Trump: U.S., Mexico Reach Deal To Avoid New Tariffs
Trucks pass along a border wall as they get into position to cross into the United States at the border in Tijuana, Mexico, on Friday. Companies have been rushing to ship as many goods as possible out of Mexico to get ahead of possible tariffs threatened by President Donald Trump, hurriedly sending cars, appliances and construction materials across the border to beat Monday’s deadline.
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Updated at 10:25 p.m. ET
The U.S. and Mexico have “reached a signed agreement” that would avert the tariffs that were scheduled to begin on Monday, President Trump said on Friday evening.
As part of the deal, Mexican officials “agreed to take strong measures to stem the tide of Migration,” Trump tweeted.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador also praised the deal, thanking “all Mexicans who made it possible to avoid the imposition of tariffs on Mexico products exported to the United States.” He called for celebrations in Mexico on Saturday.
Under a joint agreement released by State Department officials, Mexico will assist the United States in curbing migration across the border by deploying its national guard troops through the country, especially its southern border. The agreement also says Mexican authorities will work to dismantle human smuggling operations.
Mexico agrees to accept more migrants seeking asylum in the United States, according to the deal.
For its part, the U.S. promises that those asylum applicants will be “rapidly returned” to Mexico as they await the result of their claims. Mexico agrees to accept them and offer jobs, health care and education.
“The United States looks forward to working alongside Mexico to fulfill these commitments so that we can stem the tide of illegal migration across our southern border and to make our border strong and secure,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S., Martha Bárcena, tweeted, “Cooperation for the development and prosperity of southern Mexico and Central America will be strengthened.” The joint statement said the countries recognize the importance of economic development in southern Mexico and Central America.
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the National Guard deployment would start on Monday. “I think it’s a fair balance,” Ebrard said.
The agreement did not include a demand from the U.S. that Mexico agree to a “safe third country” designation, requiring the country to permanently accept most asylum seekers from Central America.
Trump announced on May 30 that he would impose a 5% tariff on all goods imported from Mexico beginning June 10, if Mexico did not take action to stop the flow of migrants from Central America into the U.S. After that, he said the tariffs would go up an additional 5% each month until reaching 25% in October, unless the administration were satisfied with the Mexican government’s efforts on immigration.
“If the illegal migration crisis is alleviated through effective actions taken by Mexico, to be determined in our sole discretion and judgment, the Tariffs will be removed,” the president’s statement said.
U.S. and Mexican officials continued the talks, as Mexico tried to reach an agreement to stop the tariffs from going into effect.
Officials meeting at the State Department focused on possible changes to asylum rules and whether Mexico could keep asylum seekers in their country while their cases in the U.S. were adjudicated.
Mexico’s foreign minister announced on Thursday that 6,000 national guard troops would be sent to the country’s southern border with Guatemala. Though, that force was recently established and has not gotten up and running, with estimates of full operations to be underway by 2021.
Earlier Friday, the president said “there is a good chance” the U.S. and Mexico could make a deal.
Border crossings have surged in recent months as Central American families have traveled to the U.S. seeking asylum.
More than 144,000 migrants were taken into custody after crossing the Southern border in May, according to data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday.
Trump is facing rare pressure from congressional Republicans over his decision to link immigration policy to trade.
“There is not much support in my conference for tariffs,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters after White House lawyers met with GOP senators at their weekly luncheon on Tuesday.
Lawmakers have warned the tariffs could hurt U.S. businesses and force U.S. consumers to pay more for products imported from Mexico.
U.S. Women’s Quest To Defend World Cup Title Is Only 1 Of The Team’s Goals
The Women’s World Cup kicks off June 7 in Paris. The U.S. is once again the favorite and looking to defend its title from four years ago — even as the team sues U.S. Soccer for gender discrimination.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Women’s World Cup kicked off today with host country France defeating South Korea. Twenty-four teams are vying for the cup, and none is a stronger contender than the United States. The quest to defend their title is only one of the goals the U.S. team is driving toward, as NPR’s Laurel Wamsley reports from Paris.
LAUREL WAMSLEY, BYLINE: Four years ago, the U.S. won the Women’s World Cup, trouncing Japan on the strength of three goals by Carli Lloyd.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: Lloyd, with Morgan streaking – she’s chipping the goalkeeper, off the post and in. Hat trick for Lloyd.
WAMSLEY: That game, broadcast on Fox drew, more than 30 million viewers, shattering TV records for soccer in the United States – men’s or women’s. Now Lloyd is back playing in her fourth World Cup, and many on the team will play in their third, including Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe. The U.S. team is ranked No. 1 in the world and plays its first game on Tuesday against Thailand, followed by matches against Chile and Sweden. Though Thailand isn’t a soccer power, Lloyd says in a major tournament like the World Cup, you have to focus on each game as it comes.
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CARLI LLOYD: We obviously want to get to the final. We want to win the final. But a lot can happen in between that. It’s just kind of weathering the storm, winning, whether that’s pretty, ugly, just finding a way to win.
WAMSLEY: This could be the strongest U.S. team ever, with an array of fierce goal-scoring attackers. But other teams have gotten stronger and more tactical, too. Germany, England and France could each win what many believe will be the most competitive Women’s World Cup yet. Accordingly, U.S. coach Jill Ellis has tinkered with the team’s roster in the last few years, moving players around, trying new ones and changing the team’s formation. Ellis says she can considers the U.S. the team to beat.
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JILL ELLIS: Have to – you know, it’s confidence. So much of it is a mindset and an approach. And there’s a lot of good teams, and we’re all aware of that. And – but we want to be the team to beat.
WAMSLEY: The U.S. team is making big moves off the field, too, demanding equal pay for equal work. In March, 28 members of the women’s team sued U.S. Soccer – their employer – arguing that the federation discriminates against them on the basis of their sex by paying them less than the men’s team. The team has also been critical of FIFA, the international governing body, which scheduled the Women’s World Cup final on the same day as the finals of two of its other major international tournaments. And the prize money that FIFA distributes to the teams in the Women’s World Cup is a fraction of what the men win for theirs.
Megan Rapinoe, the U.S. forward who is often outspoken on social issues, says FIFA has made some steps in the right direction in recent years, but that it’s been far too slow given the organization’s capacity for change.
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MEGAN RAPINOE: They have essentially unlimited resources. There’s been such a lack of investment for all of these years and such a lack of care and attention that doubling or tripling or quadrupling investment, care, you know, attention to the women’s game, I think, would be appropriate.
WAMSLEY: And it’s not only the U.S. team that’s frustrated. The best player in the world right now, Norwegian striker Ada Hegerberg, won’t be playing in the tournament even though Norway qualified. She says the Norwegian Football Federation hasn’t done enough to support the women’s game, and she’s refused to play for her national team since 2017.
Meanwhile, the U.S. team arrives in France without a few of its stars from four years ago. Hope Solo has been replaced by Alyssa Naeher in goal. And Abby Wambach, the sport’s all-time leading international scorer, says she’s grateful to be watching from the stands this year, having retired in 2015.
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ABBY WAMBACH: When you’re in it, you talk about what an honor it is. You talk about how exciting and fun it is to play in the biggest tournament of your life. But now that I’m away from it, I can speak honestly. It’s super stressful.
WAMSLEY: To win, Wambach says, so many things have to go right, and you need a little luck on your side, too. Laurel Wamsley, NPR News, Paris.
Copyright © 2019 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.
Poll: Majority Want To Keep Abortion Legal, But They Also Want Restrictions
Georgia state Rep. Erica Thomas speaks during a protest against recently passed abortion-ban bills at the state Capitol on May 21 in Atlanta.
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Three-quarters of Americans say they want to keep in place the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade, that made abortion legal in the United States, but a strong majority would like to see restrictions on abortion rights, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll.
What the survey found is a great deal of complexity — and sometimes contradiction among Americans — that goes well beyond the talking points of the loudest voices in the debate. In fact, there’s a high level of dissatisfaction with abortion policy overall. Almost two-thirds of people said they were either somewhat or very dissatisfied, including 66% of those who self-identify as “pro-life” and 62% of those who self-identify as “pro-choice.”
“What it speaks to is the fact that the debate is dominated by the extreme positions on both sides,” said Barbara Carvalho, director of the Marist Poll, which conducted the survey. “People do see the issue as very complicated, very complex. Their positions don’t fall along one side or the other. … The debate is about the extremes, and that’s not where the public is.”
The poll comes as several states have pushed to limit abortions in hopes of getting the Supreme Court to reconsider the issue. Abortion-rights opponents hope the newly conservative court will either overturn Roe or effectively gut it by upholding severe restrictions. The survey finds that while most Americans favor limiting abortion, they don’t want it to be illegal and don’t want to go as far as states like Alabama, for example, which would ban it completely except if the woman’s life is endangered or health is at risk.
A total of 77% say the Supreme Court should uphold Roe, but within that there’s a lot of nuance — 26% say they would like to see it remain in place, but with more restrictions added; 21% want to see Roe expanded to establish the right to abortion under any circumstance; 16% want to keep it the way it is; and 14% want to see some of the restrictions allowed under Roe reduced. Just 13% overall say it should be overturned.
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Even though Americans are solidly against overturning Roe, a majority would also like to see abortion restricted in various ways. In a separate question, respondents were asked which of six choices comes closest to their view of abortion policy.
In all, 61% said they were in favor of a combination of limitations that included allowing abortion in just the first three months of a pregnancy (23%); only in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman (29%); or only to save the life of the woman (9%).
Anti-abortion demonstrators hold a protest on May 31 outside the Planned Parenthood Reproductive Health Services Center in St. Louis, the last location in the state that performs abortions.
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Eighteen percent said abortion should be available to a woman any time she wants during her entire pregnancy. At the other end of the spectrum, 9% said it should never be permitted under any circumstance.
More than half (53%) of Americans say they would definitely not vote for a candidate who would appoint judges to the Supreme Court who would limit or overturn Roe.
Politically, abortion has been a stronger voting issue for Republicans than for Democrats. This poll found that abortion ranks as the second-most-important issue for Republicans in deciding their vote for president, behind immigration. But for Democrats, it is fifth — behind health care, America’s role in the world, climate change and personal financial well-being.
The poll also notably found the highest percentage of people self-identifying as “pro-choice,” those who generally support abortion rights, since a Gallup survey in December 2012. In this survey, 57% identified that way versus 35%, who called themselves “pro-life,” those who are generally opposed to abortion rights.
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The percentage self-identifying as “pro-choice” is an increase since a Marist Poll in February, when the two sides split with 47% each. The pollsters attribute that shift to efforts in various states to severely restrict abortion.
“The public is very reactive to the arguments being put forth by the more committed advocates on both sides of the issue,” Carvalho said, adding, “The danger for Republicans is that when you look at independents, independents are moving more toward Democrats on this issue. … When the debate starts overstepping what public opinion believes to be common sense, we’ve seen independents moving in Democrats’ corner.”
In the case of self-identification, 60% of independents identified as “pro-choice.” Asked which party would do a better job of dealing with the issue of abortion, a plurality of Americans overall chose Democrats (47%) over Republicans (34%).
Independents chose Democrats on the question of which party would do a better job by an 11-point margin (43% to 32%).
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Asked if they’d be more likely to support state laws that decriminalize abortion and make laws less strict or ones that do the opposite, 60% of Americans overall, including two-thirds of independents, chose laws that decriminalize abortion and are less strict.
What specifically do Americans support and oppose?
The poll also asked a long series of questions to try to figure out what Americans support or oppose when it comes to potential changes to abortion laws pending in several states. Poll respondents were not told which states these proposals come from.
The poll found that Americans are very much against requiring fines and/or prison time for doctors who perform abortions. There was also slim majority support for allowing abortions at any time during a pregnancy if there is no viability outside the womb and for requiring insurance companies to cover abortion procedures. A slim majority also opposed allowing pharmacists and health providers the ability to opt out of providing medicine or surgical procedures that result in abortion.
At the same time, two-thirds were in favor of a 24-hour waiting period from the time a woman meets with a health care professional until having the abortion procedure itself; two-thirds wanted doctors who perform abortions to have hospital admitting privileges; and a slim majority wanted the law to require women to be shown an ultrasound image at least 24 hours before an abortion procedure.
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“What’s most interesting here,” Carvalho said, is that “the extremes are really outliers. When they advocate for their positions and change the debate toward the most extreme position on the issue, they actually do the opposite. They move public opinion away from them.”
The more vocal advocates on either side, however, have had the ability to shift the debate and public opinion to their point of view. Consider that many of the specific items above, at one point or another, have been hotly debated.
When does life begin?
The poll also asked the very big question of when Americans think life begins. There was not an overwhelming consensus. A plurality of the six choices given, but far less than a majority, said life begins at conception (38%). Slightly more than half (53%) disagreed, saying that life begins either within the first eight weeks of pregnancy (8%), the first three months (8%), between three and six months (7%), when a fetus is viable (14%) or at birth (16%).
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Gender gap? Try a stark party divide, particularly among women
The most acute divide among Americans on the issue of abortion, arguably, is not a gender divide but between the parties — and of women of different parties.
For example, 54% of men identified as “pro-choice,” compared with 60% of women. For women of the different parties, 77% of Democratic women identified as “pro-choice,” while 68% of Republican women identified as “pro-life.” (A lower percentage of Republican men, 59%, considered themselves “pro-life.”)
Throughout the poll, the divide was stark. On Roe, for example, 62% of Republican women said overturn it or add restrictions; 73% of Democratic women said keep it the way it is, expand it to allow abortions under any circumstance or reduce some of the restrictions.
Eighty-four percent of Democratic women said they are more likely to support state laws that decriminalize abortion and make laws less strict; 62% of Republican women said they are more likely to support laws that criminalize abortion or make laws stricter.
On requiring insurance companies to cover abortion procedures, 75% of Democratic women support that, while 78% of Republican women oppose it, higher than the 63% of Republican men who said the same.
Republican women also stand out for the 62% of them who said they oppose laws that allow abortion at any time during pregnancy in cases of rape or incest. They are the only group to voice majority opposition to that. Fifty-nine percent of Republican men, for example, said they would support such a law.
And Republican women are the only group to say overwhelmingly that life begins at conception. About three-quarters said so, compared with less than half of Republican men and a third of Democratic women.
It’s a reminder that Republican women, in many ways, are the backbone of the movement opposing abortion rights.
The survey of 944 adults was conducted by live interviewers by telephone from May 31 through June 4. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
Editor’s note: The survey asked respondents to identify as either “pro-life” or “pro-choice.” This question wording, using the labels “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” was included in the survey because it has tracked the public debate on abortion over decades. It is sensitive to current events and public discussion even though it does not capture the nuanced positions many people have on the issue.
As Google Advances Its Interests, It Serves As Huawei Emissary To U.S.
Huawei employees wait for a shuttle bus at the company’s campus on April 12, 2019, in Shenzhen, China. A senior Huawei official says Google is talking with the U.S. government on behalf of the Chinese telecom giant.
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Google is quietly assuming the role of Huawei emissary, according to a senior Huawei official, in effect negotiating with the Commerce Department on behalf of the Chinese telecom giant that has been blacklisted in the U.S.
The fates of Huawei and Google are intertwined. Huawei is a leader in creating next-generation wireless networks, and it’s the world’s No. 2 maker of smartphones. Google provides support for Android, the popular mobile operating system. The U.S. government ban against Huawei also blocks Google from giving security updates to millions of existing Huawei phones and from issuing Android licenses in the future.
In an interview this week with Huawei Chairman Liang Hua, NPR asked him how his company would resolve the problem of losing access to Google software.
“Google is a very responsible company. We have maintained very good cooperation with each other,” Liang said through a translator at Huawei headquarters in Shenzhen, China. “We really look forward to productive results from the communication that Google is currently having with the Commerce Department.”
When the Huawei ban first went into effect, and Google announced it would cut ties, there was an outcry. Days later, the Trump administration said it would postpone parts of the ban until August.
The outsize power of American tech giants is well-understood the world over. Huawei’s Liang is now leaning on Google to influence the Commerce Department on his company’s behalf.
“We really hope that there are possible remedies coming out of the communication between Google and the Commerce Department,” he said. “We think that it is in the benefit of the consumers if they could work out a solution.”
Last month, citing national security concerns, the Trump administration added Huawei to a list of banned entities. American companies — from mobile providers to chipmakers like Intel and Qualcomm — will not be allowed to do business with Huawei. That’s because, according to U.S. officials, the company’s technology could be used for surveillance. If a resolution isn’t reached, Liang says, Huawei will have to build its own software, which would be “difficult.”
Liang says he does not know the details of the talks. In an email, a Google spokesperson says the company is engaging with the Commerce Department to ensure Google is in “full compliance” with the new rules. The company declined to say if its talks with the government have included directly or indirectly advocating for the ability to support future Huawei devices.
NPR interviewed several former senior officials at Commerce and the White House who are concerned that a private company, governed by its own self-interests, is advocating for a foreign partner that has been officially blacklisted for security concerns.
Eric Hirschhorn says turning Huawei into a bargaining chip in the U.S.-China trade war was a strategic mistake. “I spent a lot of time [trying] to make sure that national security and trade were kept separate,” he said. Mixing the two “would have been unheard of.”
Hirschhorn served in the Commerce Department during the Obama administration as an undersecretary for industry and security.
According to former Commerce officials, it’s standard for companies to reach out to the department about their ability to do business abroad. But the foreign partner is often at the table too, able to talk and be questioned.
Hirschhorn says the process changes once the U.S. government decides to take enforcement action – as it did last month when the U.S. banned Huawei. He says company financials should not be considered alongside national security decisions. And, he says, if Huawei gets what it wants, through Google’s efforts, that sends a “very, very bad message” to people who break American rules.
“If I know that my government or my powerful business partner can basically fix a ticket if I get one, I won’t worry about speeding,” Hirschhorn says.
The Commerce Department says it routinely responds to inquiries from companies about regulatory requirements. It says this is not new to this administration, and these discussions don’t influence law enforcement actions.
NPR’s Pallavi Gogoi contributed to this report.
Roger Federer And Rafael Nadal Set To Reignite Their Rivalry At French Open Semifinal
NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Sports Illustrated’s Jon Wertheim about Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal renewing their rivalry at the French Open.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
On Friday, two of tennis’ all-time greats will reignite their rivalry at the French Open semifinal; 37-year-old Roger Federer will take on 33-year-old Rafael Nadal for the 39th in their careers – keep all those 30s straight. Nadal is the current French Open champion. He has won a record 11 titles there. Federer, meanwhile, edges him out in Grand Slam titles overall, which means, whether you are team Nadal or team Federer, Friday’s match is not one you are going to want to miss. To help us prep, we have called Jon Wertheim from Sports Illustrated. He is in Paris. Hello again, Jon.
JON WERTHEIM: Nice to talk again.
KELLY: Nice to speak to you. OK, so Friday – it’s big. How big? How excited should we be here?
WERTHEIM: We should be teeming with excitement.
KELLY: (Laughter).
WERTHEIM: This is Nadal-Federer 39. A lot of us who cover this sport weren’t sure we would get this match, much less at a major event. And you mentioned team Nadal and team Federer, but really, this is a rare rivalry where it’s completely reasonable to root for both of them. So this is sort of a triumph for tennis, as well as another installment in this great rivalry.
KELLY: Oh, really? So you’re making the argument – the fact that this match is happening at all is cause for jubilation?
WERTHEIM: Roger Federer is going to be 38 years old in a few months. Nadal just turned 33 the other day. And I think 10 years ago, if you had said, look – in 2019, these guys are still going to be meeting in the latter rounds of majors, people would have, you know, chased you around with butterfly nets. So it’s really that the longevity is part of what’s extraordinary, the fact that here they are, still at the top of their sport. And this rivalry still continues to undulate to sway. I mean, Nadal leads the head-to-heads 23 to 15, but he hasn’t beaten Federer in more than half a decade. Federer has actually won the last four or five matchups they’ve played.
KELLY: Federer’s won the last four or five matches they’ve played, but has Federer ever won against Nadal in Paris, at the French Open?
WERTHEIM: He has not, and that’s sort of – that’s Nadal’s great ace in the hole. This is his personal sandbox. Nadal has won 17 majors, and 11 of them have come here. He is – so Federer has never made inroads against Nadal at the French Open, and this is sort of seen as Nadal’s great stand here against Federer. I mean, again…
KELLY: I mean – and explain why that is. What is it about Nadal’s style of play that makes him so good on clay, which is what they play in Paris?
WERTHEIM: His game is just absolutely tailored to the surface – the fact that he’s left-handed; it’s the surface he grew up playing on. I think a lot of it is sort of spiritual. It’s almost psychological as well. Nadal is this workmanlike player, and clay really rewards effort in a way that no other surface does. It’s really perfect for Nadal’s sort of offense, defense. It also has the effect of sort of blunting some of Federer’s grace and artistry.
KELLY: Huh. It sounds as though you are maybe aligning yourself with the way the betting money is going, that you think Nadal is going to be just hard to beat here?
WERTHEIM: I think Nadal is going to be hard to beat. I mean, the great subtext of this match, too, is that Novak Djokovic, who’s the No. 1 player and has won three majors in a row, isn’t even really being spoken about. And this story has kind of overwhelmed the narrative here. You wonder if, while all the attention is on Federer and Nadal and their 39th encounter, if Novak Djokovic sneaks by and plays one of them on tired legs and takes the title; that wouldn’t surprise me at all.
KELLY: Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated. Thanks for joining us from Paris.
WERTHEIM: Anytime. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF TENNIS’ “ORIGINS”)
Copyright © 2019 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.
Social Security Error Jeopardizes Medicare Coverage For 250,000 Seniors
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A quarter of a million Medicare beneficiaries may be receiving bills for as many as five months of premiums they thought they had already paid.
But they shouldn’t toss the letter in the garbage. It’s not a scam or a mistake.
Because of what the Social Security Administration calls “a processing error” in January, it did not deduct premiums from some seniors’ Social Security checks and it didn’t pay the insurance plans, according to the agency’s “frequently asked questions” page on its website.
The problem applies to private drug policies and Medicare Advantage plans that provide both medical and drug coverage and that substitute for traditional government-run Medicare.
Some people will discover they must find the money to pay the plans. Others may find their plans canceled. Medicare officials say approximately 250,000 people are affected.
Medicare and Social Security say they expect that proper deductions and payments to insurers will resume this month or next. Insurers are required to send bills directly to their members for the unpaid premiums, according to Medicare.
But neither agency would explain how the error occurred or provide a more exact number or the names of the plans that were shortchanged. The amount the plans are owed also wasn’t disclosed. A notice to beneficiaries on Medicare’s website lacks key details.
Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, and two colleagues wrote to both agencies about the problem on May 22 but have not received a response from Medicare. Social Security’s response referred most questions to Medicare officials.
Organizations that help seniors say they are getting some questions from Medicare beneficiaries.
Two seniors in Louisiana lost drug coverage after their policies were canceled due to the SSA error, says Vicki Dufrene, director of the state’s Senior Health Insurance Information Program. One woman had the same drug plan since 2013, which dropped her at the end of April. She was without coverage for the entire month of May until earlier this week, when Dufrene was able to get her retroactively re-enrolled.
Dufrene says some people might not notice that their checks did not include a deduction for their Medicare Advantage or drug plan premiums. If their check was a little more than expected, they could have assumed that extra amount was the expected cost-of-living increase, among other things.
In Ohio, a Medicare Advantage plan reinstated a member due to unpaid premiums less than 48 hours after the state’s health insurance information program for seniors got involved, says director Christina Reeg.
Medicare beneficiaries have had the option of paying their premiums through a deduction from their Social Security checks for more than a decade, she says. However, they can also charge payments directly to a credit card or checking account instead of relying on Social Security.
Humana spokesman Mark Mathis says about 33,000 members were affected — or fewer than 1% of its total Medicare membership. None of those members lost coverage. The company blamed Medicare’s nearly 15-year-old IT systems for the failure and urged the agency to invest in new equipment.
A UnitedHealthcare representative says none of its 32,000 Medicare Advantage or Part D members affected by the SSA problem lost coverage. The company has the highest Medicare enrollment in the U.S.
Aetna has not received payments for Medicare Advantage and drug plans for the months of February through May for 43,000 affected members, says spokesman Ethan Slavin. Customers will receive bills for the unpaid premiums and can set up payment plans if they can’t pay the entire amount.
These and other affected insurers must allow their members at least two months from the billing date to pay. And they must offer a payment plan for those who can’t pay several months of premiums at once, Medicare says. With both steps, “plans can avoid invoking their policy of disenrollment for failure to pay premiums while the member is adhering to the payment plan,” Jennifer Shapiro, the acting director for the Medicare Plan Payment Group, warned the companies in a May 22 memo.
Lindsey Copeland, federal policy director for the Medicare Rights Center, an advocacy group, says she is concerned that older adults will view the bill with suspicion.
“If you think your premiums are being paid automatically and then your plan tells you six months later that wasn’t the case, you may be confused,” she says.
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Contact Susan Jaffe at Jaffe.KHN@gmail.com or @susanjaffe
Ohio To Juárez And Back Again: Why Tariffs On Mexico Alarm The Auto Industry
An employee works at a wiring harness and cable assembly manufacturing company in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, that exports to the U.S. in 2017. The auto industry says threatened tariffs would play havoc with supply chains.
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President Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on goods imported from Mexico, starting next week, if Mexico doesn’t take action to reduce the flood of Central American migrants across the Southern border of the U.S.
The proposed tariffs — which would start at 5% on goods crossing the border and could ramp up to 25% over time — would play havoc with supply chains in the auto industry.
To understand why, consider a vehicle’s wiring harness — the car’s nervous system, consisting of a complex network of wires that connect electronic components throughout the car body.
“It’s a huge, heavy bundle of wires and it’s gotten dramatically more complicated as cars become more electronic,” says Sue Helper, an economist at Case Western Reserve University. “If they’re done wrong, you can get electrical problems that you’ll never solve.”
All those wires are carefully laid out in the proper configuration (different for different car models) and bundled together before they’re installed in a vehicle. And for cars made in the U.S., that bundling almost always happens in Mexico — specifically, in Juárez. It’s time-intensive work, and labor is cheaper in Mexico.
But that’s just part of the picture.
The terminals on the ends of those wires might be built at an Aptiv factory in Warren, Ohio, shipped to Juárez for assembly into the wiring harness, and then shipped back to the U.S. to be installed in a car.
Smaller, stand-alone parts have their own wiring harnesses. For instance, a breakaway kit designed to stop a runaway trailer starts as a plastic box made by Hopkins Manufacturing Corp., in Emporia, Kan. Then it gets shipped to Juárez, where other components are combined and a wiring harness installed. Finally, the finished good comes back to the U.S. to go inside a trailer or to get sold to a consumer.
These goods start and finish in the U.S. but would be subject to tariffs under the new policy.
And it’s not clear just how hard those tariffs would hit.
Hopkins, the company manufacturing breakaway kits and other auto parts and accessories, currently has to pay duties only on the value that was added to the part while it was in Mexico. But CEO Brad Kraft says he is concerned that the tariffs proposed by the White House could be imposed on the total value of the good — which can be 10 times higher than the added value — every time it crosses the border.
If that’s how the tariffs are imposed, then when Hopkins Manufacturing brings a breakaway kit back into the U.S., the company would effectively be paying a tariff on the plastic box that it manufactured in Kansas.
The auto supply chain didn’t always involve so many parts crossing borders so many times. But over the past few decades, the system has dispersed geographically. That included wire bundling jobs once done in the U.S. being shifted to Mexico.
The supply chain could shift again in the future. But experts say these particular tariffs aren’t likely to bring any jobs back to the U.S. Instead, experts worry they could push assembly work from Mexico to other countries with low labor costs, which could actually lead to the loss of more American jobs.
“The wire that goes into those wire harnesses, the fabric that is coated around those wires, as well as all of the connectors are oftentimes made in the United States,” says Ann Wilson, the senior vice president of government affairs at the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association. “So if we make it more expensive to make wire harnesses in Mexico … and they move that offshore someplace else, we are going to lose those jobs in the United States.”
That might be a concern in the long term. For now, businesses aren’t ready to make drastic decisions like moving factories, given the profound uncertainty surrounding these tariffs.
In addition to the fluctuating amount — 5%, gradually rising to 25% — it’s not clear how long the tariffs might be in place; they’re pegged to progress on immigration, as defined by the administration’s “sole discretion and judgment.”
“What do we have to achieve in the immigration issue before suddenly the tariffs are now taken away?” asks Aaron Lowe, senior vice president for regulatory and government affairs for the Auto Care Association, which represents companies that provide aftermarket auto parts and services. “It’s very, very vague.”
Frontera Radiators and Parts, based in El Paso, Texas, right on the border, operates multiple manufacturing facilities in Mexico. It makes truck radiators that are no longer produced in the United States. CEO Arnoldo Ventura is considering buying products from competitors in India or Dubai, if the tariffs do make it up to 25%. But planning is difficult.
“Instead of looking forward a year or two years of planning, we’re just planning on every week,” Ventura says.
And Kraft of Hopkins Manufacturing says in this atmosphere of uncertainty, he can’t just pick up and move his factory from Juárez.
“There’s very little that we can do,” he says.
There’s only one thing, really. Prepare to pay the tariff — and pass the higher costs along to consumers.
There Aren’t Enough Golfers To Keep All Of The U.S. Courses In Business
An estimated 800 golf courses have closed in the last decade, freeing up vast swaths of green space and a new “golf course gold rush” for developers and loss of public courses for golfers.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
There are more golf courses in the U.S. than anywhere else – about 2 million acres of green space all told. But there aren’t enough golfers to keep them all in business. Wisconsin Public Radio’s Phoebe Petrovic reports on the consequences.
PHOEBE PETROVIC, BYLINE: To understand what’s happening today, you need to understand what occurred about 30 years ago. In the late 1980s, golf was surging, and the National Golf Foundation encouraged the industry to build a course a day for 10 years.
Jeff Davis, with the firm Fairway Advisors, says that encouragement was taken to heart.
JEFF DAVIS: The genie was out of the bottle. Developers – all they heard – and the mantra became – was build a course a day. And they did it.
PETROVIC: Over a 20-year period up until the early 2000s, they built more than 4,000 new golf courses. Greg Nathan with the National Golf Foundation says many of those courses fit the same mold.
GREG NATHAN: There was a lot of expensive-to-build, expensive-to-maintain, high-greens-fee golf courses.
PETROVIC: And Jay Karen, who’s with the National Golf Course Owners Association, says it wasn’t the golf industry building the courses.
JAY KAREN: It was the homebuilding industry that really drove much of the boom. Homebuilders made new golf courses the central amenity in the communities that they built around the country.
PETROVIC: Communities like this one built in Florida in 2000.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Waterlefe Golf & River Club, a one-of-a-kind residential community…
PETROVIC: In Florida, California, Pennsylvania, developers gobbled up land and built lush, rolling courses, surrounding them with expensive homes and hotels. Tiger Woods was in his prime, and residents sometimes paid millions to live in gated communities alongside golf courses.
But Karen says exclusive, expensive courses weren’t the only ones built in the ’90s.
KAREN: A lot of municipalities were also getting this exuberance around golf and wanted to add these crown jewels to their parks and recreation divisions and portfolios.
PETROVIC: But soon, there was too much supply and too little demand. The number of golfers and rounds played began to decline in the 2000s. And across the U.S., courses began to close – 10% of them since 2006. The National Golf Foundation says that reflects the market correcting itself. And for the remaining 14,000 courses, competition for players is fierce, especially for the almost 11,000 courses that are open to the public – whether daily fee courses owned by companies or municipal courses run by cities.
Madison, Wis., has more than a dozen golf courses in the area, and the city’s four municipal courses are in crisis. They’ve lost money for the last decade – almost a million dollars last year alone.
Brad Munn grew up playing on Madison’s municipal courses and now works on them. He’s at the Monona Golf Course today driving in a cart.
BRAD MUNN: This is one of my favorite ladies.
PETROVIC: Oh, yeah?
MUNN: Yeah. OK, I got the reporter here, Nancy. We’re ready to watch.
PETROVIC: Munn and Nancy Poole have known each other for about 30 years. She’s played this course nearly every week with her women’s group.
NANCY POOLE: We feel very strongly that it’s part of the Madison parks, like bike paths and ball diamonds and everything else. We need to keep it open.
PETROVIC: City leaders say they’re considering every option for the struggling courses, including closures. That worries Madison’s parks superintendent, Eric Knepp. He says losing municipal courses could limit access for everyday golfers.
ERIC KNEPP: American golf has always had a stodgy, affluent, elite feel. Now, I know that’s not our golfers, and I don’t think it’s good or healthy to have a space where we have 750 acres that are viewed as for these other people. That’s for golfers.
PETROVIC: The municipal courses make up almost a fifth of Madison’s park land. And Knepp says the best way to try to save them is to treat them as a public commons.
For NPR News, I’m Phoebe Petrovic in Madison.
(SOUNDBITE OF KARIM SAHRAOUI’S “BEFORE THE 2ND COMING”)
Copyright © 2019 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.
What Missouri’s Fight Over Abortion Means For An Illinois Clinic Across The River
NPR’s Ari Shapiro talks with Alison Dreith, the director of Hope Clinic in Granite City, Ill., about how the uncertainty of Missouri’s last abortion clinic is affecting her patients and staff.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Missouri’s only clinic that performs abortions is fighting to stay open. That fight against the state’s health department is playing out in the courts today. Last week we asked the head of Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services, Randall Williams, how the closure of this clinic might affect Missouri women’s access to abortion.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
RANDALL WILLIAMS: Access is always important to us, and so as you know, Missouri is contiguous to eight states. And so there certainly are abortion facilities very close by in Illinois and Kansas.
SHAPIRO: Alison Dreith directs one of those nearby facilities. She runs the Hope Clinic in Granite, Ill., roughly 20 minutes’ drive from St. Louis. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
ALISON DREITH: Thanks for having me.
SHAPIRO: How have you and your staff been preparing for the possibility that Missouri may one day be left without a clinic that provides abortions?
DREITH: Well, I think abortion providers all across the country have theoretically been planning for this day since Trump was elected to office, and those conversations have picked up more rapidly and frequently since the beginning of 2019. And now we have had to rapidly put in some of that crisis management planning into practice over these past two weeks.
SHAPIRO: Can you give us examples of some of the kinds of steps you’re talking about?
DREITH: Yeah, some of the steps we have taken is hiring new staff, considering patient flow and how to allow patients to expect the same safe and compassionate care that they always have from us without having to be in the clinic longer hours. We’ve been utilizing volunteers to do mundane clerical work for us that we once had the opportunity to do so. We’ve been increasing our number of patients and staying open longer hours than what we would have normally expected.
SHAPIRO: I imagine your clinic’s capacity is limited in some respect. Can you scale up to the degree that you think you might have to?
DREITH: Absolutely not right off the bat. We see about 3,000 patients a year here at Hope Clinic, and from the…
SHAPIRO: And is that all for abortions, or does that include STI treatment, birth control?
DREITH: Just abortions.
SHAPIRO: OK.
DREITH: The last report I think from the Guttmacher Institute of abortion patients in Missouri was 3,500 in 2017. That is more than double of what we currently see, and we wouldn’t expect to take on all of those patients where there are a number of neighboring states that could provide services much more close to home for patients. But we are in a unique position that we’re so close to downtown St. Louis and that remaining abortion provider in Missouri and that we also go to 24-weeks gestation, which a lot of our other neighboring states do not.
So we have already seen about a 30% increase of abortion patients in the past two years since Missouri passed its last ban on abortion in 2017, but we have seen an increase in those numbers already in 2019 compared to the same time last year. And we expect that to continue to go up not only with Missouri patients but from several other neighboring Midwest and states in the South.
SHAPIRO: You prepared for something similar to this in 2016 when Kentucky was left with only one clinic providing abortions. Has this been different from that?
DREITH: Yeah, I think so because all of our abortion providers and including myself are Missouri residents, and they also provide gynecological care in the state of Missouri. And so for a lot of reasons, we feel like we’re a clinic that is operating in two states – abiding by the Illinois law but also feeling the direct impact of what’s happening in Missouri both professionally and medically and also personally.
SHAPIRO: Alison Dreith is the director of the Hope Clinic in Granite, Ill., just outside St. Louis, Mo. Thanks so much for speaking with us today.
DREITH: Thanks, Ari. Have a great day.
Copyright © 2019 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.
The Thistle & Shamrock: The Scottish Traditional Music Hall Of Fame
Christine Kydd.
Courtesy of the artist
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Courtesy of the artist
Host Fiona Ritchie is joined by the well-loved singer of Scottish traditional and contemporary songs, Christine Kydd. Featuring songs from Christine’s new album Shift and Change, the conversation explores the appeal of traditional songs, the power of some legendary songwriters, and the evolution of Christine’s own work as a performer, educator and composer.
Hear the debut of this new collection of songs and join the company of Fiona and Christine.
