Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Obamacare Affects Labor Market; Cancer Predictions; Heart Risks; Hoffman's Drugs; Tennessee Plane Crash; Credit Fraud Solution

Aired February 04, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

<14:00:07>

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Here we go. Top of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for joining me on this Tuesday.

Developing right now, a new report suggests Obamacare will push two million workers out of the labor market. Why? One of the reasons, folks will choose to get health care benefits from the government rather than from their jobs. The White House is pushing back on this big-time. I want to go straight to Capitol Hill to Lisa Desjardins.

And, Lisa, explain this to me.

LISA DESJARDINS, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Right. OK. This can be complicated, but I'm going to make it very simple for everybody.

BALDWIN: OK.

DESJARDINS: What the Congressional Budget Office is saying here is that over the next 10 years, more than 2 million -- the equivalent of 2 million people will decide, hey, I don't have to get health care through my job anymore, I don't rely on them, maybe I'm sick and I have a preexisting condition, so maybe I'll leave work and maybe I will get my health care through an exchange instead.

That could be people who are retiring. We know something else about these workers who the CBO thinks will leave the workforce because of Obamacare. They're mainly low wage workers. People that aren't earning a lot. And you know, Brooke, I've worked plenty of low wage jobs myself. Those aren't your happiest jobs. So these are people who may be looking for other options and CBO says 2 million, the equivalent of 2 million Americans will leave the workforce because of that.

Now, good news for the workers possibly. They have another option, right, Brooke? But that's not good for the economy.

BALDWIN: Right.

DESJARDINS: Because we're going to lose not only those workers, but all of their output, all of their production, and it comes at a time when the baby boomers are also going to be leaving the economy. So this report also says, Brooke, that we are going to see the workforce continue to drop in America significantly.

BALDWIN: Right. We hope that they return to the workforce for better, higher-paying jobs.

DESJARDINS: Right.

BALDWIN: But for the meantime, that's not great for the economy. When you look, Lisa, at the 2 million number, this report --

DESJARDINS: Yes.

BALDWIN: This CBO report doesn't distinguish how many not only work for benefits, but also cash.

DESJARDINS: That's right, it doesn't. It really is sort of a big lump -- in a way, it's sort of an economist's best guess of what's going to happen. But it is a big deal, Brooke, because up until now, this same non-partisan bunch of budget gurus, they had estimated this effect from Obamacare to be much lower. They doubled their estimate essentially in this report. They do think many more workers are going to leave their jobs because of Obamacare than they had. And that's just because they've seen how the thing is working in the past few months and over the past year. So we're learning more and we're learning more about what Obamacare will mean for this country.

BALDWIN: We know that the Obama administration is pushing back. How are they pushing back on this?

DESJARDINS: Yes. Right. In fact, some of our viewers probably just saw James Sperling (ph) talking to Wolf Blitzer. They're making the case that this is something that happens when the government puts through a systemic change like this. He made the example of Social Security. Saying, when Social Security was put in place, many of America's older citizens who were forced to work in order to stay living and to provide a living for themselves, they decided to leave the workforce because now they had this Social Security benefit. That's how the White House is comparing it. But you're not going to be surprised, Brooke, that Republicans are pouncing.

BALDWIN: Of course they are.

DESJARDINS: I want to show, if we have it, there's a tweet from House Speaker -- Republican Speaker John Boehner. Just in the last hour, he said, this shows how devastating -- let me read it exactly. He said, "the CBO report confirms the devastating impact of the president's health care law on jobs." So you can expect Republicans to run with this. The White House is saying, hey, it's not number of jobs, it's number of people. You know, who knows how voters are going to take that, but Republicans think that this shows Obamacare is not good for the economy.

BALDWIN: We will have much more on this throughout the next two hours. Lisa Desjardins for us in Washington. Lisa D., thank you very much.

Just ahead here of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, keep in mind, opening ceremony this Friday, word of a new threat against a couple of Austrian athletes. A spokesperson for the Austrian Olympic Committee tells CNN this committee received a letter threatening two female members of that country's Olympic team. He says the letter was written in German, but he did not identify those two team members. As I mentioned, opening ceremony's Friday. Islamist militants have threatened to carry out attacks on the Sochi Winter Olympic games. The Russian military and security forces, of course, on high alert as the days tick down to day one.

And today, today is World Cancer Day. And on this day, we have been given a frightening prediction. They are calling it an imminent human disaster. This is the World Health Organization. They say cancer cases are expected to surge 57 percent over the course of the next two decades.

Take a look at the graph and you can see specifically a rise in the number of new cancer patients each year from an estimated 14 million worldwide in 2012 to 22 million in 2032. Do the math. That is 22 million new cancer patients in a matter of one year. <14:05:00>

And I'm afraid to tell you, with that prediction comes a rise in the number of deaths. Take a look at this now. This is a new graph, same shocking predictions. Over that same 20-year period, cancer deaths are predicted to rise from 8.2 million a year in 2012 to 13 million annually by 2032.

No one wants to see those numbers. I don't want to see those numbers. Dr. Walter Curran doesn't want to see those numbers here. He's the executive director of the Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta at Emory University.

So, doctor, welcome to you. Oh, it's tough looking at that. We're all touched by this in some form or fashion.

DR. WALTER CURRAN, WINSHIP CANCER INSTITUTE OF EMORY UNIVERSITY: Right.

BALDWIN: And at least when you read this report from the WHO, it says that half of the cancers, you know, half of the cancers are preventable. You have these amazing treatments, you know, in technology, et cetera.

CURRAN: Right.

BALDWIN: So why the rise?

CURRAN: Yes, these, Brooke, are very frightening numbers. They really reflect changing lifestyles around the world. Increase in tobacco use in many parts of Asia and Africa, a westernization of diet, greater rates of obesity. And some of them are related to infectious means, such as viral and other diseases. The cancers that are going to increase around the world, liver cancer, stomach cancer, lung cancer. All of these are related to what tragically are preventable causes.

BALDWIN: That was, in a reading the report, you mentioned tobacco using. CURRAN: Right.

BALDWIN: Lung cancer, the number one most commonly diagnosed cancer. I think number two was breast, number three was bowel.

CURRAN: Right.

BALDWIN: But again, when you think of lung cancer, stop smoking.

CURRAN: Right. So we've seen smoking rates go down in this country from 40 to under 20 percent.

BALDWIN: Good.

CURRAN: And the number continues to go down. That is not the case worldwide. And --

BALDWIN: These are worldwide numbers.

CURRAN: These are worldwide numbers. Cancer mortality in the United States is going down. Cancer rates, if you do an age adjustment for them in the United States, are going down. And yet this is a worldwide problem. Cancer is a worldwide problem.

The cancer centers in the United States, such as Winship, and the National Cancer Institute in the United States, recognize we have a responsibility worldwide to have some effect on it. But there are many parts of the country, many parts of the world where the resources are not there. So it will require private/public partnerships really across the globe, just not the United States.

BALDWIN: Dr. Curran, you work down the road at Winship. You look these people in the eye every day. I don't know how many years you've been doing this, but have you at least noticed a difference, noticed any kind of progression in a good way?

CURRAN: Absolutely. We released a report with the National Cancer Institute yesterday of a new therapy for brain tumors, which extended survival of slow-growing brain tumors by over five years. That was a result that we started back in 1998.

BALDWIN: That is fantastic.

CURRAN: That is -- but it takes that kind of detailed, long-term attention to a problem. And right now the progress is happening in the United States, but we also have to find the means to make it a global fight against cancer.

BALDWIN: Yes. Where's the cure?

CURRAN: So, cancer is about 200 different types of disease. We have seen cancers that are cured these days, which would have been unthinkable a decade or two decades ago. We understand, for example, lung cancer, as we were talking, it's not one disease. And there are types of lung cancers that have mutations where we have new targeted therapies where people are living long periods of time that was not unthinkable a decade ago. So the progress is there. It will not --

BALDWIN: So it's not on the prevention end, it's on the --

CURRAN: Right. Well, there are tremendous progress in prevention, too. Liver cancer, which is the number two killer -- cancer killer in the world. Hepatitis b and hepatitis c vaccines can eradicate that, compared to the lack of vaccinations. So there can be progress and it can be both on prevention and on cure.

BALDWIN: OK. Dr. Walter Curran from Winship at Emory University here in Atlanta, thank you so much, sir. We appreciate everything you do at Emory.

CURRAN: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: And now this. One more health study I need to tell you about this afternoon. This one related to almost everyone's favorite ingredient -- sugar. It turns out added sugar raises the risk of deadly heart problems. Here's the bottom line. There's a lot more sugar in the foods we like to eat and drink than most of us actually realize. You have process foods, bread, for example, lots of sugar you may not know about.

And then there's the sugar we add directly to our cereal, to our coffee in the morning. Then then there are the treats that we, you know, give ourselves. Soft drinks, candy, et cetera. You are eating more sugar -- and I should put myself in this -- we are eating more sugar than you realize. And at the very end, you know, the result can be quite serious. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, our chief medical correspondent, here to talk sugar.

And, I mean, listen, I --

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You're making everybody hungry with all this discussion (ph).

BALDWIN: I know. And I'm thinking of what I might have had watching a movie last night.

<14:10:00>

But, I mean, listen, we're all -- we're all guilty of eating some of this, maybe more than others, but killing us?

GUPTA: Well, look, what's interesting is that we think of sugar as something that can add a few pounds to the scale, a few inches around the waistline.

BALDWIN: Yes.

GUPTA: But we know more than ever what sugar actually does in the body. It obviously has a lot of calories in it, but --

BALDWIN: What's it doing?

GUPTA: We weren't designed to be able to eat as much sugar as we eat as human beings. So now you get all this sugar and the liver has to try and do something with all this sugar. What we know is that it makes these cholesterol particles that are particularly harmful, particularly concerning for heart disease. So someone who's getting about 17 percent, 18 percent of their total calories just from add sugar --

BALDWIN: What is added sugar?

GUPTA: That stuff like -- all the stuff you just mentioned, in the soft drinks, in the bread, in the pastries. Not in fruit, for example. That has sugar in it.

BALDWIN: That's the good stuff.

GUPTA: Well, that has the fiber and it has everything else in it.

BALDWIN: Good-ish.

GUPTA: This is added sugar into a product that didn't have it. So once you start adding that number of calories, about, you know, again, 20 percent of the calories that you take in the day, if they're coming from added sugar, that's going to significantly increase your risk of heart disease. That's what this particular paper found.

We haven't -- we've sort of known that there's problems with this for some time, but they're starting to put some numbers on what could be problematic.

BALDWIN: Tell me, Sanjay Gupta, how much sugar I can take.

GUPTA: Well, you know, in people -- there's no sort of across the board guideline on this. And this is what a lot of scientists are clamoring for as well. We know about cholesterol. We know about trans fats. We know all these things. We talk about it a lot. There's not an agreement on exactly how much sugar is too much or is not enough. And that's what a lot of scientists are trying to come up with right now.

BALDWIN: How much sugar are you eating? That's what I want to know.

GUPTA: Well, the American Heart Association says for a man, about 150 calories a day from sugar, and for woman about 100 calories per day. Now, if you're eating 2,000 calories, you're talking about, you know, 5 percent or so of your calories.

BALDWIN: That's nothing.

GUPTA: The average person is probably taking closer to four times that much.

BALDWIN: OK.

GUPTA: So, again, we've known for some time that it's bad, but the idea that sugar, by itself, separate from anything else, can increase your risk of heart disease, this has been the drum beat of science for some time now and this is what the study shows. BALDWIN: So my pre-show orange is OK? GUPTA: The orange is good, yes.

BALDWIN: OK. Whew.

GUPTA: Just don't eat 100 of them.

BALDWIN: OK. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you very much.

GUPTA: You got it. Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next here, inside those final hours of Oscar winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. We have one of the final pictures taken of him and what he did with friends, what he got from an ATM machine that day before he was found dead.

Plus, we're taking a look to today at the death of John Belushi and what happened to the woman who gave him the drugs that ultimately killed him. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

<14:15:50>

BALDWIN: The day before he was found dead in a Manhattan apartment, Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman went to his favorite coffee shop for his four shot espresso. At night, he met two people for dinner at a west village restaurant. And then later Hoffman withdrew $1,200 cash from an ATM at a supermarket near his home. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, but police say those who interacted with Hoffman during the day say he appeared, and I'm quoting them, "out of it." Police are trying to piece together the actor's movements as they search for anyone who might be linked to the drugs that apparently killed him, including whoever may have sold that to him.

On the Senate floor this morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid condemned those who played a part in Philip Seymour Hoffman's death and Senator Patrick Leahy added he will hold a Judiciary Committee hearing to address heroin addiction across America. But as police are searching for this dealer or anyone connected to his death, we're reminded of the death of actor John Belushi and the woman who served prison time for her involvement. Quickly, a note, before the break we showed a picture of his brother Jim accepting John's star on the Walk of Fame. Just want to make this clear. Here now is CNN's Casey Wian.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): March 5, 1982, comedian John Belushi is found dead of an overdose of heroin and cocaine at the historic Chateau Marmont on the Sunset Strip.

CHEVY CHASE, ACTOR: A person as young as John was, it's extra sad.

WIAN: Similarities with Philip Seymour Hoffman seem clear, a talented, beloved star, seemingly in the prime of his career, killed by an apparent drug overdose. LT. DAN COOK, (ph): Belushi had been dead possibly two to three hours.

WIAN: Outside the hotel, police encountered rock groupie, back-up singer and alleged drug dealer Cathy Evelyn Smith, returning in Belushi's Mercedes.

COOK: So she was taken into custody and taken to Hollywood Station.

WIAN: But only briefly. Later, Smith reportedly accepted $15,000 to tell her story to the "National Enquirer." Her admission that she repeatedly injected Belushi with a heroin and cocaine cocktail known as "a speedball" led to a second-degree murder charge in Los Angeles.

Today, Elton Fox is a Los Angeles judge. Back then, he was a deputy D.A. leading Cathy Smith's prosecution.

JUDGE ELTON FOX, LOS ANGELES SUPERIOR COURT: In this case, the criminal acts resulted in the death of a human being.

It's a rare incident where you're able to connect the source of the drugs with the person who uses the drugs and/or it results in a death or a homicide.

WIAN: Eventually, Smith pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and served 15 months in prison.

FOX: With Cathy Evelyn Smith, the involuntary manslaughter, at least from the district attorney standpoint at that time, was a reasonable resolution in that John sought her out and had asked her to acquire certain drugs.

WIAN: Now investigators are seeking to determine whether it was indeed heroin that killed Hoffman. And if so, who supplied it.

STAN GOLDMAN, LOYOLA LAW PROFESSOR: There was no evidence here that anybody but Mr. Hoffman himself injected himself. But we're dealing with a somewhat different case than the Belushi case, where there was real evidence that she is the one who put the drugs in John Belushi's body that he died from. That doesn't mean you couldn't charge someone, however, with selling a deadly drug to someone who they knew might very well use it and potentially overdose.

WIAN: Goldman says, as was the case with Belushi, media attention on Hoffman's death makes prosecution more likely.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIAN: As for what happened to Cathy Smith, CNN has been unable to locate her. We know she was deported back to Canada after her incarceration. But one of her Canadian attorneys says he hasn't spoken to Cathy Smith in years, Brooke.

BALDWIN: They are looking for the person who supplied Philip Seymour Hoffman those drugs. We understand why.

Casey Wian, thank you. Coming up, did you hear about this plane crash in Tennessee leaving a family of four dead. But the pilot being hailed a hero today for what he did, his quick thinking, in the final seconds before that crash.

Also, the data breaches that affected Target and Neiman Marcus customers getting a closer look today on Capitol Hill.

<14:20:00>

What lawmakers are proposing that could change the way your information is protected, next here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: I wanted to share this story with you of someone using his final moments to pull off what's now being hailed as a historic act. Witnesses say a pilot took a hard right turn to avoid hitting a YMCA and a nursing home just before his plane crashed. This happened last night in Nashville. All four people from the same family are dead. But that small jet left from Kansas, had been preparing for its second approach just before the crash. Here is Emily Luxen from our TV affiliate WTVF.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think anything like this has ever happened in our lifetime.

EMILY LUXEN, WTVF REPORTER (voice-over): It was a terrifying scene, and some Bellevue residents could only watch as a plane fell out of the sky.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My son, Jay, was coming into the Y, and he said he looked up in the sky and he said that an aircraft just came straight out of the clouds and just went directly into the ground.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We heard the whole house start to shake and then we just looked up out of the window and we saw the fire ball go up.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was falling like down like -- like probably five seconds, and then crash. It was going so fast.

LUXEN: After hearing the initial crash, many tried to get a closer look at what happened.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was white smoke at first, and then it broke out into flames. And it was awful. It was awful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Still a ton of flames and it just looked like it was in pieces.

LUXEN: While disbelief settled in, some witnesses say they may never come to terms with what they saw.

<14:25:00> UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just kind of looked -- stood there dumbfounded for a minute just looking in the window like, is this what we just thought it was?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Instantly you kind of just go into a shock, a numbness of -- you can't process it all fast enough.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The realization set in once you saw, like, the smoke everywhere that it was like an actual airplane. And it was just -- you wouldn't think that that would happen, like, you would witness something like that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Emily Luxen with our affiliate WTVF. By the way, it's still not yet clear what caused the crash.

Congress, today, taking its turn, looking into the massive data theft that hit millions of customers both at Target and a number of other retailers. Target's chief financial officer apologizing for the data breach of his company. And in a sign of just exactly how sophisticated these attacks have become, he revealed that Target didn't even realize its security had been compromised until it was informed by the Justice Department.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), JUDICIARY CHAIRMAN: Had you had any knowledge that that malware was there before the Department of Justice gave you that notification?

JOHN MULLIGAN, EXEC. VICE PRESIDENT/CFO, TARGET: We did not, senator -- or, Mr. Chairman. Despite the significant investment and multiple layers of detection that we had within our systems, we did not.

LEAHY: So you had all your systems in place, but you found out about it from the Department of Justice?

MULLIGAN: That's correct, Mr. Chairman.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So, what do we do about this? Today's testimony did cover one potential answer to credit fraud, replace that little magnetic strip on the back of your credit card with a computerized chip. So, CNN personal finance and business correspondent Zain Asher joins me now to explain what -- so the strip is better than the chip? No, no, the chip --

ZAIN ASHER, CNN PERSONAL FINANCE/BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: The other way around.

BALDWIN: The chip is better than the strip, why?

ASHER: Yes, exactly, Brooke. I actually wanted to show you the difference. I'm holding up two cards in my hand. I hope you can see them.

BALDWIN: Yes.

ASHER: But there is one key difference. This is the European version. It actually has a chip imbedded inside the card. This is the American version that purely relies on this strip on the back.

Now, the issue with the strip, the magnetic strip, is that every single time you make a transaction, your information travels from the card to the payment processor and it can be intercepted by hackers. They can use your information to create duplicate cards. They can also use card scanners to get your information as well.

Now, with the European version, all your data is actually stored on this tiny little chip here. It is heavily encrypted. And the encryption key is unique for every single transaction, so it's far more secure. I've been speaking to hackers -- ethical hackers, I should say, about this and they're telling me that if every single American had one of these cards, these mass data breaches you're seeing with Neiman Marcus and Target probably wouldn't have occurred.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Why -- why then hasn't the U.S. switched already if the chip is better than the strip?

ASHER: Yes, the chip is better than the strip. Well, the short answer is, it's really cost. I mean you think about how much it would cost American banks to really replace every single card in the United States with one of these chip and pin credit cards. It costs, obviously, a lot of money. And then retailers would have to update their point of sale systems, their terminals as well. So the technology and the infrastructure would be very costly to replace.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Might be worth it. Just saying. Zain Asher, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

ASHER: Sure.

BALDWIN: Coming up, "Vanity Fair," have you seen the cover, getting a round of cheers for its annual Hollywood issue after being criticized for years of being too white. The magazine has a few fresh faces on the cover this year.

And Woody Allen firing back at allegations he molested his adopted daughter Dylan. Today his lawyer says the claims are a, quote, "continuation of Mia Farrow's desire to hurt Woody Allen." We'll discuss whether this impacts his career, now and looking ahead, after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)