May 9, 2018

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Entertainment May 9, 2018

Today in Movie Culture: Watch Rick Moranis Return as 'Spaceballs' Villain, 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2' VFX Break Down and More

Here are a bunch of little bites to satisfy your hunger for movie culture:

Role Reprisal of the Day:

The semi-retired Rick Moranis vocally revisted his role as Dark Helmet in Spaceballs for this scene from a new episode of The Goldbergs:

VFX Breakdown of the Day:

Weta Digital shares a breakdown of their Oscar-nominated visual effects work on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:

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Cosplay of the Day:

Speaking of Guardians, BBC’s The Social profiled a cosplayer whose Nebula and Harley Quinn are worthy of attention:

These Harley Quinn and Nebula cosplay looks are UNREAL.@karengillan@MargotRobbiepic.twitter.com/Hwvt0047zL

— BBC The Social (@bbcthesocial) May 8, 2018

Fan Theory of the Day:

For Nerdist, Dan Casey examines the ridiculous fan theory that there are two different Luke Skywalkers in the Star Wars universe, of different sizes:

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Movie Comparison of the Day:

You love Pixar’s Up but not Despicable Me 3? But they’re the same movie, as Couch Tomato shows with 24 piece of evidence:

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Vintage Image of the Day:

Albert Finney, who turns 82 today, receives direction from Tim Burton on the set of Big Fish in 2003:

Character in Close-Up:

In the latest episode of IMDb’s Awesome Bad Guys, Patrick Epino puts the spotlight on Regina George from Mean Girls:

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Supercut of the Day:

This cinematic tribute to voiceover narrators consists of clips from Darkest Hour, The King’s Speech and more movies where a character has to speak into a microphone:

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Movie Influencer of the Day:

For Fandor, Jacob T. Swinney looks at the influence of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo on the 60th anniversary of its premiere:

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Classic Trailer of the Day:

Today is the 15th anniversary of the release of the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer. Watch the original trailer for the underrated classic below.

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and

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Business May 9, 2018

Worries That A Federal Student Loan Watchdog Will Be Defanged

Mick Mulvaney, acting director of the CFPB, testifies at a House hearing.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

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Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

It’s a single line in an email:

“The office of ‘Students & Young Consumers’ … will be folded into the office of ‘Financial Education.’ “

Words sent Wednesday morning by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s acting director, Mick Mulvaney, announcing various staffing changes at the bureau.

Why did this bureaucratic-sounding announcement trigger a sheaf of critiques from consumer groups, California’s attorney general and at least two U.S. senators?

Because student loans just crossed the $1.5 trillion mark. They are the biggest category of borrowing after mortgages. And since 2012, when college students are mistreated or misled, the CFPB’s Student and Young Consumer division has been there to help:

Students and Young Consumers, until recently, was a parallel program office to the office of Financial Education, so this reorganization looks an awful lot like a demotion. Staffers at the bureau, who declined to use their names for fear of losing their jobs, tell NPR they believe this is a move to weaken their ability to protect student loan borrowers and other young people.

A former senior CFPB attorney agrees. “This is an appalling step,” says Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former enforcement lawyer and special advisor at the CFPB. “This has been an office that’s been out there protecting consumers when student loan debt collectors, predatory schools, and other companies have been violating the law.”

The CFPB’s spokesman John Czwartacki told NPR: “This is a very modest organizational chart change to keep the Bureau in line with the statute but the office is still operating within the same division. The work of the office continues, personnel are all on the job and working on the same material as they were before. The bottom line is there is no functional or even practical change.”

Here’s a recap of the context. President Trump named Mulvaney, who is still the director of the Office of Management and Budget, concurrently to this post at CFPB last fall. The only problem was, Obama appointee Richard Cordray had already named his deputy, Leandra English, to be his successor. In fact just last month the two were in court fighting about it. As a U.S. Representative, Mulvaney criticized the agency and voted both to muzzle it and to get rid of it entirely. Also last month, he faced off against Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in a banking committee hearing; she blasted him for his lack of regulatory verve since assuming the post, saying, “You are hurting real people to score cheap political points.”

Meanwhile, it’s getting lonely out there for those trying to hold shady lenders, servicers and colleges accountable.

“Now, I’m less convinced that there’s going to be somebody in Washington who is paying attention to whether or not these businesses are doing what they’re supposed to,” says Peterson.

The Department of Education stopped cooperating with CFPB on student loan enforcement last fall, and in March, they issued guidance telling states to back off too.

This story has been updated with the CFPB’s response.

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Sports May 9, 2018

Las Vegas Golden Knights Could End Up In Stanley Cup Finals In Team's Inaugural Year

With just a few teams left in the NHL playoffs, it looks like there may be a first time winner of the Stanley Cup before it’s all over. It might even be the Las Vegas Golden Knights, a team that didn’t exist 14 months ago.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Not even two years ago, the Las Vegas Golden Knights were just an idea. Now the NHL expansion team is on the brink of the Stanley Cup final. Now, let’s be clear. If an expansion team somehow avoids finishing in last place in its inaugural year, that’s a big deal. What the Golden Knights are doing this year is just ridiculous. It’s one of the NHL stories I want to talk about with veteran hockey reporter Scott Burnside of The Athletic. Welcome to the program.

SCOTT BURNSIDE: Thank you very much for having me, and – always love to talk about playoff hockey.

CORNISH: So just how good are the Knights?

BURNSIDE: (Laughter) Well, I just got done a radio interview where I said I’m going to stop predicting anything to do with the Vegas Golden Knights because I have been wrong right from the get-go. They’re a driven group, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they were cast off or they felt cast off by their other NHL teams. They were exposed in the expansion draft. And so there is a – I think they call themselves the Vegas misfits. And I think there has been a galvanizing element to that. And they play a very fast-tempo game that is fun to watch, and it’s been captivating. I agree with you. It’s been the story of the NHL this season, and it certainly is the story of the playoffs to date.

CORNISH: I’m going to expose my bias here and talk about the Washington Capitals because for about a decade, they’ve been a Stanley Cup favorite. And they have good regular seasons, and then they kind of fall apart in the post-season. But this year…

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JOHN WALTON: Here come the Caps. Kuznetsov gets loose – Evgeny coming down the middle. A shot, and it comes over. He scores. He scores. Evgeny Kuznetsov wins it for Washington. It’s off to the third round. The demons have been exorcised.

CORNISH: So essentially the Washington Capitals got past their tormentors, the Pittsburgh Penguins, as you can hear there. Their demons have finally been exorcised. Is that the case? How significant was this moment for this team?

BURNSIDE: Oh, there’s no question. I’ve spent a lot of time around that team over the last decade. And you’re right. They are a team – I believe they’ve won three Presidents’ Trophies, so they’ve been the top team in the regular season three times, never managed to get out of the second round in the playoffs. In fact, this represents just the second time in franchise history that they’ve gone as far as a conference final.

I was certainly pleased for, you know, Barry Trotz, who coached for a long time in Nashville before going to Washington. He had never coached a team under the second round. Alexander Ovechkin, who has, you know, at times been criticized because of his inability as a captain to the team to lead his very talented Washington teams beyond the second round – you know, you could see in the postgame interviews that there’s a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. And this has been a very talented team. And they have always underachieved in the playoffs. And this was a moment where they did not.

CORNISH: You know, it’s hilarious to me that here we are talking about Las Vegas. I know the Nashville team, Tampa Bay team – they’re all still alive. And meanwhile, no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993. (Laughing) I understand just – there’s just the lone Winnipeg Jets right now. Can they break that streak?

BURNSIDE: Well, you know, in having been in Winnipeg covering this series – and you understand the depth of passion for that team. Of course they lost the team. Years ago, they went to Arizona. And in 2011, Winnipeg got a team again as the Atlanta Thrashers moved to Winnipeg. And it has not been an easy road.

This spring marked the first time in that franchise’s history that they’d ever won a single playoff game, let alone a series. I don’t know whether they can win on the road in Game 7 in Nashville, but I can tell you they’re a very good team. And if they don’t do it this year, they are definitely going to be back. And I think they probably represent Canada’s greatest hope for breaking, as you point out, what has been a long, long Stanley Cup drought.

CORNISH: All right, so if you could pick a team at this point in time to take it all, who are you rooting for?

BURNSIDE: Well, at the beginning of the playoffs, I had Washington and Nashville in the final. I predicted the Capitals would not just exercise their demons against Pittsburgh but would win the whole thing. So I’m going to stick with that. I know there are three other very, very good teams still that feel that they can – they have the goods to take it all. But I’m going to stick with Washington defeating Nashville in the final.

CORNISH: That’s Scott Burnside, national hockey writer for The Athletic. Thank you for speaking with us.

BURNSIDE: My pleasure.

Copyright © 2018 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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Health May 9, 2018

Why Can't Medicare Patients Use Drugmakers' Discount Coupons?

Patients with private insurance like the drug coupons because they can help make specialty medicines more affordable. But health care analysts say the coupons may also discourage patients from considering appropriate lower-cost alternatives, including generic drugs.

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One reader suspects a double standard — how come people with private health insurance are allowed to use a manufacturer’s discount coupon for medicine, but Medicare patients can’t? Another consumer wonders what ever happened to cost-free primary care appointments. We have answers to these health care questions that may have been worrying or frustrating you, too:

My doctor wants me to take Repatha for my high cholesterol, but my Medicare drug plan copayment for it is $618 a month. Why can’t I use a $5 drug copay coupon from the manufacturer? If I had commercial insurance, I could. I’m on a fixed income. How is this fair?

The explanation may offer you little comfort. Under the federal anti-kickback law, it’s illegal for drug manufacturers to offer any type of payment that might persuade a patient to purchase something that federal health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid might pay for.

Here’s the scenario, and the federal government’s rationale: Makers of brand-name medicines use the coupons to help increase access to and demand for their products. Patients with commercial insurance like the coupons because they can help make expensive brand-name drugs more affordable. But the coupons may also discourage patients from considering appropriate lower-cost alternatives, including generics, says Leslie Fried, a senior director at the National Council on Aging.

According to a 2013 analysis coauthored by Dr. Joseph Ross, associate professor of medicine and public health at Yale University, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 62 percent of 374 drug coupons were for brand-name drugs for which there were lower-cost alternatives available.

If patients choose to use the coupons to buy a higher-cost drug over a generic or other cheaper alternative, the cost to Medicare and other federal health programs is likely to be more than what they would otherwise pay.

There’s also a hitch for any patient using the coupons, Ross points out: The discounts often have annual maximums that leave patients on the hook for the entire copayment after a certain number of months.

Last year, my marketplace plan covered five primary care visits at no charge before I paid down my $2,200 deductible. This year, it doesn’t cover any appointments before the deductible, and I had to pay $80 out-of-pocket when I went to the doctor. Is that typical now? It makes me think twice about going.

Under the Affordable Care Act, marketplace plans are required to cover many preventive services, including an annual checkup, without charging consumers anything out-of-pocket. Beyond that, many marketplace plans cover some services before you reach your deductible — such as some primary care visits or generic drugs.

But the likelihood of having a plan that offers to pay some portion of the cost of primary care before you reach your deductible (rather than requiring you to pay 100 percent of the cost until you hit that amount) varies significantly, depending on whether you’re in a bronze, silver or gold plan, according to a recent analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

In 2018, 77 percent of silver-level plans offer some cost sharing for primary care visits before enrollees have paid off their typical deductible of $3,800, the analysis finds. In most cases, that means people owe a copayment or coinsurance charge for each visit until they reach their deductible.

A small number of plans offer a limited number of no-cost or low-cost visits first, and then people using more services either have to pay the full charge for each visit or must share at least part of the cost until the deductible is met.

Bronze plans for 2018 are much stingier than silver plans in how much they’ll contribute to payments for primary care before people their deductible — the median deductible in 2018 plans is $6,400.

Only 38 percent of bronze plans offer any primary care coverage before the deductible, and generally patients still have to pay a copayment or coinsurance amount. A smaller percentage of bronze plans offer limited visits at no cost or low cost before the deductible is met.

The share of people who chose bronze plans grew from 23 percent in 2017 to 29 percent this year, says Katherine Hempstead, a senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. While premiums are typically significantly lower in bronze plans than other “metal”-level plans, it can be worthwhile to check out how plans handle primary care services before the deductible, she says.

Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit news service, is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, and is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.Follow Michelle Andrews on Twitter: @mandrews110.

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