How California stacks up with vaccination policies, the Affordable Care Act changes the way you file taxes in 2015, the Anthem hack and personal data security.
California lawmakers want to end 'personal belief' vaccine exemption
In response to the measles outbreak that has infected more than 100 people, California lawmakers have proposed legislation that would make it harder for parents to opt out of vaccinating their children.
The law would end the personal belief exemption that allows parents to cite personal grounds, rather than medical reasons, for refusing to immunize children. The strict measures would bring California in line with just two other states in the country.
Mississippi, a state that's often on the nation's worst list for poverty and obesity, has a near-100 percent vaccination rate.
Daniel Salmon, deputy director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety and associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said that's because the state doesn't offer anything besides a medical exemption.
The process of getting an exemption varies from state to state.
"In some states, it's incredibly easy. You simply check a box and sign your name. Other states have requirements like notarization, writing a personal letter, annual renewal and counseling with either a physician or health department," said Salmon.
But simply clamping down on exemptions might not be the answer. According to Salmon, exemptions serve a lot of purposes.
"Among others they serve an important policy purpose, which is it allows an escape vowel or pressure release vowel for those people who are really strongly opposed to vaccination and it may not be in the public's interest to force these parents to vaccinate so while that may seem like simple solution, it may actually cause more problems in the long run," he said.
Anthem hack: How secure is our personal data?
Target, Home Depot, Sony ... and now Anthem.
It's the second-biggest health insurance company in the country with 80 million customers and employees, and it's the subject of a massive data breach.
In California alone, the personal info of more than 37 million customers was stolen including names, Social Security numbers and addresses.
The company maintains that credit cards or medical information were not taken.
Danny Yadron, cybersecurity reporter for the Wall Street Journal, explains how secure our personal data are with health companies.
Q&A: How will Obamacare affect your taxes this year?
It's February, W2s are arriving in mailboxes across the country, and you know what that means: it's tax time.
But this year will be a little different. New regulations attached to the Affordable Care Act mean a slightly more complicated filing process this year. CPA Selwyn Gerber, founder of Gerber & Company, joined Take Two to explain.
This is the first time that people will have to show on their tax forms that they had health insurance in 2014. How is this going to work?
"First of all, those people who did buy health insurance should be getting, [or] should have received a new form which is called Form 1095-A.... If it doesn't come over the next several days, that's a bad thing, and listeners should be calling the exchanges or going online to download them because Form 1095-A is needed to complete another form (believe it or not) which is form 8962. So you need a form to complete a form. And that has to be attached to the tax return."
And what do you have to do with that form? How do you prove yes in fact I do have insurance?
"Well the 1095-A doesn't really prove that you have insurance. That's dealt with in a whole other way... Basically, the basic form 1040 has on it a new line called Line 61 and that's the line where you check off if you did in fact have insurance. And if you had insurance, that's the line that gets checked off.
And for those people who have regular health insurance that they got from their employer, a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid, or insurance they bought privately through an insurance company, they're really not affected by the change. They will simply check off that box and their taxes will be completely unaffected.
If you got insurance through an exchange, you use the Form 1095-A, where basically the Form 1095-A is really going to give you, among a number of other details, two things that really count. Number one the total insurance premium that you paid, and secondly how much of a tax credit you got. Because when you applied for health insurance through an exchange you had to estimate your income and your deductions for 2014, and stuff happens in life and things don't always work out as you expected even with the best of intentions.
So what you really do is you take the information from 1095-A, put it on to 8962 where basically you figure out whether you overpaid or underpaid, whether you got a tax credit that was too big or too small."
Let's talk about the [people] who decided 'Hey, I'm not going to get insurance, I'll pay the penalty, that seems like a better deal to me.' Remind us what the penalty is for that.
"The penalty starts at about $95 and goes all the way up to $11,000. So it's a big range, complicated, not clear to everybody exactly how that's going to be computed."
Isn't it just $95 or 1 percent of your income, which ever is greater?
"Yes, although there are a bunch of exemptions as well... So if you can prove that your insurance premium would have been greater than 8 percent of your income, then that's an exemption. If you have certain religious objections to insurance, that would be an issue. If you live in a state that didn't expand the Medicare under Obamacare, that would be an exclusion, so there are a bunch of exemptions to Obamacare as well.
And there is one thing I wanted to just add... once you got any kind of exchange health insurance, you no longer can complete the simple 1040-EZ. You have to go to the full Form 1040."
Let's say you went for part of 2014 without insurance and then you decided to buy insurance. Where does that leave you tax-wise?
"You've got a three month leeway. You can go without insurance for three months without any penalty. If you're uninsured for more than three months, then the penalty that I alluded to, starting at $95, kicks in."
Crisis Text Line offers teens a new counseling service
A couple of years ago, a new service called Crisis Text Line launched, attempting to solve an old problem with a new solution.
The service is available 24/7 and offers free, emotional support for teenagers in need. On average, they receive 15,000 text messages a day.
Alice Gregory recently wrote about this for The New Yorker and she joined Take Two to talk about her article and her experience as a counselor.
The Wheel Thing: King of the Hammers - desert off-road racing at its craziest.
When you think of a dune buggy, you usually visualize a cute little vehicle, probably based on a old VW bug, with the body stripped down and some oversized tires bolted on.
But this week, out in the Southern California desert north of Palm Springs, scores of super-buggies are competing in something called the King of the Hammers.
These 4-wheels have monster engines and suspensions. The race requires a vehicle that can reach 100 mph or more on the flat scrub and sand, and that can also climb over boulders and up the face of a vertical rock wall.
Just finishing the race is a victory. There are legions of broken axles and blown out suspensions, and the vast majority of drivers suffer the indignity of being wenched out of the way. In some cases, other drivers motor right over downed buggies, treating them as just another obstacle along the way.
The King of the Hammers started out as a contest between a group of off-roaders back in 2007. This year, more than 30,000 fans have staked out spots in the desert to watch and, in many cases, participate. And most of the vehicles are home-made, garage projects, cobbled together with love by off-roaders who like to push the limits, and then push them some more.
Watch Video: Crazy desert racing
State of Affairs: The race for Boxer's seat and the politics of measles
On this week's State of Affairs, the politics of measles, the battle to replace Barbara Boxer gets a bit more heated, and where $226 million went last year.
Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, Professor of the Practice of Public Policy Communication at USC's Sol Price School of Public Policy and John Myers, Senior Editor for KQED's California Politics and Government Desk, joined Take Two for a look at the latest news in California Politics.
Plans to revamp landmark building could revive LA's Broadway
The new owners of the May Co. department store in downtown Los Angeles have unveiled plans to restore the nine-story building to its former glory.
The idea to is to create a complex of gourmet food stalls and high end retailers. This could jump start a revamp of the whole Broadway corridor, which has been in decline for decades after once being the heart of downtown.
For more on the history of the area and what a makeover might mean, Take Two is joined by Nathan Masters, who writes about Los Angeles history for USC Libraries and Los Angeles Magazine.
What could come next for Amy Pascal, Sony
Amy Pascal is out as Sony Pictures' head following the studio's massive hack. The Frame host John Horn discusses what’s next for her, and Sony.
Lab Notes: Get 'awed' for health, pill use trade-offs, cat journalism
How feeling awed can keep you healthy, what people would do to not take pills each day, and cat journalism didn't start on the Internet.
Anaheim, Santa Ana’s dueling pot shop stances
The Anaheim City Council has voted to crack down on pot shop landlords. But just 10 minutes south in Santa Ana, pot shops can find a mellower place to call home.
Dengue Fever: LA band on Cambodian pop, psychedelic jams
Los Angeles-based band Dengue Fever's new album, The Deepest Lake, is the latest in the sextet's exploration of Cambodian rock, Afro grooves and psych jams. But the way members tell the story, the group itself nearly never came together.
For days, lead singer Chhom Nimol was reluctant to show up for try-outs with the newly-forming band, wary of unknown musicians playing the music of her homeland. When she turned up, she was pleasantly surprised.
"I told my sister, hey, these guys are good, they can play our Cambodian music," remembered Nimol.
For the rest of the band, Nimol was the missing piece – and the chemistry clicked.
"It just went off the hook, it was almost like some sort of weird explosion happened," said bassist Senon Williams. "And that was that, it was quite simple."
Their music, however, is anything but, with a dynamic sound and wide ranging sonic landscape.
Check out the video for their new song, "No Sudden Moves."
Dengue Fever's "No Sudden Moves"
WHEN: Thursday, Feb. 5
WHERE: @EchoPlex
1822 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA, US
(213) 413-8200
www.attheecho.com
More about Dengue Fever's 2015 tour here.
Starry Kitchen will continue to fight for its balls
Two months ago, we told you about a Kickstarter campaign launched by the owners of the LA eatery Starry Kitchen.
Nguyen Tran and his wife decided it was time to go big or go home. They wanted to raise $500,000 to find a permanent home for their pop-up restaurant, which had been roaming from space-to-space over several years despite being enshrined in Jonathan Gold's list of the top 101 Best Restaurants.
They called the campaign, "Save our Balls," a reference to their delicious signature dish, tofu balls. Nguyen Tran joined Take Two to update us on what happened.