February 18, 2017

No Image

Business February 18, 2017

NPR Launches New Tool To Monitor President Trump's Ethical Promises

Senior Business Editor Marilyn Geewax talks about NPR’s newly-launched Trump Ethics Monitor, a tool that helps track conflicts of interest between President Trump’s businesses and the White House.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Now let’s talk about a new tool that NPR’s digital team created. It’s the Trump Ethics Monitor. It’s a digital project on npr.org that lets us and you keep an eye on President Trump’s business interests and what he’s doing to rid himself of conflicts of interest related to them. Here to talk about this tool is Marilyn Geewax, NPR’s senior business editor. Marilyn, welcome back. Thanks so much for joining us once again.

MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Hi, Michel.

MARTIN: So very quickly, remind us of what President Trump has said about these ethical issues. I mean, he reminds us often, as does the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, that presidents are not subject to the same conflict of interest rules that other government employees and even Cabinet secretaries are. So what has he said about this?

GEEWAX: Right. Even though he, on the one hand, says he’s exempt from those conflict rules – and he is – he has made a number of assertions. And we went through a bunch of transcripts of the debates and White House statements to look for what has he said he would do, and we came up with 10 claims. And then we set out to find the documentation that he actually has lived up to his own word.

And what we found is that there are these assertions. And sometimes he says he’s done them, but we are still not seeing any evidence of them. For example, he said he would sell all of his stock. He said he’s done that. But there’s no paperwork. We would like to be able to link to a document. Where’s the receipt? You know, just show us.

He also said that he would release his taxes when his audit is completed, but he has not released a letter from the IRS saying he is being audited. So – and, of course, there’s also the issue that the IRS says you don’t have to wait for an audit to be done.

MARTIN: So how does the tool work? Can you kind of walk us through it?

GEEWAX: Well, we just quote the promise, what he has said in his own words or his attorney, and then you can click on it to see – what is the conflict that’s potentially the problem? What is the latest development in this? And you can draw your own conclusions.

MARTIN: Are there any areas in which President Trump has made progress?

GEEWAX: Yeah. I think you could say – he has said that he would step back from daily management of the business, and we can find documents to show that. But at the same time, he has – all he’s done with the businesses is collect them all up together and put them into a revocable trust. But he’s the sole beneficiary of that trust. So even if his sons are running the businesses, the daily management, ultimately the money comes back to him. So ethics experts say that’s nowhere near what is enough to end the conflict of interest.

MARTIN: Now, before we let you go, Marilyn, we just heard from NPR’s Scott Horsley, who is at a Trump rally in Florida today. And this is actually a campaign event geared toward – wait for it – the 2020 election. So…

GEEWAX: Ooh (laughter). We’re all so excited to look forward to another cycle of…

MARTIN: Exactly. So I wanted to know if there are – people have raised ethics questions about these campaign events during the previous campaign. What are those questions?

GEEWAX: Well, it’s very unusual to have a president who has so many for-profit businesses. So when he was a candidate, for example, his companies made something like nearly $13 million in rental, you know, for staging an event, and then the campaign would actually pay his businesses. So it’s kind of unclear over the next four years – every time he shows up at one of his properties, will he call that a campaign event and collect rent for that? It’s a strange situation.

And he can also, you know, take in donations right now. He’s already collecting money for 2020. So it’s just unusual. Other people in the past have waited at least two years into their term before they started running for re-election.

MARTIN: That’s Marilyn Geewax, NPR’s business editor. You can check out the Trump Ethics Monitor at npr.org. Marilyn, thank you.

GEEWAX: 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.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

No Image

Sports February 18, 2017

Saturday Sports: A Winning Streak And A Losing Streak

A weekly update on the world of sports! This week, a look at the women’s basketball team with the most wins, and the team that hasn’t won a single game all year.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

And now it’s time for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: It’s the NBA’s All-Star Weekend, and once again, BJ Leiderman, who writes our theme music, has been left off of both teams. Will either team play defense in tomorrow’s game? Spoiler alert – no. Will former teammates and current adversaries Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook – both playing for the Western Conference – pass to each other or will they hire lawyers to do it? NPR’s Tom Goldman is here to ignore those questions, but he’ll talk about some other real basketball stars. Tom, thanks for being with us.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: (Laughter) My pleasure, my pleasure.

SIMON: Tonight, UConn – University of Connecticut – women’s basketball team goes for win number 101 in a row. They hit that 100-straight victory milestone earlier this week – an extraordinary accomplishment, but there have been some dissonant voices, too, haven’t there?

GOLDMAN: There sure have because we’re talking about women’s sports. There always are. Those doubters minimize the streak, Scott, because the Huskies are so absurdly dominant. The average margin of victory for the 100 wins – 38 points. They minimize what head coach Geno Auriemma does because he has the best players. But like any great head coach with great players, it’s what he does with those players, right? He fits them into a system. He pushes them to be even greater. He’s a great coach, and he certainly got that message from his university with a reported new five-year contract worth at least 13 million bucks.

SIMON: I want to mention a women’s college team that’s – you know, it is as far away from UConn as you can get, except maybe in that indefinable element of character, and that’s Chicago State. The Cougars are in the midst of an epic losing streak, and I know you talked to their head coach this week.

GOLDMAN: Yeah, I did. We talked about her team being 0 and 24. We talked about the difficulties at Chicago State. It’s a public university that serves a lot of low-income students, and it’s been in dire straits recently. State funding is way down as it is with all public universities in Illinois. They’ve had a woeful graduation rate, but the Cougar – and the Cougars are struggling like their school. Zero and 24 is the longest current losing streak in Division I women’s basketball. But there are some positive things going on. That head coach, Angela Jackson, she’s now in her 14th year at Chicago State, and she’s impressed by her players’ attitudes as the losses have mounted. Here she is.

ANGELA JACKSON: That’s the amazing thing about this group. It hasn’t been, oh no, here we go again. You know, I don’t see the shoulders slumping. I don’t see the heads going down. They’re still up. They’re still clapping. They’re still fighting. We’ve just come out on the losing end of it.

GOLDMAN: Yeah, now Angela Jackson’s really proud of her players, but she doesn’t treat them like heroes. I asked her if she gets mad at her team. Here’s what she said.

JACKSON: Every day (laughter) – I’m still a coach, and I’m still competitive. You don’t, you know, go out there and come out on the short end and your competitive nature doesn’t kick in, so absolutely.

SIMON: Tom, why can’t they seem to win a game?

GOLDMAN: You know, you would think maybe it’s because they’re not talented. That’s not it. Coach Jackson says it’s mainly about numbers. The Cougars started the season with nine players, then one transferred, one blew out her knee, one got a concussion. So for 18 of their 24 games, they have played with six players. The coach says they’ve been close in a lot of games, but, you know, when the fourth quarter comes around, they simply run out of gas.

SIMON: Yeah. Coach Jackson has a lot of admirers. She could get a job at a lot of other places, right?

GOLDMAN: Yes, she could, yeah, but she really doesn’t think about that right now. See, she says if she gives up, her kids are going to give up. And she says they don’t want to, you know, they don’t deserve to be shortchanged, but it’s not all doom and gloom. She says the team has improved during the season, although the record doesn’t reflect that. She talks about individual players who’ve improved. Chicago State plays today, Scott, against Missouri-Kansas City. The Cougars will try to get that first win.

SIMON: Tom, I went on their website last night, and I ordered a sweatshirt.

GOLDMAN: (Laughter) All right.

SIMON: I got to tell you, Chicago State sweatshirt – had to, good colors…

GOLDMAN: The fan club grows, yeah, excellent.

SIMON: NPR’s Tom Goldman, thanks so much for being with us.

GOLDMAN: 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.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

No Image

Health February 18, 2017

GOP Leaders Urge Return To 'High-Risk Insurance Pools' That Critics Call Costly

Craig Britton once paid $18,000 a year in premiums for health insurance he bought through Minnesota’s “high risk pool.” He calls the argument that these pools can bring down the cost of monthly premiums “a lot of baloney.”

Mark Zdehchlik / MPR News

hide caption

toggle caption

Mark Zdehchlik / MPR News

Some Republicans looking to scrap the Affordable Care Act say monthly health insurance premiums need to be lower for the individuals who have to buy insurance on their own. One way to do that, GOP leaders say, would be to return to the use of what are called high-risk insurance pools.

But critics say even some of the most successful high-risk pools that operated before the advent of Obamacare were very expensive for patients enrolled in the plans, and for the people who subsidized them — which included state taxpayers and people with employer-based health insurance.

The argument in favor of high-risk pools goes like this: Separate the healthy people, who don’t cost very much to insure, from people who have pre-existing medical conditions, such as a past serious illness or a chronic condition. Under GOP proposals, this second group, which insurers fear might be expected to use more medical care, would be encouraged to buy health insurance through high-risk insurance pools that are subsidized by states and the federal government.

Article continues after sponsorship

Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan made the case for high-risk pools on public television’s Charlie Rose show in January.

“By having taxpayers, I think, step up and focus on, through risk pools, subsidizing care for people with catastrophic illnesses, those losses don’t have to be covered by everybody else [buying insurance], and we stabilize their plans,” Ryan told the TV host.

Minnesota’s newest congressman Jason Lewis (R-Minnesota) recently endorsed high-risk pools on CNN.

“Minnesota had one of the best … high-risk insurance pools in the country,” Lewis said. “And it was undone by the ACA.”

It’s true that the Affordable Care Act banned states’ use of high-risk pools, including the Minnesota Comprehensive Health Association, or MCHA. But that’s because the MCHA was no longer needed, the association’s website explains; the federal health law requires insurers to sell health plans to everybody, regardless of their health status.

Supporters of the MCHA approach tout a return to it as a smart way to bring down the cost of monthly premiums. But MCHA had detractors, too.

Craig Britton of Plymouth, Minn., once had a plan through the state’s high-risk pool. It cost him $18,000 a year in premiums.

Britton was forced to buy the expensive MCHA coverage because of a pancreatitis diagnosis. He calls the idea that high-risk pools are good for consumers “a lot of baloney.”

“That is catastrophic cost,” Britton says. “You have to have a good living just to pay for insurance.”

And that’s the problem with high-risk pools, says Stefan Gildemeister, an economist with Minnesota’s health department.

“It’s not cheap coverage to the individual, and it’s not cheap coverage to the system,” Gildemeister says.

MCHA’s monthly premiums cost policy holders 25 percent more than conventional coverage, Gildemeister points out, and that left many people uninsured in Minnesota.

“There were people out there who had a chronic disease or had a pre-existing condition who couldn’t get a policy,” Gildemeister says.

And for the MCHA, even the higher premiums fell far short of covering the full cost of care for the roughly 25,000 people who were insured by the program. It needed more than $173 million in subsidies in its final year of normal operation.

That money came from fees collected from private insurance plans –- which essentially shifted a big chunk of the cost of insuring people in MCHA program to people who get their health insurance through work.

Gildemeister ran the numbers on what a return to MCHA would cost. Annual high-risk pool coverage for a 40-year-old would cost more than $15,000, he says. The policy holder would pay about $6,000 of that, and subsidies would cover the more than $9,000 remaining.

University of Minnesota health policy professor Lynn Blewett says there is a better alternative than a return to high-risk pools. It’s called “reinsurance.” In that approach, insurers pay into a pool that the federal government administers, using the funds to compensate health plans that incur unexpectedly high medical costs. It’s basically an insurance program for insurers.

The big question is whether lawmakers will balk at the cost of keeping premiums down for consumers — whatever the approach, Blewett says.

“The rub is, where that funding is going to come from?” she says. “And is the federal government or the state government willing to put up the funding needed to make some of these fixes?”

The national plan Ryan proposes would subsidizehigh-risk pools with $25 billion of federal money over 10 years. The nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund estimates the approach could cost U.S. taxpayersmuch more than that — almost $178 billion a year.

Researchers at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company say reinsurance would likely cost about a third of what the high-risk pool option would.

This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Minnesota Public Radio andKaiser Health News.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)