Determined from tuesday night a. Key state wide office in virginia. The same office that gave rise to Ken Cuccinelli. The race is close. It seems there are thousands of ballots that went uncounted on Election Night. We will film you in on the latest on that. We are wondering if history will, indeed, repeat itself with Chris Christie playing that role. I have thoughts about that. It involves explaining to you what something called a he cume is. You might want to stick around for that. Our friend mellissa harrisperry is taking her dedication will pay off. That is ahead. But first, president obama is waking up in miami, florida today on his tour of Southern Statesch red Southern States encouraging republicans to do something he didnt expect hed have to be doing 17 months ago. It starts in june of 2012. Thats when the Supreme Court issues its long awaited ruling on obama care. To the surprise of many and dismay of conservatives, it upheld the law. That ruling came with a catch. The law called for states to expand their ped cade programs, to expand low income people eligible for Subsidized HealthCare Coverage and for the federal government to pick up the lions share of the cost of that expansion. But the court also ruled states didnt have to take part in this expansion. They didnt have to take the free medicaid money. It would be their choice. Someone said this might be a problem. Here we were smack in the middle of the Tea Party Era when opposing fighting and railing against obama care was a test of basic tribal loyaltive. Wouldnt governors see a political advantage and imperative in rejecting the money, in rejecting the expansion of ped cade in undercutting a crucial component of the health care law. That court ruling came down a yearandahalf ago, conventional wisdom was resounding. Of course not. It is the most general federal match in the history of medicaid. A vast ma voter of states will come in. For those few to come in will have to answer why theyre letting people down. The generous thing you can say is lou was partially right a. Handful of republican states have slowly come into the fold. Mostly recently, john casich of ohio. Still that medicaid money is still being left on the table in half the states. It basically tracks what the red state, blue state dwiechltd there are currently 25 states that are not moving forward on the Medicaid Expansion. Of those 25 states only six of them voted for obama last year. Maine, New Hampshire, wisconsin, pennsylvania, virginia and florida and not coincidentally not all of those states has a republican governor. In the sixth, New Hampshire has a democratic dpof who must deal with a republican state senate. That map could be changing a little. New hampshire is right now holding a special session on this issue. The governor maggie hassand a democrat, she is trying to find some kind of compromise with state legislators. Virginia on tuesday elected a newf go, a democratic governor, Terry Mcauliffe, who says he wants to expand ped cade rules in his state. Rick scott, florida governor, actually came around on the law this spring only to be jammed up by his republican state legislature. We will see what happens with that. In other red states, there is no sign of any momentum. Then there are the states that are embracing Medicaid Expansion, there are 25 of them. Along with the district of columbia. Five of those states voted for romney last year. Three of them, arkansas, kentucky, West Virginia, those three states have democratic governors. Also, north dakota jack doulrichle came around, jane brewer waged a protracted fight with her colleagues. Governor rick snyder is a democrat in a blue state. If you can make sense of all. That he had a similar standoff with his own party and he prevailed this summer. There is progress on the Medicaid Expansion front, but it is very slow. And the technical problems with the Health Care Exchanges website have only given republicans another excuse to drag their heels and just say no. As long as fighting obama care remains a preparty test, its hard to see most of america embracing medicare expansion. This is why the brent to the heart, to dallas texas, to make a pitch for rick merrys state to sign on for expansion. I think that all of you understand that no state that actually needs this more than texas. Here in just the dallas area, 133,000 people who dont currently have Health Insurance would immediately get Health Insurance, without even having to go through the website if the state of texas decided to do it. But this is the Tea Party Era. This is texas. So not surprising outside that event there were protesters tweaking president obama. Democrats in general are fighting a long war here. It seems that for the foreseeable future, being poor in red state america and poor in blue state america will mean very Different Levels of service all because of our polarized politics. We will talk about all of this with a policy reporter for politico. Com. A Political Correspondent for national journal, nbc correspondent. Steve kornacki, last minute. Jeremy peters, politics reporter from the new york times. Thank you for joining us. I guess we start with that. We placed jack lew a week after the Supreme Court ruling came down in june of 2012. I think the conventional wis come he was expressing was, yeah, sure, technically the courts allowed the states could opt out. There will be an immense amount of pressure from the hospitals and their states to take this money. At the end of the day, this is one of those things we will all have to give in. Here we are, as we say, a week and a half later, that just hasnt happened. Is that a surprise to anyone here . What has happened that alleged the stalemate . I think it underestimated the challenge. Right now, this is one of the affect. Ed ways for republicans to protest this law. Theyve done a number of symbolic things. Theyve voted over 40 times in the house to repeal it. Theyve shut down the government over obama care, which nobody knew it wasnt going to work and succeed into funding that law. So this is one of the ways to effectively throw a Monkey Wrench in the plan, it does interfere with the law of the land. It covers a large swath of people through the expansion of medicare, medicaid. When they decide to opt out. It interferes with the goals of the law and the mech names put in place. So, for example, the federal government is going to gradually phase out uncomplicated care because that money was supposed to be offset by medicaid and for states that opt out and arent expanding medicaid, its an effective way to protest and opt out setting up their own exchanges. Thats a part of the problem with the website is there has been a lot of money alocated for states to set up their own exchanges, not for the federal government to put it together. So when they have to take on that work, it interferes with the whole process. Or now, its one of the effective ways the governor has to protest obama care. That really is driving all of this, basically the Republican Party decided in the run up to the enactment of obama care this is the no. 1 thing they are fighting, the test of being a republican today is fighting obama care tooth and name. It seems as long as thats the case, there is no incentive to expand it in his or her state. One is by allowing states to opt out of this, what you have is what should have been a policy debate turned into strictly a political debate. Thats whats happening in these states right now, legislators rejecting the policy that has become their raise on detra. They will stop at nothing, it seems, to try to smash this law. But where it gets tricky, i think, is if you look at who exactly is suffering because medicaid is not being expanded to the states, these 2006 have not opted into it. Thats half the population. It is also twothirds of the poor. And poorer states. Exactly. So these people are left behind. I want to play this first. This was president obama in new orleans yesterday. He is making his case in a red state yesterday in new orleans. One thing, though, i was talking to your mayor and your governor about, though, a separate issue is one thing the Affordable Care act does is expand medicaid to cover more of their citizens and, you know, here in louisiana, here in louisiana that, benefitted about 265,000 people. So there, he is making the case. Of course, within like an hour of giving that speech, the republican governor of louisiana, bobby jindal puts out a statement, we will not allow president obama to bully louisiana into accepting expansion of obama care. We have rejected it in louisiana. Because it would cost taxpayers 1. 7 over the next ten years and move 250,000 louisianians from private cover to medicaid. A case in point, we dont need top down one size fits all mandates. It strikes me, i start to wonder, what is the point of this tour that president obama is on right now given the sort of polarized reality of american politics. He goes into a red state in louisiana. He makes good faith state for this law. There is nothing to do than attack the bullying of the democratic president. I think they are both posturing here. He wants to go there and say hes doing his best to do something, because what kells he do . He knows and they know theyre not coming around. I think if i was bobby jindal, i would look at jan brewer in arizona, tea party rewho. She eats scorpions for breakfast, according to title of her book. She was on the fascial stage of immigration a few years ago and she decided to go ahead with the Medicaid Expansion and its now become a person is that nongrataf. I was jindal looking at 2016, i would look at that example and say, woe, i better back off there. The key is, i dont think hes running for reelection again in arizona, so this is sort of the end of the line for her so what, could, is there anything the president the white house the supporters, what can they do to get the governor of lousiana the government of mississippi, states like this, what can they do to get get them to say, okay. We will sign won Medicaid Expansion. I think the time will be the main thing here. Its been more than a year. Lolts of time has passed. A few republican governors have actually signed on. So if you think of them, there are about 30 republican governors, id say almost a half signed on to expanding medicaid and tear state. If you look at john case kasich in ohio, he said, we need this for the state we need the money. We will do this on our own. That you notice will they can it to independent court. Tennessee is looking at this. Up in maine, paul le page has vetoed the expansion of the medicaid, but hes just recently come out and said, you know even though i vetoed it, there are ideas i would support. In arkansas, they came up with a deal to assuage republicans where instead of taking the medicaid money, they would change it so that the money would go to the private insurance. So individuals instead of being on medicaid would use funds for private insurance. Now we are seeing a whole bunch of republicans sort of opened to that bobby jindal will not be one of them. I think we are seeing movement on this and over time as governors see this is a free pot of money if they want it, i think were going to see more. Arkansas issued an example, too, you have a state that voted overwhelmingly, on the other side of the break with ve a former governor in a state that may be, probably right now is the next battleground over the expansion of medicaid. Thats virginia because of what happened tuesday night in virginia. We will talk to the former governor there right after this. Vo its that time of year again. Medicare open enrollment. Time to compare plans and costs. You dont have to make changes. But it never hurts to see if you can find better coverage, save money, or both. And check out the preventive benefits you get after the health care law. Open enrollment ends december 7th. So nows the time. Visit medicare. Gov or call 1800medicare [ chicken caws ] [ male announcer ] when your favorite food starts a fight, fight back fast with tums. Heartburn relief that neutralizes acid on contact and goes to work in seconds. Tum, tum tum tum tums heartburn relief that neutralizes acid on contact save your coffee from the artificial stuff. Switch to truvia. Great tasting, zerocalorie sweetness. From the stevia leaf. How old is the oldest person youve known . We gave people a sticker and had them show us. We learned a lot of us have known someone whos lived well into their 90s. And thats a great thing. But even though were living longer, one thing that hasnt changed much is the official retirement age. The question is how do you make sure you have the money you need to enjoy all of these years. It is 21 billion. Its our money. We should be bringing it back. 29 states have already agreed to do it. Its just that its fiscally irresponsible not to take it to those virginians that get life saving care. Its morally and socially the right thing to do. That is the incoming lt. Gov. Terry mcauliffe, here to talk more about how health care played a role in the 2013 governors race in virginia, i want to bring in a former Virginia Governor jim gilmore, a republican. He joins us live from richmond right now. Governor, appreciate the time this morning. So this was a pretty big Campaign Issue in your state where Terry Mcauliffe, you know, clearly said throughout this campaign he wants to expand medicaid, his opponent ran ads saying, dont vote for Terry Mcauliffe, he will expand it. Now he has one, i know he has to deal with a republican majority in one of the state legislative chambers. Do you expect they will have medicaid as a result of this election . Well thats not really clear. Let me say, everybody wants americans to have access to Good Health Care t. Real question is, is this the best way to do it . Is this obama care the common sense approach and most people really think that it is not the best approach. Now, look, governor. I dont mean to interrupt, from a state standpoint, we had the federal argument the federal level is obama dare right way . At the federal level, obama care is the law. What is being asked is to expand their rules and have that paid for by the federal government and slowly phase it out to 90 . Ultimately, 90 is coming from the federal government for your state. Well, first of all, this is a chart. This is what is happening in virginia right now. When i was governor, we were paying about 3 billion for medicaid, now its up to 7 billion in the last ten years revenues have not kept up with that. Its increasingly expanding health care that will go on forever. When the states have to kick in that 10 , ten its going to be a giant hole in the budget. Thats the problem that people are foreseeing that will be the problem. Thats the reality. The question is not whether we want toem people to have health care, is this sustainable . What is going to happen as this continues to expand and expand at the state level and more and more costs are built in because nothing controls costs in obama care. That continues to go on, then its going to crowd out other things. Where is the money going to come from for transportation . Where is it coming from for education . Where is it coming from for Public Safety . The answer, of course, is these are the first dollars that must be spent. If you have to do all this other great stuff, you raise taxes. People foresee this. They understand this, the problem is that obama care is not a good approach and the difficulty you got now is that because everybody says, well its the law, so we all got to do it . Well, it stops us from thinking of other innovative ways of providing health care. The real problem we got right now is that this thing is going to be a continuous expansion that goes on forever. One more thing the fact is that theyre saying right now and governor elect mcauliffe who i just met with yesterday is focusing on the fact as all the other governors are, including governor kasich, were going to get this big slug of money in here well, the federal government is bribing in the long run it will be catastrophic to the states. People across the country are saying, wait a minute, lets take a deep breath and find more innovative approaches. I just want to follow up on something you said. You say that everybody wants Better Health care an everybody wants more individuals covered, but we need to find more innovative ways to do that. If obama care is not right way what is your alternative . There are other things to talk about. There are Self Insurance programs for lower income employees are often provided Health Care Programs by their companies. There are no know rate issive ways that you can afford through insurance. Obama care will squeeze that out. You see companies saying we cant afford to do this and we will let them go onto the exchanges. Of course, we know that technically they havent been able to implement that. The real underlying problem is not computers t. Real underlying problem is you are eliminating the private sector from providing Health Care Coverage in a reasonable way because of this one sides fits all obama care problem. The problem is that this government controlled problem of this approach is squeezing Everything Else out. If you remember, one more point want to make, the most important thing is we got to get people into the work force so they can get benefits from their employers. That meejs we got to build up this commitment reduce unemployment and get excitement going in this economy agai