important. california congressman adam schiff joins me now. happy new year, sir. thanks, brian. listen, we have phil shiliro back in the white house, john podesta back in there. you ve been critical at various points about the rollout here. do you actually think we ve turned the corner? i think so. i m very encouraged by what i saw in december when we had about a million people enroll through the federal exchange and substantial enrollment through the state changes. we re now up to about two million. that s not as high as where we wanted it but it s a lot better than where things looked in october, november. so i m very encouraged and i do think that goal that was set at the outset, that milestone of seven million next year is doable. i also think it s going to deliver very important health care access to millions of people that haven t had it before. any pooicht this point even don t get to three million or the seven, it seems like it will
have not been notified yet. let me go to story number two, washington state. someone signs up for obamacare and says, here s my bank account information, take the money out at the end of december. then they fine the money has already been taken out of their bank account. it has happened in washington state, and one of the state exchanges. so, remember, that 17 states, including the district of columbia, are running their own state exchanges, and the president has been telling everybody that these state changes are running better than the federal exchange. they re working very well there. but that is not the case inch washington, one example, where, for instance, in this case, stu, that someone has said bill me on december 21st. believing they ll be build for their premium on that date and the exchange just took out $800 out of their bank account before they were ready to pay, which leaves them in an awkward position. there s many examples of this in washington, and it s not just wa
for whom it is also expensive, close to two out of three of them don t want anything to do with it. so, bottom line, we upended an entire health care system that we are the enhave i of the world to something we are a billion shy of supporting. 88% of people were covered before. now we re trying to get up to 95%, and in order to do that, a lot of employers are going to be dumping the people they have on the health insurance and make people parttime so they don t have to cover them, going to the state changes and find they can t afford the premium the government has to subsidize everybody and some people will be in the gap. more and more premiums go up so people won t get access, and then with the doctor shortage you won t get access to the care you need under the affordable care act which is not affordable. i think part of it is the preexisting conditions, kids you can keep on the policy, another
how to talk to the his pan ebbing pop rags. rick perry wants 39% of the hispanic vote, and likewise, republicans need to learn to talk to his pan ebbings at a national level sfwloosh you re right. i think to howard s point. the demographic shifts have a factor that need to be taken into account as the state changes. i think the timeline is a little longer than a lot of democrats hope it is, simply because even those republicans those democrats you re talking about in the his pan ebbing community, they re conservative. they do identify with that part of the political spectrum. the shift is going to common areas, yeah, like immigration, but economics and upward mobility, opportunities which the castro brothers really speak to, and if they can i think they light that. it s about talking about opportunity in a new way that people don t see it through a partisan lens and see it much more in an opportunistic lens. the other thing is democratic turnout. we ve talked about minority turno
that s a big deal. he meant zero additional seats where hispanics would have a majority voting opportunity. so here you have an attorney general who is given the toughest line yet from the obama administration on the state changes in voting. you mentioned photo i.d. laws. they are the hot thing right now. and the advocates say it is necessary to prevent in person voter fraud at the polls. opponents say that voter fraud is not that big of a problem. then you have restrictions on early voting and registration at the polls. and the attorney general said this is an attorney general who made civil rights a big priority speaking at the lbj library. it s a dramatic setting to lay down this marker and he said by the way, the justice department because of its role in clearing changes in voting in states with a history of discrimination we