PBS NewsHour Weekend; PBS NewsHour Weekend : KQED : January 7, 2017 5:30pm-6:01pm PST

seven-piece of mind. Xfinity home, connected, protected, home. On this edition for January 7, 2017, a Florida airport reopens the day after a mass shooting there claimed five lives. What happens now, following US Intelligent Assessments on Russian influence on the Presidential Election? And in our signature segment, what's replacing Obamacare? How one state offers a preview of the debate to come in Washington. Next on PBS NewsHour Weekend. PBS NewsHour Weekend is made possible by Bernard and Irene Schwartz, Judy and Josh Weston, the Cheryl and Philip Milstein family, the John and Helen Glestner Family Trust, supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. Sue and Edgar Wachenheim, the third. Barbara Hope Zuckerberg. Corporate funding is provided by Mutual of America, designing customized, individual and group retirement

products. That's why, we're your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by, and by, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. From the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center in New York, Hari Srinivasan. Good evening, and thanks for joining us. Florida's normally bustling Fort Lauderdale International Airport reopened today, 16 hours after a mass shooting allegedly carried out by a 26-year-old Iraq War veteran caused it to be shut down. Thousands of passengers who had been stranded after flights were canceled were able to board flights again. The alleged shooter, Esteban Santiago, opened fire early yesterday afternoon with a semi-automatic handgun inside a terminal baggage claim area after retrieving the gun from his luggage. In 70 to 80 seconds, he killed five people and wounded six others before police arrested him. Victims from Iowa, Virginia, and Georgia

were in town on vacation. Three of the wounded were still being treated in a hospital intensive care unit today. The FBI says it believes Santiago flew from his home in Anchorage, Alaska, to Florida to carry out the attack, but agents don't know why. We have not ruled out anything. We continue to look at all avenues and all motives for this horrific attack. Santiago, who was born in New Jersey and grew up in Puerto Rico, deployed in 2010 for one year in Iraq with the Puerto Rican National Guard. The Pentagon says he was demoted and discharged from the Alaska National Guard last year for unsatisfactory performance. The FBI has interviewed his family who says he has a history of mental illness and was once committed to a psychiatric hospital. His brother says Santiago heard voices and believed the CIA controlled him through online messages. Florida Governor Rick Scott met with travelers at the airport today. When you hurt one of us, you hurt all of us. Santiago was expected to make his first court appearance

on federal murder charges on Monday. President-elect Donald Trump today formally nominated former Indiana Senator Dan Coates to be the next director of national intelligence. Cotes just finished his third term in the Senate and previously served in the House of Representatives as ambassador to Germany and was in the Army. The DNI coordinates the efforts of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and military intelligence operations. As for Mr. Trump's other appointments, the U.S. Senate has scheduled its first confirmation hearings for cabinet-level picks next week. But according to the Office of Government Ethics, several picks have not submitted all the information required to check possible conflicts of interest. In a letter to Senate leaders, office director Walter Shaub says he, quote, has not received even initial draft financial disclosure reports for some of the nominees scheduled for hearings. Shaub did not identify any nominees. Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said today, the letter, quote, makes crystal clear

that the transition team's collusion with Senate Republicans to jam through these cabinet nominees before they've been thoroughly vetted is unprecedented. In response, a Trump spokeswoman tells the NewsHour, in part, quote, it's disappointing some have chosen to politicize the process in order to distract from important issues facing our country. This is a disservice to the country. One day, after top U.S. intelligence officials showed him the classified evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a hacking campaign to influence the election in his favor, President-elect Trump said Russia could become an ally during his administration. In a series of tweets this morning, Mr. Trump said, in part, quote, when I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now, and both countries will perhaps work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the world. The agency's also released a declassified version of their key findings for public consumption. For more on the intelligence report,

what it means going forward, I've joined from Washington by Wall Street Journal reporter Shane Harris. Shane, so what happens now? We've had the classified version in both parties' hands, so to speak, both administrations, the incoming one and the existing one. What happens for Congress? Well, the most immediate next step will be that on Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee is going to hold a hearing about this report that's been released publicly. And of course, some of its members have already seen the classified version, which is about 50 pages we're told, so a bit longer than what the public has seen. There will be witnesses there. There will be a public hearing. They'll get to question intelligence leaders about these findings. And I imagine that they'll go into more detail about why they reached these conclusions. I don't think we should expect them to be revealing anything about their classified sources, but that'll be yet another opportunity for this to get aired publicly and for lawmakers to ask more direct questions about these findings that the Russian government intervened in the election and tried to help Donald Trump get elected.

In a non-classified version, there's no smoking gun, so to speak, but you sort of expect that because of the sources and methods on how they got the information that's in the classified report. Is that what the intelligence agencies are telling you? Exactly. This is not an opportunity for them to so much to show their work, as to much to show their conclusions. And so I think that people who were already skeptical about these findings are probably not going to be persuaded by this particular document that was released. Although it is definitive in a lot of its judgments, it doesn't actually tell you we got this information from, for instance, this person in Russia or this series of communications that we intercepted. That's been left out as have a number of other pieces of the puzzle, if you will, that the intelligence agencies feel would be too revealing about how they collect information and they don't want to burn those channels going forward. You know, there's one quote that I'm looking at as we did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. That's from the report. And then I'm looking at President-elect Trump's tweet,

intelligence stated very strongly, there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results. So I mean, can both of those exist in sort of parallel universes here? Well, I think they do. I mean, clearly the intelligence agencies did not try to make that assessment of whether or not this Russian intervention, which they think was trying to help Mr. Trump could elected, whether it actually succeeded. And I think in his statement, he's characterizing a bit too far what the intelligence agencies actually said. Now, what they did say in this report is that there is no evidence that Russian hackers or anyone else actually manipulated vote counts or got into voting machines or equipment and literally changed the outcome that way. But this question of whether this so-called influence campaign changed the outcome of the election, they did not assess that. That the voting machines were not hacked with something even the Obama administration mentioned. The other thing is that this report seems to be a guidepost

for elections to come around the world. That's right. And the intelligence report and officials publicly have said that they want to make clear this is not activity by Russia that they imagine will be limited only to this campaign, only this election. They're already seeing similar activities in England, in Germany. They have seen them before in Eastern Europe. And they really wanted people to understand. This is now a full spectrum of operations that the Russian government is using. And I think now has some evidence that it can be very effective and that the intelligence officials just don't expect that they're going to stop. This is kind of a new reality, a new weapon, frankly, that they think that the Russians are going to be using. You know, what about the concerns that people have? It said, listen, we are pointing the finger at Russia, but the United States and other Western countries probably have similar operations underway around the world. It's a very interesting question, sort of, you know, at aren't we doing the same thing overseas, perhaps, that they're doing to us? And James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence

testified this week. And he was sort of asked about this point, and he really drew a line by saying, look, intelligence agencies all around the world, including ours, collect information all the time, including about their political adversaries. The distinction that he was making, though, that Russia did here was to disclose this information and, as some lawmakers has said, to weaponize it. It's that disclosure, the giving of the emails to WikiLeaks and other groups that they feel crossed a line. All right, Shane Harris, Senior National Security Reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thanks so much. Pleasure, thanks. California State Insurance Commissioner says a foreign government may have been behind a hack of America's second largest health insurer. The report released yesterday did not identify who was allegedly behind the 2014 hack of 78 million customer accounts at Anthem, but the report says the cybersecurity firm hired to conduct the investigation believes with medium confidence of foreign government ordered the theft of social security numbers, birth dates, and employment details. Anthem has agreed to $260 million in security upgrades

as part of a settlement with insurance regulators. Meet the Native American artist who created a photo series to bring greater visibility to her tribe, visit PBS.org slash NewsHour. Canada Donald Trump promised to repeal President Obama's Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and the new Republican Majorities in Congress, share that agenda, though they have not proposed a specific program to replace it. However, this process is already underway in Kentucky, the home state of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The state has had one of the highest rates of Obamacare enrollment, mainly due to its Medicaid expansion. In fact, two-thirds of Americans who've obtained health insurance under Obamacare were poor enough to qualify through Medicaid. But two years ago, Kentucky elected a Republican governor who promised to roll it back. In tonight's signature segment, NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Chris Bury reports how that's playing out. This report is part of the NewsHour's ongoing look at the 44th President's legacy, the Obama years.

We're used to it now. For Steve and Melanie Uxner, the Affordable Care Act has meant life-saving health care without going broke. Steve, who is 60, has throat cancer. Every day we look like we seem to be getting a little bit better. His treatments, including chemotherapy and radiation, are covered by Medicaid, the federal government health program, for low-income and disabled Americans. The Uxner's qualified after the act known as Obamacare took effect, but the cancer, chemo and radiation have taken their toll, leaving burns on Steve's neck and costing him his voice. Are they giving you like a topical steroid for that? No, I've been using cocoa bars. Melanie speaks for both of them. What is having this insurance meant for Steve's health? With the Medicaid, we've paid nothing. I mean, it has covered, every ounce of it. So, I mean, peace of mind has just been just absolutely tremendous.

The Uxner's, who take care of their three-year-old granddaughter, now get health insurance because Kentucky, like 31 other states, agreed to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. Before qualifying for Medicaid, Steve relied on private insurance from the company that owned the gas station where he worked, which Melanie says, paid a maximum of only $2,000 a year in benefits. I'm going to put a note in with the billing department. After Steve was diagnosed with cancer in 2009, his treatments ran up bills of more than $100,000 before the couple qualified for Medicaid in 2014. Would you be deeply in debt if you didn't have this insurance? We are deeply in debt from not having it before, yeah. And we would be even more deeply in debt, yeah, selling this house wouldn't get us out from it. Under the Affordable Care Act, Kentucky, like 17 other states and Washington, DC, set up its own health insurance exchange. Kentucky called theirs Connect. Residents could sign up for private insurance

often with government subsidies. Yet for every Kentucky resident who obtained private insurance this way, another four residents got coverage through Medicaid expansion. The expansion raised the income eligibility to 138% of the federal poverty line. That's about $16,000 a year for an individual and $33,000 for a family of four. Here in Kentucky, the rollout of the Affordable Care Act in 2013 was considered such a success. It became a model for other states. In the first few months, more than 300,000 people qualified for Medicaid coverage under the new law. And Kentucky saw a dramatic decrease in the percentage of uninsured residents, one of the biggest drops of its kind in the country. In 2013, nearly 19% of Kentucky's non-elderly population had no health insurance. By 2015, the uninsured rate had fallen to less than 7%. That's better than the national rate of the uninsured,

which has dropped to 10.5%. Former Kentucky governor Steve Beshear, a Democrat pushed for both a state exchange and Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. I didn't care who passed it. I didn't care whether it was Democrat or Republican in terms of politics. I mean, it was the one opportunity that I felt like we had to make a big difference in Kentucky in the next generation or so in our health. That difference is seen in a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association last October. It found Kentucky's newly insured in the first two years of Medicaid expansion received more primary and preventive care, made fewer emergency room visits, and reported better health. But in Kentucky, like many states that usually vote Republican for president, Obamacare became a political punching bag. And in 2015, Republican Matt Bevin successfully ran for governor, promising to roll back parts of the law

if elected. Last year, Kentucky eliminated its state exchange, saying it was redundant given the federal exchange to help control costs. Governor Bevin also asked the federal government for permission, known as a waiver, to overhaul the state's Medicaid program, which now covers 1.3 million people, almost one in three residents. I want to see us become a healthier state. I don't want us simply to provide people with a Medicaid card and feel like we've done our part. We owe people better than that. The governor declined our interview request, but Republican state representative, Addia Wuchner, who chairs the state committee on health and family services, supports his plan. The goal is to help every individual that is being served by traditional Medicaid or expanded Medicaid or moving into the exchange to learn to utilize the tools of having insurance and coverage. Are you saying it provides an incentive?

So it allows them to have that skin of the game, to be consumers, but also taking that responsibility. Under Bevin's plan, Medicaid would no longer be free. Recipients would be charged monthly premiums up to $15 a month or $180 a year. Able-bodied recipients without dependence would be required to work or volunteer up to 20 hours a week or to be enrolled in school. Those eligible for expanded Medicaid who miss a single premium payment could lose coverage for at least six months. $180 a year to have this almost the same coverage that you and I would have. That's a pretty good deal. So the governor's not asking, nor are we asking too much of them, but we're asking them to be collaborators in their coverage of care. The consequence is you can lose your insurance if you don't meet these obligations. If you don't step up and be responsible, we want to, but we're going to put all the tools in place

to help citizens be responsible. Just giving them health insurance, just giving people often coverage doesn't mean that they're really engaged in the care that they have. Wuchner says Kentucky needs the waiver because the Affordable Care Act requires states to pay a growing share of Medicaid expansion costs. 5% this year rising to 10% by 2020, costing the state an estimated $1.2 billion between 2017 and 2021 and making Medicaid the largest piece of the state budget pie after education. 5% doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up to be a lot of money. So I think the governor's approach to look at it is still wanting to assure people have care, but actually have a shared responsibility in that care. Former governor Beshear sees another motive at work. My biggest concern is that the efforts to get a waiver are really just disguised for.

We'd like to kick as many people off this program as we can. The current governor says that Kentucky cannot afford this expansion of Medicaid. Yes, and it's simply not true. Beshear argues that health care spending due to the Medicaid expansion provides an economic boost and thousands of health care jobs for the state. It's sustainable and it's affordable. But when you get into ideology, which this current administration is in, and they're not the only ones, I mean, this is rampant around the country, it's sort of don't let the facts get in your way. At the Shawnee Christian Health Care Center in Louisville, which serves one of the city's poorer neighborhoods, outreach director and peak, fears of return to the days when nearly one in five Kentuckians were uninsured. We will lose hundreds of thousands of folks coverage. People will not be able to get the preventive care that they need, and people will be going back

to the emergency rooms in droves. I've been coughing a whole lot. Robin Duncan now gets regular checkups at the Shawnee Clinic because she is covered by Medicaid. But last April, before she had Medicaid, Robin showed up at the ER uninsured and had to undergo gallbladder surgery. Before you had insurance, how much did you rely on the emergency room? I was probably having to go there for a little while. I was probably having to go like two or three times like a month. For your basic health care? Correct, yes. After the Medicaid expansion, Kentucky hospitals saved more than $1 billion in uncompensated or charity care from 2013 to 2014 according to a state commission study. Kentucky's waiver, if approved by the Trump administration, could provide a glimpse of what a Republican replacement for Obamacare might look like. Brian Blaze, a former staffer for Congressional Republicans, now works as a health policy analyst. We have 50 states that they're often

referred to as laboratories of democracy, let them figure out some of these problems and learn from each other. Blaze favors a repeal of the Medicaid expansion and says that in states like Kentucky, the investment has not paid off. Right now, when states spend an extra dollar, the federal government is reimbursing the state for most of that dollar. I want to see a change where states get a set amount of money with a lot more freedom with how to manage the dollars and who to gear the program to. I think we have probably have way too many people on the Medicaid program and that it's not able to serve sort of the truly needy who need the public assistance. About 20 million Americans have health insurance that didn't have health insurance before. Isn't that a good thing? It's a good thing. If you don't look at what the corresponding costs are, you have to think, what's the value that people are getting on this health insurance and is the value that people are getting worth the cost? Blaze cites a 2013 study from Oregon that found people who got coverage through a Medicaid expansion

did utilize more health services, but showed no significant improvement in physical measures, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, though diabetes detection and treatment went up. But Jonathan Weiner, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University, says there are definite health benefits to having coverage. For the individual unquestionably people with an insurance card in their pocket are healthier and over long term have a better and longer life than someone that doesn't have an insurance card. One of the reasons Republicans oppose this Medicaid expansion, they say it's been far too expensive for the health outcomes that have been produced. Well, health care is expensive. People in private insurance plans spend even more than is the case here. But this way they can get preventive care, they can get their diabetes treated. Yes, that's more expensive, but they will be healthier. Say, Steve Okshner and his wife Melanie credit the Affordable Care Act with helping keep Steve alive

during his battle with throat cancer. They're open to changes in the law, including paying a premium or volunteering to keep their Medicaid coverage. You'd be okay. We'd be okay with it. And I know that there are a lot of people that wouldn't, but we'd be okay with it. We just would. Because the insurance is that important. Because the insurance is that important. It is. This is PBS NewsHour Weekend Saturday. British scientists say a 100 mile crack in Antarctica will likely lead to a 2000 square mile iceberg breaking off the continent in the coming weeks. That's larger than the state of Rhode Island. ITN's Tom Clark has more. It's a huge crack running through the expansive ice on the edge of Western Antarctica. These images taken by NASA show how long and deep the rift on the last and sea ice shelf really is. It threatens to separate a chunk of ice

from the Antarctic peninsula and soon. The crack spread to here by 2010. Since then, it has gradually crept along the ice. But in the last month, it's lengthened by more than 11 miles. Just 12 miles of ice now keep it from floating away. So the iceberg is hanging on by a thin strip of ice. And we think that in the next few weeks, it might well break off. Professor David Vaughn knows only too well what happens when icebergs begin to break off in the Antarctic. He needs a team of scientists that have been monitoring the peninsula for nearly three decades. It's already floating, so it has no immediate impact on sea level rise. But if, because the iceberg is taken away, then the glaciers that are feeding that ice shelf speed up, then that would be an extra contribution to sea level rise. He's seen several similar break offs, which have caused ice to disintegrate into the ocean, but nothing on this scale. The crack in last and sea has been present for years, and its sudden growth is thought to be completely independent

of climate change in the Antarctic. But there is evidence the ice sheet has been getting thinner, melting from below and above due to warmer sea and air. That could have a bearing on what happens next. Some scientists predict the entire ice shelf could collapse, as others have done slowly redrawing the map of Antarctica. Finally, thousands of supporters of President Barack Obama waited in a line stretching for blocks in Chicago today to get free tickets to his farewell address. They braved temperatures as low as three degrees to see the speech in person at McCormick Place Convention Center on Tuesday night. Mr. Obama's address to the nation at the end of his second term will continue in tradition, started by George Washington in 1796. That's all for this edition of PBS NewsHour Weekend. I'm Hari Srinivasan. Have a good night. PBS NewsHour Weekend is made possible by Bernard and Irene Schwartz,

Judy and Josh Weston, the Cheryl and Philip Milstein family. The John and Helen Glessner family trust, supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. Sue and Edgar Wachenheim, the third. Barbara Hope Zuckerberg. Corporate funding is provided by Mutual of America, designing customized individual and group retirement products. That's why, we're your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by... ...and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. Be more PBS. On American Experience. The warhead on top of the Titan 2, which is three times as powerful as all the bombs used

in the Second World War. It was a monster waiting to go off. Working on a weapon of mass destruction. You're counting on everything to work perfect all the time, and things just don't work perfect all the time. Command and Control. On American Experience. Tuesday night at eight on KQED9. The Latin Quarter is the core of the left bank as the south side of the San River is known. This is Long Bend the city's university district. In fact, the University of Paris, a leading university in medieval Europe, was founded here in the 13th century. Back then, the vernacular languages, like French and German, were crude. Couldn't have to handle your basic needs.

But for higher learning, academics like this guy, spoke and corresponded in Latin. Until the 1800s, from Sicily to Sweden, Latin was the language of Europe's educated elite. And for reasons called this university district, the Latin Quarter, because that's the language they heard on the streets. Today, any remnant of that Latin is buried by a touristy tabooly of ethnic restaurants. Still, it remains a great place to get a feel for the tangled city before the narrow lanes were replaced by wide modern boulevards in the 19th century. The scholarly and artsy people of this quarter brewed up a new age. Paris's Café scene. By the time of the revolution, the city's countless cafes were the haunt of politicians and philosophers who plotted a better future as they sipped their coffee. And the Café society really took off in the early 1900s as the world's literary and artistic avant-garde converged on Paris. In now famous cafés, along boulevards Saint Germain and boulevards Saint-Michel, free thinkers like Hemingway, Menon,

and Jean-Paul Sartre enjoyed the creative freedom of these hangouts engendered. Indy now, Monday nights on KQED. Hello, I'm Tuy Bou. Our weekly current affairs show KQED Newsroom is moving to a new time. Beginning January 20th, you can watch us at 7 p.m. on Fridays. We'll bring you the same mix of news and arts coverage with unique Bay Area and California perspectives. All an hour earlier, that's Friday nights at 7, starting January 20th. Here's tonight's lineup on KQED, made possible by your support. Truly California is a KQED production

presented in association with... Cal Humanities. Next on Truly California. Oakland hass always in a great city. We've been here. We've been going great things. With the growth of Oakland's first Friday, the splendor of the rapidly changing city was on display. There's like a couple of months where it just ramped up and came crazy. As where it's growing pains. Having a place does make it safer, but not for everybody. Next, first Friday. Today in the city, if you want to just leave all your money and all your money.