SUMMARY: A new podcast from the NewsHour examines the public defender system in the United States — and the enormous gaps and problems that undermine its effectiveness. Amna Nawaz and producer Frank Carlson reported from Missouri for this five-part series, and they join Judy Woodruff to discuss the heartbreaking stories they heard and what the flawed system says about American criminal justice.
SUMMARY: How are President Trump's tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum affecting manufacturers and workers? At two different Missouri factories, there are two very different stories. Mid Continent Steel and Wire, which makes nails, has already eliminated 100 jobs. But about 60 miles away at Magnitude 7 Metals, the reopened aluminum smelter is back up and running with hundreds of jobs. John Yang reports.
SUMMARY: Protesters gathered for a fourth straight day in downtown St. Louis to denounce the acquittal of Jason Stockley, a white former St. Louis police officer who was tried for the 2011 fatal shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith. William Brangham talks to Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the case and the broader concerns about police brutality that are driving these protests.
SUMMARY: The NAACP issued a travel advisory about the state of Missouri for women, minorities and LGBT people, asking those travelers to use “extreme caution.” The NAACP's first statewide alert comes after Missouri passed a law that the organization says permits legal discrimination. President Rod Chapel Jr. of the Missouri NAACP joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss how and why the advisory came about.
SUMMARY: Some of the fiercest political battles are taking place between Democratic-controlled cities and Republican-led state legislatures over issues like minimum wage and plastic bag bans. Increasingly, those issues are decided through a political maneuver called preemption, when state lawmakers write laws that prevent cities from enforcing their local ordinances. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Chris Bury reports from Missouri. This is part of an ongoing series of reports called 'Chasing the Dream,' which reports on poverty and opportunity in America.
SUMMARY: What do Americans think of President Trump's time in office so far? Judy Woodruff asks newspaper editors from around the nation -- David Bradley of the St. Joseph News-Press, David Haynes of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Lee Ann Colacioppo of The Denver Post -- to weigh in on what they are hearing from their readers.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now that we're one month into the Trump administration, we wanted to get a sense of how different parts of the country are assessing the president's time in office.
To do that, we have asked newspaper editors from three states to tell us what they're hearing from readers in their communities. And they join us now.
Lee Ann Colacioppo is the editor of The Denver Post. David Haynes is the editorial page editor for The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in Wisconsin. And David Bradley is the editor of The St. Joseph News-Press in Missouri.
And we welcome all of you to the NewsHour.
David Bradley, I'm going to start with you.
Missouri is a state that went heavily for Donald Trump. He won by something like 20 points. What are you hearing right now from your readers about how he's doing?
DAVID BRADLEY, St. Joseph News-Press: I think people are fairly well satisfied with what Donald Trump is doing now.
I think he's done a lot of things that he said he would do. He's made a few misstatements over the last few weeks, but what he's done, I think, has been pretty impressive.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Lee Ann Colacioppo, what about your readers in Denver around Colorado?
LEE ANN COLACIOPPO, The Denver Post: We're getting a lot of really mixed results, mixed phone calls.
We have got people calling up really upset, angry with the Trump administration, angry with us when we have editorialized in the vein of he's lying. And then we have got a lot of people who are — so we're really hearing from both sides.
JUDY WOODRUFF: OK, we are going to pursue that.
David Haynes, what about in Milwaukee? What are you picking up from your readers?
DAVID HAYNES, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Well, Judy, it always depends on who you talk to.
Liberals in our state don't have much use of Donald Trump. Independents are a little bit divided, although they are concerned about what has been reported as some of the chaos in the White House. Conservatives in Wisconsin didn't support Donald Trump in the primary. They went for Ted Cruz, and so they're still a little wary and worried that the agenda of Paul Ryan, who is from our state, may not get passed in the way they'd like.
But what I hear from Trump supporters, mostly, is you in the media need to let him get his administration organized. And I often hear them saying that, you know, Bill Clinton didn't exactly have an easy transition either, but, in the same breath, they often will say, but, gosh, I wish he would stop tweeting at 3:00 in the morning.
SUMMARY: The tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011 was one of the most destructive in U.S. history. Five years later, the city seems to be thriving -- possibly even better off than it was before. One key to its success? Getting residents to stay, says Jane Cage, chair of the Citizens Advisory Recovery Team. But the emotional trauma from that day still lingers. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Storms, hurricanes and natural disasters clearly test the fortitude of any area, as we're seeing this weekend with Hermine, and just recently with the rains and flooding in Louisiana.
We tend to focus on the immediate aftermath and relief, but the devastation can last for years.
We have the story of how one city leveled by a tornado has spent years rebuilding, and in some ways is better and stronger for the future.
The tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, on May 22, 2011 was one of the most destructive ever in U.S. history; 161 people were killed, 1,000 were injured, and more than 7,000 homes were damaged.
When the “NewsHour” visited four months later, people were still literally picking up the pieces of their lives.
JANE CAGE, Chair, Citizens Advisory Recovery Team: It is certainly clean, compared with what it used to be.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Jane Cage, a businesswoman who chaired the Citizens Advisory Council to rebuild Joplin, told us back then she was worried people wouldn't come back to the destroyed areas.
JANE CAGE: In the beginning, I think everyone said, I want to rebuild my house. And now I think people are faced with the reality that what they wanted, their neighborhood and their friends may not be in that same spot.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Five years later, Cage took us on a tour of the same neighborhood.
JANE CAGE: I think this is, in some ways, one of the best recovered neighborhoods. They're nicer houses and larger houses overall.
HARI SREENIVASAN: She says one of the main things that Joplin got right in the aftermath was encouraging residents to stay.
JANE CAGE: We concentrated on keeping our population in Joplin, because we saw what happened in other cities that experienced disasters. And I think one of the first things that we did to make that happen was, our school superintendent made the promise that we would start school on time.
SUMMARY: A new report by the Ferguson Commission, appointed to respond to racial inequity, calls for 200 changes to policing, education, housing, health care access and more across St. Louis and Missouri. Gwen Ifill discusses the reform recommendations with Rev. Starsky Wilson of the Ferguson Commission and Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Missouri state senator.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Just over a year after the city of Ferguson, Missouri, exploded in unrest after the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, a local commission today released a blunt new report.
Focusing on race, inequity and history, the 16-member Ferguson Commission issued 189 calls to action, including improvements in police practices, education, housing, and health care access.
“What we are pointing out,” the commission concluded, “is that the data suggests, time and again, that our institutions and existing systems are not equal, and that this has racial repercussions.”
Joining me now to discuss the report and its possible impact are commission co-chair the Reverend Starsky Wilson, and Missouri State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal.
Thank you both for joining us.
So, call to action, Reverend Wilson. What was the single most surprising and the single least surprising thing that you found in this report?
REV. STARSKY WILSON, The Ferguson Commission: Well, thank you for having us on.
First, quite frankly, the most surprising thing was that so many people lived in enclaves of comfort without understanding that folks just five, 10 miles away live in Third World circumstances when you talk about health outcomes, life expectancy.
It was surprising to note that there is a $15 billion cost in our regional gross domestic product for these racial inequities that we see in our community. It was surprising to note that we are 42nd among the top 50 metropolitan areas in the nation in economic mobility, the capacity for a child to do better than their parents.
And so, with those surprises, I was shocked a little bit as we went throughout the process as this — that there are so many people of such goodwill to be able to come around these issues when they came to know about the issues, when they recognized the challenges, to actually be a part of the process.
And so we’re pleased that the process, this bold experiment and inclusive democracy has produced a result in this report, in these recommendations. And now it’s time to aggressively pursue them through activism, advocacy and agitation, quite frankly, of power structures that can make them happen.
GWEN IFILL: Senator Maria Nadal, was this — were the findings here about the structure of way the city, the state, the region is structured, or is it about something more profound than that?
MARIA CHAPPELLE-NADAL (D), Missouri State Senator: It’s absolutely about how this system is structured.
And let me just tell you, Gwen, what we’re dealing with right now is the fact that African-Americans are at the bottom of the economic food chain. They’re in the mud. They’re right alongside catfish in the Mississippi.
So we have to do something that’s different. We have to really look at how our system is structured. Yes, we have been looking at racial inequity for a very long time, if you look at President Truman’s freedom from fear. We were looking at racial inequity in 1968, when you had President Johnson looking at inequity in the Kerner Commission.
And 47 years later, we’re still talking about racial inequity, which means we still have environmental inequity, social inequity, economic inequity. And so because all of these things still are existent and around means that there is something fundamentally wrong and flawed in the structure in which we are operating right now.
SUMMARY: George Hodgman left a fast-paced life as an editor in Manhattan for small town Missouri to care for his elderly mother. Judy Woodruff sits down with Hodgman to discuss his poignant memoir of caretaking, “Bettyville.”
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): It is a memoir of a son and his mother at the twilight of her life, the son who returns from the fast track Manhattan life to the small town of Paris, Missouri. It’s about loss, but also about discovery. It’s about struggle and courage, but ultimately it’s about love.
The it is “Bettyville” by George Hodgman, a former magazine and book editor at Simon & Schuster and Vanity Fair and Talk magazine.
George Hodgman, welcome to the program.
GEORGE HODGMAN, Author, “Bettyville”: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You spent years as an editor, but you had never written a book until this one. Did that make it easier or harder?
GEORGE HODGMAN: I think that I always, always wanted to write a book, and I had been carrying around little slivers.
And this emotional moment just had to allowed me to access everything. And the editing, I learned a lot about what I should have been doing as an editor all these years when I became a writer.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I want you to fold that in to coming home to Missouri, a place you left, maybe thinking you would never go back.
GEORGE HODGMAN: I am surprised to find myself back, but I also am surprisingly happy there.
I had lived on my own and for myself in a lot of ways, and it’s nice to be in a different kind of community for a little while. I have been around hard-driving, ambitious, kind of self-centered people. And I’m enjoying a completely different kind of life.
I mean, it’s interesting, because my East Coast friends are — were so determined to get me back. And they had such negative attitudes about this part of the country and, you know, religious fanatics and right-wingers and everything. And it was a good lesson in learning that the stereotypes that I had sort of acquired were not always so accurate.
ROBERT MCCULLOCH, St. Louis County Prosecutor: …Mr. Brown’s movements.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): That’s Robert McCulloch, the prosecutor in St. Louis County, Missouri, reporting that what he describes as an accurate and tragic story but that ends in no probable cause being found in order to — to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot, in August, Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager. It’s created, as you can see, lots of unrest in Ferguson for months.
He told us that there were 25 days of grand jury meetings, 70 hours of testimony, 60 witnesses, including three different medical examiners, hundreds of photos and that they basically concluded that a lot of the things that we had heard, a lot of the eyewitnesses did not — were not consistent with the stories that they found, the evidence they say they have now found, that the physical evidence basically refuted a lot of the eyewitness evidence, and that, as a result tonight, there will be no indictment for that Ferguson police officer, as you can also have been able to see, there had already been some, at least so far, peaceful protests.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): That’s right. I think it’s fair to say, Gwen, what we’re listening to now is the prosecutor recount what different witnesses said. But he — what you just summed up is — is what was important tonight. There is no indictment of Officer Darren Wilson.
They are saying there’s no probable cause. He was trying to explain it was an exhaustive process. He talked about wit — eyewitnesses, but in the end, he said, it’s the evidence that — that mattered the most.
We do have three guests we want to bring in to talk about what we’ve just heard.
They are Roger Goldman. He’s a professor at Saint Louis University School of Law. Gil Alba, he’s a former New York Police Department detective. He currently runs a private investigation firm. And Rev. Willis Johnson. He’s a pastor at Wellspring Church in Ferguson.
SUMMARY: The decision that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson would not be charged by a grand jury for the shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown sparked riots and protests in Ferguson and major cities last night. Gwen Ifill reports on the reactions by protesters and law enforcement after the decision was announced.
SUMMARY: Just a day after the grand jury announced not to indict police officer Darren Wilson, the city of Ferguson remains tense. Gwen Ifill speaks with Christina Swarns, Litigation Director for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Susan McGraw of St. Louis University, on the grand jury’s role in the legal system and what’s next for the city of Ferguson.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): We return our attention now to Ferguson, Missouri, where an unarmed black teenager was killed last month by a white police officer, sparking protests and continuing unrest, up to and including last night.
It started Tuesday night with gunshots and looting, after fire destroyed an impromptu shrine to Michael Brown. Then, yesterday, Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson issued a video apology to the Brown family, nearly six weeks after the shooting.
THOMAS JACKSON, Chief, Ferguson Police Department: I’m truly sorry for the loss of your son. I’m also sorry that it took so long to remove Michael from the street. The time that it took involved very important work on the part of investigators who were trying to collect evidence and gain a true picture of what happened that day. But it was just too long, and I’m truly sorry for that.
GWEN IFILL: Last night, Jackson emerged, in civilian clothes, and marched with protesters. But a fight broke out, and, in the end, seven people were arrested, all of this, as a grand jury continues investigating Brown’s death.
Saint Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch said this week the panel should finish by early November.
SUMMARY: In a special PBS Town Hall called “America After Ferguson,” Gwen Ifill moderates a conversation on the death of Michael Brown and the wider community conflicts that have been exposed for Ferguson, Missouri, and the nation. In this excerpt, participants discuss getting more young people of color involved in politics, as well as a divide in the perception of race and empowerment.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): We take a closer look now at the situation in Ferguson, how the St. Louis, Missouri, area community is struggling to keep order and heal the divisions that continue to bring protesters out into the streets.
A short while ago, we spoke with USA Today reporter Yamiche Alcindor, who is in Ferguson.
Yamiche Alcindor, thank you for joining us again.
I want to start by asking you about reaction there to Governor Nixon’s decision to ended curfew and to call in the Missouri National Guard.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR, USA Today: The reaction here was really mixed. I talked to a lot of people who were really happy to hear that the National Guard was coming in. People say that the businesses here are losing so much money and people who live in this neighborhood are terrorized because every night there is tear gas and there’s gunshots in their neighborhoods.
However, some people are really upset. I talked to one woman who said she feels like she’s in prison in her own neighborhood. And there, people really thought, you know, this is just even more militarizing of our neighborhoods. This is really the actual military.
And when the National Guard comes in, there is going to be soldiers walking down the street. So I think people are kind of mixed, but I think the majority of people I talked to are worried because that they thought this might get out of hand.
SUMMARY: To discuss the racial divide in reactions to the Ferguson protests, Judy Woodruff looks at data with Carroll Doherty of Pew Research Center. Ronald Hampton, former executive director of the National Black Police Association, and Gil Alba, former detective of the New York City Police Department, discuss the prospects for reconciling the Ferguson community after such upheaval.
SUMMARY: Amid protest and tension over the killing of Michael Brown, the residents of Ferguson, Missouri, are contemplating what the events in their community mean for them and the whole country. Hari Sreenivasan offers an array of voices from Ferguson.
SUMMARY: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the week’s top news, including the response to the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, by politicians and President Obama, as well as the political shift in Iraq and the prospect for additional American intervention.
Anyone who thinks race does not skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention, Sen. Rand Paul writes for TIME, amid violence in Ferguson, Mo. over the police shooting death of Michael Brown
The shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown is an awful tragedy that continues to send shockwaves through the community of Ferguson, Missouri and across the nation.
If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off. But, I wouldn’t have expected to be shot.
The outrage in Ferguson is understandable—though there is never an excuse for rioting or looting. There is a legitimate role for the police to keep the peace, but there should be a difference between a police response and a military response.
The images and scenes we continue to see in Ferguson resemble war more than traditional police action.
Glenn Reynolds, in Popular Mechanics, recognized the increasing militarization of the police five years ago. In 2009 he wrote:
Soldiers and police are supposed to be different. … Police look inward. They’re supposed to protect their fellow citizens from criminals, and to maintain order with a minimum of force.
It’s the difference between Audie Murphy and Andy Griffith. But nowadays, police are looking, and acting, more like soldiers than cops, with bad consequences. And those who suffer the consequences are usually innocent civilians.
The Cato Institute’s Walter Olson observed this week how the rising militarization of law enforcement is currently playing out in Ferguson:
Why armored vehicles in a Midwestern inner suburb? Why would cops wear camouflage gear against a terrain patterned by convenience stores and beauty parlors? Why are the authorities in Ferguson, Mo. so given to quasi-martial crowd control methods (such as bans on walking on the street) and, per the reporting of Riverfront Times, the firing of tear gas at people in their own yards? (“‘This my property!’ he shouted, prompting police to fire a tear gas canister directly at his face.”) Why would someone identifying himself as an 82nd Airborne Army veteran, observing the Ferguson police scene, comment that “We rolled lighter than that in an actual warzone”?
Olson added, “the dominant visual aspect of the story, however, has been the sight of overpowering police forces confronting unarmed protesters who are seen waving signs or just their hands.”
How did this happen?
Most police officers are good cops and good people. It is an unquestionably difficult job, especially in the current circumstances.
There is a systemic problem with today’s law enforcement.
Not surprisingly, big government has been at the heart of the problem. Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies—where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.
This is usually done in the name of fighting the war on drugs or terrorism. The Heritage Foundation’s Evan Bernick wrote in 2013 that, “the Department of Homeland Security has handed out anti-terrorism grants to cities and towns across the country, enabling them to buy armored vehicles, guns, armor, aircraft, and other equipment.”
Bernick continued, “federal agencies of all stripes, as well as local police departments in towns with populations less than 14,000, come equipped with SWAT teams and heavy artillery.”
Bernick noted the cartoonish imbalance between the equipment some police departments possess and the constituents they serve, “today, Bossier Parish, Louisiana, has a .50 caliber gun mounted on an armored vehicle. The Pentagon gives away millions of pieces of military equipment to police departments across the country—tanks included.”
When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.
Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.
This is part of the anguish we are seeing in the tragic events outside of St. Louis, Missouri. It is what the citizens of Ferguson feel when there is an unfortunate and heartbreaking shooting like the incident with Michael Brown.
Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.
The militarization of our law enforcement is due to an unprecedented expansion of government power in this realm. It is one thing for federal officials to work in conjunction with local authorities to reduce or solve crime. It is quite another for them to subsidize it.
Americans must never sacrifice their liberty for an illusive and dangerous, or false, security. This has been a cause I have championed for years, and one that is at a near-crisis point in our country.
Let us continue to pray for Michael Brown’s family, the people of Ferguson, police, and citizens alike.
SUMMARY: Judy Woodruff talks to Yamiche Alcindor of USA Today in for a closer look at the drama unfolding over the police killing of Michael Brown, as well as local reaction to the governor’s order for State Highway Patrol to take over security. Former Ferguson Mayor Brian Fletcher and Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch weigh in on Ferguson’s disproportionately white police force.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): For a look at what’s happening on the ground in Ferguson, we turn to USA Today reporter Yamiche Alcindor, who was there last night. She regularly covers social issues relating to criminal justice. I spoke to her a short time ago.
Yamiche Alcindor, we thank you for talking with us.
First of all, reaction to the governor’s announcement that the Missouri Highway Patrol is going to be taking over law enforcement there?
YAMICHE ALCINDOR, USA Today: Residents here for the last two days that I have been here have really been complaining about what they consider military-style policing.
People are welcoming this announcement. I just talked to a woman who said she was scared to have her child out in the street and that she was going in extra early.
I think people are really excited about. And even though they don’t know exactly what’s coming and they — and they’re still kind of worried about what the Highway Patrol is going to do, people think, if it’s not going to be tanks or tear gas, that may something will be better.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, you were very much there last night. You were reporting on it, tweeting about it. What did you see? Because, as you know, officials are saying people in the crowd were throwing rocks, throwing firebombs.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: So, I didn’t see people throwing rocks and firebombs. But I know that there are some images of people doing that, so I continue — I think that that might have actually happened.
What I saw mostly were people crowding in different areas, picking up their arms, saying, don’t shoot, hands up. People were in some ways aggressively walking up to police and kind of taunting them. At about 2:00 in the morning, I was at the Ferguson Police Station, and a group of six to seven people actually walked on to the Ferguson police property and were kind of taunting the police there.
Soon after, the Saint Louis County police showed up with about four trucks and about 60 officers in riot gear. So I think — I saw that. And I also saw officers with rifles drawn kind of pointing at people that they thought were either taunting them or — or that they thought might be shooting at them.
SUMMARY: Violent clashes between local police and protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, has highlighted the distribution of military equipment to police departments around the country from the U.S. Defense Department. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Matt Apuzzo of The New York Times about the concerns over the militarization of domestic law enforcement.
Television commercials have already run suggesting that buying health coverage through the state’s new insurance market, Connect for Health Colorado, will feel like winning the World Series.
The market’s employees are traveling the state to explain how it will work, often in electric yellow T-shirts with the message, “Got Insurance?” In the coming weeks, 400 guides will be trained to help the uninsured sign up for coverage, with some targeting groups like Hispanics, gay and lesbian citizens, and even truckers.
This is Colorado, five months before the central provisions of President Obama’s health care law take effect: a hive of preparation, with a homegrown insurance market working closely with state agencies and lawmakers to help ensure the law’s success. Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, is a firm supporter, and the state legislature, controlled by Democrats, has not thrown up any obstacles.
When the legislature voted to allow a state-based insurance market in 2011, Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, but many supported the bill, contending that it would give Colorado more control over how the health care law played out here. This spring, state lawmakers voted along party lines to approve an expansion of Medicaid, which is encouraged but not required under the law.
The law does have opponents in Colorado, but they can do little to stop the Democrats from carrying it out. In February, Republicans even helped kill a bill that would have repealed the law allowing the insurance market.
“There’s politics everywhere these days,” Mr. Hickenlooper said in an interview, “but for the most part, we’ve really been focused on how to do this right, and trying to make sure that people have affordable health care.”
Connect for Health has received about $180 million in federal money to be up and running by Oct. 1 and to cover the first year’s operating costs.
Much of the work involves building the Web portal through which people who do not get insurance through their job can buy coverage. Colorado residents will be able to shop for insurance plans and compare them on www.connectforhealthco.com, and determine whether they qualify for federal subsidies to help with the cost.
The portal has to be able to exchange information in real time with insurance companies, state agencies and the federal government, which is building a “data hub” through which it can verify income and citizenship.
Looking for the new health insurance marketplace, set to open in this state in two months, is like searching for a unicorn.
The marketplace, or exchange, being established by the federal government under President Obama’s health care law has no visible presence here, no local office, no official voice in the state and no board of local advisers. It is being run like a covert operation, with no marketing or detailed information about its products or their prices.
While states like Colorado, Connecticut and California race to offer subsidized insurance to their citizens, Missouri stands out among the states that have put up significant obstacles. It has refused to create an insurance exchange, leaving the job to the federal government. It has forbidden state and local government officials to cooperate with the federal exchange.
It has required insurance counselors to get state licenses before they can help consumers navigate the new insurance market. And, like many states, it has refused to expand Medicaid.
“It’s like running an obstacle course every day of the week, but the course changes from day to day,” said Herb B. Kuhn, president of the Missouri Hospital Association, a strong advocate of expanded coverage.
State Senator Rob Schaaf, the Republican author of a 2012 ballot measure that prevented the state from setting up its own insurance exchange, said: “We can’t afford everything we do now, let alone provide free medical care to able-bodied adults. I have a philosophical problem with doing that, and I’m also worried about our country’s financial situation.”
Over 850,000 Missouri residents, including low-income people in St. Louis and Kansas City, family farmers and small-business employees, are uninsured. Many could qualify for coverage through the exchange, which encourages competition and offers subsidies to reduce costs.
Kenneth L. Schmidt, an insurance broker in St. Louis who intends to sell insurance products offered on the exchange, said: “We have not seen any evidence of the federal exchange — how it will be run, how it will be structured in Missouri. Will it be run from Jefferson City? Will it be run from Washington? Who will watch over it? No clue.”
David R. Griggs, who owns a carpet store with 15 employees in Columbia, Mo., said he was hungry for information about the exchange. But, he said, “I have not seen or heard a word about it.”
Kat Cunningham of Columbia, the president of Moresource, a firm that handles payroll and benefits for more than 600 employers, said she had been deluged with questions from clients and was struggling to provide guidance.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Now, the city of Joplin, Mo., rebuilds and remembers one year after it was leveled by a deadly twister.
This was Joplin one year ago, after a tornado packing 200-an-hour winds tore through town. It killed 161 people, injured hundreds more, and destroyed 8,000 buildings, many of them homes. This is how the city of 50,000 looks today. Three million cubic yards of debris have been hauled away. Damaged homes have been torn down, leaving empty foundations.
Others have been rebuilt, but at a cost. The storm caused $2.8 billion in damage, the costliest tornado since 1950. And emotional, physical and psychological scars remain.
