(and Covering It)
It’s Thursday, October 31, 2013, and it’s about to be a very scary Halloween for the Obama administration. I’m working the monstrously frightening Obamacare launch.
The administration is withholding most of the relevant public information, whether it’s regarding HealthCare.gov’s tenuous security, failed tests prior to the rollout, or dismal enrollment figures. The key to getting real facts is going to be the congressional committees that have the power to demand documents and issue subpoenas.
Republicans must sense an advantage. This is the most self-assured and aggressive I’ve seen them behave since Senator Obama became president. Previously, Republican house speaker John Boehner has tempered many of his colleagues’ attempts to exploit the administration’s vulnerabilities. He slow-walked their demands for a joint select committee to investigate Benghazi. He delayed subpoenas on Fast and Furious. But the Republican response to the HealthCare.gov susceptibilities is different. Full speed ahead.
Of course, if history accurately predicts the future, the Obama administration will thumb its nose at Congress and its document demands for as long as possible. There are few repercussions to this approach. Republicans usually wring their hands but don’t do much about it. The media shrugs its collective shoulders but stays mute. And the only true enforcement authority is the very administration that’s committing the offenses.
But there are other keepers of revealing information: government contractors that worked on HealthCare.gov. Some of them aren’t so cavalier about ignoring requests from Congress. Some of them will turn over relevant materials. I need to stay close to the essential congressional committees that stand the best chance of getting information that can be released to the public. They’re all in the House: Oversight, Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce. My producer Kim Skeen and I hit them up with phone calls and emails. Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce have good background material and context to balance all the information the Obama administration is releasing, but there’s nothing particularly noteworthy from them . . . yet.
But I haven’t heard back from Oversight. Four days pass and they still haven’t responded to my emails and calls. Sometimes that means they’ve got nothing. But it can also mean the opposite. I’m left to guess.
Everyone wants to know what the early Obamacare sign-up figures are. They’re significant because trusted experts I’ve consulted, including well-informed insiders, say the business model relies on two simple factors: the number and quality of customers. First, there needs to be seven million enrollees by March 31, not counting Medicaid customers. That’s roughly 38,000 a day. Second, there needs to be the right mix: plenty of healthy, young enrollees—“young invincibles,” in insurance industry jargon—to balance the cost of older and sicker customers. If either measure falls short, it could jeopardize the entire program. At the very least, premiums skyrocket.
There should be nothing secretive about how many Americans are enrolling: the figures belong to the public. And unlike Benghazi and Fast and Furious, the government can’t withhold the information on the grounds of national security or “ongoing investigation”—two of their favorite stonewalling excuses.
Nonetheless, the administration simply says it’s not going to announce enrollment numbers until it’s good and ready, and then will produce them once a month. They justify this methodology by saying it’s how the government handled the release of Medicare Part D figures. It’s an invalid argument for the government to claim that statistics for HealthCare.gov must be disseminated the same way they were for the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit when it started back in 2006. That’s akin to declaring that everything in the future must be done the same as it was in the past, for no particular reason. If we all operated that way, we’d still be chiseling on stone tablets. Because that’s how things used to be done.
But more important, the administration insists there is no enrollment data, yet. Experience, knowledge, and common sense lead me to suspect they’re telling a fib.
So, on Halloween at about 3 p.m., I finally get a return call from Republicans on Oversight. It seems they’ve obtained so-called War Room notes taken by a HealthCare.gov contractor during emergency meetings convened when the website first failed at the start of October. The notes refer to a “dashboard” that’s tracking enrollment and is apparently working better than the rest of the website. What does it reveal? On the first day of Obamacare, six people enrolled.
Six.
For a moment, I’m at a loss for words. No wonder the administration wants to run and hide. Everyone thought it would be bad. But not this bad.
“Did you say six? Are you sure?” I ask my contacts who are listening on speakerphone.
“Yeah,” they say. “It’s pretty clear.”
I look at the documentation myself and consult additional sources for context. Then I call my senior producer, Linda Prestia.*
“I have some enrollment figures for the first day.”
“And . . . ?”
“Apparently, six people signed up.”
Pause.
“Six?” she asks. “How can that be?”
As I prepare to report this revelation on that night’s CBS Evening News, I contact the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the primary government agency overseeing implementation of the Affordable Care Act. I already know the drill. The press spokesman will use the opportunity to attempt to pump me for what I know without giving up a shred of information.
Until now, HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters has largely ignored questions I’ve raised in emails and phone calls. But the moment I ping her that I need confirmation on enrollment figures, I have her interest. My phone rings. It’s Peters.
“I need to know how many people enrolled on the first few days,” I tell her.
“We’ll be releasing those figures in mid-November,” she answers, repeating from the talking points that HHS has used for weeks.
“So if I were to give you numbers that I have, you couldn’t confirm them?”
“There are no numbers,” she insists. “They don’t exist.”
We go back and forth. I tell her that I know enrollment numbers are being collected and I have some of them. She continues to say there aren’t any. I’ve long dealt with government officials who beat around the bush when they don’t want to give an honest answer. Lately, it seems they’re bolder. They say things that are provably false. And they say these things with conviction. Indignation. We’re not getting anywhere and I draw the call to a close.
“Wait,” says Peters. “I’d like to know what numbers you have.”
“I’m sure you would. And I’d like you to give me your enrollment numbers but it looks like neither of those things is going to happen.”
“There are no numbers,” Peters shoots back once more. She’s sticking to script—but sounding worried now. She needs to report back to her superiors. They need to prepare their spin. It’s a game whereby they constantly modify their story as contradictions surface, necessitating formulation of an evolved position that’s more consistent with the newly unearthed facts. We didn’t mean that, I’m afraid you must have misunderstood. Here’s what we meant. . . . The game is tedious but pro forma.
“You’re going to go on the Evening News and report numbers, I’d like to know what they are!” Peters tries one last time, sounding testy.
She’s got it backward. She gets a public salary and her agency is collecting information about the public that belongs to the public. She’s the one who’s obligated to provide information.
“I was looking for help from you to confirm enrollment numbers,” I say. “But there’s no point in telling you what I have since you say you have no numbers, right?”
We hang up and I grab my files and notes to head over from my office to the main CBS building, up the street. As soon as I enter the newsroom, I swing by Prestia’s desk and tell her to expect a call from the White House. My chat with Peters has set the machine in motion. There’s some comfort in knowing the routine. So predictable.
It’s not long before I overhear Prestia arguing on the telephone. I walk toward her desk, and she looks up and smiles as if she doesn’t mind the battle on the other end of the phone line. She scribbles on a piece of paper as she continues talking and hands it to me.
“White House.”
Fulfilling my prediction, a White House press officer has called to complain, and to try to find out what we know and how we know it. Prestia pushes back. Why would we discuss details of our reporting with them when they insist no enrollment figures exist?
She hangs up. “Really? That’s the best they can do is sic him on us?” referring to the White House press flack who had called.
“Somebody higher up the food chain is probably calling Isham [our bureau chief] and David [Rhodes, president of our news division],” I tell Prestia. She hasn’t been in her position long enough to know the whole routine. Their normal strategy is multipronged. They hope to reach somebody at CBS who might be intimidated or sympathetic. It just takes one. But today, it doesn’t work.
At 6:30 p.m., we air our report. It reads, in part:
The website launched on a Tuesday. Publicly, the government said there were 4.7 million unique visits in the first 24 hours. But at a meeting Wednesday morning, the War Room notes say ‘six enrollments have occurred so far.’ . . . The notes leave no doubt that some enrollment figures, which the administration has chosen to keep secret, are available. . . . But head of [the government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] CMS Marilyn Tavenner would not disclose any figures when Rep. Dave Camp, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, asked earlier this week. “Chairman Camp, we will have those numbers available in mid-November,” she said.
It’s big news.
Six-people-enrolling-the-first-day becomes an instant meme reflecting the HealthCare.gov disaster. It’s fodder for a song written and sung on the Country Music Awards on November 6 from Nashville: “Obama-care by Morn-ing . . .” croon Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley on ABC, “. . . over six peop-le served . . .”
Jay Leno pokes fun on his late-night comedy show: “According to CBS News, only six people enrolled in Obamacare on the first day of the rollout. Six! That means more people have walked on the moon than have signed up for Obamacare.”
And casual observers can’t help but note that the number six happens to jibe with a skit that Saturday Night Live had performed five days before. In the parody, an actress portraying Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius tells Americans, “Millions of Americans are visiting HealthCare.gov, which is great news. Unfortunately the site was only designed to handle six users at a time.”
The next morning, a CBS News producer shares with the rest of us that White House officials are unhinged—“out of their minds”—over the media coverage, and are on a mission to excavate information to exploit to their advantage. They’re asking, Which reporters are working on the story? What are the names of their producers? There’s a hint of more desperation than usual as they execute their PR game plan, which looks something like this:
KNOW YOUR ENEMY Get to know the reporters on the story and their supervisors. Lobby them. If they don’t adopt your viewpoint, try to discredit them.
MINE AND PUMP When asked to provide interviews and information for a story, stall, claim ignorance of the facts, and mine the reporter for what information he has.
CONTROVERSIALIZE Wait until the story is published to see how much the reporter really knows. Then launch a propaganda campaign with surrogates and sympathizers in the media to divert from the damaging facts. Controversialize the reporter and any whistleblower or critics to try to turn the focus on personalities instead of the evidence.
The Obama administration’s downhill PR trajectory may have been a fait accompli from the moment Secretary Sebelius’s handlers scheduled her to appear on Jon Stewart’s Comedy Central program October 7, 2013. She cleared a spot in her tight schedule for the political comedy show after refusing Congress’s “invitation” to testify because she supposedly didn’t have time. It’s a classic Obama administration move: bypass the traditional news media. Circumvent Congress, if you can. Go straight to the popular media. There you’ll get friendly banter with no tough questions and no serious follow-up.
It usually works.
But Sebelius was ill-equipped for Stewart’s brand of political humor, which exploits real-life observations to construct blistering satire. He begins the segment by opening a laptop computer on his desk.
“I’m gonna try and download every movie ever made,” says Stewart as Sebelius chuckles nervously, “and you gonna try to sign up for Obamacare and we’ll see which happens first.”
“Okay,” says Sebelius as the audience laughs.
Later in the segment, she’s befuddled by Stewart’s persistent bemusement over why the administration granted businesses, but not average Americans, a year delay in meeting Affordable Care Act requirements. After Sebelius repeatedly attempts an explanation, Stewart says, “Let me ask you this: Am I a stupid man?”
Stewart’s treatment of Sebelius and the HealthCare.gov story seems to buoy some in the news media. We pass around the link and marvel at how he so skillfully shed light on the controversy. We’re forced to look in the mirror and ask if we’ve grown accustomed to being overly deferential to some political figures. (Answer: We have.) Maybe we should be asking tougher questions and demanding full answers. Not accepting the usual runaround. If the liberal comedian finds fault with HealthCare.gov and the government’s response, then perhaps some of us should be taking a more critical look.
| THE “GLITCH”
It’s about two weeks later that the Affordable Care Act story falls into my lap, in much the same way that Benghazi did. There hadn’t been any interest by the Evening News lately in my investigative reporting. But mid-morning, I get a phone call from a New York colleague who tells me that, as of right now, the network powers that be want me to focus on Obamacare. In twenty years at CBS News, I rarely know who it is and how high up who decides that we—or I—should be hot on a particular story or why. And when interest later suddenly dissipates, as it usually does, I rarely know exactly how that comes about, either.
Invited into the health-care story, I join a group of CBS News producers and correspondents who are already on the case, and we begin daily conference calls to discuss developments and unanswered questions. We share information and divide responsibilities.
As I’d watched the rollout of HealthCare.gov, much like an average consumer, it seemed as if some in the news media were hesitant to call a spade a spade. Or in this case, afraid to call a debacle a debacle. Many had adopted the administration’s chosen term for what’s going wrong: glitch.
It reminds me of how the media often perpetuates a propaganda lexicon rather than critically examining whether it’s accurate. For me, detecting and resisting disinformation is an avocation: I’m always on the lookout for signs that we’re being worked, whether it’s by Democrats, Republicans, corporations, or other special interests. I’ve become so keen at detecting the techniques, they stick out like a sore thumb.
In the case of HealthCare.gov, the media has adopted the administration’s understatement of the website’s massive complications as a “glitch.” While it’s perfectly fine to quote administration officials who want to call it a glitch, we should not promulgate the notion as if we journalists have independently concluded it’s the case. Yet the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and all the networks—have all used the g-word long after the troubles proved to be far beyond what can be fairly described as a glitch.
I look up the definition of glitch. TheFreeDictionary.com defines it as “a minor malfunction, mishap, or technical problem.” Merriam-Webster.com says it’s “an unexpected and usually minor problem; especially: a minor problem with a machine or device (such as a computer).”
I then look up disastrous: “very bad or unfortunate . . . terrible: a disastrous report card.”
HealthCare.gov’s failed launch is much closer to being “a disastrous report card” than “a minor malfunction.”
There is, at least for the moment in late October, an appetite for more aggressive coverage of the president’s signature initiative. The problems are proving to be too big and persistent to downplay. Americans are just beginning to suffer a wave of insurance cancellations as a result of Obamacare. The president is taking live fire for the many iterations of assurances, at least thirty-seven, in which he or another top administration official said, “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan.” One can almost feel sorry for him as the news media play montages of his past on-camera statements belying today’s reality. But it’s hard to feel sorry for too long, considering written evidence that shows his administration knew all along—and even worked into its formulations—the prediction that millions would, indeed, lose their insurance. It’s figured into Congressional Budget Office projections over the years as well as internal CMS analyses.
Eventually, the administration will acknowledge the cancellations and instigate fixes. But for now, it’s in denial mode. It’s the insurance companies’ fault, they say, and plans aren’t being canceled; people are being automatically switched to “better” plans. Spinners fan out in the press and call it a “kerfuffle” of “manufactured Republican outrage.” But for once, the spin falls flat: even Democrats in Congress are in a lather. Some of them will soon be facing tough reelection campaigns. And they know from their constituents that there’s a groundswell of grassroots anger.
Further proof that government proclamations should be viewed askance, no matter how confidently they’re made, comes from a White House–produced video posted in August 2009 as the Obama administration pushed Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act. It’s one of those PR outreaches that bypassed the newsman and went straight to the public: unfettered and unquestioned. The video featured communications director (and former CBS News correspondent) Linda Douglass of the White House Office of Health Reform debunking “the myth that reform will force you out of your current insurance plan. . . . To the contrary, reform will expand your choices, not eliminate them.” The article slammed critics saying that they “may find the truth a little inconvenient.” Now, in 2013, we know that the “critics” were correct all along—millions are being forced out of their current insurance plans. Despite the conviction with which that White House video attack on health-care opponents was delivered back in 2009, it has proven to be either misinformed or dishonest. Ironically, the title on the banner that introduced the 2009 video, most unfortunate in retrospect, was Facts Are Stubborn Things.
As CBS News moves to get more aggressive on the story, there’s palpable tension and no universal agreement on what our coverage should say. Key managers criticize another correspondents’ health-care report for referring to insurance cancellations occurring under Obamacare.
“Customers aren’t being canceled, they’re being automatically switched to better plans with better coverage,” argues one manager vehemently, adopting the administration’s verbiage, “because they had substandard plans!”
Undoubtedly, there are some previously uninsured customers who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act. But it’s paternalistic for us to claim to know that all of those switched against their will are better off, and just don’t know better.
“We might be able to report they’re getting more coverage, but it’s not up to us to say it’s better coverage,” I say. “If it’s coverage they didn’t want or need and it’s more expensive, it’s not necessarily better for them.”
Another manager voices concerns that to continue our watchdog reporting could give the appearance that we’re “piling on” the beleaguered White House. It sounds like another argument from the administration’s supporters: spinners often accuse us of “piling on” when they want us to ease up on negative coverage. As I’ve mentioned, broadcast producers have adopted the vernacular when they don’t want a story. It’s not a substantive argument and I’m not sure why it ever works, but it does. I’m unsympathetic. We should follow the story where it leads, not be deterred by red herrings.
Other reporters have shared with me experiences about meeting similar roadblocks at the hands of managers using similar language. Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Jeff Gerth disclosed in a footnote in a book he coauthored in 2007, Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, how his New York Times bosses killed one of his articles about the Clintons. According to the footnote, “an editor in Washington told [Gerth] the editor in New York decided a second piece [about the Clintons’ Whitewater controversy] would be viewed by readers as ‘piling on’ and spiked it.”
If anyone is to blame for the cascade of critical reports on HealthCare.gov, it’s not the news messengers: it’s those who screwed things up. During my conversation with managers who are worried about “piling on,” I point out that for many months, the news media produced plenty of glowing stories about the Affordable Care Act. We profiled countless individuals and families who would supposedly be helped, and uncritically accepted the promise that people would be able to keep their plans and doctors. If the new reality is less positive, so be it.
As journalists, we must have a tin ear for the propaganda campaigns that swirl furiously around us. We need to be cognizant of the many attempts to influence or manipulate by spinners and their media surrogates: bloggers, authors of letters to the editor and opinion pieces disguised as news articles, and social media engineers.
By the first week of November, insurance cancellations have reached critical mass and public outrage is so strong, the White House decides it’s time for a mea culpa. It won’t happen at a press conference. It won’t be given during an interview with an adversarial reporter. And an appearance with Jon Stewart is obviously out of the question. Instead, the president’s handlers call one of the friendliest guys on the block for a taped one-on-one: NBC/MSNBC’s Chuck Todd. I don’t blame Todd for answering the call. If they’d called me, I would’ve gone, too. Funny thing is, the White House never calls me for an interview.
The interview airs on November 7. The president doesn’t offer an apology off the top. But when Todd presses the point about people losing their insurance, Obama says, “I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me.”
| PUSH-ME-PULL-YOU
Covering this story continues to involve push-me-pull-you when it comes to navigating internal politics. One conflict surfaces when I prepare a story about growing worries that the Obamacare business model could collapse. One Obama administration source has confided in me that the breakdown of the website poses a fundamental and perhaps insurmountable enrollment challenge. Several insurance experts tell me the same thing. It’s the talk of the industry right now. In short, they believe that the coveted healthy customers won’t waste their time trying to log in over and over. Only the sickest, most motivated patients will. And they will skew the risk pool. The experts explain it using the phrase “death spiral,” an industry term of art to describe the fatal business phenomenon that results. Not enough low-cost customers to help pay for the expensive ones. The death spiral could defeat the Obamacare model.
“That’s the road we’re headed down,” says one expert flatly.
As I write my report, my producer and I already know that some of our managers in New York will have a visceral repulsion to the phrase “death spiral.” Their response is emotional and makes no logical sense, but through experience over the past two years, we’ve become adept at predicting what they’ll try to keep off the news. Such battles used to be rare or unheard-of but now they’re ingrained: the heavy-handed reshaping of scripts; the banning of certain words, phrases, views, and topics. Even so, we try to resist the inclination to self-censor in advance. So I write the story the way it should be written and submit it.
Sure enough, I immediately get one initial response: “One thing to avoid . . . the term ‘death spiral.’” I’m told that all the relevant managers are “in agreement we don’t want to be that inflammatory.”
I begin the process of fighting this piece of censorship. I explain that “death spiral” is not an inflammatory or opinionated term; it’s a widely known, accurate insurance industry term describing the fact pattern at issue. What’s their real problem with the phrase?
I argue that it isn’t appropriate for us to censor facts or terms of art. And I submit a scholarly reference to support my stance.
Death spiral. The term is found in the academic literature at least as early as Cutler and Zeckhauser’s 1998 paper “Adverse Selection in Health Insurance” which refers explicitly to an “adverse selection death spiral.”
—Cutler, David M.; Zeckhauser, Richard J. (1998). “Adverse Selection in Health Insurance.” Forum for Health Economics & Policy 1 (1). doi:10.2202/1558-9544.1056.
After much ado, I bring upper management into the discussion and it’s finally agreed that the piece should air complete with the term death spiral. But I know not everybody inside CBS is happy about it.
My next HealthCare.gov story won’t make them any happier.
As I move forward with my research, I pinpoint a significant vulnerability that the news media hasn’t explored to any meaningful degree: security. And judging by the administration’s reaction, it’s an Achilles’ heel for them.
I begin by poring through an inspector general report and congressional testimony given months before the website went live on October 1, 2013. They reveal that crucial security-related deadlines kept slipping as HealthCare.gov’s development fell desperately behind schedule. This prompted great concern from the inspector general as well as some Democrats and Republicans. As I get up to speed, I’m struck by how many warning signs there were throughout 2013. But we, the media, were largely disinterested. Asleep on the job.
The security issues don’t just involve the personal information that a user enters on a HealthCare.gov application, though that’s a serious matter. They also extend to the vast hub through which HealthCare.gov exchanges data to link to the IRS, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Veterans Affairs, the Defense Department, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Peace Corps. Even if you’re not a HealthCare.gov customer, the system’s security shortfalls could compromise information stored about you in these colossal government databases.
I learn that the deadline for final security plans to be formulated slipped three times from May to July 2013. Security assessments that were supposed to be finished in early June slid to mid then late August. And the final, required end-to-end security tests never got done prior to the launch. This presented the Obama administration with a dilemma: delay the rollout of the website—political disaster—or grant itself a waiver to go ahead and launch October 1 and hope for the best. Four days before the launch, it issued the waiver. The way we know is because Congress obtained an internal government memo, despite the Obama administration’s best efforts to keep it secret.
The waiver memo was dated September 27, 2013, and it’s a blatant red flag. In it, HealthCare.gov’s lead project manager, Henry Chao, and a colleague tell their boss, head of CMS Marilyn Tavenner, that because major parts of the website are still under development, no “end-to-end” security testing can be conducted. This, says Chao’s memo, poses “a level of uncertainty . . . deemed as a high [security] risk.” Nonetheless, the memo shows Tavenner signed off on the required Authority to Operate the website, accepting the liability without notifying Congress or the public.
This is the same government that would likely squawk out objections and issue regulatory threats if it learned that certain private industry websites were doing the public’s business without passing basic security assessments. But here, for the sake of forcing an unfinished website to launch by a certain deadline, the government secretly exposed Americans to a mandate with giant security holes. Notably, there were no disclosures on the website, not even in fine print. No terms for users to acknowledge and agree upon that divulge the site’s true security status. In private industry, such a lapse could be seen as grounds for a lawsuit.
As the Obama administration frantically attempts to brush off the Chao memo and the risks, my inside sources are doing the opposite. One of them tells me that the decision to launch the website with such precarious security was so contentious that people threatened to quit over it.
Kim and I consult a range of cybersecurity experts who tell us it’s “shocking” and “unacceptable” that the website was allowed to become operational with its vulnerabilities. However, nobody wants to say so on camera. I even turn to a major cybersecurity firm suggested by a CBS executive who has contacts there. Our communications begin cordially and I describe the issue at hand. A few minutes later, the contact at the firm calls back and tells me in a frosty voice that its executive will absolutely not address that topic on the record.
Let’s face it. Many of these experts do lucrative contract work for the federal government. Or they’re connected to universities that get a great deal of government funding. Whether by accident or design, it’s almost as if the would-be critics have been bought off with tax dollars. Who can blame them? Why should they bite the hand that feeds them? It’s yet another illustration of how information can be censored and manipulated in ways the public can’t imagine.
I’ve begun familiarizing myself with the arcane security rules that the government is supposed to follow. The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) requires federal government websites to meet standards developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST defines a high risk as a “vulnerability” that “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect on organizational operations . . . assets or individuals.” If a federal website goes forward with known risks, the law requires that a designated official with the agency formally acknowledge and accept the risks, and devise a written plan to mitigate and fix the hazards down the road.
HealthCare.gov’s risk status is a very big deal, indeed.
Kim manages to locate one credible expert who will speak about the security problems on camera: Affordable Care Act supporter and Georgetown law professor Lawrence Gostin. Gostin is an especially valuable figure in this context because he helped craft the Affordable Care Act so that it would stand up to constitutional challenge. His criticisms can’t be dismissed as partisan. When we tell him about the September 27 memo and waiver, he’s disturbed that the Obama administration signed off and moved forward.
“Nothing can undermine public confidence more than the fear of a security and privacy breach,” Gostin tells me in an interview. “You could have somebody hack into the system, get your Social Security number, get your financial information.”
Adding to the security questions is a strange addendum to the September 27 memo. It’s signed by three of Chao’s colleagues: fellow managers at CMS. It states that while the government’s mitigation plan would reduce the security risk to the overall operation, it “does not reduce the risk to the [Federally Facilitated Marketplace] system itself going into operation on October 1, 2013.” For all the effort the administration has put into trying to convince the public otherwise, evidence of the persistent threat is codified in black and white, signed by the government’s own experts.
I wonder: Is the addendum a “cover your ass” document? Did these security officials who signed it suspect that disaster might strike? Were they making sure that if people later asked, Who the hell approved the website to go forward with such risks? the record would reflect they had raised flags?
I also know from my research that CMS chief information officer Tony Trenkle—not Tavenner—was originally the authorized official who should have signed the website’s Authority to Operate. Instead, he signed the odd addendum noting the risk. This seems like a clue. I consult my inside sources, who tell me this whole arrangement is unusual, if not unprecedented. I wonder if it’s proper or legal. I ask HHS to explain. But like most of my inquiries, these fall into the bottomless pit where unwanted questions to federal agencies go, never to be answered or addressed again.
| CHAO’S AWKWARD POSITION
Some Democrats as well as Republicans are now questioning the security status of the website and on November 13, 2013, Chao is called to testify before Congress. His demeanor couldn’t be more different than what I expected based on the descriptions from some of his acquaintances. They said that he was a good guy to work with. A competent, straightforward man who always had a kind or encouraging word when he saw you in the hallway. But when Chao appears before Congress in a suit that’s too big and a collar that’s too tight, he appears uncomfortable, shifty, and sarcastic. He puts a great deal of effort into backpedaling from his September 27 memo. Now he tells Congress he never really had any serious security concerns and was confident the website would perform well on its debut. That the only reason he sounded so worried in internal emails is that he’s an overly cautious kind of guy.
It’s an awkward scenario for Chao, to say the least. HealthCare.gov is an unmitigated mess. For him to now claim that he didn’t have a clue may advance the interests of the Obama administration, which wants America to believe there were no real warning signs, but the tradeoff is that Chao comes off as ignorant. Yet as long as Chao wears the mask of the ignorant but stays in synch with the White House, his job is safe. It’s moving off that script that could jeopardize his government career.
In short, Chao must convince the public that the true Chao isn’t the worried Chao revealed in the documents; the true Chao is the one who didn’t foresee impending disaster and is, therefore, the incompetent Chao, but the Chao who’s in harmony with the administration.
Democrats coalesce behind the incompetent version of Chao; Republicans prefer the concerned Chao who foresaw the train wreck. As for me? Do I believe Chao 1.0 from documents prior to the PR crisis, or the updated version, Chao 1.1, prepped by his HHS minders in advance of a potentially damaging congressional hearing? After the hearing ends, one government insider tells me he’s shocked at how evasive, if not downright dishonest, his colleague Chao seemed at the hearing.
“I wouldn’t have guessed he’d be like that,” says the source. “He must be under a lot of pressure.”
| ALTERNATE UNIVERSES?
To hear the opposing views of HealthCare.gov’s security status, you might think you were in alternate universes: one where the system is invincible: another where it’s frighteningly vulnerable. Never is the contrast more absolute than on Tuesday, November 19, 2013, during dueling hearings on Capitol Hill. It’s Chao’s second appearance before Congress since the website’s launch; this time it’s Energy and Commerce. Democrat John Dingell of Michigan asks a series of rapid-fire questions intended to dispel the security concerns.
DINGELL Is HealthCare.gov safe and secure for my constituents to use today with regard to protection of their personal information and their privacy? Yes or no?
CHAO Yes.
DINGELL Is there any evidence at all to the contrary?
CHAO No.
At the precise moment that Chao is giving those reassurances, four security experts are barely a stone’s throw away giving the opposite assessment before the Science, Space and Technology Committee.
Republican Chris Collins of New York asks, “Would any of you have launched HealthCare.gov, recommended the launch, given the factual known status of the website on October first?”
“No,” answer the four security experts.
“Do any of you think today that the site is secure?” Collins asks.
“No,” they reply.
“In your opinion, do any of you think the site will be secure on November thirty?”
“No,” say all four.
Back at Chao’s hearing, Chao testifies that no identified vulnerabilities have been exploited by an attack and “the American people can be confident in the privacy and security of the marketplace.”
At the security expert hearing, Morgan Wright, CEO of Crowd Sourced Investigations, testifies that “only in the government could such a gaping hole be allowed to exist without fear of consequence. . . . [There is] a massive opportunity for fraud, scams, deceptive trade practices, identity theft and more.”
Democrats ask choreographed questions to try to make the Chao hearing go their way. But Republicans have their own preplanned strategy and get Chao to confess that up to 40 percent of the website systems remain unfinished more than seven weeks after it went live. On top of that setback, Chao once again pleads ignorance. He says as project leader he never saw a damaging independent consulting report that foreshadowed many of HealthCare.gov’s problems. Even after the report was leaked to the Washington Post and published the morning of the hearing, Chao testifies he still hasn’t bothered to review it.
These two hearings should be of great interest. A poll released the same day shows that more Americans are following the HealthCare.gov rollout than the monster typhoon in the Philippines that killed more than six thousand people. Yet the hearings receive scant attention in the mainstream media. CBS is alone among the big three to mention them at all on the evening newscasts. It seems as though the temporary surge in aggressive coverage on the topic is now waning.
NBC leads with a positive story for the Justice Department announcing JPMorgan Chase will pay $13 billion in the mortgage crisis. ABC leads with the stabbing of a Virginia state senator by his son. There are also stories on pilot obesity, insomnia, the JFK assassination anniversary (still three days away), Caroline Kennedy becoming U.S. ambassador to Japan, and a feature on penguins. But no time for the news topic that interests more Americans than most anything else.
Among the news wire services, Reuters does cover the security expert hearing. Interestingly, the article calls it a “Republican sponsored Congressional hearing.” It’s the first time I remember noticing an official congressional hearing described as being “sponsored” by a political party. It’s as if readers are being cued to skeptically view the expert witnesses who criticize the Obama administration. If the article considers the hearing to be Republican-sponsored because Republicans hold the majority in the House, then—Substitution Game—shouldn’t we describe all hearings in the Democratic majority Senate as “Democrat sponsored congressional hearings”?
It’s an example of the disparate treatment the media may give to different political interests.
As a young journalist, I once had a supervisor who required us to label conservative analysts in our news stories as “conservatives,” while the liberals were simply referred to as “analysts.” And if a conservative analyst’s opinion really rubbed the supervisor the wrong way, she might rewrite the script to label him a “right-wing” analyst. The implication is that when a conservative says something, the opinion needs to be qualified and perhaps discounted. But the liberal? He’s just an independent, fair guy giving an everyman’s opinion.
Often, this type of bias isn’t thought out: it just comes naturally. One day, to make a point, I called a conservative in my story a “right-wing” analyst and labeled the liberal a “left-wing” analyst. When the supervisor read “left-wing,” she sputtered out a spontaneous objection. I argued that we could label both analysts similarly, or label neither, but that it wasn’t logical to label one without the other. She leaned back in her chair as if the thought had never dawned on her, and I’m pretty sure it hadn’t until that day. After a moment, she looked at me and said, “You’re right.” From then on, we applied equivalent labels to conservative and liberal analysts.
Many others have faced their own challenges. A network news writer recently told me he that he was forbidden to refer to President Obama as “Obama” or “Mister” on second references, which had been common style for other U.S. presidents. “When I questioned this,” says the writer, “I was told it was because ‘the office of the President demands respect.’ I asked, ‘Did you always say “President’ Bush?” I was told ‘No, he didn’t deserve respect.’”
The writer says that when he reported on the Defense of Marriage Act, “the part about President Clinton signing it into law was taken out every time (thirty-five times, I counted).” When he reported on same sex marriage, “any reference to President Obama having opposed same sex marriage while serving in the Senate was taken out of my scripts.” When reporting on HealthCare.gov, any reference to the government releasing sign-up figures but not actual enrollment “was taken out.”
I think of all of this when I read the article about the “Republican sponsored Congressional hearing.” Was there an editor somewhere up the line who, like my old supervisor, felt compelled to put a Republican label to qualify opinions he didn’t like? To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with applying a label if it’s accurate, if there’s a journalistic reason to do so, and if it’s equally applied under similar circumstances. In other words, the same news outlet should refer to all Senate hearings as “Democrat sponsored.”
| THE PUSHBACK
The news organizations that have been covering HealthCare.gov’s troubles now face intense, daily pressure from the White House and its supporters, who are desperate to turn things around. The fervor with which they pursue their attacks on the stories and the journalists reporting them is directly proportional to the importance of the subject matter. Judging by the response, we’ve done some pretty impactful stories. At the same time, many in the media are wrestling with their own souls: they know that Obamacare is in serious trouble but they’re conflicted about reporting that. Some worry that the news coverage will hurt a cause that they personally believe in. They’re all too eager to dismiss damaging documentary evidence while embracing, sometimes unquestioningly, the Obama administration’s ever-evolving and unproven explanations.
On Monday, November 11, we break news of another damning internal security document: a memo dated September 3, a month before HealthCare.gov went live. It’s bad. It delineates specific “high risk” security problems—the most serious kind. Vulnerabilities that “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect.”
It’s pretty difficult to spin or sugarcoat “severe or catastrophic.” Pretty much everyone knows that’s serious.
The memo says the risks are posed to the “Federally Facilitated Marketplace,” or FFM for short. Exactly what is the FFM? It’s the entire support structure for HealthCare.gov and, says the memo, is what handles the flow of “financial, demographic, and (potentially) health information.” (Remember this part, because Democrats will later falsely claim to an unsuspecting public that the described catastrophic risks didn’t apply to the FFM and could not have jeopardized any personal information.)
The single most worrisome finding uncovered by independent security testers in the memo states that “macros enabled on uploaded files allow code to execute automatically. . . . The threat and risk potential is limitless.”
Limitless.
Why? Because a malicious macro can do almost anything: transmit viruses, execute a program, gain access to other parts of the system, set up connections to outside computers, and search for passwords, personal data, and financial data. One cybersecurity expert I consult says it’s impossible to overstate how potentially damaging this is.
“Anyone who downloads those documents with macros enabled can open a pathway for their computer to be hacked,” he says. “Even a government computer.”
He adds that criminals have been able to embed macros into documents and use them to hack an entire company.
Furthermore, according to the security memo, the independent testers uncovered another extremely serious issue: software that may produce functional errors was being deployed. That’s “a very big red flag for security folks,” says one expert, “and can introduce unknown, new security flaws into the system.” It’s a risky practice known in the industry as “cowboy coding.”
There are other risks revealed in the memo: it appears there’s “an inappropriate E-Authentication level” in the system that “contains financial and privacy data.” One expert explains to me that means people could access sensitive information without proper authentication, for example, without logging in. Or one customer might be able to see the log-in and documents from another’s health plan.
As I consider the memo’s enormous implications, I assume the government is addressing these risks, but the fact that they arose so close to the website’s deployment is troublesome. Experts agree that forcing the October 1 deadline jeopardized security.
Even more important, I learn that once again, the project’s lead manager was in the dark about all of this information. Chao-the-Ignorant says he knew nothing of the security risks. He’d made that confession in a secret closed-door interview with House Oversight staff on November 1, a month after HealthCare.gov launched.
“I just want to say that I haven’t seen this before,” Chao tells Oversight staff when they show him the security memo outlining the “limitless” and possibly “catastrophic” security risks.
“Do you find it surprising that you haven’t seen this before?” asks a Republican staffer.
“Yeah . . . I mean, wouldn’t you be surprised if you were me?” He later added, “It is disturbing. I mean, I don’t deny that this is . . . a fairly nonstandard way” to proceed.
Even more disturbing, Chao tells the committee that his own team had led him to believe the opposite was true.
“What I recall is what the team told me, is that there were no high [risk security] findings,” Chao testifies.
Not only were the high-risk findings unearthed by security testers, but another government document indicates they persisted, unresolved, weeks after the September 3 memo. Why would Chao’s team have kept him in the dark about all of this? Shouldn’t he have had a better grasp on the big-picture items of concern and the supposed remedies?
As I prepare to write up the story for that night’s Evening News, I contact Oversight Democrats and HHS asking for comments and context. The information on the security problems is particularly incriminating because it’s not from political opponents; it comes from the government’s own files. If the administration now contradicts it, it’s undercutting its own documents and Chao’s testimony.
Specifically, I ask HHS how and when it addressed the security holes outlined in the September 3 memo. I also ask to see the paper trail providing proof of any fixes. (I asked for all the website’s security documents weeks ago by filing a Freedom of Information Act request, but it apparently got lost in the bottomless pit.) The most important question I ask now: How could Chao have been so far out of the loop on security? What else doesn’t he know? What else haven’t we been told?
The way I figure it, the government should already have its response to these questions prepared. After all, HHS has had the damaging security assessment memo for two months—it’s their document. And Oversight Democrats were present for Chao’s closed-door testimony ten days ago when he said he’d never seen the security memo and was completely blind to its findings.
However, both HHS and Oversight Democrats react to my queries as though I’m probing mysterious, new territory. In fact, both ask me for copies of the relevant materials. I point out that the documents originated with them, and that they’ve had the facts much longer than I have.
They’re employing the Mine and Pump Strategy. Stall, claim ignorance of the facts, and mine the reporter for what info he has.
Hours tick by as Oversight Democrats tell me they have no information or comment. At 3:56 p.m., the spokeswoman for the Democrats, Jennifer Hoffman, emails me, “still waiting to see if our team has any insights on your questions.” Then at 5:58 p.m.: “Nothing yet . . .”
Shortly before air, I get a brief email statement from HHS that fails to answer any of my questions but says that privacy is of the utmost concern and there’s no reason for HealthCare.gov customers to worry.
We air our report on the CBS Evening News, after which Oversight Republicans issue a full press release providing the September 3 memo about the high security risks and the transcript from Chao stating that he didn’t know about it.
The vehemence with which the Obama administration reacts shows how near the story hits to a nerve. Their hysteria is heightened because other media, including the New York Times and the Hill, pick up the story. It becomes more difficult for Democrats to credibly label the reporting as partisan.
But still, they try.
Long after the story airs, Democrats provide their first hint of response in the form of spin rather than answers. They spread it through media surrogates who publish it nearly word for word and, judging by the factual errors, without doing any research or asking for documentation.
Their first talking point is to falsely claim that—contrary to what the government’s own memo states—there was never any true security risk to HealthCare.gov. They say that’s because the implicated parts of HealthCare.gov are no longer in use.
The second talking point falsely holds that there was never any threat to customer privacy data because the implicated parts of HealthCare.gov don’t transmit personally identifiable information.
And for good measure, the Democrats also circulate an on-the-record quote that, predictably, is devoted to the continuing campaign to controversialize Oversight’s Republican chairman Issa.
“Controversialize,” as in the PR tactic that involves launching a propaganda campaign using surrogates and sympathizers in the media to divert from the damaging facts. They try to turn the focus on personalities instead of the evidence.
Even the Washington Post, which has done some strong reporting on HealthCare.gov, gets snookered on this one. In a fact-check blog, the newspaper incorrectly states, “upon close examination of the [security-risk] memo, it had nothing to do with the parts of the Web site that launched on Oct. 1. Instead, the memo dealt with modules of the Web site that would not be operational until spring of 2014 . . . [and] will not submit or share personally identifiable information.”
Yes, that’s the Democrats’ spin pretty much word for word. But it’s factually incorrect.
The Post presents the Democrats’ take without attribution, as if it’s true, seemingly without proper fact-checking. Otherwise, the reporter would know that the security-risk assessment explicitly stated that sensitive, personal information was at risk because “inappropriate controls” exposed “financial and privacy data” that are part of the “entire enterprise.” The memo also stated explicitly that the risks applied to the entire Federally Facilitated Marketplace supporting HealthCare.gov, not—as Democrats incorrectly state—small, dormant pieces of it. And although the Democrats’ press release implies that there was never any danger because the dormant pieces where the problems were found won’t go online until the following spring, it fails to mention that they were already operational, exposing the HealthCare.gov system to the high-risk threat. Taking them off line until the spring doesn’t remedy that.
“Just taking [the suspect components] out of the system doesn’t remove the threat,” one cybersecurity specialist tells me. A second agrees and adds that to remove the “limitless” threat created when enabled macros on uploaded files allowed code to execute automatically, “the government would have had to audit every document already uploaded for malicious content.” He says there’s virtually no chance the government has been able to accomplish that massive job but goes on to say that “by law, all this audit work must be tracked and written down, so [if it’s been done] they should be able to provide a record of it.” Again, I ask HHS for such records but none are provided.
Now, the administration is in full pushback mode and Chao is indispensable to its PR recovery effort. The day after the Evening News, the Hill, and the New York Times reports, Chao testifies before Congress again and desperately attempts to revise and recast his closed-door testimony that looked so bad. Providing the Big Assist is a lead Oversight Democrat: Gerald Connolly of Virginia. In a pre-prepared exchange straight from the Democrats’ talking points press release, Connolly prompts Chao to testify that he and that September 3 security-risk memo were entirely misunderstood by the incompetent media, who succumbed to the persuasions of the corrupt Issa. There was never any security risk! Don’t believe that internal government memo. Listen to what we’re telling you now.
This is neither unexpected nor out of line with what Democrats have every right to do in their defense. It’s the media’s job to sort through and get at the truth. The problem is, in today’s environment, some in the media present political spin as if it’s fact—even when it runs counter to the evidence.
I liken some of the media’s behavior to a gullible jury hearing the case of the burglar who’s confessed on video after getting caught on surveillance tape. At trial, the burglar insists he didn’t really confess. His lawyer says the videotape recording of the confession is wrong. As for the surveillance tape showing the crime? Well, the defense says that’s mistaken, too. Who are you going to believe: me or your lyin’ eyes? The jury acquits, treating the implausible defense as fact rather than a position to be considered with appropriate skepticism.
Like the jury in the analogy, some in the media report the Connolly-Chao spin as if it sets the record straight. They said it at a hearing! So now, we know the truth! Never mind that it contradicts the evidence and that the administration refuses to provide the documentation that would theoretically support its version of events. Some just want to believe.
The administration’s surrogate bloggers ask whether CBS and the New York Times are going to correct our reports now that Chao says it’s all wrong—as if we’re to believe Chao’s latest spin instead of his previous sworn testimony and the actual documents. And in my case, I have the added supporting evidence from experts inside and outside the government who have explained the computer security risks, the memo, and its context.
Obama officials join in the effort to get me to “update” the Web version of my original report with their follow-up spin. They become incensed when I reply that I still need them to answer some basic questions and show documentation of their claims, which should all be public record. My reticence interferes with another of their PR strategies: they decline to provide information for the original story, then wait for it to publish, issue their spin, and ask that it be added to the Web version of the report. That way, they get their unchallenged statements printed verbatim and don’t have to answer any pesky questions. Then, they and their surrogates portray the “update” as a correction to try to discredit the original story premise.
It’s not much trouble to add an after-the-fact statement to a Web story, and most of the media usually go ahead and do it because it’s the path of least resistance. But the administration has a well-established history of misrepresenting facts on this story and it would be irresponsible to unquestioningly accept and print their spin when they’ve refused to answer basic questions of public interest and when their spin contradicts the available evidence.
So, ever predictable, White House press secretary Carney begins nagging my bureau chief, Isham, hoping to sway him into a sympathetic position. And Oversight Democrats call my senior producer, Prestia, to complain. I think about how much of the public’s time and money these federal employees are spending to execute their PR efforts.
Sadly, the propaganda effort takes hold and persists among a complacent media that fails to check its own facts and instead relies on partisan sources and blogs for background research, parroting what it reads or hears. A good eight months after my report on the security risks, in July 2014, NPR reporter David Folkenflik asks me about the Democrats’ complaints for a profile piece he’s producing about me.
To try to condense or expect anybody to quickly digest the research I spent many hours performing, and to ask them to immediately comprehend the jargon, background, documents, and expert sources isn’t realistic. That’s why I’m an investigative reporter: I put in the time and understanding to present the facts to others who don’t have the time or ability to do the same on a given topic. I sure couldn’t absorb all the research in ten minutes, I can’t explain the research process and details in ten minutes, and I don’t think it would be easy for anybody else to understand in ten minutes.
Nonetheless, I spent a great deal of time with Folkenflik summarizing the evidence—documents, expert opinions, inside sources—in the simplest way I knew how. He seemed satisfied or at least didn’t question it further.
Not a word of describing my efforts made it into Folkenflik’s NPR report. In fact, he didn’t summarize or represent anything I told him. Instead, he mischaracterized my reporting as if my entire research for the HealthCare.gov security-risk story consisted of relying upon “a partial transcript” of a witness: Chao. That’s false and entirely contrary to the content of our interview. He also treated Chao’s contradictory testimony as if it should be accepted uncritically as the final word on the matter. This from an administration that repeatedly provided provably false information on this very topic. In the end, Folkenflik simply called the facts that I presented in my story “difficult to prove.” That’s wholly false. They may have been difficult for him to understand. They might have been time-consuming to explain. But they certainly weren’t difficult to prove.
After Watergate, few would have predicted today’s dynamic in which some journalists view their job not as questioning the powers that be, but undermining those who report on the powers that be. In this instance, journalists misreporting the HealthCare.gov security story accept, at face value, the word of the very government officials implicated in the mismanagement even though it’s contrary to their own prior testimony and documentary evidence. At the same time, these journalists portray my reporting, which culls from independent experts and documentary evidence, as “difficult to prove.”
| WANING APPETITE
If there’s a moment that’s emblematic of the political low point in the HealthCare.gov catastrophe, it might be the release of a CBS News poll on Wednesday, November 20, 2013. The president’s overall approval rating has fallen to the lowest of his presidency: 37 percent. His handling of health care has also hit bottom: just 31 percent approve. Fifty-seven percent disapprove of the job he is doing: the worst ever for President Obama in CBS News polls. And he’s lost ground on personal qualities like honesty.
How can the administration reverse the momentum? With help from the media.
Kim and I finish three weeks of strong coverage on the CBS Evening News, often breaking exclusives. It’s the kind of momentum that serves both our audience and the network.
But then, the light switch goes off.
Just as we edge ever closer to exposing more of the facts the government is trying to keep hidden—it’s a process and our mission—there’s a sudden loss of interest, internally, in my hard-hitting stories on the topic.
It begins, as it often does, with New York requesting that I work on a story that ultimately never airs. In this case, they want me to explore Chao’s wild inconsistencies. As the day-to-day manager of HealthCare.gov’s development, he’s the public face on its failures. We’ve all noticed the many contradictions in his positions and explanations, including those prior to HealthCare.gov’s rollout.
One example is found in a July 16, 2013, email I recently obtained from congressional investigators. In it, Chao worried about prospects for the website and contractor CGI: “I just need to feel more confident they are not going to crash the plane at take-off,” Chao wrote.
But he gave a very different impression publicly the next day when he and Tavenner testified to the subcommittees of the House Homeland Security and Oversight committees. Republican Scott DesJarlais asked about unfinished tasks.
DESJARLAIS So both of you are testifying today that [the website’s shortfalls] are going to be one hundred percent complete on October first?
CHAO Correct.
DESJARLAIS Ms. Tavenner?
TAVENNER Yes, sir.
A few days later, the worried Chao was back. He emailed colleagues the video link to his congressional testimony, saying, “I am not sharing this with you because I think it’s entertaining and informative” but rather “so you can see and hear that both Marilyn and I under oath stated that we are going to make October 1st . . . please share this up, down, and wide.”
Another contradiction comes from Chao on November 13, 2013, after the website’s launch, when he testifies before Congress and tells Republican Cynthia Lummis that he didn’t talk to White House officials before HealthCare.gov went live.
LUMMIS Did no one brief the White House about the status of the website before October first? Mr. Chao?
CHAO Not me personally, but our administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, certainly is representing the agency. So you might want to ask her.
In other words, Chao is helping shore up the Obama administration’s narrative that nobody at the White House knew the website was in trouble.
But internal government emails I’ve recently obtained indicate Chao personally met with White House chief technology officer Todd Park prior to the rollout of HealthCare.gov.
“One of the things Todd conveyed was this fear the [White House] has about [HealthCare.gov] being unavailable . . .” wrote Chao to colleagues after their discussion. “Todd does have a good point. . . .”
Drilling down on Chao’s conflicting positions is important. Public officials have a responsibility to be truthful in matters of their public duty, and part of our job is to pursue accountability. But my New York managers who originally assigned the story have a change of heart and delay it from one day to the next, and then it just fades away altogether.
Another story I propose that Evening News passes over is the discovery that CMS and the Congressional Budget Office predicted for years that the Affordable Care Act would cause millions of Americans to lose their work insurance. This directly contradicts recent statements from the White House’s Carney. In his frenzy to deflect attention from all the individual insurance cancellations, Carney had repeatedly insisted before TV news cameras that Americans who get insurance through their workplace will not be affected: “They don’t have to worry about or do or change anything.”
This is as stark and important a distortion as the president’s if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-you-can-keep-your-health-plan, only more audacious since Carney is making it after all the flak over the president’s misstatements. As I write in my script, Carney has given repeated assurances that nothing will change for those insured through work. But in 2010, it turns out, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimate Obamacare would “collectively reduce the number of people with employer-sponsored health coverage by about 14 million.”
The prospect of 14 million workers getting dropped is at least as significant as the news of several million individuals being canceled—and that made big headlines. But the Evening News is oddly disinterested. The producers say it’s too soon to do the story about workers. Maybe we’ll revisit it next year when their insurance actually gets canceled.
I disagree with the premise of waiting: when you discover new facets of a story, you don’t keep them secret. You don’t wait to report them after the fact. Yes, we knew this disaster was coming all along but didn’t think you needed to know until it was too late. Under that mentality, we wouldn’t report that the government might shut down or a wildlife species might die out or a political candidate might win or a suspect might be guilty of a crime or a hurricane might strike a region: we’d just wait until it happened and then report that it did.
But Kim and I know that this dynamic has little to do with logic or what the audience wants or even the significance of the particular story. When I receive these kinds of signals, the writing’s on the wall. Stop the story.
Nonetheless, Kim and I keep working. We’re convinced that a good story is a good story and somehow needs to be told. We’re able to find examples of business owners already canceling their workers’ insurance due to Obamacare. I go back to Evening News and tell them that the cancellations have already begun; we don’t have to wait until 2014 to do the story. Still no interest. Fortunately, we’re able to find a home for the report on CBS This Morning on November 26. And that’s pretty much the last in my string of in-depth or investigative health-care stories to make it on TV in 2013. From then on, the broadcasts want only basic stories from me that mark time but don’t uncover anything new.
As I’ve said, I’m never privy to exactly what turns the tide and halts a line of investigative reporting. Polls show unquestioningly that viewers remain keenly interested in all things HealthCare.gov. I do know from my sources that I’m not the only target of the incessant White House campaign of emails and phone calls. Obama officials are bearing down on many reporters and news organizations that have uncovered inconvenient facts. Appealing to the higher-ups, searching for sympathetic ideologies, trying to stop the negative coverage.
This sudden loss of interest also coincides with the administration calling in the special teams to handle Congress and the spin. It hires media relations specialist Jen Friedman, who worked on President Obama’s reelection campaign as well as at a bevy of federal agencies. The administration also brings in Jennifer O’Connor, a former private practice attorney who once helped defend President Clinton in congressional investigations. More recently, she helped the Obama administration defend the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups seeking tax exemptions. These women are the equivalent of private PR crisis management flacks being brought in on your dime to manage the fallout. It’s become so commonplace for the federal government to spend tax money on whatever resources it needs for its self-serving goals—no matter how supposedly tight the budget—the practice doesn’t even raise eyebrows.
The CBS Washington bureau is still trying to pitch HealthCare.gov stories though the appetite in New York has faded. The bureau asks me to try to get access to the facilities where HealthCare.gov’s miracle fixes are under way. But HHS won’t let us in. So much for transparency.
For a story about how the repairs are progressing, I conduct a phone interview with John Engates, a technology expert with a company called Rackspace Hosting, a leading firm specializing in high-capacity e-commerce. Engates has been a vocal critic, calling the HealthCare.gov launch “one of the most spectacular public failures of any website ever.” He’s also attacked the lack of transparency.
But as we begin our interview, Engates sounds like a different man. He says the Obama folks have the best people making heroic efforts to fix the site. He says there are no politics involved and he couldn’t be more impressed and confident.
It’s so far out of line with what Engates has said in the recent past, I wonder what’s changed, so I ask him. He tells me that a few days before our interview, he’d gotten an invite from the White House to attend a private briefing on HealthCare.gov. So he hopped on a plane from San Antonio to Washington for a special session held in the White House Situation Room. Other invited companies included IBM, Salesforce.com, and ExactTarget.com. Some of the White House heavy hitters on hand were Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel, and the official heading up the tech surge: Jeff Zients. It’s the kind of access the media can only dream of. After the White House briefing, the group was shuttled to the Maryland operations headquarters of contractor QSSI, where the government’s “war room” fix-it site is centered.
Engates tells me he has to be careful about what he reveals in our interview because the group was instructed not to share some aspects of what they observed, including specific website numbers and statistics displayed in the operations center.
The whole scenario is outrageous from a public access standpoint. There’s no legitimate reason why the Obama administration should exclude the media, then grant handpicked corporate officials special access—and tell them not to share what they see with the public. The White House is wielding control over assets and information that rightfully belong to the people, and doling them out to a chosen few in private industry in hopes they’ll become emissaries to advance the self-serving cause.
It seems to be working: Engates, the onetime critic, has turned positively bullish. I don’t blame him; in fact, he gives a very informative, honest interview, which I use in several daily news stories on the status of HealthCare.gov. If the White House had invited me to a special briefing, I would have gone, too. But I never get those invites.
It’s time to contact HHS again and ask when they’ll allow our camera into the facilities. I point out in my email to Peters that it’s inappropriate for the government to allow corporate executives admittance to public-funded facilities that have been denied the press. I get no response.
About this time, late November, other major news outlets that were pursuing the Obamacare story also seem to suddenly back off. The Christian Science Monitor notes the trend in an article published November 26, 2013: “Bit by bit, the media narrative around the travails of Obamacare and its main enrollment vehicle, HealthCare.gov, is starting to look up. Or to put it more precisely, it is no longer so crushingly negative . . . a competing story line is starting to emerge.”
The Monitor theorizes that the new “wave of positive stories” may be the result of reporters getting tired of wall-to-wall negativity, seeking out “happy stories for a change of pace.” But I see it as far less random. First of all, good reporters don’t make story judgments based on whether they’re “tired” of the direction of a story: they let the story dictate the coverage. If it’s negative, it’s negative. What I think is the bigger reason for the change of mood is also noted in the Monitor article: “The Obama administration has also ramped up its public relations efforts. . . .” And it’s working.
| THE BIG “GET”
I’m now plugged in to a wide variety of well-informed sources. The news hasn’t stopped happening just because the broadcasts aren’t interested in what I have to report. I keep digging. I can publish on the CBS News website, which provides a golden opportunity to reach a large number of people and has a nearly insatiable appetite for diverse content. For the many outside influences that work so hard to keep certain stories off TV, their efforts backfire when I publish on the Web. Those versions are sometimes more widely circulated than the broadcast stories and can be more thorough since the length restrictions aren’t as tight.
As 2013 draws to a close, the quintessential example of the political propaganda machine in action—and the media’s susceptibility to it—rears its head.
For a couple of weeks, I’d gotten tips that Oversight Republicans were bringing in various HealthCare.gov officials for closed-door interviews. Secondhand accounts from my sources lead me to believe that news is being made, but I don’t know the details. I work sources on the committee but come up empty.
“What did Tony Trenkle say?” I pinged my Hill contacts in an email, after learning that the newly retired CMS top technology executive had been there the day before.
No response.
I keep trying over the next few days. Nothing.
Then on Tuesday night, December 17, my home phone rings. The caller ID reads “unidentified.” When I answer, it’s one of my sources letting me know that CMS’s lead cybersecurity official, Teresa Fryer, has just spent six or seven hours answering questions before Oversight and she dropped a couple of bombshells.
Wednesday morning, I’m up on the Hill to fill in the blanks. I ask for an on-camera interview with Oversight’s chairman, Issa, and also with the lead Democrat on the Committee, Representative Elijah Cummings. The Democrats’ spokeswoman, Hoffman, says Cummings isn’t available so I also ask to speak to his deputy on the committee, Gerald Connolly, or any other Democrat who can talk about the issue. Since the House isn’t in session, I’ve offered to go to Cummings or Connolly wherever they may be. Hoffman says that no Democrat can be available for an interview. Later, Democrats would falsely claim that I didn’t give them the chance to weigh in.
In our interview, Issa tells me about one of Fryer’s shockers: that prior to October 1, she wanted to reject HealthCare.gov’s security certificate—the Authority to Operate—due to security risks but was overruled by her superiors.
“My recommendation was a denial of an ATO [Authority to Operate],” Fryer had told Democrats and Republicans in a recent closed-door interview. She said she gave the advice to her boss, CMS’s chief information officer, Trenkle. The man who had just retired and wasn’t talking publicly.
“I had discussions with him on this and told him that my evaluation of this was a high [security] risk,” Fryer testified. She said she briefed HHS officials as well.
This is a bombshell. The Obama administration has expended a great deal of effort trying to craft the impression—sometimes under oath—that there were never any serious security concerns. But now we know that the top official over security at CMS believed things were so bad, the website shouldn’t have been launched at all. And she can’t be labeled as a politically motivated, disgruntled ex-employee. She’s a current, sitting, senior manager.
By any neutral measure, this is an important advancement in the HealthCare.gov story. But with the light switch at CBS firmly in the “off” position, it will be next to impossible to get this kind of information on a broadcast.
So I’m in the familiar position of applying my efforts on two simultaneous fronts: first, reporting the story amid strong pushback from the administration. Second, trying to convince my New York superiors that this is a story.
I ask HHS and Oversight Democrats for comment on Fryer’s testimony. They pretend this is the first they’ve heard of her negative security recommendation.
Peters from HHS: “[C]ould you all share with us exactly what it is that you would like for us to comment on? Do you have a transcript or other document that you have received?”
(Mine and Pump Strategy.)
Peters also makes a boldly false statement. She claims her agency doesn’t know anything about Fryer’s startling testimony because “we were not in [her] interview with Oversight.”
The thing is, I know from my sources that HHS was in the interview, represented by Jennifer O’Connor, one of those special advisors HHS hired in late November. Oversight Committee Democrats were present for the Fryer interview as well. It’s ridiculous for Peters to claim they’re all in the dark.
“I’m told you did have staff in the interview,” I tell Peters. “Jen O’Connor. Didn’t you know that? She can tell you more than I can.”
Peters acknowledges that O’Connor was present for the interview after all, but keeps her hard hat on and continues mining without missing a beat. It takes a certain kind of person to be untruthful and then display utter lack of contrition when caught.
“If there are specific comments Teresa made about this issue or documents that you have obtained, it would be helpful to see those so that we can make sure we’re getting you the right information you are looking for,” Peters emails. The persistence with which she’s fishing leads me to believe that Fryer must have said something else damaging. Peters is trying to figure out if I know.
Later on the phone, Peters reverts to her claim that “we didn’t have anyone in the Fryer interview.” She must be reading to various media outlets from the same talking points and has forgotten that I know better. I remind her.
“Jen O’Connor works with you at HHS, right? I told you, she was there,” I tell her.
“Yes,” Peters relents.
She’s still touchy over that recent story I’d done about Chao and the high-risk security findings.
“We want to help you be sure your story is accurate and fact-checked,” Peters tells me, “so that you don’t make any mistakes and can avoid a repeat of your last story.”
The idea that I would rely on HHS to fact-check a story is ludicrous.
“There were no mistakes in the last story, we’re very happy with it,” I correct her.
“I’m sure you are,” she shoots back.
Several hours after Kim and I first contacted Oversight Democrats, at 3:17 p.m., their spokeswoman Hoffman complains that I’m being unfair in expecting them to have any response to Fryer’s testimony so quickly. And she’s got her miner’s hard hat on, too.
“We are working very hard to respond to this request with extremely short notice,” Hoffman writes in an email. “As we discussed, it would be most helpful if you could provide information about the documents you obtained from the majority. Without this context, it is hard for us to provide a complete and thorough response to your inquiry. It is unfortunate when outlets report on excerpts selectively leaked from the majority without giving the minority access to the same information so we can provide a full response. This would also help ensure that your story is fully vetted, fact-checked, and balanced. Please let me know what additional information you can provide so that we can respond appropriately.”
The tone deviates from Hoffman’s usual informal, friendly style. I get the sense that she (or whoever wrote the email) is writing it to share with media surrogates who will assist in the post-story spin. It’s incredibly disingenuous for her to claim the majority is leaking information “without giving the minority access to the same information.” Democrats had the information before anybody: Fryer works for HHS, was debriefed by them before her interview with Oversight, and Democrats and HHS attended her interview.
Think about how twisted the spin is: The public officials who are withholding public information are claiming to be out of the loop on information that they’ve had longer than anybody. They’re criticizing Republicans for “leaking” material that belongs to the public, which they, the Democrats, have misrepresented and withheld. The very public officials who have repeatedly provided untrue information are suggesting that I should rely on them to fact-check and vet my reports.
I reply.
“Sorry but I disagree that notice is ‘extremely short’ since your folks heard everything Fryer testified to in real time yesterday, the same time everybody else there did. In fact, I’m told the administration was well aware in advance as to the scope of what Fryer was going to say, so you guys have actually had more time than anybody else to think about all of this. I’d love to have any documents that you can offer that are relevant, but I don’t have any to share with you at this time. Our inquiry is quite simple and I don’t think there is really anything difficult or obtuse about it so we are still looking forward to your prompt response.”
I run Fryer’s impeaching testimony by an inside source who supports Obamacare and has been helpful in providing context on its flaws. This source tells me, “It’s pretty damning when the top CMS IT security person strongly recommends that a project [HealthCare.gov] not be cleared to operate but then is overruled. Well done—it looks like you’ve got a scoop on your hands!”
Kim says surely the Evening News will find this story too big to pass up, even in the current discouraging climate. So we pitch it. But my Washington senior producer has already told us the broadcast isn’t very “keen” on the story. And the New York group doesn’t usually put stock in guidance from the reporter level—at least not from me.
Nonetheless, I argue to the managers that we, the media, didn’t do a very good job looking into HealthCare.gov before the rollout and we have a responsibility to do a better job now. I say that we have a public duty to report the security vulnerabilities, especially on the eve of the deadline for a large number of Americans to sign up on the website. But I’m not changing their minds. This isn’t about the worthiness of the story. Other forces are at play.
I’m not the only reporter who’s meeting up with resistance from superiors on this story. I know from my sources that other national news reporters are on the case but also having trouble getting this same story past their editors.
Meanwhile, at 4:18 p.m. on Wednesday, HHS sends me a comment that doesn’t directly address Fryer’s testimony that she recommended HealthCare.gov not be allowed to launch due to security risks. Instead, HHS states that all the fears about security risks in the past never came to pass.
I’m about to find out that’s yet another misrepresentation.
It turns out, Fryer had dropped a second bombshell when she testified to Oversight: two high-risk security findings surfaced on HealthCare.gov after it went live October 1. One had been flagged the day before Fryer spoke to Oversight. This must be what Hoffman and Peters were mining to see if I knew about.
I return to Peters with this new information and she reacts as though it’s the first she’s heard of it. I’m to believe that the most serious category of security issues was flagged inside HHS and that Fryer discussed it in a congressional interview at which a top HHS spinner was present—but that Peters, the HHS spokesman, knew nothing of it until I mentioned it just now.
About the same time, Oversight Democrats are also fishing to see if I’ve learned of this new revelation.
“Has Chairman Issa’s office provided you with any specific info from the [Fryer] interview? We would like the opportunity to provide additional context,” Hoffman emails.
Additional context? They haven’t given any yet.
“Not disclosing sources,” I tell Hoffman, “my information is that Fryer reported there have been at least two high [security risk] findings, one discovered in testing last week related to a November incident and another on Monday of this week. Your folks know of this.”
I can almost hear Hoffman muttering, Crap, she knows!
It’s closing in on 10 p.m. Thursday and Peters emails HHS’s response to Fryer’s testimony about the high-risk findings: one has been fixed and the other was a “false alarm.” That may or may not be true. No proof is offered (though plenty should exist since the security process requires extensive documentation). Some in the media will accept these claims, as they do each new assertion the government rolls out, as if there’s no history of misrepresentation. But without any documentation, it should rightfully be characterized as their side of the story and nothing more. I ask Peters whether there have been other high-risk findings besides the two that Fryer referenced. She won’t answer.
All of this news is a game changer: The worst category of security risk is no longer just theoretical. It’s actually surfaced and we’re learning of it for the first time from a knowledgeable insider: Fryer. It contradicts Obama administration claims that there haven’t been any real security issues, only unfounded fears whipped up by Republicans. I write up an informational summary for CBS. One executive recognizes the significance and responds, “Pretty damn good story, Sharyl.”
In the end, though, no broadcast takes the story. So I publish it on CBSNews.com the next morning. ABC News and FOX have just published their own versions, also online. None of the big three networks finds room to mention these important findings on their evening broadcasts. In fact, it’s as if they’re going out of their way to avoid it, seeing as how it would have fit so naturally with news that they do air about President Obama holding his final news conference of the year—largely devoted to HealthCare.gov controversies.
But with the story widely circulating on the Web, it’s time for the next phase of the administration’s PR campaign. Representative Cummings and Oversight Democrats now issue their first comment on Fryer’s testimony, after my story has published.
Predictably, once again, they personally attack Issa and, by implication, the news media.
(Controversialize.)
At almost eleven that night, Hoffman fires off an angry, accusatory email to me out of the blue.
“Why did you refuse to tell us that Chairman Issa provided you with [Fryer] transcript excerpts—was that a condition of his leak to you?”
The outrage seems conspicuously manufactured, written for her third-party audience, whoever it may be. Her question is loaded with incorrect assumptions, such as that “Issa provided [me] with transcript excerpts.” And only those trying to hide public information would think of its release as a “leak,” as if it’s to be frowned upon and discouraged. A better question might be why Hoffman’s team or the administration didn’t release all of this information themselves, especially considering that it’s covered under Freedom of Information Act requests I filed weeks ago.
More important, Hoffman doesn’t seem to understand that I’m not obligated to report to her or anyone in the government. It’s the other way around.
I reply, “I think you have it a bit backwards.”
I know they’re setting in motion their next step.
Some media outlets that were disinterested in the potential security threat to millions of Americans now eagerly comply with the Democrats’ prompt to report about the reporting of the story.
A reporter from one Internet news organization calls the CBS press office. He says that Representative Cummings is saying that I didn’t give him a fair chance to respond to my story and this reporter wonders if I have a comment. I flash off a quick background note to my press office that shows we asked Cummings and his staff and other Democrats on Oversight for on-camera interviews and comments over and over but none were provided prior to publication. One CBS manager comments to me, “[T]he only thing more ridiculous than Cummings’s claim is that [another news organization] is calling our press office to ask about it.”
Before long, a predictable string of “articles” begins to appear, all designed to controversialize the reporting and distract from the facts. A colleague sends me one such article published in the Los Angeles Times. The article is an opinion piece by a writer named Michael Hiltzik. It appears in the newspaper’s business section and, surprisingly, is not labeled as an opinion piece.
Hiltzik echoes the Democrats’ spin, complete with incorrect assumptions, misleading material, and fact errors. He also adheres to the strategy of trying to make the story be about Issa. Though the damaging testimony and documents actually originated within the Obama administration, Democrats portray it as having come from Issa and, therefore, not to be believed.
Hiltzik’s obviously one-sided blog isn’t likely to change any minds. These overt propaganda efforts, employed by both Democrats and Republicans at times, are simply preaching to the choir. Yet there must be some sort of cumulative advantage to getting the articles into the public domain or else they wouldn’t bother. Maybe it’s as simple as arranging to have these favorable blogs return prominently high in Internet searches to overshadow, counter, or confuse the real news.
It’s easy to see why Democrats focus so much effort on controversializing Issa: it’s because of the committee he leads. Oversight is among the most powerful and effective watchdogs in Congress. Whether it’s led by Democrats or Republicans, it boasts some of the best staff on the Hill. In my experience, Oversight’s seasoned investigators have been thorough, careful, and accurate in how they’ve portrayed information to me over the years. They dig into hot-button issues and aren’t afraid to use subpoena power to get documents that might otherwise languish indefinitely at the other end of an unanswered Freedom of Information Act request.
So if the administration can convince the media and the public to dismiss everything from Oversight out of hand, because “it came from Issa,” they’ll have eliminated one of the few serious threats to their agenda. That’s what they’re trying for.
A choice example of the formidable threat Oversight poses is a letter that Issa dispatches to Secretary Sebelius on January 8, 2014. His investigators have compiled her allegedly false or misleading testimony.
First, on October 30, 2013, Sebelius told House Energy and Commerce that MITRE, the contractor hired to conduct security assessments, was performing “ongoing” tests for extra assurances. In fact, the committee says, MITRE’s pre-launch security testing ended September 20, 2013.
Second, Sebelius testified that MITRE “did not raise flags about going ahead.” But the committee points out that MITRE actually raised such serious issues that Fryer, CMS’s top cybersecurity expert, didn’t think the website should launch.
Third, Sebelius told Senate Finance on November 6, 2013, that “no one . . . suggested that the risks outweighed the importance of moving forward.” Actually, Fryer says she did just that.
And fourth, Sebelius said MITRE “made recommendations to CMS, as is required” and did not suggest delaying the rollout. But MITRE told the committee that it was “not informed, nor asked, by CMS about a ‘go-ahead for HealthCare.gov.’”
There are many more misrepresentations that could be added. HHS spokeswoman Peters falsely claiming that nobody from HHS was present for the congressional interview with Fryer. (A high-level HHS specialist was there.) Chao claiming he didn’t brief anybody at the White House prior to the launch. (He’d spoken to the White House’s Todd Park.) Administration officials insisting no enrollment figures existed. (They were collected from day one.) White House spokesman Carney promising worker insurance would be unaffected. (The administration’s own calculus predicted 14 million workers would lose insurance.) CMS head Tavenner stating under oath that there were no volume issues revealed in testing prior to launch. (Her agency’s internal tests showed the website repeatedly failed with just a few hundred users.)
In a different environment, all of these things might be exposed and examined and analyzed on the news. Public officials might be held accountable for mistakes and misstatements. They might be pressured to turn over public documents that they’re hiding. We might learn more about the true reasons why things went wrong, how to fix them, and how to avoid the same mistakes next time. Maybe we’d be able to avoid future waste of tax dollars.
And in a neutral news environment, it might be time to ask whether Obamacare has, for all intents and purposes, collapsed. With the multiple delays, a poor risk pool, millions booted off their existing plans, employers canceling insurance, employees dropping out of the workforce—the Affordable Care Act is barely a shadow of its grand vision.
But, like I said, the news decision makers appear to have lost all interest in these sorts of things in late November.
So viewers don’t hear much about it when, on January 23, 2014, the credit rating agency Moody’s downgrades the outlook for health insurers from stable to negative, naming the Affordable Care Act’s many problems as a significant factor. There’s little more than a passing reference on February 10, 2014, when the administration announces yet another year’s delay in implementation of rules for certain employers—until 2016. Most people don’t hear meaningful debate over the president picking and choosing how to implement pieces of the law, a practice that some claim to be illegal. Most of the news media don’t examine the trend of Democrats who are up for reelection in challenging races distancing themselves from the Affordable Care Act. There aren’t prominent reports fleshing out the debate over whether delays in implementation should also be extended to individuals, not just businesses. There are no high-profile stories providing smart financial analyses with revised estimates of costs, including new taxes and fees, versus benefits. And the continuing difficulties with many Obamacare recipients failing to receive proof of their insurance, patients having to switch doctors, insurers failing to get paid, and other problems may as well be nonexistent.
Replacing what should be critical analysis is the media’s tendency to adapt the government’s propaganda, or at least allow it to sway us from conducting meaningful oversight. HHS holds conference calls during which officials take reporters’ questions, but consistently give pat nonresponses to queries they don’t wish to answer. We note this trend but don’t launch objections: we just complain to each other and continue to take part in the dog and pony show, gaining no real information other than what they wish to spoon-feed us.
The White House holds daily press calls featuring success stories and asks Democrats in Congress to circulate success stories gathered by their offices as well as coalition groups. The administration makes use of opinion pieces, blogs, and social media. A favorite go-to remains the Los Angeles Times’ Hiltzik, who continues to publish his opinion articles in the business section, so closely in synch with the White House’s own messaging, so utterly in line with the administration’s agenda, attacking its enemies, pushing its self-proclaimed achievements, they seem one and the same. There are new websites, a page on the Department of Health and Human Services website, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages featuring “ACA Success Stories.”
In mid-February 2014, the government releases new enrollment totals for January and the spin couldn’t be more positive. Record enrollment! Three point three million! Goals met! Young, healthy desirables signing up in great waves! The rainbow has emerged after the storm. The gray, stormy skies are gone.
Of course, considering the track record of misinformation, on this story in particular, journalists should know they must treat the government’s report like the press release that it is, and dig into the statistics with other experts to see if there are opposing viewpoints or alternate analyses.
Strangely, many reporters don’t do this. They unquestioningly accept and report the government’s spin, just as it’s presented in its press release, as if it’s undisputed fact.
But perhaps the greatest PR coup of all is that the administration’s expert spinners successfully lead the media by the nose down the path of concluding there’s no true controversy unless there’s a paper trail that lays blame directly on the president’s desk. Time and again, with each scandal and each new damaging fact, Democrats and the White House read from the script that says, “there’s no evidence President Obama knew” or “there’s no evidence of direct White House involvement.” Anything short of a signed confession from the president himself is deemed a phony Republican scandal, and those who dare to ask questions are crazies, partisans, or conspiracy theorists. The press fails to independently step back and note that those implicated are Obama administration people, sometimes top handpicked officials. A headline that might read, “Administration officials hid HealthCare.gov’s pitfalls . . .” instead might read, “No evidence Obama knew . . .”
Substitution Game: If past presidents had received similar treatment, the headline for Hurricane Katrina in 2005 might have read, “No evidence Bush had direct involvement in botched Katrina response” instead of “The botching of hurricane relief will affect Bush’s legacy” (U.S. News and World Report)
Under President Obama, the press dutifully regurgitates the line “no evidence of White House involvement,” ignoring the fact that if any proof exists, it would be difficult to come by under an administration that fails to properly respond to Freedom of Information document requests, routinely withholds documents from Congress, and claims executive privilege to keep documents secret.
Even accepting the most generous interpretation, many in the media fail to see news: the White House claims to be in the dark about massive mismanagement or wrongdoing by its own federal officials and agencies; about Obama’s HHS secretary, Sebelius, overseeing the botched rollout of HealthCare.gov; about his energy secretary, Chu, overseeing billions in poor investments of green energy tax dollars; about the controversial surveillance of citizens and the press; about a massive cross-border gunwalking operation; about misuse of IRS authority; about an incorrect narrative on Benghazi; about Obama’s State Department under Clinton denying security requests for Benghazi; about his director of national intelligence, Clapper, giving incorrect testimony to Congress; about his Justice Department under Attorney General Holder providing false information to Congress.
FEB. 13, 2014
CBS THIS MORNING
This morning, a milestone for the government health insurance marketplaces: they’ve finally met their monthly enrollment targets. The Obama administration reports 1.1 million people signed up for insurance in federal and state programs in January. Since they opened in October, nearly 3.3 million have signed up for coverage. There’s also a surge in the number of young people enrolling, those 18–34 years old now make up 25% of the applicants.
It turns out there’s much more to the story if one bothers to scratch beyond the surface. Out of curiosity, knowing there will be no interest in a broadcast report containing a critical analysis, I’ve nonetheless reached out to several experts who have proven to be uncannily accurate on this topic thus far. One of them is insurance industry representative Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates. Another is an insider source who’s a great barometer, beyond his verity, because he’s a stalwart Obamacare supporter: he’s not skewing his analyses to undercut the initiative. Both men provide nearly identical evaluations that are polar opposites of the government’s.
“They made a big deal about the age results,” says Laszewski. “But the greater challenge for them is the low number of people enrolling. There is no way you can get a good spread of risk with such a small percentage of the total eligible signing up.”
The insider tells me that the bump of young enrollees in January to 27 percent is “progress,” but added that government officials “neglect to point out that they need roughly forty percent to help achieve a balanced risk pool” necessary under a successful business model.
Both sources unequivocally state that, far from being an encouraging number, 3.3 million people is a small proportion of the population that “should be” interested in signing up. And that the true number is even lower because the government is counting 20 percent of enrollees who haven’t paid, and because two-thirds of the enrollees were already insured prior to Obamacare so shouldn’t be counted as previously uninsured.
“Looking at the total of 3.3 million, netting out the non-pays, and listening to the anecdotal carrier reports, it doesn’t look like we have more than a fraction—certainly something less than ten percent—of the previously uninsured,” said Laszewski.
To me, this is a headline—and an important one. I write up the story for the CBS News website.
Less than two months later, in April 2014, President Obama claims wild success with “marketplace” or “exchange” enrollment at 8 million customers, beyond all expectations. Most in the media accept the selectively released statistic without pressing for basic evidence to back it up. Having recently separated from CBS, I conduct an independent review using the government’s own projections and statistics, industry surveys, and expert sources. Out of 38 million eligible Americans, only an estimated 3.4 million previously uninsured had been picked up through the insurance exchanges. One supporter involved in implementing Obamacare called the results extremely disappointing.
So many conflicting accounts. In so little time. But the biggest of all is owned by the president.
On December 12, 2013, the fact-check site PolitiFact.com dubs the president’s pledge, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” the “2013 Lie of the Year.”