outside the next day, and there's a huge rally outside with people, the tea party came, you know? a big tea party rally was happening outside the capitol, and a colleague of mine and i, we spent the whole afternoon talking to people out there about what they think about marco rubio's role in the immigration debate and do they like him now? do they hate him now? by the large, they were all very unhappy with him now. he wasn't who they thought he was. you can probably imagine what the responses were. but those were two separate stories that kind of address immigration reform from a different perspective and from a sourcing standpoint, some of my stories are -- some of my favorite stories are talking to people, people who come to the capitol, people who live in town struggling with the policies that get so overtalked in this town that they start to feel like they lose meaning, yet when you talk to people who are not in the bubble here, you can get some great stories. they're real people, and for me, i think, huffington's been really good for our sourcing to

be just people, not people in the bubble. but they've got millions of sources out there in this country, so why not talk to them? .. i think it's inevitable they'll change. i think they have shown as jim brady put the head of digital first media they were able to sort of see the future, and build amazon before people knew

they wanted to order things online. i think that is what has been needed in journalism is somebody who can envision the way that people are going to want information a few years down the road. i think it's a great thing for the "post." i know, a lot of people are apprehensive. he said all the right things. the letter to his -- to the employees of the post was pitch perfect in term of the balance between his commitment to the great journalism post has always done, but also plenty of clues there for futurists who wanted to see what is he going to do? obviously, you know, he invented almost internet commerce, i mean, so much of internet commerce has been effected by what amazon did. i think he could have the same

role at the post. i think it's a positive thick. >> one of our editors made the joke that free "washington post" with every kipped l sold. -- kindle. you wonder if they expand the online presence somehow to going effect the onlike news coverage. they have been incredible at covering the d.c. region. you wonder how they're going evolve in the upcoming years with, you know, new mind set of digital first. >> as a local, growing up reading the post, i'm a little apprehensive. i think on the one hand, the post for a long time, especially in the local coverage, seems to me, at least to me, the necessarily people who lived in the city but an upper economic group. repeatedly they have started to change. they have a great columnist

there, a young guy named clintonuates. they brought him to the paper full time now. i'm concerned the move toward a sort of more focused within the city and focused on younger demographic may or may not be helped or hurt by that. i think but i also think, you know, there's a utility to having newspapers owned by families especially families that live in the cities. you know, in having somebody who lives in california, where he lives, and whose mind is not about local at all. the international sort of global thinking kind of a person, i do have some reservations about what that will mean for coverage of crime and of life in washington in general. you know, even sports in washington. do they continue to be the go-to place to read about the red skins or the nationals? do they become a bigger focus? these are all questions that are

not going to be answered for months if not years potentially as a result of this sale. on the same hand, i think the post has been struggling a little bit. all the newspapers -- big newspapers have been struggling. having somebody who i know said created online commerce there could really help create a new renaissance for the post, and for all of the old sort of guard newspapers. i think which is important. i don't think that they should die. i think if they play an important role in the society. they are sort of institutions that hold the torch for what journalism should be in a lot of ways. on all level, the beat of journalism, and if someone can come in and help find a way for them to continue forward and really finally find a place within the news sort of digital environment i think that would be great.

>> i must add, i think something had to change, and i also grew up around here. i have high hopes. i have friends who work there. i think my son said people are just kind of excited, you know, something has to change. well, you know, we won't know how long it will take to show what is going to happen, but i think something had to give. we'll see what happens. >> i think it's hard to overstay how seismic it builds in the media industry and washington and the graham family have been wonderful steward of journalism for so long. of course, their names names names are synonymous with watergate and the pentagon paper. and the kind of journalism that inspired generations to come. it really feels like a dramatic turn in the industry that certainly represented of the times we live in. the panel we're on today is built around what our public

indications do differently than traditional journalism. i think there's a sign there's no more traditional journalism in the sense we're used to thinking about there's not web versus print anymore because we live in a digital age. you have to think about good journalism period. delivered to people in a way they can absorb it and understand it and get excited in a way they wanted. i think for big metro papers like "the washington post, and "boston globe" and so many others that have been in the news lately facing circulation decline and pressures on profitability, they have to find a way to thrive in the new space if they're going to remain viable. so i think we all watch the post and want to see it be the, you know, producing excellent journalism they have for many years. at the same time there's a need to transform in order to succeed

in the new world. so i think we'll see at love that. the question i'll have watching them move forward is sometimes we're an innovator, i think, is somewhat easier to come to a fully new space and create something from scratch than it is to take an existing institution with proud traditions, and, you know, entrenched bureaucracy and figure out how to make that move to a new space. so that will be an interesting and hopefully very successful process for them. [inaudible] >> it will be very interesting to see. obviously they're coming from very different place and dealing with a long standing institution. that's a good point. let me pick up on something you have all mentioned in going along the line here. which is getting the people outside -- [inaudible] to care. to see how sequestration matters to them. see why it's important. i wonder if we can could go a little bit deeper offer example

of some of the things you have done that worked really well in engaging your audience. also, how you know it's engaifnlged them. how do you go that and how do you get feedback from them? what do you do with the feedback? how do you use it moving forward? >> well, we wrestled with this in building a fact-checking website, because there had been some fact checking before, but i always felt it was sort of like "eat your vegetable" journalism. like the story that if you're in a news room have to be done in october before an election. we need do an issue story. somebody do a story on the candidates' position on education, you know, and then they write a story and hardly anybody reads it. because it's not appealing to people. we came up with the idea of the truth-0-meter as a way of amazing our journalism. we go the out at plit fact and do indepth research and get

together. we have a methodologies for this and come up with a truth-0-meter rating. we know it's effective the at doing this. it drives people crazy! they go bongers about the ratings. the wonderful thing is as they're talking about the ratings, they are having substantiative discussion of policy. i guarantee it's not happening with the long 20-inch fact check. so you may not agree with our rating on any particular claim, but the great thing about the rating is it's giving you a snapshot of our work, our best judgment of what the relative truth of it is. you can disagree. i think that is what is needed. i think the one of the problems, as we have made the transition in to the digital age, is the expectations that sort of the

old con instruct of "eat of your vegetable" will work. i don't think they will. >> i think that's a tremendous point. i think we think about how to make it's engage. we are past the world where can write the simple happened today kind of story and expect anybody to care. there are so many outlets that do that. we talk lot about how to punch through. you probably all heard the driving-the-conversation phrase that "politico" loves so much and endlessly -- shall we say talked about in the industry. we find when you talk about ways to measure, if you're reaching your audience, we look at is it in the conversation? is it in the bloodstream? is it being talked about by lawmakers and policy makers, and hopefully a respectful manner. in any way. we use that as a measure. sometimes that's traffic,

sometime it's the vice president mentioned. the publication all of measures we look at on topics from, you know, inside the fiscal cliff debate to, you know, the tick to be that we do so many of. and do them very well to hope we cover all aspect of the announcement there will be a delay for employers on obamacare mandate. we look at that for many, many topics. as we expand to more policy areas, we're looking a the the best way to sort of meld them with the core mission of "politico" as well. >> i would say that "huffington post" prided itself, at least on my perspective, on engaging with the community. we have people on -- people have blogs on the site. we have very engaging comment sections for most of the stories. engaging as euphemism for something else. terrorist a lot of interaction with the nonbunl community on

the website all over the site. and one thing that i think was a success for us in this context was during the gun control debate. when the senate voted down the background check bill, there was outcry. there were a lot of people that couldn't believe it who don't live in d.c. and aren't following politics day by day. why can't we pass a background check bill? that's ridiculous. we tried to keep the issue going for awhile. one of the project we put something on the site that said if you have a story, a personal story, about being effected by gun violence. we want to hear it. send it in. here is a phone number. call, leave a message. and, you know, leave your name and number. we'll call you back if we want to use your story. we got hundreds of people who called. so many had stories. they were stories about losing people killed in gun violence.

they were rolling in. the voice mail was getting full. it was a bigger response than i would have expected. maybe i should have expected more. but then, you know, one of my colleagues went through, we figured out, you know, maybe a dozen of the stories we thought were particularly compelled and reached tout 12 people all over the country. they submitted photographs, gave us their name, where they lived. we had a huge splash on the front page that said the "face of gun violence" it was ten images in one square on the front page. it was people. there were no guns or frothing at the mouth, you know, activists on one side or the issue. people who had been affected by gun violence in sad ways. when you hoovered your cursor over the face, it would take you directly to the story. you could hear it. you could hear the audio. you could hear their voices shake at moments and when start to get more worked up as they

were talking. that, to me, that was one of our proudest moments, i think, it is districtly engaging the publish on an issue that infuriated so many people. it's letting the people, not in the bubble tell the story that resonates, you know, much more broadly than the failed bill in the senate. and so that's the kind of thing that huffington has been very good at doing and very well suited to get people to tell stories in turn d.c. has to read about them. it connects two world in a way. that's where i see huffington on this. >> i have two thoughts. one, in mid december during the fiscal cliff fight, i originally was going to go a story how members were not feeling very much pressure from the public because of sort of post-election fatigue. it was very that diggal notion. the interest in politics drops off right after the election. so we went and looked at the data from the buzz feed

networking which is websites. i think "politico" is on it. i compared the sort of the points in the fight with that with the debt ceiling fight in 2011. the thing we found was more people were reading stories about the fiscal cliff at that exact point in that debate than they were in' 11. despite the fact they had gone through the sort of grueling election. nobody wants to talk about politics. it was right before christmas. nobody likes talking about politics except for at dinner table at christmas. we were surprised it was that many people. i think it's indicative of the shift that is going on in the public. i think people are now more engaged in politics than they have been over the last few years, they are partly because they are frustrated. i think it's partly because they are increasingly able, because of the internet, to see the people they may agree with,

frankly, and hair their voices more and keep them more engaged. the fights are fairly epic and become the life and death sort of deals. and that gives me a lot of hope, frankly. we are finding a way, even if we don't understand how we are doing it, to find people and keep them engaged in what is going on. i think one of the things we do that we try to do at buzzfeed that helps with that is to try to find ways to make things a little bit more personal. i did a two stories i did that had a lot of traffic. one on a friend of mine, named jeff, who was working for the defense department as a contractor, and he scwes -- sequestered started. it was the average american. he had lots of credit card debt, a house, divorced, had kids. took the new job in d.c. thinking it was going help him get ahead to get a handle on the

finances. start go to college. sequester hits. the way it is working it sounds like a 2% cut. in fact it can be 20% of your pay in some cases. that's what it was going to be for him. that reality forced him to reenlist in the military. and reenlist in the military to get combat duty. they have a year without having to pay tax and the dod pays for the housing here. they get sort of benefits by putting yourself in danger of dying. and, you know, we did the story, and lots of people read it and sort of very powerful sort of snapshot of the average american who is being forced almost to this terrible decision because of sequester. the other one that i think that did very well that illustrates this, we did a story about the chief justice of fisa court, and this sort of fascinating character. there's not much written about him.

we found -- he's one of the highest ranking black judges in the united. we found this greatest say he had done in the early '90s about growing up, about being racially profiled, about what it meant for him as a justice and how he views the legal system. we wrote the thing. the guy in charge of the most powerful supercourt in the world. at love people read it. it was an interesting way to look at the fisa debate. a lot of people looked at other stories we wrote about fisa, and about nsa spying and that sort of thing. it put a human face, i think, on the otherwise inpenetrable government bureaucracy system going on. nobody ever really stands exactly -- don't understand what is going on when nsa decides to tap someone's phone. and it was a nice way to sort of show that to people. >> i agree with john when he mentioned that people seem to be

more plugged in to politics now than they have ever been. there are part of the explosion of media outlet on capitol hill covering politics since 2006, 2007.ort what you see is that people are only going places that reenforce their already-held opinions. so it's important -- we all -- all of our organizations do really well, is to provide an independent viewpoint or independent look at what is going on in in washington that is simplified enough for the common person, the nonpolitical person to understand but nuanced enough that, you know, you're not boiling it down to something where they're not getting anything out of it. like, i was talking to jane before we came in about role call every year does 50 richest list. which looks at lawmaker wealth on capitol hill. we just revamped this year, actually, to create a fantastic

online data base of all on wealth. when you talk about the fat cat in washington, now you can see easily how fat those cats are. conversely, we also write about the least rich lawmakers. so some people who are, you know, not worth anything actually owe money. it's an interesting snapshot exactly who is making the decisions that affect you every day in, you know, you can look and see a lot of the people have been on capitol hill the longest or the richest. you can see what committee they sit on. how the wealth has changed from year to year. what sort of assets their money is wrapped up in. and going to unveil it early this fall. we're providing this fantastic resource for people to look at their own local lawmakers or state lawmakers and see, you know, exactly how much money this person has and whether that, you know, you can make your own call on whether you

think that affects their decision making or -- it's purely just a resource to learn information about your lawmakers. and, you know, that's the sort of resource and reporting that we pride ourselves on. >> just in a side. i remember joe biden came in debt last. >> yeah. least rich on capitol hill. [inaudible] [laughter] >> yeah. did he say what he made in the book. $200 last year. [laughter] [inaudible] [laughter] it's great. >> i know everyone has questions. we need to transition to questions that people might have. each of you has worked in somewhere else. most of you have worked in more traditional places before you moved on to what you're doing now. can you talk about how it's different for you, personally. what you kind of feel has been a change for you, perhaps, in

moving to the kind of work you're doing now. and i think probably as teachers in the audience were also interested in how can we help students prepare for this kind of environment where there's all different opportunities? what do they need to know to take advantage of the opportunities throughout and the kind of organizations you work with? >>ic they need to learn how to code. [laughter] i think that, you know, somebody worked for a newspaper for -- i worked for the "tampa bay times." for the last 25 years. the last six moving -- now moving to academia. i'm struck by the tremendous opportunities for students who can understand the fundamental of journalism, but also understand computer science, can understand html, and want to

take the curiosity of a journalist and put to work in on the web and mobile devices. >> i'm going push back on that a little bit from my own interests and say i don't care if they know how to code. [laughter] i want to find students who are smart and curious. i was on a panel recently talking to a group of students, and i was telling them i think curiosity is the most important factor. i want people who are going to come in and ask a lot of questions and push back on officials. i want to see the wheels in their mind turning all the time. i go through a pitch for curiosity. we fish and, you know, the moderator said are there any questions? a whole group of kids sit there and look at us. [laughter] finally, after the awkward two-minute pause i think somebody asked a question. i thought how have i failed to -- [laughter] make my point here. and i think sometimes we get focused now on coding and social media and sort of fancy new bag

of tricks that we forget that journalism in the most fundamental way hasn't changed. you have to be able to ask the smart questions and dot smart reporting. you have to be able to write a story that is interesting and coherent and draws people in. i see young journalists now be too reliant on the new tools. i could e-mail my stories or tweet them or, you know, send them a direct message or text them. no, i want do you get out of the chair and leave the office. i want do you go have coffee with them and look at the eyes. so i, you know, it's great as many new trick of the trade they can learn that's wonderful but not at the expense of any of the most important things that we do. >> i have to completely agree with what she said. i have talked to a couple of classes and given my spiel and then, you know, be asked them any question it's like silent. it's like, really? come on! then they start requesting

asking questions. some ask if it's worth it to get to journalism then they tick off the hits the industry has taken and depressing. newspapers are folding. you don't make at love money. people think you are terrible sometimes and tole you you are terrible. >> it's great. >> all that said it's a great job. [laughter] no, in fact, the teacher who organized one of the classes was sort of suggesting they shouldn't go in to it. i was like what are you doing? you're a journalism teacher. no names. i think it boils down some basic stuff. are you interested? are you curious? do you see something happening in your community that doesn't seem fair or right? or someone who is disempowered and getting trumped and stomped all over people by position in power. basic stuff like that needs to be told. that's how it works, you know, i have a friend who is journalist who told me once he loves his

job so much because it's the only job in the world where you're actual job is to tell the truth. that has stayed with me. that's their job. at the end of the day, you are supposedly here to tell the truth and talk to people who are jerks and lie to you and talk to people who are getting crapped on and people in power. you cut through it all and you tell the truth and put it up for everybody to see. when it's a good story, that's the best feeling in the world. we don't get paid whole lot compared other industries. there are friends of mine losing jobs in the industry because of newspapers folding and whatnot, but it's the essential excitement about seeing things that are wrong and telling people about it. i mean, that's our job. that's why at huffington we look for people who aren't necessarily eye have -- ivy league grads. we look for people who are

creative. they are curious. that's the most important thing i would say too. >> i actually agree with all of you. i don't think necessarily is -- you shouldn't be learning how to do a lot of stuff that is new the coding and learning how to do that is i think very important. i think you should able to -- you have to have the core set of values. as an editor, i would say if you can teach them how to write a lead, that would be awesome. [laughter] >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> i think my, you know, view of this is increasingly a lot of kids i see sometimes and you read it not just a publication, you read their stuff. everybody is -- quasi blogger. they write the soft leads and, you know, sort of backed in to it's something i, you know, can't stand is coming from sort of traditional, you know, hard news kind of a background.

active voice, for instance, is something that seems to be completely foreign to me less millennium generation. i think it's a broader thing that in watching some of the younger reporters on the hill, you sometimes feel like they have this, you know, i think in my generation, i think there was a notion we're going to be wood ward and burstein. that was sort of an awesome way to go about things. you also, we just sort of an idea it was an movie. we didn't understand they, you know, they built that story originally off of some very sort of boring stuff. the local crime story that nobody wants to cover. they built that story that way. we wanted to jump in at the end and say ta-da! the president is corrupt! it seems more like there's a -- everyone come in and expect within a year or two to be making their own television show and make billions of dollars.

maybe it's a weird thing you're not explanning we're poor and don't make any money in the job. you know, i think that is the thing i noticed with younger reporters sometimes. they get frustrated by it. they feel like they're not getting ahead as fast as they feel like they should. that's a shame. some are very talented. i think if they temped their notion of what was going happen and have to learn on the job. they would be better off for it. you know, you i don't know. i think they have the energy because of the 24-hour news cycle and twitter they have an energy that i don't know that we had when i was 22 or 23, and wanted to work all day long, all night long, seven days a week never complain about it. i did lot of complaining about working on a saturday. i still do. they just don't. i think that's an amazing thing. like every reporter i know is more than willing to drop what

they're doing on a sunday afternoon and spend three hours working on a story. i think that's a credit to them. >> i think it's important for young journalists to always be looking for ways to evolve their story telling. whether that's embracing new media or looking for ways or, you know, working with other people in the news room to create resources, to compliment your story. i don't think everybody needs to know how to code, but i think maybe you should have an idea of what coding is so you can work with somebody in the news room to create a package that really shines and go viral but seen by decent population. because you can be writing the best story, the most important story, but if nobody sees it, you know, and there's just so much competition out there right now for, you know, page views and viewership.

it's always, i think, important to be looking at ways to make your product unique. >> i would also just add that they -- we as sort of their editors, i think, often times need to learn how to learn a little bit from them. you know, they kind of come in a world that is foreign to me. i mean, i, you know, i remember when pages were a new thing. right, i mean, these kids these days come up and have had, you know, like laptops wi-fi pretty much their, you know, entire life. they don't know a world without e-mail. they don't know a world without the things we didn't know. you know, and i'm constantly amazed with the reporters i work with they have different ways of seeing the world, and different ideas about how to tell people about what is going on in the world. things i look at and think that's crazy. then they do it and it works. it's amazing. it's been an eye-opening thing over the last year to work with

the folks at my outlet because i, you know, i'm sort of embraced twitter. i came in late. i thought it was a silly thing. i really learned that it is a valuable way to talk to people. and, you know, my point about leads. ironically, 140 characters is a great lead. if u yo can write a solid leaded at 140 characters i think you are doing something very right. it takes me forever to figure out how to write a tweet that is not terribly misspelled. they do it effortlessly, sort of, you know. >> i would make point to piggy back on the comment. we have been talking about building the brand and younger journalists seem to know instinctively now. they have build a brand whenever it goes. they know to tweet and all that have. i think there is a little bit that has been paying your dues is still valuable. and we have created, i mean, my

publication and others there are so many opportunities now for journalists to very quickly be covering congress even covering the president before they covered, you know, a zoning meeting and chester county which is write started out. chester county, pennsylvania. but i think that is something that enclasses is important to emphasize. don't -- get ahead. build your brand. take the opportunities there to take. don't miss the things you learn when you cover the school board hearing and the county planning meeting. those are valuable too. you learn how to deal with people and not be afraid of sources when they yell at you and how to tell sources that a tough story is coming. and all the things that will ultimately make you a successful journalist here or anywhere else. >> i think we're in the "those kids" phase of the panel. and now ready to move to another phase. >> we've all been there.

kids today! [laughter] >> i have a lot more questions. i think we have a nice audience here. i'm sure you have things you would like that ask. i think i'll see if you co. also ask the panelists if they have questions of each other and kind of step back and have more of an interactive discussion here. let me first ask the panelists. is there anything that others said that you would like to pick up on or follow up on? >> i actually have a question for bill. when you were creating what was the conversation like about coming up with a grading system and, you know, dealing with the fear that maybe you are -- i don't want to say watering things down too much but simplifying enough it was easy for the layperson to understand, but also not losing any of the details of the overall conversation and discussion. >> sure. great question. so it started -- i wish it was on a cocktail napkin. it was actually on a word document. from the beginning it was a meter.

it was a meter. but the idea from the beginning was you didn't have the meter without all the journalism to back it up. and so that gave us confidence that this was not going to be too much as arbitrary and biased. we knew that was going to be a logical reaction particularly from partisans, but the other thing i think was a willingness on the part of my bosses and the staff that this thing was going to evolve, and so we started off with out a lot of principles. how does it feel? does it look like a half truth? and we basically built the rules as we went like british common law. that is sort as the case law evolved, we began to sew what a half true was. and so there was a willingness to invent over time. and i can't say often enough, i have said this in some other

speeches and panels, the willingness of the management of the tampa bay times to stick with it. to show the courage say, you know, this is going make lot of people mad. we ought to be doing this anyway. and stick with it and let us invent it. recognizing there would be mistake ace long the way and whatever. but it -- it is really -- i think it's a cool story of creation. it's also a cool story of team work where, you know, i was the guy who did the word doc sketch, but it was the staff that flilled in the blank and made it work. [inaudible] >> talking about writing today and has it changed? i have to teach write together kids. and -- i know how to do it. my motion were graded in 1973.

is it -- has there been a definite change in how the writing style should be? is it much looser? you give me great encouragement when you want a straight lead. i thought those were -- national. >> i do think that the rise of blogs in the early 2000s caused this sort of softening, frankly, of writing. i think, you know, it caused a little bit of softening for a period for some people who went from being bloggers to reporters. i think there's a knowing i don't to have to talk to a lot of people i can sort of, you know, be matthew i ash and everybody fancy them being like that. what matt does is great. it's not hard-news reporting. he's well versed in economics and stuff. he writes about that it. that style suits that. i think a lot of people particularly coming out of

college thought that was being a reporter. it's not being a reporter. i think now this there is a shift back, you know, i don't know it's tough to tell. when i was a -- there it is again. i couldn't write my way out a paper bag. i spent hours and hours and hours being screamed at in front of a lot of people by my editor about how much of an idiot i was. it was good for me. i learned got beat about the head and learned how to write an actual lead. a little bit of it, frankly, is the speed of journalism now. makes it it's less. i think editors will oftentimes say view it. i'm going to fix it myself and browbeat to the reporter and explain why it's wrong. it doesn't do them good. they need somebody to ride them a little bit and say this is how

you do it right and take them by the hand and say it's an awesome lead when it's right. we get caught up in the speed. as reporters to comment on them and us in general to be more careful with the editing at least at the top of the story. >> yeah. i'm of the mind set no matter the medium inverted pyramid is timeless. you're not dealing with -- [inaudible] you're not a, you know, dealing with length issues anymore. space issues you are dealing with, you know, you have to competition in you're dealing, you know, people -- if you look at any website an lettic and look at the timeline page. people aren't spending a the love time reading their story. they're reading the first four or five graph and clicking on a link or going to a different source. you have attention span issues now. and so it's still important to get your best information at the

top of the story. and, you know, i'm i feel like it will be. >> i agree with that. we have five or six interns come to huffington every six months. i notice trends among some of them mainly some are pretty good writers and pretty good reporters. we throw them to the capitol building basically like, okay, here is congress. figure it out. that's how i learned. so you to start somewhere. you get screamed at a lot and make mistakes. you figure it out when you screw up. one thing i noticed from the here and there stories i'll take look at the interns are doing, some of them are great writers. some of them are good reporters but they -- it's the lead. they seem to bury the lead. they'll have all the quotes and some filler graphs trying to make in a graph and then seven graphs down it's like, oh, and senator mccain said he supports repealing defense of marriage act. you're like what? he said what? and i think one thing that i

think maybe can help with that for whatever my advice is wort on this one, just talking through a story before you write it. because you figure it out as you're speaking what the news is. i think sometimes there's a pressure to write everything you have and make it sound creative or something. you are actually missing the content. it's nicely written, but where is the nugget that is the news? you need to put it first. even spending a minute -- i would prefer to spend a minute talking to the interns before they write. they have great stuff, what is your story. you can put all the other stuff in it. >> i absolutely agree with that. i think that those are all great points. you can make the top is create. i don't want to see any throw queering at the start of your story. tell me the most important thing and typical me quickly so i don't have to wade through to figure it out.

we do ante-dotely sometimes. we have a good abet dote and tell it quickly. let back to the story in seven paragraph before we tell you a point never. i wouldn't rather see someone who can write a strong and grab. we're talking a lot about the tile of writing. the other thing i would say is accurate sincerity is more than important than ever. it's easier to make a mistake because you don't have as much -- it's not let me write the story and eat lunch and talk to a couple of people. we're moving pretty quickly. the i want people who can be as accurate as possible the first time around. [inaudible] i'll start because "politico" is launching a new division. i think the future of long form journalism is fantastic. i think the future is less great for journalnism the middle.

squishy journalism. i think long form, -- more important than ever. we are talking about today journalism can punch through. journalism can that can tell us something we don't know. i think long form is a terrific way to do that. i think there's a lot of exciting experimentation going on in the industry right now with how you translate long form to the web. do you give them seven screen or put it on one continuous screen. how do you tell with video and promote your long form journalism on twitter and facebook and all the other places you might do it. i think the future is extremely bright because we're all looking for ways to set our journalism apart from others and name difference with story. i think that's one of the best ways to do it. >> i agree. we have started a new long reads vertical buzzfeed. it's done extremely well. you know, my colleague steve did this i don't know it was like eight or 9,000 word story about

david lee roth a couple of months ago. it was fantastic. a lot of people read it and, you know, it reminded you of the old days of sitting down with a magazine, and, you know, reading something forever. it was great. you never felt like was. i think part this was a push on the internet, frankly, to make everything fast. get it out first. things tend to be very short. and i think consumers of news are starting to shift back a little bit and saying, okay, you know, this 5,000 of you and all of you are tweeting or posting the same four sentences. identicalically at the same time. and i think as editors we start, you know, they say i want to see more than that. i think the push back toward content over speed being first among consumers is driving to a certain degree this resurgence

of long read journalism. i think it's very good. i agree with that. we are also launching a long form initiative. we have an app called "huffington "it's for long form pieces. sometimes they run on the site too. they are specifically for people who want to read it on the app on the kindle or whatever. but yeah, i mean, to me it's about repackaging the way you present long form. it's not that long form is going away. i feel excited and hopeful. they are encouraging us at huffington at the place where there's so much stuff. we do the fast quick hit stuff all the time. it's absolutely encouraged for us if we have idea about long form pieces go for it. we can work with the design teams if we want to have certain picture run through the piece, you know, you can have a video. not to distract you but in a way you put it together that it works. you are engaged with it. and it's i feel like there's a

lot of potential there. it hasn't been fully tapped. >> before we go on. i want to ask alex. how does design need to long form. are there things that can specifically engage people? >> just getting back to what she was saying about incorporating video or audio, you know, not sort of to accent the story itself whether it's, you know, you'll read a long form piece whether it's a sports piece or whatever. you can click to listen to the interview of the reporter with the individual. or set up camera. you can watch it as an addendum to the story you read. it provides a different aspect of what you're looking at. you can see that person's -- you can hear that person's emotion or see that person's reaction to the questions, and gate real feel for what the actual conversation was like. sister important to provide

images and, you know, whether you're reading a long "sports illustrated." provide new visual stimulation because, you know, whether you're a person reading newspapers or journalism or a person writing it, a lot of gray can be very daunting. and, you know, it's interesting to see that you are all launching long read products that are in a essentialized location on the website; right? because it's almost like you don't to smack the reader over the head with a long piece. you want them to know there's a place they can go where they can read longer piece about something they night be interested in. they can sit down and have time whether it's on the train or in the commute somewhere and read this and actually plan ahead. because they see something interesting they like. well, instead of accidentally clicking on it, putting it away,

saving it for later and forgetting about it. so it's just interesting to see how that has evolved. thank you. gosh. here and then behind you. the lady here. next to sean. >> talk a little bit more about how marketplace pressures effect the work your organization does. years ago there was a campbell "newshour." today there's more instances of advertising perhaps mast raiding as journalism. >> trying to get us in trouble. [laughter] you ask about sponsor content and that kind of thing? >> just perhaps what challenges your organization has faced in keeping that at bay or trying to do something with it.

>> well, for us we're a little bit different in a lot of organizations. we don't have advertisement. we don't have banner ads or popup ads things like that. the fizzment on our site is a sort of sponsored content. it's labeled as such as post sponsored by or written by corporation. and -- learning how to do things in term of how the advertisement are generally written and presented. mostly because we do viral marketing, you know, advertisements are done for the same way. weth way we get our story out in a way that quickly share them with each other. the advertisement done our site is similar, i think. i don't know a lot about it, because frankly they are a different part of the universe. i'm not sure i know anybody that does any advertising for our company. it's sort of a traditional line between the two.

why see the pages and to ther there's an ad here and video ad here or something. i don't notice them honestly. i'm looking for the content i don't know it's been challenging. i'm not really sure. >> i think there is still a very strong desire in the news room to keep the advertising separate from the work we do. as we have been saying to specifically market to advertising so there's no confusion. every news room i've been in has focused on keeping that separation. and i think that remains absolutely critical to the success of our business. having said that, i think there's a little bit less, i mean, used to be that the business side would be entirely separate and would be a i can't

think about business because i'm on the editorial side. i don't think that's the same as it used to be. i think there's a greater level of comfort, you know, journalists might speak to business i.t. they wouldn't say anything thig they wouldn't say on to any other audience. i think editors in general across the business, top editors, a paper probably interact more with the business side than they used to. i think as long as that doesn't come at the expense of the journalism and the integrity of the journalism it's necessary to keep the business healthy. i agree. we would never let roll call let business influence what we're reporting or, you know, anything like that or where we run story in the paper. but we have started a topic aid log which is on the site. it's actually run by boeing. they pay us to have the blog on the site. it's set off to the side.

it's very upfront about it not being, you know, roll call is not writing the story for the blog. it's boeing material, and they pay us for us. it's an advertisement that sets it on the website and it's been well received in industry and, you know, a testament to our new editor, david, who he saw this outlet, saw the opportunity and ran with it. i think we're probably going start more blog like that. i'm not as up on the information as he is, obviously. it's a new way to build revenue for your product. because the, you know, the unfortunate real city you have to do it somehow. >> in our case, we the the

interesting animal. t a product of the "tampa bay times" it has 11 partner news organizations also provide content as state sites. so the cleveland plain dealer is ohio. "newark star-ledger" is new jersey. so they -- i don't think any stand alone site is making enough revenue from ads to pay bills from the reporters. the news organizations do it because it's great content. they want to have it not just on the site but the print product and in their mobile product. fortunately, i mean, i think they have been viewed as public service, so it's not. it doesn't have to make a profit because the newspapers believe they should be doing it as a public service to readers and so the newspaper in effect subsidizes it. we have also gotten money over

the years from foundations particularly from the knit foundation. i think that's another avenue with great promise for supporting fact checking and public service journalism to get additional revenue from foundations. >> thank you. a lot of people have questions. i think i'm going ask the panelists if maybe one or two people could respond unless you have something you feel you must say. we'll go on to hear for questions. if that's okay. this lady had a question. >> hi. i had a question about legitimacy. it might go to "huffington post" and buzz feed. not that i don't love the joke about the top ten cat video. i'm wondering in light of a couple of thing. first of all, for me, michael hastings death, which i think he was the most fantastic journalist. i was so sad about how "the new york times" 0 bit was written about him and the journalism he did that i make all of my students read delegitimized him

and the journalism he did and what has been done at buzzfeed in my mind, which is good journalism. and then also, the question of a glen green walled and his david gregory questioning whether he's a journalist or not. what is it to be a journalist. and i feel like it's strange today we're still fighting those battles of who is journalist, who is not a journalist, and we're questioning sites and people that are doing really good journalism. how do you come up against these, you know, impressions that buzzfeed is a list side or "huffington post" is her pet project whatever she wants to say that day. stuff like that. >> people say that? [laughter] what? [laughter] >> well, on the topic of the "new york times" obituary. it was a good example of what is not fact journalism in my

opinion and was terrible. there's that. on the broader question of people saying buzzfeed is a fluffy content. i always point back to the 1930s and the trial of -- [inaudible] who was a silent movie star and accused of i believe it was murdering and having sex with an underage girl. it was on the front page of every single newspaper in the united states for like a year and a half. it was the biggest story. during the depression. right during the worst economic period in the country's history. this was the top story. people that we created the notion for some reason that journalism there was this, you know, decades or century long period of very serious -- news and doing the kim kardashian's back end was not anything anybody wrote about and

suddenly in the last decade it's become what we write about. it's wrong. we've been the history of this profession has been that both of those things are talked about. because, frankly, that's what people want to know. they want to know about what is going on with kim kardashian. they want to know what is going on with, you know, sports team. they want to know those kinds of things. also want to know when a general is acting like crazy person and saying bad things about the commander in chief. they want that hard-hitting journalism. i have never understood the notion that they can't coexist together perfectly well, or frankly, the idea that well, there's a serious journalists that write the story about politics and then sort of these other idiots that do the other stuff. trust me. i -- it's very difficult to do. it takes a lot of time. it takes a lot of skill. you have to an eye what is going to make people want to read it and continue to read it. and, you know, it's just as

serious, you know, that is just as serious as writing a story about -- [inaudible] >> i just read the top twenty things about growing up in the '80s that was awesome. i loved it. >> it requires do you have a depth of knowledge and understanding how to relate your information to your reader. one of those two things that make the journalist in any part of the business. sports writer or political writer or whatever. that's my sort of take on it. >> i think, to me, i have thought about this too, and to me there's a difference between being, you know, journalism and things people want to talk about. and to me they are both vailed and huffington is a good example of that. we have side boob, we have cute cats, we have you know what is miley cyrus doing to do her hair. they are there.

.. they will notice the star next to that about, you know, the latest fight over closing abortion clinics in texas or something, like a real substantive issue that's been reported on by someone who has talked to people, left their house and met with people, wrote a really good piece. that's next to this story. that's journalism. to me it's not really that come

in the end it comes down to pretty basic stuff. you can have things you can talk about and the journalism. does that mean they are not worth reading about? i think they're both fine. i read heavy stories when i want to click on the tabs, but also want to know about what's going on in texas. if it's a bunch of photographs, with funny captions, i love those. we have those, too but it's not journalism t too much as me it s a fun read. it's not that hard to differentiate. i think it's great. betting and what is it? it's like human interest, right? >> if you like those you must check out 20 reasons why john stanton should be on the list of the most beautiful people. [laughter] >> the lady here and a gentleman next. >> i have a question about the archiving of your content. a lot of you are born digital

and are only digital. someone who thinks about capturing content for the future, what, if anything, of your content could you go back and get from years ago, or let's say that you're continuing on the next 10 years, is so going to build a come back and get content from today 10 years from now on your site? >> i think that's a great and important question. as somebody now moving into academia and looking for links that i can give my students for readings every week, i can't tell you how many broken links i found in the last two, three weeks. it's so frustrating. when we created politifact, we said that it was going to be as important for people to be able to look things up as it is for them to see the latest fact checks. so there's been a commitment from the start to archiving, and in addition, the head of the

"tampa bay times" was committed that we would also give all of our content to nexis. so politifact contents preserve those places, but man, you just want to, somebody to put some energy at every news organization, going back and fixing all those broken links. you know that content has got to be around somewhere, but for the link just isn't taking you there. it's a huge loss because some good stories. sometimes the linked will time out. you of a news organization that will say this can only be used for two weeks, or whatever, because they want to be able to charge for access. but that's a real big issue. [inaudible] >> news libraries, so what used to be the place responsible for collecting and archiving is gone, and those functions have

not been restored by other people in the news organization, especially concerning foreign digital publications. [inaudible] [laughter] >> that is a great question, theoretically all the work should be findable on the internet. so that is that. but no, in practice it's not, at political we of the stories over and over and over as a new story develops today. 10 times, more transcom depending on what they need dictates and then switching to the analysis peace. i find myself more often telling editors let's just start a new one because i want to reserve one in that the original news story for people are looking for it. so there's that for us to be conscious of as well. >> and there's no protocol for that at news organizations. so you'll have, like i'm putting together things on the newtown

shooting in trying to find the early error, error ridden the stories. they've all been gone through. they were blog posted, oregon, or the story has been written through and there's no protocol in journalism four, welcome how do you do that and what stories get and what stories don't, and how to signal to the reader this is an old story, if you want the correct stuff go to this story. and we haven't sorted that out yet. >> right. even we'll often put on the top of the story is there something significant that is the we'll save updated at the top. so when it is updated, the original version isn't there anymore because it's been, after all, updated. that is something we're very actively thinking through right now. >> how much do you discuss defining your role, defining the

presidential field for 2016? we hear a lot about rand paul, mark arabi, hillary clinton, joe biden but no paul ryan or mario cuomo. >> i just wrote about mario cuomo. data, the deduction, we have a debate about all the time almost, i feel like our reporters are very reluctant to become part of this, you know, a cottage industry of like the next presidential election the day after the last one. >> [inaudible] >> the reality is we all do it. i think right now the least, an industry not getting too far ahead of ourselves and allowing it to a certain degree to be the players. paul ryan is not doing anything to really make it look like he is running for president right

now. i feel like he probably is pretty sort of keeping a lower profile than rand paul this. so i think right now certainly most of the reporting that i see has been pretty good about keeping it limited to the people who are making moves towards that. >> donald trump. [laughter] >> so, we started off early in this discussion talk about the implications for the bios of the "washington post." and with the heritage traditional media site like beckham one thing they been able to do, ellsberg and the whistleblowers. so let's say snowden's best friend comes forward that he work with what the only batch of secret documents that the police who wants to blow the whistle on government mismanagement. how does your position and let if that person were to come to you because you are not the "washington post"?

>> we would handle it the same way. i think the guardian has done a very good job of getting good stewards of information. there's tons and tons and tons of information, way more than anybody really realizes, that snowden gave, that he just, we're not going uses because for whatever reason but it will put somebody in danger or whatever. and i think they have done a much better job than some of the legacy u.s. paper state. the times as air to in my opinion too much on the side of caution in some cases. you know, i think they are to a certain degree to me sort of model of how to handle that, frankly. >> you know what's interesting is in an era of citizen journalism, snowden chose to go through traditional journalists. and greenwald being won with a strong viewpoint but still being a journalist.

he very easily could have just posted that stuff on the web somewhere. he didn't need journalists, like he did. and it will be fascinating to talk to him about it because i presume he knew that if you just posted on a website somewhere it would be shut down, when asked if he could enlist bart and greenwald, that they would give credibility and protection to him. and so it's been a fascinating episode, and yet, you know, he really didn't have to have them. and probably had he put it up, wikileaks would've taken a snapshot of it and there could've been ways to keep it up. [inaudible] >> an organization that could go to bat for you. the guardian they can go to bat lately. especially some of the smaller, no longer small but started all smaller, organizations with the upper management would say yes,

run that story. i mean, small system bloggers would again like to say, back away from that in a heartbeat, right? >> we just had a series of stories on ecuador, and on some of the domestic spying the equity when kevin is doing. she did it because snowden was looking to go there. and the government enlisted this south vietnamese -- trying to put the screws on us, taking down filesharing sites. a few of them agreed. there was never a question. we have a legal teen. we talk to be. it was never a question that we're going to protect not only rosy but the store and we're going to make sure that those sites put the information backup. we pushed back hard and they did. i think, i mean, i've worked at roll call and i know both shops would in a heartbeat and if you like all of us come from the same place.

>> i think we all work at organizations with the top leaders are very respected journalists, and absolutely would not back down from a fight if they felt like that was the right fight to be having. >> on my since we were probably handle it the same way similar to glenn greenwald's approach to doing this. >> time for one more question, or two if they are quick. anyone? final thoughts? tell us one thing that's been the most fun. go down the list, for you can't in this new endeavor. >> [inaudible] >> one thing that's been the most fun come in the panel or in life? [laughter] >> in life. >> i think the new media world creates great opportunities for

invention, and in my previous job that political fact i love working with people to invent. and it was great fun and some of the most fun i had was sitting in meetings coming up with stuff. and i think that come in my new job, i in looking forward to new kind of things. i think invention is, this is a time of invention, and i think there's a great spirit in journalism to do that. >> i agree with the. i think the creativity and your adrenaline of the new media world are both incredibly exciting. and they feel like we live in a time as a journalist here in washington where practically everything recovery feels like a first, whether that's the debt ceiling brinkmanship or anything else. i feel like we are living in historic times and we have a new way of covering those times to get the news out more quickly

and more effectively than ever. so it's a very exciting time to be a journalist in washington. >> yeah, i guess, i mean, i have fun every day. it's fun. it's fun to be a journalist in d.c. right now working for huffington freed me up today coal country different approaches. estoria presa probably wouldn't have been able to write. really quizzed i'm thinking of one know. i ended up in a twitter exchange with republican congressman about gay marriage and we went back and forth, back and forth. it was on twitter. everyone who is following either of us was in this but in the end he said he didn't think we should have the defense of marriage act. this was republican congressman, leaning libertarian but that was a news story that wrote afterwards. through the tweets, my tweets and his sweets into the story and published it on the site. it was a really fun exchange. random people on twitter were

jumping and into the conversation, too. stuff like that, even five years ago couldn't have done that. it's really fun right now. >> i think gay marriage fight and sort of the broader emphasis we've been putting on lgbt community and issues affecting them has been the most interesting and fun part for me at this job. it's been something since i came on last year, it's been a major focus for the site. we are now dealing with the russian olympics and that kind of stuff, and i find it to be gratifying to be at a site, a news organization that is focused on that, on the very important civil rights issue right now. this is that moment when you get to say yes, you know, in 30 years we're working on this and we were paying attention to and it was an important thing. so for me that's been the best thing. >> i agree with everybody.

>> tough to be last. >> it's interesting to see the role social media is playing, whether you're talking about a creates a store or you can mine social media for ideas or sources, you know. it's an exciting time to be a journalist, especially in d.c. because yet we're seeing history being made right now and it's incredible. it's truly, it's an important time to be paying attention to politics, and so it's up citing to try and get those stories out there is to as many people as possible. >> a perfect note to end on. thank you, alex. thank you so much, terrific. [applause] >> and the you know, i don't want to volunteer their time but if anybody wants -- [inaudible] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> on c-span this afternoon, a look at marriage in the u.s. at 5:45 p.m. eastern a group of plaintiffs talk about the supreme court ruling on gay marriage.

here's a brief look. >> the sort of strategy they relied upon in the political campaign and the court as well, a couples as different and even deviant, and not worthy of something, and certainly not good enough for parents. sandy and i with four children who we love dearly and their friends who we love dearly and all the other children in california we want to hope, that was just too much to tolerate and it was hard to be in court when that was gone back over again. we watch the ads again. we listen to them talk about the judge how we were not worthy, and her children were there and they heard that as well. and i think is a real good experience. i hope someday the video is unsealed at all a you can see what we saw and heard in that courtroom. because even though they wanted to convince the judge that they were right, they had no evidence and they couldn't back up any

othem. i think it's why we want is that the 17 witnesses we have compared to the two they had were using data and evidence. to explain how meaningful and helpful marriage is, the people are married are healthier and wealthier, that they are happier in many cases, and that their lives are enriched by marriage. and certainly knowing that you with the option to be married, where the jews are not even helpful. so that was the great part. the try was the goodness they cannot afford side in the hard part was the news that came from their site. >> this afternoon, more about how marriage is changing after the supreme court ruling in june on gay marriage. we will talk live to journalists and legal outlet us about some of the locations of the supreme court ruling. wwe'll take your calls convenience and tweets. it begins at 7 p.m. eastern on c-span. our next update on the --

>> [inaudible conversations] >> do you want to find or see them we'll try to get started on time. good afternoon. my name is that howard. i'm with the alliance for health reform and i want to welcome you on behalf of senator rockefeller, senator blunt and our board of directors to today's program on the current status of efforts to stand up

these health insurance exchange is or marketplaces in every state. , october 1, which is just over seven weeks from now, these entities are scheduled to begin enrolling individuals and small businesses in two health plans with coverage beginning as early as january 1. but a bit of context. it's worth noting that most americans who now have coverage will probably not be dealing directly with the exchanges, at least initially. you get your coverage through your employer, and it's a substantial enterprise, you will continue to get your coverage through your job, perhaps with some change in was covered and what you have to pay. but for those who don't get coverage through their work or whose jobs don't bring insurance with them, and some others, the exchange, the marketplace in your state will be the place to

go and there will be at least one in every state. as we tried to convey in the title to this briefing, that is, different strokes for different states, not all of these exchanges will be the same. they will share some common standards, but they're going to differ in many and many important ways. in recent months we've heard a lot of predictions about train wrecks and on-time arrivals and other metaphoric outcome predictions related to the exchanges. we are not going to try to validate one or another of those sets of predictions this afternoon. we do think it's timely to take stock of where different state exchanges are in their preparations, what kind of choices are being made, how insurance companies are coping with those changes, and what

ordinary folks might encounter when they began trying to sign up. we are pleased to have as a partner in today's program the commonwealth fund, which is a century old philanthropy established to promote the commonweal, the common good. and we are lucky enough to have as our co-moderator today sarah collins was the vice president for affordable health insurance at the fund. sera enter under colleagues have produced some of the best analyses to the issues confronting those trying to get the exchanges up and running and you'll find a couple of good examples of that in your packages. sara, welcome back to the moderators chair. were looking forward to having you help frame this issue for us for the discussion this afternoon. >> [inaudible] >> on behalf of the commonwealth i want to extend a warm welcome to everyone today. on is really warm day in

washington. the congressional budget office -- it's not -- >> or not. >> thank you. the congressional budget office is estimating that by about 2018, about 25 many people are expected to enroll in health plans through the new health insurance marketplaces, also known as exchanges. the majority of the enrollees will be eligible for subsidies to help pay for the health plan. this isn't going to happen all in one year. cbo is projecting that about 7 million people enrolled in the marketplace next year, and 2014. rising to about 13 million by

2015. and medicaid cbo is projecting an increase in enrollment of about 9 million people, rising to 12 million by 2015. certainly the hallmark of the reform law is the degree to which implementation is taking place at the state level and how local politics and decision-making will influence both state and national outcomes, like enrollments, reduction them at the number of people who are uninsured premiums. so these two maps give you a sense of where the potential is for variation in these outcomes. these are very -- interactive pools on the commonwealth website. on the left you can see state decisions regarding the marketplace. 16 states and the district of columbia have adopted to offer its own market places next year. seven states will operate the marketplaces in partnership with the federal government come and seven others will have federal marketplaces but will play an active role in plan management.

utah will run its own small business market place next year with the federal government running its individual exchange. new mexico will follow a similar model, but 19 states will full-fledged federal exchanges. on the right you can see the decision states have made aware to expand their medicaid brogue ran. so far 22 states in the district are expanding. three states including arkansas are expanding or considering expand with a variation or really lucky to have judge thompson your today to explain this to us. about 25 states are either undecided or decided not to expand. next slide, please. certainly one of the most exciting aspects of the summer has been watching the steady release of proposed 2014 premiums for plans that would be close to the marketplace is not she. for the individual market, it's difficult to compare rates right now to what they'll be in 2014 since the benefit packages vary

enormously across people, across regions. people are charged based on the health and gender in most states. it's difficult to make apples to apples comparisons between the rates now and what we're going to see next year. in this analysis, h. s. compares with what the congressional budget office has suggested putting this would be next year and in 11 states premiums for the sober plans to both of change are coming in on average 10-18% lower than cbo's projections. it's also important to keep in mind that these rates are the for subsidies. so most people who buy plants through the market place will pay substantially less than these rates depending on their income. next slide. it takes some results for small businesses, looking at actual rates and the small group market inflated to 2014, the proposed rate to the lowest-cost sober plans are about 18% lower than predicted rates. so far at least we are seeing a new deregulated market that bans

insurance carriers from charging premiums based on the risk profile other applicants, combined with requirement that everybody has health insurance but two important pieces of this puzzle come we're seeing a market that is shaping up to be quite competitive on dimensions of many full to consumers, principally priced and value. next slide. in addition to questions about premiums, you are so many others on everyone's mind as we look forward to october 1, open enrollment begins less than two months. here are just a few in the very, very near-term how are the marketplace is shaping up, what are the key differences across states? our insurance carriers signi-st? our insurance carriers signing up cell plans and how does participation by carries -- carriers vary across state and even within states? want our federal and state governments and stakeholders doing to ensure broad public awareness of the marketplaces

and people's eligibility for subsidies. will be expensive people who choose plans for the marketplaces ?-que?-que x do they enroll, why am i not? how macy's will participate in the medicaid expansion next year. in the short to longer-term, different marketplace design check outcomes like enrollments, premiums and even delivery system and innovation. how will state approaches to the medicaid expansion affect exchanges to medicaid programs, the marketplaces, individual and government costs? how our state and federal governments coordinate exchanges in their medicaid programs? without i will send us back over to ed and look forward to the panelist presentations and your questions, thank you. >> me there we go, sorry. a couple of housekeeping items before we get to our panelists. if you are in a twitter mode, you can use the hashtag

@ahrexchanges, and that is on the title slide that you see up on the screen. there's going to be a video recording of this briefing available in a couple of days followed by a transcript a few days later, both on our website, allhealth.org. you will find also their background materials, those of you in the room will find not only the ones that get hard copies of in your packets, but also additional materials that you can use. if you're watching on c-span you might take note of that, have access to computer, you can go to allhealth.org right now, follow along the slide presentations from our speakers and have access to those background materials that i was mentioning. i would like to ask those in the room at the appropriate time if you want to ask a question of our panelists, there is a green

question card which you can use. there are also microphones that you can come to to tell your question in person. and at the end of the briefing we would love to have you fill out the blue evaluation form so we can improve these programs, and get to the topics and speakers that you would like to get you. now, what we got to get to is the program. with a terrific group of panelists. we have a lot of them, so we are going to try to ask them to be as brief as they can and then we'll save a bunch of time at the end to respond to questions. we are shifting the order of speakers around from the one you see on your agenda in order to accommodate our first speaker, that is chiquita brooks lesueur who has to cut out from this mean to get you another me. she tells us she is busy, i don't know if that is really the case, but she's going to be leaving early right after her

presentation. she is the deputy director for policy and administration at the cms center for consumer information and insurance oversight. it's her job that is responsible for developing and giving clear to me regulations and other guidance that is needed to get exchanges and insurance reforms in the aca up and running. i think that means she is not taking a long vacation this month. some of you may know she key to from her days on the professional staff of the house ways and means committee of two years ago. and we are very pleased that you have carved this out a little bit of time to talk to our audience. >> thank you so much. for the invitation and it's a pleasure to be here with you. and i'm sorry that i'm not going to be able to stay very long, but i assure you i am very busy. so i'm just going to start by briefly, as sara talked about can't go to talk little bit

about what we're doing with the federal marketplace. as sarah mentioned, there are 24 seats that we have conditionally approved to fully or partially run their marketplaces, 24 states and d.c. but states have a row even if they are not running the marketplace. in terms of making sure that the plans are available for octobe october 1. the vast majority of the states are enforcing the market rules, which are of course a critical part of the changes that come in 2014, things like an essential health benefits, modified each rating, et cetera. and so we're working with the states across the nation as a review as part of their normal regulatory process to make sure that all of the qualified health plans are also meeting the market reforms. in addition, states are

participating in planned management function. there are additional things again as sarah mentioned, were doing the work to certify that, certified, the qualified health plans on behalf of the federal government. and so we are working with many states as we work to stand up the federal market place. hunches going to talk for a few minutes about the work that we're doing with the committee and, of course, karen will talk later in the panel about that but we've been working very closely with issuers to make sure that they have the information available that they need in order to offer products for 2014. as you know, and we've been putting out a tremendoutremendou s amount of guidance over the last couple of years. we are very close to final. we have one more regulation that affects the marketplace related to program and integrity that we are planning on finalizing very soon it and as you know, this

year we also additionally to rulemaking, issued a letter to issuers that outlined many of the rules of the road for those issuers that were interested in participating in the queue hud application process. in april, we started accepting applications for qualified health plans to be offered in the marketplace in the federal facility market place. these numbers may change as they're not final until september but we've been very pleased so far as the participation. we announced earlier this year that we were received over 120 issue were applications, and so we've been very pleased about participation in the marketplace. we have been and states have been in the process of reviewing applications to ensure that rates are justified, that plans meet the benchmark for essential

health benefits, satisfied network standards, et cetera. so later in the summer we are in the process now of working through any technical corrections on the applications that may be needed as well as looking at rate outliers there can later in the summer, issuers will hear from us about the final certification determination and they will sign the qualified health plan agreement. sarah was also talk to some of the states that have started to release information about raise. that's a state-by-state decisions. there's some states that have rules about when the disclosures occur. what we have said, and our intention is to only publish rates related to the federally facilitated marketplace, once those issue or agreements are signed. so that's an activity that will take place in september, and so after that we will be releasing

information about rates. but i will say, again, in states where there's a great deal of competition the results have been very promising. >> i want to talk briefly about some of the assistance that's available for people who will be enrolling through the federally facilitated marketplace, outreach of course is a critical part and that's really the face that we're entering in over the next couple of months. there's an application as you all know that we made public, a streamlined application for enrolling in a variety of programs, certainly enrolling in a qualified health plan. if you are enrolling just to purchase coverage you only need to fill out information related to searching for a qualified health plan. if someone is interested in applying for one of the insurance affordability programs, they decide to provide more information about their income, et cetera, in order to

determine whether they are eligible for an advanced payment of the premium tax credit, medicaid, or one of these programs. we have been testing the of which, as you know, is a way to make sure that states and, are able to interface with the federal government. it queries different databases, secured databases, and so testing began in october of last year and continues ongoing with the states and with other of our partner federal agencies that we have worked with. and then finally, as we started connecting with consumers and we relaunched the call center -- excusing, healthcare.gov, providing more for mission to our call center has also been launched just last week we open up a shop call center, and so both of those call centers are

starting to get information and calls into the community. we have been working on revamping healthcare.gov to prepare for all of the new enrollment that will begin and, of course, you'll be seeing more changes as we finalize the plans that will be offered and start providing the information for people to enroll in coverage. we're also in the process of training agents and broker training has begun. we've had quite a robust response over the last week and a half of people getting trained, as we've said we will soon be announcing navigator of wards and then shortly after that begin training navigators. there are certified application counselors. so people have a variety of ways to enroll in the federally facilitated marketplace, whether they want to apply online, in

person, or use the telephone or a combination of those approaches. and then just find i want to mention, of course there's a great deal of information on our website, healthcare.gov, workplace .ca mess.gov, and, of course, specific information to cciio, cciio, the regulations come et cetera. cciio .ca mess.gov. so thank you again. it's been a pleasure to be with you all, and i live forward to hearing certainly the work, great work that the states are doing. it's very encouraging on our and to see the great work that the partner states are engaging in the states and it's been quite a partnership i would say all of the work of aca, both with the states issuers and others in the community to make the promise of the affordable care act a

reality. thank you. >> thanks very much, chiquita. godspeed to the next one. fortunately, we have four panelists have volunteered to answer all the questions that chiquita wasn't around -- [laughter] >> and we're going to start with sarah dash. sarah is on the research faculty at georgetown health policy institute said on health insurance reforms. her work at the center focuses on the implementation of health insurance exchanges around the country. she's the author of two of the major papers that are in your kids, the yellow one and the purple one. full disclosure, before joining the center, sarah was the senior health policy aide for senator jay rockefeller, and the alliance liaison. so our honorary chairman had

good judgment in hiring health staff the center will give us some detail on what's going on in what, one-third of the states that have decided to run their own exchanges, as chiquita had described. sarah, thank you so much for being with us. >> thank you so much. can i go any? thanks so much, ed, and the alliance and the commonwealth fund. it's good to be here. i'm going to dive right in. some of the key design decisions that states have made, and setting up their exchanges and they have had a lot of them and it had to make a lot of those decisions in a very short period of time. and the that a lot of flexibility, which is kind of why they have so many decisions to make it in the key thing here is going to be as certain of them really figuring out how some of these differences and the design decisions play out in terms of the key outcomes like the sustainability of the exchange, the competitiveness of the marketplace, and other key

outcomes. so a couple of key themes that we have found amounts withdrawn through and look more closely at these design decisions is, when is that states really do this easily in terms of customizing their exchange to the needs of the state, the needs of their stakeholders, and consumers. so in some areas they actually moved much farther ahead than they were required to in the law. for instance, in some areas of quality reporting and in terms of the way they set their marketplaces. and then in other areas where they had flexibility, such as expanding the small business affected by an exchange to 100 employees, all other states basically chose not to do that this year. they chose to keep it at 50 employees. and as a but he knows they will have to do that anyway in 2016, but the idea behind that was to sort of keep the market as

stable as possible what implement all these other require changes. so i'm going to move into some of the design decisions that on face, sustainable. next slide, please. and here is really, there are a lot of issues in terms of sustainability it means a lot of things to different people. i will dive a little bit into the financing mechanisms. basically this is an area where some of the states are still deciding how to be financially self-sustaining, as a genuine first, 2015, as they're required to do. for those of made up their minds, they are pretty much going to follow the same model as the federal marketplace which is an assessment on i it ensures that are offering coverage through the exchange. and then a few states had pre-existing mechanisms for revenue that they are redirecting, at least in part, to the exchange. i'm going to move onto the next slide because i know we have a lot to cover and we can catch

some of this in the q&a. so competitive market place, one of the promises of exchanges is that it's supposedly a more competitive, more transparent markopolos, easier for consumers to shop for insurance. in order to do that unique plans to participate. as chiquita was noting some of the planned of participation numbers are coming out. and states took a variety of approaches to encourage insurers to participate and to offer plans. some of them took a very hands off approach and said the less regular sure we have the better and that's going to encourage. others have said we will require insurers to participate either through an outright requirement war, and a couple of instances, in terms of closing the nonexchange market which is kind of a de facto way of getting insurers into the exchange market. and then states also took a

variety of approaches in terms of selecting plants on the exchanges. it really went across the board. about a third of them took the so-called clearinghouse approach, and that basically means of proving any plan that met the criteria for qualified health plans. and then a smaller number were selected contractors or, also known as active purchasers. applied an additional layer of review once the plans were submitted. and then in the middle there's a category called market organizer, which is placing some structure around the plans that could be offered, such as limiting the number of plans that could be offered, but then not applying an additional layer of review once they were submitted. so next slide, please. choice and quality were for small business and individuals, this was a really big value for the states that were designing their exchanges.

this really showed up especially in the shop exchange with regard to the employer choice option. every state that is setting up its own exchange with a couple of exceptions is going to be offering what's known as employee choice. so right now small businesses come employers typically don't have a lot of choices are plans by then it picks up for them and that's it. this is a brand-new tool that the states are able to track small businesses through their exchanges. and the next couple points on that states took a lot of steps that again were not required of them to make it easier for consumers to choose a plan. i'm going to talk about those in the next couple of slides and they also did a lot in terms of quality reporting. they're not required to report the quality metrics for plans until 2016. but nine states chose to do so in 2014. so again that's just an indication that states are feeling like consumers should

know more of the value proposition of exchanges. and next slide, this is just for you to look at, to show one example of our states went beyond what they needed, they required insurers to offer more than the silver and gold medals that is required in the law. and that would be states and the district of columbia. the next one i'm going to gloss over a little bit but it's interesting because the three things that are shown you on the sly, again, states did not have to do this but they did it to make a more easier for consumers to choose a plan. the ideas that winner too many choices on an exchange, consumers might sort of freeze up and not be able to make a choice, or they might not make a choice that is the best value for them. so states took some steps to try to streamline that. for example, they might have

limited the number of planned at any given ensure had offered, or required some additional standard of co-sharing and benefit. beyond what's required in the apa. -- aca. this is, my next, last slide, we look at some of the steps that states took on the navigator and personal assistance programs and abuse agents and brokers. if you think about what you need to get an exchange and make it successful, you need a plan, you need a competitive market place and you choices and you need the people to come to the marketplace. as chiquita was noting, the outreach will be really, really critical. states viewed, of all these different entities as really important and part of kind of a unified effort. most states did this does both.

some of them were still forget some of the funding sources for the navigator programs at the time we wrote this. every state is going to let agents and brokers to self coverage through the exchanges and we're starting to see some of the agent broker on boarding and training happening now in the states. and then states also decisions to make in terms of the training hours they were going to require, the compensation rules that they were going to require, and you, they carried on the details but in general they view this as part of a unified program. and then in addition some states are pursuing state-funded initiatives to increase the affordability of the plans on the exchange for a certain population. in my last fight i'm going to note, exchanges are really a means to an end t. its most basic, it's about connecting people's coverage. has really what states are focused on is getting exchange 1.0 up and running.

but as exchanges continue to roll out, there are some states that really see these as part of a driver for things like delivery system reform and quality. some states are certainly farther ahead than others and felt they could take more on in that regard. issue, but i think that something will continue to see as this rolls out. i'm going to stop since my time is up and turn it over to ed. thank you. >> rate, thank you, sarah. you've heard both chiquita and sarah give you an overview of what's going on in a bunch of different places. now we're going to hear a little closer to the ground what is going on into very specific places, and specifically were talking about the state of arkansas and maryland and we will start with the maryland with rebecca pearce who is the executive director of the maryland health benefit exchange. she's been the that for almost three years, which is pretty

remarkable when you think about the length of existence of the for will correct itself. before that, she held a number of senior national positions with kaiser permanente. maryland is one of those states sarah dash was describing on things who run its own exchange. rebecca did give us frontline report on how things are shaping up in baltimore and annapolis. >> thank you. i appreciate the opportunity to be. thank you very much. i want to start with a couple things about maryland. i was hired very early on because the governor signed an executive order of the day after the affordable care act was signed. so governor of valley has always been that health care reform in the state. and very quickly put a commission together to determine exactly how the state should move forward with health care reform. the exchange was implemented and great in our first federal legislation and 20 olympic we

been able to pass three sets of legislation so far. to really make sure that the marketplace that we're putting in place is actually right for all marylanders. so we did it in incremental steps. our population can we have about 5.9 million people in the state with about 800,000 who were uninsured and about 590,000 were eligible for medicare or anble y exchange. but why this maryland care about this? the health institute out of baltimore county and economic impact study and want to determine is that the affordable care act creates 9000 new jobs in the state in 2014, and 26,000 new jobs in the state by 2020. so we are very much, we very much believe this is a job creation these, not only just about health care but down the path. not only that, $609 in federal subsidies into our stat state ad just 2015. it's a very important to us. this slide shows what are

expecting enrollment is. so really if you focus on 2014, we expect about 250,000 people to be enrolled in the first year. we expect by 2020 to have about 475,000 tickets it lowers our uninsured rate by about half by 2020. so again, very important to us because we think we can make a difference in the uninsured numbers. the line at the bottom is a little difficult to see, but really what this dry some is importance of the system that we're putting in place. the affordable care act allowed us the opportunity to replace a 20 year-old enrollment eligibility system for medicaid. so while we expect about 250,000 people to enroll in year one, one fell -- currently on medicaid through on the system, it will be over 1.2 million

people who are on our new combined system. so it's again very important to us. talking about our planned availability, we had 79 medical plans that were approved by the insurance commissioner several weeks back. we recently received notification that aetna and coventry were exiting the in such a market in mount as they are in many other states. and that leaves us with 59 medical plans available. and even though we didn't require people to have a platinum or a catastrophic plan, we did require the gold, silver and bronze. you can see that we have at least five plans, or several plans i guess, we plans at every single level for multiple carriage. so we're very excited about the flexibility that will be able to offer, and we really feel strongly that anybody searching will find a plan that is right for them. i don't think were up in the

rates information but again our rates which is released very recently we did an analysis and we determined in that analysis that of the other plans come of the 12 that i've proposed or -- we are ask among the lowest. new mexico had one plan does more expensive than ours by $4. so in the baltimore metropolitan area, the average rate for 25 euros non-smoker is $167. just for reference can you can see the d.c. rates slightly more expensive. but again, we feel like the number of plans and the rates that we have on our market are really going to be competitive. but how do you ask a kid -- we have in building the sebastia which is but how to get people to come and purchase? so we're going to utilize as many people as possible. our last estimate is that we have about over 5000 people who will be supporting us.

we have are connected entities are separated by region, and we're going to have over 200 navigators with 300 in person sisters. these are the people are really going to be out knocking on doors. we are utilizing our local department of health and social services. with over 2500 case workers who already do medicaid eligibility in the state so we'll be utilizing them as well. and brokers in the market. with over 2000 brokers who told us that they are, intend to work with us. we have over 950 of them already train set up for training, signed uscientific training ande stars in mid-august. and so between those there's about 5000 people. it doesn't count the call center. we will have 125 people at the call center as well because we know, you know, there's going to be a lot of touches for this to expect people to want to talk to become not just at the internet and phyllis out but be able to really talk to somebody who can explain things to them.

>> so this is how we split up the states from original connector into the perspective but it was very importan imports that camilla called and connected entities. these are the navigators and assistance. for those connected entities to be so local within their environment, to work with the communities organizations, to reach the underserved population, to the hard to reach population. when they submitted their grandstand to prove to us that they could reach these populations, that they came with, there are six connected entities that are working with over 50 smaller organizations within the state who have expertise reaching specific pockets of the population. we do have several online resources. we get maryland health connection.gov. it is up. this is our portal. is where everybody is going to go to enroll. it's a placeholder page right now, several pages but it's got attacked later on and things like that.

come october 1 it will be where but he goes to enroll. we currently also maryland -- this our stakeholder site. this is where you can actually sign up for a weekly newsletter that we send out, and is really the hotbed of information of what we're doing right now. in talking about our marketing piece, again how we're going to get people there, we are just launch our social networking piece last week. you can follow us on facebook and on twitter. will also be on youtube. but this is just the beginning of what will be a very comprehensive marketing and outreach campaign. we will be full-blown in the market as of september. at the very beginning of september, really doing some education pieces in the beginning. so just educate people about the importance and about of health insurance and the importance of having health insurance. and then moving to the call to action really a little bit later starting october 1.

so that's a very quick snapshot of where we stand. >> quite a good one, thank you very much, rebecca. we will turn out to joe thompson, dr. joe thompson has the title surgeon general for the state of arkansas, which iss a pretty impressive but it belies even at that it's very wide-ranging portfolio of responsibility in academics, in clinical were, in public policy. ..

joe? >> thank you. i appreciate being here. we look forward to question and answers. to give a little bit of ab environmental perspective. arkansas is a little bit more politically diversified than maryland. [laughter] we have a republican house, a republican senate, and democratic governor. i have served as the cabinet-level adviser to the governor and former governor. we're in the middle of really a four or five year system transformation that predate the affordable care act. we started with the work force strategic planning process. we lost a multipayer public information. and along came the fract -- affordable care act which i described as disruptive.

what's what you do with it. the brand of the arkansas health connector originally we were not going participate at all and have a federally facilitated exchange "politico" made a decision that we want to have some control over the state politicses. we are a central state partnership with the state maintaining responsibility for planned management and consumer outreach and engagement. we we have a -- with our sisters and with our applicant support we have used our two-year colleges to train the people across the state. so they will be out and about in the coming months to help en-- enroll people. it gets buy in with the two-year colleges and the community connections they have. as an environmental place holder we have about 3 million people in the state of arkansas. we have a 25% uninsured rate from 64.

darkest blue county approach we're not the most attractive state in the nation for them to come and offer the service. saw it as not only an opportunity to help those eligible for tax credit but a critical need to take advantage of the expansion opportunity under medicate to be able to help individuals that if not have insurance. our state has the low e or most restrictive eligibility in the united states for medicaid. to be on medicate in our state and you are not disabled so you to make less than $9 ,000 a year and have less than $2,000 no asset and be a parent. it's represented an important opportunity. a politically challenging opportunity to take advantage of

it. i would say that opened with a strong impetus not to take advantage of the medicaid advantage under the the the affordable care act. if we can use the commercial sector to strength the competitiveness of our market and explicitly not expand the medicate even crotchment we put together the challenge and put together. if you be to the next slide, we passed what we call the health care independence program. i might just mention to pass the program and have have funds to spend it took 75% of the house and senate. it was no low bar. we had 75% requirement. but what they offered was a private option for us to bayousing federal medicaid funds in to the private insurance market who premium assistance what was offered to individuals

above 138% of the federal poverty level. it's not what states have traditionally used in bidding out and contracting directly with the carrier through medicaid managed care. it's not what our state has always done which was directly contract with providers to pay providers directly. it is using a relatively infrequently premium mechanism system to use premium to buy health insurance on the health insurance exchange. it's an integrated market base approach to cover these. the proposal to the federal government is that we would drastically reduce access barriers to medicaid beneficiary. we'll increase the quality of their care. and stabilize the marketplace, and a -- achieve that are otherwise infrequently achieved. individuals will be to be remain in the same plan as they go up-and-down the income ladder.

they will drastically reduce the term which has been predicted in historical experience and the size of the marketplace, our private individual health insurance exchange almost doubles with the medicaid program buy in which will increase the competitiveness of the market and potentially attract new carriers in to the market statewide. and finally, the enrollment of the private option is in the qualified health plan will help support the payment -- and make the transformation we are encouraging to make by trying to align payment with the quality and outcome goals of the state and the private payers. that make our enrollment process much more difficult. if we are trying to put medicaid eligible through the exchange in to private plans for which we're in a federal state partnership, we just double down on the complexity of trying to implement the fract.

we are close to figuring out. they have income and that at this level and therefore e eligible for a tax credit or not. if they are eligible they'll proceed across the horizontal to the arkansas federal facilitated choice and choose between plans that are offered on our federally facilitated state partnership e change. if they are found to be less than 138% and therefore eligible for medicaid. they drop down or transit over to the state-based portal, where we are obligated to screen out the individuals that are millionly frail or complex for which the private sector would not be the best place to try to have them seek care and financial support from. if they screen out as medically

frail we'll retain them in the traditional medicaid program. however, if they screen not medically frail, i would call it the -- we have some experience with. we transit them over to a shopping experience that our goal is for to look and see exactly the same as those individuals above the 138% line and using federal tax credits. so the goal we have in collaboration between our democratic executive branch and our republican-lead house and senate, is that we want every arkansas person to have a private experience. we do not want to grow state government through the medicaid program. we have required the our plans that operate on the exchange to offer a high silver act warrial value plan and willing to have medicaid enrollee buy in. we think for the marketplace by putting a quarter million in to a individual insurance market we

will provide some significant stability to the carriers in that insurance market, potentially reduce the premium cost of that market, and increase the care entry to that market. with a stake that currently has a 25% uninsured rate of 19 to 64-year-old. those are bold goals. but i think as i mentioned this is a unique opportunity. we're trying to take every advantage of it going toward. where we are now, if i can have the last slide. these are the seven uninsured rate. and the number or the number of carriers currently underreview by the state and federal government for competition and each of those market area. you can see in all but one of the market areas we had more than two plans. we think we have already reached at one early goals privatizing the medicaid in to the private

and individual health insurance marketplace. we submitted our waiver on tuesday of this week to the secretary. the governor did. and we look forward, hopefully, to response for sure by the first of the year. hopefully in times we can guarantee people when we enroll in this october there's federal support for the states put forth. >> that's terrific. thank you, dr. william. -- thompson. she's president and ceo of america's health insurance plan which is the trade association for america's health insurance plans. she's been working for the plans for -- i can't believe this twenty years or so. before that, she directed the work on employee benefits. she was on the professional staff of what is now the senate health committee, karen is here to it share a bit what her members are encountering as they prepare for the full scale

implementation of the major aca provision including exchanges. both the federally facilitated exchange and the state base exchange over the coming months or weeks as the case may be. karen, thank you so much for being with us. >> thank you, ed. good afternoon, everyone. it's terrific to participate on this wonderful panel, and i look forward to questions as well. i have four slides after this one. what i true to is anticipate the great information that would be imparted already. i knew i have batting clean up here. i thought i would do is give you a birds' eye perspective from the through the prism of the health plan community. what are we addressing? what are we working on? what are we prioritizing and talk you through the answer to the question that i most frequently get asked, which is how do you think about the pricing premium across the

country. and why do prizes vary across the country? i anticipated some of your questions, and i tried to build that in to the presentation with the idea of imparting helpful information to kick off the discussion. can i have a next slide please? many times over the last couple of years, a number of individuals will say something like the following. our health plans preparing for health care reform. after i gave theme look it occurred that so many of the stakeholders begins on october 1 of this year. that's what people have been thinking about. working up to, and so on. i want to flag a couple of things that happened. in 2010 in september we to change our benefit packages in to the individual market. that was changed substantially.

we overhauled internal appeal and grievance processes. we put all the information that our is relevant to beneficiaries with respect to choice and premiums in the individual and maul group markets on the hhs portal already there. it's easy to say not a small thing to do. we've also changed the way benefits are displayed. it's standardized now across the country. we have gone through an entirely new process for rate review. an entirely new process for submitting information to states and entirely new process for submitting information to the federal government. and in addition to all of this, a massive readiness effort on the part of the commune toy make sure that we were ready to do what is expected starting october 1. in addition, to make sure that

we are ready to offer affordable products oning on -- october 1, a number of the plan in partnership with providers, hospitals, and doctors have launched new payment arrangement, which i'm going talk about. that explains what you're seeing in some of the premium across the country. this is a handy danny chart. through the prism of the health plan, you can see the entire shaded area has been done. now what is next is what is not shaded which is above the line there. next slide, please. in term of understanding rate variation. just one rule. there's no average. a urm inform people expect that there is an average premium, and we have a very good study that was done for us by melmen which actually very clearly explained from a very specific perspective on all of the factorses that i'm going to talk about. how they veriy, why they vary

across the country. if people are interested we are happy to share it. they conclude there's no possibility of determining an average for the following reason. how you price a health insurance product depend on the average of individuals buying. number one, where people live, and i'll explain why in a moment. number two, and other factors i'm going talk about in a moment. obviously in the interest of time, so ed doesn't have to get the hook. i'm oversimple simplifying. first, we start what coverage do people have today? if you're in your 20s, for example, generally what you buy is catastrophic donch protect yourself and prevent medical bankruptcy. not that we don't try and want to sell broader coverage, but generally folks in the 20s and many times in their early 30s are -- and sometimes later 30s are just interested in having that baseline protection. so obviously if you're starting

there and going ten categories of coverage, that's a buyup situation. what health insurance also a reform does if you're on the old every end of the spectrum, and you have a number of health conditions, then health reform probably means that u yo are going to be spending less. where you stand depends on where you start. there's no average. the second thing is premarket regulation in the state. so a number of you probably heard us talking about things like compression. it's ab important area because folks who are over 50 are expecting reductions, and people who are under 45 and healthy need to be part of the pool so we can make thiewr -- sure that the expectations are fulfilled on the end of people who are older rather than younger. and that's why some of the issues within the legislation compressing premiums to the

point that they have compressed put pressure on folks who are younger. at the same time, plans have tried to recognize the dynamic here to do whatever they can to make sure that they are turning in affordable rates. for individuals who will be purchasing. if you have a healthy insurance pool you have to have the mixture of 09er, younger, and healthier and sick. so we worked very hard to make sure we are doing our job to provide affordable coverage. state mandate play a role. where you are located in term of high cost and low cost area and that differs state to state plays a role. and finally, the ability to do payment innovation. to the extent you can do payment innovation as a health plan you are stretching health care dollars for individuals. that's why we worked hard to do that. next slide.

there are some exojist issues that overhang here. that i think more policy leaders are pay attention to. if you look at california's rates that are posted. same health plan operating in northern versus southern california. you see a difference betweening the pricing higher in northern california because the extent of possible consolidation net market versus southern california. that's a primary feature i use that example. there are a number of other examples. there's the health insurance premium tax in the legislation. that's of concern because it adds on average first year $300 to the cost of family coverage, and anything that is adding in our view, is a problem in term of adding to cost while we're trying to make sure we're earn turning to affordable product here.

states joe and i were talking about how many states around the country still have restrictions on our ability to actually provide high performing networks for individual to be able to access high performing doctors and hospitals to make sure again we're stretching those dollars. that will have to be looked at. scope practice, this community is very familiar with that. to make sure nurses can play a roader roll. and other professionals as part of team so we can try to economize health care and make it parent-centered. and stretch the dollars. the issue of defense and medicine. i'm not talking about tort reform from the perspective if we want to have high quality practice, then we have to be able to reward physicians that are practicing according to the latest professional society standards.

and i think that there is a potentially an area to look at there as a way to improve quality. the final slide, i'll say a couple of things about this. as i said, the plan community is focused on being ready, doing the job that we are expected to do. i can talk if you're interested from the standpoint of what that means for getting our call center ready, our agents and brokers trained, our region education. all of the technical infrastructure support on the i.t. side making sure we are ready to do our job. making sure we're meeting accreditation standards of federal exchange as well as state exchange. and making sure we are doing our job and working closely as we are with cms on the testing of the various westbound -- websites and aspect of the website. we are focused on

affordability. focused on workability, and making sure that the experience is a positive one for individuals whether they call our health plans, whether they are using the health plans services, or whether they're inquiring about the networking of hospital and doctors. a significant amount of activity going on, and i hope that's helpful in term of rounding up the panel and i look forward to answering questions. >> that's terrific. thank you very much. , karen. it does help, i think a great deal. we have put a lot of issues on the table here, and put a lot of pressure on our panelists to not be too detailed. you had a chance to sketch out some of those details. as i messaged, there are -- mentioned there are microphones you use to ask your questions. they are at the back of the room. if you do that, i would ask that you identify yourself and keep your question as briefly as you

can so we can get through them. we also have the green question cards in the packet if you want to write the question out and hold it up. someone will come by and bring it forward. i believe that you go first. >> thank you. >> i'm dr. caroline, i'm a primary care physician. i'm curious about plan variability. it's possible to design -- well, let me go back. it's possible to design plans that are more attractive to young healthy people with a gym membership, and for instance and rans less attractive to older people. maybe there aren't too many specialist or a lot of physical therapy. nobody said anything about risk adjustment on the panel. how are you -- are there any controls on making plans more attractive to young people and less attractive to

older people? >> good question. [inaudible] >> i think, first and foremost, the essential health benefit address that a little bit. being that everybody is required to cover the essential health benefit and fairp, for example, needs to be covered. also, from a risk adjustment perspective, you know, the rates are pooled in and outside the market. inside and outside the exchange. i think that, you know, as you address your entire market, that you're a carrier and looking a the entire market you have to look inside and outside. so while you may try and attract, you know, certain people within the exchange or outside the exchange, you still have to pull it across the board. i think from a risk adjustment perspective i think that helps to address that. >> i think rebecca did a great job. that's exactly right. i also think that the competition now the way it's skinned because everything is

very transparent. one plan bidding against the other. with clear disclosure on the networking adequate sincerity and specific standards in all of those areas. so the plans are very focused on. that's why i want to make sure that they're engaging in the partnership they need to engage with to providers to provide the affordable coverage options that we are seeing now as the rates being exposed across the country. >> thank you. there's a difference between the benefit package defined in the law for the service medicaid program and benefit package. and to the extent that somebody qualifies for medicaid under the program, but required to get the

coverage through the exchange base plan. they may have a package circht than what they qualify for fee-for-service. i'll give you a concrete example. the affordability care act required -- for medicaid. and -- that level of coverage is not specified. it's going available depending on the states and plans. it may be that a person gets to an exchange plan and a pregnant woman doesn't have coverage if she wants to go to a free standing birth center. how is she going to know if she wants to that she can get coverage if that kind of service under the fee-for-service program. are you making any provision to inform your patients about that kind of thing? >> i'll get back to your question. let me set up in a slightly different way. many of the requirement of the medicaid plans have to assure access that didn't equal what individuals in the private sector were achieving.

you give an example about nurse mid wife. requirement for access. in our private option, explicitly and legislatively in arkansas statute, we are trying to have medicaid program utilize these same benefits that private individuals have in therefore to eliminate supplement tal requirement for medicaid access to reach approach equity. we have equity. the same people on the private individuals and the qhp. it's the same whether you're on private insurance or medicaid. we think some will contract with mid wife for services for the private and medicaid beneficiary. it's explicitly not having medicaid reach across and tell the health insurance plan who they have to characteristic with or pay. it's to get our medicaid ben fishy newly covered. the same coverage that privately congressed individuals in the insurance congress under the affordable care act.

it neutralizes the access difference by us using the same private sector plans that private individuals will pay. in our approach, if you're not million -- medically frail you won't have a option for tradition nailing medicaid. you have a -- to select between one of the qhp on the private exchange as do those that come to the federally facilitated exchange and have the same choice also. >> thank you. i want to follow up and request the cost sharing for people eligible for medicaid and getting coverage. >> that was one of the things that over the last sixty dais we have spent a fair bit of earth on. there's a limit of 5% people between 130 and 150%. it's 5% of the plan cost and

medicaid eligibility. it's 5 percent of family income. the cost share soggy it's essentially and through the insurance commissioners plan guidance forced all the plan to use the same high value cost sharing. so that an individual who is medicaid funded at 100, or tax subsidized at 149, we require the plan to have the same cost sharing arrangement for individuals. below 100 they don't have it and medicaid wrap for the cost sharing. on premium, individuals will not have premium because medicaid will be buying the premium on their behalf. >> okay. >> yes. go ahead. >> i'm nay than -- i have a question about the state of community providers app the federal exchange i think in the partisanship exchange. who participate in the 340b

program. but state run exchanges that is not the case. that's still influx. who and how are we going monitor the inclusion of essential community providers in the health plan networks? especially because those organizations care for under serve and core population? sure. that's a great question. than is definitely something that we're going to be tracking going forward in term of the state approaches to networking adequate sincerity and community providers. so -- i can tell you what we're doing in maryland. do you care about what we're doing in maryland? >> yeah. so in maryland we are the networking adequate sincerity standard defined by the carrier. we didn't want to modify that. e with didn't want to disrupt

the market. we want as many people to participate as possible. that being said, we also created mixers between the essential community providers and the carriers. and so we met around the state to introduce essential community providers to the carrier and help the community providers understand what it means to work with the carrier and the fact they may be getting grant today to help them change the business nolgd understand that the funding is not necessarily going to come through grant. it's to be coming with the carrier and networking with the carrier. help them understand what the differences are and make sure that they participate with the provider. >> with the carrier. >> can i add? >> please. >> and just coming behind rebecca. there's a great deal of work going on with the plans and the central community providers across the country. both getting to know one another, but a number of the plans have actually been long standing colleagues with the essential community providers. and i think you said it very

correctly, i see these relationships growing. one of the issues that the plans have put on the table, i'm not sure it's surface in maryland yet, but across the country is we want to make sure that essential community providers are able to meet quality standards and transparency so on and so forth. in the process of talking that through with a number of essential community providers across the country. >> thank you. how arkansas defines medically frair. and what percentage of the population under 138% fpl is floridaly frail. and second, i'm also wondering about the budgetary impact in the state of arkansas after 2017 when the federal share drops

below 100% to pay for medicaid and how the state justifies what it's doing with the waiver given that they are more expensive than medicaid. >> starting with the last first. giving our political diversity. we have authority do this for three years while the sphrowft paying 100% from the general assembly. we three years to actually assess. i think that's a demonstration waiver to the federal government to what the system impact is. not only for the medicaid program, but also the broader health care system. i think that will be an important part of the evaluation component that i'm confident will be required in the federal government and we desire on the state side. coming back to your first question. i'm blanking. >> what is frail? every plan and i think one of the challenges we have. these people uncleared have no

claim or past record. we have developed a screener set of questions. it's relatively limited with the university of michigan and some limited validation step for the health care and quality we will launch in line of the path of the individual coming through. we estimate that the number that are medically frail will be less than 10%. we try to pull 10% of every who come through out. the important caveat, if row are already disabled you are already on medicaid and not coming through the portal. all the disabled individuals stay on medicaid in the traditional role. it's 10% of the uninsured individuals. we have some experience with a waiver we had for small businesses. with individuals that were in the working arraignment.

we are going start off, we believe it's less than 10%. we're going to overshoot and pull 10% out. as we get experience with the individuals on the use of service, claim information required from the health plan and the wrap around service people will be able to unveil themselves of try to refine it over time. it requires that it benefits parody with medical surgical benefits. i guess my question is what is the experience thus far. how well is it works as we set up the classified health plan. as the states ready to begin enrollment and so on?

they determine what the essential benefit is. we picked one the small group plan and had to supplement on the -- i would say it's easier on substance abuse. i think we have it on substance abuse and mental health.

i believe it's a little bit squishy on debilitative care. they never had experience like the medicaid plans have had. i would say my concern is less so about the financial parody of those two we have not built up the capacity in the work force to bible to provide the service even at the financial barrier relieved. >> thank you very much. >> hi had. i'm clark ross. american association on health and cability. goipt back to dr. tempson on the millionly frair issue. we we are working with several disability coalition trying to figure out the determination of medically frail and the timeline. how quickly it will be done. so i understand you use university of michigan a questionnaire. who actually will make the

determination and is there a timeline for whoever that person entity is to make that determination to make the determination? >> so it's an operational challenge, let me take you through it. we are using best supported screener tools we can find. we believe the number of medically frail is, again, significantly less than 10%, but to err on the side of safety we stet at 10%. they come through the process and it will be a self-assessment they fill out the question year. those 10% will be routed, if you will or maintained and not allowed to go forward to the private insurance plan selection. we hope there are false negative people who are millionly frail

who get rooted to the plan. from the discussion with the federal government we believe and want to enable the individual throughout the year to essentially raise their hand and say i think i need to take screener again. i'm not being best served. or we retain the option for the med came program to say the service utilization looks like they may not be best served. we are stricting the plans from being able to do that. every 12 months the medicaid available individuals will retake the screener and consider whether they are best served in private sector or medicaid program. that's the current approach. it is dealted assessment on the front end and guarantee in the right place. the approach we have taken has tried to minimize the number of

-- if you will, false negatives people who are millionly frail and end up to the private sector. but with the two different safety net route for them to be pulled out after the fact. >> if i can the folk at the microphone to be patient for a moment. i would like to try get at one or two of the questions we had on cards and submitted in advance. there's a lot of interest expressed and tension on the panel's part to question what the premiums are. question asks how much ability did the state have to negotiate or do states have to negotiate lower premium for exchange plan. is there a lot of variation how aggressive the states have been in the area? >> i can try to answer that one. so [inaudible] the states could choose to

negotiate premium or kind of follow the states, you know, standard rate review process. generally you have a few states that have negotiated premium. so california is one example. rise, these are typically your active purchasers. selective for the rates come in. there's a i guess not a threat, but, you know, the notion that some of those plans could not be certified if the rates weren't satisfactory. if the insurance commissioner is the one that is responsible for the rate review process that karen mentioned that was

instituted already and typical kind of following that in a couple of case, like, in d.c., there may be augmenting it with some of their own independent actuary to take an additional look at the rate. but, you know, karen, you might have additional perspective from the plan perspective. >> i think everyone in this audience knows well that this is a very different dynamic. the market is changing very substantially in terms of we are going to be in a situation where consumers can now can compare plant to plan consumers price sensitive. the plans have very significantly motivated to do what they can. which is why i want to stress what we're doing in term of payment reform to make sure you are competitive on price,

competitive on quality, as individuals look at the quality spectrum as well. and so in addition i guess the third fake to keep in mind there are caps now on administrative cost for plans. so the dynamic is to be if you are health insurance plan, you your mission is to provide health insurance coverage. so you going coeverything you to provide affordable, high quality options to individuals because you want people to buy your product. as you think about pricing, you think about what will meet elevate people to buy product so the pressure is to be as cost-effective as possible. which is why all the work on the payment side is so important here to leverage those tools. disease management, a range of thing we haven't had a chance to talk about. but go in to the how you think about building your premium.

when you run against consolidation, where it's difficult on the hospital side to actually negotiate the kind of affordable premiums you would like, that's a problem. and the reason i wanted to point out california is because you can see that as a very striking example of the problem. i think the policy community is only beginning to internalize that as a major issue. and as the issue it is. there was a blogpost on the website on thursday. it is worth looking at. it's a question of variation. they did is look at premiums the range of premiums that are published so far in state. look at the variation between the second highest silver premium and the second lowest. there's a tremendous amount of ratherruation in the rate and different stateses a well. there was a tremendous amount in new york city. there was a great deal of variation in california.

what sara mentioned in term of the selective negotiation that california gave. there was far less variation, at least in san francisco and san diego. so the authors also provide some explanation why they think we're seeing the broad variation in certain cities and maybe not so much. a lot of it comes down to what karen is arguing that we don't have a lot of experience with the market. the question is over time will the different approaches to market organizations that we see in states will that make a difference and the kinds of premium that people are seeing? i guess i'm maybe posing that question to karen over time i

think so. you have some new case offering insurance product that have never been in the insurance industry and before. and it will be interesting to see if they are able to make it as insurance carriers. i think as you approach this and as an insurance plan, you think do i have a network it's the large unknown sara talked about as well. and very ably. you don't know who is actually going buy the product. you have to make a hypothesis about percent of young percent of old. if we don't have that ideal blend, then it doesn't work out so well.

in pricing to make sure you are offering affordable product as many people as possible to attract that balance in the risk pool. so all of the factors as sara said come in to play as you build your networking and over time see people have more experience is. it's very different bidding year two versus year one. we saw it in the prescription drug plan. the only other factor to put on the table and all of you this here. if you look at the federal program, the experience there is sobering. we have a number of people the rules are you can't have insurance coverage for six month before you enroll. the reason i point it out it

gives us a window who may come to the pool. the piece of program across the country and there are more at the state level. we have seen that i don't know of any that is even with what is being paid in versus what is paid out. i know, a number of states are paying out eight times what was taken in. some are paying out two times what was taken on and there a bunch in between. i think for -- as an actuary, if you are building a risk profile, to figure out how to price a product you have to figure out how many people who are very, very sick are coming to your plan. there's no way to know until the first year you have the first year under the belt. i think you asked an important question. we're probably going to see some of this i watt -- way we did in d. >> karen, you're referring to the federally set up temporary

high-risk pool. >> yes. that were put in place by the aca as sort of a way to get people with preexisting condition to the starting line in 2014. right which is an important program. it doesn't give us a window who people who don't have health care coverage. many of them are maybe have significant health care concern. obviously it's important for them to get the system as early as possible so you can coordinate the care, provide the support they probably haven't had you can do it, i think, far more rely on going to the emergency room and that was the only way they could get care. and coverage to the extent that you called that coverage. it's not much but with that program that allowed folks to be able to go to the system very important. but if you're sitting in your desk and ab actuary for a plan

thinking about how to price a product, so you to look at that as well. i think all that have explains some variation. and the high cost, low cost area just we see that across states. if you look at new york state, much more expensive down state than up state. in term of pricing the actual services that people purchase through premiums. >> if i can take 30 second for the commercial. the alliance is mounting a web are in to try to delve a little bit deeply to the rate question next tuesday, the 13th. if you have out indication and the time, you can find information about it on our website. the folks with the microphones have been patient. please? >> thank you. arlington health care group. a question on the design model for eligibility for the premium subsidizes and tax credits.

what design models have been considered and/or adopted already. i understand that with the federal data hub they have actually chosen the design model that include utilizing some third party vendors. to validate income and credit scores and thing of that nature. i would like to understand a little bit of what other design models have been used in the big box in the sky sky, and how effective they are. >> we are using the federal data hub. >> we are too. we didn't want that responsibility in the rapid cycle frame we were going. >> a large number of states are using the federal data hub. >> i guess. i guess maybe my correlation question is there any risk associated with just having one vendor only transunion or some combination thereof?

i think that obvious answer is very, very early. i think from our perspective, what we're focused on will the data be correct? and the individuals are focused as well. we have been working with a number of advocacy groups and so on. and number of starts as well. with the cms very, very actively to help support the. they are focused on this to make sure the information is correct. what we are going to be getting is a transmission from the federal hub, for example, from the federal exchange saying the hub in this case for states that are using it saying this individual is enrolled. they are eligible for particular subsidize because that would have been -- they would have an interface with the irs and et.

that's generally how it's going work. >> okay. i would add it's not going to be perfect on october 1st. [laughter] it's going have at love bump and a lot of pothole going down the path. and so i know i think it will be get refine over time. there's risk and consolidated too much within one entity. i'm sure it can be met gaited through competitive purchasing group. >> thank you all. i had a question for doctor thompson. obviously there's a lot of newly insured anemia your state. i wonder what difficult you see with them having access to care. where will they be going for care? >> i think that's one of the reason across the platform is transformation while we start with the work force strategic planning process. both came out -- individuals were providers were we found a dramatic

consolidation of primary care providers in the county that had low insurance rates. people don't like to move out when provokes the essential community health providers, and i think anticipated dependent to meet the newly insured demand and build new relationship between the health plan and those providers. we have less of a shortage. i think we industrial a shortage. i think the nation has a shortage. we went footer say we need reorganize the system. actually move toward team-base care that has a physician in the lead but doesn't necessarily have a physician being the touch point for the patient. and integrate using electronic health records across platform and site. we have actually come from way in the back of the pack on health information exchange. electronic health record use we

were the first state to get meaningful use approval by the officer of national coordinators. so i think it's about practicing smarter, using technology, and actually using facilitated technique to get patients access at the point they need it with a level of service they need. and importantly refer ton a system we removed the financial barrier which has been such a devastating issue and effected work force access, and can -- did a study that oughted if we took advantage of the medicaid expansion and the tax credit 2400 lives a year saved in our state. >> add a little bit to that. i think the question of networking adequate sincerity is one of those that probably going continue to evolve as we're watching this go forward, and, you know, some of the things that karen have been talking

about in term of the new team base model of care. different way to make sure there's access, open access scheduling and things like that. the way we think about networking adequate is evolving in term of the standards and circht states in different plaits. some states have existing standards like time and distance standards, you know, no more than 30 miles to, you know, over 30 minutes. other may have a ray ratio of providers to patients. and a lot of flexibility in term how they apply the networking adequate standards. and to sort of take it up a little bit of a level it's most basic. states, i think, had to really think through and kind of struggle with how to take a standard that might only apply to h measuring o in the state and apry -- apply it to all on the exchange. and figure how to apply it and

whether to market it inside the exchange and outside the exchange to avoid those adverse selection issues that could arise if you are playing a different standards inside and outside the exchange. i think that's something that states are still thinking through, and bears close watching as things move forward. >> we have about ten minutes left. i would ask as we go through the last question and answer if you would pull out the blue evaluation form and try give us feedback. the next question, actually, coming back to you, sara dash. the questioner would like you to take us through the funding stream for navigators, consumers sisters in 2014 and long-term. >> do you want to stay after school? >> i'll try. [laughter] so the funding stream, so, i

mean, to try to simplify it a little bit, when states decided to set up the known exchanges, florida entered to a state partnership exchange like arkansas has done. they had access to basically exchange establishment funding to set up navigator and consumer assistance programs. the federal exchanges that aren't running where the state isn't running a consumer stance program they are relying on basically federal grant funding to fund their navigator program. so i think the first wait of the 54 million if i'm not mistaken to fund the navigator. those are the navigators that chiquita was talking about that are soon to be announced. states can't use the funding it -- the states cannot use exchange

establishment grant funding to fund navigator grants. that's why there's an in-person system program which is a program that states can use their exchange establishment grant funding to fund the actual grant. starting once the states start get revenue to the exchange they can use their exchange operational funding to fund the navigator grant. so, you know, i mean, i think this is all overlaying sort of a, you know, fight about the duty of navigators and, you know, agent and brockers been an ongoing bit of a struggle. but, i mean, essentially what you had was states having to put together an assistance program and kind of different funding stream in order to do it, while

trying to making sure they reach the population. i don't know if there's a specific state perspective there. ..

so having that oversight of those streams is something we are very focused on. >> a question again from joe about the medicaid approach that arkansas is using him whether he thinks it could work for other states. i guess if you think back to the map, about 25 states not undecided are not going to withstand. others it's potentially looking at this as an option for a way forward for them. >> i think we are testing several aspects. one is eliminating access barriers by having medicaid individuals for the same plan privately insured good on the flipside, making sure medicaid individuals are adequately served by the privately insured. i think it is to go back to her state. had the most restrictive

gullibility threshold. we have not expanded to medicaid outage here before. steve had a verdict on that may have an easier path than ard had in place. if we find providers are much more readily willing to accept medicaid patients that they closed the access hairier and get the outcomes that we want, that could be a mechanism that we are able to maintain a competitive pricing structure so it is equivalent to what medicaid would otherwise have had to pay. this path opens up a potentially new avenue of the golden outcomes of high-quality fish and affordable care for medicaid programs in other states. >> there is another aspect, one question that is relevant here. do you pay or do you envision paying providers the same rate

for these non-medicaid eligible people as they are paying for those over 130%? >> important question. it differentiates them medicaid care or traditional state medicaid programs were providers are paid a much lower rate. we are buying the same health plan that the tax subsidized individuals about 138% are receiving and we are putting in safeguards so a provider doesn't know whether the individual is medicaid untouchable or tax subsidized. we are intentionally trying to eliminate a providers knowledge whether the individual is medicaid funded or tax subsidized and therefore the payment rates have to be the same. >> yes, i'm sorry. last question. >> hi, strategic communications.

this is just a general question. i'm sorry if this is our debate answer. i am just trying to understand what the difference in the job roles is between sisters and navigators because it seems like they do -- it is just a different turn for the same kind of thing. i'm just trying to understand what the difference is between the community as sisters and navigators actually do. >> e-mail, long story short is they are doing very similar roles. the navigators have a certain set of prescribed roles in the last such as outreach and education, facilitating enrollment into a plan. you know, certainly providing services in a culturally linguistic manner.

you know, states designing these programs could have said being some variations on that. i am large, they are going to be largely similar duties. you know, i can with a funding streams. >> how will the consumer note the difference? the consumer will want to find a navigator, but they will see an organization that would hope that. >> they don't need to know the difference. >> go to the website and you'll see a list of potential people that can help you. >> then we have numbers of agents and brokers around the country also going to be very actively involved in helping people get enrolled and flipped through the coverage options and so on and so forth. they have a lot of experience doing that. >> is there any difference in those categories in the extent

to which they will get access to the personal information? there have been privacy concerns raised in this area. while non-navigators be able to get that same information to help people put it into the system as the navigators do? >> well, agents and brokers, for example, sort of a kitchen table test will be helping people determine whether or not they have a chance getting a subsidy and so on and so forth as well as the traditional types of things that agents and brokers do. how do you compare one plant to another if you are a doctor and that particular plan that you're interested in. what kinds of diseases you have in your families or might you have a possibility or probability of having? how do you look at networks and so on and so forth? all of those decisions are taught about by agents and

brokers with their clients. normally at kitchen tables across the country. they will certainly be helping people determine whether they are a candidate for the subsidies. >> i believe that is the last word. i apologize for those folks who wrote the questions on cards and we didn't have time to get to. i will ask you to fill about the forms if you haven't already. i would also like to thank our colleague, sir and rachel at the commonwealth fund for helping to a great extent shaped this program and put this together with an excellent panel and i would like you to help me think that pmo from what i bet it's not the last time we addressed this question, but certainly one of the most enlightening discussions we've had on the exchanges. thank you.

[applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> democratic senator, sheldon whitehouse how they made in pawtucket, rhode island. he described a divided republican party between moderates and republicans each party. he also talked about health care exchanges about climate change and wall street reform. this townhall is an hour. [applause] >> already. now this is -- go ahead and have a seat, guys. this is the 115th, by our count, community dinner that i have held since i first started running for the senate back now seven years ago. we do them subtly and that kind of got the routine down.

that is that everybody gets something to eat and then we sit down. i speak very briefly and then it's just a discussion. so if you have a question, if you have a comment, this is rhode island. we even accept remarks, the whole package. please feel free. but in order that everybody else has a chance to hear you, please put your hand up and give us a chance to get a microphone to you. who is running the microphones here? these chama men look at the hand mike. one other thing that i will say is that now that everybody doesn't love public speaking. whether it is because you don't love public speaking or whether it is because what she want to talk about is more personal than that or whether we've simply ran

out of time, if for some reason we don't get to you, don't worry about it. one of my rules for these community dinners as i try to be the last person to leave. so i will stick around and if you want to talk about something that you don't want to talk about in front of everybody, that's fine, too. thank you very much. obviously, this is a challenging time to be in washington. economic recovery is still very slow and particularly slow here in rhode island. we are trying to do things to get the economy moving more quickly, but we are trying to do so anytime with this enormous conflict and dissension in washington. the one thing i want to tell you about that, because it is my job to report back to you on what i see and what is going on around me is that what i see is not actually a lot of conflict between republicans and

democrats. what i see is immense conflict, bitter conflict within the republican party. you have a tea party contingent that has one set of views. you've got four moderate republicans who have a very different set of views and they are really almost at each other's throats now. you have flat-out conflict on the floor of the senate between republicans. you have fights within the caucus among republicans. you have one group raising money against the other group and it's really very, very contentious. we are kind of bystanders to that site. we experienced the effects of it because when one party is that divided and there's not much anger and conflict, it is very hard for them to help getting legislation passed. so we have had our troubles

there, but we are pushing very, very hard. senator reid and i had dinner several months ago with president obama and the provost around the table. the president was talking about one area where he thinks the republicans are willing to work with us tonight is on infrastructure. that is an important opening because if we get that done, that is a big deal. there are so many pros that need work in rhode island. there are so many bridges that are past their appropriate life or need, repair and maintenance. there's so much water work that needs to be done, both sewage and clean water that needs to be done. nationally because $600 billion worth of water work we could be doing. we've got 6 billion of it done, 1%. there is a lot more. we need to do it sooner or

later. it will help rhode island more than other states because we've got a lot of a lot of old infrastructure. we need their jobs. we need to get after that. i think that is an important window and i'm working to find awake to get a good infrastructure bill through the senate. we've got a water infrastructure bill through and we need to get other ones as well for rosen urges. the last thing i will mention is health care. we are closing in on being able to stand up the insurance exchanges that were in the affordable care act. that should be a really good deal for everybody. where they come up with seeing prices come down. it's for the very obvious reason that if you've got an insurance exchange, it is like a market. you can go there and you can find what is for sale, what the price is and you can match the

side-by-side because they have to match in order to qualify. you can know what you are dealing with them you can find out which gives the best price. that makes the insurance companies have to compete on price. most of the time insurance companies compete on trying to get the business of a big business. so if you're a big business come you got a good rate for your employees. if you are a small business, maybe not so much. if you are on your own trying to buy insurance, you pay through the nose. this brings everybody together so you don't have to be in big business to get a good price. the a marketable worker may hope it will bring prices down. i am pleased with a terrific job liz roberts has done moving us forward on that. there are a lot of issues. we can talk about any and all of them. i just wanted to open with those

two. if anybody wants to lead off with a question or a comment, i will gladly do that. as we do that, but may find ian lang who is here. where are you? en is working at the health exchange and that is now sped up. if there's any specific questions, i want to make sure we have him here. without coming on soon, he's there to answer technical questions and try to help. thank you, en, for being here and a great job you all are doing. >> binaries can always. i'm retired fire captain and i work for senate since he first ran. he's always made me proud i've told you that.

it is unfortunate that if i was in a union and i ran for president and you defeated me, what i would do in america or the school council, if you become president, i am going to back you. it is my union. but can i do to help you? we seem to have anything here are all american, however, i look it up every morning and think what i can possibly do to us just where winter. what can i do to make about that? c-note infrastructure. what can i do to make sure more people are unemployed. that's not the way things are supposed to work. representative of the head of the house says we are not here to pass laws because laws help people. we are here to repeal laws.

unfortunately, he's been lousy at that job, too. in five years he hasn't repealed any laws. so all i am asking you, senator, and i spoke to you earlier. the only thing i'm asking because everything is done so far is to not give in to the debt ceiling of terrorism because that is absolutely ridiculous. i guess i was talking, it the times -- i don't know if they published on the last 13 years has been wrong in everything. he finally got one right today's ago. he had a picture of the elephant, republican with a gun to his head. if the debt ceiling. even after 13 years -- i told my wife come get me a glass of water and going to pass out. i said anyway, that is only matched to you is to stand strong. i can understand if a problem,

but stand strong and thank you. >> i can promise you that i will. [applause] i can also promise you that a lot of republicans will stand with me. this is another one of those issues where it's not all the republicans together wanting to do this. there's a group of extremist nakedness for. many republicans disagree with them. i know a senator from north carolina. he's a republican. he is as conservative as you can imagine. it is also a responsible person. and he was asked about this idea of voting against the debt limit and crashing the credit of the united states of america as the

threat for the repeal of obamacare, which nobody actually wants. they can't win on a boat, said they want to operate like you would -- take a hostage. but richard said, he was actually overseas visiting the troops. they put a microphone in front of his face and said that is the dumbest idea i've ever heard. so when a conservative republican is saying that is the dumbest idea i've ever heard, it is pretty safe bet why i stand up as so many of them. that's important. >> yes, sir. >> senator, my name is drawn from west greenwich. i'm a small businessman. we have a family also. when we don't have money anymore to operate our business, to pay additional people, to pay for

various things of this sort, we have to let people go to avoid bankruptcy. we stopped spending money. the u.s. government right now is that stopping. they're increasing that, you did help some people, yet it's also costing him in the future everything they could make. they will appeal to afford this. i like you people, but i don't like the future that my children and grandchildren will occur. >> what you make two points about that because it's a really good point. but all that's going on to say we've got to get the debt down, got to get the deficit down. the deficit is down because of the economic recovery. we have to get down also. there are two considerations

that i think are important to that discussion. one is we are still in a recession. we are still recovering. if you look over in europe, they try to basically cut their way out of the recession and followed the so-called austerity principles. and what happened as their economies actually got worse. our gdp isn't growing much, but it's climbing by 1% to 2%. they are actually falling. our unemployment is higher than it should be, but it is single digits and even in rhode island is around 9%, just under 9%. in a lot of those countries, greece, italy, portugal, italy

17%. it is 27%. so when the economy goes bad, families spend life. businesses spend less, municipalities spend life, states spend less and that contracts the economy even further. the federal government's job in that time is to counterbalance that by spending to offset. i think our economic results are better. that is a short-term thing. as soon as the economy because it's a it's a cold coming any to die about that. you do have to get through the down period. i think if we followed the republican prescription about those cuts they wanted in the middle of the recession, we would look a lot more like portugal that we do not economically. we would be in real dire straits. that's one point. the second is if you look out, the big issue that crushes the deficit is health care. and everybody agrees on that.

paul ryan is the most conservative budget cutter in washington says if you're going to be honest about the deficit, it's really health care. president up, on the other side of the equation says if you're going to be honest about the dead, it is really health care. you've really got to get after health care. to me, the issue in health care is that we have to make it way more efficient and we can't. we really can't. we spend 18% of our gross domestic product in this country, 18% on health care. in europe it is about 11% on average. why are we spending more than half as much than they do in europe when in europe it is free health care for everybody and here we have people left uninsured, all these problems in our health care system. the national institute of

medicine say you can save $750 billion every year in health care spent. three quarters of a trillion dollars every year in nearly half comes back to the federal government taxpayer, medicare, medicaid and all that. so to me, that is where we need to look. how do you bring that number? right now we spent $2.7 trillion on health care. how do you bring that down under 2 trillion all that savings comes into the economy and half of that goes into the federal budget and that's the big issue on a going forward basis. the battle we have them wash 10 is one group of people say we've got the health care side, the cut medicare and medicaid are not solve the underlying problem. i think we have to solve the underlying problem. i've been beating heart of the obama administration to be more responsible and more accountable about trying to get down the

road further. i will close by saying we are actually good at this in rhode island. people like to knock rhode island, but this is an area we are doing really cool things. go to any intensive care unit in rhode island. your likelihood of getting a hospital infection that many of sculling men and all that, people always get infections in the hospital. in an intensive care unit because of a program that kicked, your likelihood of getting a hospital acquired infection is now zero. they simply don't happen any longer because they put procedures in place to prevent it. that saves millions of dollars because you're not having to treat the infection. not to mention people die at them. there is this huge human cost as well. we are paying doctors more for trying to keep you outside of how many procedures they gave to you. that is changing the way people do business. i don't know if anybody uses

coastal medical. the doctor in charge of steering them in a whole new direction. the patients love it. they are open more hours. more support to keep yourself healthy. i mean, who likes having medical procedures done, really? so it's happening in rhode island. you can see the future and rhode island is leading the way. i agree with you. i think we've got to hold off a little bit to make sure the economy is back before we start to draw federal money out of the economy. it's got to be about the time private money is coming back in. it's the big dollar item. if we do that, we can get back to very sensible levels of debt quickly. you are right to be concerned and i appreciate that you raise that. i promise not to give such long answers in the future. that's a really interesting question. i've stunned everybody with

that, haven't i.? sorry about that. yes, sir. [inaudible] >> i think it's great, but i want to ask, do you support elizabeth warren universal health care or some it might not? if not, why so? >> i think it would be a good idea. i think it would be a lot more efficient and i think it would be a lot fair. practically, how do you get there? that is a bit of a problem. i actually wrote, along with sherrod brown, the senator from ohio, two of us wrote in the affordable care act will be called the public option. so people didn't want to have a public brokering, they didn't have to. but there was a public option available. we couldn't get the votes for it in so it failed. i felt strongly enough about it with sharad.

we wrote that bill together and i still strongly believe in a public option. you mention vermont. there's a waiver in the affordable care to save the state wants to go to single payer, they can do that. vermont is starting to decide whether they will go to a statewide single-payer system. my guess is vermont does that and you find the come down by 25%, 30%, that will be pretty interesting and people start looking around saying we ought to think about that. that seems to be working pretty well. [inaudible] >> yes, absolutely. yes, sir. blue shirt. >> hi, senator. steve groner. a couple of questions on health care. one with the website that has been set up the portal.

want to know how secure are my data will be what i and others go to enter data, october 1st if the feds have confirmed security on there and. >> i believe that it is secure. i don't know the details of how they secure it. if you look at the information exchange that rhode island has running, the insurance exchange will have some information, but not a lot because the product goes up in you decide if you want it. and you go. by that data is much more personal is in the information exchange. the information exchange is if you say you got an mri, the information exchange allows the laboratory that did the blood test for the imaging shop that

took the mri to basically posted direct way onto your own private electronic health record. so your doctor can see it right away and i was going on with you and it simplifies things and speeds up the time. but i've been watching that for years and that got that covered very tightly. so it's a priority that needs to be secure. >> i'm wondering who will have access to my data website and put it into the system. >> on the information exchange, use the lack who has access to your data and you can select by naming doctors or you can select by saying a doctor who was treating me. you may even select wide-open, anybody can see it. it is your choice in the select the program. >> as far as penalties go, who

is in charge of assessing -- who is going to collect as penalties? >> statue that requires the release of public information to be disclosed. once they are disclosed, there is a private cause of action, where you can go to court and say wait a minute, you released my information and the regulatory agency over whatever it is, the telephone company or a hospital, whoever is regulating them has the authority to sanction them for having released the information in an unauthorized fashion. >> i'm talking about if i choose or if somebody chooses not to sign up for health care, there there is a penalty.

i believe the first year is $95 or 1% of the rent town. >> the irs collects data. >> the irs. that doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. once they get access -- said they will get access to my data because obviously they will come collecting the money. >> they don't need access to your data to collect money. >> okay. i guess they will find me somehow. i had one final question on health care. i noticed that illegal aliens do not have to participate in this program. can i participate in this program? >> that's a good question. i don't know off the top of my

head. i think at the moment the answer is no. because if you are in l.a. and who is here in undocumented or legal fashion, you are not in title ii any federal health benefits. so you would be entitled to the benefit of the payment that you get to make the insurance affordable under this plan. when that changes if we pass immigration reform and at what point people on the path to citizenship cancer to claim that benefit is that this point is not certain because the house hasn't passed a bill yet. but it could happen after that passes there is a point at which undocumented folks get the chance to come in. >> finally, when did the federal subsidies and? subsidies for health care. they started 2014.

>> they are intended to be continuing. >> that is taxpayer money that puts the bill. >> alternately, yeah. things for your question. and thanks for coming out. >> i didn't come right from the beginning, so if you've asked this question, just ignore it. the role of states in the study of interest rates. that is the case until a certain point a minute longer came the case. if my understanding is correct, elizabeth warren would try to revert this problem. if that's the case, if you could elaborate on the status of those

attempts. >> i'd be happy to. this is not something that makes me popular with the big banks. but many of you will remember a time when a feedback or somebody else charged interest rates that were too high, it was called usery and it was actually an offense and there was a matter to refer to the police. rhode island had laws among other states that limited the amount of interest that banks could charge, which is a long, long, long tradition, back to the bible days where there were limitations. back to the early kurds have been there just michael coats of justice. there has always been its ability to a limit on the amount that folks could charge.

in america, it was always a state decision. so there would be a stay of august at 12% is the max, 17% as the max, whatever it is you could decide. so about 40 years ago now, a bank suit and set the, i am in nebraska and this customer is in minnesota and i need to straighten out whose law applies to my transactions at the customer, my customer. is that my nebraska law or is it their minnesota law? the supreme court said you were at the bank. it is your nebraska law. we will decide it that way. no big deal it seemed. but then the banks got smart and did a little thinking and said wait a minute. if it is the state where i am incorporated that the love,

maybe we can find some states that will get rid of all of their banking consumer protection law for us. and then we could move there and set up shop. so bingo. delaware did it in north dakota today. do you ever wonder why your credit card is from north dakota? in north dakota they got rid of so many of their consumer protections. so now, if rhode island passed an interest cap, would make a darn bit of difference because of that ruling and because the bank has moved to north dakota and they can charge whatever the heck they please. that's how you could interest rates at 30%. who here has a credit card that hit 30% interest? it happens.

you fall into a trap, something goes wrong and suddenly up goes the interest rate. 20%, 30%. in the day that would have been illegal in rhode island. we had a usery law. so what i proposed is the law of the consumer. that is your choice. if that limits the amount banks that will do business in that state, that is your choice, too. it is based on the person, not based on the bank because they have gained that system in order to take advantage of it. so we actually got a vote on it. i think we got 38 other senators to vote with me. not even on the democrats. debates are pretty pretty powerful. so when i read filed this year,

elizabeth warren decided she would join us. elizabeth is my cosponsor and we are going to keep working on it. one of the things about congresses just because you have an idea that you think is a good idea, you don't get a pass right away. you have to be patient, wait for the right season, wait for the right congress and then you can make your move. i will keep setup they had not appeared with that a lot the time of calm when they get it done and we can get rid of these abusive unjustifiable 30% interest rates and we can have control in different states at how much consumer protection are people get. that is the right way to go. by the way, all the republicans talk about state rights. he would be a good chance to go and know what they really are. so far we are not getting a lot

of traction yet. thank you. [applause] >> miles parker. we have a long way to go on wall street reform. a long way. transparency in the market and interactions will still have a very unstable environment. what is happening? >> well, we got a pretty good distance with dodd-frank, the bank reform bill. on some of the big issues like separating investment banks are regular checking account, main street banks, we couldn't actually get the glass-steagall it was called, the law that separated them. what we did get was a series of

authorities for different baking agencies to build a regulatory level and separate those functions. they have had years to do it. they have been harassed constantly by the big banks. they've made varying degrees of progress in some cases we gave them authority and they didn't use it all and they didn't use as much as we'd like. so i think we need to begin revisiting those questions. i think the most significant one is the business of separating the speculating banks from the regular main street checking account, savings account banks. we have several in effect for decades. they really protect the banking system. if a bank that was speculating and dealing with derivatives and all this weird stuff went last, that was their funeral. you can let them go bust. they work when i take the

economy because they didn't have millions and millions and millions of americans with day to day savings tied up in their gambling basically. so get in that separation is very, very important and i constantly support those bills. i am a cosponsor of the new revised glass-steagall act. one thing i will say -- i'm very fortunate that we are all fortunate to have jack reid as our senior senator. [applause] i feel fortunate because they get to work with them every day. jack doesn't toot his own home very much but i will give you one quick to do in front of everybody here to point out that at the end of this election in 2014, if jack is reelected, he is the number two right now on the armed services committee and is the number two on the banking

committee of the senate. both chairman, chairman levin on armed services and chairman johnson on banking have announced their retirements. so jack reid, if and when we reelect them is going to be able to choose to be the chairman of the senate armed services committee or chairman of the senate aging committee. unfortunately, he only gets one, not two. you've got to leave scraps for the others. that would be a terrific opportunity. that's going to be a great opportunity for our whole state. yes, sir. >> i am a science teacher. i try to keep up on the current

understanding of climate change. i am one of those people who has come to the conclusion that it's really happening and it's our fault and we are in real trouble. this is going to be a longer-term problem. i was wondering, would gec when you talk privately to our senators and representatives? do you see any emotion towards an understanding of how serious this problem is? because what i hear on the airwaves is people saying no, it's a controversy. the science community doesn't believe this controversy. >> people who don't do what they talk about a dozen of the the controversy is manufactured and

guess who is behind that? >> the polluters. the oil companies, coal companies. they put out lots of propaganda about this. but they figured out is they don't have to convince you that it's not happening. all they have to do is put it? in your mind so you think that's controversial, so they try to fault the debate. people are uncertain. this is a level of certainty that anybody would act on in their personal life. all franken is a friend of mine in the senate talking about climate change one day on the senate floor. 97% of the scientist to know about climate stats say look, this is happening. this is real, profound. so franken has a good sense. he said okay, how many people, just take her on senators.

how many people if their child was sick but go to the doctor and the doctor says you need this treatment for your child. you think it's expensive, i'm not sure i want to do it. but make it a second opinion. so you get your second opinion. let's say you went and got 100 opinions. he went to 100 doctors to ask them, is my child sick and child's second detainee treatment? 97 said yes come your child needs the treatment. three of them said no. who do you go with? 97 to three. would you go with? it is obvious. what is important is that it's not just theoretical any longer. for a while that is theoretical. how much carbon can you put up? how does it create that? how warm does it get? we are already seeing it.

go down to newport. go to the type h. that has been there for decades. the tides on average in rhode island are 10 inches higher than they were back when i had the hurricane back in the 30s. so you get another big hurricane. you know we could. we aired a day. it's now growing 10 inches more of ocean and not accept it as the storm surge. that is going to be a very bad day for rhode island that happens. four degrees warmer in the winter than it used to be. that affects a lot of things. when my wife was a scientist, she was studying the winter flounder because it is so valuable for fishermen. they showed up and down the day catching winter flounder.

it's four degrees warmer. the flounder don't like it as much. it would rather be assured. the thing that beats them is the shrimp. they would grow past or the shrimp could meet them any longer. now that has all changed. the people who own the orchard in johnston in the northern part of the state with apples and peaches and other furs. they see their trees bloom in the middle of winter. it is changing around here and affect the nice and it's really going to be very, very serious. they've got to get on top of it. i think it's going to be a tough lesson when we have to explain to these young eagle scout and to their kid why would we knew all that science, how was it that the american system of government allowed people to ignore but other scientists were saying and how could the polluters have pulled off such a

stunt on the american people? alitalia that question haunts me. i don't have grandchildren yet, but i've got a 24-year-old and a 20-year-old. in 20, 30 years, this will be coming on strong. they will be my age and not good looking around saying, dad, what the? you do this. the scientists on the list. all this stuff is going on right now in our world and you didn't do anything about it? how could you? i don't want to have to answer that question. so that's why i give that speech every single week on the senate floor. that's why sent the senate oceans caucus to get people working together on notions. i passed out twice the national endowment to get more information.

this one haunts me. yes, ma'am, sorry. campbell scott u.k. >> what you are saying made me think that global warming is for energy usage. is there anything out there, a different kind of energy to use besides moving our coal plants to mexico or china? >> now, if we move the coal plants to mexico or china, that doesn't donate good at all. we need to develop new technologies. some of them are basically already here. the prices coming down constantly. we're about to do windfarms offshore, very excited about that. show down into geothermal, even if you don't have, like in iceland, it is hardly neutral down. you can still do it here.

i've been to geothermal houses in rhode island. but into natural gas is a good first step because it does so much less damage than corn and oil. there are terrific technologies emerging, including one company i visited on the west coast. i think it has the way to take the nuclear waste that is around all the power plants in the country. we don't have anyplace to put our nuclear waste. so what they do is they leave it at the powerplant and try to bury it someplace and there it is. it's going to poison us for generations. what do you do with it? this guy thinks he's figured out a way to re-burn it as a new feel to create power. he estimates $2 trillion left in power in the nuclear waste. if we could crack the scientific problem of how you get the power

out, not only is that essentially free power, you avoid the cost of having to figure out how you get rid of the darn nuclear waste. search technology ultimately is the solution. if you think of two things when it's a natural resource, the more you use set, the more the price goes up. you've got to dig further to get it. you've got to drill further to get it. you've got to go further in the arctic to find it. it gets more expensive than the price always goes up. that's the nature of the beast. but when it's technology, this stuff gets cheaper every minute. i can remember when if you wanted to buy some calculator it was like $59.99 for a little calculator that didn't hardly do a thing. now you go to the opening of an insurance agent or new bank branch, they give them away for free.

they cost a buck. you want to be on the side of the elegy, not on the site of resources in terms of this. we can do it. if we are good at it, we will all technologies and export technologies and be part of our economic growth in the years to come instead of importing oil from saudi arabia and propping up tater is in countries that really don't like us. we will be inventing what we are good at, innovating and exporting not throughout the world and having our energy future also be our economic future. that is my goal anyway. to left. yes, sir. >> my name is george mitchell. e property tax has been three

coming up and up and it seems like no limit. what's the solution? >> well, property taxes are mostly a municipal problem. so pawtucket, newport providence that is not a complete dodge because they said it, but they set their property taxes depending how much the state can provide to support different municipalities. as the budget is turn up for the state, there's been less money for municipalities. ask any mayor. they have to depend on property taxes, so it has been hard on property tax owners. the states in turn taken in reading because there's less federal money coming in because of the cutting we have done. i think we need to do two

things. one is be careful about what we are pending. sometimes you cut off your nose to spite your face and it's not a wise cut. supporting the states and municipalities is usually a reasonable way to spend money. community development block grants are very helpful and allow a lot of flexibility for local communities. that's really important. the other thing is that as the economy picks up and taxes coming from other sources, you can do less dependent on property tax. the property tax is the last tax standing when people are coming to the hotels. the sales tax is crashing. what do you do? there is the property tax. you kind of have to stick with that. the more we get the economy going again, the better off we are. to me, the big jump start his

infrastructure. that is something we need to spend money on. you know, people often say, if your family assured me, you have to cut expenses so you balance your family budget and that's the way the government should work. not quite right because of what we talked about earlier that you got a small set with what everybody else was doing. you don't have another greece or portugal here. infrastructure is not just spending money. in your home life, that is like fixing the roof on your house do you love with your credit card. might be a big expense to fix the roof, but you have to fix the roof. when it is fixed, your house is worth more than you get that value. it is not like taking a credit card and going to disney world. you fixed up being that you will

and it adds to the value of your home. the same way with infrastructure. if you fix american rose, when effects are american bridges, when you fix our american water pipes and water treatment plants, that his votes in this country. if it is spent wisely, it makes more wealth because roads of water and utilities allow for development in commerce. you can't let that stuff go. we let it go. we have a huge infrastructure deficit and it is just crazy. so i can't do anything directly about pawtucket property taxes, but if i can help ensure that money keeps coming to the state delayed you still saavik is supported and supports municipalities and the economy's

crusade and lifting all boats, that is the best i can do and that is my target. [inaudible] >> almost 35%. >> .satcher said the city council mayor to make. i can influence the choice by making sure we have an economy rolling again and that we are supporting the states in the municipalities so that they don't have to hit the local taxpayer so hard. the local property owner is the person who has to pick up the tab when everything else is dried up. and it gets very expensive. you're absolutely right. >> before you take the last question. license plate number bbs 796 has got to move their car.

you are in the fire lane. i'm not sure who that is. if you could please news your vehicle, we need to clear the fire lane. thank you. hang on, we will get you a microphone. coming your way. there you go. >> i just had a few questions for you. argue for or against the obama plan and wide? >> yeah, i am very for it. i helped write it before it got called you up on the plan. it started in what is called the health committee of the senate and i had a temporary assignment for the health committee to work on that bill. i am for it for three big reasons. one is a lot of people didn't have insurance in this country.

and if you don't have health insurance, it really affects your life and it really affects the care you get when you get sick and it actually can make the difference between getting well and not getting well. a canoe and make the difference between whether you live or whether you die. so getting people -- more people that have health insurance was a really, really good goal and a really good achievement. the second thing is the insurance marketplace wasn't all that sayer. as i said earlier, if you work for a big company got a pretty good rate. if you had a little company, you got a not so good afraid and you're on your own. you pay top dollar on your own and you were stuck. ..

because they could never get another job because they could never get a new health care policy that covered their sickness because it was now a pre-existing condition. they got it on one job and they were tracked with that company for the rest of their lives until they got to medicare and they were saved on medicare. so, basically all of the problems we can think of with the insurance industry i think we are -- a really good job with that in the last thing is that it set off a whole array --

40 different programs to help innovate to help figure out ways to deliver better health care cheaper to figure out ways to pay a doctor in a different way so you stay healthier. right now the only way a doctor gets paid is when you get sick and when they order stuff for you. guess what happens to a system in which the only way the doctors get paid is when you get sick and they order stuff for you? they wait until you get sick and then they order a lot of stuff for you. that is an expensive system. what we want is a system that keeps you well. that can answer your question before you have to go to the emergency room, that keeps track of whether you are taking your medication so you stay out of the hospital. those sorts of things. no doctor ever got paid for doing any of that. that is all changing. if you get a hospital-acquired

infection they stop paying hospitals for that. if you took your car into the shop and they dropped it off the lift would they come to you and say oh by the way we fixed your car but we also dropped it off the list so here's your bill for the bodywork we had to do when we drop your car off the lift but if you're a hospital we gave you a hospital-acquired infection and here's your bill for $30,000 for curing the hospital-acquired infection. that's so we cut that off. if you are leaving the hospital then you go back into the hospital for the same condition within 30 days you don't get paid. because what they were doing was what is called a discharge order when you leave the hospital and you have the discharge plan. the discharge orders were crummy the discharge plan stunk. nobody bothered to call your doctor and say they released to

you. there was no follow up -- follow-up. they wouldn't take their medication and they wouldn't do this and they wouldn't do that and boom there back in the hospital. no, no. you've just got to follow up. you put the just charge plan out and make it a good one and stick to it. you don't do that conquer you don't get paid. that changes the behavior and those kinds of changes are what is going to change the way we do health care in this country and that's how we are going to get the costs down and the same time hacker buddy have a better experience in a better outcome. those were the three big chunks of the bill. covering people making the insurance industry fair and trying to move this innovation thing forward. i think we can pretty well offer it. no bill is perfect and it was a big bill so i'm sure there are bugs in it but i'm pretty happy with it and i'm standing by it. >> isn't also true my

understanding is that up until october 1 -- [inaudible] is that correct or am i misunderstanding something? >> exchanges that market where you have got to be able to go and say okay i want to buy insurance at what are my choices and someone has to be there to say okay here are your choices, that starts october 1. and i think you don't get it done they have one year for the federal government to back in but that starts october 1. now the people who want to get rid of the bill would like to get rid of it before then i think largely because once the exchanges go up, it will look pretty sensible. and in the same way that people are happy their 26-year-old can stay on their policy and were

happy they could still get coverage for pre-existing conditions and were happy to see their seniors not having to fall into the doughnut hole having people see this is a pretty good deal. it's a market solution and that is what people should want. that is what the october first-aid is all about and there's a big push to repeal obamacare, good luck. they have done it 40 separate times in the house and it's never going to pass the senate. the whole thing is a big waste of time but they want to keep doing it. >> he was out there announcing that unless you work so many hours and work full-time -- health insurance and a lot of employers are doing the same thing. [inaudible] i want the insurance. they are saying you have to be full-time and they will give you two or three hours less to make you a little bit less than full-time.

[inaudible] >> which means yeah, good for you. so, if that happens to you you will now have a choice that you did not have before. you can go to the insurance exchange and you can even go talk to ian about it right now and what they will do as they will say okay here's your list of options. there are three levels gold silver and bronze of coverage. i want great coverage, i want okay coverage or i want medium coverage and then you choose one that you like and they will say okay what do you pay? depending on what you make, there will be a subsidy so you don't have to pay more than -- no more than 10% of your income for health care. whatever you are making 10% goes for health care and the rest is made up for through the

subsidies subsidy so you get covered that way. i think you will find there will obviously be a few bugs when you start something new but now you have a choice. if the employer doesn't stick with your coverage you can go to the exchange and you can not only get the coverage but gets the support that makes it affordable so that it's affordable. [inaudible] >> that should make it easier. not only easier but you are more flexible now because you can go to the exchange and get that insurance coverage. you can work where you want. you are not stuck with your employer because of the health care. i am going to. >> sorry to interrupt senator. i work for the mayor. the mayor had a community meeting tonight and he apologizes. it ran over and they had great questions like we had tonight.

he asked me to thank you on his behalf for all the work that you end your staff do throughout the years and obviously tonight as well coming out and doing this for the public. so thank you. >> thank you dylan and please think of mayor for us. i appreciate it very very much. >> thank you everybody and good night. says i promise i will be the last person to leave and we can stick around and talk if you want to chat further. [inaudible conversations] now discussion on the contributions of immigrants to

america. the group of naturalized citizens share their stories of how they came to the country. this event was one of a series of panels on immigration that followed a naturalization ceremony last july that the bush presidential library in dallas. >> thanks very much jim. one of the questions that came up at the end of the last session was about immigrants as human beings, cannot just his numbers in one of the things i want to encourage our panelist to talk about is their own human and personal experience but to get to that point i want to move from the personal to the abstract for just one second. the book that i wrote that jim was kind enough to mention was about the experience of japanese americans during world war ii and i'm sure most of you know that after pearl harbor over 100,000 japanese-americans were forcibly removed from their homes and thrown into camps where they spent most of world war ii, that is most of the

three years after pearl harbor. as you can imagine this was a huge dislocation to the japanese-american community but the book i wrote was not about that. the book i wrote was about a much lesser-known part of that story, which was out of that experience a segregated unit of american soldiers called the 447 regimentaregimenta l combat team was formed out of volunteers. about half of whom came out of the camps and this unit went on to become the single most decorated unit for its size in world war ii. and writing this book i was struck as i am sure you are by the fact that the very men whose families and in some cases themselves had been treated in the worst possible fashion by

their own country nonetheless volunteered to fight for the very country that betrayed them. and i saw in this a story about what it means to be a citizen because we have had a lot of talk about the formal process of citizenship but being a citizen is more than taking an oath and meeting the formal requirements of citizenship. one of the suggestions that came out in the last panel was that this process takes several years and it often does but it also takes a commitment on the part of the individuals that is exemplified by what the members of the 442 did but can be found across all life and not just in combat. combat provides the most dramatic example of it that we see people making choices every day large and small that ad up to what it means to be a citizen. we forget that the concept of

citizenship is both a very old and a very new one. it rose in the time of the great polis and the roman state that it really disappeared for 2000 years. we didn't talk about citizens under the emperors and the kings. they were not citizens. they were subjects and it was only with the advent of the enlightenment and the spread of democracy and the american revolution that citizenship became an issue and it became an issue because freedom became an issue. it became an issue because free men and women come together and form a state. that imposes a special obligation not just on the state but on the individual to decide who is citizen is and how you become a citizen. a lot of what is going on in the public debate now concerns the specific policy aspects of that but there is a much larger philosophical question about what does it mean for me as a

citizen? what is it going to cost me not just in terms of the $680 but in terms of my identity as a human beings of this abstract question of citizenship that i saw being worked out in very dramatic fashion in the book that i wrote is something that all of these panelists have something to say either out of their personal experience or things they have witnessed. so i want to move to that question. that is the question of citizenshcitizensh citizenship as evolving responsibilities and in some cases involving sacrifice and it's a great honor and pleasure to be here with two members one active in one recently retired of the military who will speak to that but other members will also speak in terms of their -- what it means to be a citizen. so i would like to begin with miguel howe who many of you may know as the director of military service initiatives here at the bush institute. he had before that a very long distinguished career in the u.s.

army which i'm sure he will refer to in his talk. but in talking to him before we started this panel he and i were both very struck by something president bush said in his remarks this morning, that the members of the armed service who are immigrants had risked it all the first time to become an immigrant. they had given up their home country and change their language and settled in a new land and by joining the armed services they were risking it all the second time to make it possible for their children and future generations to have the same opportunities that they did so i would like miguel to talk about that both in terms of his experience here at the george george bush institute but more partly in terms of his experience as an army officer. >> thank you robert payday would like to start out by wishing congratulations to our newest citizens.

my experience over the past 24 years as active military service has been in our our most engage service-oriented and patriotic citizens and servicemembers are our newest. and so as the director of the military service initiatives here i had the honor and responsibility to lead the bush institute's effort to honor the service and sacrifice of all of their post-9/11 veterans military servicemembers and their families but also to empower and unite the efforts of non-profits businesses universities individual citizens and communities to improve the well-being of those veteran servicemembers and their families but also to release their potential to continue to serve as national assets in their communities after their military service is over. and so since september 11, 2001,

2.3 million members of this country have gone -- worn the uniform in iraq or afghanistan and since 1973, we have been an all-volunteer force so every young american and i think we like to consider ourselves young , but every young american who raises their right hand and sites that oath of enlistment or that oath which sounds very similar to the oath of citizenship that we heard this morning has really i think demonstrated that courage that robert has said in two levels before they set place in iraq or afghanistan or wherever else our nation has called them to serve. those 2.3 million and another million that will leave the

service but the 2.3 million includes approximately 100,000 legal immigrants who are not yet citizens as we saw today with a young lance corporal and specialist who became a citizen. so that is a pretty significant percentage of our military who affords a even become citizens have made that commitment and had the courage. one of the mottoes of the first units i served with him served with an input tray unit in hawaii is -- as you spoke to robert in terms that actions that come with the words of responsibilities of citizenship. clearly they have demonstrated through their actions and their willingness to serve knowing they are going into harm's way and maybe asked to make the ultimate sacrifice by doing so in order to achieve that hope

and desire for freedom and opportunity for themselves and their families but now truly an act of love i think to do that as well for all of us and all of our future generations as well. and so until i recently retired i was recently retired head of the seventh special forces an army unit that has the responsibility for special operations at two goodies did in both latin america as well as afghanistan. because of the imperative to be able to operate by with them through our partners in all of those nations there is an emphasis on the cultural affinity and understanding from where you were going to work and your allies in who you are going to work with. we both attract and actively recruit within that particular

movement the hispanic population. approximately 35% of that unit are all latinos but from throughout, these heritages throughout all of latin america. since 2000 for, our unit has had 40 soldiers killed in combat operations in afghanistan and those 40 heroes include men with names like morales muñoz gonzalez vazquez and nuñez. first class nuñez a father of two young boys is an immigrant from mexico and so as a new immigrant and as a naturalized citizen he chose to demonstrate through his actions not only what he recognized as the

opportunities that came with him and with his family when he came to the united states but the responsibilities that he had as a citizen to give back. so david served on two tours in kosovo a tour in iraq in two tours in afghanistan and in his last tour in afghanistan in may 2008 and afghanistan his special forces attachment and the afghan national army members that he was serving with ran into a very significant ambush from the taliban. they were very significantly outnumbered at that time and so they were trapped. the convoy was trapped and so david again, deeds not not words, made the ultimate sacrifice insuring the safety and the livelihood of his

brothers regardless of their nation of origin, that they would survive. so david's vehicle came under heavy fire. he manned a machine gun to put fires on the enemy and to suppress the enemy while receiving significant fire himself. his vehicle burst into flames and because of his concern for his brothers that were still in that vehicle and because munitions were starting to explode david started to throw those munitions out of the back of the vehicle. so he stayed with that vehicle to ensure that his brothers that were with him would not perish due to the fire and explosions and the amount of fire that they were receiving. david succumbed to his wounds during that and for his actions he was recognized with a silver star, the third-highest award

for valor that we have within the military. david is just one example, one example and there are countless from this era from oliver preceding and subsequent acts of love for their brothers servicemen and women, for the country that they have adopted as you describe so well even under the most arduous circumstances. and so, when i think of what we talked about robert in terms of responsibility of service and identity in terms of citizenship, i have been blessed with the opportunity for the past 24 years to see and experience that first-hand. whether in iraq or afghanistan or throughout latin america all

the places that i had the opportunity to travel to and back at home within the united states every day during training i also served for a time and was responsible for the army's recruiting efforts in southern california and so over the course of the 26 months we have the opportunity to bring over 5000 young people to army service and so we were responsible for an area in the five counties of southern california. it's not necessarily the right word to say in the form today but they're great americans living and serving out of southern california for sure. and so that area spans of broad socioeconomic spectrum and is a very vibrant immigrant community and so i have the opportunity to see these young people balance

both the opportunity and the service and the sense of duty and obligation that they had to commit to serve in the u.s. military and there are some myths and stereotypes that military service is for those that have no other option and nothing could be further from the truth. as we say here today less than 25% are young americans aged 18 to 24 are eligible for military service. they don't need -- meet the mental physical or moral qualifications it takes to serve so we don't just take anybody. the high school level education physical standards in terms of height weight and basic fitness and moral standards in terms of challenges or problems with the law. and so it really is an opportunity for the select few,

those who are willing to do it but for those who are willing to serve it does come with tremendous opportunity whether that is the economic opportunity of the job or career and the benefits that come with military service or whether it comes from serving within a values-based organization within the army. loyal to do the selfless service integrity and courage. the opportunity for education and training for skills so there's the technical skills that some of which we require within our communities to help our economy grow that we heard about earlier but then there's also some of the intangible skills of leadership and management and planning and situational awareness judgment and decision-making under the most arduous of circumstances.

the opportunity of being in a true meritocracy. when dave lost his life nobody cared whether or not he was an immigrant or a citizen. they cared about who he was as a person and as her brother and as a sister. while those may be sources -- those are key sources of personal identities for the family and for those that are serving in uniform what matters is who you really are as a person and not where you came from or what your first language is. the last thing robert i will say in terms of weak-kneed, we need immigrants within our service. we need them as a reflection of who we are as a nation. we need them for their talent and their skills. when i was in recruiting i had a

mission to recruit 40 noncitizens legal residents legal immigrants so that we could leverage their language and cultural expertise which i had previously not being aware of this program leveraged in iraq and subsequently leveraged in afghanistan. and so there are specific technical skills that they provide to make our military stronger but it is that commitment and that sense of obligation to service him patriotism that i personally in my experience has been the true strength of our immigrants are being with us. >> thank you very much. there is a very good summary of the contradiction of our -- the oath is similar to the oath you take in becoming a citizen and our next panelist captain

eustaquio costro-mendoza did in fact take the oath of citizenship in your early 20s and shortly thereafter entered the military so i wonder if you could tell us a little bit about the qualities of your immigrant life that led you to make both boats and contributed to your obvious success since you are near the end of your 30-year career. >> thank you bob, thank you very much and what i would like to do first of all this thanks to george w. bush foundation for inviting me here to this very important event. it's a pleasure for me to participate in this distinguished panel. i am an immigrant from mexico come, the arrived here in 1962. and i think that my service or

my choosing to serve this country was for a number of reasons. one was my general upbringing. my parents -- my mother was born in bryants texas by the way. she went to mexico as a child and married my father in mexico and then my father came back to the u.s. to work under the program and the late 50's and early 60's. and so myself and my brother isaac here on the panel we are products of a different society. but, what brought us here was their parents desire for us to have a better life. one of the jibing factors for my entire family which is a very large family and isaacs talked

about that i'm sure was a pursuit for education. and a pursuit of a contribution to a country which to us was very foreign in the very beginning in moving from northern mexico to north texas to a little town in texas. it was an experience that i will remember forever but it was a transformative experience for myself and from that transforming experience came my deep desire to be a productive member of society. i actually had no intention to become a military officer. my intent was to get it ph.d. in biology. i was pursuing a ph.d. in biology at the time and i said well you know what, i have got to do that. i am nearing the age limit so i've got to do it now.

as i went into the flight program in pensacola florida i didn't get my wings of gold but i was so in love with united states navy and the military in general because the u.s. navy and the military are like a family. i think a lot of democrats are seeking to belong to a family type of grouping and in this case it happens to be the united states of america. i have known many people from all walks and other countries and what i also think and it's important to understand is why is it that so many choose to come to this country and as miguel talk about why they would want to serve in our military.

the reason is because not just because of opportunity but because they surely have fallen in love with america. it's those ideals of democracy that we may sometimes take for granted, they don't. as an immigrant i never took that for granted. i came here knowing that there was opportunity. i grew up here. to adulthood. so it's not just about getting an opportunity. it's about serving in true patriotism. that's what makes people from afghanistan comes to america and want to go back to afghanistan as soldiers wearing the uniform and give up their lives for that country. you know we have had citizens who have become citizens

posthumously. they have given their lives in the military. and then earning their citizenship through that service which i think it's a very good thing and as miguel said also that has given us a huge diversity within our military. we don't see -- and the military we don't see that diversity is a hindrance. we see it very much is a very positive factor and the gil has described some of the positive factors that derive from that diversity. anyway i think i'm getting off topic a little bit. >> you are very much on topic. >> you want to skip over the next two to get to the last panel and i wanted to surprise everybody by telling everybody that there were two brothers on the panel notwithstanding the fact that their last names are slightly different.

the next panelist i think -- isaac castro who is the brother of eustaquio costro-mendoza is himself a very distinguished man in a totally different area which is public service. he is now the mayor of the city of hamilton texas. before that he had a unique distinction in the so-called big country around abilene and i won't steal his punchline. i will let him tell that story but he has had a very distinguished career as a politician and public servant and has been a groundbreaker and the story that i'm going to let him tell. >> thank you. i might not be able to fit the bill there but thank you all for staying and for being here. i wanted to brag about my tie. you can't see the insignia there

but it's w04, my george w. bush tied or when he was renominated for a second term in new york city. my brother and i grew up in a large family of 12. the first six of us were born in mexico and the other six were born in texas. a farm near old glories texas. i will skip forward and then you can ask any other questions but whenever i first got out of law school in 1980 i was convinced to come back home to stonewall county by the county judge and the commissioners court and he said the commissioners court would have a point me to county attorney. so i did that and came home and in 1980 was appointed to

stonewall county attorney. it didn't seem all that remarkable to me until later on because i read in the newspaper a few years after that and i don't know if it was two years or four years but i read in the abilene reporter news, i don't believe everything i read but i read in the news that there was a hispanic justice of the peace that gotten elected fair and abilene and that he was the first hispanic public official in the big country. stonewall county as part of the abilene area and so at that point if that fact was true then i knew i was actually the first minority officeholder in the area is so that became a little bore remarkable to me when i found that out and then i try to

verify that there weren't any other officials that were minorities and sure enough there weren't any others at the time. if wasn't remarkable to me that i was in that position so much as it was remarkable that for older white men would appoint a 23-year-old hispanic to such an important position. that is what became to me the most important factor and now a lot of things have changed over the last 33 years. but that was the beginning of my career in public service and my political career as well. >> i think the point you made really is underscored which is that what was regarded as a

conservative part of texas that had not known a lot of change for a long time, for white old man picked this then young hispanic man to become their prosecutor and that speaks very much about this complicated potentially reporting usually rewarding relationship between immigrants and the people they are trying to become part of. i like our next guest if i can hop skip and jump a little bit vinay jain who is a distinguished oncologist with over 20 years of practice who has also done lots of other things in founding companies both for-profit and nonprofit that is himself a relatively recent immigrant who i think in our conversation suggested that he had somewhat the same welcoming experience as an

immigrant. i wonder if you would talk about that. >> i think the bush institute for inviting me. my wife is also an immigrant and i'm pleased to be chosen for this panel. my story began in 1984 when they came here like you are saying to get further education. i just finished my medical degree in new delhi and i always wanted to be a cancer specialist. i think i was probably a teenager and it was a dream and it's still a dream. i am living a dream every day. america is the best schools universities and hospitals. i was lucky enough to be accepted by a distinguished hospital in ohio the dayton clinic which is one of the hospitals that very much is at the forefront of advances in

health care. i spent three years in ohio and went to the national cancer institute. for five years i worked as as an oncology researcher. all throughout this time i was amazed by the inclusiveness and the acceptance of the society. americans are pretty special people and i can absolutely second the statement that was made. i've been to many countries and i've lived in many countries and people are good everywhere but there is something special about the average american. the average american is straightforward and honest and helpful and they want other people to succeed. the dire -- desire for success is shared in the thought process that your success helps me and my success helps you so it's a shared success story.

i was helped by so many people it's hard to count but each step of the way somebody helped me and guided me and gave me opportunities and then just by pure chance i was thinking moving to california but came to texas, came to dallas and the gentleman that brought me here was an oncologist and dallas. our journey has been a journey of constant surprise and constant -- we just feel you rub your eyes this is happening to you. this is the dream that i dreamt. we are doing a number of things in the fight against cancer. i am the middle of developing a couple of cancer drugs to treat the kenya. if you are fortunate in a few

years offering medicines to patients who are struck by this disease. the city of dallas and we very much think of this is home now. this has been a great city for us to live and we have made many friends here. we are very involved in giving back to this country and this community. that has made us not feel like immigrants. we very much feel that we belong to this community and you know with a little bit of luck and some effort we hope that we can contribute in a small way for the next generation of people who choose to come here to live. >> thank you. that was very heartfelt and personal perspective on this. if we can move towards the organizational i would like to introduce our final panelist suzii paynter who's the executive coordinator of baptist

fellowship which turns out to be much bigger than i ever imagined and she will tell us a little bit about that. one of the things she said to me in a conversation was that one of the strategies was bibles badges and business which is a way of uniting different constituencies behind the move to integrate immigrants. the nonprofit world of course it's always been very much at the forefront of the process that we have described here bringing new americans into society. and i am sure your organization has done huge amounts for that. but i am curious not so much from an organizational perspective but from a for small perspective for people who at the fitted from this, how do they benefit and what did they do with the things that you help them do and how do they move on themselves from the activities of you help him with?

>> i want to first of all say thanks again for including me on this panel and reference referenced a couple of things. first of all a remark that president bush made in his comments today. he said immigrants bring renewal to our national character and invite talent and her culture. i would like to say sincerely that in the faith community and as a natural beautiful part of our culture that immigrants have brought renewal to the church and to the character and the moral character of our congregations and they add vitality to our culture. and primarily one of the most important aspects of this is the aspect of leadership. what you have heard today in the title of this how immigrants serve, they serve as leaders and yesterday's immigrants new immigrants are today's theologians pastors committed and compassionate missionaries.

they are yesterday's new immigrants are chaplains in the military. yesterday's new immigrants are in compassion ministries and cultures and communities that would never accept another mission. so in the faith community that beautiful gift of the new immigrants is for the renewal of our culture. and for the renewal of faith. one of the other comments that i would connect two was dr. castro's comment. he made the compelling statement that when you stand up up and say the oath it's for the beliefs that you have in your country. the first 16 words of the bill of rights to our in fact a commitment to religious diversity and personal freedoms.

i think this connection between belief for many people who have come to our country and served in our communities of faith their faith experience, they are spiritually connected to the people that they have left behind in the homes they have left behind and maybe their only connection. they are citizens of this kingdom but then also the kingdom of god. somebody asked me a while ago how did you get involved in immigration and for me my commitment came as a texas baptist because of our number of hispanic congregations. we have over 1200 hispanic baptist congregations in the state of texas in addition to spanish-speaking congregations in texas. we have 425 congregations that speak a language other than spanish and english every sunday morning so that beautiful nature of kingdom of god is diverse. so looking again at those

elements of how do our immigrants serve? they serve first of all the connection to the discussion about english-language classes and the movement. this 8 million, how do we help people move from this 8 million people who could receive naturalization services that they are faced with all these problems. many of them in their communities are approached by someone who is promised immigration and taken their money. so to advocate within our congregations in the state of texas and around the country we have churches in 18 states and regions than 130 field personnel around the world says to bring those immigration services into a congregations through an accredited representative and accredited training so that the

immigrants in that area can access low-cost trapdoors the -- trustworthy services. we work closely with our trusted partners and catholic charities who are legal experts who do a lot of the certification and training certifying training for the people in our congregations. our immigrant communities are seeking not just to serve for themselves but as you have seen from testimonies how they multiply their service as leaders for each other and for the people. these free services that are offered on saturday mornings if you go by the hispanic churches in your towns on saturday morning you will see lines of people waiting around the building waiting patiently to get an to have their status adjustment review for free by an accredited representative. these immigration services as a

part of the faith community is one way that we are helping to promote that servant leadership and to help bridge these gaps that we have heard about today. so it's not just a worship service but it is also a way of joining hands with brothers and sisters towards that. i would say my husband ended his worship service with a benediction that says risk of something big or something good. i feel in this culture in our culture of faith i think we are asking our congregations also to risk something big for something good to teach an english class to support by the citizen class to reach out with immigration services to reach out and support these individuals. truly we buy lies our faith.

>> yes think that it's a good transition to the next section of what i would like to talk about risking something big to bring something good is certainly exemplified by dr. dr. jain who came here as a young adult and i'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about what in your background and what in your family and what in the culture of your country would enable you or make it possible for you to take that kind of risk kind of risk? >> that's a great question and i don't know if i can answer it well but i can give it a shot. i think we are all defined by the people and appears we work with. we are influenced by our role models. actually if you look at gun life other sometimes have consciously or unconsciously looked up to people. there are a number of rns that work in america that actually were trained in india. this country gave them the

opportunity to use their gifts and skills that allow them to succeed for the good of society. i always wanted to work hard and to study hard and hopefully you now i was happy if i could do something small in oncology. there are 120 different cancers in each one has a different reason that they have been in each one has a different treatment. my hope was from the time i started until the time i finished if i could make a difference. i would feel like i have done something and left behind something. what i didn't realize academically i also have some latent -- and those business skills came out in texas so i met my boss who was a doctor also an

entrepreneur and he said vinay i think you should -- i said i came here to practice but let me help you start a business. and i did. that over time became a very large business. i hired literally hundreds of people. one of the questions that came up as to immigrants create opportunities for other people to benefit in jobs? do they have to the whole pie so in general if my story is true comp and it is true in their other people just like me i can say for sure that for somebody who has never met payroll or never even talked about hiring a person to have a company with a huge revenue line in oncology and give jobs to so many people and created opportunities for cancer patients to learn.

a magazine still being distributed in hospitals and meant for cancer patients. the internet was just coming at the start of the magazine. to have the confidence to develop cancer drugs is sent expensive process. drug development is quite uncertain. most cancer drugs don't work and after investing years of work and uncountable amount of money you may not have a drug that can fight the cancer. i have the confidence that we should do whatever we are given to do. it is they think was said to those much is given much is expected. i received so much more than my wife and myself ever thought we would have. warren buffett said something yesterday. he gave $2 billion yesterday to the gates foundation.

people were praising him and they were saying look how special you are. he said something that stuck with me. he said i have never given a dollar that i needed. my wife and i feel the same way. we haven't given a dollar that we needed. if somebody gives money -- that is real giving. when you are giving something that is out of what you would otherwise make. so i think i would give almost the entire credit of whatever success i have had to the people i have met. people who have seen me more than i saw in myself. i tend to meet people like that and i wanted to be like that for the younger people who come to work for me. so hopefully we will get to that point. i am by nature an optimist.

i believe in the goodness of people and i believe in human capital like you are saying. i believe people if given the chance will do incredible things. i see that every day and i see it all the time. i have worked with the dallas school district and i have always enjoyed going to a lemon tree schools. we give them kindles and book readers. these children come from mexico and other latin american countries. at home they don't speak english and some of them are shy. they feel uncomfortable with the language. if you give them a book reader and kindle has had some thing called text to read so they understand how words are pronounced. suddenly they are not shy anymore. they can touch a button. so i sit there and i see those young children and i feel like that is the next generation of doctors asked are not sailors

wall street bankers everything calm, the actors. i know there's a big immigration debate going on. when i came in 84 there was big immigration reform and 87. it was called amnesty and there was concern. all these people assimilated and became part of society. that is a nonissue. there's a big debate going on right now in and it's right to have a debate. and it democracy debate is what you need so that everybody says what they believe in and hopefully come to consensus but i'm very optimistic that this debate will result in a lot loss that we think is fair and correct and gives 10 or 11 million people to become americans. it will become a huge part of the success of this country. >> would the can get a small consensus of what happened within the castro family to produce these two sterling

examples of public service as well as your siblings are you too can fight it out in public about what it was about your family and what it was about your parents experience, what it was about your growing up that enabled you to do the things you did and to give back in the way you have. >> i will take the first crack at it but it's pretty hard. it goes back to both of my parents. my mom is a very strong individual and like i said before she wanted her children to come to the country in which she was born and she wanted her children to be successful and education was the way towards success. that was the primary driver. we were fortunate, very fortunate to come to a place

because it is an immigrant communities settled by german immigrants in the early 1900s. we were fortunate to come to the community because i think there has to be a linkage between us and the community we came to serve. so we quickly as children we quickly learned english. i think it took me two months to be able to converse with the other children in my schoolhouse we came here in march and by mail was fluent in english and i could understand. for us it was all about education. about not wanting to fail my parents. they sacrificed all to give us the opportunity. when we came here come, it was a promise, not a promise promise

but a promise of opportunity in future opportunity. .. we talked a lot about the opportunities we had here in this country, and so my mother always said you can be whatever you want here. and that was an opportunity that

we would have had anywhere else. we grew up hearing that. when we graduated from high school within it was a foregone conclusion we were going to go to college. my mother and father didn't know to be able to instruct us, you know, about colleges and majors and classes or anything like that so they always left the choices to us and it became a lot easier for me being siblings number five they were pioneers in my family who had gone in front of me. my oldest brother, the first one to go, i'm sure it was extremely difficult for him, and we would

all -- as a family, work together and pitch in to send money and get him through school. then the next brother then our oldest sister then my brother. so we just all took turns doing that and helping each other do that. our next younger brother is a physician. so everyone in our family, except one, has a college degree or higher. but it was that instruction that we had from our parents even though they didn't receive an education. they knew how valuable education would be, and so we just instinctively, in a way, believe we could just go on and keep going to school as long as we wanted. and when we bring this full

circle back to miguel, if you could say a few words how as an institution the are -- armed forces helped develop and respond to these qualities of judgment and decisiveness and lip and so on. how the people come up through the rank can in turn benefit from those and serve the country and serve future generations. maybe i'll give one small compelling example, and so i was recently going true my transition assistance program or tap class that all servicemembers go through when it's after three or thirty years of service to help you from the transition from the military family back to your community, and there was a young man sitting in that class with me, he was a young sergeant, ranger out of ranger school.

we were talking about all the opportunities that are now available to him. anything he could do whether he was looking at going home and being a cop in chicago. a lot of servicemembers gravitate to the marshall service outside the military peace officer or fire rescue, and so we just started talking. i could tell that he had a desire for to continue his education to teach and influence young people. and then he had a little entrepreneurial flair. i said why aren't you looking that the as a well? he said why would anybody want to hire me? all i've done is lead people in the fire fight in iraq. [laughter] and i said, are you kidding me? [laughter] i said where vells you -- can you better demonstrate much like a surgery room, you know, dynamic situational awareness,

judgment, and decision making and so it that's the pressure that lies little -- literally? stake. you need to think bigger as much as castro's parents inspired them to think larger about what opportunity is there for you. by nature of your service, whether it's the trairning, education, and leadership opportunity and the fire yo experienced you have been developed in ways that you do not yet appreciate that are directly applicable to anything. >> i think this is very inspiring note. also to open it up to questions that we have. we will be having lunch. i think the panelists will be there and panelists from the peeves panel and i hope you'll

have can ask your questions then. actually a little bit over. we like to be on time here, in bush land. but i just want to say we covered a lot of territory. our start -- it's part of our economic program to find ways to bring america to 4% or would it 5% growth and immigration is a necessary engine to do that. actually it's more than that. it's america's comparative advantage. it's our edge on the rest of the world and there is certainly the threat we might lose it. we began by talking about texas, and why is it that texas does so well? i think a lot of conferences that amity has done we have looked at success. why does a certain country glow

why does a certain state grow? and we look at the reason for it. clearly immigration is a major reason for the success of texas and why is that? well, texas works. it's the kind of culture that immigrants are drawn to. both, you know, the tax system, the ease of starting a business. and the fact it's a welcoming culture to immigrants. i think that's so important that president bush talked about that this morning during the naturalization event. second panel about the importance of naturalization itself in lifting the incomes of people who become naturalized and helping america in general economically. and finally the wonderful panel about sf and, you know, this is part of an economic an economic program but how do we quantify the contribution of miguel and

the castro brothers and dr. james the lives he saved from cancer. i don't think that's reported in the gd, but this is an enormous -- you can call it an economic benefit to america. president bush said today we're a nation of immigrants and we must uphold that tradition which is strengthened this country in many ways. i think one of the things we have seen today is many ways immigration that strengthened this country economically. otherwise i want to thank the carnegie corporation of new york and the night foundation and one other foundation that has chosen to remain anonymous. that is supported this event. and i want to thank the fabulous

bush events team. it's amazing, this event theme put on an amazing event, and very complicated in tanzania a few days ago. here they are doing this in dallas, and of course, amity, matt of the economic growth team, and i also want to thank the moderators for their fine work. i think we should give them a hand. [applause] as well as this panel and the previous two panels. okay. it's time for lunch in a buffet lunch in the -- thank you all for attending, and it's been a great day. ♪ and booktv in prime time

continues here on c-span2 tonight. on wednesday the last hour of w the "washington journal" we take look at recent magazine article as part of the spotlight on magazine serious.as part today we want to -- to make a gun and exercise inie. all-american manufacturing.ch charles cook who wrote the piece joins us from new york. let begin with an exercise allao

americanm manufacture and exerci ing ul reaction from many after sandy hook. a really piqued my interest. do these people come from hades? are they normal americans? it turns out they are normal americans. is nice to go to a a town and to see a factory that is thriving. host: you are talking about remington done company -- gun company. guest: they are the oldest company in the country that makes its original contract. i went to the plant in new york has been open for almost 200 years.

the guy who founded it made a barrel because he was unhappy with what was on the market. the history is obvious. you do not see factories like this anymore. the floor is wooded. people who work there had great grandfathers who work there as well. a number of people had been there for 50 or 45 years. some people could only be described as artists. this piece --e in what is the impact on this town? guest: the town next to the factory thrived because of the factory. there is about 8000 people

inilium and most of the people live in the town. i was shown the flower shop and pizza joint and a shoe shop and all of these businesses could do nothing if remington went under the. originally, the factory moved to be next to the erie canal in the 19th century so they could trade with their making. eventually, the erie canal has moved to accommodate the expansion of the factory. that would give you some indication of what remington means to that part of the country. host: how does this compare to other gun manufacturers? guest: gun manufacturing in america is booming. most of them don't have this storied history. ilium is unionized soak remington as part of the freedom group and most of their factories are not in upstate new york. upstate new york is not where you would choose to put a gun factory in this climate with the

absurd new law that andrew cuomo restaurant at the beginning of the year. it is a very old factory and in a state that is hostile to what it still thrives. it is a unique story. host: we are showings of video from the remington you to the page where they promote the different guns they make and the technology to let go to into them. what products did they make? what products and do they continue to make? guest: it is pretty much guns from the start. i looked at the museum which shows not just a wide an array of renting guns but also from other countries, beautifully and made pieces. they also made typewriters at one. . really, this is the story of a company that hit on a great idea and stuck with it. within the context of american manufacturing decline and within the context of low employment,

thought it was a story that needed telling because gun manufacturers are vilified by the left. read "thank you tells you moret about how this has been vilified. host: how his remington doing? guest: they are doing well. i heard they made 1 million tons last year and this year, 1.2 million and they still cannot keep up with demand. since 2007, it started to optic but in 2008 with the election of this president, it boosted after the gun control push after sandy hook. americans cannot buy enough guns and enough ammunition. it must be very frustrating for those who wish to limit the number of guns in this country that the moment they propose doing so, the guns fly off the shelves.

host: they had revenues of approximately $394 million in 2004 and distributes and over 54 foreign countries. what about their government contracts? guest: i got to fire one of the weapons that have been making for certain branches of the u.s. military. that cannot tell me which but they are the high end and highly trained ones. they had just landed a large contract for those rifles and they will be deployed around the world. there is some government contracts in there as well but largely, that is a prestige part of the business. the main business comes from normal american citizens who wish to buy firearms. host: the government contract is 78 $9.9 million. here is a tweet -

guest: i actually don't know how much they make. the company is a good relationship with the union because the people who work there have had fathers and grandfathers who worked there and they recognize the importance of the plant. i don't think there is any virtue being unionized but it is nice to see where the union exists it is not diminishing the business. host: if you work at remington, do you have to believe in lesser gun-control? is no litmus test. believe andeople what they are doing and is the symbol hannah gang. you probably and would not want to work and a butcher shop of your a vegetarian and would not want to work in a car factory if you were all much. i doubt you'd want to spend your

time around 8200-year-old gun manufacturer that makes weapons including weapons for the military if you thought guns or a problem in the united states. of course, they look for people who believe in what they are doing and who don't want this sort of restrictive, irrational, absurd laws that new york operates under. host: this is the cover story from "the national review." it is about remington and its factory in ilium, new york. here are the phone lines. is from marlborough, mass., independent caller. caller: crake article yesterday.

-- great article yesterday. a couple of quick questions -- how does the united mine workers factor into representing people that make guns? withther question -- automation today, are they actually losing hiring less workers because of the automation? and how much does the state debt and taxes? in taxes? i think it is disgraceful they get any money since andrew cuomo is passing anti-gun laws for the town may be benefiting but as far as the state getting money, i think that is disgraceful. of the last question, i don't know the exact tax

revenue. i would tend to agree. about this. remington along with many new england gun manufacturers are getting offers constantly from the southern states, south carolina is stealing the manufacturing and so is taxes and they are doing this actively. when you have a highly skilled work force that has been there a long time and a town that supports them, you don't about . want to move out. the remington of view is that we don't want to help new york out that we don't like dole all but our view is to repeal it. host: he talked about the union that's involved there, the united mine workers and what are they involved? then he also talked about the technology that is being used to create these guns and ifthe that

means they are hiring less people on the line. don't know the answer to the first question. that is a local issue and the union picks up on that. there is probably no such thing as a gun manufacturer is union. question,f the second yes, i think there was employment reduction with new machines but these things tend to increase the efficiency of a factory which allows them to hire more. i'm not sure it is replacing people with machines as much as it is casualties of change. answer, youa direct should ask remington. host: here is a tweet -

you talked about being recruited from other states but are they going to the state governments and saying they will leave? yes, i yes, i -- guest: think we see that in connecticut. you don't want to make a product of which you are proud and have it illegal in that state. you would presumably like to be self much of what you make a local area and not ship it out to free state. there is also the union issue but i think remington is in a unique position with its union. it is not so much the union that would be a difficult day. it is more the general climate, the high taxes and regulation. you wrote about technology in your piece -- can you describe this into what goes into making a gun these days?

guest: i was extremely naive on this. it.ew the history of that thereresumed be 18th century gunsmiths in tricornered hat making guns themselves. that is not the case at all. it is more involved than a car plant where you have a lot of robotics. this is effectively a production line. made pieces are individually by machine and buy each person and they go along the line and each part of the gun is added and then they take it on to the range and they have different ranges for different types of guns and the gun goes out. it is extremely quick. host: nottingham, a democratic caller.

caller: i wanted to ask a question about the gun control law. control and then there is done banning. when people talk about gun control, they speak of them as \ guns is to ban completely. it seems to be more about regulation about who gets them and out and make it more difficult for john doe to obtain a gun more so than just banning guns completely. any reasonable person that guns will never be banned. i think there is a need to have more of an emphasis on making it tougher for at least keeping track of the guns that are out there and making sure that they are not as easily purchased or center around. about old gun-nk control more than begun banning? that: i certainly agree

there are few propose to get -- ban guns completely. when the senate took up the gun bill after sandy hook and joe biden pretended to put together a report, two of the three components that were suggested by dianne feinstein. there was a ban on magazines or above a certain amount and a band about 250 different types of weapons that she did not particularly like. what eventually came to floor and was defeated was gun- control. it was about who could get control of guns. i oppose that because the loopholes that we hear about today were deliberately put into law and the new loopholes this change would have created tomorrow will be treated as if they need closing. i am not somebody who is

particularly worried about making the argument. slippery slope arguments make sense. there has been progress on gun rights in the last 20 years and i don't want to see it reversed at the federal level. host: i don't know what that means. host: what about having safety regulations, some sort of standard across the board for guns? guest: there is. this.not play games with a gun is an item designed to kill people. it is designed to fire a projectile extremely fast into somebody's body or an animal. that is what is there for. there is no point in dressing that operate the question is who gets those guns, not whether they do harm. there are already safety features and regulations and

manufacturing standards. you have to register every serial number of a gun. they are supposed to kill people. they are supposed to kill people what they are held by the army or the police or by the citizenry. don't wish to see a dupoly environment held by the state. there's no way to make a gun safe. host: what about the regulations? you talked about a serial number on every gun. you write about it in the story. tell our viewers. question aboute what happens if a gun comes out bad. , if it is beyond repair within the factory. the answer is that this is a heavily regulated area. the receiver which is the part of the gun that makes it a gun, it does the firing, it told the round and contains the trigger housing. every single one of those made

has to have a serial number. even if it comes out broken. if it comes out broken, that have to take a picture of cutting it in half and then send that to the federal government if the federal government asks for it. they have to document it. it is not as if there are people popping in at night and stealing chocolate. this is already regulated industry. norfolk, va., independent college. about: you were talking having guns designed to kill people and animals. do they talk about the number of people who have been killed by remington arms? is there a difference between those who knew they would be

killed and those who were innocently killed and whether or not they are planning on heavier types of equipment so that more people could be killed. guest: of course they don't talk about how many people remington arms has killed. they have not killed anybody. nor any other gun manufacturer. the gun is a tool. people can use to kill other people. the question is -- into whose hands do you allow those tools? in a pre republic, the answer has to be that the citizenry which hires the government gets them first. is next from new mexico, independent caller. toler:sir, i would like you compare the number of gun deaths in your country of origin and a number of gun deaths in this country.

if you are a bridge, does that mean britain is less free than the united states? u.s., britain is a lot less free than the united states prefer to start, britain has no first amendment and people are routinely arrested for offending others which is an outrage. massacre the dunblaine and the government banned guns. i am british but i would say that when the british band guns, there was almost no protests. 2000 people took to the streets and they did so halfheartedly and compare that to 400,000 people who took to the streets when hunting was banned. in america, there's a constitutional right to bear arms, a gun culture and a very strongly defended culture of gun ownership. there are also 350 million guns free banning guns in britain or

australia is nothing like banning guns in the united states. you cannot ban guns in a country with 350 million of them. it is a totally different situation. yes, britain is very different and there is less gun violence. there is let me -- there is not less violence but there is less gun violence. if you think the australian and british model are a recipe for the united states, you would probably be looking to start a -- the civil war. host: independent color -- caller: does remington just make long guns or pistols also? guest: they have just started making pistols again. that had a 10-year hiatus in which they made no pistols at all and they have just gone back to it. in may 1911 which i think is selling well. host: are you still there? why do you ask the question? caller: i am familiar with making -- them making long guns free i have never heard of them making pistols.

host: you know about their history with that? guest: the majority of the guns they have made historically has been either long guns or shotguns. they are famous for shotguns that they make. remington is owned by the freedom group and it on another bunch of gun companies and those companies have a specialty. some of the operations of the gun companies have been moved to the ilium pplat. my understanding is that the history was more on the line of long guns. host: what other companies -- -- does the freedom group own? >>bush master which was in the news after sending up. it owns marlin. i cannot tell you the other five. host: new york, democratic color -- caller: good morning to you. ilium, new york

that family members that worked for remington. i used to be a hunter and used guns all my life. the thing that kills me is guns don't kill people, people kill people. the problem is not the guns. it is the mental instability of people that do this. i have known many people who have hunted and we just had an incident in the mohawk valley about a year ago where a guy picked up a gun and just went on a rampage. they tried to link it to guns. kill people, people kill people. that is all i would like to said. host: while you were talking, we have been showing youtube video from remington.

are from the town, how would you describe the impact of remington on that community? has keptemington members of my family and a lot of my friends and without remington being there, not only ilium but you have franklin, mohawk. there is a big percentage of herkimer count the itself along with surrounding counties whether it is part of oieida - a big area, part of this mohawk valley depends on remington arms. you also have the other businesses that have business with remington. i can remember going to school. i went to school in mohawk and fieldand a lot of our trips had a lot to do with

remington. remington is not only gunmaker but is also a big supporter. i realize the activists and what happened with sandy hook and that was bad. i understand about that. this is what kills me -- they don't understand and they see a negative impact about gun makers. they don't see the other side of it per don't understand the other side. remington has a school right called remington elementary school. they don't understand how much money remington themselves have put into that school. that's how it got that name. host: how much to your family members make an average from being employed at revving 10? caller: i am 48 now and this has been years ago. years, it back 15-20

has been a while, a couple of them still work there. and that hady go to go automated because you've got to keep up with the times. if you could get a job in remington back in the 1980's- evens, you were making, then, it was maybe $15-$20 per hours a remington always took care of the people. arkansas city, kan., independent college. caller: i am down on the southern border of kansas. we have a packing house and some pressing plants and i would income a manufacturer come to furnish good jobs. a license to carry.

salt lake city, utah, democratic caller. caller: you equated guns to automobiles. i am curious why we don't ask john -- gun owners to also provide insurance so that they would be able to protect themselves and other people and provide monetary support for unlawful deaths that occur because of these guns? we asked the sending of people with cars. why don't we ask the gun owners to do that? if i don't protect my gun and get stolen and used in a crime, shouldn't i be held responsible? guest: have you read the bill of rights? host: go ahead with your point. there's a different standard applied to automobile. i have a lot of admiration for people who want to appeal the second man but not much admiration for people to pretend

that guns are no more protected and speech is no more protected, the right to jury trial is no more protected than driving. there's no right to drive but there is a right to own a gun. that is the limit to accessing that right and that should be as small as possible. host: kansas, democrat. ifler: i am thinking that remington leaves new york, i think it would be a good thing. let new york find out what is going on when they lose more revenue. you said earlier that remington said they are going to stay. i have an awful lot of sympathy for that line of argument in general. pay thehould have to price for passing bad laws. if you look at the economic

success of texas at the moment, you can actually see what happens when a state puts in a good business environment. having said that are remington is a very big operation and has been there for 200 years and have the awful lot of employees and this bill was rushed through a few months ago. it is not as if it has been on the statutes for 15 years. i think we approach that remington has taken the idea to repeal it. if you look of the popularity of governor cuomo before and after that was rushed through, you'll .ee there's a reasonable chance made the that probably right decision and waiting. manufacturer, i would move, too. host: waldorf, maryland, democratic column. caller: good morning to both of you. most americans have no use for the fastest rate in this country.

we have even less use for the communist left to run by this president. because will not say it it is not politically expedient. we only want guns to defend their homes a little bit. what we really need is their guns to defend ourselves against communist or fascist and soldiers that would come into our country if that power to cover this country. could never happen? gonzales to elian and taken out of his home by soldiers run by fascist and communist voices in this country. >> i think there is a slim chance of that happening but that is not really the point. reasonght is there for a and when you look at the historical debate surrounding

the passage of the second amendment and the federal constitution, the insurrectionist theory holds that ultimately, people may have the right to keep and bear arms because they might one day need to use against the government is very clearly true. much maligned in recent years. the right is there? yes. if you look of the constitution of the answer, the first post- colonial constitution, it includes the right to insurrection. it says as clear as day that people have a right to recall three i'm not suggesting that people should and i don't think one should take that line of reasoning too far. that is why the second amendment is around. caller:er: ho

11 in neighboring community to the frankfurt-ilium-herkimer community. my brother passed away last year and raise an entire family working at remington. the businesses that are supported by all families that live and work at remington, the company is a wonderful company. they support so many people. this is a very hard-pressed area. recently have horrible flooding. these community members were so wonderful. that's all i have to say. host: thoughts from that sentiment? very: it is obviously important thing that people maintain their jobs. is work that gives one dignity. nobody really wants to live live

in poverty or the unemployed. as you just heard, the source of employment as remington is clearly important. as a story that means telling. it is not holding up their there is some idea that there is a dark, smoke-covered factory, in the hills of more that is during out rep -- weapons that people. nothing could be further from the truth. a cover s

it's what might have happened if this health want a civil war. and i think that is something worth more leasing about because of the truth of the matter is the reason we worry so much about the civil war is the south did not win and the north did. and so, i am trying to go back and reconstruct from what we know about the way the war actually went and the reasons for that. and say now if we change a few things we would have to change more than one. what would the world be like if the subject confederacy was on the border of the united states

of america? >> what is one of the first things you look at? why did we fight the war in the first place and i won't go into all of the details but to make a long story short, we went to the war over the issue of slavery. there are a lot of issues between north and south but as my dad used to say about money, slavery may not have been the only reason the civil war happened but it is way ahead of what ever happened in second place. that is important because the issue turns out to be something that is extremely difficult to resolve to the nitze commands the war progresses, there aren't a very many exit past so to speak to say let's see if we can settle that. we already tried all of those and they didn't work so we have to fight to the finish what most people concentrate is the two battles, gettysburg is the most

famous and he could have one that didn't. the other one a lot of people leave to move towards thinking may have been more pivotal is the bottolfsen tecum, the battle in which the british basically decided since the self didn't win we won't go in and it's also the battle that prompted lincoln to issue the emancipation proclamation. and that sets the tone of the best of the war as being a war against slavery and the inability to defeat mcclellan and what is sometimes referred to as a maryland campaign was a turning point in the sense that it meant the south was now committed to have to keep on fighting, something they were not as prepared to do as simply because they were a small country, fewer men not capacity to fight the south would have preferred to end this quickly and antietam put an end to any people that have a hope of that.

the other turning point when you get past gettysburg the other point would be lincoln would have to lose the deflection. i think one of the promises i always felt about the civil war is a major thing the north had going for it was a leader that was totally and completely committed to waging the war for ending slavery in winning the war. and that he election would have to go either way. that wouldn't happen without some thing going different. the two things i hold differently are that the northern forces are not as successful in the west particularly at shiloh and this leads of to the situation by the time you get to gettysburg if the south wins the battle that might be to turn the populace against lincoln and maybe they could have him win that election and into the war. >> now can we tell the story how history was in your book in 1864

what is going on now? >> i follow what is probably pretty standard practice for people that speculate on the outcome of gettysburg. i have a league winning because he does a couple of things like those with him rather than against him, and the union army then has to retreat. lee just has to stay in the north and make a mess of himself. you know the way the elections go. the build and the opponent's catch up on it and he's defending himself because lee is rampaging through pennsylvania degette he's in new york, and the next thing you know he loses the election. the person coming in is going to be in a position to try to negotiate with the confederacy. it's not that they necessarily want to negotiate with the confederacy. the problem is that with a victory at gettysburg, the

french and english who have been watching ever since early in the war for a chance not necessarily to send troops to the united states but to metal. we are familiar with this today because we need mediate peace for you and the british offered to do that. lincoln would have turned them down. but in his place, the new president says there is no way. we will let you mediate the peace. the piece is mediated, the treaty is signed and the confederate states of america with jefferson davis as the president become a nation to the south of the united states of america. and that opens up a whole new world, the world that we can only imagine because it never existed. but think for a net of the united states from baltimore all the way down through a around for the coming down along the gulf coast in the end of texas

that would be foreign territory. it wouldn't be part of the united states putting it in fact, the united states would have no real access to the atlantic or the caribbean except for a narrow path from baltimore number as far as boston for a good harbour sunni way. so all of a sudden the great atlantic coast in the united states is to the point can be easily blockaded. everything has to be funneled through. it doesn't mean that the united states would collapse under its own weight. it means the united states would have no one near the presence in the western hemisphere in terms of dealing with the prevention or french intervention. but i reminded my readers that and 1865 the french had troops technically the emperor maximilian and mexico. my theory is that had the self won the civil war the french would have stayed in mexico and

the british would have expanded their influence at the kennedy and and what became for the last half of the 20th century the caribbean is dominated by the big north american state wouldn't be there. there would be the north and the south and would be allied to the british and to the french. that would change the geopolitics. now, i think it would also change the politics within the united states of america. losing the war doesn't come easily to any populist. and in the case of the civil war going the wrong way having the south when, the republicans would be cursed because they were the ones that started the war in the eyes of the public and then lost it. but the south would be the ones that surrendered to the enemy. and both parties could use that against the other. so my theory is you probably

would get a huge realignment if not what became the populace but some third-party. but mostly you would get a situation of much more instability and much less one has to remember the actual path after the civil war was the republican dominated that led to the united states becoming the great industrial nation of the 20th century. i am not sure it would have been the great industrial nation of the 20th century had the south one that war and they certainly wouldn't. >> what happens to the institution and the confederate states of america? >> you to get right out of my mouth. as far as the sleeves are concerned, the irony is they would eventually become free. they wouldn't become free because they were under the freedom of because of the abolitionists in the north, they wouldn't become free because the cotton market was going to collapse in the 1870's, the the

outcome of the civil war. and that collapse was going to cause prices to fall dramatically. now, slavery in the united states was a very economic institution. even before the civil war, half of the value of the invested money capital in the south was in the form of slaves in the 21st century in the 19th century, a collapse of the cotton market and the collapse of the slave prices would have a similar affect the financial disaster. the way to offset that disaster is people expect them to keep falling for quite awhile. the slave holders would turn to the government for help. that is after all the american help. they would say why our -- are

slaves coming emancipate them and get them out of this debt because they paid a lot to the debt. get us out from under this debt and we will be forever thankful. now in the book i probably have to speed things up a little to pursue my tale played of that happening in the 1880s it would be the 1890's. now, i have to quickly remind people this isn't the same as saying the united states would have emancipated the slaves anyway. it isn't so much different from the apartheid in south africa. they wouldn't be free. they just wouldn't be slaves anymore. you wipe out the economic burden of the slaves being the capitol and replace it with a preshow system of segregation much stronger than what we actually saw but it's enough to give you

a clue of what would happen if they had their hands free to do anything. and the one huge loser would have been the african-americans because even if they were free from slaves they wouldn't be able to go north. remember that in fact many african-americans got out from under the heel of segregation as the legacy they went north. i don't think the united states would welcome that if they had been in the context of the war that they lost in the south. >> why not? >> the same reason we don't really welcome mexicans, latin americans. i think they are a very strong racial aspect here that i've always told by students for one of the things that made the expansion of slavery so disagreeable to the northerners is they really didn't want blacks coming into their territories. you don't want blacks in your

neighborhood. and slavery and black were synonymous. there were a small number, a very small number. but for the most part, a black person was a slave, and therefore if you move slaves, you are moving black people in there and i have always argued the this was definitely favoring any expansion of slavery in the new areas. it could be tolerated partly because number americans for not all that free from racism themselves. they could tolerate slavery in the south from by southerners and never touch our shores so to speak. but they wouldn't tolerate it if they started bringing them in to the neighborhood so to speak. >> so now this is into the 25th century. with the united states and the confederate states of america be

like? >> in my book i point out that one of the problems of the counterfactual history where you note that i keep referring back to what actually happened, you can only do that up to a point but the further that you go it's like climbing the tree way out at the end of branches and you have too many branches and to many routes and you can no longer maintain a coherent story. so i and my book and i'm perfectly willing to concede it is a convenient way to close out ending the book counterfactual book is harder than starting it. i end this by saying look, the one thing that wouldn't have changed is the world would have been caught up in the grips of the first world war. great powers, france, germany, england still would have played out their games and fought the great war. but i say one of the differences about this war is that the united states would have been drawn in because the confederacy would be tied closely to england

and france and america would only have one place left and there would be germany. they would say no, no, the 20th century we never joined up with the germans. in 1900, the germans for the second largest group in the united states besides the irish. and to this day and you can see it in the midwest and milwaukee and st. louis, a large german leaders. succumb and this actually was a factor and i am not getting into world war i to some extent. my theory is the united states for to come into the war on the side of germany and the confederacy would have been on the side of the quote allies and the first world war would have been right here at home, counterfactual history changes just a couple of things. in my case it is the battles in the war. and then after that, you begin to see what the ramifications are. but you try -- i have a recipe i will try to remember.

i believe it is to parts reality and one part imagination and you intersperse them and enjoy a good meal. but the factual part is very important. >> is what if a question that historians ask often? >> they don't ask it often openly. there is a -- the way that i put every historian secretly asks what if when he's writing his history were up least if you are dealing with historians writing about a great defense and so forth they choose their defense partly because they think they are important. why are the important? because if they didn't happen, the world would be different. if you are arguing that the world has changed because of your agent then you must be arguing that would have been different if it didn't happen. so yes, i think it is very much

there. and that is why i cannot of the closet so to speak. i think that is what brought my book on the country did states of america coming out of the closet and singing here is how i think the social war should be taught. should be taught in terms of people understanding on what would have happened if the war turned out differently. >> up next on the special weeknight edition of book tv. author national book award winning author nathaniel