Big health care news from Washington - again. After two more GOP senators backed out of the latest repeal and replace ACA bill, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing for a straight repeal vote, no replacement. Would this pass? How would it affect the market? What about California? We also look at potential face scans at the airport; how to be honest about depression; and more.
With kibosh on ACA repeal and replace, what a full-on repeal looks like and how party leaders will respond
Senate Republicans can’t agree on a replacement for the Affordable Care Act.
With last night’s word from two more GOP Senators that they’d vote no, leader Mitch McConnell admitted defeat. He says he’ll call for a straight repeal of ACA instead.
But that only opens a whole new series of questions. Would repeal pass? The New York Times’ Thomas Kaplan reports that a full ACA repeal would be dead on arrival in the Senate because Republicans Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Shelley Moore Capito (WV) have said they won’t vote for repeal without replacement. Other Republican Senators have hinted towards similar viewpoints.
If a full on repeal does pass, the question becomes what happens to individual health insurance markets, and what might that mean for the MediCal expansion in California. There are also the Democrats to consider. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said the door is open to bipartisan negotiation so long as Republicans are willing to work on repairing the existing health care law and abandon a few of their sticking points, like Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy.
Guests:
Anna Edney, health policy reporter for Bloomberg News; she has been following the story and tweets
Gerald Kominski, professor of health policy and management at UCLA and director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research
Lanhee Chen, research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and former policy director for the Romney-Ryan 2012 presidential campaign; he tweets
Matt Rodriguez, Democratic strategist and founder and chief executive officer of Rodriguez Strategies; he is also a former senior Obama advisor in 2008 and tweets
Analyzing Trump’s wish list for renegotiating NAFTA
On Monday, the Trump administration sent Congress an 18-page “Summary of Objectives for the NAFTA Renegotiation,” that put a heavy emphasis on reducing trade deficit with Mexico and Canada, one of Trump’s longstanding campaign promises.
The wish list also included eliminating unfair subsidies and giving the U.S. more control in terms of cracking down on cheap incoming products, as well as provisions about currency manipulation that may be more of a signal to China. Ideas regarding the environment and labor regulation, reminiscent of those in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that Trump pulled out of early in his presidency, were also included in the proposal.
What’s in NAFTA currently and what’s in Trump’s plan to renegotiate the trade agreement? Are these objectives, especially the focus on trade deficit, a departure from previous trade agreements? And how likely are these objectives to make it past the negotiating table?
Guests:
Megan Cassella, trade reporter for Politico; she tweets
Bryan Riley, senior policy analyst in trade policy at Heritage
Matt Gold, adjunct professor of Law at Fordham University; former deputy assistant U.S. trade representative for North America
Are face scans at the airport coming our way?
Would you be okay with having your face scanned at the airport every time you took an international flight?
That's the scenario the Department of Homeland Security is pushing for as part of its effort to better track visa overstays and bolster security. Under the plan, anyone taking a flight out of the United States — U.S. citizens included — would have to submit to a face scan upon departure.
DHS says it would be an extension of a 2004 law that has allowed airports to collect fingerprint data and photos from foreign nationals entering the United States, and that subjecting U.S. citizens to the process would ensure that they match the identity on their passports. The department has also kicked off trials of the face scan program at airports in six U.S. cities — Boston, New York City, Washington D.C., Houston, Chicago and Atlanta — where passengers are free to opt out.
Privacy advocates argue it could lead to alarming levels of surveillance, and some have raised questions over the accuracy of facial recognition software.
Guests:
Matthew Feeney, policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.; he authored the Cato article, “DHS: Don’t Want Your Face Scanned? Don’t Travel!”; he tweets
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at Center for Immigration Studies; she tweets
Are you honest with friends, family and employers about depression?
Last week, writer Sherman Alexie wrote a deeply personal Facebook post recounting his current struggle with depression and announcing that he was cancelling part of his book tour.
The tour is a promotion of Alexie’s latest book, "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me," a memoir about his late mother. The tour, said Alexie, has been an experience of “rebreaking my heart night after night. I have, to use recovery vocabulary, been retraumatizing myself.”
In the wake of Alexie’s honesty, we want to ask listeners with mental illness about how they’ve dealt with serious bouts of depression. Has the stigma surrounding mental health problems lessened? Do you feel you can be as honest as Alexie with your family, friends and employers?
You can find mental health resources here.
Guest:
Danielle Keenan-Miller, Ph.D., assistant adjunct professor and director of the UCLA Psychology Clinic; she is a licensed clinical psychologist