captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, march 28: the im cpacts of tonavirus pandemic. ferains on the health care net. ood, could the stimulus package give a to the concept of universal basic income? p next, newshour weekend. i>> pbs newshour weekemade possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. charles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us.

at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomor yw can he make the most of today. mutual oamerica financial group, retirement services and snvestments. additionport has been provided by: and by the corpotion for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people. and byontributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> sreenivasan: good evening, and thanks for joining . we areing you our broadcast tonight from remote locations across the country for the second weekend. i'm not in the tisch studios; i'm here at home with my family. our guests have joined us using technology that allows us to have convertions, just as many of you and your families are these days, for school, work, and social connection, in this time of social distancing. our reporters, producers, and editors are also working from their homes and gathering the news when it's safe to do so. let's get started neth today's tos. president trump suggested today

that he is csidering a "quarantine" for new york, new jersey and parts of connecticut. >> some people would llike to see new york quarantecause it's a hotspot. new york, new jersey, maybe one or two other places certain parts of connecticut, quarantined. i'm thinking about that right now. we might nohave to do it, but there's a possibility that sometime today wel do a quarantine-- short-term, probably new jersey, certain parts, and connecticut. >> sreenivasan: mrtrump left the white house today for a trip to norfolk, virginia for the launch of a navy hospital ship.n hospitals natiwide are preparing for a surge in coronavirus cases. ventilators to treat the most serious cases are still in short supply. governors and mayors are calling for more help with equipment and relief for fcant le health e workers. >> we've all been focused so much on supplies, on equipment,

on ventilators. we need to focus increasingly on our health care personnel, both everything they are going through now, , but also the fact that we're going to we're going to need a lot more highly-trained professionals to get us through this in the >> sreenivasan: the united states now has more confirmed cases of covid-19 than any other country nsaccording to jopkins university's coronavirus resource center, there are w more than 104,000 case reported in the u.s., and more than 1,700 deaths. the u.s. are now under state and local orders to stay at home, to to slow the spread of t coronavirus. while tens of millions of americans are under stay-at-home orders, president donald trump left the white house today and flew to norfolk, virginia. the president wanted tos.ee off the u.avy's hospital ship, the "comfort," as it headed ton ew york city. the 1,000-bed ship is expected to arrive on monday. the "mey," another of the navy's massive medical support spshiarrived in los angeles

yesterday. he johns hopkins coronavirus resource center reported day that confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide have topped 600,000, killing more than 28,000 people, a pting thousands of health care workers around the world at risk. theon world health organiza director-general said yesterday that the international community must work together to combat the shortage of protective equipment for health care workers. >> the w.h.o. has shipped almost two million items of protective gear to 74 countries that need it most and we're preparing to send a similar amount to a further 60 counties. but, much more is needed. >> sreenivasan: in spain and italy, despite complete shutdowns for weeks, theco two untries have recorded more than 14,000 deaths combined. authoritiein india sent buses to the outskirts of the capital, nentdelhi, today to help mig workers return to their home

villages. thousands of unemployed workers have been tryiei to walk to r homes after the country's nearly complete lockdown. and in wuhan, china today, six subway lines reopened t the public, three days after bus service resumed-- but s ssengers are required to register their to record thtreiel before boarding. former oklahoma representative and senator tom coburn died today. coburn, a republican, was an obstetrician and became known as "dr. no" during his time in office for his opposition to federal spending. coburn died from complications from prostate cancer. he was 72 years old. >> sreenivasan: for the latest on the coronavirus and news from around the world, visit www.pbs.org/newshour. the economic toll covid-19 is taking, more than three million americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, a record number. according to the kaiser health foundation, close to half of employees receive health iurce from their employer.

that means more 00than 100 might now be not only out of a job, t without health nsurance, as well. as you might imagine, that has only intensified the national conversation about uversal health care. i recently spoke about that with sara c, vice president for health care coverage and access at the commonwealth fund. enormous numbers of people that were filing for unemployment, and that number may grow. and the reason we're talking to mayou about this is, s americans have healtare tied to their employers. so, what kind of a strain are we going to see on the healthcarehe system and onafety net in the next few weeks? >> you know, it's a really mar loss of jobs-- unprecedented, actually-- in terms, in terms of the number of an increase and will be an unprecedented loss of people with employer-based coverage. through-- through an employer, so that's a big hit to the

health insurance system and to people who are now covere through employer-based plans. >> sreenivasan: what about the failsafe systems that we have in re act or thee medicaid expansion? >> this is a really important protection now that we have that ldwe wt have had ten years ago had it not been for the affordable care act. soif you lose your job and you have coverage through your job, you are eligible automatically for a special enrollment period so, it's-- what's reallylaces. now is to go to healthcare.govht and check out your options through the marketplaces. you may also be eligible for medicaid, you could get-- you might get coverage through medicaid. but if you go to that web site, you can find out what your options are. you might be eligible for a subsidy. your income probably dropped, is dropping a lot, anso you're-- you could be eligible for a

subsidy to offset the cost of your premiums or be eligible for medicaid in yote. >> sreenivasan: does what we're living through now shine a fferent light on the conversation aut univers health care? >> i think it really does. there are about 30 million people that are still uninsured. a'rnd so, yseeing in congressional bills attempts to patch that up by vering the costs, requiring insurers to cover the costs of testing, for example. we're considering other options. 11 statesave new special nrollment periods for the marketplaces so that people can get enrollewho are uninsured. nationwide effort to open up the marketplaces for people. but i think that this should be a baseline feature of our healthcare system. we should know gog into a crisis like this that everyone has health insurance coverage. we're not trying to insure people to protect themselves from catastrophic health care costs. this is a very serious illness, and if people end up in the hospital without insurance,

they're going to face major bills. if they can't pay those bills, then the hospitals are going to have to find a way to come up with the funding to pay those bill and i think it's going to-- it's a reckoninfor the united states to look closely at how we can expand coverage to get t universal coverage, and there are lots of ways we can do that. vice president bidenas proposed building on the affordable care act to get tve universal ge. senator sanders has proposed medicare for all. these are very differths, but they ultimately lead to the same place. >> sreenivasan: what's the biggest thing you're worried about? >> i'm very concerned that people are going to not get care because of their surance status. i g worried that when they to get care, that they're going to be very, very sick a that they won't-- they'll get major bills and not able to pay those bills. and hospitals are also deeply in

financial trouble because of that, as well. >> sreenivasan: so, considering the legislation that congress has already passed, what should people know about this? >> well, they should know that all-- all insurers and employers have to cover the tests associated with coronavirus, and it h to do without cost- sharing so you won't face any costs. and states can also cover people whroo are uninsured h their medicaid programs and for the costs of testing. but, importantly, this does not incle treatment. so, if you get-- if you get sick and you're uninsured, treatment costs aren't covered. so, that's a gaphat needs to -- still needs to be addressed. so, one thing the administration could do is to expand that coverage for testing to treatment through the medicaid program. medicaid is an incredgrly flexible p in a crisis. it's oftenrerawn on for to

spond to natural disasters or epidemics like this.an d the administration could do much more than is doing with dicaid, with the medicaid program right now, to help patients and also hospitals that they're getting care from. >> sreivasan: sara collins of the commonwealth fund, thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: the federal stimulus package, which will provide relief checks to some families impacted by the pandemic, has reignited the idea of univeal basic income. e concept has been floated in academic and think-tank circles and even madit onto th democratic debate stage with candidate andrew yang. but when it comes to actually implementing u.b.i., well, for that, it's best to hear from the in stockton, cafornia, a pilot program called the stockton economic empowerment demonstration, or "seed," has

distributed $500 a month to 125 city residents for more than a year. philanthropically-funded, the program will be completing s its run tly. i spoke with stockton mayor michael tubbs; seed director sukhi samra; and thprograars lead reers-- dr. stacia martin-west from the universy of tennessee college of social from the university ofro baker pennsylvania school of social policy and practice. this is part of our ongoing initiative, "chasing the dream: poverty and opportunity i america." mayor, let me start with you. what was the reason for this experiment in the first place? >> the reason we started this seed experiment was understanding even before this coronavirus crisis that a lot of americans were living in a seme of economic insecurit severe economic rity. att, that poe knew that one in two americans were one $400 emergency away from financial ruin. in stockton, my city, 23% of the folks are at the pover line; and i would argue another 30%,

one paycheck away. and for all the things we're working on in the city, from education to violent crime reduction to ecomic development, i think at the heart of it is poverty, and it's how many people are economically >> sreenivasan: stacia martin-west, what kind of things are you measuring? >> sure, so what we're really interested in seeing is the public health impacts of a guara.nteed income the sort of data that we're collecting looks at things like stress and wellbeing, how people doing psychologically, h they're doing in their families, how they're doing with employment. and the data that we've gotten back so far that the community was real interested to know-- and i think most folks are-- is, how do people spend thi$500, right? so, what we've seen so far is foat about 40% of the money has been spent o. about 25% of the money each month is spent abig box stores places like wal-mart and target. so, whs speaks to is that lower-income families prioritize the needs of their families. and we can trust them to make rational financial decisions.

>> what we know from a lot of years ofocial science and public health data is that most american households are food insecure. so, again, speaking to what dr. west just said, it-- when we think about the ways in which most families are struggling and living paycheck to paycheck, food is one of the things that's flexible, right? so, it's one of those things that we can actually adjust our spending on. and what we're learning through seed, which builds on a pretty big body of knowledge, is that the quality of food and th qutity of food shifts based on how much money is in the household. >> sreenivasan: mayor, i'm sure youar've the counter- narrative: this is not going to help anything, the peisle you give oney to are going to spend it the wrong way, this is essentially just a free handout. when this project was rolling out, how did you push back against that? >> the responses were multifaceted. wi think the first respon-- it really goes down, again, to fundamentally o do we trust as a country. in 201 we had a conversation about tax cuts where $1 trillion were given to the richest

americans d corporations. and i venture to say, i've received more questions about what people have done with the $1 million philanthropically- funded basic income demot nstration than wl these folks did with trillions of dollars of our tax money in the form of stimul. and it's because we implicitly trust people who have power or who are rich or who have positions to make decisions, while we don't trust people that are actually more in line and more similar to the vast majority of americans-- people like us who are just regular working folks. and then, number two, i think, in the research that the researchers have found illustrates to us that people are rational actors, that the issue with economic insecurity isn't because people are mismanaging money or isn't because people are dumb or isn't even because people are not working and they're lazy. the issues that people don't have enough cash, that our wages hahe not kept up with-- with cost of living or with utility increases, and that people are ly making very complex a complicated decisions day by day, month by month based on the and then, the last thing i would say to folks is that this is not

a.some foreign i this idea is deeply rooted in our american ethos and values, particularly aroportunity and particularly around the fact that everyone's contributing-- that peopleparticularly women who are staying home and doing domestic work and care-giving, they're doing work, and that's not being compensated. i think a basic income or income floor is a gical extension of some of the new deal protections, etc. >> sreenivasan: sukhi samra, this might be a procedural question, but how do people get the $500? is it cash? is that a check in the mail? >> so, the money is dispersed every month on a prepaid debit card th we actually issued in folks' names. so, everyone has what's called a focus card that has your own name on it, an each month on the 15th or close to the 15th as possible, we load the $500. fr there, folks are able to spend it just like you would any other debit card. they can transfer the money onto their own accounts, and they can withdraw, as well. >> sreenivasanmayor, you know now that congress is passing a massive bail-out. part of that includes a direct payment to individuals. when you hear this plan, what

goes through your mind? >> it's a great start but definitely far from a finish, particularly knowing that this crisis is going to be longer than one month. knowing th of work for longer than one month and knowing that the s of this will last longer than one month, it makes no sense to persist that one month is going to be enough to help people navigate through this crisis. so, i think it's a start, but i think the amount should be larger and that it should go as long as the coronavirus pandemic lasts. >> sreenivasan: you're saying that this shouldn't just be a single payment, it should cisontinue through andemic. i can hear members of the audience saying, "wait a minute. how are we going tpay for that look at how long it took just to try to get is package >> if you look at any kind of massive response, whether it's a war or a publou health issue, nation marshals the resources to do what's necessary ns make sure we emerge stronger. i think, in thisnce, with this pandemic, we have to dig deep and look at sort of almost-- the presint has called himself a wartime president, so we need a wartime budget, but one that's focused

on armi the american people with the financial and economic security they need to fight back during ese times. >> sreenivasan: mayor, what kind of effect has this had? these $500, are they drawingg less on city services? >> what i've seen is that folks have actually availed themselves to more ofhe city serv but not in a draining or parasitic way, but to contribute. so, i've met seed particants at different community events and town halls and things of that sort, and who are now engaged civically in their community because they feel seen and a part of, which is-- which is phenomenal. but the research team-- and suki granular information about, really, the impacts on social services that the city or the county provides. >> sreenivasan: sukhi samra, do you have examples for how people are increasing their productivity in the city thanks to this money? >> sur over the course of the demonstration, we've definitely seomen folks bg more civically engaged and feeling more involved. mas ggie, who serves caretaker for her husband who

had a stroke but who is now also wrirdting letters to the ren support of, you know, stuff like the guaranteed inco. demonstrati when we had our primary, she was like, "i went and voted, and i got my entirfamily to vote, as well." so, i think, over and over again, we're seeinrethat they're that they have a call to action that didn't previously exist. >> sreenivasan: mayor, ts program is going to end. so, let's say, best-case scenario, the researchers comeh up weat findings. how do yo- how do you keep this going? >> yeah, absolutely. i think a big part of our strategy has been to kind of be open about the data and what we're learning, to invite folks in. and i've been having and presidential candidates and governors and assembly people the only way this will work will be at a statewide or national level, and i think th coronavirus pandemic gives us an emergency basic income would look like. program and the stories of the recipients will give us an army of folks who could effectively advocate about how an investment directly in the hands of folks

of the united states is the most important investment we can make as a country, as a state government. so, will continue on working and leading those advocacy efforts, and-- and, hopefully, in the next couple of years, we have some sort of ine me floor for st majority of americans. >> sreenasan: are there padirticular fs in the data that make you optimistic? >> yeah. i mweean, part of whae seeing so far is affirmation of what those of us who work in socorial services, social you know-- things like behavioral economics-- have known for a really long time, which is that the people who budge at be people who are living at or below the poverty line. so, contrary to our assumptions about how money is spent and who knows how to budget and not budget, what we're seeing with the early data is that people who are living paycheck to paycheck know to the day, to the hour wnehen their s going to run ou, so they came into the experiment having a plan for exactly where they were g.ng to spend and that type of spending anxiety, and it increasesrs healthy outcomes, right? so, what we're seeing, you know, right now in that spending data

is more affirmation that when we stust our people and we in in everyday americans who are the ones who are holding up the economy, that what we will see is not only positive health outcomes, but positive economic outcomes. you know, one of the things that we get asked a lot is, well, how much can $500 really do? it's so expeive to li in california. the economy's bad, housing's expensive. and what we've seen with stocon is how far that $500 can go and the ways in which it's alleviating other problems in the markets. >> sreenivasan: so, to be clear, this is not a replacement for the city's safety net. >> it absutely is not. that's one of the key findings that we htoave from theton experiment is that if you implement a guaranteed income, it has tnghappen ade the existing safety net. the first feedback that we received fe rom ty and from focus groups that we were conducting is how is this going benefits?ct with my f or, does this mean i won't be able to have medi-cal anymore?

so, that's more ev mence of peoping rational decisions for their families, right? is it actually worth receiving this $500 ift means that i'm going to have a reduction in my snap benefits? so, as we thiutnk acaling this out, we have to have a plan the current level of benefitsn that they're receiving as well as receive the unconditional cash. >> sreenivasan: mayor, how prepared is stockton, california, for wharycould be a veong slog through this pandemic?>> e are working very, very closely with our-- with our state and federal officials. i think, likspevery other al system, we need more ventilators. we need more hospital beds. we need me c.u. beds. and we're doing the best with what-- with what we have and preparing accordingly. and i think our frontline workers are doing a phenomenal job. an, i mean, again, this is something we'll-- we'll have to learn from and make sure we have even more preparedness. communities, our seniors-- weer are worried about a shortage of

beds, of i.c.u. beds and ventilators. and that's why, again, that stay-at-home directive is so important for folks to realize that we're being preventative, thae t weying to ensure that we don't become like italy and other countries that are making ns aboifficult decisio how to allocate scarce resources. one ofrn the biggest lgs for me just this past week was how, just given the world we live in r where this y's coronavirus, next year or the year after it could be some nalatisaster, couple years after that cod be another public health emergency-- that it's more important that we get the foundation set d ready now so, i was already sold on a guaranteed income, b now i'm more than sold because i see now, particularly in a world thngt moves so fast, where t like this are becoming more and more commonplace, that folks need a firm fation. an as my mom always says, if we get-- if we stay ready, we won't have to get ready. so that folks are in a better position and next time some sort of pandemic or naturalisaster happns, that this has to be part of our natioral resilience egy: how do we make sure that every american has ateast

something to persist through what's becoming morand more common. >> sreenivasan: mayor michael tubbs of stockton, california; seed program there; staciahe martin-west from the university of tolennesseege of social work; and amy castro baker, university of pennsylvania school of social policy and practice-- thank you all for joini us. >> thank you so much for having us. >> sreenivasan: finally tonight, reverend joseph lower the c aivil rights leader aey ally of reverend martin luther king jr., died yesterday. loaswery pastor in mobile alabama when he met king in the 1950s. he went on to help found the southern christian leadership conference, which heor 20 years. in 2009, lowery gave the benediction atresident barack obama's inauguration. >> help us to hoices on the side of love, not ha.

onon the side of inclunot exclusion. tolerance, not intolerance. and, as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. >> sreenivasan: joseph lowery was 98 years old. that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. for the latest news updates, visit www.pbs.org/newshour. i'm hari sreenasan. thanks for watching. have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. charles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment,

to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we om believe taking care ofrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. >> when it comes to wireless, consumecellular gives its customers the choice. ou no-contract plans give as much or as little talk, text and data as you want. and our u.s.-based customer service team is on-hand to help. to learn more, go to www.consumercellular.tv. additional support has been provided by: he corporation for public broadcasting, a private porporation funded by the americple. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

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in part by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. - you know, the fundamental of the idea that the aduin is set in stone is the common saying thatan't teach an old dog new tricks. but, in fact, you can. the adult brain, again, at , in their 40s, 50s, 60s, even beyond, can change its structure and functi in a significant way. - everyo i know who's getting older and forgets things makes joout having senior moments. but i think deep down inside,