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Obamacare and Political Races; Obamacare Premiums Soar; Sheryl Crow Talks Campaign Season. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired October 25, 2016 - 14:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:00:25] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there. Welcome to CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with me.

Precisely two weeks until Election Day. Both presidential candidates are focused on the very same goal today - the ever-critical battleground state of Florida. A state Donald Trump just called a must-win for him. In just a couple minutes, you will see Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton speaking there live.

And we very well may find Hillary Clinton on the defensive despite her solid lead in the polls, including a new one from CNN. Clinton has tightly linked herself with President Obama. And there's this new government report out today that essentially says the premiums for the president's signature health care plan are to soar next year by an average of 22 percent for the benchmark silver plan. Twenty-two percent, that's the average. That's some states obviously much higher than that.

Donald Trump, he's seizing on this today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: But Obamacare is just blowing up and even the White House, our president, announced 25 or 26 percent. That number is so wrong. That is such a phony number. You're talking about 60, 70, 80 percent in increases, not 25 percent.

Obamacare has to be repealed and replaced and it has to be replaced with something much less expensive for the people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's go to Sunlen Serfaty in Washington on the news of the rise of the premiums. It's a rise that will put some pressure today, I imagine, on Hillary Clinton to respond to that.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, without a doubt, Brooke. Hillary Clinton has not yet responded to this new report. We suspect at some point she's going to have to face questions over this. Yo know, put simply, without a doubt, this is not the headline that Hillary Clinton or other down-ballot Democrats wants to be facing two weeks to Election Day. Certainly it hands Republicans fodder for their arguments against the law, against Democrats and certainly we've seen that reflected so far on the campaign trail today. As you just mentioned, Donald Trump seizing on that line of attack.

Now, Hillary Clinton, in the past, she has said that there are some fixes to the law that she believes need to be made, but that repeal and replace, as Republicans want, is the wrong way to go. But, yes, there are some tweaks that need to be made. And I think it was the second town hall debate where she faced a questioner who was complaining about the cost of premiums increasing and she said, yes, premiums have gotten too high, she said. I'm going to fix it because I agree with you.

I think when we do hear from Hillary Clinton, we'll hear sort of a similar refrain. And certainly we've started to hear a little bit from Democrats today. Debbie Wasserman Schultz just saying on CNN about an hour ago, we're going to sit down and iron out the kinks here. No doubt, though, having to be - switch into defensive posture two weeks to Election Day, not the position that Hillary Clinton wants to be in.

BALDWIN: Could work to the Republicans' advantage. We're seeing (INAUDIBLE) already trumpet other, you know, Ayotte in New Hampshire already cutting an ad on the increases.

Sunlen Serfaty, thank you.

We'll talk about the politics of all this, but first just on the facts. Let's just take a closer look at the Obamacare rate hike. Taking a look at federal health exchanges only. Federal exchanges only. So not including those run by individual states. The average Obamacare premium is actually going up by 25 percent for the next year. Compare that to just 7.2 percent from 2016.

Let's go to Alison Kosik, CNN Money's Alison Kosik, who's been working through the numbers. And just explaining it to the people, why is it going up next year?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: OK, so it all - it sort of all begins with the risk pool. And what's really happened here is when Obamacare was passed, when the Affordable Care Act was passed, it was believed that the younger, healthier people would sign up. But what's really happening is -

BALDWIN: People are (INAUDIBLE).

KOSIK: That's not happening. You've got the sicker people signing up and that's kind of draining the money, or the pool that's there. You know, so you've got these fewer young healthy - fewer young healthy enrollees who aren't signing up. They're opting, instead, to just take the penalty on their tax return. They figure, I'll just take my chances, I won't get sick.

You're also seeing that these insurers, they now see that they've priced their plans over the past couple of years they've priced them too low. So now they're trying to make up for that gap in revenue. So you're seeing these spikes in premiums.

But here's the interesting thing. I went to Arizona last month to really look into people being affected in positive and negative ways from Obamacare and one woman I talked with said, look, there's - we don't - I don't think that Obamacare should just go away. She says there are good things and there are bad things.

[14:05:01] And believe it or not, because the subsidies wind up taking care of those spikes, she's not so much concerned about the 116 percent spike that you're seeing happen in Arizona. She's concerned about the access to doctors, getting an appointment, let's say, for her daughter who has epilepsy. What's happening now is you're seeing these insurers actually pull out of the Obamacare marketplace because they're not making money. So what's happening is you're getting, in these counties let's say, you're not having a choice of what plan you're going to go to. Let's say, just going to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, you're not getting a choice of Blue Cross and Etna, so you only have a smaller pool of doctors so that access and getting an appointment on time or seeing your regular doctor that you saw maybe last year, that you didn't have to get - now you have to switch every year because these insurance companies are changing so frequently. So you're seeing people more concerned about access sometimes and sometimes less than the premium spike just because the subsidies are taking care of that spike.

BALDWIN: Subsidies are a huge piece of that. You mentioned Arizona, where it's in the triple digits.

KOSIK: Right.

BALDWIN: This is an increase in some states and some in the negative, so you'll actually be paying less for the year 2017.

KOSIK: Right, in Indiana.

BALDWIN: So, thank you so much for the explainer.

KOSIK: You got it.

BALDWIN: Now to the politics of all of this, right?

So we have, again, two weeks to go until Election Day. Bill Press is joining us, CNN political commentator and a Clinton supporter. Matt Schlapp is back. He's a Trump surrogate and former political director for George W. Bush.

Gentlemen, welcome back to both of you.

BILL PRESS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hello, Brooke.

MATT SCHLAPP, TRUMP SUPPORTER: Good to be here.

BALDWIN: And, Bill Press, just out of the gate, I mean you have Republicans - I mean look these numbers - saying, we told you so. Are they right?

PRESS: Wait a minute, you've got Bernie Sanders and me saying we told you so, OK.

BALDWIN: Were you right? PRESS: Look - I - yes. I'm not going to spin this any way. Obamacare

is a mess, all right? Bernie was right in the sense that when he talked about Obamacare he said the problem is it leaves the insurance companies and the drug companies in charge. They can still screw consumers any way they can think of it. And we show now that they - that they really are. And the only long-range solution is to go to single payer. But, I have to -

BALDWIN: But how should Hillary Clinton respond to this when she talks today?

PRESS: Exactly. That's where I'm - that's where I'm going, right?

BALDWIN: Reading your mind, Bill, reading your mind.

PRESS: Hillary Clinton is also right when she says we've got to fix it and the short-term fix is a public plan option so people can get away from the insurance companies, buy into Medicare, Medicare for everybody. Even President Obama now supports that. And that's a - that's a short-term solution and single payer the long run.

The other thing I just want to emphasize what Alison said.

BALDWIN: Yes.

PRESS: I think it's important to keep in mind. This is bad, but the people who will be hurt by these increased premium cans get a subsidy, which means all of us taxpayers will be paying for it, not the individual consumer.

BALDWIN: All right, so I appreciate that answer.

And Matt Schlapp, you know, this is how, you know, a lot of Democrats are saying, hey, we expected this to happen.

SCHLAPP: Right.

BALDWIN: This is all part of the evolution. You know, we set the premiums low to try to get - draw people in. Growing pains. It's not perfect. Do you buy that?

SCHLAPP: Well, I think you should just let Bill keep talking. I'm happy to give him my time. This is great because Bill -

PRESS: All right, I will.

SCHLAPP: Bill, you're an honest - you're an honest man and what Bernie Sanders said -

BALDWIN: He is an honest man.

SCHLAPP: What Bernie Sanders said, and it's one of the reasons why Bernie Sanders has cross appeal even with some folks that don't like the government so much, is, look, Obamacare was never going to work. These state exchanges were always really fraudulent. Really what a lot of liberals wanted was a one federal controlled administered insurance program for Americans, which is what many people like Bernie Sanders would like, and you have people on the right who have said, the way Obama went about Obamacare, you were actually going to get the worst of all worlds. You actually were going to get skyrocketing insurance premiums, which obviously Americans are hurting, and it really is sensitive to them, the fact that their premiums are going up so high and you're actually not going to get better health care coverage, as we've seen doctors exit - and insurance companies exit this rather confusing - what they like to call marketplace. It's really not a marketplace. And so we have the worst of all worlds.

I think the country is either going to have to go towards a single payer, which will be obnoxious to a lot of voters and Democrats usually don't like to talk about it, and Hillary Clinton sure isn't talking about it, or we have to go back to the idea of market forces in our health care, yes, we have to have certain minimum expectations but the number one thing we want as America, America has the best health care on the globe and we don't want to do anything to damage that because lives are at stake.

BALDWIN: Well - well -

PRESS: Yes, let me come back, if I can, Brooke -

BALDWIN: Hang - Bill, well, let me just - let me just jump in because, Bill, I'm coming to you.

PRESS: Yes.

BALDWIN: But, you know, I'm sure Hillary Clinton will talk about this today. And Bill you may be preshent (ph) in a sense that, you know, what you hit on may be exactly what we hear from her. But if I may go back a few weeks to another Bill, Bill Clinton, who -- I'm sure you know where I'm going - I'm sure the Hillary camp in Brooklyn was none too thrilled when he said this just a couple weeks ago, perhaps being a tad too honest. Roll it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people that are out there busting it sometimes 60 hours a week wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. I mean it's the craziest thing in the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:10:07] BALDWIN: Would you agree? Was he speaking the truth?

PRESS: Well, I must admit, I laughed the first time I heard Bill Clinton say that. I just laughed again because it felt like saying this - he must have read my book.

BALDWIN: He read your book.

PRESS: When I - when I -- "Buyers' Remorse," when I talked about, among other things, Obamacare. But I have to make this point, Brooke. With all the problems with Obamacare, here's where I disagree with Matt. It's still a hell of a lot better than what we used to have. Twenty million people have health insurance that could never afford it before. There are some good features to it, like kids being able to stay on their parents' health care until 26. Alison mentioned some of those. The fact you can't get denied because of a pre-existing condition.

BALDWIN: Condition.

PRESS: And it's certainly better than nothing, which is all the Republicans have come up with. So for the short term, again, the thing is to fix it and to fix it is to increase availability, give people a chance to get into Medicare, which is the most efficient and the least costly medical care provided by Americans today.

SCHLAPP: Let me jump in on that, if you don't mind, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

SCHLAPP: I mean I want - I want to see Bill Press keep talking and I actually, for the first time in my life, would like to hear Bill Clinton keep talking about this because we do all know that what we have - and the American people know that what we have isn't the right alternative because it's never been popular in the polls. And the problem with what Bill is saying, as I look - just, Bill, with all respect, I'd like to decode that a little bit. What he's really saying is that -

PRESS: That's all right, I'll get the last word.

SCHLAPP: We need more people - we need more people who are working to pick up more of the expenses, the people who are having trouble paying all their bills to actually have to pay higher expenses -

BALDWIN: They want young, healthy people to sign up.

SCHLAPP: For everybody else. And this is the problem in America is that those folks who are working are not seeing their incomes go up. They haven't seen them go up for a decade. It's not just Obama. It was in the Bush years, too. We can't keep expecting them to pay for everything for others. Eventually the system breaks and that's why we have so much discontent on this issue (ph).

BALDWIN: And - and - and - and is that a line -

PRESS: Hey, wait, look -

BALDWIN: Hang on, hang on, is that a line that you think we should hear from Donald Trump -

SCHLAPP: Yes.

BALDWIN: Pounding this message into the ground for the next two weeks?

SCHLAPP: Absolutely. BALDWIN: Especially in states like Arizona, where those premiums will

go up, where you know Hillary Clinton is trying to turn a red state into a blue state going up 116, 119 percent. It could work for him.

PRESS: Yes.

SCHLAPP: Brooke, let me just say quickly, Bill, then I'll be quiet, which is, it's the number one reason on the minds of voters which is they feel economic insecurity because their prices are going up and their salaries are not.

PRESS: Yes, first of all, I just got -

BALDWIN: Bill, can Trump stay on message? Do you think he can?

PRESS: No, I was just going to go to that point. Of course this is a good opening for Donald Trump, but he has shown so far in a year and a half no ability to stay on message. So he'll be talking about some - probably Miss Universe today.

But I want to - back to Matt's point. Look, let me be clear, I am not defending Obamacare. I told you, Obamacare is a mess.

BALDWIN: Buyers' remorse, I know.

PRESS: But the point that I'm making was that - and, again, I'm not for this, but the individual consumer won't feel the bite because the subsidies are available and it's the general taxpayers who are going to pay the bite, which is, again, why a single-payer system is a better system and we eventually have to get there. If it's good enough for Sweden and Canada and the U.K. and France, God, it's good enough for us.

BALDWIN: All right, well, we'll see how Trump and - Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, how they handle it, how they continue talking about it today.

Matt Schlapp, Bill Press, thank you both so much.

PRESS: All right.

SCHLAPP: Thank you.

PRESS: Thanks.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, for a man who doesn't really let his guard down, Donald Trump just made a big admission about which state he knows he needs to win the White House.

Plus, a mysterious new super PAC ad warns Trump will launch a nuclear bomb. Who's behind this? Let's talk about that.

And, all she wants to do is shorten the heck out of this never-ending election. Coming up next, Sheryl Crow joins me live on set about her petition to both parties. Do not miss this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:17:33] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERYL CROW, MUSICIAN (SINGING): Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light. What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes -

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Oh, she's got pipes and she is here with me in New York. She is Grammy Award winning singer Sheryl Crow, a life-long Democrat performing the national anthem at the first Democratic primary debate in October of last year. Can you believe that, a year ago? She calls herself an avid follower of politics, but you know what, she's had enough. She started an online petition at change.org that demands a shorter campaign season and, in part, this is - this is what it says. "This election cycle has been extremely damaging and has incited fear and hatred in a country founded on the beauty of our differences. The American people have been extremely disrespected in this campaign season with the ugliness that pits us against each other. It is time this comes to an end and that we demand better for ourselves."

Sheryl Crow is here with me right now.

It's so nice to see you.

SHERYL CROW, GRAMMY-WINNING SINGER-SONGWRITER: Thank you. Nice to see you.

BALDWIN: What, you didn't want this to go on six more months?

CROW: Well, I'm going to miss it.

BALDWIN: Come on now!

CROW: I actually am worried about the next day. What are people going to do?

BALDWIN: I - you're getting ahead of me.

CROW: Yes.

BALDWIN: I'm curious how you're spending your night and your next day.

CROW: Yes, I'm sure. Yes.

BALDWIN: How did you - when did you - why did you?

CROW: Well, a couple of reasons. I am the mother of two little boys.

BALDWIN: Nine and six.

CROW: And I will practically hurdle over the couch to get to the remote control before they can turn on the news. And I know a lot of other moms feel that way, or dads. And I got to the point where I felt like this has gone on so long that we're not learning anything more. It's become just sensationalized. It's incentivizing vitriolic hatred. Just talk of - just hate talk, really. And I don't want my kids to be exposed to it. And that's a terrible feeling when you're considering voting for the highest office in the land and you're protecting your children from them catching any of it.

BALDWIN: I have -

CROW: So I say other countries have managed to shorten their campaign cycles. Certainly there has to be a way we can do that as well.

BALDWIN: I mean it's not like ugly politics is new this season.

CROW: No.

BALDWIN: You just feel like the vitriol, the rhetoric from both sides - would you agree both sides?

CROW: Absolutely.

BALDWIN: Yes.

CROW: And I - you know, I - I come from a conservative family. When I was a kid, I could only stay out until 10:30. And I would always say, dad, why can't I stay out later. Nothing good happens after 10:30 at night.

[14:20:05] And I feel like this. I feel like we've gotten past the point of learning anything new. We're not talking about the issues. We're literally just trying to keep everything sensationalized?

BALDWIN: Have you heard from either campaign, response to your petition that you want this thing shortened?

CROW: Actually, interestingly, I turned on the news the other day and the Al Smith (ph) coverage was on and -

BALDWIN: The Al Smith Comedy - the dinner here in New York.

CROW: Yes, Al Smith, yes.

BALDWIN: Yes.

CROW: And Hillary Clinton was saying, we need a shorter campaign cycle. And they - they -

BALDWIN: Panned.

CROW: Pan over to Donald Trump and he's shaking his head yes and applauding. And so I know I'm not the only one that feels this way. I mean there are other parents -

BALDWIN: And how short are we talking? What are you proposing?

CROW: Well, I would love to see it around six months. We have a large country. So we'd have to sit down with the RNC and the DNC, the two major parties at least, and talk about how can we make this shorter, how can we make it where we're all proud to be a part of this election process?

BALDWIN: Do you think that had - let's say this election cycle been six months, the outcome would be different? Do you think the nominees would be different if it was shorter?

CROW: I don't know. I mean when talking about putting all the primaries on one day. You look at someone like Barack Obama, who really benefited from having primaries spread out because he had a grassroots movement going. If he were running against Donald Trump, who is already funded by his own millions, that really rules out that kind of candidate. And we saw it with Bernie Sanders, he had a huge grassroots movement. So that doesn't actually work. But there has to be a way. I mean Canada has a shorter one. England. France. These all have shorter campaign cycles and we have social media and a thousand ways to get information issues out there.

BALDWIN: You mentioned England and let me just press you on this because I go back to Brexit and, you know, Cameron was out. They knew that - he had promised that this vote would happen to vote out of the EU. It felt like it was rushed. People didn't have all the fact, the information, and a lot of people who voted leave, which ended up winning -

CROW: Yes.

BALDWIN: Have buyers' remorse.

CROW: Right.

BALDWIN: Would you worry about that with a shortened election cycle?

CROW: I would say we would have to sit down and be very thoughtful about this. And I know that we can do that. I mean this country is illustrious when it comes to creating a new way of looking at things. And we take the best bits and pieces of other systems. Do I think 38 days, like what England had, would work for us? No. But do I think two years is fruitful in any way, shape, or form? I don't think so.

BALDWIN: Do you think that, you know, when you talk about two years, I think it was Ted Cruz, March of 2015, correct me, when he first initially said he was running.

CROW: About 232 days ago. Something like that.

BALDWIN: Yes. Not that - not that anyone's counting. Do you think, though, that since these people who want to be president have to take this chunk out of their life to run, do you think we would get different candidates? People, if you shortened it, who just took that shortened time off, do you think that would effect - could they be better candidates?

CROW: I -

BALDWIN: Maybe not as much money is needed.

CROW: I don't want to sound like a dinosaur. And first of all, this petition is a way for all of us who actually are the people that the government works for, it's our way of saying, we have a say in this and we're telling you that all of us want to see this thing changed. We want to have a better system for our kids to feel good about. We want to put some respect back into the Oval Office. When it drags out this long it becomes - it only benefits the networks. It only benefits policy - not even policymakers, but political consultants. It doesn't benefit the people.

BALDWIN: What about debates? Did you think that they were helpful?

CROW: Well, what I was going to say, I don't want to sound like a dinosaur, but when I was a kid -

BALDWIN: Ah, you're not - you're not a dinosaur.

CROW: I know, but I'm just saying, when I was a kid, it was Walter Cronkite. You had the debates. You had conversations at home. You had the newspapers. We have every way possible of finding out information about our candidates. We can't let it become what it's become now. And that is by virtue of the fact that there's a lot of time on our hands to fill up 24 hours of news and a lot of what gets covered has nothing to do with the issues and perhaps we can get some respect back into our system. We have a lot of great candidates who were running, but this thing went in a completely different direction and now we're in the final stages of the election and I think it's created a lot of vitriol, it's created a lot of hate talk and we've got to abandon that and get back to something more civilized.

BALDWIN: Quickly, where are you and your boys on election night? Sitting in front of the TV or -

CROW: Well, we're going to be in the barn. No, I have a barn and we always have friends over election night and we'll see who wins and probably eat pizza and drink a couple of beers and get on with it.

BALDWIN: Sheryl Crow, thank you so much.

CROW: Change.org, make it short.

BALDWIN: There you go. Sheryl, thank you.

Next, Donald Trump says he needs the state of Florida to claim victory on Election Day. Does the math pan out for him? We'll discuss that.

Plus, could a new TV network be in the cards after the election for him? How Donald Trump could be laying the groundwork right now.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. This is CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:29:24] BALDWIN: Donald Trump says he's winning. And in the battleground state of Florida, he's urging his supporters to get out and vote. Two weeks to go until Election Day. The Republican nominee is optimistic in his campaign blitz of the state. He says he is winning there and any poll that says otherwise is quote/unquote phony. Here's what he told Fox News today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have four events today in Florida.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is a must-win for you, correct?

TRUMP: Right. I believe Florida is a must win and I think we're winning it. I think we're winning it big.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Twenty-nine electoral votes. You can't go to the White House unless you win in Florida. You would concede that, right?

[14:30:02] TRUMP: I think that's probably true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: All right, so, David Chalian, CNN political director.

Hello, sir.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Hello.

BALDWIN: So hearing Trump acknowledge, yes, he needs the state of Florida to win