ask for directions when we get lost. [laughter] fiftyfifty-two percent are african-americans. we are also seeing that although we have no guidelines, the majority of the population we serve are low to moderate income. these are the services we've provided. we help people, as you can see, it's grown. the program has been up and running for about two and a half years. we're helping people with all of these different services, and here's what we're seeing. what are the issues that people are working on? the big one, credit and debt. credit and debt is a major problem that not only credit

report, and all in the financial being and making ends meet. savings is lower down on the scale, but we're helping people put together budgets so they have a monthly plan where they can pay their bills and also hopefully save. we do -- we have developed a financial wellness strategy called the thin fit challenge where we give people points and prizes in the workplace like the wellness programs today. i think this is in the future, the third leg of the stool. we've been focused on green energy to address our abuse of natural resources. we've focused on health wellness because of our bad lifestyle

habits in america, and now we have to be focused on financial wellness. it's going to be something that we're all going to have to participate in. i think my time is up. >> please, we have time for just a couple questions, i think. i was wondering what kind of services do people resort to, and have you made end roads, particularly, you know, with the new consumer protection financial bureau at the federal level? you know, has it improved any? this is controlled at the state level, what the cfpb can do is educate consumers about these issues. in delaware, one of the big development strategies about 20 years ago was to invite all of

the credit card companies to delaware to create jobs. we have usury law and all credit card bills come from delaware and you pay 25-40 #% on your credit cards. unfortunately, for payday lenders, title lenders and these fringe financial services in delaware, as in most states, there's a lot of them, and the problem is they have no credit score or savings and to get a consumer loan like you might do is difficult for a lot of people. they do have to resort to payday loans. >> let's open it up to the audience. questions for mary?

okay. i didn't see hands right away. i want to ask you, i'm curious about whether you are getting any pushback or help from the financial industry? i know in the runup to the financial crisis, you know, sub prime morning bower era, and they crack down on lending, push back from lobbies, representing fannie, freddie, and so forth, what's been the reaction to, you know, to the program in delaware? have you got help or hindrance? >> help. for the most part, under cra, this would be eligible activity so we do get a lot of support. we have a lot of partnership with local financial institutions who help to fund

the program. unfortunately, when it comes to providing financial products, it's challenges because of the regulatory environment. we need a lot of exceptions to the regulations in order to offer products to people who have difficulty or who have difficulty in the past maintaining a bank account or with their credit. that lady -- >> it sounds like a great program that you have in terms of education and helping people manage their money. i wonder what the minimum wage is in delaware on whether there's movement and to increase and to understand and manage? >> well, that is a good

question. i'll be honest. i can answer you -- i don't know what the minimum wage is, but whatever the minimum wage in, not minimum wage, even if it's $10, it's not enough. what we find is that people are working more than one job. a lot of the people that we're working with in businesses we're serving, they have multiple jobs, and they use credit cards to supplement income, so when we look at wages over the past 20 years, the wages are stagnant, and the cost of living has gone up. that's, i think, something in terms of public policy that we really need to have a look at. >> another one here. >> i'm with columbia university, board member, and the reason --

it sounds like you're gaining huge amount of traction in delaware. to what degree are the other states looking in your direction and diseasing about, you know, whether they are going to move forward with a similar sort of organization or are you going to reach out and expand to the greater country, or -- what's the view to the future to expanding your success? >> we're very interested in reaching out to other states around the country. we really think that having, as i said, having the governor involved really makes a difference. there's so many different state agencies, and the ability of the governor to leverage -- to influence the other sectors throughout the state, we just put together a playbook for national rep cation. the national governor's association is doing a case study on the program that's going to be distributed to the other states. we just completed an 18-month

evaluation and an evaluation in the workplace, and these are materials that we're going to be able to provide the research and the documentation and actually the model to other states who are interested in replicating so we have complications. the governor and i are talking to people here in washington, and hopefully we'll be working with nga as well. >> well, i'm afraid we're out of time, but thank you very much. it was absolutely fascinating presentation, and now going to surrender the stage to ed ryely, the global chief executive officer of strategic communications for ftc consulting who is going to present the very, very vivid data in the heartline monitor poll that really underlies a lot of the things you're trying to correct with your program. thank you. >> thank you.

[applause] >> i have to move quick lo through the survey to bring to life the discussion we've had. this is our 19th survey done over the last five years. we begin this project with a support of all states, back in january of 2009. our goal then was to document and look at the changing circumstances that americans were dealing with given the global financial crisis we're in the midst of. we have to figure out whether this would create lasting changes in terms of people's behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions on their own economic security or merely it was an event, a blip passing with time quickly and people reverted to more normalized

behavior. i think we can say today 19 surveys into this we can see that there's been lasting changes, both in terms of people's attitudes and opinions, but there have also been lasting changes in terms of the reality that they're living with in therms of their own economic security and sense of opportunities for the immediate future for them and their families, but also for the next generation. we thank national general for the partnership and opportunity to work with them, and, particularly, all state for the support on the project to look at important issues going forward. the survey we're going over today is fielded between november 2 and 6. we surveyed 1,000 respondents. they are adults at the age of 18-plus. this margin of error is plus or minus 3.1% as we talk about this. in terms of just some key summary findings before we jump

in, the political and economic indicators are at or near their low water mark since we began the series. most americans believe that the u.s. economy is still in recession. americans believe that they can handle their daily financial obligations; however, they are less sure about meeting the long term financial milestones that one would normally set out in order to achieve financial security. most have faith in the financial system, but many do see it as still very risky participating in the market, participating in long term investments. those things continue to raise concerns for many americans in the aftermath of the crisis. finally, americans believe that the fiscal troubles that manifest themselves here and on the stage in washington, d.c. has had a direct impact and hurt their own personal finances. with that, let me give a quick snapshot of the political

overview which does set some context for how people view their own economic circumstances. in terms of -- i'm going to contrast where we are today to where we were one year ago. in terms of right track, wrong track for the country, you'll see that we are in -- in 20 # 13, it was 10% to the negative. right track, wrong track, that's fallen now to 42% of the negative. in terms of the approval rating of the president, that was 12% to the positive a year ago, and it is now 17% to the negative. in terms of the approval or disapproval of congress, it has moved from a 51% of the negative to the unanimous -- [laughter] of a minus 75% to the negative. very chilling numbers as we look there.

approval moved from 12 to 13 by 14%, losing support with african-american households by 8%. by hispanic households in particular, a key constituency in the election campaign, down 26%. with republicans, not much lower to go, down 4% from 11 to 7, but interestingly with independents and democrats, down 19 and 17% respectively during the last year. also, we're talk about the divide of noncollege and college educated households down 20 with noncollege educated households and down 11 with college educated households. again, a very significant slip. just further building on this, if you look at this chart, the first line is the president's approval rating down from november 2012. the people's belief that the economy will improve over the

next 12 months, you see a slide down on that, but little bend back to the positive. country had it in the right direction, consistently down, but the policies of the current administration will increase opportunity for you, for people like me. you see that that has basically slid down and then bottomed to where it is right now, and the congressional approval rating, you see that dropping. on all of the indicators, you see a slide down; however, if you look at this one item, and this speaks to a constant finding throughout this poll, all around you is bad. all around you is slipping, but how do you view your own personal situation, and will it improve over the next 12 months? you see that while that is slid down a little bit, that has basically remained constant throughout the poll, not a great number with 40% saying that they are confident that there will be an improvement in their own

financial situation, but something that speaks to the core belief we found from the very beginning of this that while i question the leadership class of the country, while i question whether or not my neighbors can deal with the financial crisis that we're in the middle of, while i question whether or not the political class can come up with solutions, i think i'll do okay. this sort of individual sense of confidence that i will navigate my way through this remains a constant. now, this is a little bit of a difficult -- think of this as a square pie chart. this basically just takes a look at some of the groups that we'll talk about as we go through the survey. 61 -- segments based on the indicators -- 61% of the household have at least one full-time worker at varying income levels and education that is actively in the work force right now. thirty-nine percent fall into another category. you see the top blue is

full-time households, full-time worker in the house hole, income over $50,000 a year in that household, and a college degree that makes up 23% of the sample. the next group down are full-time working households without a college degree represents 15% of the sample earning $50,000-plus. the next is a full-time working household earning less than $50,000 a year and have a college degree. these tend to be younger households, people just entering the work force, have a college degree, still under $50,000 a year. you see full-time households earning less than $50,000 a year, no college degree represents 14%. 16% of the samples are households with retirees, no one is actively participating in the work force, but they are, and they are retirees, and then 21% do not have a retiree and do not have a full-time worker so these

are individuals who are working part time. these are individuals who are the hard unemployed or have somebody in the household who is -- who is not fully participating in the full-time job in the work force. you see this hard core households with an unemployed person. you see the portion of that where both people, two-thirds of that group, that 13%, are in households where neither -- where no one is working full time and participating in the work force, but there are also, as you see, they stretch out into the other group noted by the red line of where there's an unemployed member of the household, but they might have another full-time worker. they might be in the household earning over 50k, college degree, a few of those, in a household turning over 50k a year with no degree, ect., ect. so you see -- one of the things that we're beginning to see in

the survey is there is this hard core group of people who are not participating in the economy. they do not have a steady work, and that they remain a serious problem. i have a digression here. this data be -- there's not a test when i'm done, number one, and number two, this data is available online, the entire series. if there's an area of interest, you'd be able to avail yourself of the data directly, and, obviously, we'd be willing to help. if you look at what we highlighted here, full-time working households, 50k plus, and a college degree. 30% of these opposed to 40% of the sample as a whole are age 50-plus. they tend to be younger than the

sample as a whole. 5 # 4% identify themselves as being in the middle class, and 49% of the group actually earn income greater than a hundred thousand dollars a year, and 24% are nonwhite versus 38% of the total sample, and 82% of this group owns a home. immediately next to them are the full-time households who earn 50 # k plus, but there is no college degree. what i draw your attention to, is the households with a college degree, 49% of them earn $100,000 a year or more, and those without a college degree, only 24 -- excuse me, 25% go above the 100,000 mark so you see that while these are good -- this -- the noncollege degree households, good middle class family, a lower ceiling on income in terms of what's available to them. another group just to look at that's interesting here is the retired households, and one of

the things found through our surveys is some of the people who felt most capable of negotiating the current turbulence are those who are already retired, those who are already on a type of a program. obviously, 988% of them are over 50 years of age. fifty-two percent identify themselves as being part of the middle class versus 45 of the sample as a whole. nineteen percent of them are nonwhite. this is a much wider population group that has other impacts as we look at this, and 77% versus 63% of the sample as a whole own a home. again, these three groups in the middle clustered around the highlighted group in the gold bar represent those who are more comfortable with dealing with the future than the rest of the population. however, while high income americans have a better feeling about their finances in the moment right now, they don't

necessarily share the financial optimism of those of lesser means. now, those with a little on optimism talking about improving, you know, that is from a relative perspective. they might think it has to be better because it's tough where i am right now, but it speaks to the lack of confidence of those who are achieving in terms of looking at improvement of their finances in the near term future. again, focusing on the group of 50k plus households, full-time degree, 50% of the group say their personal finances are in excellent or good shape. only 36%, however, say that their situation will improve in the next year as opposed to 39% of the sample. again, if you look at those three columns in the center, while they are the ones who are most confident about where they are today, they are also the ones who have the greatest drop off in terms of where they will be in the next 12 months, and,

again, you know, those with the greatest optimism are 50,000 a year or less, and nay have a full-time worker in the household, but no degree. no full-time workers or retirees, and those participating in the labor force on the margins of plus 49%. again, in terms of just looking at this in terms of the confidence of those winning about the next 12 months, it's a frail situation at this moment. we also ask people, you know, most americans think that the financial system today, we asked them a question, will this financial system be a path to a secure financial future for you? to a substantial majority -- they believe it works that way, 58%, but to a substantial minority, 35% say that when they

think about the financial system, they look at something that just appears to be too risky for them, and, again, if you look at the households by income group across the bottom, you know, the college had 50k plus households, most confident about participating in the financial system, and that provides them the means to enhance economic security. if you look at those on the margins, they have least confidence about that. again, you know, those who are retired, those earning above $50,000 a year, college degree or nondegree households are the most confident. those without have the most concern about our financial system providing real tufnt for them looking to the future. interestingly, if you don't look at the financial system, you know, where would you put your

money? people respond to home ownership, means of building wealth, other people talk about more hands on type of ownership up to and including goals. the idea that it's not paper, but something with a physical asset to be much more important than what they see as the shakier market. interestingly, when we ask americans, do you think the u.s. economy is currently in recession or not, 53% of americans believe that we are still in recession, and 41% believe the recession has passedded. this, you know, has an ideological cut to it also that i would just note that while if you look at republicans, a margin of 56% to 40% believe we're still in the recession, that is interesting because that pushes against the other finding of who is optimistic, the 50k household, republican households, 57% of republican households are not above $50,000 a year, yet you have a finding

that is somewhat ideological that we are still in a recession. independents, 58% to 38%, and democrats, 5 # 1-44 believes that we are out of recession. there's a slim margin on that. again, looking at that by income group, not many surprises there as you would expect, but i would say that there is one ideological piece whether or not we're in a recession, but if you are a republican, regardless of the income level, you are much more likely to believe we're still in recession. those who believe we're in recession are much likely to disapprove of president obama's job performance and skeptical about participating in the financial system. if you believe that we're in a recession, you are 65-28 disapprove, approve of the job that the president's doing. if you believe that we are still in a recession, 41% tracking

pretty much along with the sample as a whole, 5 # 3 #-411 believe that -- 5 #1-41 believe it's too risky. if you believe we're not in a recession, you are likely to be approving of the president's job versus the sample as a whole, quite dramatically, and you are much more likely to believe the financial system is safe and reliable, and, again, i think what's important among this is it underlies contours of those who believe we recovered, the upper third talked about, a third of the sample who are feeling that, okay, that is bind us now, and we are facing the future versus those who still feel they are gripping through results of the events of 2008 and 2009. then looking in terms of how americans assess whether or not they keep up with their responsibilities and plan for

the future. we asked questions, how realistic would each one of you be to meet the following given your financial circumstance if faced with that decision today. so you could basically negotiate these day-to-day financial relates, paying your day-to-day bills, 90% say it's realistic. paying medical bills, 71. making mortgage payment, 68. paying off your debt, 68%. when you ask them to begin to think about the future, putting things aside for the future, maintaining a comfortable standard of living in the retirement, down to 59, and 39% say -- 38% says that's not realistic. investing money for future needs, 58% saying that's realistic, 39% say it's not. affording six months of expenses in case of a job loss or emergency, 50% basically an even split, 50% say it's realistic, and 48% say it's not. paying for college education for

your children, 45-47. now, what's interesting about this is if you look at this by the college household break. and, you know, what are these financial tools you have at your disposal? the checking account, 94% drops to 78%. savings account, 84 down to 65 in a noncollege household. credit card, 81 down to 511. life insurance, 70 down to 50 #. a 401(k) to save for retirement, 45 down to 19. an ira, 43 down to 20, and a pension that you'll participate in, 36 down to 19. again, seeing a very sharp divide based on that college degree in the household and what that college degree usually means in terms of household income.

how important do you think the following financial activities are for you to meet your own personal financial goals. paying off in avoiding new debt, 94%, top of the pile, sticking to your monthly budget, 94%, maintaining emergency savings fund, 88%, saving for retirement, 84, and planning for the future, 83, and purchasing life insurance, 78. you see it tracking down. those things that are immediate at the top of the list, those things that are longer term go down, and looking at investing in the stock market, only 38% believing that's something that's important in terms about their own financial activities as they move forward. ..

>> again you see the feel that they are either behind or just

fighting to keep pace with meeting that they recognize as the demands of the future with paying off this on a day-to-day basis in terms of meeting the financial obligations and we asked if you had an important financial decisions made today, do you have the ability to understand the information and make the right decisions? 89%. 47% say that they are very confident and decisions about buying a home, 77%, 50% saying that they are very confident in now. planning for your retirement, 75% say that they are very confident that they have the tools to do that than 35% say that they are very confident and

still striking confidence that people believe they have the ability to do that. state planning, setting up longer-term stuff for your children, 64% say they are very confident. and 30% say they are very confident. and the fact that this has been a consistent theme throughout the survey and this includes on its financial decisions. the dark blue color of the graph here, those are saying that they have a solid plan for finances going forward and the lighter shades says that they have a plan, but they also have some questions and they are looking for a little bit more support it. those that say that they don't have a plan really need some

guidance and when we asked people and we are thinking about your money and personal finances, do you feel you have this plan or do you need some help would be really need some guidance with difficulty. the total sample, 65% say that they feel that they have a good plan and they are executing on it. 14% say they don't have a plan and looking at this again by the demographic breaks that we have talked about, the most confident group of those above $50,000 per year who do not have a college degree, 66%, and also retirees, 71%, we spoke about that earlier and they are obviously into executing the plan 71% say that they are confident and they have

a solid plan and they are executing on it. then again, you see on the margins of those in low income households and those who have this participation in the labor force and the labor plan is quite pronounced in americans that are split over whether or not we asked this question about in terms of financial regulations and financial institutions. to get increased information, what is the best way to go about this. is that consumers and an increased pressure that should be put on companies? 32% is roughly a third. the federal government should require a regulatory answer, close to one third. or a financial services company that the market will sort this out 20%. just drawing us to the ideological break on that.

42% support regulatory fixes enough for most popular. we do see what republicans and they are supportive of the market fix and competition should bring about better performance by businesses. and this includes how americans believe that the current dysfunction that we are seeing in the stalemate around the budget and fiscal issues. how much do believe the federal government's budget situation the deficit and national debt affects your personal financial situation. three in four americans basically believe that this affects them a great deal and only 26% say that they are sort of not impacted by that fact. and we asked if you believe that the federal government's budget situation has a positive or negative effect or overall effect on your personal financial situation. 62% said that this had a negative impact on them from

only 37% say that this has no effect -- excuse me, 26% and finally what you believe is an impact on you in terms of your own personal financial situation. what i would draw your eye to his faraway and fewer opportunities and the real issue of this is greatly challenged by this circumstance. and i hate to leave you on something that is not very optimistic, but looking to the near-term future in terms of

where we are, how confident are you that we are reaching an agreement and avoiding another government shutdown. 73% of americans are not confident in that cuts across party identifications and that obviously has an impact on not only the political attitudes of consumer behavior and this is how we experience these issues before we move onto the next step of the program. thank you. [applause] ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ >> i would consider myself to be middle class. we have a mortgage in cars and we are able to pay everything off each month. >> i would rate her family financial situation as good. >> i am married, i just had a baby. there's a lot of expenses with having a baby. it's expensive. >> i know people who can't even go out and buy a shirt, they have the budget everything they

spend. >> i'm sure a lot of people have to do that. >> i'm pretty confident that i know everything that i need to know to make my decisions. it's necessary for my retirement. >> i'm definitely very concerned about planning for my retirement. >> people should contribute if they have the opportunity. >> did not have enough savings less than six months and if i didn't work, i wouldn't have enough to last a month and a half or two months. >> i would be all right for maybe a couple of months. >> i definitely do not have enough savings to assess six months to a year. my husband works seven days a week and if we lost our jobs, it would be devastating. >> it is very important to pay off my debt. it is my ocd and my anxiety where something is not paid come , i get really stressed out about that. >> i do hope to get ahead.

i know that we will eventually pay down any kind of data we have. >> until the country is headed in the wrong direction. >> i feel the country is a mess. >> i do not approve currently of the jaw that barack obama is doing. >> he is battling with a congress that is so completely difficult to access in congress is doing it inexcusably. >> all argue. >> unemployment is off the charts. >> at this point it seems like it is so low at what degree you have, you are out of work. >> i hope by next year it will start to get better. >> i fear that it is starting to

improve. but i can't believe how many people around me are unemployed and struggling. >> the federal deficit affects us in a personal tremendously is because everything trickles down. >> higher deficit and higher taxes. >> it's difficult to get a salary and to get benefit. >> the most likely impact is fewer job opportunities. >> hopefully my lifetime it will get better, but i fear for my children if it continues to go the way it is in today's world, they will have a really rough. >> the shutdown affected many people. >> it will cause people to lose trust or a sense of security in our government. >> i think they shutdown and i think that disappoints people even further. >> i do see optimism for the future of america. we always need to get on the same page.

>> i do find optimism based on the fact that we persevere and keep going and we don't give up and we pretty much stayed together. something that will get us through. >> the country is going downhill, but it's the american spirit and the human spirit to keep positive and we are always trying to find the silver lining and it's who we are. it's who we are his as people. we can't really focus on anything negative. and that's what gets us through. >> so as you can see, we have just aggregated into those numbers. and i'm turning it over to nancy cook. [applause] [applause] >> hello, everyone. thank you so much. we have this outstanding panel and we just want to get some audience participation here to get a sense of how people are

feeling about the poll numbers. weighing in on this by asking a couple of questions to you and you can text your answer to the number 22233. or you can send a tweet. to which you believe is the primary way that average americans can improve their personal financial situations? the first response is to their own personal efforts, such as paying off debt and making sound investments. if that's the answer that you believe in, text 664124 tweet to at the poll. the second response is that americans can improve their financial situations with government help. if that is the answer that you prefer, texas at 664813 to 22183

or tweet to @poll. the results will be tabulated behind it. so let's see. and this is pretty cool. it looks like the majority of people here think that -- okay, no, it looks like the top one wins. but americans are going to improve their own personal financial situations due to their own effort by paying off debt and making sound investments, which is interesting and seems to really go along with a lot of what we heard in the poll. so i just want to introduce our panelists they're all wonderful and i'm excited to welcome them. we have eleanor who is a consumer advocate and we have the president and chief executive officer of greenwalt research and we have and wallace, who's a senior director of consumer financial services

of the president of the assistant corporation of financial services roundtable. so thank you for joining us. [applause] okay, so there is so much to dig into. and i just start with you because one thing that came out through this polling was that americans feel very frustrated about their financial futures you're an economist, so can you give us a sense of why this is happening? >> i was not surprised at all to see that we are officially out of a recession and so we are

deteriorating in some forms, but we think that we are sort of in this situation and starting in early 2010, we have just enough to hang on and keep up with growth in the normal working age population. we have been bumping along at the end of that whole for that time. so yet we are not in a recession, we are definitely in a recovery. but it's so slow that people aren't feeling like it is improving because it's improving so slowly that. >> there's a certain amount of uncertainty and people are worried about losing their jobs and their many people that feel insecure in economies not serving them well. >> one of the data points that i found fascinating was how confident people were in their

ability to guide their financial futures and how they felt that they could get advice from family and friends. as a financial planner, do you think that's a good idea and were you surprised by that? >> no, i'm really not. you know, we are very aware of this in terms of people do go to their family and friends to ask for advice and i think that we also, you know, people go to their friends to hire people like bernie madoff so we made that to be a better educated public about what the options are and that is certainly a major priority of the board to increase the standard of professionalism in the financial planning industry and people do go to their family and friends may also go to themselves and that was interesting as well in the polls and that was the same

as you says to ask how many people are above average drivers. [laughter] you would find that more than 50% of you would raise your hand, but if you are a statistician coming out of the answer is that you're not. and so i think people are more confident in their ability and maybe they are more so than they should be and so it's our job to make sure that that is part of that. >> absolutely, i was surprised a little bit by those who say that they have the ability to make financial decisions. some companies are using this to leverage social media to get the information out in the community

of people that you trust and so you have seen a number of new financial advisory tools that are based upon sort of seeing that good information out there, whether it is facebook or some of the more specific social media groups and allowing people to have access to sounder information, so it's not just what you pick up at the barber shop sort of thing, but really good and solid information from the financial planners. >> absolutely. they made a distinction between financial literacy and financial decision-making. there's no question that people need financial information they need to understand the basic vocabulary and concepts and what is also needed is the judgment. and you have a baseline of

information and you also need the capability to put that information together and apply it to a specific individual and make a prudent judgment and many people are not necessarily capable of doing that. we can do our own brain surgery and in many cases we need someone to help us with text choices in investments and retirement planning. >> one question i have a son so much a financial planning is now being left up to individuals, very few people come i think 37% have employer-sponsored 401ks and do you think that businesses and employees are going to have to step in and help people do that? >> yes, absolutely. that is a trend we are seeing is that employers and the financial services companies that help to

manage those funds are providing more information and a more accessible format and obviously you can't sit someone down and give them a two-hour lecture on what the portfolio allocation will be. so it's very much how do you deliver this information in a way and usable pieces at the opportunity for people to absorb it and apply it and that has to be an ongoing process associate employment environment, the educational environment, being aware of this is the ideal place to be doing that. >> another thing i was struck by was the retirement and hump americans -- have fewer feeling confident they can live for the future and plan to that. you have done a lot of this and how have you seen that change over the years that you have

been doing that research? >> one of the things my company does is that retirement survey. since 1990 when they serving the public annually on issues pertaining to retirement. one of the striking things was the great recession and living comfortably in retirement. in 1995, 87% of the public said -- workers said that they they're not at all confident that they can afford this throughout the retirement. and it was 10% that were not confident in 2007 in and this year is 20%, three times as much. we found that 11% of workers planning to work and now it's 36% and the difficulty in that, we measure it at 40%, they wind up retiring earlier than they plan to so there is a response

to the lack of confidence there and so everyone can realize it. it is not necessarily a bad thing. it is a wake-up call to reality and so it's the first step in trying to do more and i hope in some ways that this will be translated into greater efforts to save more and do a better job in the planning. >> yes, i agree. one of the things is the great recession hit different age groups very differently. so when you think of young workers, the waves hitting them is more a part of the job opportunities. older workers, just by where they are in the lifecycle, they have the assets that just took a major hit.

it is the value of their homes and so people just saw a massive hit in their retirement because of this bursting of the housing bubble. older workers are said and then staying in their jobs, they are not retiring, and you see this generational divide, but it is not happening. the number of missing workers is a big thing out there right now. the unemployment rate has declined a ton but there's a huge portion of that because then people see job opportunities that are so weak and you can actually dig in and say who are these workers and there are workers under age 55 years old and older and as a

group, fewer of these people are in the labor force right now than there would be if the great recession had it happen and it's smaller as a share. but it just isn't the case then there would be if it wasn't for the great recession as we we are not seeing job opportunities so strong, that they are able to stay in an sure ensure this up in the aftermath of the great recession. >> so much of it was about building a financial future and people's inability to plan long-term and people are really just respond to the short-term financial needs of their families. so how are people going to build wealth if the wages are stagnant and the housing market is not great other places. how will people do that in the future? >> there's a mechanism found to

be effective and that is auto enrollment and auto escalation. it hasn't been used ultimately, a lot of people keep them there. but now that they know that this works, we can start encouraging employees to have people in 5% and 6% and escalate them as they get to 10 or 12 and people can always opt out. i am not denigrating education, because it is important and i think that we have to use all the tools available. and it can be used more effectively and more often. >> australia does not and they have had a lot of success with that and yes, i agree, because even young people are not investing in the stock market or in their 401k plans. so getting them to understand the longer term and what is happening here. i think that this poll shows

plain and clear that americans are still paying for yesterday. they are not paying ahead for tomorrow. they either can't or they won't and again, it is this very short-term that is affecting both the consumers as well as our politicians as well. responding to the immediate crisis. and i think also that consumers need to understand it used to be that the goal of life was to retire and even myself as a financial planner spent a lot of time that was your major financial planning goal a lot of people building not nest egg, figuring out how they would retire. now we have entering student loans and that retirement not that you have to save point. think about the health care costs, particularly of the

overly, that is another huge, you know, suddenly we have consumers that are between rocks and hard places because they have so much work to do not just for retirement. so then it takes a comprehensive approach to turn to a young person or an older person and help them make the trade-offs and oftentimes we have to work at the margins to change this here and change that they are. retirement and financial planning certainly is no longer just about was the best investment. and so often people confuse us with that, with the '80s stock jockeys where we are much more comprehensive looking at the 360-degree picture. and it is so important that we get consumers thinking about all of these conflicting priorities as well. >> massey said that i totally

agree that we have found a mechanism that works and it works quite well. and so i think that it is clear to us in the financial services industry that is something that is something that should be and i suppose that keep the employers, whether it is large employers are small employers, this going to be smoothed away from her consent of the smaller employers, it's expensive, we are worried about liability, there have been initiatives here in washington to redefine the whole concept of fiduciary, which the employment community is concerned about and they are worried that they are going to have workers saving to a higher standard. so if anything is part of this,

anything that stands in the way of the employment community fostering financial planning is something we ought to take a long and hard look at. >> i agree with everything that the panel has said. the other thing is that if you are living paycheck to paycheck, it doesn't matter how much financial planning you do. you don't have the wages that would even allow the possibility of saving and so the other sort of leg of the stool is we need to do a good job and deal with the jobs problem and not just the aftermath of the great recession, but in the 30 years after the great recession where we saw the economy getting richer and richer and the jobs that are good jobs and saving for retirement, that just went

into effect, so i think that is the other piece here that is the thing that will make all this possible for a much larger swath of people who hope to retire. >> i agree with the importance of jobs and even now most people who are not saving can't afford to stay by their own admission and people who can -- if you save more, what would you have to give up. the answer is eating out, and so the main thing that kills people to his cholesterol. so you know, we have left a culture of thrift and it's very hard to get it back, but it is a problem in which we can save more easily. not everybody, but most people,

even people with modest jobs. and i think that we have to address this basic issue. >> you have done some interesting research looking at preferences for retirement and some of the other financial issues with the baby boomers that there will face as they get older. can you tell us about that? >> yes. at the roundtable, one of the things that we really worked hard with his older americans and issues like fraud and financial exploitation and issues like cognitive impairment and we have done some work on the federal reserve did some work, actually was a terrific paper and what is making older people -- and they define them as 40 years old and over so what is making people anxious and one of the things is this

exploitation in the family contacts it is sooner than the communications and the social skills and the ability to talk. >> the last thing to go. but this is a huge issue in this includes people in her 40s their 40s to 50s, they are taking care of these elderly individuals and what is the cost

to them, lost wages, benefits, it's not just the hard cost of medical. this includes fiduciary responsibility and i want to speak to this aspect of a financial planner or financial advisor. how critical it truly is to have nice professionals who are abiding by a standard that puts this interest ahead of their own. that's a vulnerable population. it is self-defense for seniors against financial abuse. and that includes how important

it is. >> another thing that struck struck me as interesting is how focused people were in pain as often as opposed to hearing a little bit of credit card debt or student loan debt was a lot worse than let's say, saving for retirement or building a nest egg. see that as a change and is that because of the political climate and has that always been our? >> student that is much higher than before. people are entering adulthood with a crushing burden, which affects them psychologically. so the amount of debt that they start off with has risen and it is a major problem. also if you go back, that is part of the culture of thrift.

i think the levels of student debt is the real problem. >> have you seen a change of this as well? >> well, yes. people in an affluent segment of society, they are wanting to pay that off and make the best use of their money there rather than the 10 basis points in the savings and whatever. so you do see that. so paying that out has become more important because of the jobs situation. so with a backup record, employers are now looking at your fico score and we are urging this young people you have to take care of that if you're not paying regularly in the little but more than what

you're told that you owe. because it will impact your ability to get a job. until you get a job, all of this other ability to save for education and everything must is as we saw in the polls. >> people have questions, start to think about them. >> okay. we're talking about this and student debt is much higher than it used to be and so are other kinds of debt. and they are called home-equity loans, and they will go up forever to pay for your kids to a college and we saw that happening left and right after the bubble crashed. so one of the reasons this book back around, i think that we saw

at increasing so much leading up to the great recession because the job quality wasn't there in the way people continued to talk about this, i think that is one of these things. people are holding a lot more debt than they used to. >> that is true and it's a very good point. >> we have anymore questions? >> puzo had. >> okay, so one thing that i have to ask about. [inaudible question]

[inaudible question] >> i can totally understand where you are coming from. and you are absolutely right and here's the thing, savings rates are very low. they are cyclical and they actually go up in a recession so savings rates go up and down and we saw that here and it comes back down and savings rates are not back to the 2006 levels. but they are down right now to the 2004 levels. people are now spending the money that's coming in and people are spending it. the consumption is low and the

thing that squares that is that they do not have jobs and they are spending what money they have and many people are unemployed and the people who have jobs, and that puts huge downward pressure on it and your employer does not have to pay you big wages. this high unemployment is hurting them and a lot of people don't have jobs and so they are spending money that they have an people don't have as much money as they did. >> question in the back the amount hello, i am a physician. my question is the financial planners, it is about timing.

we are told that timing doesn't matter that someone referred to the fact that 40% of people over 50 years old have to retire. and what happens, the market can remain irrational and a lot of people had to dip into their 401ks during the recession because they lost their jobs and that was their only source of money. so how do you cope with our? if you happen to be laid off at the wrong time? >> hopefully this is what planning is all about. they have emergency funds and the ability to get through a situation like this and probably the last place that you want to go to through. timing is important that the

more that we get some planning, the last incident people are going to be too that timing issue. and he spoke about retirement and there is no doubt about it that we are living longer and we have a retirement nest egg that is no longer being managed by our corporation and we are managing ourselves and we are also responsible for taking the money out and this is such a huge problem for so many people. how do you take it out and make it last. just when the big 2008 event heads, not like you out. we would hope to get people more flexible and able to deal with it. and if you have to be paying

that debt, you have to be taking it out just when you you don't want it in the manner of rationalizing that and there's lots of tweaks that you have to make is pressure points and it's not just about getting that kind. but our goal is to help our clients and help the american public the last exposed to those disasters. >> unfortunately we are out of time, but thank you to the panel. >> before we start our next panel, we are going to do another one of these with the audience participating in the poll. the same deal as last time, you have to text message her answer.

so how comfortable are you like planning your retirement and buying and home and so if you are very confident you can send as text to the number 222-3331 tweet at @poll. if you're somewhat confident, text this to 223831 tweet @poll. let's see what happens. and so people are not confident. that is fascinating -- well, if looks like we might have the time. people are still moving. and that would be interesting.

>> it seems like it's not very confident. and i think that people are not super confident in their own ability, which is interesting with what the polls say. selectors introduce our second case study. we have the executive director of the doorway to dreams fun and want to welcome him to the stage. thank you so much. [applause] >> in mourning. again, i just want to acknowledge to you all here and i appreciate it and i promise you two things, my take on a lot of the discussion is that some of it has been kind of depressing. so i promise you some optimism as we go into the final round and i will talk really fast as

well. so making sure that i'm using this right, a word about what is best. we are a nonprofit organization and our mission is to strengthen low and moderate incomes consumers through innovative and incubating and stimulating and public policy. we are a laboratory for new product ideas to benefit middle income folks and the focus has been on savings, which has been relative to the conversation today you can see the folks we have the privilege of working with were getting support from. analysts say that savings is fundamental to a lot of themes, whether paying down debt or long-term preparation on the emergency fund part of the conversation and a lot of it comes back to that decision and

the ability to set aside some money. that is what we tend to focus on and the ones to think about that problem is two things. the landscape that we all operate on and a good set of product choices and tools to help us build a financial securities and all the great tools in the world that we don't have some ability to navigate those tools and to make smart choices. so we try to think about those two halves of money running through some specific examples. part of this prior conversation is a government problem, a private-sector problem, i think that what we will see is that it's both and there can be a little bit of each and let's talk about one that is more private sector focused and how can we make this saving easy. does anyone know what the

household number is ever your? the second is social security in the context of low and moderate tax seasons, where we send it out every single year for households that we might call the working poor. this is almost the single largest financial event of the year and you can get 20% of your income that comes typically in february at that time of year and a huge financial event and if we care about financial security and helping people save, then we need to think about the tax season. the schematic illustrates that since 2006, the irs has offered all of us the ability at the time that we file our returns to state take this part of my refund and send it to a savings destination, whether that's an ira or savings account or whatever might be. you can make that decision once we find out how large that

refund is. if you're single working parent, maybe making $25,000 a year for a couple of part-time jobs, if you go to your tax preparer, you get $2200 and how much would you like to put into savings and that is the question that can be asked. what we found is that a lot of those folks do not necessarily have a savings product to send their money too. so since 2009 but we ran a series of tests, the irs offers the ability to put some of those funds directly into the inflation protected u.s. savings bonds and i was an announcement that the president made in 2009 but the irs would begin the service and that has led to the three or so years of the policy has been in effect, about 170,000 people have collectively saved $65 million and 80% of those come from households with incomes less than $75,000 per year. so these are small amounts and they are at the beginning of a

pattern for a lot of people but had a very difficult time getting a pattern to be saved. we are now starting something new, which is to offer a national promotion to bring awareness and i encourage you to check that out and did he say part of that through this mechanism, you can win up to $25,000 for per year choice to do that. >> how many people enjoy saving money? okay, there's a chuckle from everyone. so i will promise to try to keep this lively and it illustrates a point that in the trade-off, and the spending forces have a lot of advantages.

and it's rewarding and backed by tens of millions of marketing effort dollars and leaving him and on the same thing when we think about marketing and financial security and savings. and those of you who have a savings account know how modest that is in the current interest-rate environment and what we offer you a chance to win this savings and this is much more motivating test than the certainty of a modesty return. and this is using us to benefit ourselves. so by the way we spend $60 billion a year on gaming and similar products and 80% of

which it has been estimated come from households living on less than $50,000 per year and this has led to a product called save to win. we ran that as a pilot in michigan with the credit unions in 2009, we saw a very strong consumer response, 11,000 people save $8.5 million, and they have some stressed-out year-to-date, or i should say we have had 40,000 people across the country where the product was offered open these accounts may have saved $70 million in this is kind to replicate the conditions that allow this product in michigan and a broader interest in this use of returns to motivate people to save and make it, frankly, a little bit less painful and a little bit more exciting. we are now seeing state lotteries being engaged in offering savings which they are approximately twice as many

retail locations to buy a lottery ticket in this country with versus bank branches. when you think about that, there is a real appeal there. we have seen those that are working with the federal government and there is a piece of pending legislation to move the legal barriers that make this complicated. so as i said at the outset, the landscape matters, we have seen a couple of examples of that and we also need to make sure we make smart choices and what can we do about that. we've had financial advice and all of these things are relevant. and back to these things that you would prefer, or the thing, you're more likely to be drawn to the pile of advice for the game? i will leave it as a rhetorical question in our inside has been that the game is probably going to win for many of us and most

of us enjoy something that is fun and has helped us to create financial entertainment to be contrasted with the financial education. financial entertainment is the use of new media, especially casual video games to offer financial learning in an attractive and fun behavior changing oriented way they are easy to pick up and play without a lot of time invested into what the game is about and one is available on a mobile device. you can be waiting for the bus, open it up, and you can play a little bit of celebrity calamity. we have done is taken abruptly and decadent chocolate. and if you want to reach millions of people with important financial lessons that lead to new actions, we have to

think about this problem and this includes workbooks and highly specialized financial planners with those to think differently about their finances. and we have been able to put them on line and we now have many of them show up and play these games. and that is actually a lame of a metric. this includes 20 to 30 minutes per game, and this is voluntary, people spend 25 minutes on it and we have delivered 90,000 hours of this mechanism we have evidence that leads to an more importantly their attitudes and how confident they feel and that

it can pull through two different actions and choices that they make. and increasingly we are breaking apart the components of game so that they can be taken apart. >> the question on everyone's mind. how does this work? your job, you are their manager and i hope they achieve their

financial goals. >> in some ways they can be a useful negative role model. young women between the ages of 19 are sold in 32 years old. and that was a motive that would have the broad residents. >> we have 10 minutes left for questions and let's open it up to the audience. >> all of these are very clever gimmick, this may not be the right question for you, but the government subsidizes rich people who save money for retirement and iras and things like that because they get a big tax expenditure. and does the government do anything like that?

they don't pay federal income taxes? >> i think that you are right that there are a lot of people who want to weigh in on this question and what i can contribute is that there is something called the saver's credit and i believe the cut off is $50,000 and it is an original design to be a refundable credit for people who do not have a tax liability, they can receive an incentive to save money. and this includes a financial incentive as well and i would add to that that there are a lot of benefits and back to my schematic, if you sprinkle in a

powerful financial incentive, you really have a recipe for the lower income households. and food stamps, there has been a lot of coverage. and i have asset limits that mean that if you exceed a threshold of savings come you lose the public benefits. what we can all understand, the reality that just creates exactly the wrong message for people to build their own security. >> questions in the back? >> hello, i am a consultant and i just wanted to go back to the point that you made about the

tax refunds. i was appalled when i would have clients would have a large refunds at the beginning of the year and this includes the bankruptcy filings and is it a better policy to adjust and have more per paycheck, perhaps, instead to have the savings schemes he suggested? >> at the great question. whether we think it's a good policy or bad policy, the evidence is pretty clear that it is a strong consumer preference in effect with very large refunds and this includes the earned income tax credit and you could take an advance on not, which is a policy designed speak to that idea and if we could get a little bit more all year long instead of waiting for this random event at the end of the year and hard to plan against.

people just didn't want to do that. they don't know how big it will be, but there will be some reward, they think. so it's a fair question to adjust the policy and our focus has been trying to make the most of the reality that people want to see those refunds and then decide what to do. >> let's go 11. hello, i'm wondering if the government could take a lesson in this, the rates for savings are very low currently and it is projected to stay that way but in time it might change. at times have changed. after that, they shifted to the ira if they could afford to put the money away and everything became a need to save money without paying taxes. but many of these old ones are

available and maybe the lottery angle could help you can have a type of savings bonds and balance the budget in a way. >> we are big believers in the savings bond programs in these are well over 100 basis points. ..

>> good point. anybody else? i think that brings us the end. once again, i say to my colleague, thank you very much. [applause] i want to say thank you to our participants. i thought it was a great day, and also to our audience in the room and watching via live stream on nationaljournal.com. a special thank you to all state and sanjay for supporting this important conversation and fti. have a great weekend and a great holiday. thanks. [applause]

next on c-span2 the alliance for health reform hold a discussion on rollout of health insurance exchanges. after that remarks from wisconsin governor scott walker.

this weekend booktv is live in florida for the miami book fair international. coverage kicking off saturday at 10 a.m. eastern on c-span2 with dave barry. and continues with appearances by lawrence wright, and a. scott berg. plus call ins.

if you're a middle or high school student c-span video cam exe tension wants to know the most important issue congress should address next year. with $100,000 in total prizes. the deadline is january 20th. get more info at studentcam.org. next the alliance for health reform talking about the rollout

of health insurance exchanges. the enrollment rate, and the makeup of those applying. the white house promised that the federal exchange will be working for most people by the end of the month. this is about an hour and 45 minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> we want to try to find a seat, and allow us to get a and ted. we'll tryal to codo it on time.

[inaudible conversations] good afternoon. my name is ed howard. i'm with the alliance for healtn reform, and on behalf of senator rockefeller, our board of torectors want to welcome 0 you to this program to take a look at the initial, almost eight til weeks of experience since the since the marketplaces or exchange is open for business on october 1. and the major pieces of implementation of the affordable care act began taking shape. we want to recognize our partners in this enterprise. the commonwealth fund, which is almost four baby just over 100-years-old on the washington-based philanthropy

devoted to the common good. you will be hearing from sarah collins of commonwealth in just a moment. this program is important because we want to go to give you as much information as we can, and to put every piece of data that you have seen into the perspective particularly from the perspective of folks who are actually dealing with this situation. there's an awful lot of interest in the number of people registered in the exchanges, the number of folks who can't get through on the website and the number of people who are signing up for medicaid through the portals and i would like to announce that we have completed a 50 state survey this morning and we have the latest numbers

for you from each of the states. i would like to announce that, but i ain't going to do that. and in fact, i think we all want to emphasize that we are at the very beginning of a process and whether you adore or a poor the affordable care act, what you need to do is listen to the insightful comments from our panelists today about what is actually going on in various parts of the country and put that together with the policy context that goes along with this very complicated and far-reaching piece of legislation. as i said we have sarah collins at the fund both as a co- moderator and someone who knows an awful lot about this topic

and we've not only asked to co- moderate told us frame the issues in a way that will enhance your ability to digest the rest of the program. thank you for being with us today. >> thank you to the alliance and the panelists and also the great audience for coming together today to talk about this timely issue on the marketplace. the hallmark of the affordable care act is the degree to be seen at the state level and this means that the local politics and the state decision-making will influence outcomes across the country both in the states and nationally. in particular over the last couple of months in the large variation we have seen in the website functionality and the ease with which people are able

to get into the marketplace and actually n. roll. in terms of the marketplace, about 16 states and the district of columbia are running their own marketplaces and it is great to have her here today to talk about the dc marketplace. idaho and new mexico use the federal website this year for enrollment. this means residents in about 36 states are using healthcare.gov to enroll in health plans. participation in the medicaid expansion is also going to have a significant impact on enrollment. so far 26 states and distric the district of columbia are expanding the program. about 24 states are undecided or are not going to expand. the congressional budget office has estimated by 201 201,825,000 people will enroll in the plan and they are expecting about 7 million to enroll in 2014.

in medicaid a project about 9 million to enroll next year and about 12 million by 2018. so the central question on everyone's mind is will consumers enroll in the plans now that they are available and who will enroll clocks of the young and the healthy enroll in the representation of the overall population? this will be critical to the well functioning market places, stabilization over time. to learn what people are experiencing during the first initial weeks of a nobleman the commonwealth fund in october interviewed a representative sample of over 600 adults that are potentially eligible for marketplace options or medicaid, people who are either uninsured or purchasing coverage in the ad individual insurance market. we found about 60% of those adults were aware of the

marketplace in october, this is up from about a third of those in a similar survey that we conducted in the summer. 17% of these adults reported visiting the marketplace in october. at ththe age and the health distribution of those that went to the marketplace generally reflected the age and the hope distribution of the eligible population to be a read about on in five for ages 19 to 29 and nearly three quarters reported to be in good health. only one in five, however, said they would enroll in a health plan. we asked people who didn't enroll why they haven't. 48% said they didn't enroll because they were not certain they could afford a plan and about 46% said they were still trying to decide which plan they wanted. thirty-seven said technical difficulties on the website was the primary reason.

a majority of survey respondents appear determined to come back to gain health insurance coverage over the next few months. about 58% who haven't gone to the marketplace works have gone but haven't enrolled in a plan said they were somewhat likely to visit by the end of the involving-to find out if they were eligible for financial assistance. young adults were as likely as older adults to say they were going to go to the marketplace by the end of the period. they found widespread support for expanding medicaid and the state. nearly three quarters said they were strongly or somewhat in favor of making medicaid one available to residents of their state. despite the difficulties involved in the love of healthcare.gov and other marketplaces the latest figures from the 14 states running the marketplaces show that enrollment has climbed to around 200,000 people nationwide and i

think that is a pretty good estimate of the variation around it but this is up from about 106,000 people that had selected a plan or enrolled in a plan by november 2 supported by hhs earlier this month. the latest figure doesn't account for the many new and little used but probably gained coverage through the federal marketplace this month and we will find out what those numbers look like in the next few weeks. many states are supporting significant numbers in the program. among the states running their own marketplaces in the medicaid enrollment at 343,000 people have enrolled in the program. it's too early to assess the age but there is evidence that young adults are enrolling in the plans. reuters reported this week that connecticut, kentucky, washington and maryland 20% of those enrolled so far 19 to 34

and we heard yesterday in california that that was the same percentage that had enrolled in plans in that state in october. the poor performance of healthcare.gov has been a huge and largely unforeseen challenge. but these numbers do show people are determined to gain coverage despite the obstacles they are dealing with. there is going to be a video recording of this briefing available probably monday on our website.

on the website accessible to the website. for those on c-span and computer access you can go to allhealth.org to do the background that is embodied in the materials that are the folks in person attendance have at their disposal. either by filling out the green question card or by coming to one of the microphones that you can see in the audience. and at the end of the briefing, we would appreciate you calling up a blue evaluation form and giving us some feedback that will allow us to improve these briefings for you in the future.

>> let's get to the discussion we have a traffic line up for the national and state and community level perspectives that i think will help you understand what a load of the noise that you hear is really about and we are going to start with the executive director of the national association of medicaid directors. he has all of the state and territory medicaid directors and many of you may know him from his work at the governor's association working on the health reform agenda is from the governor's perspective. how is in rome and going in the various medicaid states. as sarask sarah pointed out the enrollment in medicaid is outstripping actual enrollment in the exchange plans themselv themselves. what's happening?

>> thanks a lot, ed for hosting this and to everybody here. it's exciting to see people coming about what is happening in medicaid. before i get into sort of talking about some of the medicaid and marketplace dynamics i think it's important to take a second to give a little bit of brief context on what exactly is this program throwing around numbers. we are expecting 7 million here and 9 million there. it's the largest most important program you probably don't know anything about. we have 72 million americans walk through the doors at some point in time last year in medicaid. 72 million. the largest health insurance program in the country. we also spent $430 billion last

year and what does it look like the face of medicaid is also a tennis population. pregnant women, low-income families but all of the dollars in medicaid are in seniors and with disabilities, long-term care. and the other important thing to note is that as ed pointed out as you would over or up or the aca really one half of the trillion dollars that they spend over a ten year window. i want to go out there and put some context. what are we doing trying to -- the state experience to get ready for october 1, getting ready for january 1.

and then came october 1 and we shifted back to weekly which is a lot of work for our members at the time that they are really busy and it's important and to get a sense of what is going on. all of this information, the monthly, the weekly, everything moving forward is available right now on the website. medicaiddirectors.org. sign up for the newsletter and get this stuff pushed out. it's great. and a couple of days ago we released a sort of snapshot with the broad state perspective on housing and how things have been going for the past couple of months. really talking about the states and so this doesn't sound very sexy but it's really important. it's designing the systems that make this work.

it's how medicaid interfaces in the marketplace. it's the enrollment efforts that they are undertaking and at the end of the day it is how do we do this in a way that really benefits the consumer because their experience really matters here. if they are not happy, they are not calling -- they are not calling president obama if they are not happy in the consumer experience. they are calling us. so it is incumbent upon us to figure out how to make this work as best as we can for that. >> and i think either is a point that can't be stressed. the states come at this from very different perspectives. the eligibility in the 1980s and this is a perfect

opportunity for many of them to modernize. because no one else runs the systems into the states are coming at this from a lot of different perspectives. and here is a point that is also really important. regardless of whether a state has made the decision to expand medicaid or not, then to do a state exchange or federal exchange, every single state has had to do enormous work and totally overhauling a lot of their systems and ensuring this connectivity with the federal hub and the exchanges that is building eligibility systems, reworking your application procedures and business processes that live underneath that. again it's figuring out how do

you communicate that information seamlessly with the hub, and then thinking about again, once you get people in, how do you make sure that you have to deliver the infrastructure in place to make sure they get the high-quality care that they need? and eight damn, this is a lot of work. anybody that says how hard can it become obviously they have no idea what they are talking about. this is some of the most competitive stuff that has ever been done. and just purely from the federal side, where you are talking about creating a system that has reareal-time seamless interactin between the hhs, the department of labor, the irs, treasury, homeland security. this is not starting up

amazon.com. this is a manhattan project, and again the state experience with preparing and developing and building it systems is not a real pretty one. and we hear from our states that the basic rule is the number of times that a system that you have procured comes in on time on budget the rollout is going to be bumpy. states try to build up their own estate systems, and i think it's important to keep in mind.

these things do take time. a couple things come it is a little too early to be drawing the broad conclusions and we are less than eight weeks i and if e have that data from a relatively small number of states. what we can see from the numbers is that the medicaid enrollment is higher than people thought. it's higher than the exchange enrollment and i think that there is a lot of reasons for that. the states that' that have a ste exchange, the states that are doing the medicaid expansion there is a pretty tight diagram of the states and they are in a strong correlation with the states and efforts to do a aggressive and targeted outreach. going out and looking at the beneficiary, people who are getting other types of local

benefits you know who these people are and what their income is into the euro k. getting government benefits. will you reach out to them and say we have something you might be interested in was medicaid? it isn't a surprise they come back and pretty large numbers and say yes we are interested. while those numbers be sustained, like four to one or whoever it is? what we will see is the medicaid enrollment that we have seen will go down into the exchange numbers will go up. but in all what we are seeing is the numbers according to the states we talked to which is pretty much everybody, it is largely consistent with what their projections were at the onset. and so, what the states are doing though is it is a constant quality improvement process.

and as they are building systems and as they are interfacing, they are testing and they are fixing and they are patching and sometimes they have to go back and resorts to mitigation strategies. sometimes they have to go back and do things with paper and romance. this happens. it's okay. it's in the mitigation strategy to get us through until we get fixed. but the things that we are going to be watching for or who comes in, who comes in the door. are they newly eligible or were they a group of the eligible but not enrolled, the wood works and sometimes called welcome mats. that makes a huge difference in terms of the federal government pays for an hundred% of one of the group, the expansion group. they don't pay anything additional to the other that matters. the other is what is the case? are they coming in young and healthy or are they older and a sick and have substance abuse and mental health disorders,

this matters. i'm out of time so i'm going to run through the last slide or two. and i think the success stories in a lot of states see is if you can treat the rollout of the exchange like a soft opening of a restaurant come and build some functionality in early and then build upon that. that's where we have seen the most success. it isn't always possible but that is certainly something that we have taken away. finally, you know october 1 is important, january is going to be even more important it has been covered to actually start. and we have to make sure the system is ready for them and then finally closing it is the easy part. once you get them in the door that is the easy part. with 72 billion plus people, 400 billion plus dollars a year,