January 21, 2017

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Health January 21, 2017

What Does Trump's Affordable Care Act Executive Order Do?

Donald Trump was president for less than a day when he signed an executive order guiding agencies to limit the way that the Affordable Care Act works. But does the executive order do?

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We’re going to take a break from covering the women’s marches today to talk about one of President Donald Trump’s first moves after taking the oath of office yesterday. President Trump signed an executive order to limit what he calls the quote, unquote, “burdens of the Affordable Care Act,” taking a step toward fulfilling his campaign promise to dismantle the law. NPR health policy correspondent Alison Kodjak is with us now to explain exactly what Donald Trump’s order does and what it cannot do. Alison, thanks so much for joining us.

ALISON KODJAK, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: So what exactly is in this executive order? What is the president trying to do here?

KODJAK: Well, the order talks broadly about, quote, “easing the burden of the Affordable Care Act.” But he talks about easing the burden, not just on individuals, but on insurance companies, on hospitals, on doctors, on medical device-makers, pretty much across the board, saying this law is hurting the entire health care industry.

And what it does is essentially sets the direction of policy for it. It tells all the heads of all his agencies, who haven’t yet been confirmed mostly, that they should find ways to ease the financial burden of this law on all these constituencies.

MARTIN: Now, that’s a pretty sweeping mandate. What can the order specifically require them to do at this point?

KODJAK: Well, it’s a little bit vague because it depends on how aggressive they want to be. He specifically mentions the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s nominated Representative Tom Price, who probably will be confirmed sometime in the next days or weeks. The HHS has a lot of regulations, such as the minimum requirements for coverage that they could change through a rule-making process. In addition, the HHS has the power to offer waivers to people who say that the individual mandate to buy insurance is a hardship.

So there are some people who speculate, oh, they’re going to just start giving waivers to anybody who complains. They can’t not enforce the law, meaning they have to have the IRS actually collect the penalty if people don’t buy insurance. But if they offer too many of these waivers, that could kind of undermine the individual market by making people not buy insurance.

MARTIN: But is the danger here that the individual market could actually collapse before there is a replacement for it? Because that’s what leads me to – my final question to you is how does this dovetail with President Trump’s other plans and promises?

KODJAK: If they want to have a replacement before they repeal the law, then they clearly don’t want the market to collapse, you know, in some sort of chaotic way. At which point, it’s probably unlikely that they’ll be too aggressive. It sort of just sets the tone of this is our intention, this is what we want to do. However, if they do want to really push it hard, they could do some damage early on.

MARTIN: So Alison, what is the bottom line here?

KODJAK: Well, no one’s quite sure because President Trump and his colleagues on Capitol Hill don’t yet seem to be on the same page about what they want. He has said he wants insurance for all. They’ve said they want to provide an atmosphere where everybody has access to insurance. And so we need to see where they’re going to go with that.

MARTIN: That’s NPR health policy correspondent Alison Kodjak here in our studios in Washington, D.C. Alison, thank you so much.

KODJAK: Thanks, Michel.

Copyright © 2017 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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Sports January 21, 2017

Saturday Sports: Golf, Politics And The Presidency

Golf will return as the prominent presidential sport. And football legend and African-American icon Jim Brown shocked the political sports community by supporting Donald Trump.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Administrations come and go, but now it’s time for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: President Trump is a golfer, so was President Obama, who was mostly a devoted basketball player. Does sports get politicized this year, too? NPR’s sports correspondent Tom Goldman joins us.

Tom, thanks so much for being with us.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: My pleasure, Scott.

SIMON: There’s been a fair amount of division in American sport over President Trump, hasn’t there? Ranging in LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, on the one hand…

GOLDMAN: Right.

SIMON: …And then – let me get you to talk about Jim Brown, interesting figure now.

GOLDMAN: Very interesting case. You know, considered the greatest running back in NFL history, known for his activism when he joined other prominent African-American athletes like Muhammad Ali and Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as you mentioned, all speaking out during the civil rights movement. But, you know, Brown’s form of activism was always different. He was more about practicality than protest. And it led to his controversial criticism of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and more recently Congressman John Lewis.

Journalist Dave Zirin wrote this week about spending time with Brown a couple of years ago and learning more about Brown’s attitudes, which focused on building an economic base in African-American communities – business ownership, entrepreneurship as a way to resist racism. And Brown has spent many years doing kind of roll-your-sleeves-up work in those communities. And this apparently is what he believes the new president will encourage after having a recent meeting with Trump.

SIMON: And he’s going to be talking about it, I gather, this week at a forum with a lot of other interesting people.

GOLDMAN: Yeah, yeah. He’s scheduled to take part in an event at San Jose State University. It’s a gathering to discuss athlete activism. And there will be, you know, traditional liberal voices from men like Dr. Harry Edwards and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And it’ll be interesting to hear what comes out of it, perhaps some constructive dialogue that could be applied outside the world of sports.

SIMON: Tom, I got to tell you, I was at the White House this week with the Chicago Cubs.

GOLDMAN: Lucky guy.

SIMON: And – yes, indeed. And I – President Obama said something, in what might be the last remarks of his administration, I want to note. The president said – the last official remarks of his administration, he said, quote, “sometimes people wonder, well, why are you spending time on sports? There’s other stuff going on throughout our history. Sports has had this power to bring us together even when the country is divided. Sports has changed attitudes and culture in ways that seem subtle but that ultimately made us think differently about ourselves and who we were.” The president said, there’s a direct line between Jackie Robinson and me standing here. There’s a direct line between people loving Ernie Banks and then the city being able to come together and work together in one spirit.

GOLDMAN: That’s nice…

SIMON: I told – I told his speech writers, the best presidential address I’ve heard since Gettysburg.

GOLDMAN: (Laughter) And I understand, like a great basketball move by the president, it was improvised.

SIMON: It was improvised indeed, yeah. The speechwriter told that to us. We got to talk about the NFL this weekend, Steelers versus Patriots, Green Bay versus the Falcons. A lot of people would love to see Brady and Rodgers – versus Rodgers in the Super Bowl.

GOLDMAN: Yeah. Well, that may very well happen. I think Brady’s a pretty strong bet, you know, hard to imagine Pittsburgh coming into Foxborough, Mass., and beating New England on its home field. Pittsburgh’s running back Le’Veon Bell has been the strength of the Pittsburgh offense. But he’s going up against an amazing and kind of unheralded run defense of the Patriots. Atlanta-Green Bay – man, we’ve got visions of both teams scoring in the 40s or 50s. That’s going to be a really exciting game, hard to call. And, you know what? We’re out of time, so I don’t have to.

SIMON: (Laughter) Way to vamp. NPR’s Tom Goldman, working the clock. Thanks very much, my friend.

GOLDMAN: (Laughter) You’re welcome.

Copyright © 2017 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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Business January 21, 2017

Corporate Leader Brenda Barnes Dies At 63

Brenda Barnes, the former CEO of Sara Lee, has died. She became known for quitting her job as the CEO of Pepsi-Cola to spend time with her family. Scott Simon speaks with her daughter Erin Barnes.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Brenda Barnes died on Tuesday at the age of 63. She was one of the highest-ranking women in corporate America when she chose to step down as president of PepsiCo North America in 1997 to be with her three children. She told NPR…

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

BRENDA BARNES: The whole issue boils down to time. You know, I was faced with many times when I might not be at a school event or I wouldn’t be there at a special moment, you know, for one of my children to tell me about or, you know, when you have very limited time windows, you are trying to force an interaction. That child might not be ready to talk about it. So just having that casual time to interact with your family is what I was finding that I was missing too much.

SIMON: Brenda Barnes would spend seven years with her children, and served on a few corporate boards, before she returned to full-time work as the CEO of Sara Lee. Erin Barnes is the daughter of Brenda Barnes. She is now 28 and joins us from Chicago. Thanks very much for being with us.

ERIN BARNES: Thank you for having me.

SIMON: Your mother always said she didn’t make the decision she did for you, her children, so much as herself. Help us understand that.

E. BARNES: Yeah, she – we were very fortunate growing up to have a wonderful nanny who lived with us for about 11 years and really became part of our family. She moved with us eight or nine times. And my mom, you know, told us after the fact, when she made the decision to stay home, that she said, I knew my children were loved. They were fed. They were educated. They had happy lives. So it wasn’t that we weren’t being well taken care of, she just didn’t want to miss another birthday. And her job had her travel so frequently that it did pull her away from home more than she wanted to be.

SIMON: Yeah, what difference do you think it made in your lives?

E. BARNES: Oh, it changed our lives entirely. It’s hard to even quantify, you know, what that would be like. But if I look back on those years, both of my parents who left Pepsi around the same time were the parents who drove every kid to the mall, to the movies, to soccer games and practices. And they were just – they were there at our disposal 100 percent of the time, and we have such a strong family unit.

And I think my mom particularly stepping down when she was at such a pinnacle in her career really showed us what value we were to her and how important her family was. And she really – you know, her actions very much matched what she always preaches, which is that family is the most important thing to her.

SIMON: There was some criticism at the time, I gather.

E. BARNES: Yeah, yeah. She laughed. I mean, I – she really is blown away. And I think it was maybe in the interview she had with Katie Couric back in the day that she said, you know, I got famous for quitting my job. I think she just never in a million years would have thought that it would have impacted the business world like it did. And it sparked a debate of women feeling like she had a responsibility to other women, showing that you can have it all. And my mom would always just say there’s 24 hours a day, seven days in a week, and you have to pick and choose what’s important to you. So that’s really all she did.

And people – my mom would always tell people the thing she hated most was this debate that women have, you know, kind of criticizing one or the other, whether it’s working moms kind of pitting themselves against stay-at-home moms or vice versa. My mom just said, it is 100 percent a personal decision for you, for your family. And what she did find that upset her so much, and it was such a kind of lacking space just in our business world, is that these moms who do work and then stay at home to spend some time with their children don’t lose their minds.

They don’t lose any of their hard work, but they have a hard time coming back into the workforce. You know, that broke her heart because she said these women are brilliant, and running a household is no small feat. And they’re running the PTAs and they’re – you know, they’re running communities. Why are we having a hard time getting these women back into the working world? So she did some work at Sara Lee with the Returnships Program. But, you know, she was just very much a supporter of people making individual decisions and encouraging women to support each other and not – you know, there’s no right or wrong way to do anything. You just make your choices and choose what’s important to you.

SIMON: You sort of have changed your career track, I gather, too.

E. BARNES: I did. And my whole family is in business, so I kind of got pulled in that world in college. And then through the experience – so I worked in advertising in Chicago. And then through the experience with my mom, I have decided – and in my last couple months of a career change and finish nursing school this spring. So it was a decision largely shaped by, you know, kind of the identity I found in myself caring for her during the last six and a half years and having so many of those medical professionals help us in such a meaningful time. It was just something that really resonated with me and I found that I was much happier, you know, when I was caring for her. So I made a change and I’m very happy with it.

SIMON: Sounds like you learned from her example.

E. BARNES: Absolutely. Yeah, she – you know, our parents, I think, never cared what we did as long as we were happy doing it and that we worked hard and treated people with respect.

SIMON: Well, it sounds like you and your mother have done that.

E. BARNES: Thank you. Thank you very much.

SIMON: Erin Barnes, her mother, Brenda Barnes, died this week at the age of 63. Thanks for finding time for us this week.

E. BARNES: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Copyright © 2017 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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