December 10, 2016

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Trump Attends Army-Navy Game As Black Knights Snap 14-Year Losing Streak

President-elect Donald Trump greets Army Cadets before the Army-Navy football game on Saturday in Baltimore. Patrick Semansky/AP hide caption

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Patrick Semansky/AP

President-elect Donald Trump took in one of college football’s most storied rivalries on Saturday — the Army vs. Navy game.

The annual game between the military service academies was held this year in Baltimore. The soon-to-be commander-in-chief was cheered with chants of “USA! USA!” as he entered the stadium.

Trump talked with CBS Sports announcers Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson during the third quarter of the game, joking that perhaps he should appoint Ludquist as ambassador to Sweden. Lundquist was calling his final football game for CBS on Saturday.

And while Trump said he was happy to be attending the game, he told CBS the traditional meeting between the rival military academies maybe wasn’t the most exciting football game.

Here’s the President-elect throwing shade at the quality of service academy football pic.twitter.com/lEjlLTN4W1

— Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) December 10, 2016

“I just love the armed forces, love the folks. The spirit is so incredible. I mean, I don’t know if it’s necessarily the best football, but it’s very good, “Trump said. “But boy do they have spirit, more than anybody. It’s beautiful.”

It did end up being an exciting game, with Army snapping their 14-year losing streak over Navy in a close 21-17 win. But Trump left before the game was over.

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Before he departed for New York, the president-elect split his time by sitting on both the Army and Navy sides, in boxes partially enclosed by bulletproof glass. On the Army side, he was a guest in the box of David Urban, a 1986 West Point graduate who advised Trump’s campaign in Pennsylvania. Also in the box were Gen. Mark A. Milley, chief of staff of the U.S. Army, and Lt. Gen. General Robert L. Caslen, Jr., the superintendent of the West Point academy.

On the Navy side, he was a guest of retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a graduate of the Annapolis academy and a former national security aide in the Reagan administration who was embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair. Also in the Navy box were Admiral John Richardson, chief of U.S. Navy Operations, and Gen. Robert Neller, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.

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Economist Says Manufacturing Job Loss Driven By Technology, Not Globalization

NPR’s Scott Simon talks to economist Michael Hicks about how most of the manufacturing jobs lost in this country are due to increased use of technology and not outsourcing to foreign countries.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

American manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Donald Trump certainly hammered that theme home during this year’s campaign. The country’s lost more than 7 million factory jobs since the late 1970s, and yet the amount of stuff the U.S. produces is at an all-time high. A lot of these jobs have not been lost to other countries, according to Michael Hicks who’s an economist. He co-authored a report last year – “The Myth And Reality Of Manufacturing In America.” He says automation is responsible. Michael Hicks who teaches at Ball State University joins us now from the studios of Indiana Public Radio in Muncie. Professor Hicks, thanks for being with us.

MICHAEL HICKS: It’s good to be with you.

SIMON: And, boy, Indiana has been in the crosshairs of this recently – hasn’t it? – because of the Carrier plant. What do you make of President-elect Trump’s representation that hundreds of jobs were saved?

HICKS: Well, clearly, for the workers that are there, it appears that there are going to be more jobs available for the next several years. The question that I have is whether or not the jobs are saved or the workers are saved? As the plant probably goes through an automation period, we just don’t know how many of the workers that are there now are going to be able to fit into the new, highly technical automated factory of 2020.

SIMON: Yeah. Do you believe people that talk about our outsourcing haven’t accounted for the powerful impact of automation in industry?

HICKS: You know, it’s very clear to me in talking about the subject and writing about it for the past couple of years that there’s a real disconnect between what we talk about, which is jobs floating overseas to Mexico and China and Vietnam, and the reality, which is that automation and technological improvement have really accounted for the vast majority of job losses in Indiana nationwide.

SIMON: Yeah. Well, explain to us how that works. How could we be producing more stuff with fewer people?

HICKS: Everything from statistical process control that cuts down on waste and mistakes and measurement to robotics. And digitisation of a production process is going to make things quicker. So to sort of put in context, in 1990, the average American autoworker made 13 cars a year. In 2010, the average American autoworker made 18 cars a year. So we don’t need as many auto workers as we did a generation and a half ago.

SIMON: Are new jobs being created by automation?

HICKS: To be sure, they’re harder to see, but the entire tech industry is really fueled by the need for factories and for service providers to have more technology. And then, you know, of course, logistics – between the time that manufacturing peaked in 1977 and today, we’re down about 7 and a half million manufacturing jobs, but we’re up about 9 and a half million logistics jobs.

SIMON: What about the promise that I daresay some people find to be smug that is sometimes made to people who work in factories? Oh, don’t worry. More jobs are going to be created, and we’ll train you for those. Is that practical?

HICKS: You know, it’s a difficult thing to ask a 56-year-old guy or gal who hasn’t been around middle school math since the early ’70s to, you know, jump into a training program at our community technical college or with our workforce development board and get retooled for a technology job or to work in a health care setting. It’s a very difficult thing to do. I mean, we may have to face up to it, but it’s not a simple and seamless task.

SIMON: Are we talking about a landscape eventually in this country – and I don’t mean in two or three years, but I perhaps within the lifetimes of people listening – where there is no manufacturing? Everything is robotic.

HICKS: That’s an interesting question. I think it’s – to think about the challenge that manufacturing may face, is – it’s good to look at agriculture. We were, within living memory, at a time when most Americans in the Midwest and certainly the grain states – Nebraska, Kansas – were working in agriculture, and those are very important industries. Two thousand fifteen was a record agricultural production here in the United States. We’re doing that with a very, very small share of the population. So the challenge of places like Muncie or Youngstown or Detroit that have a lot of manufacturing is – what are you going to do afterwards to keep people here that was less successful for much of the agricultural industry?

SIMON: Michael Hicks at Ball State University, thanks so much for being with us.

HICKS: Delighted.

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Don't Skip Medicare Coverage For Doctor Visits, Even If You Have Other Insurance

When Cindy Hunter received her Medicare card in the mail last spring, she said she “didn’t know a lot about Medicare.” She and her husband, retired teachers who live in a Philadelphia suburb, decided she didn’t need it because she shared his retiree health insurance, which covered her treatment for ovarian cancer.

Cindy Hunter, who is battling ovarian cancer, says she mistakenly thought she didn’t need to enroll in Medicare because her husband’s retiree insurance would cover her. Steph Brecht/Courtesy of Cindy Hunter hide caption

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Steph Brecht/Courtesy of Cindy Hunter

“We were so thankful we had good insurance,” she said. So she sent back the card, telling officials she would keep Medicare Part A, which is free for most older or disabled Americans and covers hospitalization, some nursing home stays and home health care. But she turned down Part B, which covers doctor visits and other outpatient care and comes with a monthly premium charge. A new Medicare card arrived that says she only has Part A.

Her story isn’t unique.

When Stan Withers left a job at a medical device company to become vice president of a small start-up near Sacramento, Calif., he took his health insurance with him. Under a federal law known as COBRA, he paid the full cost to continue his coverage from his previous employer. A few years earlier, when he turned 65, he signed up for Medicare’s Part A. With the addition of a COBRA plan, he thought he didn’t need Medicare Part B.

Hunter and Withers now know they were wrong and are stuck with medical bills their insurance won’t cover. Hunter called it “an honest mistake” and said there was nothing in the written materials she and her husband received indicating that if they had Medicare Part A, his retiree coverage could not replace Medicare Part B. Withers had no idea he made a bad choice

Thousands of seniors unwittingly make similar mistakes every year, believing that because they have some type of health insurance they don’t have to worry about signing up for Medicare Part B. Generally, insurance other than that provided by a current employer will not exempt them from Medicare’s strict enrollment requirements.

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Advocates for seniors and some members of Congress want to fix the problem, backed by a broad, unlikely group of unions, health insurers, patient organizations, health care providers and even eight former Medicare administrators.

Medicare’s Part B enrollment rules haven’t changed since the program was created in 1965. Seniors can enroll only when they first become eligible — usually three months before and after the month they turn 65 — or when their job-based insurance ends. If they miss this chance, they have to wait until the months of January through March to enroll and then coverage only begins July 1. Most won’t be allowed to buy any other health insurance policy during that time.

If people delay signing up for 12 or more months after becoming eligible, many will be hit with a permanent penalty added to their Part B monthly premium. In 2014, about 750,000 beneficiaries paid late penalties, raising their Part B premiums an average of 29 percent, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“The rules have not changed, but our lives have,” said Joe Baker, president of the Medicare Rights Center, an advocacy group that is leading the effort to update the enrollment process. When Medicare began, the government wanted seniors, especially younger and healthier people, to sign up quickly and so the deadlines and late penalties were incentives to get them in the program.

But these days more seniors work past the Medicare eligibility age, get health insurance through their employer or their spouse’s, or have coverage through the health insurance marketplaces, Baker said. The problem isn’t that people are going without insurance. “The confusion that we really see is with how Medicare interacts with other insurance coverage,” he said.

Hunter, 62, became eligible for Medicare earlier than 65 because she gets Social Security disability benefits. She’s receiving two chemotherapy drugs to control a second reoccurrence of ovarian cancer. This fall her oncologist’s office told her there’s “something going on with your insurance,” she recalled. After many calls to her husband’s retiree plan, Social Security, Medicare and even her congressman, she learned that her insurance would only pay a share of the bills for her cancer treatment after deducting the amount the insurer said was Medicare’s responsibility. “But Medicare isn’t paying because I don’t have Part B,” she said. So Hunter is probably responsible for that portion.

Withers thought the health plan he purchased through his old employer would count as job-based coverage, but COBRA is not a substitute for Medicare Part B, a point no one mentioned when he submitted his paperwork. He should have signed up for Part B when he left his previous job.

“How could there be a rule that no one knows about?” Withers asked.

In addition, the private plan has refused to pay thousands of dollars in medical bills because the company argued that he should have had Part B and those are Medicare’s responsibility.

Confusion over COBRA is just one of many reasons that people miss their opportunity to enroll in Part B. Others think, incorrectly, that getting Veterans Health Administration benefits, job-based-health insurance from a company with less than 20 workers, retiree coverage from a former employer, or coverage from the health law’s insurance marketplace exempts them from Part B’s lifetime late penalties and waiting periods with no insurance.

To help seniors avoid such mistakes, bipartisan legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate that would allow people who miss their initial Part B enrollment deadline to sign up in the fall, when millions of seniors already in Medicare are choosing private drug or medical policies. Part B coverage would begin the month after they enroll, said Stacy Sanders, federal policy director at the Medicare Rights Center. It would also allow most people who enroll late to apply for retroactive coverage to their initial eligibility date and request a waiver of the late penalties if they can prove they were misled by an employer, health plan, insurance broker or state official (currently, an exemption may be based only on misinformation from a federal government representative).

“Because I didn’t ask Social Security and they didn’t give me the wrong information, there was nothing they could do,” Hunter said. “They said if they had given me the wrong information, they might be able to do something.”

Seniors “shouldn’t face penalties or gaps in their Part B coverage simply due to bureaucratic snafu,” said Rep. Patrick Meehan, R-Pa., who co-sponsored the House bill. “I’ve had seniors contact my office and say they simply had no idea of existing deadlines — or that they faced penalties down the road for missing them.”

The legislation also would require Medicare officials to notify all Americans prior to their 65th birthday about signing up for Medicare. Currently, the federal government and some states notify only those 64-year-olds who have health insurance though the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces.

Although the bill appears unlikely to see action before the end of the current congressional session, Meehan said he will reintroduce it in 2017.

Getting an official government notice before turning 65 explaining when to sign up for Part B would “absolutely” help, said Withers. “There should be something that tells people what they need to do.”

Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can follow Susan Jaffe on Twitter: @susanjaffe.

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