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NTSB to Use On-Board Recorders for Train Crash Investigation; Insurance Alone Won't Make Us Healthier; Holiday Shopping Sluggish This Year; Amazon CEO Talks Drone Deliveries.

Aired December 02, 2013 - 13:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The NTSB go team is at the site of the train derailment in the Bronx that killed four people and injured dozens more. They've downloaded data from both of the on-board recorders. Tweeted out this picture of one of them. The recorders will play an important role in helping to determine if speed was a factor.

Joining us, the former NTSB managing director, Peter Goelz.

Peter, thanks very much for coming in.

How much are we going to learn, investigators, from these recovered data recorders?

PETER GOELZ, FORMER MANAGING DIRECTOR, NTSB: I think we're going to learn a great deal. I think if we're focusing in on speed and braking, the data recorders, while they're not as complex as aviation data recorders, it will give you the essential information. Most importantly, it will give you a little historical information. Were the brakes functioning at the previous stop? I think we'll know a lot more at the 4: 00 briefing.

BLITZER: The train operator says he tried to apply the brakes but that it still wouldn't stop the train. Have you heard about this happening before?

GOELZ: That's pretty unusual. I think there's going to be two things that the NTSB are going to really zero in on the next couple days. One is, what was this is driver's situation in terms of work rules? You know, the 72 hours before? Was he getting the appropriate rest? Was he in any way fatigued on the day of the accident? Secondly, they'll be looking at distractions. Was this driver paying attention to his job? Hopefully, there was no use of handheld personal devices like cell phones or computers. Hopefully, he was paying attention. And then they'll zero in on the equipment, on whether the equipment functioned as advertised.

BLITZER: It's pretty shocking to me, Peter, that there are no video cameras on these trains. That would obviously be very useful right now in an investigation. Why is that?

GOELZ: Well, that has been a controversial issue for a number of years. And it focuses in on union work rules. You know, the engineers in the cabs do not like to have videotape recordings taking place. They believe that they'll be misused by management and they'll be misused in the public domain. Even though, you know, the voice recorders on, in, cockpits of airplanes have been very well protected. There is no reason why we can't have video recordings in the cabins.

BLITZER: It's surprising in this day and age. The other thing that's pretty surprising to me, and tell me where I'm wrong, if I am, no seat belts. There are seat belts on cars and planes. But on trains, there are no seat belts. And those who were killed I think, all of them were ejected, were thrown off the train.

GOELZ: I think the NTSB is about going to look at that issue of the ejections to see the crash worthiness of these cars made by Bombardian (ph). But we've looked and considered seat belts on trains. But, frankly, there is not enough data to justify requiring them. And because of the mass transit applications of rail, boy, it's almost impossible to implement that kind of rule.

BLITZER: Well, let me throw this out at you. If those four people who died died because they were thrown off those train cars, they might have lived if they would have been fastened in, in a seat belt, right?

GOELZ: You are absolutely right. And they will look at that. It's going to be an issue that will be discussed.

BLITZER: We'll learn a lot more, 4:00 p.m. eastern at the news conference. We'll have live coverage here on CNN.

Peter, thanks very much for helping us.

GOELZ: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: The Obamacare website may be working better but expanding coverage is not the only issue. Sanjay Gupta says insurance alone won't make us healthier. Sanjay, standing by live. We'll talk to him when we come back.

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BLITZER: As different as night and day, that's how the Obama administration describes the healthcare.gov website after the weekend deadline to try to fix it. Officials now say the site could handle 50,000 users at the same time and about 800,000 consumer visits a day. The average response time is less than one second. That's down from eight seconds. The Obama administration admits there are still problems. Insurers complain about so-called back end issues and point to enrollment files with missing or inaccurate data. Some cases they're not getting any enrollment data at all. The White House says it's working to fix those problems.

Obamacare is designed to help more people get insurance coverage. What about making Americans healthier?

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is joining us. You wrote a very provocative article on CNN.com, it's now posted, which says there's too much focus on the website. Explain the driving point you're making here.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think everyone's focused on the website and it's become this horse race looking at numbers from month to month and figuring out just how well the site is going to work. Obviously, it's very important. I've talked about this quite a bit. If you look at some off the goals of health reform overall, not just health insurance reform but health reform, it was certainly about increasing access so more people had health care insurance, but more so, it was about trying to create a healthier America. And that was sort of the point of my article was let's not lose sight of the big picture in all of this, and how do we create a healthier America.

There was a fascinating study done a few years ago out of the state of Oregon, Wolf. It looked at people who had just received Medicaid compared to a similar group of people who did not receive Medicaid. It sort of watched them over a series of years. And it found that the people who were now newly insured did go to the doctor more often. They did get more care. But here was the interesting thing. They were less likely to be any healthier. They didn't get as much in terms of cardiac numbers, looking at heart disease risk. They weren't any better than the people uninsured.

The point is that health insurance alone isn't going to make us healthier. I think it's a very important point, Wolf.

BLITZER: You also make another important point involving what's called this notion of moral hazard. In some cases, insurance might actually be counterproductive. Explain?

GUPTA: Yeah. This is more of an economics theory, but it's interesting how it might apply with regard to insurance. Again, there was a fascinating study that came out that looked at, in particular men, who had recently received Medicare. They had been uninsured for a while but recently received Medicare. What they found was quite surprising, a little strange, that, in fact, many of the things that you'd expect in terms of their health went in the opposite direction. They were 40 percent less likely to exercise. 16 percent of them, more of them were smoking. 32 percent were having more than one drink a week. It was fascinating. They received insurance and, for some reason, started behaving badly with regard to some of the aspects of their health.

Now, obviously, correlation and causation are not the same thing but this idea that if you have insurance, does it really make you healthy? Again, does health insurance make us healthier? I think the answer is no. And in the case I just described, it could actually have an adverse effect.

BLITZER: Making you healthy, staying away from cigarettes, getting regular checkups, that kind of stuff will make you healthy. You also write this, and I'll read it, I'll put it up on the screen, Sanjay: "Access to health care insurance is not nearly enough. If we are serious about a more healthy America, the real change starts in each and every one of us. And it's not that hard to do."

Go ahead. Tell us what we all need to know.

GUPTA: Let me say a couple things. First of all, there was a study looking at just, if every American did 30 minutes of exercise a day, that's it, every American 30 minutes a day, then you could actually cut the risk of heart disease and stroke by a third. That's now. If you want to talk about real impact in terms of making us a healthier place, that is real impact, far more than insurance, which is very important, but far more than that would do in terms of a healthier America.

It's funny, I say this as a doctor, but we always tell patients as they walk out of the room to make sure to eat right. What does that mean exactly? Have we done a good enough job providing nutritional counseling to people? We focus on pulling people out of the fire after they've had serious damage to their bodies but food is medicine. We could advise people and educate people what that means. All of a sudden, we're starting to make real dents, impact in terms of a healthier America.

Then this idea overall, it's not just about playing defense and swatting at flies and believing we are preordained to heart disease and diabetes. I was that way, too. But instead, it's this idea we can't optimize ourselves and we are nowhere near that right now. None of this other stuff works unless we focus on some of that. And that's within us. That's what I meant by that.

BLITZER: That's a good point. All of these points are excellent points.

I want viewers to go to CNN.com, read the entire article, and learn important potentially life-saving information.

Sanjay, thanks very much.

GUPTA: You've got it, Wolf. Thank you.

BLITZER: So forget the crowds and the brawls at the stores. Today, the focus shifts to online shopping. I want to tell you which retailers are pinning their hopes on a big Cyber Monday.

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BLITZER: Let's see what the markets are doing right now. A cautious start to December trading after a record run in November. There you see the Dow Jones Industrials right now about 32, 33 points. Markets could remain quiet most of the week ahead of the big October jobs report, due out Friday morning, 8:30 a.m. Eastern.

After three days of long lines and testy shoppers, the hunt for bargains continues online today. Some early reports are that holiday shopping overall has been sluggish so far this year.

Alison Kosik is joining us from the New York Stock Exchange.

Alison, Cyber Monday has become a very crucial day for the retail industry. How do we think this year is stacking up?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Even though, Wolf, this is a huge day for retailers, they really aren't expecting shoppers to go gang busters. Think of Cyber Monday, how this came about, it came about in 2005 because, back then, people at home had slow Internet speeds, so they would wait until they get to work to do their shopping after Black Friday. Now the technology has improved. Even though people shop online all the time, they still expect to snag a deal on Cyber Monday. And it's grown into the biggest day of the year for online shopping. Just today, more than 131 million shoppers plan to shop from their computers or mobile devices. That's two million people who shopped online than last year. They are expected to spend a lot $1.8 billion. One shop says it is worth it. Shop.org says eight out of 10 retailers are offering specific Cyber Monday deals.

But here's the problem for retailers. Even with the sales, a lot of firms have forecast that spending overall this holiday season isn't going to be great. The National Retail Federation said retailers saw their first decline in spending over this holiday weekend, since 2009. So the numbers are still rolling in. They're not looking spectacular at this point -- Wolf?

BLITZER: So if the spending is relatively subdued, the stock market has been soaring in recent months. Actually, it's been going crazy. There seems to be a disconnect. What's going on?

KOSIK: There is a huge disconnect. People in the market have been making tons of money, not necessarily turning around and spending it. Economists had hoped a number of improvements we're seeing in the economy, including rebounding home sales and car sales, the hope was that would build momentum to a stronger holiday shopping season. But here's what's happening. Some of the spending that consumers did on the big-ticket items, that may have cut into holiday budgets leaving consumers less money to spend at Christmas. So it winds up being a double-edged sword. And you see that disconnect there.

Also a lot of the upper-income American, whose are invested in the market, they have the money. And the lower-income ones, the benefits aren't making the awards from the stock prices going up, up and up -- Wolf?

BLITZER: Good explanation.

Alison, thanks very much.

So how about getting the Cyber Monday purchases delivered by drones? It's an idea that is apparently not so farfetched. We'll tell you why. That's next. Plus, it's one of TV's hottest shows, but did you know "Scandal's" Olivia Pope is based on a real person. Tonight, Piers Morgan sits down with Judy Smith, the woman with all of the secrets of crisis control. 9:00 p.m., only here on CNN.

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BLITZER: If you want your Cyber Monday gifts delivered right away, drones may be the answer. Yes, online retailer, Amazon, unveiled its plans on Sunday during a "60 Minutes" interview. Amazon's CEO says the drones, called Octocopters, will be ready in the next four to five years.

Brian Todd is joining us.

Brian, it seems a little farfetched at first glance. How would this work?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, they say they can deliver these products to your doorstep with these drones, which they call the program Prime Air. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, unveiled this on CBS's "60 Minutes" and explained some of the technological capabilities, some of the logistical capabilities these drones might have.

Take a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF BEZOS, CEO, AMAZON.COM: We can do half hour delivery.

UNIDENTIFIED CO-ANCHOR, 60 MINUTES: Half hour delivery?

BEZOS: Half hour delivery. And we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds, which covers 86 percent of the items that we deliver.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TODD: Bezos said these drones could deliver products within a 10-mile radius from these so-called fulfillment centers that Amazon has around the country. He says, in some of the areas where they have the centers, those are large population centers, so a 10-mile radius will cover a lot of potential customers, Wolf. Also notes, these will be autonomous, meaning there won't be someone with a joystick in front of a screen operating these things. In Jeff Bezos' vision here, they will program the coordinates of your house on GPS and the Amazon drone will fly there.

But some potential pitfalls. The weather could be a problem. They could be hacked, knocked off course. And they also said they want to prevent these from falling out of the sky and hitting us all in the head. So those are some of the things they're going to do to tweak their development of these objects.

BLITZER: There's a lot of skeptics out there. They're hearing about this, Brian. I guess the question is, is this really a legitimate part of Amazon's strategy or a publicity stunt for Cyber Monday.

TODD: Clearly, the timing was designed to unveil this in time for Cyber Monday, Wolf, but the way Jeff Bezos was talking about it and Amazon is talking about it, I think they believe this is going to be a legitimate delivery option. They do have to tweak it. They have to make sure these things are safe. They have to make sure that all of the other safety considerations are in place. But they believe this is going to be a legitimate option for customers and they think they can make it work very efficiently.

BLITZER: Brian will have more in "The Situation Room" later today.

Brian, thanks very much.

TODD: Thanks, Wolf.

BLITZER: So if you watched the BET Soul Train Awards from Las Vegas last night, you may have seen Alicia Quarles, of E! News, and me make a presentation.

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ALICIA QUARLES, E! NEWS CORRESPONDENT: All right, Wolf, me, a 30- something-year-old black woman, who has been born and raised on soul music. What about you?

BLITZER: And me, an older white guy who likes to sing Chaka Kahn and Stevie Wonder songs in the shower.

(SHOUTING)

(LAUGHTER)

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BLITZER: I have been invited in recent years to the Soul Train Awards and I thoroughly enjoy the evening. It's a really fun event. Like so many in my generation, I grew up in Buffalo, New York, watching Don Cornelius and Soul Train. I loved the music, the dancing, the outfits, everything about the show. That's why I was so excited when my pal, Paxton Baker, here in Washington, who produces the show, invited me a few years age. Last night, there was a wonderful tribute to Dionne Warwick and a great performance of Doug E. Fresh. He once taught me how to Doug E. By the way, if you missed it last night, it will replay next Sunday night.

And thanks to Andy Cohen, of Bravo, for giving me a mauzal (ph) for my appearance on the Soul Train awards. Who would have thought?

That's it for me. I'll be back at 5:00 p.m. Eastern in "THE SITUATION ROOM."

NEWSROOM continues right now with Brooke Baldwin.