filibuster no matter whoever you nominate. Any reaction to that . I think thats the kind of opposition to anything that the president proposes that is a hallmark of this republican congress. The irony is that there is some bipartisan support for the cuban policy that he announced at the end of last year. The president and the administration will continue to work to try to make progress on this policy that the president identified. He believes its its clearly within the best interest of the United States. He believes there are things the u. S. Citizens can benefit from m edits in the best interest of the cuban people. The vast majority of the cuban people actually agree this is in their best interest. We will continue to press this reform or this change in policy, even if it runs into reflective opposition. On the commutation issue there seem to be some parallels between this and the president s wish a couple years ago. He made the capitol hill and when it fell apart he did executive amnesty affecting millions of people. Is this the seminar kind of thing where if it fails on capitol hill that we should expect toward the end of his term that hes going to have tens of thousands of people i think i would say that im not sure that is at this point i think its hard to jump to that conclusion. Primarily because there seems to be significantly more bipartisan interesting criminal Justice Reform then there has been in immigration reform. I would stipulate that there are a large number of republicans in congress that have paid lip service but have never had the courage to follow up on. Im hopeful and remain optimistic that the reform for criminal justice will be different. I think based on the actions weve seen from some members of the Congress Like senator lee and senator paul, there is interest in trying to make progress on criminal Justice Reform. We are hopeful that congress will take those kind of reform steps that would have a Significant Impact on making our criminal Justice System more fair. Thank you everybody. Did he win or lose . He lost. [laughter] the future on the internet site yahoo with author nicholas carlson. Then a conference on aging. Reform on poverty in the United States will be discussed later tonight. Cspan created by americas Cable Companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a Public Service service by your local cable or satellite provider. Nicholas carlson, why a book about Marissa Mayer . Thats a great question. She is just a fascinating person. She is 39 years old now shes made 700 billion in her life. Shes an early google person she got there when there were 20 employees and left when there were thousands and thousands she went and joined an extremely troubled company. Shes a wonder woman super ceo and i wondered what she was doing to try and turn around this company. Well what was her path to yahoo question. So Marissa Mayer went to school at sanford and was going to be a doctor. She decided that was too much memorization. It wasnt that it was too hard for her, it just wasnt that exciting. She go to the summer camp and learn science but what was really important in life about how you make decisions based on what you know is more important. She got really interested in programming and specifically a field called human computer interaction at sanford. While she was at sanford she went on to get a graduate degree and had great report as a student teacher. She she got very good at that. She was a great student and shed all sorts of options when she left. She couldve gone to go be a professor or a Consulting Firm to be on the fast track to a highpaying professional field or she had one of her advisers say why dont you look at this funny Company Called google. She almost missed the opportunity as she deleted the email from google inviting her to apply for an internship, but she didnt. Then she went in and a real lesson to learn from her is she went in and she was overwhelmed with how an intelligent or bright the people were at google. She was feeling like they were much smarter than her which wasnt true, but she felt like they were. She said this would be a real challenge in a scary opportunity. She seized on she seized on that and went for it. From there she entered into google. Another really interesting lesson about her as she was hired to be someone who makes the programs. Her first big project was supposed to be googles first ad delivery system. She was going to make the first one. It took her months and months to do. Google then went out and hired new talent and is sort of shocked the industry because hes known for being one of the best coders on the planet. He was able to do the project in a matter of weeks and had been taking her months. She looked at this and she said i love working here but im not gonna make this longterm. What else can i do . She threw herself at whatever problems came by. She got involved in pr and marketing and any strange things that coders might not usually get into. She she found a role for her self and developed rapport with the ceo and she became his number one lieutenant in the sense that she ran his meetings for the rest of the staff and set the agenda for whats going to be discussed. She really needed to know what his vision was for where google was going. The other thing she did was really important, she got herself involved in the user interface review process so that every product that went live on google had to go through this checklist before it was launched. It had to meet her standards of what a good product look like. The the other thing over many years i google was her boss for a long time kept bringing product manager. In a tech company its really important that you have tech managers that can push forward and create new products. So this boss of hers kept bringing people to larry page the then ceo and paige kept rejecting them all. Finally she said heres what youre doing wrong. Youre trying to hire mbas. He wants technical people within the company. You you need to hire people like me who are technically trained but have a real interest in business. He said thats a great idea why dont you run the program, so she created one. Lots of companies have this kind of program where they hire technically oriented people and put them in charge of managing groups at a very young age. It sort of like throwing them in the bullpen. This was interesting for her because not only was she in charge of all google products but she hired managers into the company. What that meant was as these people went throughout the company, they all individually still reported through her who hired her. That meant she had a lot of power in what became the most powerful Internet Company. Thats where she was for a long time and was doing a great job. She ended up being pretty senior i google and then my book gets into issues of promotion at the end of her career. Thats how she gained so much power in the beginning. Comedy years was she at google and how much of the 700 million did she make from google . So she was there around 2000 until 2012. So she was there 12 or 13 years. She joined when there was 20 employees and left when there was 50000. She made 300 million or so from working at google being one of those early employees. She has fabulous wealth. She has many homes but theres two that we know of for sure and one is at the top of the four seasons in San Francisco and another is in palo alto near the sanford campus. Like many of the very wealthy people there she has done this thing where she loves the neighborhood so much that she has decided to buy some of the homes around her just to make sure it remains pleasant around her. Outed she get to yahoo and become ceo . So this was a big upset and a big surprise that yahoo was able to hire someone like Marissa Mayer. First if we talk about the history of the Country Company which is the first hundred and 50 pages my book. What i wanted to explore was yahoo and how it got in such bad shape before she got there. Why they needed her to come in and turn the place around. Just before she got there the company had gone through several ceos in a short time. It had gone through an interim ceo and a permanent ceo and then someone who is pushed out of the company for lying on his resume. All of that happened in the period of about a year. It was so tumultuous that there was a lot of expectations the company would say lets hire this person he has a great name he has a mission and vision for what to do with the company. So that so that had been the expectation. Then one july day, all the sudden Marissa Mayer is there as the ceo as yahoo and everyone is shocked. It was such an upset. Behindthescenes behindthescenes what happened was in 2011 yahoo fired its ceo the ceo was in new york for business trip and she gets a phone call from the chairman who starts reading a script and she said it sounds like youre reading from the scripts, why dont you have the guts to actually talk to me. Anyway, anyway, she was fired and it was very public. Meanwhile, over a google and and another scene in my book one of mayers long time confident, he came from the world of politics and his pr type and he made her into somewhat of a celebrity along with something she played more than a role. Anyway so she said i think you would be a great fit for yahoo. Mayer set i thought about that and it would be interesting but theres no way im doing that with yahoos current director. The reason she said that is because over its many years, yahoo had a notorious bad board of director. The people who hire talented ceos but talented ceos were really a bad fit for the company. People who along the way prevented the company from making sound business decisions. There was a moment moment where yahoo had gotten a big offer around 2008 and they got a large offer from microsoft and the company sort of just fumbled it and pushed it off and said they wouldnt do it. It was because because of the board of directors. So was just a notoriously bad board of directors. What mayer didnt know was that across the country in new york there is a Hedge Fund Manager who is an activist investor. His name is dan lowe. He goes in and buys large stakes in Public Companies and then says to the board of the public company, listen listen im now a big owner in your company and i have some ideas of how you should be running this company which is very different than how youre running it now. By the way if you dont do what i say, i will go to the other shareholders and will all get together and get you fired. Meaning Public Companies are in a way shareholder democracies. If enough shareholders get together they can throw out the board of directors and the board of directors and the board of directors can fire the ceo. So dan lowe had taken a 5 stock in in yahoo and he had watched the disastrous board for many years. He thought this was the underperforming asset and if only the board was removed someone could be hired and could really run it. So he geared up and bought 5 of yahoo and launched what was called a proxy campaign to get out the board and ceo. He pushed for it to hire someone like Marissa Mayer and asked the Board Members to resign. The board and not listen and went out and hired a president of paypal which is another division of ebay. They hired this guy name scott and he went into yahoo with all these strange plans of what he would do with the company and he just sort of indicated that he had never been in the Media Business. Yahoo was the Media Business and it was just like what had happened before. He was intelligent but not good for the company. Download said lets keep this proxy war going. They had allowed for a long time a mistake. One might say that thompson lied on his resume about having a sign its degree a a Computer Science degree from a university that didnt have a Computer Science degree at the time he was there. He would write these gaping letters which he would call letters of mass distraction. Theres a scene in in my book where after this war between the investor and Scott Thompson and the board of yahoo is going on for quite some time its may 2012, and Scott Thompson the ceo of yahoo is in a meeting at a used ushaped table in the mood of each executive starts to change. There in this long meeting but theres also this electricity in the air. They start looking at their laptop and blackberries to see what was going on. A reporter said that the investor published a letter and accused Scott Thompson of lying on his resume. He stands up and bolts from the room and starts dealing with it. He didnt survive. He actually has a lovely career going but didnt survive his job at yahoo. He he was out within weeks. That left yahoo with another ceo search. The next guy had the idea to make yahoo a Media Company and carve it and make it smaller. But instead, the investor had been out researching and speaking with people in the valley about what kind of ceo the yahoo needed. The creative creator of netscape told the investor and another future board member of yahoo named mr. Wolf, he told them what you need is when you have a tech company like yahoo, the product isnt necessarily like a product for a car company which is just a thing that comes off and assembly lied. The thing that you make his innovation and you really need a technical leader. Someone who has an understanding of how products are made in the environment. Thats how places like amazon and google and facebook are such great companies, and apple for example as well. They got it in their head that what they needed was to go find someone like larry page or mark zuckerberg, someone who has an understanding of what users want from products and have a native understanding of the web in a way that the previous ceos did not. It was a pretty allstar list but at the very list was Marissa Mayer. Gmail google maps and google search. She is to talk about a toothbrush test. These services need to be something that is used at least twice a day. Its difficult to come up with these products, but thats what they wanted to do. That was at the top of the list and they thought it would be impossible to get her. The recruiter reached out to her and the recruiter was stunned to find out that Marissa Mayer was actually interested in the job. She went in and if theres one thing about her, she is the best preparer in the world. If she knows she needs to have a set of data understood, she she will have it understood and be able to be more than affluent on it as well is convincing and so forth. She went in them blew the board away. While there was some reluctance to hire her because she had not actually run a division with a profit and loss station at google, but eventually they were able to convince the rest of the board that she would be the right higher. They made this grand announcement in july and it shocked everyone. A little piece of information was she was pregnant. She was five months pregnant. Here you have a 37yearold woman who was pregnant and the ceo of a massive Internet Company and how would she do . Thats what the the world wanted to know. Thats what i wanted to know. Thats basically why wrote the book. Necklace carlson from page 300 your book the honeymoon between Marissa Mayer and yahoo 1500 employees employees last about a year. So. So when she came in there was an incredible amount of optimism for her. She demonstrated that that all the optimism was worthwhile. She came in in the 2008 president ial election there was a poster made of resident obama and on the bottom it said hoping capital letters. When she arrived in july 2012 there were posters of her done in the same style with the word hope written underneath them. There was that sort of us excitement in the time in the company. These were were in the hallways at yahoo. The founders, david philo met her at the front door and rolled out a purple carpet for her to enter the company on. She came in and her office is full of things like cupcakes, because shes shes sort of a cupcake in the easiest or at least thats the impression the world has gotten. Its not really true but thats the impression the world got. Its full of cupcakes and balloons and calls on her answering machine from the white house, calls from j. P. Morgan and ceos and celebrities congratulating her on the job. There was this humongous enthusiasm and optimism for her arrival at yahoo. She did great right away. Some of the things she did is she brought an increased level of transparency. For years, the way that yahoo employees learned what was going on was not through the channel of communication but through reading reports on the company particularly reports by charis swisher. She would just break news about yahoo all the time. That was how people at yahoo knew what was going on. Marissa mayer came in and said that needs to end. We need to do a better job communicating with employees. It was a common thing in the valley now but that was a weekly meeting where the executive team, the ceo and his or her executive team sit on the stage in front of all the Company Employees who can either watch the meeting through their computer or in person, and they take questions from employees. The employees asked quite difficult questions so one thing i was astounded by, and you can see this in the book, its pretty common or how hard the questions were and how candid she wasnt answering these questions. It was amazing. She brought this level of transparency that had not previously been at yahoo and raised morale. She also did other things. In many ways she brought yahoo to parity with what the rest of the valley was doing. She instituted free food for employees. All of a sudden you could go there early in the morning and stay late at night and get three meals a day. Its a great perk but it also has a sneaky side effect of keeping people a around the office much longer. For a long time they were out and trying to make web products and apps for people to use but at the same time yahoo executives employees were not using iphones and android phones and the kind of phones that consumers were using. They were using blackberries. She said she said that would have to and so she gave employees new iphones and androids for free. Smalls sounds like a small deal but it was actually a big deal for the employees. The number one thing she band was working from home. Employees employees really need to come into the office and this is a Creative Company where we need creativity to flow between people and the only way to do that is if youre bumping into people and seeing them around the place. Also by the way, we looked at data and a lot of people who work from home arent logging in all that much so they are going off in skiing instead of working and things like that. She said thats enough. That was a very controversial thing outside of yahoo. Especially a lot of women who argued that working from home is a great way for me to be a professional and take care of my family. They were offended and she was regarded by anti woman. Inside yahoo it was not nearly as controversial. There is a few people who complained. They complain that yes she was making this policy that was not helpful for working mothers and meanwhile she with hundreds of millions of dollars had built a nursery in her office. She literally knocked down a wall and built a nursery. So people were sort of upset by that. But overwhelmingly the employees felt this is something that needs to be done in order to get us moving again. We really need to get the place moving again. Thats another thats another thing she did. She got them moving quite a lot faster during her year there. Before before she was there it took yahoo 18 months to launch a new version of yahoo email. Thats the amount of time it took before her influence. After she arrived they launched the email product in six months and then the next time they launched a new version of email, it only took three months. Its impressive. She she did that in a way that was very different than how most ceos come in and try to turn around a company. Most ceos comment and they say okay i have a strategy. It will take 100 days to complete the strategy and then theyll delegate it out and asked people to push down the latter throughout the pm mid thats how it gets done. Mayor went into yahoo, and we talk about her having this low act google where she was on the user interface review team where everything that went lied had to go through her. So she went into the yahoo and set im gonna do that again. She went went into the product meeting where things were being made. You dont see ceos come into meetings like this and sit down. Theres a scene in my book where shes sitting next to the product manager for yahoo mail. Shes looking at him and she grills him for 45 minutes on where hes getting his data from, what kind of surveys hes using, why hes making the decisions hes making, and is just the sort of things like getting her hands on the lapel of yahoo to make sure that everything is good and up to her standard. She got the place moving again by doing that kind of thing. Now the problem was and the reason the honeymoon ended is that when she decided to join yahoo, one of the things she talked about with the board of directors is that they needed to cut costs. It needed to lay off people. Now she never promised that she would lay off people but she indicated she would cut costs. A lot of people outside the company thought that yahoo needed to go through the pace that had 15,000 fulltime fulltime employees and a few thousand parttimers spread around the world who were called freelancers and contractors but were actually working as much as fulltime employees just not getting the benefits. They thought that what she would do is take this 18000 strong workforce and reduce it down to 5000 people, perhaps as low as that. In fact one of the silicone valley star investors that we mentioned before who really advocated he was public and said yahoo needs to fire 10000 people. But she did not want to do that. She thought the last thing they needed to do was lose talent. She looked looked at some of the layout plans that have been laid out and she thought this was a disaster. Hes gonna fire people regardless of their talent and their specialty. I think i think i can find a smarter way to reduce costs and improve the talent mix at yahoo. She thought back to her google days where they had this process called objective key results. What they were is that every quarter every google employee meets with their manager and that employee decides on a set of objective key results for the next quarter. They were held accountable to these goals. They were graded on how well they perform against these goals. Yahoo had some review processes but she really prioritized and emphasized this idea. She called them quarterly performance reviews. There was a twist. The twist is that she thought what we need to do is have these people graded on what they said they would do each quarter and hold them accountable to how theyre doing, but not only that we need every manager to take all the people on their team and grade them on a scale of one to to five on how they do. Not only do i want them to grade them on how they do on a scale of one to 5. By the way way these scores matter. If you have something above a three or four youre eligible for promotion and transfers. But this matter to people in a way that was very big. So if your score is a four and then you got a two than that drag your whole average score down and your life is materially worse than it was before because you are not able to get a raise or bonus or something. Now all that wouldve been fine if she wouldve instituted an Accountability Program but what she did that cause problems is that she asked her managers to put their employees in a forced curve. Maybe 15 would get a one, 15 would get would get a five and so on. Each bucket had to have a certain number of percentage in every group. This caused a lot of problems because even in a high performing group you had managers who believed and understood what that meant to be that they had to give some failing grades to people who are not deserving failing grades. This has created a lot of confusion. This is called stack ranking. Theres a number of problems with that. Theres been a number of studies about why stack ranking is a failed management paradigm. A lot has to do with the fact that people dont want to Work Together as much. If you are a star employee you dont want to be and another group with another star employee. One of you will have to be in the top group and one of you will not. As a general rule people dont want to Work Together or transferred to new groups because they dont know whos on the team and where theyll fit on the team. They dont want to switch in the middle of the quarter and then be ranked last in the group and be punished and so forth. So people grew upset about this. They were confused and disoriented and felt like their lives were being worsened because of this program. Finally, finally, we talked about these meetings that she would hold every week called fyi and finally there were a number of questions over time about this process. People were demoralized by these new performance measures. Mr. Carlson we are going to have to leave the rest for people to buy the book and finish that story. Unfortunately unfortunately we are out of time. Nicholas carlson Marissa Mayer and the fight to save yahoo is the name of the book. Cspan, created by americas Cable Companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a Public Service service by your local cable or satellite provider. On the next washington journal the latest development in the iran nuclear to negotiations. Helping ghazi plans to proceed with this investigation. Well hear from members of congress. Later well hear from mike pompeo from kansas. Washington journal life every morning at seven eastern on cspan. You can contribute to the program by phone, facebook and twitter. This weekend on cspans road to the white house, two Major Political events from iowa and we are the only place you can watch or listen to these events in their entirety. Friday night will be live in cedar rapids for the Iowa Democratic hall of fame dinner. It will mark mark the first time that all five democratic share the same stage. Then beginning saturday we will be live in aims for the family leadership summit where nine leading republican candidates are scheduled to speak. On cspan, cspan radio and cspan. Org. Cspans road to the white house 2016. We take you there. Pres. Obama spoke at a white house conference on aging earlier. This year marks the 50th anniversary anniversary of medicare, medicaid and the Older Americans act as well as the 80th anniversary of Social Security. We will also hear from a former Deputy Commissioner on aging who served during the johnston administration and from labor secretary thomas perez. Thank you. Good morning everyone. From the smile im seeing on your faces you share the off that this day presents. We are privileged we are privileged few who are not only at the white house, the very center of the planning strategic for our future, but we are also those who have been chosen to focus our knowledge and experience on the challenges that long jevity has presented itself in our nations future. That is quite a challenge to all. You are aware of that. Im convinced that we are all up to the task before us that we have today. I serve as a delegate for the 1961 white house conference. [applause]. Thats why im hanging on the rails. [laughter] there are over 3000 delegates at that time. We werent privileged to be in the white house. We were serving the white house. We were divided into 13 specific sectional areas and we had great discussions. As a matter of fact, although the convictions were strong ab thats not the word i should say, they were passionate the delegates were committed to resolving the issues to which we were there. We examined every issue in every proposal presented. We know the results of that conference. That is is what we are hoping to achieve at this conference. So we are called upon to extend the energy and sense of responsibility in addressing the challenges that are presented and have been presented at the regional meetings that weve had around the country. I was 38 years of age in 1961. Ill be 93 and two months [applause]. Im just as excited as i was then. The future is with us in this room. We are going to be a strategic part of it. The profile of our society is changing, you all know that. But rejoice, rejoice. We have the opportunity to shape that profile and to provide its opportunities for the seniors who are yet to come. Our children, our grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. So we take on a very difficult task this day and we are going to be responsible and happy when we see the results of that. Im told there are over 600 watch parties today observing our activities and our deliberations. In 1961, i never would have imagined that in one year this past year much education and information sharing could be so accomplished. Not only the u. S. But throughout the world. We have been heard throughout the world. This 2015 conference on aging has maximize the opportunity for interaction between the professionals in our programs and the people that we are hoping to be more involved and active. Certainly the younger generations the thousands and thousands of baby boomers who are going to be coming in to our age group and are going to be looking to us to have shaped that period of time in their lives that they will be proud to participate. Well thats enough information. Just the background. You know far more than i whats going on today and its time we get to work. So its my honor, distinct honor today to introduce the Senior Advisor to the president brock obama. [applause]. Im really not this bad off. Hardly. Good morning everyone. What a pleasure pleasure it is to welcome you to the white house and thank you for that terrific opening. Your leadership and dedication and your spirit at the ripe young age of 93 is something we should all emulate. Thank you, lets have another round of applause for bernard nash. You you have and continue to inspire generations. I am thrilled to look around and see so many friends in the audience. Of course i have to recognize the congress men who are here today true champions for the issues that we are going to be discussing. To all of you two are here today, welcome to the well white house. You are joining us in a pretty exciting year. We have made a great deal of progress in 2015 but as we know this is also a year of some rather importantly a marks. Medicare and medicare and medicaid are 50 years old. A round of applause for them. [applause]. And Social Security just turned 80. Another important landmark. These three programs truly symbolize who we are. They reflect our countrys values. They reflect the fact that we are our brothers keeper. We are our sisters keeper and we understand that we are all in this together and that we have a responsibility to each other. Because of our steadfast commitment to these programs, america is living and leading longer and healthier lives. As we we recognize that americans are regularly living 20 or 30 years beyond the traditional retirement age, we must reshape what it means to age in america. We need to view changing demographics as an opportunity and not a burden. Pres. Obama and his entire administration have consistently worked to ensure all americans are able to look forward to healthy, secure and fulfilling lives after they retire. Thanks to the Affordable Care act, seniors are saving a fortune on prescription drug. They are taking advantage of prepreventive benefits in higher numbers than ever before and we are prohibiting Insurance Companies from denying claims due to preexisting conditions. Thanks to the Supreme Court, aca is here to stay. [applause]. President obama is also working to strengthen older American Financial security and reinforce the basic american concept that hard work should be rewarded with dignity and stability in retirement. We are also working to protect Social Security and reject all calls to privatize it. Amen. Amen. The future of hardworking americans should not be dependent upon the fluctuation of the stock market. Today we look forward to exploring with you future strategies for how we best empower all americans as our population ages and as Older Americans continue to live fuller, healthier and more vibrant lives as bernie demonstrates. Todays Conference Provides an opportunity for leaders and advocates and experts around the company to share best practices and identify both individuals and collective goals for the next ten years. I learned firsthand from my mother barbara bowman, a vibrant and independent 86yearold who has who has no plans to stop working anytime soon the potential of our elders if we provide them the support they need to lead full and productive lives. This is a very, very important day for the administration and for all of you and for the future of our country. We hope this conversation will move our country forward and the older generation upon whose shoulders we stand will be able to look towards a brighter future. This years conference conference is the most exclusive in history. And inclusive in history as we begin to join 600 watch parties around the countrys watching online and engaging with us. We want to have a broad engagement because we want everyone to participate on the solutions and suggestions that we have and can put in place immediately and over the longterm. We welcome all of you here today and everyone who is tuning in online. Your voices will be heard as well. We hope that today will be a productive, energetic session. Thank you very much for being with us and thank you for everything youve done that has led us up today but thank you for the very hard work that we will engage in together going forward. So now, id like to turn it over our first panel to a tremendous talent and advocate , david pierce who will moderate our first panel. [applause]. Good morning. I am honored to be in this building and on this panel. I am 56 years old and to be asked to be part of a conference on aging is slightly bracing. [laughter] on the other hand i was in virginia two days ago buying a bottle of wine and for the first time in over 20 years, i was carded. So, the lord giveth and the lord taketh away. It made me think about how we define ourselves and how some of these words that we use become fixed and calcified including age words like aging and caregiving. I think we need to shake up some of these definitions. It something that has been happening in this country, i feel feel is that we have been able to recognize and go beyond and take down the barriers and the division that we have sometimes artificially created between ourselves. I think these words aging and caregiving, are are two of those words. They almost wearing cozy sweaters and leaning on a walker. I think we all had very different experiences of those words. My families familys experience with caregiving came under the shadow of my grandfather and my dads alzheimer and dementia. Those game in the 80s. The honor of caring for those was shared by many generations. Even the role of caregiver mike grandmother and my mom were fine caregivers for their spouses. The physical toll on their health ultimately made it very difficult to separate the sufferer from the person who was caring for the sufferer. We felt like alzheimers took all four of them. So those definitions become very fluid. My hope is that this amazing panel we have here today, their different perspectives, will help shake up our calcified definitions and remind us that to age is to live and to care is to be human. So let me introduce this wonderful panel. Starting at the bar and robert mcdonald. He is the secretary of the u. S. Department of veterans affairs. He has held that position since july 2014. He was previously the ceo of procter gamble. Next is the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and codirector of the caring across generations campaign. Shes been working working with immigrant workers since 96. In response to caregivers in the home she launched an organization to help with the need to care for the expanding group of aging individuals in our company. Country. Next is frank hernandez. He serves with blue cross and blue shield of minnesota. He focuses on Medicare Medicaid and the federal employee program. He was elected president in 2010. He is insuring for ensuring Enterprise Health and Customer Value and patient lives for the walgreens company. Finally britney fergusons sitting next to me is a chemist who works fulltime at a chemical plant. She received her bachelors degree in chemistry. She is also a also a single mother of a 2yearold and the primary caregiver for her 90yearold dad. He is a veteran with alzheimer and dementia. She lives in shreveport louisiana. Please help me welcome our distinguished panel if you think back to what occurred the crisis that occurred in 2014 some americans think that that is because we were fighting this war for over 14 years, the reality is that the veteran population was the primary, if not the primary reason. In west point in 1975 we had several individuals. In 2017 we will have 10 million veteran over the age of 65 years old. And this means that the number of individuals is up by 50 over a shorter period of time. And this includes the number of chronic illnesses that has doubled and so we have things like this jobs facetoface premium, telephone training, we have seen caregivers in isolation. We also have other things that are very important. And also best practices. And in case any of you would ever need it the number is 36 032 4185260 and there is like social work that will provide counseling and information for caregivers we have provided over 30,000 referrals. The program there is an acronym for it and its called reach and that stands for resources for health. And its a critical the Valuation Program used to teach veterans about the program, with those with dementia problems how to solve problems and how to get things done. And its part of the national alzheimers project at as well. And this is a recent one. And this is an opportunity to bring together local veterans, Service Providers coming caregivers come and advocates through Community Driven networks that we have established and these are chaired by local leaders and not by the employees, to bring people together to talk about common issues and to make sure that we are applying the right resources to get these issues resolved. We have lost the first of these this month, and we hope to have 50 by the end of the summer and over 100 by the end of the year. And i can think of no more Important Group as we can carefulness than the caregivers no more Generous Group and no more kind group, and we are working hard to do that and share our knowledge with others. [cheers] [applause] it is true, the reach of that work goes far beyond the veterans and we are all taking advantage of what we are learning and exporting it to the community. So we thank you for that. Okay britney . As we said, you are a mother of a small child, you are taking care of someone with dementia. And that is the definition of the sandwich generation, by the way, im wondering what it was like what the diagnosis and what your daily life is like. [inaudible] my baby. My babys life is difficult. And balancing a 12 hour work shift and also a very energetic two year old as well as my data can be stubborn at times because he so used to being independent. It is very difficult. There are medical appointments there are prescriptions there are general things like Grocery Shopping and even going to the bank and it has been very difficult for me but he is my father and he has been a great father. So i do it. [applause] are you pretty much on your own handling this . Yes pretty much, my mother helps when she can, but she is also suffering from arthritis and so she helps when she can but its pretty much just me. How old is your mother we met. My mother is 62 years old. Okay, and so how is she holding up . I know that it can be very dramatic. She is doing pretty well. [inaudible] and its really difficult, but we get through it. She is doing pretty good. It is amazing that you are here. Is taken care of everything and how did you manage it reign. My mother has my son now. My mother and my brother are helping as well and i was conveniently off work for the next couple of days, so that was easy. Thats great. We are lucky to have you. [applause] [applause] a question for frank fernandez. It is really a role model in terms of what it has been doing to the front of care. Thank you for the question. You know the heart of these communities, these communities are critical in terms of living with dementia and caregivers and they ensure that the experience of dementia will continue to live in the community and in minnesota, the act on alzheimers collaborative have developed a Community Engagement that includes Technical Support that is fostering 34 different communities in every region of the state. Those communities are rural and superman and communities of interest and this is a place for individuals with dementia and their families and the individuals. And that includes individuals such as Law Enforcement, government businesses legal and financial Service Providers government, and health care and faithbased communities. These are very different segments that Work Together to develop fair practices. [inaudible] and especially when we go to announce the launch of a National Effort called dementia friendly america. The initiative is a collaboration of 50 organizations with a shared goal of dementia Friendly Communities across the United States. And we are going to pilot 15 dementia Friendly Communities across the country this includes knoxville, tennessee, Santa Clara County california georgia county maryland, and the entire state of west virginia. We are so proud to share this information with you today and we are really excited. We want all of you who are working to make an impact on this disease to join us and to please be part of the effort. I did want to add a little bit about what you are talking about in terms of the communities who unfortunately suffer disproportionately from the disease, we have been working really hard in minnesota to ensure that we are paying attention to the cultural differences, whether they are linguistic or other issues that create the berrier is to seeking care including the subcommittee in place. And we are working on some of the basic things like translating information in other ways in which we can make sure that the communities that are here underserved have access to the tools and support that are necessary in order to be successful. It boils down to one word which is awareness. When the communities are made aware, when Law Enforcement is made aware of what the issues are and the possibilities are and we tend to think of caregivers as being family members or professionals. And is that right to make that distinction . Or dc that there is a combination of those rules that can be had enact what is your vision, your book is called aging with dignity, how does that include caregivers . I actually think about the former first lady saying at best, when she said that there only four kinds of people in the world, people who are caregivers or those that will be caregivers come and people who need care or are going to need care. Many of us experience those identities in overlapping ways and even then there are many family caregivers who become professional caregivers. Most of the professional caregivers also have families that they are caring for her. And there are 50 million of us who are either working as professional caregivers for the growing and aging population and for people with disabilities and really to put in the place the system to really support and value the killer untrained caregivers this includes the family caregivers and our professional caregivers. To say a word about the professional caregiving workforce, this is a workforce whose job it is to support the dignity of the people that we love everyday. And they do it with such incredible skill and incredible patience, and the average Median Income for a home care worker in this country is 13000 per year. And the opportunity ahead to put into place a new system to support our families and to support living well across generations. It has to revalue care and particularly goodquality caregiving jobs so that we can have this sustainable strong vibrant diverse and dynamic situation for the 21st century in the future that we are going to need in this country to live well. Its so true, i hope that capitalism will catch up with the need. Because these people we have all had the experience when you find someone who is dedicated and you know the people that last as these caregivers are people that are the biggest part in the strongest individuals. Walgreens is everywhere. It has thousands of the tories. Caregiving has touched my family this year. And i think that the way that we support the caregivers and in particular seniors as well it is based on three factors that provide this unique opportunity. The first is convenience which is everywhere. We have over 8300 Walgreens Stores throughout the country and that includes statistics about convenience, 67 live within 3 miles of a walgreens. So when you need a prescription filled or you need something you are in 3 miles away usually, but not just a physical convenience. And this means Nurse Practitioners can treat illnesses. The idea of convenience after hours is really an advantage. And things like medication management, the average senior today is for five or six keeping it straight is really important, these drugs can have interactions and they can be lifesaving, they can have interactions which make them more likely to fall or to be confused and pharmacists are really helping to support the caregivers and patients and the doctors sort that out. And there are other support Services Like immunizations were so important especially for saving lives like influenza, pneumonia and viruses known as shingles. And then the third factor is frequency when i was treating seniors, i would feel fortunate i that i got to see them two to three times per year just as a statistics that you could find it interesting. And that includes being supportive of the doctors and caregivers and we are really trying to make a difference. Thats fantastic. Stepping up to the plate, seeing the need. And we have some questions that were sent by twitter. Because it is 2015. [laughter] this is robert. This is probably for you. Maybe there is a new answer. From the fitzgerald house in new york city one individual is asking what are the newest plans to help senior veterans. You have talked about the community and stuff. I think one of the things that is exciting is the research that we do in the ba. I think that we are necessary, also necessary for american medicine. We have a project which the president is very much supporting entirely, but we have the blood samples of the main veterans that have volunteered. We are working our way there. We are doing this genome mapping on all those veterans and not the same time, for most of them we have 40 or 50 years of medical records because they have spent their careers in the military, and we have, you know, everything that happened in their lives. And the genome mapping, those medical records and everything, its going to be available to research and to be done. So that we can do research and discover precision medicine. And that includes getting ahead of some of these diseases before they begin. And i think that this is a good question for you. And youre asking about the support that we can give family caregivers. I wish that i had. I will call, either no one answers the phone, or they wont return a phone call or if they do answer there is another 800 number. And so that has been a big difficulty of mine to get the resources and the benefits that they need. There are so many wellintentioned organizations. Imagine dealing with caring for multiple people and you dont have time to make the calls in the first place. And then to have that kind of runaround. The way that we see caregivers, this is a huge part of the solution for the future. Its a huge part of the equation for quality of life. And this includes and this is an incredible leverage point for the society that we all want to live in. I think that at the end of the day when you think about it Dementia Friendly Community, it is about supporting the caregiver and easing the burden that we all know that the caregivers have in terms of doing daily things in this includes those that have dementia themselves can live forward and there are tools that are necessary and that is why we believe that these dementia Friendly Communities are one of the ways in which we are going to do a much better job of supporting the other caregivers. When it comes to the caregiving workforce, which i think that it comes due. You have mentioned actually saying that this could be a good idea. I did think it was a great idea, paying a living wage where you care for your own loved ones and theres also training with other kinds of support and the other thing about caregiving is it can be incredibly isolating and so creating Community Connections and support and letting every caregiver now that they are valued and they are a critical part of the society and the family. They have this in the new York City Office just like any family member, what they are going through, they have been able to just vent and learn from each other especially when we are dealing with issues of dementia, how you respond to this ever shifting disease it really takes training and expertise and that is vital. And im going to talk about this. This is Live Streaming the conference today. [applause] and they have asked that the single most important need caregivers have and what can the area agencies do to support them in terms of supporting the effort and those that understand what the support our, ensuring that those are available to the communities that are learning and building education and awareness in trying to understand what those supports are, they have been very critical in terms of their participation in the Dementia Friendly Community and they will be very involved in what is happening across the country and so we are very happy as a collaborative that they will be part of that and we look forward to evolving these communities across the country with help from this. I was just going to say that the most important thing that they could do for caregivers is to find them. But i continue to be a part of this for the last 20 years and im still amazed at how many places people just dont know there is still this stigma about dementia and disease, and some of it is because of the different communities and different ways of looking at dementia. But it continues and also the isolation of being a caregiver and the time is taken up taking care of things. So unless we find ways to say guess what, there is a resource theres places you can go, people that you will answer to that will be the most important. From my brief experience in government the second time, the collaboration is incredibly important. You have a state level and a local level and getting collaboration between all of them so you have the importance of that scale setting up to program the resources demographics are destiny and we know that people are going to be aging in the future and at the same time you have to have a human being on that phone line so that you get the Personalized Service and the answer is in the right answer. So how you get that collaboration that permeates the entire system everyone working together synergistically so you get the scale at the same time and you get to customize individual service at the local level. We have so many people that come from the Business Community and what you describe is how a business would be what do we do to create that kind of collaboration nationwide reign. I will just make a comment on that. I think that some of the barriers and for example there is a lot more that we can do to leverage the 8300 stores with pharmacist as they are open late and on weekends, but we dont always have the mechanisms to compensate them for the work they do and theres many other caregivers that are in the same vote. So i think that we have to find ways to create Business Models to really compensate folks that are in the community and i can provide the care and that we were in chatting about as well before the panel. And that is a work in progress. Some of it is economic. And there are lots of different needs, not just in terms of health and different illnesses that people are living with, but also traditions and cultures and quality of life that is so deeply tied to so many realities to the extent that the officers can really be oriented to how is the reality of how the caregiving needs are changing and the full diversity of who we are as a country. And i believe that that is a key priority. [applause] in minnesota, Blue Cross Blue Shield of minnesota has essentially been making a healthy difference in peoples lives through this work and we have been focused upon creating an atmosphere on the job of being supportive. So we have brown bag lunches where we have provided education and created awareness for the employees. We have provided training for Customer Service representatives so that they can detect issues and also do a better job of helping those individuals navigate what is a complex system on how to better support those cultural communities, one of the unique ways in which the Community Partners have been raising education and awareness is through having written and the play is based upon reallife experiences and that is one way in which we have been able to break through some of those barriers with this work and that includes more importantly that there are people out there who care and who can support you not only from the individuals but the caregivers. [applause] how great to have a role like that. I think thats very exciting. Does anyone have any questions that they want to talk about while they are here . Any members of the family . Okay, it was about incinerating paid family leave for people that need to take care. If the expression that id never heard and that would probably be okay for you. Yes, it would be right now. You need surgery but i cannot take off work to be with him. So paid leave would be wonderful. [applause] [inaudible question] [inaudible question] [applause] let me just repeat that for the people. The issue of elder abuse which is certainly part of this in this country, there are people coming in to walgreens, this is actually a great resource to be observant and to notice when this is happening. I think that its a very important comment and i commented on that frequency of interactions when you have senior caregivers come in 20 or more times per year, its a great opportunity for pharmacy individuals to develop these relationships, i really appreciate the comments and the insight which is on target. Hello im from new york city, and i am a jewish feminist and my big fear is not being able to do what it is i have to do with caregiving and to go into the system known to be discriminatory homophobic, and you know, i am concerned that after all of the years im going to have to talk about this and if i have to go into an institution as well. I am concerned that the government has been into whatever is going on in the Older Americans act, there should be training and it should be done to the caregiving level because things are part of this. Most of all i dont ever want to have to go back into the closet again. Thank you. I just have to say that thats a credible point. When we talk about numbers immunities, there are all kinds of diverse communities. Its very sobering. Yes. You have mentioned about the programs that they have for training and social workers and caregivers and i know that they have social workers in their for the training programs, but when there are veterans that need longterm care, who pays the bill, where does the Veterans Administration fit in on that . In families cannot afford to pay a caregiver, what happens to this . And the other question is for all of you. Do you support and believe that the Homecare Workers are really worth 15 per hour two i mean they are underpaid and they are fighting to get recognition and to hold onto their dignity and to take care of their own family. So where do you stand on that . And that is for anyone up there. The answer is that it depends upon the status of the veterans. The application of benefits for veterans is complex because of the number of laws that have been passed over the years. And the best is to call the caregiver line and i will repeat that number again. 855 2603274 and we will need to drill down to be able to answer it this question. Just another question. Of course the work of caregiving and home care workers deserves at least 15 or more per hour its not more. And that is just the first step in what its going to take to secure a home care and caregiving workforce to support those that would prefer to age in place, athome, in our communities living life on our own terms, i just want to shout out my caregiver that takes care of my grandmother and supports her to take care of herself independently, takes her to church so that she can be in the senior choir and she wants to play it with her friends, you do not want to take her on in competitions and all of that is made possible by the work of these individuals. So it really just want to recognize them here today. That is a great note in which to wrap up. And i just want to take a second to think the president as well as the congress, miraculously all moving together to pass a national alzheimers project, we have talked about the division in this government and the unity there in which we have all benefited from and im grateful to thank all of you. Please have a wonderful rest of your conference. [applause] [applause] [applause] good afternoon. It is an honor and a pleasure to be with you here today and to tell my story and share it with you. I was raised to be a hardworking and military brat. And my parents did not go to college, but they were able to send my Three Sisters as well as myself to get a nice college education. And my dad passed away about 14 years ago, but my mother, she is 81 years old and shes watching from home. Hey, mom im in the white house. [laughter] and so my parents raised me like many parents do with a strong moral fabric. Somewhere along the line i went way off track. And i ended up in a fiscal nightmare. With bill collectors with foreclosures looming on the horizon. And i didnt think that i could see any way to get out of my financial problems. In about 16 years ago in atlanta, georgia, i stumbled into a meeting, which was a Financial Education meeting. And many of us go to meetings, you think you are in the wrong room. So i went in and i didnt see anybody that looked like me. And everybody look extremely prosperous. And i was thinking that it was the wrong meeting, but they made me feel really warm and they welcomed me. The individuals who had come to teach that meeting include the individual with the Womens Institute for secure retirement she had flown into atlanta and she was there to provide help to my organization so that i could reach out to women like myself who were struggling and who never thought that we could have a secure retirement. In this white house conference on aging is an opportunity for everyone to come to the table and feel like they have a voice. And we have an opportunity for shifting the economic landscape for millions of women in this country as well as men and millions of women like myself who struggled financially to make sound decisions while dealing with some very difficult economic challenges and this is both personal and im passionate about it. And we are hopeful that this can be a generational dialogue that reaches out to women in their 20s and 30s 50s and 70s, 80s and beyond. This is our opportunity to be able to be heard and as well as having a part of this process that is so critical. When i think about my 81yearold mother in massachusetts she is also a part of this conversation as well as my nieces and my daughter. My 15yearold daughter was saying, are you going to see nicki minaj as well as the president . [laughter] and i said that im going to have an opportunity to express what many young people need to know today that this is a part of their dialogue as well and that the resources and the innovation that we are going to hear today at this white house conference on aging is going to set the tone for a dialogue that is going to provide opportunity for my daughter as well as the next generation. And now i have the distinct honor as well as the distinct pleasure of introducing the president of the United States, barack obama. [cheers] [applause] hello, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] [cheers] [applause] everyone, please have a seat. Welcome to the white house conference on aging. I would like for you to give it the key a huge round of applause for that. And i want to thank the members of congress who are here tonight, those in the administration who have been working on this issue and i want to point out one of my favorite former members of congress a legend that is here today. John. Thank you so much, john. And john was elected to congress when he was just 29 years old. He is an over achiever. Ten years later he presided over the House Chamber for the votes that passed medicare into law. For which he and his father can take some credit. Last week he turned 89 years old and we want to wish him a happy birthday. He has done a retiree for six months, but just check out his twitter feed if you dont believe me. He still has some very strong opinions. And it is wonderful to be here with all of you many of you have dedicated your careers to advocating for Older Americans and you understand the whole thing. Not just the challenges but also the opportunities, not only the questions we are asking but the questions that we have to start thinking about for tomorrow. Because this conference takes place, we have to make it count. And so one of the best measures of a country is how it treats its older citizens. By that measure, the United States has a lot to be proud of. Medicare, medicaid, Social Security. Some of our greatest times as a nation. When Social Security was signed into law, far too many seniors were living in poverty. And a little bit more than half of all seniors had some warm of insurance. Before medicaid came along, families often had no help pay for nursing home care. Today the number of seniors in poverty has fallen dramatically. Every american over 65 years old has access to a herbal health care. And since the Affordable Care act was signed into law, the uninsured rate has fallen as well. [applause] [cheers] and together we have declared that that is pretty good. Together we declare that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security as well as dignity and that saves millions upon millions of people from poverty and allows them to live longer and better lives. So we need to be proud of that. These american endeavors dont just make our countries better but reaffirms the greatness that we have is a country. And so its hard to find a single american whos lives have not been enriched by these covenants in summit special fashion. My grandmother was a fiercely independent woman, she helped raise me, she worked her way up. Working on Assembly Lines rosie the rivers are during the war, got a job as a secretary, kept on working until she was Vice President of a local bank. After my grandfather died she chose to live independently and medicare and Social Security allowed her to make that choice. She had the confidence that having worked hard and plays by the rules she was rewarded and she could not fall through the cracks. And that was a promise that the country made to her and all in it. And as her grandson i certainly want to make sure that it is better to people that are working today. [applause] and we are going to have to work for it. We have to work to do more and to ensure that every older a american has the support that they need to thrive with the challenge of protecting seniors dealing with the rising cost making sure that we have enough home care workers for our families. And maximizing the contribution that Older Americans can make your country, these challenges are becoming more like this and this is why. Everyone came home and had babies in world war ii. Not literally everyone but a lot of people did. And now each and every day almost 10,000 of those babies turn 65 years old. So more than 250,000 americans turned 65 years old and do so every month. They are living longer and they are living healthier. We are seeing people rake athletic records in their 60s. And you do not want to raise some of them in anything. [laughter] [applause] [laughter] arguably the toughest justice of the Supreme Court is the oldest. Ruth bader ginsburg. [applause] and also known as the notorious rbg. [applause] and just about every field, americans who once couldve been dismissed out of touch past their prime they are making vital contributions in every field. All of us are able to raise our own ambitions about what we hope to achieve in our goals for the years ahead. And since im living out dog years here in the presidency this is something that im paying a lot of attention to. And it probably was something that i was laughing a little bit to too much about. And we have briefly with focus will we have strengthened already with medicare, taking a longer look at what we have to do for the strength and retirement even more and medicare and Social Security are in crisis, we hear that all the time, that is used as an exjews to try to cut spending on the bedrock programs. Medicare and Social Security are not in crisis. Nor have they kept us from this into thirds. And this includes the demographic trends that i just talked about and for medicare that means that we have to keep slowing the growth of Health Care Costs and keep building on the progress that we have made the past two years. And so since i signed the Affordable Care act, also known as obamacare. [applause] since we have signed it into law, we have a tendon and Medicare Trust run by 13 years. We are moving medicare towards payment models that were higher polity of care and the measure of what you get paid. Creating a different set of incentives and that is something that will keep Older Americans healthy and americans as well. This law has saved over 9 Million People on medicare currently, more than 15 billion on their prescriptions and that doesnt get a lot of notice but i want everybody to understand that builds into the Affordable Care act, 9 million seniors have gotten significant discounts on their prescription drugs and that is why they have been paying cheaper drug prices giving people free Preventative Health service and we have expanded the options for home and communitybased Services Offered by medicaid, which means that more Older Americans are able to make the same choice that my grandmother died and live independently. And so those are some areas that have made progress in our secretary of health and Human Services is here at some point this is something that the conference will be talking about additional steps to further improve the Delivery Systems and understand that the goal is not to cut back on services, the goal is to make sure that you are getting more of the services that you need and less of the services that you dont, so you have more money to do even more stuff that you need to keep you healthy and active and thriving because we have too much weight in the system that is not benefiting patients but oftentimes this has to do with a really inefficient system or in some cases working well for providers but not the consumer and so even as we are dealing with the health care side, we know that too many Older Americans leave the workforce work force without having saved enough for a dignified retirement area and its not as if they havent tried. A lot of folks out here work really hard but at the end of the day they just still dont have enough saved. Todays economy, preparing for retirement has gotten tougher. Most individuals dont have a traditional pension. Where you are guaranteed a certain amount every year once you retire. Social security on its own oftentimes is not enough and even though we pulled ourselves out of terrible financial crisis and the stock market has not doubled since i took office, which means if we need to we have helped 401k plans for millions of families. So that has been important for millions of families throughout the country but a lot of people dont have any kind of retirement account at all. So we are going to have to work hard to deal with these issues. First of all, we have to keep Social Security strong and protect solvency. And i think that there are creative ways that people have talked about protect future solvency and also strengthen Retirement Security for the most honorable neighbors and that is step number one. Step number two is for americans that are doing the hard work of saving for retirement, lets make sure that they did a fair deal. We are taking new steps by cracking down on conflict of interest in retirement advice. The goal is to put an end to wall street brokers at the expense of their clients. And they should be looking out for you and not for somebody who is selling a product that may not be right for you. For the many out there that are doing the right thing, this levels the Playing Field for them as well as their customers and the notion is that we want to make responsibility is not exploited. So there is a Consumer Protection elements of this whole thing. Number three, we have to make it easier for people to save for retirement. Im pleased to announce an important step, about one third of American Workers do not have access to a Retirement Plan at work. One third. And that is why every budget request that i have submitted has included a commonsense proposal to automatically enroll workers without access to a work based Retirement Plan in an ira which would provide an additional 30 million americans with access to a Retirement Plan at work. And unfortunately congress has billed to act on