Judge Limits DOJ's Warrant For Records From Anti-Trump Site
Anti-Trump protesters chant during an Inauguration Day demonstration in Washington, D.C., in January. A judge has narrowed the Justice Department’s warrant for records related to a website used to plan protests.
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A Washington, D.C., judge has significantly narrowed the Justice Department’s warrant related to a website used to plan anti-Trump protests during the Inauguration.
The government had sought a sweeping warrant for records from web hosting company DreamHost of all visitors to its customer’s website, DisruptJ20.org — even those not suspected of committing a crime. As NPR previously reported, DreamHost resisted complying with that warrant, considering it overly broad, and endangering privacy and free speech.
“[W]hile the government has the right to execute its Warrant,” D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert Morin wrote in his order, “it does not have the right to rummage through the information contained on DreamHost’s website and discover the identity of, or access communications by, individuals not participating in alleged criminal activity, particularly those persons who were engaging in protected First Amendment activities.”
The government sought the warrant as it gathers evidence for its cases against nearly 200 people charged with rioting on Jan. 20.
The judge’s new order instructs DreamHost to redact identifying information of “innocent persons” who visited the website before providing the records to the government. It also dictates a protocol for incorporating procedural safeguards to comply with “First Amendment and Fourth Amendment considerations.” Among other stipulations, the government must submit to the court its plan for permanently deleting from its possession all information not within the scope of the warrant.
DreamHost considered the judge’s ruling a significant victory.
“The new order is a far cry from the original warrant we received in July,” DreamHost General Counsel Christopher Ghazarian wrote in a statement to NPR. “Absent a finding by the Court that probable cause of criminal activity exists, the government will not be able to uncover the identities of these users. There are also quite a few modifications that further reduce the government’s ability to review unrelated data. This is another huge win not just for DreamHost, but for internet users around the world.”
The company says it does not intend to appeal the court’s ruling.
“As it stands today, the sum total of requested data in this case very closely aligns with hundreds of other government requests that DreamHost has received, and complied with lawfully, in the past,” DreamHost VP of Corporate Communications Brett Dunst tells NPR.
Morin took over adjudication of the matter from another judge, Ronald Wertheim, who had granted the initial warrant.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the order.
California Governor Signs Law To Make Drug Pricing More Transparent
The new law will require pharmaceutical companies to notify the state and health insurers if they plan to raise the price of a medication by 16 percent or more over two years.
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California Gov. Jerry Brown defied the drug industry Monday, signing the most comprehensive drug price transparency bill in the nation that will force drug makers to publicly justify big price hikes.
“Californians have a right to know why their medical costs are out of control, especially when pharmaceutical profits are soaring,” Brown says. “This measure is a step at bringing transparency, truth, exposure to a very important part of our lives, that is the cost of prescription drugs.”
Brown says the bill was part of a broader push toward correcting growing economic inequities in the U.S., and called on the pharmaceutical leaders “at the top” to consider doing business in a way that helps those with a lot less.
“The rich are getting richer. The powerful are getting more powerful,” Brown says. “So this is just another example where the powerful get more power and take more… We’ve got to point to the evils, and there’s a real evil when so many people are suffering so much from rising drug profits.”
The drug lobby fiercely opposed the bill, SB 17, hiring 45 firms to try to defeat it and spending $16.8 million on lobbying against the full range of drug legislation.
The new law is intended to shine light on how drugs are priced, requiring pharmaceutical companies to notify the state and health insurers anytime they plan to raise the price of a medication by 16 percent or more over two years. And, companies will have to provide justification for the increase.
The legislation was supported by a diverse coalition, including labor and consumer groups, hospital groups and even health insurers, who agreed to share some of their own data under the bill. They will have to report what percentage of premium increases are due to drug prices.
“Health coverage premiums directly reflect the cost of providing medical care, and prescription drug prices have become one of the main factors driving up these costs,” says Charles Bacchi, CEO of the California Association of Health Plans. “SB 17 will help us understand why, so we can prepare for and address the unrelenting price increases.”
Drug companies criticized the governor’s move, saying the new law focuses too narrowly on just one part of the drug distribution chain and won’t help consumers afford their medicine.
“It is disappointing that Gov. Brown has decided to sign a bill that is based on misleading rhetoric instead of what’s in the best interest of patients,” says Priscilla VanderVeer, spokesperson for the drug industry association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). “There is no evidence that SB 17 will lower drug costs for patients because it does not shed light on the large rebates and discounts insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers are receiving that are not always being passed on to patients.”
This law is part of a long game toward developing a stronger web of drug laws across the country, says Gerard Anderson, a health policy professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who tracks drug legislation in the states. In that respect, it makes sense to start with the source of the drug prices: the drug makers themselves, he says.
“The manufacturers get most of the money — probably about three quarters or more of the money that you pay for a drug — and they’re the ones that set the price initially,” he says. “So they are not the only piece of the drug supply chain, but they are the key piece to this.”
California’s law will not stand alone, says state Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), the bill’s author and an optometrist. “A lot of other states have the same concerns we have, and you’re going to see other states try to emulate what we did.”
'Something Amazing' In Angola: War Scraps Become Steel Beams For Rebuilding
Aceria de Angola is a company that is turning old weapons — rifles, tanks — into steel beams. It was founded by a baker, whose business was destroyed by the bloody civil war. But the spoils presented an opportunity.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Angola’s long civil war ended in 2002, and the country is still recovering today. There’s infrastructure to build. There are long-term injuries to mend. And there’s this question – what should be done with the old tanks and rifles that litter huge tracts of land? NPR’s Eyder Peralta has this story about a company that’s melting weapons and turning them into steel.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Aceria de Angola has a junkyard in a rural town about two hours from the capital, Luanda.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRUCK REVERSING)
PERALTA: To see the whole place we climb on a two-story scaffold. I see a vast wasteland. The red dirt is covered with crumpled metal, old, rusty cars, mounds of motorcycles and, in the distance, big chunks of tanks languishing in the sun.
(SOUNDBITE OF METAL CLANGING)
PERALTA: A bulldozer picks up the scraps like Legos and drops them into a machine that shreds them into tiny pieces.
(SOUNDBITE OF METAL CRUNCHING)
PERALTA: Luis Silva, the guy who runs this factory, puts his hands on his waist and looks around.
When you look out here, what kind of story does this yard tell you about this country?
LUIS SILVA: (Laughter) It tells me a story of poverty and war.
PERALTA: Silva has done this kind of work in Europe. Out there, he says, the yards are littered with junk that still has some life – cars with some paint left on them. And you also get the remains of a society on the move – steel beams from relatively new buildings and factories being destroyed to make way for new ones.
SILVA: You don’t see here industrial scrap. You look for that and just a small amount of pipes comes from the oil industry. But the rest is old; very old.
PERALTA: Aceria de Angola is the brainchild of Georges Choucair. During the war, he owned a big bakery, but his delivery trucks were destroyed. And when it was all over, he saw a country with the need and means to rebuild. In the steel business, he saw money. But he also saw a parallel between his old life and what would become his new one.
GEORGES CHOUCAIR: Steel is as much important than food. We need food because we need to live, but we need to have a home. And home without steel also nothing.
PERALTA: Of course, he faced many challenges building a factory in a country emerging from war. He had to invest in the power grid so he could get enough electricity, for example. But his love for Angola kept him going, he says. Once the plant was built, one of the first things they did was clear tons of war scraps from Cuito Cuanavale, the site of one of the most intense and historic battles during the Angolan Civil War.
CHOUCAIR: We now can recycle all the scrap, the war scrap, to something amazing, giving life to people.
PERALTA: Back at the factory, Luis Silva shows me how the metal scraps are melted in furnaces, how it’s poured out and turned into what look like long, black beams.
SILVA: After that we start the rolling process.
PERALTA: He says there are still lots of problems here. There are few roads to get scraps out of the center of the country. There are lots of power cuts, and employees often lose family members to what should be treatable diseases. He stops to show me the presses. They squeeze warm steel into thin rebars.
SILVA: And this is the finished product.
PERALTA: There are still problems, he says. But when he sees this new steel made from old scraps, it gives him hope. Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Luanda.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRACEY CHATTAWAY’S “SHIMMER”)
Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Businesses To Benefit From Addressing 'Loneliness Epidemic,' Doctor Says
Former surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy says that underlying many of the most critical public health issues facing America today is an epidemic of loneliness. NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Dr. Murthy about what that means, and what he thinks should be done about it.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let’s talk about health and well-being for a few minutes. Often, when we talk about the issues that most concern the leading figures charged with addressing the nation’s health, we think about excess weight or smoking or violence. But the former surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, would like to add something else to that list – loneliness. That’s a subject of a new cover story in The Harvard Business Review. Some 40 percent of American adults say they feel lonely. And a rising number of people say they have no close confidant in their lives.
That’s one reason why Dr. Murthy argues that America is in the midst of a loneliness epidemic. And the consequences of that, he says, are significant enough that businesses, managers and workers should rethink the way they work to think about how to foster more meaningful relationships with colleagues, with whom many people spend more time than with family. To hear more about that, we’re joined now by Dr. Vivek Murthy in our studios in Washington, D.C. Dr. Murthy, thanks so much for speaking with us.
VIVEK MURTHY: Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: So I would imagine that a lot of people wouldn’t think about loneliness as a public health issue. So first of all, tell us why you think it is a public health issue, and then help us understand how you got to thinking that yourself.
MURTHY: Well, years ago, I wouldn’t have thought about loneliness as a public health issue either. But two big things happened in my life that changed that. Number one, I began practicing medicine and seeing patients and quickly realized that the greatest pathology that I saw was not heart disease or diabetes. It was, in fact, loneliness, and it was impacting the ability of my patients to live healthy and fulfilling lives.
But the second thing that happened is, when I began my tenure as surgeon general, I visited communities all across the country – big and small. And what I heard everywhere I went was that people were, in fact, struggling with loneliness. They used different words to describe that feeling and that experience, but the experience was often the same. Some people were struggling with loneliness in the face of illness.
You know, I met moms and dads, for example, who had lost children to drug overdoses and felt profoundly alone in part because of this terrible stigma that surrounds addiction. But even people who weren’t struggling with illness often felt that they were on their own. And this is quite striking despite the boom that we’ve had in technology, especially social technology.
So these two experiences really led me to see that loneliness is not only a profound problem. But when you look at the literature and you understand the science, there are powerful impacts that loneliness can have on our health. And that’s why I began to look at it as an important public health issue that we need to address.
MARTIN: Well, in fact, you used the language of health – like you said, it’s a pathology. I mean, I think when people think of an illness, they think of something that is something physical that has specific symptoms. I mean, does loneliness have those things?
MURTHY: When you look at the data, you find that loneliness is associated with shorter lifespan. And, in fact, the reduction in lifespan from loneliness is similar to the reduction associated with smoking, and it’s, in fact, greater than the impact of obesity. But if you delve even deeper, you see that there’s an association between loneliness and cardiovascular disease, dementia, anxiety and depression. And if you look at even more deeper at the physiology, it’s not too difficult to understand how this may, in fact, come about because loneliness, in fact, creates a stress state in our body.
As human beings, we evolved to be social creatures, and there was a very practical reason for that because, in ancient times, if we had other people that we were connected to, we had a stronger guarantee of a stable food supply. We also had a greater chance of being protected from predators at night. We could all take turns keeping watch around the fire instead of having one person stay up the entire night. And over hundreds and thousands of years, that need for social connection became baked into our nervous system. And so if we are in a lonely state, it actually places us in a state of stress, and chronic stress is associated with increases in cortisol, increases the inflammation in the body, which can damage tissues and ultimately increase our risk of heart disease, obesity and a number of other illnesses.
MARTIN: Why do you say that the work environment needs to address this? Why is that a business problem or work problem?
MURTHY: Well, the truth is that all of us have to think about how we can address the loneliness epidemic across all sectors. But in particular, we need to look at where people spend the bulk of their time, and people are spending the bulk of their time with families, in the workplace, in schools, in social organizations like faith-based organizations. And for many people, spend at least eight hours a day at work. Many spend many more than eight hours a day at work. And for this reason, the impact that the workplace has on our social connections becomes very, very important.
Now, one might think, OK, well, it’s not the job of an employer to really think about whether your employees are lonely or not. There are a couple of reasons you might be interested in doing that. Number one, you recognize that loneliness has an impact on your health. Then, you know that employees who are not healthy can contribute less to the actual business and to the bottom line. The second reason, though, is loneliness is not a phenomenon that occurs in isolation.
But in many ways, loneliness has network effects. When individuals are lonely, they can impact whether people around them feel lonely as well. And so that is, in part, why I think of it as an epidemic. But if you’re an employer, you want to make sure that people in your workplace are feeling connected, so that they can be happier, more productive, healthier and have reduced health care costs and, ultimately, so you have a community that’s thriving instead of a community that’s groaning under the yoke of stress.
MARTIN: That’s Dr. Vivek Murthy. He was the 19th surgeon general of the United States. He was appointed by former President Obama. And he was kind enough to join us in our studios in Washington, D.C. Dr. Murthy, thanks so much for speaking with us.
MURTHY: Thank you for having me.
Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Patients, Health Insurers Challenge Iowa's Effort To Privatize Medicaid
Neal Siegel, who lives with his girlfriend, Beth Wargo, is one of six disabled Iowans suing the state over its privatized Medicaid program.
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Iowa is one of 38 states that radically changed the way it runs Medicaid over the past few years. The state moved about 600,000 people on the government-run health program into care that is managed by for-profit insurance companies.
The idea is that the private companies would save the state money, but it has been a rocky transition in Iowa, especially for people like Neal Siegel.
Siegel is one of six disabled Iowans suing the state, alleging that Medicaid managed care, as it is known, deprives thousands of Iowans with disabilities the right to live safely in their homes.
Medicaid serves people with disabilities, low income people, and people in nursing homes. A combination of federal and state funds pays for it. It covers 74 million people across the country these days, about half of whom are in Medicaid managed care.
Siegel, a former financial consultant, was in a hit-and-run bicycle crash four years ago that left him with a severe brain injury. He uses a wheelchair and can barely speak.
“I would probably put Neal at about 98 percent cognitive of what’s going on around him, but unfortunately not able to articulate it,” says Siegel’s girlfriend, Beth Wargo. “So it’s being trapped inside your own body.”
After the accident, Siegel qualified for Medicaid. He lived in a rehabilitation center for a while, and the lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court in June, says he was the victim of abuse and neglect while living there.
Neal Siegel and Beth Wargo, in a photo taken after Siegel’s accident in a hit-and-run bicycle crash left him with a severe brain injury.
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Eventually he moved home with Wargo, where he’s totally reliant on caregivers to assist him with all activities of daily life.
Then last year, Wargo says, they got a letter in the mail from AmeriHealth Caritas, the company that manages his care. Siegel’s budget for home help had been slashed by 50 percent, Wargo says. Siegel’s face lights up as Wargo talks about the lawsuit, and he manages to say, “Oh yeah,” when she mentions how happy they were that they could be part of it.
Cyndy Miller is the legal director with Disability Rights-Iowa, the advocacy group that spearheaded the lawsuit.
“The system is too stressed right now with the way it’s being managed and it’s not healthy for individuals with chronic or serious disabilities,” says Miller.
According to the lawsuit, the company claimed that spending on Siegel’s case was cut because it had exceeded a limit set in state policy. A spokesman for AmeriHealth Caritas said the company could not comment on ongoing litigation. The state has asked for the lawsuit to be dropped.
In addition to the suit, complaints about Medicaid from hospitals, doctors, and patients have spiked in Iowa.
Iowa’s Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven defends moving the entire Medicaid population to managed care. He says more taxpayer dollars will be saved under private management.
But he says his agency is willing to make changes, especially for people like Neal with serious disabilities.
“Everything’s always on the table. We’re always looking at everything to say how do we best serve the people we’re trying to serve and be the best stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Foxhoven says.
For their part, the three companies with contracts in Iowa say in statements that the first 18 months have been successful. But they also have said to state officials that reimbursement rates were based on deeply flawed cost estimates provided to them before the project began.
They are now negotiating to get millions of dollars more in state funding.
So where’s the savings? So far, no state has actually done a comprehensive review of whether private companies actually save Medicaid dollars, says Kelly Whitener, an associate professor with Georgetown University who studies managed care.
“You’d really need to be able to see, are you saving money overall or not, and if you are spending less money, are you suppressing services that are needed? Or are you really finding efficiencies and only delivering care that families really need?” says Whitener.
For the moment, those questions don’t have definitive answers.
Meanwhile, Iowa has to balance its books. Republican Governor Kim Reynolds had to tap more than $260 million of the state’s reserve fund this year, and officials expect next year’s budget will be even tougher to negotiate. Medicaid funding will likely be a large part of the discussion.
This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, local member stations and Kaiser Health News.
Episode 798: Bad Credit Bureau
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
In 1874, if you wanted to buy groceries on store credit, the cashier would reach under the counter and pull out a little blue book. Inside would be your name, profession and whether you paid your debts on time. It was the beginning of the Equifax business model. And it was never about the regular citizens. It was about the businesses that wanted to lend to them. Regular people are the product. Banks and businesses are the customers.
And in many ways, that makes sense. Businesses do work better if they know something about their patrons. It’s safer to lend money, which means it’s cheaper and easier to get for “creditworthy” customers. Sort of a win-win but for one uncomfortable thing: Today, credit bureaus like Equifax have grown into massive corporations that slurp up virtually every piece of our financial lives. We never signed up for Equifax, or either of the other two companies that monitor just about every non-cash transaction. We never opted in. And it’s hard to opt out.
On today’s show: Why credit bureaus know so much about us, and why lawmakers have been struggling to regulate them for the past fifty years.
Music: “Say It Out Loud” “Acrobatic” and “Assault On Fort Apache.” Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.
Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts or PocketCast.
Amid Harassment Reports, Harvey Weinstein Takes Leave Of Absence
Harvey Weinstein, who heads The Weinstein Co. with his brother, Bob, arrives at the 2014 Oscars in Los Angeles.
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Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is taking a leave of absence from his company following a New York Timesstory that he sexually harassed female assistants, executives and actresses for decades. The Times report also says Weinstein settled complaints with at least eight women.
Weinstein is one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. He co-founded Miramax, which has produced such Academy Award-winning films as Pulp Fiction, Chicago, The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love. He and his brother, Bob, head The Weinstein Co. Along with movies, the Weinsteins have produced a number of Tony Award-winning shows on Broadway.
Harvey Weinstein is also known for his temper and, the Times story says, his inappropriate behavior toward women has been discussed within his companies for years. The story begins with actress Ashley Judd being invited to what she thought was a business breakfast with Weinstein at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles. Instead, she says, she was sent to his room where he asked her to give him a massage or watch him shower.
“How do I get out of the room as fast as possible without alienating Harvey Weinstein?” Judd is quoted as saying in the article.
Weinstein released a statement in response to the allegations. He apologizes for some of his behavior by saying that times have changed since he began in the movie business:
“I came of age in the 60’s and 70’s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different. That was the culture then.
I have since learned it’s not an excuse, in the office — or out of it. To anyone.
I realized some time ago that I needed to be a better person and my interactions with the people I work with have changed.
I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it.”
At the same time, one of Weinstein’s lawyers, Lisa Bloom, released a statement saying “he denies many of the accusations as patently false.”
Weinstein says he will take time to “conquer his demons.” He also says he will use the time to fight the National Rifle Association. Weinstein is a longtime donor to Democratic candidates and liberal causes.
California Bill Would Compel Drugmakers To Justify Price Hikes
Drug lobbyists and consumer health advocates fill the halls of the state Capitol in September to see how Assembly members vote on a controversial drug price transparency bill.
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Tam Ma/Courtesy of Health Access California
Insurers, hospitals and health advocates are waiting for Gov. Jerry Brown to deal the drug lobby a rare defeat, by signing legislation that would force pharmaceutical companies to justify big price hikes on drugs in California.
“If it gets signed by this governor, it’s going to send shock waves throughout the country,” said state Sen. Ed Hernandez, a Democrat from West Covina, the bill’s author and an optometrist. “A lot of other states have the same concerns we have, and you’re going to see other states try to emulate what we did.”
The bill would require drug companies to give California 60 days’ notice anytime they plan to raise the price of a drug by 16 percent or more over two years. They would also have to explain why the increases are necessary. In addition, health insurers would have to report what percentage of premium increases are caused by drug spending.
Drugmakers have spent $16.8 million on lobbying since January 2015 to kill an array of drug legislation in California, according to data from the Secretary of State’s Office. The industry has hired 45 lobbyists or firms to fight the price transparency bill alone. Against the backdrop of this opposition campaign, Brown must decide by Oct. 15 whether to sign or veto the bill.
This is the second go-round for this drug price bill. Last summer, the same legislation crashed and burned. Its intended regulations were gutted so extensively that Hernandez decided to pull it. But, he said, two key things happened after that, stetting the stage for a successful second attempt.
First, in August 2016, less than a week after Hernandez pulled the bill, a firestorm of controversy erupted nationally over the price of EpiPens spiking nearly 500 percent. The increase sparked outrage from parents who carry the auto-injectors to save their children from life-threatening allergic reactions.
Momentum grew among federal lawmakers last September to do something. They called for hearings. Several proposed bills aimed to reign in drug prices across the country.
But then, the election of November 2016 disrupted all order of health care business in Washington. After Donald Trump was elected and Republicans took control of Congress, the number one health policy priority became repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act.
As federal lawmakers focused on dismantling the ACA, Hernandez said he saw another opportunity for state lawmakers to act on drug prices. He reintroduced his bill in early 2017, and this time political support grew quickly, beyond the usual suspects.
“It wasn’t just labor,” he recalls. “It was consumer groups, it was health plans. It was the Chambers of Commerce, it was the hospital association.”
Hernandez is optimistic the governor will sign SB 17 into law. But he knows nothing’s certain. That’s because of what happened on Sept. 11, the day the bill came up for a key vote in the state Assembly — the same place it went down the year before. Hernandez thought he’d secured all the votes he needed, but at the last minute the votes started slipping away.
The bill needed 41 votes to pass the Assembly. During the roll call, the tally stalled around 35. Hernandez said he had plenty of colleagues willing to cast the 42nd vote, but with drug lobbyists swarming the Capitol, no legislators wanted to be the one to cast the deciding vote.
“If the bill fails and you’re stuck out there, then you’re the person that’s attacking the industry,” Hernandez says.
But, the bill crossed the 41-vote threshold and the remaining lawmakers joined in. In the end, the bill passed with 66 votes. All the Democrats and half the Republicans in the state Assembly voted for it.
This was much to the dismay of drug companies, which lobbied hard and issued a blitz of advertising in the last weeks before the vote.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, a drug industry’s trade group, argued that SB 17 was full of “false promises” that wouldn’t help consumers pay for their medicines, and would instead stifle innovation with cumbersome regulatory compliance.
“That takes up a lot of resources and will take up a lot of time,” says Priscilla VanderVeer, deputy vice president of public affairs for PhRMA. “And that could mean pulling resources from research and development and having to put it into the reporting structure.”
Experts say the drug industry doesn’t want a large influential state like California forcing them to share their data.
“When they have to justify in California, de facto, they have to justify it to the other 49 states,” says Gerard Anderson, a health policy professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “Other states essentially get to piggyback on the good efforts of California, and hopefully, because they might have difficulty justifying the price increases, everybody’s prices around the country will be lower.”
Other states, including Maryland, Vermont, Nevada and New York, have passed similar laws aimed at bringing more transparency to prices and curbing price gouging. But the pharmaceutical industry has fought the hardest in California. If drug companies don’t like the disclosure laws in smaller states, they could decide not to sell their drugs there, Anderson says, but the market in California is just too big to ignore.
“States like Maryland are just not as powerful,” he says. “It just doesn’t have the clout that a state like California has.”
But drugmakers are likely already devising ways to work around the California bill, Anderson warns. They’ve filed lawsuits to try to slow or stop laws from being implemented in other states, or to weaken the rules if and when they go into effect. Policy experts are watching to see what kinds of legal challenges the California law might be vulnerable to, and if it can withstand them.
“We learn from the mistakes of other states,” Anderson says. “Legislation is an iterative process. We have 50 states and hopefully, by some time, we’ll get it right. We’re looking for California to take the lead on this.”
This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, KQED and Kaiser Health News.
Equifax And Wells Fargo Apologize To Congress; Lawmakers Not Buying It
Former Equifax CEO Richard Smith testifies about the company’s massive data breach before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Tuesday.
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When corporate chief executives appear before Congress, they come braced for battle, but hope for gentle treatment.
Tender handling is not what they got on Tuesday. Not from Republicans. Not from Democrats.
Not when they were representing Wells Fargo and Equifax — two huge companies that recently have harmed Americans.
“At best, you were incompetent. At worst, you were complicit. And either way you should be fired,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan.
Sloan was testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, trying to explain the scandals that continue to plague his company.
In another hearing at the same time, the former CEO of Equifax, Richard Smith, was telling a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee about how his company managed to expose the sensitive, private information involving more than 145 million Americans.
The scope of Equifax’s failure to protect people’s privacy was “unprecedented,” subcommittee chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, said. The breach was “also unique because of the sensitivity of the information stolen — including full nine-digit Social Security numbers,” Latta said.
Smith, who stepped down last week from Equifax, started by saying: “I’m truly and deeply sorry for what happened.”
He then blamed the massive breach on two factors: “human error and technology errors.”
Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said Congress should pass legislation to protect consumers whose personal data gets stolen in such security failures. “Of course, breaches will continue to occur, but they occur more often when there is no accountability and when no preventative measures are in place,” he said.
Equifax executives were notified of the security breach in July, but waited until August to disclose it.
“Consumers do not have any say in whether or not Equifax collects and shares their data,” Pallone said. “And that’s what makes this breach so concerning. This is unlike any other breaches at stores like Target and Michael’s where consumers could make a choice and change their shopping habits if they were upset with how the companies protected data. That’s simply not the case with Equifax.”
Smith will have many more opportunities to explain it all; he is scheduled to testify at three additional hearings this week.
Meanwhile, back on the Senate side of Capitol Hill, the Wells Fargo CEO was getting clobbered too, and not just by Warren.
The banking giant, which is an NPR sponsor, has been in trouble for more than a year – ever since it revealed that its aggressive sales culture had led to the creation of millions of potentially fake accounts. Since then, other scandals have erupted, mostly involving excessive fees.
Like Smith, Sloan showed remorse.
“I am deeply sorry for letting down our customers and team members,” he said. “I apologize for the damage done to all the people who work and bank at this important American institution. When the challenges at Wells Fargo demanded decisive action, the bank’s leaders acted too slowly and too incrementally. That was unacceptable.”
But senators thought it was worse than unacceptable. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., asked Sloan: “What in God’s name were you thinking?”
And Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, was having none of it. “The changes Mr. Sloan and his team have made are not sufficient to reform a corporate culture that is willing to abuse its customers and employees in an effort to pad its numbers and increase executive compensation,” Brown said.
Facebook Surrenders Russian-Linked Influence Ads To Congress
Facebook has handed over ads linked to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
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Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
Updated at 3:26 p.m. ET
Facebook said on Monday it has given Congress thousands of ads linked with Russian influence operations in the United States and is tightening its policies to make such interference more difficult.
“Many [of the ads] appear to amplify racial and social divisions,” it said.
The social media giant confirmed that it discovered the ad sales earlier this year and gave copies to Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Facebook had shown the ads to congressional investigators but not turned them over. After complaints by the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the company decided to give them up after all.
“We are sharing these ads with Congress because we want to do our part to help investigators gain a deeper understanding of Russian interference in the US political system and explain those activities to the public,” said a statement by Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president for global public policy.
The leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence committees, which are investigating Russia’s attack on the 2016 presidential election, have complained that Facebook, Twitter and other online platforms haven’t cooperated as much with their investigations as they wish.
House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., acknowledged receipt of the ads on Monday but said there are still important unanswered questions about the social media campaigns.
“As we fully examine these ads in the coming days, we will be particularly interested in understanding their full reach, in particular to determine what groups and individuals were most heavily targeted and why,” he said.
Schiff said he hopes to release a “representative sampling” of the ads Facebook has turned over as soon as possible.
And both panels want to schedule open hearings with representatives of the companies this month or next, although Facebook and Twitter haven’t said whether they’ll participate.
Representatives from Twitter visited Capitol Hill last week to brief investigators on their findings, but at least one leader wasn’t satisfied: Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., called the session “frankly inadequate.”
Meanwhile, the use of social networks in influence operations continues apace.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has vowed that his company will change the policies that made possible some of the influence operations that he, Congress and Robert Mueller are investigating.
To that end, Kaplan said on Monday that the company was rolling out tweaks: Facebook plans to show users more information about the ads they’re seeing, including other messages the buyer is running that target other users.
It also says it plans to better enforce restrictions on “improper” material, require more documentation from buyers of election ads and collaborate with its competitors.
The next milestone in this story could take place on Wednesday, when Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Warner are scheduled to convene a joint news conference in Washington, D.C.
