Return to Transcripts main page

NEW DAY

Buffalo Bracing for Flooding; Obamacare Faces Legal Challenges; UVA Reacts to "Rolling Stone" Article

Aired November 24, 2014 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Time now for the five things you need to know for your new day.

At number one, a grand jury reconvening this morning to consider possible criminal charges against Police Officer Darren Wilson in the Michael Brown shooting. We have now learned that testimony may not be released if Wilson is exonerated, despite prior assurances.

Talks over Iran's nuclear program have been extended. A western diplomat tells CNN, there is a March deadline now for political framework and a July deadline for a completed deal.

Another Bill Cosby accuser coming forward. Kristina Ruehli says Cosby tried to assault her sexually in 1965. She says she's comfortably financially and is not looking for Cosby's money.

University of Virginia student leaders are set to speak about the school's growing sexual abuse scandal this morning. It comes just days after UVA suspended all fraternity activities following disturbing allegations in a scathing "Rolling Stone" article.

Look, I don't know football, but I know that is an amazing catch. Some are saying this grab by Giant's receiver Odell Beckham Jr. Sunday night against the Cowboys is the best they've ever seen.

We always update those five things to know, so be sure to visit newdaycnn.com for the very latest.

Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: That is impressive, Michaela, thanks.

Well, to Buffalo we go. The white stuff is set to become the wet stuff. Warmer temperatures moving in, ready to melt the seven feet of snow that fell there last week. Let's get right to Alexandra Field. She's live for us in Buffalo, New York, with the plans to keep people safe.

What is the latest, Alexandra?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, this flood warning is going to be in effect for most of the day. Right now the snow seems to be melting a little bit less quickly than officials had feared that it might. But we are out here along the Casnovia (ph) Creek and slowly, over the hours this morning, we are seeing water levels start to creep up. These flood warnings are really geared towards people who live near these creeks. Also to some people in more urban areas with all that snow that came down, you had some of these storm drains that got clogged up. That could force some water into the streets as the snow begins to melt.

This area, it got pummeled with snow, so now the state is doing everything that it possibly can with these warmer temperatures in the forecast. They've brought in a lot of preparations. They're doing a lot of advanced work to stem any issues that could be created by a flood. They brought in additional boats, helicopter, sandbags, pumps, generators, everything, everybody doing what they can to prepare for the possibility of flooding here. People being told that they should get some things out of their basement and even possibly pack a bag, just be ready in case the flood water does come. These people here, they've been through a lot this week. They're hoping that they have seen the worst of it.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Yes, we are too. But it looks like they will be prepared. Alexandra, thanks so much.

Is Obamacare destined to be overturned? The president's signature health care law facing some major legal hurdles. Does it stand a chance? We will speak live to the woman who was in charge of the law when it launched. That's straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to NEW DAY.

It has been one year since healthcare.gov had its big rollout and we all remember that it was really kind of a big thud, right? Well, it's round two starting now. Open enrollment, underway. The Affordable Care Act still facing hurdles, however. One of them is a huge one, a Supreme Court case that could ultimately doom the law depending on the outcome there. We're going to discuss that. And the question is, can Obamacare withstand legal challenges and just the ordinary challenges, and will it be worth it in terms of the benefit it can provide? Let's bring in Kathleen Sebelius, the former secretary of Health and Human Services, in charge when the law and website was launched, of course, also the former governor of Kansas.

It's very nice to have you with us, governor.

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: Thank you, Chris. Great to be with you this morning.

CUOMO: All right. So let's break this down. There are basically five points I want to get after here. The first is the health of the program in general, no pun attended. Fifty-six percent of people in a November 6th to 9th poll saying they disapprove of the Affordable Care Act still. What do you see out there in terms of the acceptance of this program and the effectiveness of this program at this point? SEBELIUS: Well, I think two measures are really about the

effectiveness and success of the program. First there are about just under seven million people who now have affordable coverages in the new marketplaces. That's very good news. And they have accessible, affordable insurance that they didn't have before. Almost eight and a half million people have Medicaid coverage that they did not have before. And I can tell you, Chris, I get stopped in airports and grocery stores all over this country with people saying, thank you. Thank you because I now have health care.

CUOMO: Governor - governor let me just --

SEBELIUS: The other thing that's a sign of --

CUOMO: Before you get to the second point, let me just ask you about the seven million, if I am, I'm sorry -

SEBELIUS: Yes. Sure.

CUOMO: Because that number has become a hot button issue, right? Darrell Issa and others pushing back saying it was inflated, it involved a few hundred thousand people just getting dental, not medical.

SEBELIUS: Well, 6.7, I think, is the revised number. There was a -- an erroneous count trying to get to a baseline going into open enrollment. If I understand it correctly, there were about 400,000 double counted who had dental and health coverage and they were counted as two separate groups. But --

CUOMO: Just a mistake or intentional?

SEBELIUS: Oh, absolutely a mistake. There is -- transparency has been a huge part of this program. I think putting out correct numbers has always been a goal. But as you know, there was a lot of speculation that we never would get anywhere near the projected seven million sign-ups and I just think that's a sign of success.

The other sign of success, and Wall Street analysts again weighed in on Friday, 25 percent of the insurers in the 2015 marketplace are brand new. The markets are competitive in places that they were consolidated before. And the market analysts are actually very optimistic that 2015 will well exceed the numbers with lots of people signing up and younger and healthier people signing up. So there's a very robust marketplace.

CUOMO: Now, you are no longer in charge of the website, but we are told, and that the administration acknowledges this, that the back end of the Obamacare enrollment website is still unfinished. How can that be?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think, Chris, what you're talking about is an automated way that numbers will be transferred seamlessly to insurers and they will be paid on a timely basis. What we did last year and what insurance companies actually asked us to keep in place until everything was fully tested and ready to go was the month by month trueing up, making sure that we had the right numbers and they had the right numbers and that they were paid.

So the work at the back end is going on. We want to make sure, and I think the department wants to make sure now in the ongoing work that before its just rolled over to automation, that everything is absolutely the way it should be.

CUOMO: Let's talk about some of the recent criticism. Obamacare advisor Jonathan Gruber coming out and saying that there was a -- somewhat of an intention to sell this in somewhat of a deceptive way. He also talks about the tax credits, which are going to be the subject of Supreme Court litigation, suggesting that they were used to juice states into accepting the exchanges and accepting Obamacare. Is he an important part of the process of putting this together and is he telling the truth?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think that Professor Gruber's comments are just offensive and flat out wrong. There couldn't have been more open discussions. There were dozens of hearing and mark-ups and analysis. There were five committees in Congress. This went on for months and months. So the notion that somehow this was a secret or that the tax frame was a secret is just really ludicrous.

I think that there's no question that Congress intended for tax credits to be an important part of the framework overall in the bill that people would have the federal government playing the role when an employer didn't provide a portion of the coverage. That's what this market was all about, people who didn't have affordable coverage in the workplace, had an opportunity to not pay 100 percent out of their own pocket, but to get some assistance from the federal government so they and their families could have affordable health coverage. And it works.

CUOMO: So - so I'll take it from that that you believe it will survive the legal challenge in the Supreme Court. What about the political challenge?/ Specifically what Gruber says about how there was an intentional sell. Push that it will cost less. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but push that. Don't push that it's really just about covering everybody we can because people won't like that as much. Is that what you did?

SEBELIUS: Again, i don't think Jonathan Gruber is correct at all. We were very forthright with the American public. I think members of Congress who wrote this legislation were very forthright. It was both about having affordable coverage was certainly a piece of it, but also people getting coverage that they didn't have. People who did not have, in their workplace, affordable coverage. Entrepreneurs, start up business owners, others who were really on their own to try and buy coverage, who were uninsured. And we've seen the biggest drop in the uninsured, in the united states history, and that's very good news.

CUOMO: Let me ask you something, governor, and in this context, former secretary, a year later now, do you feel that it was wrong for them to make you a fall guy for what was going on with Obamacare? Do you wish you were still there?

SEBELIUS: I think that I'm really proud of the work that I was able to do with an amazing team of people and certainly led by the president in the United States. The president and I talked about the right time to leave and right after the election. I was very happy to stay through the rollout initially, and we had a disastrous eight weeks. There's no excuse for that. The website was flawed. And for eight weeks, it was really miserable.

The good news is, by the end of December, when coverage started, we had a million people sign up. And by the end of open enrollment, we had almost eight million people. And by the time we got to October of this year, about 6.7 million of those folks have new coverage. And governors, red and blue states, expanded Medicaid. That's a great legacy and I'm really proud of that.

CUOMO: All right, governor, former secretary, thank you very much, Kathleen Sebelius, for being with us on NEW DAY. Good luck in whatever comes next.

SEBELIUS: Thank you so much.

CUOMO: All right, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, Chris.

Students at the University of Virginia outraged at the way college officials have handled a rape claim. We're talking live with a professor and an alum of the school to find out how the scandal is effecting campus.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: We've been talking this morning about the fall out from the startling "Rolling Stone" article detailing rape allegations on campus at the University of Virginia. Students staged protests over the weekend as more of these details emerged. Fraternities at the school were put on suspension until January. We should point out, a third of the students are part of Greek life on that campus. Here to examine the effect the article is having on the campus, Susan Fraiman, she's a English professor at the University of Virginia, and a UVA alumnus, Lisa Richey. She created a crowd funding site for UVA sex abuse victims.

Ladies, I'm so glad that you would join us here. We've been examining so much about what has been described as a culture of violence at UVA. Professor, first to you, because I think we would love to hear your perspective after hearing the startling allegations in this "Rolling Stone" article. Is there a culture at your school that allows for this kind of thing to go on?

SUSAN FRAIMAN, ENGLISH PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Well, obviously this thing does go on. This is certainly not the first time that we've heard about sexual misconduct on this campus, the case that was covered in the "Rolling Stone" is a particularly egregious one to be sure. You know, as the article pointed out, unfortunately UVA is the norm, so this is a problem at UVA, it's also a problem at colleges around the country. It's frankly a problem in our military, and it's not just the United States. So, you know, I would say that there is a culture of violence, it's not peculiar to UVA. UVA also has a lot of resources to support survivors, to help them report the crime. What's great about this article is that what we have is apparently not enough, so I'm glad that the article has galvanized such huge numbers of people to really try to get some concrete change and get some traction on this issue.

PEREIRA: And galvanized it has. Lisa, in fact, as an alumnus, it's really interesting and really powerful statement to me. You graduated back in 2003, I'm curious about your experience on the campus and what led you now to create this crowd funding site, a Facebook page, you've established a defense fund for assault victims, what motivated all of this, Lisa?

LISA RICHEY,CREATED CROWD FUNDING SITE FOR SEX ABUSE VICTIMS: Well, when I got home from picking my kids up from school on Wednesday, I saw this on Facebook, and it was actually a faculty member who had posted it, and he was mad. And he was so just disappointed, and enraged, and didn't know what to do, and so were all of my fellow alums. And I live in Charlottesville, so so were the townies as well. And I just felt that instead of being mad on social media, we could do something with this anger. And so I posted to some friends, hey, if I set up an alumni fund to help get an attorney for these victims, would anyone donate? And someone I didn't even know, a friend of a friend, said send me the link, where is it? And I said I guess I have to build the link, and that's really how this started, but, so I have a lot of work to do.

But what we think we're seeing across the country at universities everywhere, is that deans aren't equipped to adjudicate sexual assault. If you're a dean, you're probably the dean of both students and your role as judge is very different than one's role as advocate. And so I wanted to start this fund so there was a clear, unbiased advocate, specifically for victims of sexual violence who had absolutely no conflict of interest. And I felt that it was an important thing for the alumni to do, because a lot of us feel like our university failed these students.

PEREIRA: Right, right.

RICHEY: But the university community doesn't have to, and maybe we can right this wrong a little bit if we can help these girls get some justice and some solace.

PEREIRA: And to find a place to go to get the support, because I think that's what we're hearing, that such an interesting parallel to what we're seeing going on with the Bill Cosby case, of these victims who feel they're not being heard. This is such an interesting thing, Susan, I know you were active in organizing some of the rallies over the weekend, and men and women came out, students and faculty. What is it that you're hearing from them that they want to see happen and to see changed?

FRAIMAN: Well, you're right that we had a rally on Saturday night. It was actually the second rally that day at UVA and we had hundreds of people as you say. It was a faculty rally, you know, we realize that we have the victims and the perpetrators in our classes. One of my colleagues was carrying a sign saying we need to unlearn rape. So, there were faculty from many, many departments, and faculty are also organizing in other ways, and writing letters, and formulating their concerns and their demands.

I would say that a key concern is fraternity culture, and that's why we were on Rugby Road on a Saturday night. It's not a place that you usually find faculty, we usually steer clear, especially after a home game. But we were there because we're concerned that fraternities dominate social life at the University of Virginia. We would like to see a more diversified social life. We don't want to stop the party, but we want to make the party safe for everyone. And the way that things work now, sororities are dry, the parties take place for the most part at fraternities. Men actually they control the entrance to the party. They evaluate women on their appearance. Once women get inside, they are not on their own turf.

PEREIRA: Yes.

FRAIMAN: And this is really a climate for sexual perdition, and you add alcohol to the mix and that exacerbates it.

PEREIRA: And it just makes things even worse. Exactly. And we should point out again, as you mentioned, UVA is not a situation specific to this problem. We know that this is something that sadly we're seeing at campuses and other education facilities across the nation. Ladies, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate you standing up for this. Lisa Richey and Professor Susan Fraiman, we appreciate your time today. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Okay, Michaela. Well, a homeless man wants a special gift for Thanksgiving. He wants a family to share the holiday with. We'll tell you the incredible lengths he went to to get it. That's the Good Stuff.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: This is a story that may be even more heart rending than (inaudible).

CAMEROTA: What? Impossible.

CUOMO: It's perfect for the season. It is, it is. Check for yourself. Here's the Good Stuff. A homeless man from Virginia, here's what he wanted for Thanksgiving. He wanted a family. Neal Shytles has been down on his luck, he's been living in a shelter for the last 18 months, and his family, sadly, is all long gone.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

NEAL SHYTLES, HOMESLESS MAN: I am lonely, like, 365 days a year, but Christmas and Thanksgiving are like two of the worst days. It would mean the world to me if somebody took me in, just for that one day, you know? A couple hours, you know?

CUOMO (voice-over): So, Neal got the idea to post a wanted ad on the Facebook page of our affiliate, WTKR. He says he wasn't expecting anything, maybe a response or two. He got dozens from around the country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is another one from Wisconsin, another person New Jersey. So, you're going to have family year round.

SHYTLES: Okay.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

CUOMO (on camera): Even New Jersey reached out to Neal. He had his pick of families, one even invited him in for Easter. In the end if was first come first serve. Neal chose, listen to this even, even more perfect, Ashley and Corey Macklamore (ph), a military family.

PEREIRA: Wow.

CUOMO: They say they know what it's like to not have family around on the holidays.

CAMEROTA: Why didn't you warn us?

CUOMO: Right? I don't know, you couldn't be warned about it.

PEREIRA: It's a beautiful thing.

CUOMO: Perfect, is it perfect? Right? Come on, I don't get it right that often. Amazing. The best for Neal and his new family.

PEREIRA: Wonderful.

CUOMO: Couldn't be better, couldn't be better. A lot of news this morning, let's get you to the "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello. I ate into your show, but this time don't be angry about it Neal was worth it.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: He was worth it. That's an awesome story. Thanks so much, have a great day.

CAMEROTA: You, too.

COSTELLO: NEWSROOM starts now.