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 r
eporters 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, s
uch 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.
Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington Page 24