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2014 Political Battles Brewing; NYC to Ban E-Cigarettes; Target Customers' Pin Info Stolen; Is Healthcare.gov Website Safe?

Aired December 30, 2013 - 13:30   ET

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

ZEKE MILLER, TIME MAGAZINE: Will they hit that target and also are the demographics right? You know, do they have the right mix of the young and healthy folks who make these exchanges work, make them financially viable? And we won't know that. They're not releasing that data yet. So until we do, I mean this law will still be in flux.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Just sort of an unknowable thing at this point as to whether this is going to be a very good issue for Republicans. At the moment, it would seem it would be a good issue. But flash forward eight, nine months from now, perhaps the program is going well and they don't want to target Obamacare.

MILLER: Exactly. You can envision a scenario where six, seven months people -- you have seven, maybe five, seven million people now have health insurance. That's a lot of success stories for the Democrats to talk about in every Congressional district. Gubernatorial races, these are people who didn't have coverage and now do, that's a success story. You saw the success of the messaging in 2013 in that election, things like pre-existing conditions and, you know, contraceptives and the like. That's going to be -- that was always a powerful tool, a wedge issue the Democrats had particularly in sort of driving the gender gap, getting women sort of to continue to vote for Democrats like they do more broadly in national elections. If they can do that six, seven months, Republicans might be changing their tune a little bit on Obamacare.

ACOSTA: The other thing we don't know the about are all the folks who lost health care coverage in the last quarter of 2013. Do those folks go back and into the website and successfully reenroll in an insurance program and get covered? That's one of the issues that I think we'll be looking at the next couple of months or so. Let's get to what Democrats would like to talk about, and that is the minimum wage and nick economic inequality. The president has talked about that they want to make a big push to raise the minimum wage early part of this year. Hearing from a White House official that that is indeed something they want to do. Is that a winning issue for Democrats?

MILLER: It's a complicated issue for Democrats and certainly the fact they're moving to this message, they very populace message on minimum wage is a sign they're still not totally comfortable where they are. It's connected to an extent and they might move off of that in five or six months. Right now they're fully on board the minimum wage issue here. It could expose a rift within the Democratic Party between the progressive populace, Elizabeth Warren, Bill de Blasio, the Obama camp. That's the camp President Obama came out of in 2008. More moderate pro business community that doesn't want to raise --

ACOSTA: And endanger in some cases Democrats. We have a new poll, an "ABC News"/"Washington Post" poll. Do you support or oppose raising the minimum wage support 66 percent, oppose 31 percent. I'm assuming people at the White House have seen that poll and have other polling perhaps that we haven't seen that shows similar findings and that this might have something to do with it. But ob top of that, you also have the issue of unemployment benefits. This extension of emergency unemployment benefits affecting about 1.3 million people. Do we think that's going to get sorted out? The White House did not insist on this being part of the budget agreement the president signed at the end of this year. But perhaps we'll see a new fight on this front.

MILLER: Certainly you're start offing to see the progressive groups are starting up a progressive war. Certainly they're viewing this as a winning message in January going into the debt limit fight at the end of this month or at the end of next month rather. But in terms of can they actually get thing through, can they get the three months and find the pay forces that will satisfy house Republicans that's really up in the air right now.

ACOSTA: Zeke Miller with "Time" magazine. A lot to work on. We thought we might get a little bit of a break after 2013. It does not seem that is going to be the case.

Zeke, good to see you. Thanks very much.

New York City is getting ready to ban E-cigarettes in public spaces, but they are a health hazard or a savior for smokers? That depends on who you talk to. That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ACOSTA: In about 20 minutes, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will sign a slew of bills into law among them new restrictions on smoking electronic cigarettes in public places. The move has added fuel to the debate over whether they are a safe alternative to smoke.

Poppy Harlow explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Remember these long- banned cigarette commercials?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What cigarette do you smoke, Doctor?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's take a Winston break.

HARLOW: They're back on the airwaves, kind of.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know what the most amazing thing about this cigarette is? It isn't one.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can whip out my blue and not worry about scaring that special someone away. HARLOW: They're electronic cigarettes and they've become nearly as controversial as the real thing.

AARON DAVID ROSS, QUITE SMOKING USING E-CIGARETTES: This is how I ended up quitting smoking.

HARLOW (on camera): No question about it?

ROSS: Absolutely.

HARLOW (voice-over): Aaron David Ross smoked for 10 years. We met him at Henley, a New York City vapor lounge.

ROSS: I haven't had a drag of a cigarette since then, about two and a half years ago.

HARLOW: Here's how they work. Liquid nicotine is heated up by a battery-charged coil. There's no tobacco burned. Users inhale, and instead of smoke, there's a steam-like vapor.

Still, are E-cigarettes safe, and perhaps the greatest innovation yet to quit smoking, or an addictive health hazard?

DR. TOM FRIEDEN, CDC DIRECTOR: With a product like E-cigarettes, you're guilty until proven innocent. We don't know if these things are safe and OK to use.

HARLOW: They've been in the U.S. less than a decade, and increasingly, big tobacco companies are manufacturing them.

Limited research has been done on the health impact, and there are conflicting studies on whether or not nicotine alone is harmful.

INDRANI NICODEMUS, E-CIGARETTE USER: I would like the clients to catch up with what we're doing here.

HARLOW (on camera): But you're still willing to do it?

NICODEMUS: I am willing to do it because I think the alternative to just smoking all day, I think this is a better alternative.

AMY FAIRCHILD, PROFESSOR, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: What we gain is far greater than what we have the potential to lose.

HARLOW (voice-over): Amy Fairchild, of Columbia University School of Public Health, co-authored this op-ed in "The New York Times" making the case for E-cigarettes.

(on camera): A lot of folks say there's just not enough science.

FAIRCHILD: You could also make the case there's never going to be enough science, tht there's always going to be room for another study. What I would say to them is the need is so great now. You have so many tobacco deaths now. It's the dire urgent public health need. This is one of the most important public health problems we face.

HARLOW (voice-over): But she argues they must be federally regulated and not marketed to kids.

(on camera): I wish you could smell it in here. Of course, it doesn't smell like smoke. It actually smells a lot like candy. No surprise, given all the flavors that they sell. But critics argue when you sell flavors like cotton candy or like Gummy Bears, that can attract children.

(voice-over): Some states have age requirements on sales, but not all. CDC data show nearly two million middle and high school students tried E-cigarettes last year, more than double the number in 2011.

FRIEDEN: E-cigarettes can potentially help some people, but they've got serious potential harms that we know about. If they get kids to start smoking, that's really bad. If they get smokers who would have quit to keep smoking, that's really bad. If they get former smokers to go back to smoking, that's really bad. And if they re-glamorize the act of smoking, that's bad as well.

FAIRCHILD: The other side of that equation is it could also be a gateway to not smoking.

HARLOW: But E-cigarettes are not regulated by any federal body. And they're not an FDA-approved method to quit smoking.

Critics point out they can keep users hooked on nicotine. Ross says he's still addicted to nicotine and uses E-cigarettes at his desk.

HARLOW (on camera): For me, I wouldn't want to be sitting next to this.

ROSS: Why?

HARLOW: It smells good but it's a little disconcerting.

ROSS: It's disconcerting because there's a public stigma against it.

HARLOW (voice-over): He and others worry, now that many in America are so opposed to smoking, they're stigmatizing something some day could save lives.

(on camera): You get angry when people try to fight this.

TALIA EISENBERG, CO-OWNER, THE HENLEY VAPORIUM: Because it worked for us. We saved our lives with this product.

PETER DENHOLTZ, CO-OWNER, THE HENLEY VAPORIUM: I wouldn't be so angry if people took the time -- our elected officials took the time to get educated. They're not. They're reacting.

HARLOW (voice-over): So after decades of fighting big tobacco, what does the American Cancer Society think?

THOMAS GLYNN, DIRECTOR, SCIENCES & TRENDS, AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY: Cautious optimism with a number of caveats. Anyone right now who is using an E-cigarette does not know what they're inhaling.

HARLOW: But there's this.

GLYNN: What we don't want to do is to take something out of the hands of people who -- which could, in fact, help people stop using the traditional burn cigarette, which is the enemy.

HARLOW: The FDA is expected to announce a proposed rule to regulate E-cigarettes as early as this month. But until then --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's time we take our freedom back. Come on, guys. Rise from the ashes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: You can find panned calorie counts just about everywhere these days. Soon you'll be seeing them when you get a quick snack from the vending machine. Yes, that's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ACOSTA: I'm sure you heard the story. Target admits pin data was stolen in a recent massive data breach. How much danger does it pose for Target customers and what kind of warning does it send to the rest of us who count on credit cards and mobile money to buy what we need these days?

Joining me is Clay Johnson, the CEO of the Department of Better Technology, a software company.

Let's talk about Target. I'm sure you heard this during the holidays, as well. Everybody is talking about what happened at target. How can people safeguard themselves with respect to this pin data? Are these numbers safe, do you think?

CLAY JOHNSON, CEO, DEPARTMENT OF BETTER TECHNOLOGY SOFTWARE COMPANY: The first thing you need to do to safeguard yourself is to go and call your bank and get a new card. If you shopped at target between Black Friday and you know a week ago or December 15th I think was the cutoff date, the chances are somebody has your credit card you don't want. So call your bank and get a new credit card. And when you get that new credit or debit card and you assign a pin, make sure that that pin isn't your birthday or one, two, three, four. Make sure that pin is something unique only you know and isn't something guessable. Oftentimes when people set their pins, they set it to their birthday without thinking their Facebook profile lists their birthday. That's the first thing a crook will guess.

ACOSTA: People actually do one, two, three, four?

JOHNSON: Yes, that's one of the most common pins. Another thing you can do is protect your e-mail. Your e-mail is the gateway to a lot of your other online services and offline services. Often times, services will use your password to or, when you reset your password, they have to e-mail your password back. If someone has access to your e-mail, they have access to all the services.

ACOSTA: What do people do? I know you say they're in your tips, don't use the same password twice. I think I need a place to write down all of my passwords for everywhere that I use a password. And then what if somebody finds that list? Then I'm really hosed.

JOHNSON: There's some services called -- there's password management services. One's called last pass, another one called one password. They make it so that they actually make up your passwords for you so I you don't have to remember them. They're all-starred with you and you just remember one password to get access to all of your other passwords and they automatically fill out all the force for you. It makes life super easy.

ACOSTA: That's a great tip.

Let's shift gears a little bit here. I know you worked with President Obama on his digital campaigns. You were an innovation fellow at the White House and have been following the progress of healthcare.gov. We talked about this a couple of months ago when they were having so many problems with the website. They picked up a huge surge of consumers in the month of December, 975,000 people through the federal exchange. What do you make of the changes that they've made to the website? Do you think they've turned the corner?

JOHNSON: Yeah, I think that the healthcare.gov problem is solved. They've gone through their biggest moment of traffic that they're going to have in a very long time. And it works. Now the real question is can the president shift his administration's focus and Congress's focus to fixing the problems that caused that, the problems of federal procurement policy and procuring for I.T. The president said it's likely to blow up federal I.T. I'd like to see Congress help him there. It's an effort everybody can get behind and the question is whether or not enough attention and time will be paid to it by both the executive and legislative branch.

ACOSTA: Right, because, a lot of people are still trying to figure out what happened to the website. How did it get so messed up? As you've been following it these last couple months, besides the human process which is messed up in this town, they keep hiring the same companies to do things they're perhaps they're not adept at doing, have you been able to solve that mystery?

JOHNSON: Part of the issue is government doesn't like to take a lot of risks. In technology, technology and innovation is all about risk. And you see younger smaller companies taking the risks and push of pushing the ball forward. Whereas larger companies tend to lag behind a little bit. Government tends to make safe bets. No one ever got fired for hiring IBM, that is the culture of Washington. If we only exclusively hired IBM in the private sector, we would still be using the old giant monolithic P.C.s.

ACOSTA: Good advice.

Good talking with you again, Clay Johnson. Good tips there for people.

JOHNSON: Good to see you and happy New Year.

ACOSTA: Happy New Year to you.

We know how tempting vending machines can be. But soon you'll get a reality check because millions of machines will be required to displace calorie information. We'll take a look at how it will work and how much it will cost.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Snack time will soon be calorie-counting time. New regulations will go into effect early next year as part of Obamacare. They allow more information for you. More than 10,000 companies will have to display this, the calorie counts. Similarly to what you see in menus in restaurants. It will be on vending machines now. They'll see the calories next to their snack choice. They include Lays potato chips, Skittles, Snickers. You'll see it right there. Now, the FDA hopes this will help consumers go from alternatives. It will help you stick to your New Year's resolutions. Baked Lays, 210 calories. Fig Newtons, 190 calories but they have fruit. Roasted peanuts, 160, but they have protein. They estimate the cost will be about $25.8 million initially. $24 million every year after that. The industry's trade group says complying with the law will be expensive for small companies with few employees. But they estimate at just 0.2 percent of obese adults ate 100 fewer calories a week, it would save $2 million in health care costs. By seeing the numbers, will it change your behavior?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: Taking the fun out of the trip to the vending machine. Thanks for that report.

Still to come, you have lived the stories and made the call. We'll run down your list of the top stories of 2013 you chose at CNN.com. Results just after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ACOSTA: Hard to believe it's almost the end of the year. You have voted for the top-10 stories of 2013, and we have the results. We don't have a drum roll, but I suppose I could do one on the desk. Here we go. Coming in at 10 is the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage. Number nine is the Cleveland kidnapped women and their rescue. A fascinating story. Number eight, the Syrian civil war. Number seven, the Philippines typhoon. And number six, the Obamacare rollout debacle.

Now for the top-five stories for 2013, I want to bring in Alina Machado here to take us through them.

A lot of big stories this year. You would argue the five I just mentioned could appear in the top five, but according to our visitors on CNN.com, our voters, what did you find out?

ALINA MACHADO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jim, let's get to the list because it has been a busy year for us. This is according to rankings according to people who voted on CNN.com. The federal government shutdown sits at your number five. About 800,000 federal employees furloughed. More than a million other forced to work not knowing when they would get paid. The shutdown lasted for 16 days in October, the third longest shutdown in U.S. history and Standards and Poors says it took $24 billion out of the U.S. economy.

The high school dropout who worked his way into the most secretive computers in the U.S. intelligence as a defense contractor comes in at number four. Edward Snowden will go down in history as the man who spilled the details of the national security agency's program. They showed they were bulk collecting phone records and e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans. Some believe Snowden is a hero. Others are calling him a traitor.

He was born in South Africa, but he belonged to the world. Nelson Mandela's death is the third top story of 2013, according to those who voted at CNN.com. The world came together to mourn the 95-year-old's passing and remember his life, a struggle against racial oppression and an inspiration to many.

The Boston bombing comes in as number two. April 15th is a day we will never forget. Three people killed, more than 260 wounded after two bombs exploded near the finish line. The hunt for the suspected bombers gripped the national for several days. 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police. His 19-year-old brother was captured and is awaiting trial on federal charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

And the emergence of a somewhat unconventional leader of the Catholic Church is your top story of 2013. Pope Francis became the 266th pontiff. The first Latin American to take the title. His remarks on homosexuals and his repeated acts of compassion, including his embrace of a severely disfigured man have made headlines around the world. He was also named "Time" magazine's person of the year.

ACOSTA: I think Pope Francis absolutely deserved to be at the top of the list, man of the year, person of the year, top story of the year. The pope historically is always a big player on the world stage, but this pope seems to thrive on the very human messages of compassion and caring and for the poor and the suffering. How much does that resonate with Catholics and non-Catholics? It seems like this is something that would work for everybody, obviously.

MACHADO: Yeah, Jim. I mean, Pope Francis is called the people's pope for a reason. Extremely popular and women liked. Not just among Catholics. A recent CNN poll released this month found nearly three in four Americans have a favorable view of Pope Francis, a high approval rating for the pope -- Jim?

ACOSTA: Very good.

Alina Machado, thank you very much. And happy New Year to you. Thanks for looking back for us.

You can check out the entire list of the year's top stories right now on CNN.com. When they dropped the New Year's Eve ball, speaking of New Year's Eve, tomorrow night in New York, a famous hometown hero will be pushing the button. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will help celebrate by lowering the ball. She'll also lead the final 60 seconds countdown. Sotomayor was appointed to the high court in 2009. The third woman and first Hispanic to become a Supreme Court justice.

You may have noticed "Good Morning, America" anchor, Robin Roberts, acknowledging she's gay. She got a tweet from First Lady Michelle Obama. Roberts has been open about her health challenges, but she had not spoken about her sexuality in her past. She mentioned her longtime girlfriend, Amber. And today, the first lady responded with this tweet: "I'm so happy for you, Amber. You continue to make us all proud." She signed it M.O. As folks may know, when the first lady or president signed it M.O., for the first lady, or B.O. for the president, that means they personally sent the tweet out.

That's it for me. I'll be back at 5:00 eastern on "The Situation Room."

The NEWSROOM continues right now with Brooke Baldwin.