>> Another Democratic candidate for Attorney General, house lawmakers take aim at anti-Semitism, plus reforming prior authorization and more.

From the television studios at WFYI, it's Indiana Week in Review for the weekend of January 19, 2024.

>> Indiana Week in Review is made possible by the supporters of Indiana Public Broadcasting stations.

>> This week, former Marion County Clerk Beth White says Indiana deserves an attorney general that is serious about their response abilities and says current leader Todd has heard not help Hoosiers.

Who launched a campaign for attorney general Thursday.

>> White currently serves as the head of Indiana coalition and sexual assault and human trafficking.

She's also worked as attorney for the state Department of Child services in the Marion County prosecutor's office.

>> I want to get back to the business that the Attorney General was supposed to be doing.

Protecting consumers, making sure the legal environment is solid in the state of Indiana, protect thing seniors in particular from Medicare fraud and other kinds of abuse.

>> White has run for state office before losing the 2014 race for Secretary of State.

She says to when she needs to show Hoosier's a contrast, highlighting Rokita's issue with abortion care rider.

>> Doctors are afraid because the environment that's created has been creating fair and it's unacceptable.

>> White joins Destiny Wells for the race for the Democratic nomination.

>> Does white joining the race complicate things for Democrats?

It's the first question for our Indiana Week in Review panel.

Democrat, Lindsay Haik, Republican Chris Mitchem, Jon Schwantes, and Niki Kelly editor in chief of the Indiana Capital Chronicle, forgot my title or for a second, but Chris Mitchem is a contentious fight going to make it hard for Democrats to be Todd Rokita?

>> Absolutely, if you're the Indiana them a card party you hate to see this.

I would be hard-pressed to think they would be behind throwing up a second candidate when they have someone like Destiny Wells who is qualified, has a state name ID from a previous race.

>> A much more recent previous race.

>> Correct.

She even has expense working in the Attorney General's office, so I checked a lot of boxes you would want is a candidate.

When it comes to Beth White, I mean obviouly she has every right to run the race, you know, stake her claim why she is the better candidate, but you will be hard-pressed to find any race especially in a primary that if it goes down to the wire it doesn't eventually get negative.

They are going to start having to bring the other person down to say why they are the next candidate, so when you start with two hands behind your back on a statewide race if you're a Democrat this is the last thing you want to see to start alienating any party or party when you're going to need them on a plus a lot more in order to try to take down the bogeyman in the room.

>> Now obviously you are affiliated with Destiny Wells you, that from a certain angle, I understand.

But is it clear to you why Beth White is doing this?

>> Well I'm here to talk about Desteni.

She's obviously one of my ride or dies, I would work for Desteni whether it were for the Attorney General's race or whatever if you want to run for dogcatcher I would run for Destiny because she's a fantastic candidate, as Chris points out her work already gives her a significant likable we've seen a lot of statewide support for her.

That said, every woman I know who is an attorney, wants to take on Todd Rokita.

Is a terrible candidate right now.

That Todd has made for himself out of this constant pursuit of national press, and I'm not surprised others want to take him on as well.

It shows an incredible appetite for a new Attorney General and I'm excited to see what happens.

>> Seems we are collecting former Secretary of State candidates, I want to see word Jim helper is right now if he's going to throw his hat in the ring but is this some what reflective of how much Democrats want to be Todd Rokita?

>> Yeah, it is.

I'm sure internally, party officials are wishing they would come to some foot of agreement to avoid this.

Don't get me wrong, it's a state convention fight, it's not going to be hugely cost-- money.

But it's time they are going to spend focusing inward instead of against the same person they want to defeat.

>> We ask-- I asked Beth White, the same question I asked Chris, which is is this going to hurt your chance, the Democrats chances, of beating Todd Rokita in the fall?

The Democrats are ready have quite an uphill battle against the Republican statewide race here in Indiana, they have for a while and she just said they don't think it will be contentious, I think it's going to be respectful race.

I think there's a decent chance that's true but is it clear to you why she felt the need to get into this race?

>> I suppose she thinks she would be a good candidate and she wants to beat Todd Rokita.

Let's take it at face value.

I don't think there's any other great plot intrigue here Somebody is some puppet master, trying to play games here.

I think it's just that she's interested in running.

She too comes from a background where she has credentials.

Certainly in terms of administration, at the intersection of criminal justice system and law.

And certainly now with her work, more recent work with human trafficking and some issues which are front runner issues for the state of Indiana and other states.

>> And for that office, quite frankly.

>> That office with the task force that's been created it's been a big issue.

The answer to this, it seems, there's always two cards that you pull out for state chair, if you ask if this is a good thing or bad thing I used to tease Lainey, if she were here, because it's all most likely have multiple candidates vying for a position let's go to card A, that one says this is a great thing because now we can really harden and forge the message that this is a chance to kick the tires and see what the weaknesses might be and what the most potent messaging strategy is before we get to general election.

Then of course if you don't have one go to card B and said this is great because we can now coalesce behind one candidate and focus on the general election.

Those are always going to be the two answers, so they are dictated by circumstances.

I mean, we have primaries and convention fights, debates, for a reason.

To whittle this down to a single candidate.

So I guess maybe we've gotten away from that, certainly in past years.

Although with the Republican side certainly we come back in a grand fashion with contested races but that's another discussion for another time.

>> I will also say to his point it's also great to see a young Democrat come into the race and I said that when Keith announced back when we announce the Senate this past summer, the U.S. Senate race.

It's great to see a young Democrat interested in making-- solutions for problems.

>> Time now for viewer feedback, every week we post a nonscientific online poll, who will run the 22 84 race for Attorney General, Republican Todd Rokita or Democratic candidate?

Last week we asked you is the amount of turnover in Indiana's congressional delegation a good or bad thing?

84% is a good thing, 16% say it's a bad thing.

If you'd like to take part in the poll, go to WFYI.org IW IR and look for the poll.

Now, turning to the Statehouse the house this week advanced a bill to the Senate that would define and ban anti-Semitism in state public education institutions.

Indiana public broadcast Comber Wilen reports in its committee hearing those met with both criticism and support.

>> House Bill 1002 would add a definition of anti-Semitism adopted by several nationwide education to-- institutions banning it in public institutions.

Eli Isaacs with the Jewish relations Council says this bill is necessary because discrimination against Jewish Hoosier cannot be compounded without the-- combated without this determination being defined.

>> This will help educate people what anti-Semitism looks like, send a message that Indiana is no place for Jewish hate.

>> Others testifying against the bill saying it would limit free speech and would prevent Hoosier's from openly expressing discontent with a foreign government.

>> Lizzie Haik, quite frankly, is this bill necessary?

Speaker Mike yes and they passed it must do without one no vote.

Even though the Senate didn't hear they still passed the bill unanimously so this needs to move forward, is clearly time to make it happen, and hopefully the Senate takes it up immediately.

We will see with Senator Freeman at the home now.

@ >> It did pass unanimously to the house, though there are quite a few members of the Democratic caucus were not present on the floor.

This feels about as hot button as anything can be right now, at any Statehouse in this country.

Is this one that is going to create any blowback for lawmakers?

Who might not give full throated support to it?

>> I don't think so.

You even had some members of the Democratic caucus vote for it then, with statement afterwards saying why they voted for it, typically you only do that whenever there's a controversial vote that your constituents might not like and unfortunately you usually sought on the Democrat side.

I also found it interesting that all 13 members of the house Democrat black legislative caucus were also excused and I haven't seen any statement from their caucus or anything like that as well.

Which, you know, if that is the case I know they had some amendments and some tweaks they requested to the bill that they didn't get.

Matter how you feel about the bill or whether you think it matters I think it's good public policy especially considering you are not touching the criminal code here, you are not saying that if you do this, you know, you're going to be taken to prison were punished by the state or anything like that.

It is simply a policy and allows you to define education probably for school institutions you are sitting on a more national level.

And really one of my favorite part of the bill is it defines that anti-Semitism is not criticizing the state of Israel, as you would another country.

So you can criticize Israel's public policy stances, and Gaza.

Or their leadership, similar to another country.

But it's some of the expressions we've been hearing around college campuses come around the country, that I think is what this bill is targeting.

Giving the leaders of those college campuses more authority and really just a statutory framewrk in order to go to these potentially groups of people and say we are not going to support that on our campus.

>> Our colleague, pointed this out yesterday, which is for the last several years in Indiana when you have a publican employees come all the hot button social issues that come up at the Statehouse, it's Democrats who are united and Republicans who are often fractured.

And this, for the first time in quite a while in Indiana is the exact opposite.

You think Democrats are handling it so far?

>> This is a tough, tough issue for a lot of reasons.

I've heard several lawmakers say this is the-- essentially, this is the most difficult issue to speak publicly about because every word is scrutinized and every sentence is parsed and everybody is looking for some sort of, you know, hidden meaning.

It's almost-- I've likened it to the new third rail.

Used to be touch Social Security and die.

Now it's all most is if you touch this issue one way or the other and your software.

Some blowback of some sort.

It's a tough one.

I mean, if you look at-- if the question is, let's stipulate, anti-Semitism is horrible, it is stupid, it is idiocy,-- should not be tolerated.

And Islamophobia, I would say the same.

Also a byproduct of stupidity and misinformation many times.

The problem it seems to me, especially when you talk about a public research university and college campus which is by definition short of the marketplace of ideas, if ever there were such a thing.

Trying to protect against this is almost like banning stupidity.

You can have a rule against stupidity, "We are not going to allow stupidity on this campus and quote but how do we-- there's no statute that ever going to prevent stupidity on either side of the issue.

You willows have misinformed people spewing hatred.

And what I think, because of the challenges surrounding definitions here this will be something that will not go away quietly, but you will be looking at, well, the way this is written, you know, it depends on this federal definition.

And this definition.

And it talks about state players but what about an individual?

Say, can I criticize the minister of Israel if I'm talking about up individual and not a state, because the exception carveout is for a country?

You know, it's tough.

And there are lots of things you can observe.

Some of the most zealous advocates of this legislation were those who were dragging their feet on hate crimes, legislation for years.

You know, we finally as a state enacted something in 2019 that was much water down.

But a lot of people were very concerned about it then.

>> Much thanks to Senator Freeman who is the Senate sponsor for the bill.

>> There are a lot of complexes here and I try to choose my words carefully because there's really no-- >> I'm going to go back to the first question I asked, Nikki, this bill was created in response to what's going on over Israel and Gaza over the last few months, this is literally a carbon copy of the exact same bill that passed a year ago-- >> Not a, was different.

>> Not a thing was different in the bill.

>> Have Republicans made it clear enough why we need it?

Your turn.

>> Thinking very carefully.

>> Thinking very carefully at this.

I think the bill reinforces things that are already in our law.

We have antidiscrimination protections for race, creed, sex, all of that.

But they wanted to restate it, especially in the context of education, because that's where a lot of these conversations are happening.

I don't think it necessarily hurts anything, but I'm also not convinced it helps anything.

I think it is a strong statement and that alone is important.

And so, I expect the Senate to move it, even though Senator Bray's is also choosing his words carefully and not really-- I mean he wouldn't even really explain what the issues were with the bill last year.

So we will see what happens there.

>> It feels like, and I am not conflating the two issues, but it does feel a little like the conversation we are having around reading proficiency.

Which is, they are going to put into state law what is already in administrative rule.

Here it is putting their more words into state law what is probably only covered in the state law, but doing so does send a message to the people who may need to hear it, which is really, to your point, not the people were going to spew anti-Semitic hate, what it's doing is sending this to the leaders of educational institutions and say hey we need you to crackdown on this.

>> That's not a reason to-- >> Not only is there state legislation, statute on the books, I believe what a title VI federal funding already protects this, theoretically if an institution could lose its federal funding which essentially would be the death penalty for any state institution.

>> And quickly to John's point, even the most staunch supporter of the bill has to recognize your potentially opening up Pandora's box year of "OK we defined anti-Semitism what does anti- Islamophobia look and things like that.

", you will have a lot of those issues down the road.

>> Now for medical coverage has known as prior authorization, there was a bill coming up to ban prior authorization.

>> This would ban prior authorization for routine administrations and drug, and put a limit on the amount of prior authorizations ensure can cover and Elizabeth Struble is a practitioner in rural Indiana anticipations addition can worsen while waiting for approval and can lead to more extensive care in the long run.

>> There always seems to be other people in the middle that are not me or my patient and what I know is best for my patient.

>> Struble says prior authorizations with put the administration burger on-- burden on the practitioner.

>> Talk about healthcare issues for a lot of years now, in terms of impact, if this passes and something even close to this form, could be the most impactful bill that we've seen.

>> The answer is yes.

But the second and essential part of that is it ain't happening.

Not in this form.

And you think about it, you are right, this has been an issue because we are one of the states in this country that-- where costs are high.

I don't know where the blame-- there's a lot of people finger-pointing.

>> Trying to figure out-- >> Trying to figure out who the bad guy is, like an old western, where the good guys or the bad guys.

This one is tough.

You had proposals that had a lot of teeth in them in recent years.

Some of the toughest we saw last session where there were essentially Caps on care facilities, and there were penalties where they basically clawback the money in some fashion.

But did those get to the finish line?

No, of course not.

They were much scaled-down, whether it had to do with do not compete provisions for physicians, whether it had to do with-- I mean basically every thing that's been introduced on the issue in the past few years.

Something is passed but it's much much different, and I would guess that is the case here, we will not say something is profound and provocative as this.

Because it would get back to the first part of your question, it would happen.

>> Nikki, I will say I was surprised to see the language of this bill even as it was written.

>> It was extremely strong.

As we know one of the legislative things that happen is you want to ask so you ask for this and then you negotiate down.

There may be some bartering there.

I think the fascinating part of the bill here is prior authorization is a bogeyman.

We all hate it, we want the tester the drug or whatever that our Doctor thinks we should have.

There is a fair conversation to have about whether that is controlling costs in a world where all they want to do is control healthcare costs.

So you know, someone said yesterday that everyone has a terrible prior authorization story and the insurance companies are kind of not popular in that.

But yeah, I think they will settle on something a little less strong.

>> Is that a difficult part?

Because the argument from a lot of folks that don't think prior authorization should be restricted like this say hey, prior authorization is controlling-- helping control healthcare costs.

I think it would be a surprise to most people to think healthcare costs of being controlled, but is there some truth to that?

>> If there's ever been a case more clear for Medicare for all, this is it.

I mean, good Lord.

The reason our state's ballooning and costs for Medicaid, the reason we have a what was it, one $0.1 billion in debt we are subtly missing out of the Medicaid budget?

Our state is unhealthy.

It's me, I'm the problem, it's me!

That's us.

There's so many things we could do better and that's why our costs are ballooning.

It would be a great bill, let's move it forward, but we need more.

>> Do you think that they can get something close to what the bill is right now?

>> Yeah, it's pretty serious for a short do-nothing session.

But-- >> That is a great point.

>> I do think so because at this point this just screams House Bill 1004 from last year they did have a couple provisions or the hospitals are bracing for when it comes to site of service, auxiliary location away from a hospital, can you still charge the same fee is there?

I know a lot of hospital authorizations that are making sure they are in place with that because it could have a significant impact on that but I don't think every single provision on there is going to survive.

May view of one or two that send a message to say, we are serious about-- >> The message sending when it gets right down to a.

>> It really does feel like if you look at the provisions of the bill, if even one of them survives, any one of them.

>> Even if prior authorization for 1% of procedures, basically as a rule, if they are denying all of them and initially, even if you sent 10% that would be a big improvement.

>> Also the idea of not allowing prior authorization for routine services or emergency services, even that could have a big impact on getting care to people who needed more quickly.

>> There's a difference between streamlining and eliminating.

A lot of federal state are seeing are certainly streamlining it, certain provisions just cut it out and maybe there's a compromise there.

>> Pregnant people claiming a fetus as a dependent on the taxes, legislative heard in the Senate committee but that Tuesday's hearing on the bill is as far as it will go this session.

>> Republic Senator Andy Zay with a near abortion ban providing tax for expecting parents and families, his legislation over also requires the person getting getting the deduction to submit a radiology imaging report to prove they were pregnant.

>> You are building the relationship to get prenatal care for the mother and child as they go through the process of pregnancy.

>> But opponents of the bill say that's an invasive surveillance of pregnancy and University of Indianapolis sociology Professor Elizabeth as if says the measure takes a step closer to fetal personhood which she worries will be used to criminalize any activity and listen to the fetus.

>> Placing the rights of the fetus or embryo about the rights of the person.

>> Travis Holdman says he will take a vote on the bill this session because of the ongoing issue with the state's tax system.

>> It does feel like this is state Senator Andy Zay now running for Congress, wanted to get this out there, but is there more-- no, could you see this coming back next year when they are taking a look at the tax system more broadly?

>> I don't think so.

I think this was generally a colleague from the same area who supporting one candidate for Congress, kind of giving him a platform, some media.

I think there are a lot-- >> We are doing that work right now.

>> There are a lot of details on this that were unknown or unclear, at what point does it count?

What about miscarriages, what about abortion?

>> The method of proving you are pregnant.

>> There is just so much there I don't necessarily see it going anywhere, even next year.

But clearly it was sort of a wink and a nod to just have the hearing and get the discussion out there.

>> But is it a worthy conversation to have in a state that has restricted abortion the way it has?

>> There are a lot of people want to have that conversation and even before the Dodds decision this was a path that a lot of abortion opponents were taking to try to find some sort of person who-- personhood for the fetus in the absence of a Dodds type decision.

And what has been said is on point this far.

The conventional wisdom is that short session, people want to get done and go home so they can campaign.

I just missed that.

I think for a lot of candidates, this is the best campaigning they can do because they can't get free media like this anywhere else on issues that they know are not going to go anywhere, but they can still wave the flag for their quart constituents.

>> That's Indiana we can review for this week.

Our panel is Democrat Lindsay Haik, Republican Chris Mitchem, Jon Schwantes and Niki Kelly of the Indiana Chronicle.

You can find ideas we can review podcast at WFYI.org/IWIR or on the PBS App.

I'm Brandon Smith of Indiana public road testing, join us next time because a lot can happen in an Indiana week.