Changes what help what people would receive from the federal government to pay for insurance. Its unclear how the 5 million americans who got insurance through obamacare will be affected or how much the new proposal would even cost. For a california perspective, im joined now by california insurance commissioner dave jones, who is also running for state attorney general. Commissioner jones, thank you for being here. My pleasure. How would california be affected by the gop bill . There are a number of negative aspects to trump care. First, as you mentioned, weve added 5 Million People to the insurance rolls in california, thanks to the Affordable Care act. All of their Health Insurance is at risk. The gop bill would ultimately eliminate the Medicaid Expansion cohort, thats about 4. 1 Million People, as for the 1. 4 Million People in our exchange, 90 of them rely on a premium tax credit subsidy and the gop proposal cuts that dramatically. I think its fair to say all 5 million are at risk of losing their Health Insurance. The tax credits to help cover the cost of Health Insurance, it would prohibit that money to be spent on plans that also cover abortion. You have said that that is directly at odds with california law. Can you explain that . It is. Our constitution in california has a right of privacy thats been interpreted by the California Supreme Court to include a right to access to abortions. California state law also mandates that individual and small group Health Insurance policies include abortion coverage. So the gop proposal which would deny californians the access to the premium tax credit subsidy is at direct odds with california law. That premium tax credit subsidy is also 36 less than the subsidy currently in the Affordable Care act. For that reason, the 1. 2 million californians that rely on that subsidy currently are at risk of losing their Health Insurance because theyll get a lower subsidy and wont be able to afford health care in our exchange. House Majority Leader Kevin Mccarthy said the law you talked about just now is in conflict with federal law. Hes asking for health and Human Services secretary tom price to look into it. I also want to ask you about the gop contention that obamacare has led to skyrocketing premiums for many people. Does the evidence in california support that assertion . No, not at all. Weve had a very Successful Exchange covered in california. Rates have been increasing, but at a much lower rate than prior to the Affordable Care act. Importantly, 90 of the people that buy Health Insurance through our Health Exchange get a premium tax credit subsidy which dramatically reduces the cost of their care. That tax credit subsidy gets cut dramatically under the gop proposal and will put Health Insurance out of reach for those people. You said also under this plan, with the differences that california stands to lose about 20 billion, that it was receiving to help primarily with the Medicaid Expansion, or in this case medical. If we lose that money, would there be a new Revenue Source to help backfill that . I think its far too early to talk about whether the state is going to be forced to backfill that money. Right now were focusing our efforts on educating californians and all americans to the fact that trump care will reduce the number of people who are insured, increase costs, and lower coverage. The simple truth, though, is that the state of california and every state have limited resources to backfill the kind of federal cuts that exist in trump care. It would be a very difficult thing. Is there anything in the house gop plan that you like and think could work . They have kept the parts that are most attractive. The requirements on Health Insurers to write Health Insurance even if you have a preexisting condition, the ability to stay on your parents Health Insurance until age 26. But the parts that are necessary for the system to work, theyve cut out. Whether its the individual mandate, the premium tax credit subsidy, the Medicaid Expansion. All of these are important components of the provision of health care, and by eliminating them, they are dooming trump care to failure. As californias insurance commissioner, is there anything at all you could do at the state level to help those who would lose their coverage under the new plan . Were doing everything we can to educate californians for how bad trump care is. For example, majority leader mccarthys district includes Current County. 50 of the population of Current County is either on medical, these are the people that would suffer. We want to make sure everyone understands that and contacts their Congress Person to say, wait a minute, this is a bad idea, we shouldnt go in this direction. Commissioner jones, last month, two state senators from Southern California introduced a bill pretty much pushing for a single payer plan. It was their response to what might be coming down the pipeline from the gop on obamacare. Essentially what that would do is replace private medical insurance with a governmentrun Health Care System covering all californians. Where do you stand on the single payer system . Its important to note its not a governmentrun Health Care System, but rather the government would be the payer. We do exactly that for the Medicare Program for the seniors. Its the most efficient way of providing health care. The administrative costs and efficiency improvements far exceed what private Health Insurers are able to do. But you can still get Health Insurance on top of medicare. Basically medicare for all. I think the evidence is very strong that it would be more efficient. You get the middle people out of the system. And ultimately the way we ought to to. There have been concerns about how much it would cost to put a plan like that in place in the initial stages. Commissioner dave jones, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. The health care proposal, how it would affect california. Im joined by Health Editor carrie fibel. Welcome to you both. Lonnie, you heard what dave jones had to say about the house Gop Health Care bill. Your thoughts . I think its unfortunate fearmongering at this point. What we have so far is the introduction of a bill that i think will change substantially as this goes through the process, and as republicans try to garner support, even amongst their own ranks. I think youll see changes. For example, one of the issues he brings up is the tax credit. I would agree, i think the tax credit is currently structured is not going to provide enough support to low income americans, so theyll have to make changes there. But to automatically calling it trump care, basically fearmongering i think is fundamentally inappropriate. And puts us on an incorrect path in terms of trying to find agreement and consensus on an important issue. Is it fearmongering, carrie . The numbers are what the numbers are. This replaces the subsidies under the Affordable Care act with lower subsidies overall. It will depend on individuals how theyll be affected. If you take a 6yearold in santa cruz currently under the Affordable Care act, if that person makes 40,000 a year, theyll get more than 12,000 of assistance to purchase Health Insurance. Under this republican plan, only 4,000. There are winners and losers in Southern California. Health care costs less han in the northern part of the state. If you have a 27yearold in l. A. , theoretically she makes 40,000. But she gets nothing under the Affordable Care act because shes younger, healthier, pays less in premiums. But under this she would get 2,000 to go out and Purchase Health care. There are winners and losers. Right now these are the amounts being offered. Commissioner jones pointed to an irony here, in that many of the rural counties, where there was stronger support than for President Trump than in more urban counties. Those are the counties that are likely to lose the most because they have higher percentages of people in the medical program and in the exchange. Kevin mccarthys district around bakersfield, those are some of the counties in california with the most people on medical. 81,000 people in his Congressional District are getting insurance either through medical or other parts of the Affordable Care act. Theres going to be an interesting Political Tension that will play out in some of those counties, while the details of this filter out. I think you asked a very interesting question of the commissioner in your interview with him. When you asked him if he would be willing to raise taxes in order to backfill whatever federal money comes away from this. Fundamentally, medicaid reform is about asking states to make priorities, to figure out what choices theyre going to make as they look at overall state spending. There are a lot of priorities in california that people care about, education, environment, infrastructure, health care. I think at the end of the day what this reform is also designed to do is to ask states to make those decisions, and yes, some states are going to make the decision, for example, to raise taxes. That ultimately is a political question. If the leaders of this state make that decision, to keep the same number of people covered, which they could, then that ultimately is a decision that they should be entitled to make. I think that is what the reform tries to do, is to give states greater flexibility around their medicaid programs. What if people argue that that was essentially what we had before obamacare. It did not work. Thats why the reform happened. The challenge is what obamacare did was to broadly expand medicaid. If you look at the coverage gains that came from the Affordable Care act, 80 of them according to some estimates is it came from the medicaid. We have a relatively lean system. In fact, in some states, there can be an argument made that the Health Outcomes of people on medicaid arent any better than the people who are uninsured. There is a lot of controversy about whether medicaid is the right way to cover people or not. Medicaid is not Just Health Care for lowincome people. It is coverage for people with disabilities, its longterm care thats not offered under medicare, so you have people in Nursing Homes who are being cared for through medicaid. You know, its a broader safety net than a lot of people cen realize. This plan would radically restructure that type of medical and medicaid. That could threaten funding for people. The states will have to make difficult choices on whether to cut some services. Lets talk more about the safety net. Will there be an impact on e. R. S and safety net clinics if you have greater numbers of people uninsured . Definitely. We will see what we saw before, more people turning to emergency rooms, more people going to government funded clinics, and even jails will be stepping into the breach when you dont have people Getting Mental Health care, so they end up in jails. Thats where they get some of the care they need. I was a Health Care Reporter in houston, texas, and by default, the county jail there was the largest Mental Hospital in the state. Because a quarter of the inmates were on some sort of psychiatric medication. You know, thats the type of thing we can see. The cost of having the uninsured rate in california go up, gets pushed down onto the local taxpayers. So those costs dont go away, they just get spread differently. What the republican proposal does is restore a decent amount of what was known as disproportionate hospital funding. Compensating for the fact they treat many uninsured. It will not completely fill the void, but certainly that will help. Actually, under obamacare you still had over 20 Million People uninsured. So the notion that somehow obamacare was a full insurance, or insurance for everyone law is simply incorrect. The last point to bear in mind is this. I do think its the case were going to be left in a situation where Many Americans are going to be looking for coverage, unless they look at the current structure of the bill and change it. I do think this is an iterative process. Its crucially important. I do think theyll come out with Something Better than they have now. Lets ask about the process. Lets look back. You were an adviser on mitt romneys campaign in 2006 when romney was governor of massachusetts, that state enacted health care reform. Many referred to it as romney care. It looks awfully similar to obamacare. Are there elements of obamacare that you think republicans should keep . Well, you know, under the current reconciliation bill theyre considering, what they have made the decision to do for reasons, some of which are structural, some are procedural, to keep in place for example the right of policy, on the guaranteed issue. They fundamentally kept in place the modified Community Rating structure. I think there might be a reason to do some of that, and to keep some of that in place. Protections that are very popular, for example, like allowing people who are under 26 to remain on their parents plans. I think that is also something they decided to keep. I think there are elements they decided to keep in place. But ultimately, its difficult to pick and choose at the end of the day. I think republicans have to realize that as we move forward. The Congressional Budget Office is looking at this. They may have their own report out as early as monday. I want to thank you both for being here. Thank you. This week, wikileaks released thousands of documents describing the methods the c. I. A. Uses to hack into smartphones and internet connected devices. The cia would not confirm the awe thence ti ti of the documents but issued a statement saying the agency does not conduct domestic surveillance activities. Yesterday founder Julian Assange said wikileaks would work with Tech Companies like apple and google to help them fix vulnerabilities in their products. This raises alarm about the scope of Cyber Espionage and how vulnerable ordinary citizens are to surveillance and hacking. Im joined now by cindy cohen, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier foundation. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Julian assange saying hell make those tools to Tech Companies. Are there risks to the companies if they accept this . Illegally obtained classified information . I think its a good thing. I think we should be outraged that the government was going to go after these companies. Remember, after all, these are companies who are trying to make their technology safer. And this information is what they need in order to make their technology safer. The fact that it got classified is because the government realized there were vulnerabilities in this technology and decided not to tell them. Thats not what the classified information rules are meant to do. And it would be a big misuse of them if they did. Does this release make us more vulnerable as a nation . It makes the cias job harder. So to that extent, yes. But remember what these are. These are vulnerabilities in our technologies. So while it might make the cias offensive capabilities hurt a little bit, it will make us all a lot safer, because these vulnerabilities are going to be patched. As a defensive matter, making our technologies safer is better for us. I think of this like a house. If the cops walk by and they see that your front door lock is broken, they should tell you, so you should fix it. They shouldnt just make a note of it and not tell you, because later they might need to get in because youre a criminal. Stripped of the digital trappings, thats kind of what the cia did here. And then they lost control of that information. So now bad guys have it. I think the right thing to do is for the cia to adjust course and start working with the Tech Companies to plug these holes and to make us more secure. Given, though, this era we have now, cyber warfare, couldnt a case be made for the government to be able to have secret hacking tools, that stay secret so they can track adversaries abroad, keep the nation safe . Sure. I think theres room for that. But i think what needs to happen is this needs to be brought into a process where the offensive benefits like that are weighed against the defensive benefits to the rest of us having more secure devices. There may be a place for some of these exploits to be held by the government. But i think that should be very small. Because i think the most important thing for the government to do is to be on our side, to make sure that our tools are safe. Were talking about tvs in peoples homes, were talking about baby monitors, were talking about phones, computers, things that have our most precious information on it. This isnt some small side effect of the cias activities. This is about our basic security are. Not just from the cia, but from cyber criminals, and other hostile actors. All those devices you just mentioned, the baby monitors, tvs for example, it all falls into what people often describe as the internet of things. What other devices are coming onto the marketplace in households with builtin sensors and how good is the security on them . Sadly, in the internet of things, were finding the security is not good. In fact, at most its an afterthought. Were seeing increasing number of things connected to the internet. Were seeing refrigerators, tvs, recently i saw shoes connected to the internet. So all sorts of shoes . How do the shoes work . Theyre connected to maps. So that instead of looking at your phone, your shoes are going to tell you where you need to go. But theyre connected to the internet. Anything thats connected to the internet needs to have serious security in it. And we are not seeing that in the internet of things. Im hopeful that releases like this could help spur that. Because consumers need to start asking the right questions. What else can consumers do to keep their Information Safe . Well, most importantly, consumers should make sure they take the security updates. If you get an update from software, that says theres an update, absolutely take it. The bad guys are always finding ways in and the good guys are trying to make things more secure and plug the holes. For all the rest of us, we need to make sure we keep our softwares as uptodate as possible. Thats the best protection we can have. Secondarily, we need to start demanding security as a priority in the things that we buy. And are Silicon Valley Tech Companies doing enough in that realm . Some are, and some are making good strides. Others, like the internet of things company, sadly sometimes arent. We know the good news is, that the secure applications, like signal and wetsap that people have been relying on to do political organizing and other sensitive things, they seem to be pretty secure. The cia couldnt break them. The phones, however, and the operating systems that rest on this, i think of this like the foundation of the house versus the house. The security apps like signal, theyve turned out to be pretty secure. The foundations that they rest on in our phones and in our computers, they still need theres still work to be done there. Tech companies are starting to step up. Id like to see them do more. And id like to see other Companies Like the internet of Things Companies really take some big steps. Overall, this latest wikileaks release, what will be the overall impast on Silicon Valley companies . I hope it will make them continue their efforts and step up their efforts to make more secure tools. I also hope that they will work with us to try to get the cia and the government in general to stand more on the side of making us all safe rather than making sure that they can get into every device that we have. Offense matters. Defense matters more for all the rest of us. Either our tools, theyre in our homes and they need to be made secure. That should be the priority. Cindy cohen, thank you. Thank you. Whether its a used couch or room for rernt, craigslist was one of the internet marketplaces. Now focusing on journalism. Last week his foundation gave 1 million to support the investigative work of a company, and given money to the Pointer Institute as well as kqed for election coverage last fall. I spoke with crag earlier about protecting trustworthy journalism. What are you hoping to accomplish by donating to nonprofit journalism organizations . Im a news consumer and i want news i can trust. Ive looked at the business a bit. And it occurs to me the best way to help get there is by supporting the nonprofits which are pushing the whole industry towards getting a lot more serious about ethics, and getting a lot more serious about protecting reporters against harassment and trolling. And lawsuits. And lawsuits. And what inspired this . Have you been thinking about it for a long time . Or the president ial election is what made you really motivated to do this . Ive been actively involved in some of these trustworthy journalism efforts for four, five, seven years. What inspired me was high school history. Mr. Schulsky helped us understand the role of the press in a democracy. The way i put it now, a trustworthy press is the immune system of democracy. How do you define trustworthy in todays polarized environment . Basically if a News Organization has a code of ethics, they have a diversity policy where they listen to everyone, and if they have a process for accountability and corrections, im willing to do the honor system thing and start by assuming that theyre going to be trustworthy. Weve seen a decline in trust in the media over a series of decades. And as a result, people are questioning, who gets to define who is credible and whos not . Who defines whats news and whats not . You really dont have someone on tv whos not going to be honest with you. The problem is that even if you point out that somethings a lie, that what listeners will hear will be the lie. And if you hear the lie again over and over again, it starts to feel like truth. Whats happening now is the Pointer Institute created the International Fact checking network. That includes politifact, snoeps and others. The deal is they have great track records and they make everything they do transparent, so you can check for yourself if the fact checker is being honest. In this environment, what is the best way to do trustworthy journalism . The Fact Checking you just mentioned. What else would you like to see done . One thing you avoid doing is repeating lies no matter who makes them. And then the other thing is just to return to traditional journalistic values, where people would actually do the research. They would get multiple sources. They would check the facts. And if something does go wrong, because sometimes, you know, people have lapses. They need to fix them. You have said that the Tech Companies could present Better Options for news consumers. Maybe google had some kind of system where it allows you to only see news from trustworthy sources. How difficult is it to cut down a fake news in this environment now where we have news from so many sources . Gone are the woodward and bernstein days, one guy in a trench coat your main source. Now it could be a hacker in romania. When youre looking at the results of a news aggravator, google, or facebook, apple and twitter are news aggregators of sorts, what i like to do is check a box that says, only show me an article from a trustworthy source, and when theyre building the page or results for you, they can exclude thoughts stories which are from not trustworthy places. You were once in the media. You were called the exploder of journalism, because of your site craigslist. It helped to the decline of newspapers by taking away their classified ads revenue. Some people find it ironic you are now emerging as someone whos carrying the banner for good journalism. I have to question your premise, because ive now spent time talking to people who really know the business. Like ken doctor, like tom becktal at pointer. They point out to me that theres no evidence that craigslist had much of an effect. It seems more strongly correlated with the rise of facebook, with the rise of google. It also correlates to wall street and investors taking over newspapers, and asking for greater profit margins. Do you think that tech leaders have a special obligation to help clean up the fake news problems, since much of it is disseminated through the technology they helped create . I wont make the judgment about other people and their companies. All i really know for sure is that i feel like i should do something, so im doing something. Where do you see journalism five years from now . Where would you like it to be five years from now . I would like to see a relatively small set of News Organizations covering global issues, covering national issues, and local issues. I am hoping that the survivors who are making lots of money are ones with high ethical standards. Well, thank you for spending the time with us. We appreciate having you here. My pleasure. And that does it for us. For more of the news coverage, go to kqed. Com newsroom. Thanks for watching. Captioning sponsored by wnet sreenivasan on this edition for sunday, march 12 republican infighting over the plan to replace obamacare. The netherlands prepares to pick a new leader. Will the antiimmigrant nationalist candidate prevail . And in our signature segment president ial secrecy through history. Next on pbs newshour weekend. Pbs newshour weekend is made possible by bernard and irene schwartz. Judy and josh weston. The cheryl and Philip Milstein family. The john and Helen Glessner family trust supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. Sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. Barbara hope zuckerberg. Corporate funding is provided by mutual of america designing customized individual
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