watch white house briefings, from governors and state officials, track the spread throughout the u.s. and interactive maps. watch on demand any time at ltered c-span.org/coronavirus. julie rovner to look at the coronavirus and in health insurance. want to start by asking the healthcare system overall and the u.s. healthcare system and to absorb the patients, not just in new york city but nationwide. of that?our sense in t: the healthcare system general is fairly robust but the

hospital system is not set up to enormous surge of patients pretty much anywhere. full capacitystly and health care in the u.s. is so expensive they can't afford extra beds hang around waiting for something to happen. the idea behind the national strategic stockpile government eral would stockpile supplies and edication and as we have heard recently ventilators because hospitals themselves couldn't. places are seeing is in that are very hard hit with people with a lot of are ications hospitals overwhelmed. we are seeing e a grinding e to lawsuit. opped doing elective surgeries with things like hip replacements. things that they make most of their money from. people are afraid to go to the doctor unless they have covid-19.

we are seeing primary care practices and specialty practices and things that are not respiratory basically start to lay people off. host: looking at the health insurance, is this overwhelming the health insurance part? keeping in mind, as i understand it, didn't tested or having covid-19 related expenses will be covered i most health insurances, correct? guest: yes. that was in the thing that congress passed a couple of weeks ago that patients should not have to pay for testing. someone said that money may throw -- flow through the government. it is not clear how much of a hit that this will be on health insurance. tomiums next year would have go up a lot to make up for the extra costs that insurance companies are facing this year. they will step in and pay a fair bit of that.

it is not entirely clear how much premiums will go up as a result of this. there are many more people who are getting sick and going to the hospital and getting very expensive care. that is obviously going to do something to the nation health care tab. hospitals poised to get massive infusion of cash. a $350 billionad -- had $350 billion for small businesses. that is beginning to be tapped with nitatalked lowey. how are hospitals going to get this money? is there a concern that there may not be enough for hospitals nationwide? guest: there is concern hospitals will not get enough money. the department of health and human services announced that $30 billion, $100 billion in that bill will go to hospitals around the country, based on from last year.

there are hospitals that are upset about that. particularly hospitals with a lot of covid-19 patients will get less than other hospitals. all hospitals are in need because many, if not most of them, have stopped doing other things that bring in money. even if they don't have a huge percentage of covid-19 patients, they are still hurting initially. the hospitals in the hard-hit areas are hurting more because they are losing the money that they normally make from routine things that they do and they are having to spend this extra money to care for extra patients. here is how we are breaking up the phone lines. for those of you on the afford will care act. (202) 748-8001 if you get your employer's insurance. if you are uninsured, (202) 748-8002. others, (202) 748-8003.

on the affordable care act, the open upt client to options for the aca. guest: a number of states run their own aca exchanges. there is a couple of things that reopening enrollment does. if you lose your job and your job health insurance, you're automatically entitled to what is called a special enrollment period. you can go on to the exchange and by insurance. in order to do that, you have to have documentation, including to your employer. if there is a regular reopening of enrollments, it is much simpler and there is a lot less paperwork. people are at home and people do not always have access to documents or our transmitting document. the other thing is there are people last year -- at last year's opening enrollment, which

was in december, people might not have bought insurance who do not have insurance. they might have bought these short-term plans that the president had been touting that do not cover a lot of things. hospital care. if you get sick, you will end up in the hospital. a lot of people are rethinking those decisions now. under current laws, they are not eligible to sign up for health insurance again until mid-december. health care providers and the insurance industry and the openc health officials are to reopening enrollment nationwide. these are extraordinary circumstances where people who did not buy insurance before but want to now would like to have that opportunity. what they said instead is that they will use the money we are talking about in-hospital money .o help pay for the care that is not what the hospitals had hoped the money was for.

there is some disc insertion about that too. oncertion about that too. host: remind us again the number of states that expanded medicaid in those states. certainly, this crisis has tapped those programs in the state. when lots of people lose their jobs and lose their income, medicaid has to go up. have expanded their medicare program. in those 14 states, there is still a lot of people who will not be able to get health insurance, even if they did reopen the exchanges, because get on the exchange rate the way the law was originally written in 2010, everyone would be covered by the medicare expansion or by the affordable care act.

in states without the medicare expansion, there are people who do not have many options. welcome.ie rovner, if you want to send us a text, that is (202) 748-8003. tell us your name and where you're texting from. we will go to eddie in baltimore. hi. caller: yes. how are you doing this morning? host: fine. thanks. caller: i just want to make a statement that since trump came into office, he tore apart the aca. limitations are so dire. i cannot understand the republican party. they were protecting the trump -- protecting trump. denial about what has happened since this man came into office. hopefully they wake up and see

that this man is not qualified to do this job. that's all i've got to say. i hope god touches their hearts. all right, eddie. julie rovner, your reaction. guest: there is obviously people watching the president and seeing how he is reacting to this and seeing what the administration is doing and making their judgment. people who support trump think he is doing a great job. people who do not support trump do not think he is doing a great job. host: let me ask you about dr. anthony fauci. you had a chance to meet him and interview him or at least cover him. guest: many times. host: tell me what you're thinking is,- your granted this virus is bigger than anything we have seen, is this a typical response from anthony fauci compared to previous pandemics this country has encountered? guest: i have known dr. fauci

since the late 1980's when he was working on aids. he has always been a very straight shooter. very calm. he has been through a lot of health crises. obviously has -- infectious disease is part of andjob that makes it public stressful at times during public health crises. he has been good with journalists. he is very free with his time. e knows how to >>

>> ing believe pass police station. made over 3 trillion. what is going on?

they are asking us, the taxpayers, for money? thanks for your comment. just to be clear, because our guest julie rovner is from kaiser health news. she is the chief washington correspondent. guest: we are not affiliated with kaiser permanente. we are an editorial independent project that is not affiliate with kaiser permanente. i do not think it is three choi in dollars. we spend about 18% of gdp on health care. way more than the next high spending country. it is distributed unevenly. there are a lot of hospitals and family practice doctors and nurses and health aides who do not make a lot of money. then there are people who are making enormous profits off the health care industry. with the covid-19 outbreak, that is what washington is most concerned with.

even people in -- and unsuspecting patients. there is an enormous amount of money in the health care system. that does not mean that there are not corners of health care in dire straits. host: have you had a chance to look at what other countries are doing well in their responses and others not so well? guest: yes. everybody seems to be doing similar types of things, because there is still no treatment and there is no vaccine. the best way to keep the virus from spreading is to keep people from getting too close to one another. that is how it spreads. there is a lot of sheltering in place and a lot of closed pools and a lot of closed businesses. obviously, in italy, it turned

out to be more difficult than it was in china, because italy is not so much an authoritarian regime as china is. even in china, we are seeing that they are a couple of months ahead of us. we are seeing them tentatively try to reopen things. now, they are concerned about cases coming in from other countries. it is really difficult in a -- inin people get on which people get on airplanes and go across continents. the president talks about what a great job he did, shutting down travel from china in late january. as it turns out, according to the new york times, what happened is that chinese tourists went to europe and the virus got embedded in your -- europe and americans went to europe and brought it back within. it is hard to say we will shut down our borders and keep it from coming in. notwithstanding, a lot of it has to do with how good public health systems are in some other countries.

some have done a better job of testing and tracing so that you don't have to quarantine everybody. you can try to figure out who has the virus and keep them from going out and spreading it to , keeping them quarantined until after the notential period for a infection is up. people who are not showing symptoms can spread it. that makes things much harder, more than just staying home if you are sick. it is stay home if you might be spreading it and don't even know. that is why we are at the everybody stay-at-home face. host: let's hear from cal. caller: good morning pray thank you for taking my call. the representative made a mistake preach she criticized .he president the obama administration cut funding.

my question is will we see an increase in premiums because of this problem? host: thanks, cal. guest: we do not know yet. tend to bereases regional -- increases tend to be regional. states tend to regulate insurance if you have employer insurance. it will vary. there will be more federal health. two your first question, there is an article in political administration, going back to -- a political administration magazine going back to clinton. pre-much every administration tried to do something and it was ignored by the administration after them. particularlyn trump or obama.

it really is sort of a bipartisan, we tend not to think about public health until we need it. every time something happens, we tend to pay attention to it for a while. then it floats into the background again. something happens and everybody starts pointing fingers about why weren't you ready for this? host: our line is (202) 748-8000 . on that line from seattle is james. good morning. caller: good morning. the reason why this pandemic was not nipped in the bud earlier is because trump and republicans were trying to get phase one of >> we are going to leave this discussion from today's "washington journal." a e you live to new york for coronavirus briefing by governor cuomo. governor cuomo: it's monday. i hope people enjoyed the best weekend.this different this different easter celebration, for those