Last night, immigration made headlines at the GOP debate; President Obama's administration announced expanded rules to close the gender and race pay gap; Covered CA's executive director stops by to talk about the open enrollment deadline and TGI-FilmWeek!
In Trump-less GOP Debate, immigration emerges as substantive issue
Last night's Republican debate didn't include Trump, but it did have the longest exchange about immigration policy.
Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Jeb Bush confronted each other over shifting positions and political exploitation. Even without the outspoken real estate mogul on stage, there was no love lost between the other frontrunners as Senators Rubio and Cruz went after each other’s conservative ideals and backgrounds on a number of levels.
Who emerged victorious from last night’s GOP debate? What did we learn about the other candidates in their first debate without Donald Trump?
Guests:
Luis Alvarado, Republican political consultant and analyst for CNN Español and Telemundo; he’s a former campaign staffer for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and was the Los Angeles Regional Chairman for the 2008 McCain/Palin presidential campaign; he tweets
Susan Del Percio, a New York-based Republican strategist and founder of Susan Del Percio Strategies, a full service strategic communications firm, she tweets
Obama acts on closing gender wage gap with executive order
Today President Obama announced that his administration is expanding rules to close the gender and race pay gap. The executive order will require businesses with more than 100 employees to provide the federal government with pay data to identify abuses of equal pay laws.
The proposal is an expansion of a similar order the president announced two years ago aimed at narrowing the pay gap between men and women hired by federal contractors.
The new rules, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, would be unveiled in September, and employers have to start submitting pay information a year later.
Guests:
Kay Hymowitz, William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York. She is the author of four books and writes extensively on childhood, family issues, poverty, and cultural change in America.
Jocelyn Frye, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
Covered Cal. enrollment ends Sunday. Here's what you need to know about costs and penalties
Open enrollment for California’s health insurance exchange Covered CA ends this Sunday, January 31 and this year will see the highest penalties yet for people who do not purchase coverage.
The penalty for adults is $695 per adult and $347 per child with a family cap of $2500 or 2.5 percent of household income, whichever is greater.
According to Covered California, nearly nine out of every 10 people currently enrolled qualify for some level of financial assistance and representatives are making their final appeals to convince more Californians that health insurance is affordable.
Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee joined host Larry Mantle in studio to answer listeners’ questions about costs and penalties.
Interview highlights
If you decline your employer’s health care coverage, does your Covered California subsidy go away?
"It does. If you get offered through employers, take it. Even if it’s not great coverage. If it’s really bad coverage you can get a subsidy through Covered California, but it’s got to be really bad. Covered California is for people who don’t have employer-based coverage or Medi-Cal or Medicare. It’s really out there for people who are otherwise left out in the cold."
My son’s silver policy deductible went up 10 percent and none of his current $7500 treatment is covered.
"It’s hard to go through the specific facts of a case, but for an individual on a silver plan, the deductible is about $6,000 and again as I noted before what’s not subject to a deductible is going to see your doctor today. If you’ve got someone who’s got really expensive care going to the hospital on a regular basis, you’re going to hit your maximum out of pocket, which is like $6,000 and then you’re going to be covered 100 percent."
Do you have to pay back the previous year’s subsidy if your income increases?
"If, halfway through the year, you know that you’re going to get a bonus, let us know that and you’ll adjust your subsidy for the balance of the year. If you don’t tell us at the end of the year and you made say $40,000 more, yeah, you will need to repay a portion of the subsidy on the tax return. The amount of the subsidy is based on your income and we will adjust your subsidy down if you get a bump in income."
Our income went up and we lost our subsidy and now the plan with the coverage we need costs a fifth of our income.
"We have not made health care in America inexpensive and what the Affordable Care Act does is say that people up to 400 percent of poverty will get a subsidy. Above that there’s not a subsidy and this is the federal law about where the cliff is. If you’ve gone over that cliff, this is not great solace, but if your insurance costs more than 9 percent of your income, then there’s no penalty for you not having insurance. Now the penalty that’s a big penalty is rolling the dice to go without insurance and then having to show up at the ER with $50,000 in debt."
FilmWeek: ‘Fifty Shades of Black,’ ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’ and more
Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Claudia Puig, Christy Lemire and Charles Solomon review this weekend’s new movie releases including the Marlon Wayans’ parody “Fifty Shades of Black,” the anticipated animated family comedy “Kung Fu Panda 3,” “Mountain Men,” a dramedy about two estranged brothers trying to overcome their differences and more. We’ll also discuss some Oscar-nominated Shorts. TGI-FilmWeek!
Guests:
Claudia Puig, film critic for KPCC; she tweets from
Christy Lemire, Host of YouTube’s “What the Flick?”; she tweets from
Charles Solomon, Film critic for KPCC and Animation Scoop and Animation Magazine
‘Birth of a Nation’, Netflix and #OscarsSoWhite: A roundup of Sundance
Fox Searchlight gave the winning bid against Netflix to pick up filmmaker Nate Parker’s “Birth of a Nation,” which got standing ovations at the Sundance Film Festival this year.
Netflix offered as much as $20 million for the film. Searchlight put out $17.5 million. So why did the festival’s hit go to the lower bidder? The answer may have something to do with Searchlight’s success marketing “12 Years a Slave” in 2013, which won “Best Picture” at the Oscars.
While streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime reach a wide audience, they may not create the award-winning buzz filmmakers, are looking for. “Birth of a Nation” wasn’t the only breakout hit of Sundance. It also wasn’t the only film to generate a more diverse pool of films creating Oscar buzz, which could quell the #Oscarssowhite controversy next year. “Southside with You,” which tells the Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date, is also an early favorite.
While Netflix lost “Birth of a Nation,” it hasn’t hindered the subscription video on demand service, or SVOD, from going after documentaries. Along with Amazon Prime, the SVOD’s made big purchases under the radar, grabbing “Fundamentals of Caring,” “Under the Shadow” and “Tallulah” before they had a chance to premiere at the festival.
The Frame’s John Horn and KPCC film critic Amy Nicholson speak with Larry Mantle about the changes surrounding Sundance this year.
Guests:
John Horn, host of KPCC’s The Frame; he tweets from
Amy Nicholson, Film Critic for KPCC and Chief Film Critic, MTV News; Amy tweets from