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Business May 9, 2017

Havana Now Has A Luxury Mall. But Who Can Afford To Shop There?

A Cuban girl takes a selfie in front of a window of a luxury store at the Manzana de Gomez Kempinski five-star hotel in Havana on Monday. The Manzana de Gomez Kempinski bills itself as Cuba’s first real five-star hotel, and the brand-name shops around it appear designed to reinforce that.

Ramon Espinosa/AP

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Ramon Espinosa/AP

Cuba is not an easy place to buy things. Food is rationed, wages are low, and the black market is a way of life.

But now, Cubans can buy shirts with those little alligators on them at Lacoste. Or at L’Occitane en Provence, face cream for $162.40 an ounce. Or watches in the $10,000s.

Cuba’s first luxury mall, Manzana de Gomez, opened up a few weeks ago. And while those items are for sale, the prices are in a different sphere from what most Cubans can afford.

Indeed, the stores’ envisioned clientele seems to be tourists from abroad, rather than locals, and the new mall puts their differing means in high relief.

“A few blocks away, working-class Cubans live in decaying apartments on streets clogged by uncollected trash,” reports the AP:

“This hurts because I can’t buy anything,” said Rodolfo Hernandez Torres, a 71-year-old retired electrical mechanic who lives on a salary of $12.50 a month. “There are people who can come here to buy things but it’s maybe one in 10. Most of the country doesn’t have the money.”

Gaviota, the Cuban military’s tourism company, is the dealmaker behind the mall — and above it, the country’s first five-star hotel, opening in June. European luxury hotel brand Kempinski will operate the hotel, in a management deal with Gaviota. (American companies aren’t allowed to build in Cuba.)

“Gaviota is among the state-run companies under the umbrella of GAESA, a sprawling conglomerate run by the Cuban military,” the Miami Heraldexplained in February. “As a Cuban tourism enterprise, Gaviota’s portfolio includes 64 hotels and villas with more than 27,000 rooms in the 3, 4 and 5 star categories, marinas, a tour company and Transgaviota, a transportation services company.”

Cuba’s first luxury mall is in Old Havana’s Manzana de Gómez building, built between 1894 and 1917 as the country’s first European-style shopping arcade.

Kempinski Hotels

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Kempinski Hotels

Despite the company’s state ownership, a press release about the forthcoming hotel doesn’t sound like a socialist tract.

“With its impeccable 120-year history, European-style luxury and extraordinary quality, Europe’s oldest luxury hotel group Kempinski is a perfect fit with the Manzana de Gómez,” says Carlos M. Latuff, executive president of Grupo de Turismo Gaviota, according to the statement. “Constructed at the beginning of the 20th century, as Cuba’s first European-style shopping arcade, it is an iconic building in an important historical area. Together with Kempinski we will make this jewel the city’s leading luxury hotel.”

Last summer, well before the luxury watches and face creams were for sale, the project’s construction brought its own controversy. In July, Reuters reported that Bouygues, the French construction group building the hotel, had hired 100 Indian laborers to work on the project, “breaking a taboo in the Communist-run country on hiring foreign labor.” The wire service reported that it was the first time a firm had hired foreign workers en masse, seemingly to finish the hotel faster in order to meet increased tourism demands:

“[F]oreign firms are required to partner with state-run construction companies that have strict limits on how much they can pay Cubans. They can pay foreign workers more, however.

‘The Cuban workers are not paid well so there is little motivation,’ a western diplomat familiar with the pay differential said, requesting anonymity due to diplomatic protocol. ‘The Indian workers are being paid around 1,500 Euros a month, more than 10 times what their Cuban counterparts receive.’ “

The Cuban government bars foreign firms from hiring local workers directly, the Heraldexplained in August, and instead forces them to hire through state labor agencies. The newspaper says that Cubans hired for construction work through a labor agency receive $25 to $30 a month.

As Cuba tries to grow its tourism industry, the AP reports that it’s “under pressure to change its state-run hotels’ reputation for charging exorbitant prices for rooms and food far below international standards.”

Airlines jockeyed for routes from the U.S. to Havana after President Obama began opening up relations with the country in December 2014. But as Bloomberg reported in February, U.S. demand hasn’t been as strong as many expected, and some airlines have started cutting flights.

In Old Havana, Cubans have been exploring the new mall, taking photos amidst goods that would perhaps take a lifetime to buy.

Just 90 miles away in America, nine U.S. retail chains have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this year, in a country with 23 square feet of shopping center space for each person, the highest of anywhere in the world.

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Entertainment May 8, 2017

Today in Movie Culture: Neil deGrasse Tyson's Summer Movie Preview, 'Get Out' Meets 'Stranger Things' and More

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

Summer Movie Preview of the Day:

For The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Neil deGrasse Tyson offers his thoughts on Alien: Covenant, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Baywatch:

[embedded content]

Easter Eggs of the Day:

Now that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is out, Mr. Sunday Movies is back with a full list of Easter eggs, references and other things you need explained:

[embedded content]

Cosplay of the Day:

Speaking of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, this is what you do when you have nine other friends and you’re all going to see the movie together. See many more photos at Fashionably Geek.

Trailer Reaction of the Day:

The Thor: Ragnarok trailer is the greatest thing to happen to Earth this year, or so it seems in this video mashing it up with scenes from V for Vendetta, The Martian, Apollo 13 and other movies.

[embedded content]

Mashup of the Day:

At the MTV Movies and TV Awards last night, host Adam Devine crossed Get Out with Stranger Things:

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Vintage Poster of the Day:

Saul Bass, who was born on this day in 1920, designed the below poster for Advise & Consent, which premiered at Cannes on this day in 1962:

Filmmaker in Focus:

The Film Guy teamed up with Indy Mogul for a video teaching you how to direct movies like Wes Anderson:

[embedded content]

Supercut of the Day:

Drive, The Big Lebowski, Eyes Wide Shut and a few movies by Martin Scorsese come together in Aletranco’s supercut of night driving scenes:

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Trope of the Day:

WatchMojo looks at the history of the training montage with attention to significant examples in the Rocky series, The Karate Kid and of course Team America:

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Classic Trailer of the Day:

Today is the 75th anniversary of the release of John Huston’s In This Our Life, starring Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. Watch the original trailer for the classic movie below.

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and

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Business May 8, 2017

Austrian Court Rules Facebook Must Delete Hate Speech

An Austrian court ruled on Friday that the “hate postings” against an Austrian politician must be deleted from Facebook worldwide. The case concerns posts insulting Eva Glawischnig, the leader of the Austrian Green party. Above, a poster featuring Glawischnig before legislative elections in September 2013.

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Alexander Klein/AFP/Getty Images

In a decision that could have global consequences, an Austrian court ruled on Friday that Facebook must delete postings deemed to be hate speech.

“[T]he Viennese appeals court ruled on Friday that Facebook must remove the postings against Greens leader Eva Glawischnig as well as any verbatim repostings, and said merely blocking them in Austria without deleting them for users abroad was not sufficient,” Reuters reports, adding that Facebook’s lawyers in Vienna declined to comment on the ruling, but that a court spokesman confirmed it.

The case was brought by Austria’s Green party after its leader, Eva Glawischnig, was insulted on Facebook by posts from someone who didn’t use their real name. According to the Austrian newspaper Die Presse, the posts called Glawischnig “miese Volksverräterin” and “korrupten Trampel,” which translate roughly as “lousy traitor” and “corrupt bumpkin.”

Facebook has argued that it is governed by the laws of California (site of its headquarters) or Ireland, the base of its European operations, Die Pressereported. But the court ruled that simply blocking the hate posts in Austria was not enough — they must be deleted across the platform.

The court said it was easy for Facebook to automate the process of deleting verbatim repetitions of the hate posts, according to Reuters. “It said, however, that Facebook could not be expected to trawl through content to find posts that are similar, rather than identical, to ones already identified as hate speech.”

“Facebook must put up with the accusation that it is the world’s biggest platform for hate and that it is doing nothing against this,” said Green spokesman Dieter Brosz, Reuters reports.

The Washington Postreported in December:

“The insults directed at Glawischnig appeared to have been spread via the same fake profile that was used to circulate false rumors during the run-up to Austria’s presidential vote this month, including that Alexander van der Bellen — who eventually won the election — was suffering from cancer and dementia. In what seemed like an echo of the U.S. presidential race, Van der Bellen, who is close to the Green Party, was forced to publish his health records to dispel the rumors.”

Facebook is facing increased pressure in Europe to respond more quickly to fake news. Last month, Germany moved forward with legislation that would fine social networks as much as $53 million “if they fail to give users the option to complain about hate speech and fake news or refuse to remove illegal content,” Bloomberg reported.

“Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet on Wednesday backed a bill that would also force the companies to purge content flagged as child pornography or inciting terrorism — two categories added to the original draft. Corporate officials responsible would risk separate fines of as much as 5 million euros. If passed by parliament, the measures would be the toughest regulation Facebook faces in any country where it operates. …

“Facebook … expressed concern that the measure ‘would force private companies instead of courts to decide which content is illegal in Germany.’ “

Last week, after a number of violent incidents appeared in videos on its network, Facebook announced that it would hire 3,000 employees worldwide to review violent or hateful content.

Facebook pays NPR and other leading news organizations to produce live video streams that run on the site.

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Sports May 8, 2017

Yankees Defeat Cubs In 18-Inning Game That Broke Combined Strikeouts Record

The Yankees beat the Cubs last night in an 18-inning game that lasted six hours and five minutes, and broke the record for the most combined strikeouts in any game.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

The New York Yankees played the Chicago Cubs last night at Wrigley Field – and played and played and played.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

They played into the morning, in fact. They tied in the bottom of the ninth and played to the 18th inning. For those of you who are math or baseball-challenged, that is nine more innings than usual.

MCEVERS: Six hours and five minutes of baseball, the longest major league game this season.

SIEGEL: There were many challenges.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DAN SHULMAN: You need some new baseballs. Four hundred and seventy-two pitches, 41 strikeouts, just shy of tying the major league record. We need a new supply of baseballs.

AARON BOONE: Rub ’em (ph) up. Rub ’em up.

SIEGEL: That’s ESPN’s Aaron Boone and Dan Shulman, used with permission of Major League Baseball.

MCEVERS: Another challenge for this marathon of a game was keeping the fans awake. One stretch at the seventh inning wasn’t enough, so they stretched again in the 14th.

SIEGEL: A few innings later, their fortitude paid off.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SHULMAN: New major league record, 44th strikeout in a game.

MCEVERS: And yet that record did not stand. When the Yankees finally won in the 18th inning, the number of strikeouts was up to 48.

SIEGEL: They were thrown by 15 different pitchers for a total of 583 pitches in this very long baseball game.

MCEVERS: Not just long for players and fans. ESPN’s Buster Olney set his own record.

BUSTER OLNEY: As a sideline reporter, you know, I have to remain in place basically from the first pitch to the end of the game. So I stopped drinking liquids at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon because I can’t go to the bathroom during the course of the game. So the game started at 7:08. And we get to 1 o’clock, we get to the 18th inning, and I have a crisis developing.

MCEVERS: Happy to say crisis averted.

SIEGEL: A final note. This is not the longest major league baseball game ever. That honor belongs to the White Sox and the Brewers. In 1984, they played for eight hours and six minutes, 25 innings, before Chicago won.

(SOUNDBITE OF GEORGE BENSON’S “BENSON’S RIDER”)

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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Health May 8, 2017

GOP Health Bill Leaves Many 'Pre-Existing Condition' Protections Up To States

Two-year-old Ryan Lennon Fines was born with a condition called esophageal atresia that requires expensive medical treatment. His family worries the new GOP health bill would make it harder for Ryan to get insurance in the future because of his pre-existing medical condition.

Bram Sable-Smith/KBIA/Side Effects Public Media

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Bram Sable-Smith/KBIA/Side Effects Public Media

Ryan Lennon Fines seems like a typical 2-year-old. He and his parents, Scott Fines and Brianna Lennon, flip through a picture book of emergency vehicles. Ryan is looking for the motorcycle, but a photo of an airplane catches his dad’s eye.

“That’s an air ambulance,” Fines tells him. “You’ve been on one of those.”

When Ryan was born in 2014, his mouth wasn’t connected to his stomach. It’s a condition known as esophageal atresia. After three months in a hospital in St. Louis, the family flew to Boston, where Ryan had surgery.

The surgery worked. Ryan is active and can eat normally — he had two big pieces of fruit leather and some crackers in the 45 minutes I was there. But all that time in the hospital was expensive. In the first six months of his life, Ryan’s insurance plan was billed $750,000. The family had to pay only $5,000 of that — Ryan’s maximum out-of-pocket expenses, under his insurance plan, for 2014 and 2015.

“We were lucky we had a really good, employer-provided [health insurance] plan,” Lennon says.

Now, the family is worried about Ryan’s future. He’ll still need between $20,000 and $30,000 of medical care every year. They have insurance through Fines’ work, but the health care bill that Republicans passed in the House last week could affect Ryan’s care.

All six Republicans from Missouri — including Rep. Vicky Hartzler, from the district where Scott, Brianna and Ryan live — voted for the bill, which unwinds many of the provisions and protections of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. In a video posted to Twitter, Hartzler says passing the bill was an important first step to replacing the ACA.

“It covers pre-existing conditions,” she says, “still retains the ability for young people to stay on their parents’ policies, and makes sure that there are no lifetime caps.”

That’s true, but the bill also gives states the authority to allow insurers a number of exemptions from the federal law. For example, while the GOP bill retains the ACA provision that people, like Ryan, who have pre-existing conditions cannot be denied coverage, there’s a potential loophole. In a last-minute amendment proposed by Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., a state could seek permission to allow insurance companies to charge patients more (based on their health history) if their coverage lapses for more than 63 days.

That provision in the GOP bill would tremendously weaken the ACA protections, says Larry Levitt, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“This would guarantee access to insurance for people with pre-existing conditions in theory, but not really in practice — because they could be charged astronomically high premiums,” says Levitt.

Before the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, he says, it was common for people with pre-existing conditions to be charged much higher premiums or to be denied coverage altogether. If a state decides to waive the federal law’s protections, this could happen again.

Scott Fines and Brianna Lennon were able to keep medical costs for their son, Ryan, in check through employer insurance. Though Ryan’s health is good now, he still needs between $20,000 and $30,000 of medical care every year.

Bram Sable-Smith/KBIA/Side Effects Public Media

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Bram Sable-Smith/KBIA/Side Effects Public Media

The amendment would require that states seeking a waiver must also help people who have high health care costs. High-risk pools are the most commonly cited type of program to do this, but they were often underfunded and expensive for consumers and states.

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, supported the GOP health plan in March. His office didn’t respond to NPR’s questions about whether he supports the current version of this bill or whether he’d want Missouri to seek permission to opt out of some of the provisions. Levitt says it would likely be conservative states, like Missouri and the 18 other states that did not expand Medicaid, that may try to opt out.

Those states, Levitt says, “made a decision to not go along with the Affordable Care Act, and I think that those states are facing a similar kind of decision here.”

Fines and Lennon say they face tough decisions if this bill becomes law.

“We would have to either move to a state that didn’t waive community protections or out of the country entirely if we could,” Fines says. “I’m not going to risk my son’s health on the political whims of Jefferson City.”

But before any decisions are made in Missouri’s state capital, the GOP bill is in the hands of the U.S. Senate, where it could change before becoming federal law.

This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with KBIA, Side Effects Public Media and Kaiser Health News.

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Sports May 7, 2017

World-Renowned Rock Climber On Constantly Pushing The Limits

NPR’s Lakshmi Singh talks to Tommy Caldwell, the first to free climb a 3,000 foot “Dawn Wall” granite cliff, about his book The Push: A Climber’s Journey of Endurance, Risk and Going Beyond Limits.

LAKSHMI SINGH, HOST:

For professional musicians, the instrument on which they play is more than just a tool of the trade. It can also be a muse, a partner and a voice. A new book titled “Gone: A Girl, A Violin, A Life Unstrung” shares one artist’s story of finding her inspiration only to have it stolen away. We’ll let the author take it from here.

MIN KYM: My name’s Min Kym, and I play the violin.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KYM: I started playing at the age of 6 and a half. I won my first competition when I was 11. And, yeah, I’ll start it from there.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KYM: It took me until adulthood to be able to say the word child prodigy. Like, when I was a child and people used to sort of, you know, talk about me in that way, I was so mortified. I mean, it was just, you know, you just don’t want to be. I just wanted to have fun.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KYM: From a very young age, I was aware that the most important thing as a violinist and as a musician is to find your voice through the right instrument.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SINGH: And for a professional soloist, that means a top shelf violin worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And for Kym, that meant a Stradivarius. She had saved all of her competition winnings for this purpose. Now she just needed to find the right one.

KYM: The dealer who I was talking to came to my parents’ house. I was 21. And he had a double case with him and two violins. And everybody was sort of pointing towards one of the violins which had a incredibly sonorous and powerful sound, everything that as a soloist you would be looking for. So I picked it up and I drew my bow across it, and, yeah, of course, it sounded magnificent.

But it was like I was wearing an incredibly beautiful gown that didn’t suit me. And so I put it down, and I picked up the other one. And it was smaller. It had been repaired. It got through the walls, and I could see that. However, when I played that first note – just, oh, my goodness – the vibrations of it. I knew this was my voice.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KYM: It had an incredible soprano. It was very bell-like. It had this what I like to call space around the notes.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KYM: You could almost hear (laughter) – this is really going to make me sound like a fruitcake actually, but you could hear an orbit around the note.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KYM: The real true partnership I felt was with this Strad. And I had my violin for 10 years, and I was still getting to know it. Even after 10 years, it was still showing me new things. It was teaching me new ways of playing.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KYM: But that was short lived. Unfortunately, it’s real life. It isn’t a fairytale.

SINGH: What happened next made headlines.

KYM: I remember it like it was just, you know, moments ago. It was a cold November evening. I’d had an asthma attack earlier. So I wasn’t feeling very well, and I had a argument with my boyfriend at the time who was going to look after my violin. And there were only two other people in my life that I’ve ever entrusted my violin. So I was very reluctant not to have it in my possession, but I did agree to let him look after the violin. And one minute it was there, and the next minute it was gone.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SINGH: While Kym and her boyfriend sat in a train station cafe, three thieves snagged her Stradivarius out from under the table.

KYM: I’ve relived that moment – I sort of think if this hadn’t happened, then that wouldn’t have happened. You know, if we hadn’t made this decision, if I hadn’t made that decision, you know, and I went through it, I went through it with such a fine-toothed comb with the detectives. And he just reminded me that he’s a professional. I’m a professional. And they were professional thieves. It’s one of those things that I still find so horribly painful to talk about.

I didn’t know who I was anymore, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt as though I was just sort of a shell of a person. You know, when it’s a human relationship, it’s something that everybody can relate to and understand. But I think as a violinist, as a musician, as an artist when, you know, the relationship you have with your particular art, it’s something that lives inside you. And it’s – it has a life of its own. And that’s very difficult to explain or describe. And so, you know, after three years, it was recovered. I was on the train, and I – and the phone rang. And it was Detective Rose (ph), and he said, Min, I have good news for you. So I thought, well, he’s never said that before.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KYM: For three years, my spirits were just on the floor. And in that nanosecond, they just completely lifted again, and I felt human again. I felt like me.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SINGH: Kym wishes her story would have ended with her being reunited with her violin, but unfortunately it didn’t. By the time the Stradivarius was found, Kym had already spent the money she received from the insurance claim on a new violin, so she could continue with her career.

KYM: Too much time had passed, so for financial reasons, I wasn’t able to buy my violin back. One of the most important things that I learned throughout this whole process is that we have such little control over anything, but one thing that we do have control is how you deal with the next steps forward. Writing actually finding this new voice, it helped unblock my musical life. And, you know, for the first time in seven years or so, I felt hopeful again.

SINGH: That was violinist and author Min Kym. Her book “Gone: A Girl, A Violin, A Life Unstrung” is out now.

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 May 7, 2017

Kushner's Sister Suggests Family Can Help Chinese Get U.S. Visas In Business Exchange

Washington Post‘sWilliam Wan talks to NPR’s Lakshmi Singh about accusations that Nicole Meyer, sister to senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, used her family ties to peddle business in Beijing.

LAKSHMI SINGH, HOST:

There’s new scrutiny being directed towards senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner and his family’s business interests overseas. The story flared up because of something that happened in Beijing yesterday. Chinese investors filled a ballroom to listen to Kushner’s sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer. She was asking investors to help finance a real estate project in New Jersey and suggested, in return, investors could get American green cards. We wanted to hear more about the story and what it means, so we called William Wan. He’s a correspondent for The Washington Post, and he’s been reporting on this whole issue stateside.

William, thanks for joining us.

WILLIAM WAN: Great to be with you.

SINGH: So first of all, tell us about this event that got so much attention. I understand journalists were booted from it. What did they hear before they were promptly asked to leave?

WAN: Right. So we had a journalist there from The Washington Post. There was one from The New York Times. The both of them were forced to leave. They got to witness Jared Kushner’s sister, who was kind of the main event, give her pitch for investing into their company in return for a chance to apply for a visa. They also saw some of the promotional materials, for example, the brochure. The tagline for it was invest 500,000 and immigrate to the United States.

SINGH: Now, this all has to do – or all of it’s related to the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, is that right?

WAN: Yeah, the EB-5 program. It’s this unique kind of program where if you have a lot of money, you’re a foreigner and you want a visa, you just plunk down $500,000. And it gives you a chance to apply for one of these visas outside of the normal kind of visa line.

SINGH: And how big of an issue is this for critics of the Trump administration who’ve long protested conflicts of interest with the Trump White House?

WAN: I tried to ask a few watchdog groups. It’s hard to put in context because so much of the ethics rules, to their mind, are just kind of being thrown out the window. And so to kind of gauge this with all the other ones is hard. But one kind of former ethics lawyer under the George W. Bush administration called it highly inappropriate. I think the exact words he used were incredibly stupid and highly inappropriate.

His point was that there’s the appearance of the Kushners implying that if you invest with us, we’ll make sure to get you a visa because of our connections with the Trump administration. And that, on the face of it, seems pretty inappropriate and a use of the family connection to enrich yourself.

SINGH: And, again, we should note, the Kushners did not explicitly say that they would use their influence in the White House to get these investors green cards. But what do you think the Chinese investors took from this particular meeting?

WAN: Well, in China, you don’t have to spell out any of this. There’s a cultural tradition there where in the modern China, everything is tied together, the rich and the powerful and the ones in charge of the Communist Party. They’re all the same family. So for them, seeing the Kushners come, seeing the Kushners connection to the Trump White House, it’s a very natural association. There’s even a name for a second generation, rich, connected political elites. It’s called (foreign language spoken), the second generation rich. And so, you know, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, in their minds, can fall very squarely into that princeling realm.

SINGH: That is William Wan, a reporter for The Washington Post. Thank you, William.

WAN: Thanks for having me.

SINGH: We should note that Jared Kushner’s lawyer tells NPR that Kushner is not involved in the building project that was discussed, and he is recusing himself from matters involving the EB-5 visa program.

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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Health May 7, 2017

Democrats Promise A Bruising Senate Battle Over Health Care

NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro asks Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan about her plans to oppose the GOP’s health care bill.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

The Senate is now the center of the fight over health care in America. That’s where the House bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act is headed, and it’s already sowing deep divisions among Republicans. Several Senate Republicans have said they will ignore the House version of the bill and write their own instead. And for their part, Democrats are promising a bruising battle. On the line now is Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

Good morning, Senator.

DEBBIE STABENOW: Well, good morning.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You’ve announced you’ll, quote, “strongly oppose this Republican plan in the Senate.” Can you tell me how?

STABENOW: Well, no question. And let me just say that in your news report you were just talking about Warren Buffett – that big tax cut that he would get under this plan would be paid for by taking away nursing home care for seniors, raising dramatically the prices on insurance for other seniors that were below age 65 – that’s why AARP is so strongly opposed to it. It would, in Michigan, affect over 2.3 million people who now are able to take their children to the doctor because of Medicaid insurance rather than into the emergency room. And I’m…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Senator…

STABENOW: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: …There clearly are problems with the bill. The Republican senators have said that they will make changes. But what exactly will you do to oppose this bill?

STABENOW: Well, I’m going to speak out like I am today. All of my colleagues are. We’re going to do what we did the first time around. You know, they – the day after we were sworn in in January, they started this process. And the good news is, is that even though they passed a resolution saying that they would do the repeal by January 27, they haven’t been able to do it, and that’s because of Women’s Marches and people speaking out and town hall meetings and everything that’s happened. So we’re going to continue to speak out and to engage the public, let them know what this is really all about, funding big tax cuts on the backs of people that need medical care.

And at the same time, I do want to stress that we want – if the Republicans are willing to just put this in the garbage can, we are willing and want to sit down and talk about how to make insurance better, how to lower costs. There are premiums and co-pays that are too high. Certainly there are drug prices that are too high. So we need to sit down together and focus on ways to make health care more affordable and more available but not rip apart the entire health care system and put more than 24 million people in a situation where they can’t get health care and health insurance.

So bottom line, I mean, we’re going to speak out – we know that if they want to, they’ve set up a process. It only takes 51 votes, and the Republicans can pass this in the Senate if they want to. They can. They can pass it this week if they want to. But we’re going to speak out in the loudest way possible. On Wednesday, I am chairing a hearing that we’ve put together through a Democratic policy committee to hear directly from citizens as well as a CEO in Michigan who is the CEO of a small world hospital…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Senator…

STABENOW: …That would likely close.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Senator, just briefly – we don’t have much more time – but when your Republican colleagues were in the minority, Democrats complained that they were just obstructionists, always blocking everything. Now that your party is in the minority, Republicans say that you’ve adopted the same tactic. I’m just curious, how long is the Senate going to let American health care – the American health care system just limp along? I mean, is there something that…

STABENOW: Well, first of all…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: …We can do?

STABENOW: First of all, let me say, you’re buying the assumption that it’s limping along when we have tens of millions of more people today that can get health insurance. Do you know because of passing Obamacare, 97 percent of the children in Michigan can now see a doctor? That’s actually a really good thing. Our state, because they expanded Medicaid, health care is going to save over $400 million in their budget because people are going to the doctor, not the emergency room.

So their premise – and they’ve done everything they can to undermine the reimbursements to insurance companies, to scare insurance companies off, to do everything they can to undermine this system – I don’t – I wish they’d put half that energy into helping us make it better. But it is not true that we are looking at a situation that is completely, you know, unraveling. They’re unraveling it. Let’s work together to make it better.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Thank you, Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan.

STABENOW: Thanks.

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Health May 6, 2017

Ideas Behind Health Care Policy Ignite Passions

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, joined by fellow congressional Democrats on Jan. 4, brands what Republicans are trying to do when it comes to health care as “Make America Sick Again.”

Evan Vucci/AP

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Evan Vucci/AP

Debates about health care are complicated, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed when complicated things like premiums, block grants, state waivers, Medicaid and Medicare are the main topics.

But what are the ideas driving this debate? And why do debates get so heated when we’re talking about something so technical?

To get some clarity about this topic, Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, and Dr. Kavita Patel of the centrist Brookings Institution and a practicing primary care internist at Johns Hopkins Medicine spoke to Michel Martin on Weekend All Things Considered.

Interview highlights have been edited for clarity and length.

Interview Highlights

On health care as a human right vs. free market arguments

Cannon: It’s not like we have one side that wants people to have health care and one side that doesn’t want people to have health care. But the free market approach to this problem says, “Actually, a lot of the things that the government is doing to provide health care to people are preventing people from accessing health care.” Because what markets do is they identify and they disseminate innovations that fill in the cracks in our health care sector so fewer people fall through — innovations that make health care better and more affordable — and when the government gets involved it causes those cracks to widen.

Patel: I think one of the ideas that’s really at tension here is actually whether we believe health care is a human right. So you have people — I put myself in that category, a lot of physicians do as well — we think everyone should have access to health care. Now, there’s a lot of details to that. What does that mean? Who pays for it? But we feel very strongly, and many do in this country, that there are basic rights that people are entitled to, and access to health care is a right that all people in this country deserve.

On the American Health Care Act that just passed the House

Cannon: I don’t take positions on legislation, but Republicans have traditionally neglected health care as an issue. It’s just not a Republican issue, and as a result they haven’t been able to articulate why it is that their own principles would deliver better health care. What they’ve done here is, they’ve just tried to pass something that they can say is repeal, even if it doesn’t repeal the Affordable Care Act. And in the process, they may actually be making the Affordable Care Act worse and setting themselves up for a lot of electoral defeats in 2018, which would then, I think, cause the pendulum to swing back in the direction of the Affordable Care Act or maybe even a single-payer system.

Patel: I’m definitely opposed to the legislation. We will not see premiums come down for everyone. In fact, we know that premiums will go up for people who are older or have chronic conditions. This isn’t even repealing the Affordable Care Act. This is actually worse than what care was before.

On why politicians argue about health care so much

Patel: I think health care just touches on something that’s so personal to everyone, and then this sense of, “You’re taking away my hard-earned money and giving it to someone who doesn’t care about their health, and that’s wrong.” That’s tapping into something that’s really basal.

Cannon: Health care is a very emotional issue because we rely on health care at the most vulnerable points in our life — and that’s not just when we’re sick, it’s when a loved one is sick or a child is sick. If it appears that someone is trying to take health care away from you or from someone you love, you get a really strong fight-or-flight response from people. And usually it’s a fight response.

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Business May 6, 2017

The 'Oracle of Omaha' Condemns Republican Health Care Bill At Berkshire Meeting

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett visits the exhibit floor in Omaha, Neb., Saturday, where company subsidiaries display their products during the annual shareholders meeting.

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Billionaire investor Warren Buffett fielded questions at the annual shareholders meeting for his company Berkshire Hathaway. He offered thoughts and insights on everything from Republicans voting to repeal Obamacare, to the Wells Fargo scandal, to how artificial intelligence and technology might reshape America. Here are some highlights:

Repealing Obamacare Is “A Huge Tax Cut For Guys Like Me”

When asked about the bill Republicans in Congress just voted to pass to repeal and replace Obamacare, Buffett signaled his distaste for a tax cut provision. Obamacare pays for health care for Americans in part by taxing wealthier people. The Republican bill scraps that tax on the wealthy.

And Buffett has apparently done the math here. If the Republican bill had been law last year, he said, “my federal taxes would have gone down 17 percent last year, so it’s a huge tax cut for guys like me.”

“That is in the law that was passed a couple days ago,” he added. “Anybody with $250,000 a year of adjusted gross income and a lot of investment income is going to have a huge tax cut.”

In the past, Buffett has bristled at tax policy that he sees as favoring the wealthy — famously saying it’s not fair that he pays taxes at a lower rate than his secretary.

The Medical Cost “Tapeworm”

Buffett said at the meeting that health care costs have become a bigger issue for American businesses than taxes.

He said if you go back to about 1960, corporate taxes were about 4 percent of GDP and now they’re about 2 percent of GDP. At that time, healthcare was 5 percent of GDP and now it’s 17 percent of GDP. “So when American business talks about taxes strangling our competitiveness,” he said, “they’re talking about something that as a percentage of GDP has gone down from 4 to 2.” Meanwhile, medical costs have exploded. “So medical costs are the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness,” he said.

He argued against the tax system crippling competitiveness “or anything of the sort.” He also noted that other developed countries appear to have found better ways to contain medical costs.

Wells Fargo’s “Big Mistake” In Its Banking Scandal
Wells Fargo had a sales structure that clearly led employees to do bad things, according to Buffet. “But the main problem was that they didn’t act when they learned about it,” he said. “It’s bad enough having a bad system, but they didn’t act.”]

Former Wells Fargo workers have told NPR that they called the bank’s ethics line and the bank did nothing. Buffett’s company ethics line is actively used by workers, he says, so he’s sure that Wells Fargo got reports of wrongdoing. He said it’s true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but “a pound of cure promptly applied is worth a ton of cure that’s delayed. Problems don’t go away.”

Wells Fargo responded to Buffett’s remarks before the end of the day’s meeting, saying in a statement that the bank has taken “decisive action to fix the problems.” Wells Fargo also said it’s created a new “Office of Ethics, Oversight and Integrity to centralize the handling of internal investigations, complaints oversight, and sales practices oversight.”

Why Geckos Don’t Like Driverless Cars
In response to a question about the impact of driverless cars, trucks and trains, Buffett said they’d not only be a threat to trucking and railroad businesses, but the insurance industry too.

“If driverless cars became pervasive, it would only be because they were safer and that would mean that the overall economic cost of auto-related losses had gone down and that would drive down the premium income of Geico,” Buffet said referring to the auto insurance company owned by Berkshire.

“Autonomous vehicles widespread would hurt us.” But, he added, “I think they may be a long way off.”

Life Lessons

When asked about reflections and lessons learned in his long life, Warren Buffett referenced Charlie Munger, the 93-year-old vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, who says, “All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.”

But on a more serious note, Buffett says he’s gotten a lot of joy in life out of teaching other people things. So, he said, if people remembered him as being a good teacher, he would be OK with that.

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