Dozens Of Countries Ground Boeing's 737 Max 8 Following Deadly Crash In Ethiopia
Members of the ground crew chat near a Boeing 737 Max 8 plane operated by Shanghai Airlines and parked on the tarmac at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport in China. On Monday, the Civil Aviation Administration of China ordered all the country’s airlines to ground their Boeing 737 Max 8 planes after Sunday’s fatal crash of the same model plane in Ethiopia.
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Airline regulators across the globe are grounding Boeing 737 Max 8 planes, joining an ever expanding list of countries banning the plane from their airspace. This comes in the wake of Sunday’s deadly plane crash in Ethiopia that killed all 157 people on board. The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
The latest move came Tuesday from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) when it announced a suspension of two Boeing 737 Max models in all flights in the European bloc.
The wave of bans follows the Civil Aviation Administration of China’s decision on Monday to order the country’s airlines to suspend all commercial operations of their Boeing 737 Max 8 jets.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration does not plan to ground the jets in the United States but is facing growing pressure to do so.
The FAA & the airline industry must act quickly & decisively to protect American travelers, pilots, & flight attendants. All Boeing 737 Max 8s should be grounded until American travels can be assured that these planes are safe. https://t.co/6yRQFasFHR
— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) March 12, 2019
The FAA announced Monday that it would require a series of design changes for the Boeing 737 Max fleet.
In the U.S., Southwest Airlines uses a fleet of 34 Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft and is not planning any change in service. Likewise, American Airlines, which operates 24 of the planes, is not planning to ground them.
The full list of countries and airlines that have announced a ban is below:
—Argentina (Aerolíneas Argentinas)
—Australia
—Austria
—Belgium
—Brazil (GOL Linhas Aéreas)
—Cayman Islands (Cayman Airways)
—China
—Ethiopia
—EASA member states
—France
—Germany
—Iceland (Icelandair)
—India
—Indonesia
—Ireland
—Italy
—Malaysia
—Mexico (Aeromexico)
—Mongolia (MIAT Mongolian Airlines)
—Morocco (Royal Air Maroc)
—Netherlands
—Norway (Norwegian)
—Oman
—Poland
—Singapore
—South Africa (Comair)
—South Korea (Eastar Jet)
—Turkey
—United Kingdom (TUI Airways)
Physician Discusses Treatment Of 6-Year-Old Boy In 2017 Tetanus Case
NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks with Dr. Carl Eriksson, assistant professor of pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine, about treating a case of tetanus in a 6-year-old boy.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
If you step on a nail or get bitten by a dog, one of the first questions you will be asked is this. Are you up to date on your tetanus vaccination? Tetanus is a bacterial infection that affects the nervous system. It causes muscles to tighten up. It can make it hard to swallow. It is considered a medical emergency. Fortunately cases of it are extremely rare thanks to the tetanus vaccine, so rare that a write-up about a single case of tetanus in 2017 is now getting a lot of attention.
Dr. Carl Eriksson of the Oregon Health and Science University was one of the physicians who treated that case. He joins me now. Welcome.
CARL ERIKSSON: Thank you for having me.
KELLY: So you and your colleagues write about this case in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The case was a 6-year-old boy who’d gotten a cut on his forehead. He was playing outside on a farm. Would you describe his symptoms, what his condition was?
ERIKSSON: He started having severe muscle spasms both of his arms and legs, also of his jaw, which is a very classic symptom of tetanus. He started then developing difficulty breathing because of unrelenting spasm of his diaphragm and also of muscles of his larynx and his neck.
KELLY: And I was reading in the CDC report he became very sensitive to stimuli to the extent that you darkened the room he was in; you kept your voices low.
ERIKSSON: Exactly. We had to whisper when we were in the room to try to decrease stimuli as much as possible because stimuli can worsen spasms for a patient with severe tetanus.
KELLY: So he ended up being hospitalized for 57 days. He spent more than a month on a ventilator. I read his hospital bill came to more than $800,000. As a doctor, what was going through your head? I mean, what emotions does that prompt?
ERIKSSON: Well, it’s always hard to watch a child suffer when they’re critically ill obviously. I would say it’s harder when you know that they’re suffering from a disease that is relatively easily preventable. And I think that was also on our minds while we were treating this boy. Another reason why it was really difficult is because quite frankly, we see tetanus in the U.S. so rarely that we had to look hard for the best treatment for this child and turn to literature from the developing world and other ideas for the best way to take care of him.
KELLY: Oh, really? What countries were you looking at?
ERIKSSON: Brazil is a country that has had a lot of relatively recent experience with tetanus and actually even performed some trials of specific treatments for tetanus. And a few other reports helped us to develop the best strategy for caring for this child.
KELLY: I understand after all of that, the many days of treatment, he was eventually able to resume normal activities – running, riding his bike, all the things a 6-year-old boy wants to do. Still his parents declined a second dose of the tetanus vaccine and all other vaccinations. Was that puzzling to you?
ERIKSSON: Unfortunately no. There are a lot of families who refuse vaccination for a variety of reasons. Some just need more information. I know a lot of parents struggle with finding the right source of information and knowing what’s true and what’s not true. Meanwhile, there are others who feel very strongly against vaccination and, even when presented with really clear guidance and information the risks and benefits of vaccines, will continue to refuse vaccination. What this boy reminds us of is that these are really terrible diseases with deadly consequences, and that’s a really important voice to add to the vaccine debate.
KELLY: That’s Dr. Carl Eriksson. He cares for critically ill infants and children at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, which is part of the Oregon Health and Science University. Dr. Eriksson, thank you so much.
ERIKSSON: Pleasure to be here.
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.
Refugee Soccer Player Hakeem al-Araibi Granted Australian Citizenship
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison fastens an Australian flag pin on Hakeem al-Araibi, a Bahraini refugee soccer player who was granted citizenship in the country on Tuesday in Melbourne.
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On Tuesday, a Bahraini refugee soccer player who was jailed and facing deportation arguably got his biggest goal — citizenship in a foreign country.
Hakeem al-Araibi, 25, was one of about 200 people who became Australia citizens at a ceremony in Melbourne.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison fastened his own Australia flag pin to Araibi’s jacket. “I’ll take the new one,” he said. “But this is for you, which you can wear very proudly, as our newest Australian but as someone whose Australian values have always been deep in his heart.”
The developments in Araibi’s life triggered outcry among human rights activists, sports enthusiasts and lawmakers across the globe.
Araibi used to play on the national soccer team in the small Persian Gulf state of Bahrain. In 2012, authorities arrested him. In 2014, a court convicted him in absentia of torching a police station, handing him a prison sentence of 10 years. The professional soccer player fled Bahrain that year.
He had been living in Australia as a refugee until last November, when he landed in Thailand during his honeymoon. Thai officials arrested him on an Interpol red notice. He spent two months in jail, facing extradition to Bahrain.
“I could still remember the tone in Hakeem’s voice,” Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, the director of advocacy for the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, tells NPR. “He was telling me about his sleepless nights, like it was a film running back in his head. Remembering everything in detail about how he was abused in Bahrain detention.”
Araibi was beaten, especially on his legs and feet just to remind him that he would not play soccer again, Alwadaei says.
He says video footage showed that Araibi was playing in a televised soccer match when the alleged vandalism occurred.
Inside Bangkok Remand Prison, Araibi told The Guardian that “Bahrain wants me back to punish me” for speaking publicly about human rights abuses and discrimination against Shia Muslims by Sunni leaders.
Under international pressure, Thai prosecutors dropped the case in February and Araibi was released from a Bangkok prison cell. Bahrain withdrew its extradition request but on the same day, the minister of foreign affairs gave the ambassador of Australia to Bahrain a memorandum with the international arrest warrant issued against Araibi.
On Tuesday, the soccer player announced that he finally felt safe. “No one can follow me now,” he tweeted.
In attendance at the ceremony was Craig Foster, an Australian sports analyst and retired soccer player who worked tirelessly to raise awareness of Araibi’s case. “May we learn from the experience as a nation, treat every asylum seeker as supportively, with corresponding compassion as Hakeem. All deserve equal dignity, opportunity,” he said.
Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne told a crowd from the podium about the widespread concern for Araibi’s welfare. Public support “played an enormous part in ensuring he was returned to Australia,” she said.
His soccer club, Pascoe Vale, described Tuesday’s event as “a moment we all have been waiting for.” It added that his example showed how soccer can break down barriers and unite people.
Araibi is currently training and trying to regain the strength he lost while away from soccer, according to The Guardian.
Alwadaei says Tuesday’s joy only goes so far.
“Although someone managed to escape the torture doesn’t mean that their family members will be immune from consequences from the government,” he says. Araibi’s brother, who was imprisoned on the same charges, remains behind bars, Alwadaei says.
He adds that many more political prisoners are languishing in Bahrain.
“Although Hakeem got unprecedented support from the international community simply for his affiliation with [soccer],” he says, “there are thousands of other individuals who simply have no one to advocate on their behalf simply because they don’t happen to be a famous athlete or to have the community behind them.”
How Boeing Is Dealing With The Aftermath Of Ethiopian Airlines Crash
The 737 Max 8 has been the best-selling Boeing aircraft, but now China, Indonesia and several airlines have grounded the planes. What does this all mean for Boeing?
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Meanwhile, a lot of eyes are turning towards Boeing, which built the planes involved in both the Ethiopian air crash and that Lion Air crash in Indonesia less than five months ago. This morning, Boeing’s stock tanked 12 percent before recovering much of that ground. NPR’s Camila Domonoske has been looking at what all of this means for Boeing. She’s in the studio. Hey, Camila.
CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE: Hi.
KELLY: So what has been the official response from Boeing?
DOMONOSKE: The company expressed, quote, “heartfelt sympathies” and is sending a technicals team to the crash site to help investigate. Boeing says, quote, “based on the information available, we do not have any basis to issue new guidance to operators.” And internally, the CEO sent a letter to staff encouraging them to stay focused and saying he’s confident in the safety of this model of plane.
KELLY: And talk to me about this specific model. This was the Boeing 737 MAX 8, a very important plane for Boeing. They’ve got a lot riding on it.
DOMONOSKE: Yeah. The 737 MAX, like you heard Russell explain, is a more fuel-efficient version of this pre-existing plane that’s very popular, the 737. So this new version has been even more popular. It’s the fastest-selling plane the Boeing’s ever had, more than 350 delivered so far. But some 5,000 orders are in, so there’s going to be even more of these planes in the air in the future. And Boeing needed this version of the plane in order to compete with a fuel-efficient plane from its European rival Airbus. About a year ago, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said he was feeling bullish about the 737 MAX.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DENNIS MUILENBURG: The airplane is performing well in the field. Reliability for the fleet in the field is very high, so we’re pleased with the performance of the program.
DOMONOSKE: So reliable – sales and production since then kept going up and up. Boeing was making a ton of money off of this plane. It looked great. But now with two deadly crashes in just a few months, it’s a really different picture.
KELLY: And a really complicated picture. I mean, the scale of this is enormous. Boeing is America’s biggest exporter. Is that right?
DOMONOSKE: Yeah, period, across all sectors. The company employs more than 150,000 people worldwide. It’s got more than a hundred billion in revenue last year. And the company has been doing really, really well in large part because of the success of this 737 MAX model.
So then cut to today. This morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average took a dip, and people pointed to Boeing. The company’s success had been driving the Dow up, and when it went down, it weighed down the entire average although the Dow did manage to close higher today.
KELLY: Next steps for Boeing – do we know?
DOMONOSKE: Yeah, well, we now know that the company was already working on a design change as part of the FAA’s investigation into the earlier crash. We don’t know yet whether there will be any more updates as a result of this more recent crash. But big picture, Boeing has to prove that these planes are safe. There have been hundreds of thousands of safe flights. But the focus now of course is on these two crashes. I spoke with aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia, who says these terrible crashes probably aren’t going to cause a sudden change to Boeing’s sales. You have to consider these planes are ordered years in advance.
RICHARD ABOULAFIA: If it is the worst-case scenario and it’s the same as Lion Air, they could be looking at a very expensive bill. But in the broader context, the sheer scale of their business and the profitability of their business, it’s not going to sink the company.
DOMONOSKE: But in the short term, people are very alarmed. You know, there have been groundings of these planes across the country – China, Indonesia in particular. And some passengers are worried enough that they’re trying to rebook their flights although, again, to emphasize, we don’t know what happened in the Ethiopian Airlines crash.
KELLY: And, again to emphasize, so far here in the U.S., these planes are not grounded.
DOMONOSKE: That’s right.
KELLY: All right.
DOMONOSKE: They’re still flying.
KELLY: NPR’s Camila Domonoske.
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.
LeBron And The Lakers: What Went Wrong During His First Season In Los Angeles
NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks with Los Angeles Times sports columnist Arash Markazi about LeBron James’ disastrous first season with the Los Angeles Lakers.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For basketball fans, it was the blockbuster move of the season.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
MICHAEL STRAHAN: We’re going to talk about the huge move for LeBron James, the king. He’s taking his talents to Los Angeles.
ADRIAN WOJNAROWSKI: This is a seismic shift in the league.
PAULA FARIS: It is official. LeBron is a Laker.
KELLY: Well, that was then. Now things sound more like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: Some of the bluebirds have come out.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Booing).
KELLY: Boos there for LeBron James. Since LeBron left to LA last summer, the team has managed to compile what one sportswriter calls, arguably the most disappointing season in Lakers history. Now, that sportswriter is LA Times sports columnist Arash Markazi. And he joins us now from outside the Lakers’ practice facility. Hey there, Arash.
ARASH MARKAZI: Hey. Thanks for having me.
KELLY: So the most disappointing season in Lakers history – really?
MARKAZI: Here’s why. Not that they were supposed to win a championship, but they were supposed to at least make the playoffs. And they were supposed to be competitive, and they were supposed to contend. For this team to be as bad as they are, they’re not going to make the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season. That’s why this is so disappointing.
KELLY: And that is looking like a done deal; they’re not going to make the playoffs?
MARKAZI: No. For all intents and purposes, they are not going to make the playoffs.
KELLY: So what went wrong here, because the expectations were through the roof for LeBron hitting LA?
MARKAZI: It was a variety of things. So LeBron James missed a quarter of the season. When he went down on Christmas Day, the Lakers, at that point, were the fourth seed in the Western Conference, really playing well. When he went down…
KELLY: And remind us what his injury was.
MARKAZI: He hurt his groin on Christmas Day against the Warriors, who are the top team in the league and are expected to win the championship again. They blew them out on Christmas Day, so that’s where they were at that point in time. LeBron goes down. And again, they are not a competitive team. By the time he comes back, they’re not even a playoff team.
And another thing that happened – they tried to make a few trades. And a lot of these young players – all of a sudden, they don’t know if they figure into the long-term plans of this team. So their attachment to the Lakers, their attachment to LeBron kind of goes away. And so this team fell apart again. Guys were not only hurt, but the trust level was broken as well.
KELLY: So all of this, I gather, is giving rise to whispers. I want to play a little bit of tape. This is sportscaster Jeff Van Gundy of ESPN commenting during a game against the Boston Celtics.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JEFF VAN GUNDY: They have to rebuild this roster, right? And to me, I think they need to explore trading LeBron.
KELLY: Trading LeBron – I mean, mind-blowing. How did we get here?
MARKAZI: I mean, it is crazy, I mean, because he’s right. This roster is broken, so something has to be done. You have to surround LeBron with new players or trade LeBron. Now, I don’t think you trade LeBron. I think LeBron is a superstar that they’ve wanted to get. And by the way, he came to Los Angeles because he wants to retire here. He has, you know, plans to do things in Hollywood. So I don’t think he would want to go somewhere else.
The plan, I believe, is to draft players, sign players, trade for players who will be a good fit for LeBron because the fact of the matter is the players that they’ve surrounded LeBron with are not good fits for him.
KELLY: Are fans in LA starting to wonder if this is the beginning of the end of the reign of LeBron?
MARKAZI: I think so. I mean, it was a very unique position for a lot of Laker fans because for the past 20 years, they have been Kobe Bryant fans. And if you’re a Kobe Bryant fan, usually, you are part of the debate that says Kobe is superior to LeBron. And now, there wasn’t this feeling that, can I root for LeBron? So Laker fans are in this unique position.
I’ll give you a perfect example. LeBron James passed Michael Jordan on the all-time scoring list.
KELLY: Yeah.
MARKAZI: You would have thought you were at a golf tournament. It was a very polite clap, but there was no cheering. No one got excited because the fact of the matter is there’s no connection with LeBron. They don’t love him like he’s their own.
KELLY: Although he is still averaging – is it 27 points a game?
MARKAZI: Oh, yeah.
KELLY: I mean, it’s not shabby.
MARKAZI: No, listen; I mean, LeBron is not going to go anywhere. They signed him so they could have that superstar player. That is the one thing that this Lakers franchise has always had. Whether it’s Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, they’ve had a superstar. LeBron is their superstar. Now, the plan for them this summer is to get one more superstar.
KELLY: That is LA Times sports columnist Arash Markazi talking to us from outside the Lakers’ training facility. Thanks so much, Arash.
MARKAZI: Thanks for having me.
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.
U.S. Hospitals And Insurers Might Be Forced To Reveal The True Prices They Negotiate
The Trump administration aims to boost competition among hospitals and cut costs by letting consumers see how widely prices can vary for the same medical or surgical procedure. But health economists say patients typically have little choice in choosing their hospital.
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The Trump Administration is weighing whether to require hospitals to publicly reveal the prices they charge insurance companies for medical procedures and services — prices that are currently negotiated in private and kept confidential.
The Department of Health and Human services says its aim is to boost competition and cut costs by letting consumers see how prices vary from place to place. But health economists say such “transparency” might not actually bring down costs for patients.
HHS tucked two questions about publicizing the negotiated prices into a separate, 187-page provisional rule released earlier this month that governs health care information technology. The Wall Street Journal reported on the idea last Friday.
“The availability of price information could help increase competition that is based on the quality and value of the services patients receive,” HHS argues in its proposed rule. “The Department is considering subsequent rule-making to expand access to price information for the public, prospective patients, plan sponsors and health care providers.”
Zack Cooper, a health economist at Yale University says he’s skeptical that this particular attempt at price transparency would reduce overall spending on health care.
“Most consumers don’t look at the price of health care services before they access care,” Cooper says. “So I think we need to understand that most folks are not going to, all of sudden, go Googling hospital prices and then make big changes as to where they [go for] care.”
Still, Cooper’s research suggests HHS is looking in the right direction. In a paper he published last month in Health Affairs, in which he analyzed the prices negotiated between hospitals and insurance companies, Cooper found that most health care inflation comes from rising prices for hospital care.
“By and large, physician prices haven’t gone up in the last 10 years,” he says. “In contrast, we’ve seen pretty remarkable growth — on the order of 5 percent per year — in hospital prices.”
Those high prices end up in insurance premiums, which have also been rising, Cooper says.
The American Hospital Association is opposed to making their negotiated prices public.
“This isn’t really what consumers need or want,” says Tom Nickels, the AHA’s executive vice president for government affairs. “What consumers need and want is ‘What are their out-of-pocket costs?’ “
Almost 60 percent of people with employer-sponsored health insurance carry plans with deductibles of more than $1,000. That means more people are exposed to high health care charges for hospital visits. In addition, patients complain frequently of surprise bills they receive after a hospital stay. Those surprise bills often arise when a patient is treated by out-of-network doctors who happen to be working in hospitals that do participate in the patient’s insurance network.
Congress is already considering bills to address such surprise billing practices.
Nickels, the representative of the hospital association, says consumers have no need to see the prices insurance companies pay hospitals, just as they don’t need to see what a grocery store pays for cases of Coca-Cola.
But a glance at the public comments posted on regulations.gov suggests members of public don’t agree with him.
The agency argues in this proposal that the complexity — and opaque pricing in health care system — make the system less efficient and hurts patients’ health.
“Enough with the secrecy and back room deals,” writes one commenter.
Another writes: “When we purchase groceries, cars, homes, airfare, hotel rooms, etc., we know the price before we buy. Shopping around of lower prices is easy. The glaring exception is health care.”
In contrast, Nickels argues that revealing the secretly negotiated deals would actually cut competition. And he questions whether it would be legal.
“We have a system that basically allows people to have private contracts between each other in an economy,” he says.
The hospital price proposal is the latest in a series of efforts by the Trump administration to boost price transparency in health care.
In the last few months, HHS Secretary Alex Azar has proposed several rules to make drug prices more transparent and to change the system for negotiating those prices.
The first would require drug companies to include the list prices of their medications in any television or magazine ads promoting their drugs. Another proposal would tie the price that Medicare pays for many cancer and arthritis drugs to the prices other countries pay for those medications.
And, finally, the agency wants to upend the entire system for pricing prescription drugs that people buy at their local pharmacy. Right now the prices of those medications are determined by negotiations between drug companies and middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers who negotiate discounted prices on behalf of insurance companies.
But those discounts come in the form of secret rebates — and the PBMs keep a share of those rebates for themselves. Now HHS wants to make those rebates illegal and force the players to negotiate discounts upfront.
Sara Fisher Ellison, a health care economist at MIT, is pessimistic that these proposals will reduce costs in the prescription drug market.
“They’re trying to, around the edges, improve the function of the market,” she says. “But to be honest they probably missed the mark. That’s because the market for pharmaceuticals is not like a standard market.”
She says the problem is consumers don’t have the power to easily switch to a competitor product if the drug they’re taking has a high price.
“In pharmaceuticals, the end consumer — the patient — is not the only decision maker, and in fact is often not even the most important decision maker,” Ellison says.
In reality, she says, it’s the insurance companies and the doctors who decide what drugs a patient gets, and often what hospital a patient goes to. And those are the people who are already negotiating the price.
'Miami Herald' Reporters Investigate Ties Between Massage Parlor Owner, Trump
The Miami Herald has detailed how a woman who once owned a chain of day spas in Florida allegedly steered Chinese businessmen to a fundraiser for President Trump. NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Herald reporter Caitlin Ostroff.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
By now, you’ve probably heard the reports about Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots. He’s been charged with soliciting prostitution at a day spa in Florida. And while at first, this story may have played like another embarrassing tale about celebrity mischief, it has now revealed much more. It’s led to deeper reporting about how the sex trade actually works and how it’s connected to human trafficking.
And now, thanks to reporting by the Miami Herald, yet another story has emerged. This one is about a woman who founded a chain of day spots where prostitution is alleged to have taken place and how she may have steered Chinese business executives to a fundraiser for President Trump. There’s a lot to get through here, so we’ve called up Caitlin Ostroff. She’s part of the team of reporters at the Miami Herald who broke this story, and she is with us now.
Caitlin, thanks so much for talking with us.
CAITLIN OSTROFF: Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: I’m going to start by asking you to tell us about the woman in question and how she got involved in politics. And I do want to make clear she founded the day spa where Robert Kraft was arrested, but she sold it several years ago, and she has not been charged in this case. But tell us more about her.
OFTROFF: Yeah. So that’s kind of the big mystery – that when we were researching the spa where Kraft was busted, we wanted to know who owned it, who had founded it. And when we started looking up Cindy Yang – Cindy is the first name that she typically goes by – we were just following through her Facebook page, and all of a sudden, we found all of these pictures that popped up of her posing with President Trump and other high-ranking Republican officials.
She wasn’t politically active before a couple years ago, so she hadn’t really made political contributions. She hadn’t registered to vote until a little bit before the 2016 general election. And so we were trying to figure out, how did she go from a business owner to donating a lot of money to Republican candidates and being in a position with high-ranking officials?
MARTIN: So, according to your reporting, she arranged for a group of Chinese business executives, Chinese nationals, to attend a fundraiser for President Trump. What more do we know about that? And is there anything wrong with them attending the fundraiser?
OFTROFF: It depends. And this is what, again, our reporting is kind of seeking to pose the question of and answer. So it’s illegal for foreign nationals to directly contribute to a campaign. And so the question of that fundraiser, which happened in December of 2017 in New York – it was an RNC fundraiser – is how did Chinese residents happen to be at that fundraiser? How did they pay for their tickets to the event? And was there any influence of that exacted on the president or on other Republican officials?
MARTIN: So they could attend – foreign visitors can attend fundraisers as long as they don’t pay their own way, and they cannot reimburse a U.S. citizen for paying their way.
OFTROFF: Yes.
MARTIN: So that is the question that you are investigating. Do you know the role that Cindy Yang played in getting those executives to that fundraiser?
OFTROFF: So we don’t know exactly how she arranged for them to attend the fundraiser. But we do know that she had started a consulting business called GY US investments. And through that company, there was promises of getting Chinese investors into the president’s orbit. So we do know that she has boasted of her political ties in order to get Chinese businessmen into the presidential orbit and give them access. But we don’t know exactly how she got them into that fundraiser in New York.
MARTIN: And what does the RNC have to say about that? Have they responded to your queries?
OFTROFF: The RNC hasn’t said how they got there or why they were guests yet.
MARTIN: That is Caitlin Ostroff of the Miami Herald. We reached her at a conference in California.
Caitlin, thanks so much for talking with us.
OFTROFF: Thanks for having me.
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.
U.S. Women's Soccer Gender Discrimination Lawsuit
NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan about a gender discrimination lawsuit the U.S. women’s soccer team has filed against U.S. Soccer.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The U.S. women’s national soccer team is ranked number one in the world. The team won the women’s World Cup three times, and the U.S. women are four-time Olympic champions. The U.S. men’s soccer team – not so much. They’ve never won World Cup or the Olympics. They didn’t even qualify for the 2018 World Cup. But the women players are paid less than the men. And that’s why the U.S. women’s national team filed suit against the U.S. Soccer Federation in federal court on Friday – Women’s Day – charging gender discrimination. USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan has been following the story, and she’s with us now.
Christine Brennan, thank you so much for talking to us.
CHRISTINE BRENNAN: Oh, Michel, my pleasure. Always good to talk with you – especially about a topic like this.
MARTIN: Well, the lawsuit points out that for their success in winning the 2015 Women’s World Cup, the U.S. women were paid less than a third of what the U.S. men were paid for losing in the round of ’16. And I think a lot of people might look at that and say, how is that possible? So how is that possible?
BRENNAN: Well, soccer is – has an old boys’ network to the max, Michel. And actually, the U.S. Soccer Federation is doing a better job than most federations around the world. It truly – the sexism and the anti-women feelings are incredibly strong in the sport of soccer worldwide. And so what we’re seeing here is the U.S. women’s national team – I believe it’s the most famous women’s team on the planet in any sport, and certainly role models for so many other women’s sports and charging away, leading the charge, so to speak, on these kinds of issues. They’ve just said enough is enough.
And here we are, three months away from the next Women’s World Cup, which is coming up in France in June. And they have just – with the confidence that they’ve been given from years of playing sports in our country, Title IX now 46, almost 47 years old – they just are not going to deal with this anymore. And that’s why they did this now. And it really is quite a statement about where women are, not just in sports, but in our culture in 2019.
MARTIN: Tell me about the history of this suit. As I understand it, this started with a complaint that the women filed to the EEOC back in 2016. Is that right?
BRENNAN: That is correct. And they didn’t – that hasn’t gotten anywhere – and five players back then, including Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and a couple of others. But frankly, there have been skirmishes, Michel, going all the way back to the year 2000, when the players actually struck and missed a – one tournament going into the Sydney Olympics.
And it’s interesting because I’m sure many of your listeners remember where they were when they watched Brandi Chastain kick that penalty kick almost 20 years ago now – July 10, 1999. So 1999 was really a watershed moment because they saw the huge stadiums, they saw the popularity, the only story in history, as far as I know, to ever be on the covers of Time, Newsweek, People and Sports Illustrated the same week. That was the U.S. women’s soccer team – the nation falling in love with what it’s created with Title IX.
And so with that, I think that gave them the boost to know they needed to do more. And that has been in their DNA in terms of fighting for equal rights for women and, as I said, leading the charge for all kinds of female athletes around the globe, not just in the U.S. So from ’99 onward, there have been these skirmishes about equal pay. This is really just dropping the mike.
MARTIN: Well, OK. Let me just dig in a little bit deeper. Can direct comparisons of the compensation between the men and women – can those direct comparisons be made? I mean, the New York Times reports that each team has its own collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer and that the men – they say that the men receive higher bonuses when they play for the United States, but they’re paid only when they make the team whereas the women receive guaranteed salaries supplemented by smaller matched bonuses. So…
BRENNAN: You’re right. You’re bringing up a great point. And there is an apples to oranges kind of quality to this. Why is that? Because the men’s teams are – men’s – members the men’s team are employed by professional clubs around the world, and they receive compensation that way because the men’s game is so much more advanced than the women’s game, aside from – especially maybe entirely the United States. The women, the top female players, are under contract with U.S. Soccer, not individual teams.
So that is a little bit of why the comparison is – can be difficult. But the differences in bonuses for the two teams – 2014 World Cup, the men’s World Cup, U.S. Soccer, they lost in the round of ’16, the U.S. men did. They were paid – the bonuses were paid out of a total of 5.375 million – OK, 5.375 million for the men who lost in the round of ’16. A year later, 2015, in, Canada the U.S. women win the World Cup, and they’re paid out of a pool of 1.725 million.
MARTIN: Who makes that decision? I mean, who decides how much bonus money and how it’s divided?
BRENNAN: That’s U.S. Soccer. And you bring up a very interesting point because these are the national governing bodies for the sport. All these sports that you see in the Olympics have a national governing body. They are – they’re not for profit. And their goal simply is to promote the game, the athletes and the sport. So, for example, U.S. Figure Skating years ago decided to pay the men equal to the women on things like bonuses. It’s a little different because it’s not a team, it’s individual athletes. But figure skating made sure to pay the men equally because they wanted to hold that carrot out there to boys and men to become figure skaters because the women are the stars in figure skating. Same with swimming – Katie Ledecky gets the exact same amount of money and a bonus that Michael Phelps did. So those are the comparisons, and that’s why U.S. Soccer doesn’t look obviously so good.
MARTIN: Except that you’re telling us that, say, in figure skating, the governing body figured out that – without having to be sued – that they should pay the male athletes the same even though the women are the stars. What I think I hear you saying is that U.S. Soccer could have done the same and has chosen not to.
BRENNAN: Absolutely. U.S. Soccer could have headed this off at the pass. They have known since the year of 1999, since that World Cup, that things were changing. That was a watershed moment. And when those football stadiums were full for women’s soccer, literally packed to capacity, the Rose Bowl, Soldier Field in Chicago, all around the country these things were happening that summer, that they – someone should have said this is a sea change and we need to start noticing it. They think they did OK by raising them when prodded or when having these disputes. They did do more, they didn’t do enough.
MARTIN: That was sports columnist Christine Brennan of USA Today. Christine, thank you so much for talking with us.
BRENNAN: Michel, my pleasure. Thanks again.
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.
How Much Difference Will Eli Lilly's Half-Price Insulin Make?
Eli Lilly and Company, based in Indianapolis, is rolling out a half-price version of its insulin Humalog that will be sold as a generic.
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When Erin Gilmer filled her insulin prescription at a Denver-area Walgreens in January, she paid $8.50. U.S. taxpayers paid another $280.51.
She thinks the price of insulin is too high. “It eats at me to know that taxpayer money is being wasted,” says Gilmer, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes while a sophomore at the University of Colorado in 2002.
The diagnosis meant that for the rest of her life she’d require daily insulin shots to stay alive. But the price of that insulin is skyrocketing.
Between 2009 and 2017 the wholesale price of a single vial of Humalog, the Eli Lilly and Company-manufactured insulin Gilmer uses, nearly tripled — rising from $92.70 to $274.70, according to data from IBM Watson Health.
Six years ago, Gilmer qualified for Social Security Disability Insurance — and thus, Medicare — because of a range of health issues. At the time, the insulin she needed cost $167.70 per vial, according to IBM Watson Health.
“When it’s taxpayer money paying for medication for someone like me, it makes it a national issue, not just a diabetic issue,” Gilmer says.
Stories about people with Type 1 diabetes dying when they couldn’t afford insulin have made headlines. Patient advocates like Gilmer have protested high prices outside Lilly’s headquarters in Indianapolis.
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Last October in Minnesota, then state Attorney General Lori Swanson sued insulin manufacturers alleging price gouging. Pharmaceutical executives were grilled about high drug prices by the Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 26.
This is the backdrop for Lilly saying Monday that it is rolling out a half-priced, generic version of Humalog called “insulin lispro.” The list price: $137.35 per vial.
“Patients, doctors and policymakers are demanding lower list prices for medicines and lower patient costs at the pharmacy counter,” Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks wrote in a blog post about the move. “You might be surprised to hear that we agree – it’s time for change in our system and for consumer prices to come down.”
No panacea
When Lilly’s Humalog, the first short-acting insulin, came to market in 1996, the list price was about $21 per vial. The price didn’t reach $275 overnight, but yearly price increases added up.
In February 2009, for example, the wholesale price was $92.70, according to IBM Watson Health. It rose to $99.65 in December 2009, then to $107.60 in Sept. 2010, $115.70 in May 2011, and so on.
“There’s no justification for why prices should keep increasing at an average rate of 10 percent every year,” says Inmaculada Hernandez of the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy who was lead author of a January report in Health Affairs attributing the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs to accumulated yearly price hikes.
“The public perception that we have in general is that drugs are so expensive because we need to pay for research and development, and that’s true,” Hernandez says. “However, usually research and development is paid for in the first years of life of a drug”
At $137.35 per vial, Lilly’s generic insulin is priced at about the same level as Humalog was in 2012, 16 years after it came to market.
“We want to recognize that this is not a panacea,” says company spokesman Greg Kueterman. “This is an option that we hope can help people in the current system that we work with.”
It’s worth noting that Humalog is a rapid-acting insulin, but that’s only one of the two types of insulin most people with Type 1 diabetes use every day. The second kind is long-lasting. Lilly makes one called Basaglar. The most popular long-lasting insulin is Lantus, produced by Sanofi. Neither has a lower-cost alternative.
Still, Lilly’s move on Humalog could put pressure on the other two big makers of insulin to act.
Novo Nordisk called Lilly’s lower-priced generic insulin “an important development,” in an emailed statement.
“Bringing affordable insulin to the market requires ideas from all stakeholders,” Novo Nordisk’s Ken Inchausti said in an email, which also listed steps the company has taken, such as a patient assistance program. The statement didn’t say whether Novo Nordisk is considering offering a lower-priced version of its popular insulin Novolog, a rival of Humalog.
A statement from Sanofi, the third major insulin maker, also didn’t say whether the company would offer lower-priced version of its insulins.
“Sanofi supports any actions that increase access to insulins for patients living with diabetes at an affordable price,” spokesperson Ashleigh Koss said in the email, which also touted the company’s patient assistance program.
A different kind of generic
One twist in this story is that Lilly’s new insulin is just a repackaged version of Humalog, minus the brand name. It’s called an “authorized generic.”
“Whoever came up with the term, ‘authorized generic’ ?” Dr. Vincent Rajkumar says laughing. Rajkumar is a hematologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
“It’s the same exact drug” as the brand name, he continues.
Typically, Rajkumar says, authorized generics are introduced by brand-name drugmakers to compete with generic versions of their drugs made by rival companies.
But in the case of Humalog and other insulins, there are no generics made by competitors, as there are for, say, the cholesterol medicine Lipitor or even other diabetes drugs, such as metformin.
So when Lilly’s authorized generic comes to market, the company will have both Humalog insulin and the authorized generic version of that medicine on the market.
Rajkumar says it’s a public relations move.
“There’s outrage over the price of insulin that is being discussed in Congress and elsewhere. And so the company basically says, ‘Hey, we will make the identical product available at half price.’ On the surface that sounds great,” Rajkumar says.
“But you look at the problems and you think, ‘OK, how crazy is this that someone is actually going to be buying the brand-name drug?’ “
In fact, it’s possible that Lilly could make the same or even more profit off its authorized generic than it does from the name-brand Humalog, according to University of Pittsburgh’s Hernandez.
The profit margin would depend on the rebates paid by the company to insurers and pharmacy benefit managers. Rebates are getting a lot of attention these days as one factor in rising drug prices. They’re usually not disclosed and increase as a drug’s price increases providing an incentive to some
“Doing an authorized generic is nothing else than giving insurers two options,” Hernandez says: Pay the full list price for a brand-name drug and receive a higher rebate, or pay the lower price for the authorized generic and receive a presumably smaller rebate.
“What we really need to get insulin prices down is to get generics into the market, and we need more than one,” Hernandez says, adding that previous research has shown that prices begin to go down when two or three generics are competing in the marketplace.
Even so, Lillly’s Kueterman says the authorized generic insulin “is going to help hopefully move the system towards a more sustainable model.”
“I can guarantee you the reason that we’re doing this is to help people,” Kueterman says, noting the company’s Diabetes Solution Center has also helped “10,000 people each month pay significantly less for their insulin” since it opened in August 2018.
For Erin Gilmer, the news about an authorized generic insulin from Lilly has left her mildly encouraged.
“It sounds really good and it will help some people, which is great,” Gilmer says. “It’s Eli Lilly and pharma starting to understand that grassroots activism has to be taken seriously, and we are at a tipping point.”
This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Kaiser Health News. Freelance journalist Bram Sable-Smith can be found on Twitter: @besables.
Amnesty International: New Twitter Feature Leaves Burden On Users Experiencing Abuse
Twitter is developing a feature aimed at making the site less toxic for users. NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Amnesty International’s Rasha Abdul-Rahim, who has studied harassment on Twitter.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We’re going to return now to our Troll Watch series.
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MARTIN: This is where we bring you stories of cybersecurity attacks, bots and of course, internet trolls. This week, Twitter confirmed that users will eventually be able to press a button that says hide tweet that would, as you might imagine, allow users to hide certain responses to their tweets. And that means if you tweet something and you get nasty or abusive replies back, you could make those replies invisible to others.
Now one reason this is of interest of course is the abuse directed at women on Twitter, something Amnesty International researched extensively in a report recently. We spoke with Amnesty about that report, so we wanted to follow up to ask them what they make of this new planned feature. Joining us now is Rasha Abdul Rahim, deputy director of Amnesty Tech. She’s with us via Skype from London. Rasha, thanks so much for talking to us.
RASHA ABDUL-RAHIM: No problem. Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: So tell us about this new Twitter feature. What’s your understanding of how it would work?
ABDUL-RAHIM: Yeah, so my understanding is that Twitter’s developed this new feature as a way to allow people – women – who received tweets that may not reach the threshold of being abusive or hateful to allow them another way to hide problematic tweets they may be receiving so that they’re not as visible to them and to others. But my understanding is that people will still be able to view those tweets if they click the tab that shows the hidden tweets.
MARTIN: So what are the pros and the cons of this?
ABDUL-RAHIM: I see four different issues with this. I think the first one is the – I think there’s a danger here of brushing the issue under the carpet, so brushing the issue of problematic tweets under the carpet and not holding people who are sending those tweets accountable. So these kinds of tweets, as I said before, may not necessarily reach the threshold of abuse or hateful conduct, but they still contain hurtful or hostile content, and especially if they’re repeated to an individual on multiple occasions.
And these are the kinds of things that can reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes against a group of individuals, such as women, such as women of color. And they may still have a silencing effect on them. So I think here is – the key is, you know, will the effect of this be that those kinds of repeat offenders will not have any kind of accountability leveled to them for sending, you know, a barrage of these kinds of problematic tweets?
MARTIN: Two criticisms I’ve seen come from different angles – one is that this still puts the onus on women to solve the problem…
ABDUL-RAHIM: Absolutely. Yeah, that was the next point I was going to make.
MARTIN: …As opposed to putting the onus on Twitter. But the other side of the equation is some are arguing that this allows for censorship. I mean, it could allow for say, public officials to, you know, decide that they don’t want other people to see legitimate criticism directed at them just cause they don’t like it.
ABDUL-RAHIM: Yeah, totally. These are two issues as well that we’ve spotted. So the burden is still, as you say, on the individuals experiencing the abuse to label or to hide every single tweet. And this doesn’t only take time, but it also takes an emotional toll on those individuals who are receiving that abuse. And it’s almost as if Twitter is kind of outsourcing that responsibility to the people who are experiencing this abuse. And as you say, it could also have a silencing effect on free speech if powerful public figures such as politicians can hide dissent or prevent users from holding public figures to account.
MARTIN: Could you just remind people for those who did not hear our prior conversation why you feel that abusive tweets, this kind of communication, rises to the level of a human rights concern, such that Amnesty would take as much time and effort as it has to investigate it? Why do you think this is a problem?
ABDUL-RAHIM: It’s a problem because if women are disproportionately experiencing abuse or harassment or are targets of problematic tweets, then this means that this could have a silencing effect on them. And this is something that we found in our research that women tend to change the way in which they interact on these platforms. They tend to, you know, withdraw from Twitter or change the way in which they use their language on Twitter in order to not subject themselves or open themselves up to abuse.
And, you know, our research has shown that 7.1 percent of tweets that were sent to women in this study were problematic or abusive, which amounted to 1.1 million tweets mentioning 778 women across the year, which amounts also to one every 30 seconds. And we also found that women of color were 34 percent more likely to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets than white women. Black women were disproportionately targeted, being 84 percent more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets.
So this is clearly a problem. And if Twitter is not responding or addressing this problem effectively, then this obviously will have an impact on women’s ability to freely express themselves on the platform.
MARTIN: That’s Rasha Abdul Rahim, deputy director of Amnesty Tech at Amnesty International. We reached her via Skype in London. Rasha, thank you so much for talking with us.
ABDUL-RAHIM: Thank you, too. Good bye.
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.
