Today on the show, we start with a new report from ProPublica that shows Medicare doctors waste billions by prescribing brand-name drugs. Then, Oxford Dictionaries names "selfie" the word of the year. Also, in Jazz-loving Culver City, music instruction starts in kindergarten, Tuesday Reviewsday looks at new music by The Entrance Band, Yeawhon Shin and more.
ProPublica: Medicare doctors waste billions by prescribing name-brand drugs
Millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to pay for expensive and often unnecessary brand-name drugs.
A new investigative report from ProPublica shows a handful of doctors are writing prescriptions that cost Medicare $300 million in 2011 alone. The loophole in the government healthcare program makes it easy and legal for physicians to prescribe these drugs when cheaper, comparable generic drugs are available.
Reporter Charlie Ornstein of ProPublica, in collaboration with Tracy Weber and Jennifer LaFleur, wrote an article and analyzed data surrounding these these prescribing habits.
Interview Highlights:
On the loophole in the government health care program:
"Part D is the program that Congress created back in 2003 and started in 2006, which provides drug coverage to 36 million seniors and the disabled across the country. We wanted to look at how doctors were prescribing in this program. What we found was, the doctor you choose has a huge effect in terms of the medications you receive in terms of whether you receive drugs that are potentially harmful for you or whether you receive more expensive medications instead of generics that may work just as well."
On who is prescribing these expensive drugs:
"There are doctors all across the country, but really there's a pocket of doctors. There's about 900 doctors who are prescribing in ways that are just disproportionate from their peers. Way more brand-name drugs. These doctors on the whole cost Medicare $1 billion, in 2011, and we calculated that about $300 million of it could have been saved if these doctors practiced like their peers."
On the reasons why they don't go with generics:
"One is that among these doctors, they have a lot of patients who receive what's called the low-income subsidy. For them, the cost of a brand name medication is under $7, no matter which brand name it is, compared to a generic, which is about $3. For somebody who is middle class and doesn't receive this extra subsidy, you're going to pay a lot if you're going to pay for a brand name drug that your insurer doesn't favor. You could pay more than $100, but if you're poor, you're going to only pay less than $7. So that's one factor, this low income subsidy takes away the incentive for patients to request a generic drug.
"The second thing is that among the doctors that were heavy prescribers of brand name drugs, they were far more likely to have relationships with the pharmaceutical industry. About half of them got $1000 or more from drug companies since 2009 compared to only about 15 percent of people who didn't prescribe like them."
On whether patients bear any responsibility to request a generic:
"When it's your pocketbook on the line you do that, but I think we need to realize that it's all of our pocketbooks that are subsidizing the Medicare drug program. The way the program was set up it takes away the incentive for those who have lower income to make decisions that may perhaps be based on cost. I don't think anyone is saying that no one should ever take a brand name drug, that's not the case at all. What we're saying is that if there are doctors who are just so far out on the margins that could save Medicare so much money, why aren't they being looked at?"
On the methodology of the study:
"We looked at the data and looked to see what the average prescribing was in every specialty in every state. So we were not comparing, say a psychiatrist with a dermatologist...Then we looked for doctors that were two standard deviations away from the average, which is statistical term to look for people who are really an outlier, so it's not just people who may have several more patients who are taking a brand name drug compared to others, it's people who really have a lot more. Interestingly we found a whole bunch of those in Los Angeles, and we found pockets in ethnic communities where there are a whole bunch of doctors that are outliers.
"Particularly in Los Angeles is Chinatown and Koreatown that there are a number of doctors who extensively used brand name drugs, particularly in drug classes that there were generics available. When we visited those offices we found that they were not really affiliated with a larger medical center...Secondly, I think they have, what we found, relationships with large pharmaceutical industry. When we visited their offices we saw drug reps waiting to see them, dropping off samples, so there was a much more ongoing relationship with the drug industry."
On the relationship between doctors and drug companies:
"It's been speculated for a long time that doctors have a financial incentive to prescribe drugs for companies with whom they have a financial relationship. A lot of drug companies have now paid billions of dollars to settle claims from the government about improper marketing. And as a condition of those settlements they've agreed to post online the payments that they've given to doctors for speaking and consulting. Some doctors receive huge amounts of money and some receive little amounts of money, but studies have suggested that things as small as a meal or a small gift can influence a doctor's prescribing even if a doctor would say there is no way they could be bought for a meal."
On what Congress is doing to curb this issue:
"The president put in his 2014 budget a proposal to change the way that this is done and chance the copays for the low income to give them more of an incentive to prescribe generics. This could save not just hundreds of millions of dollars, but billions of dollars each year. Congress hasn't acted on it and the reason is there isn't a natural constituency calling for them to do that."
Cold Storage: Migrants refer to border cells as 'freezers'
A detention cell is not designed to be comfortable. But human rights groups and migrants who've crossed illegally into the US say the conditions inside some American Border Patrol stations have become unsafe.
From the Fronteras Desk, Peter O'Dowd explains temperatures in some detention cells from Texas to Arizona are so low - some migrants say it's a form of punishment to keep them from crossing again.
'Selfie' is Oxford's word of the year, beating out 'twerk' and 'bitcoin'
Here's a word for you: Selfie.
If you are frequent user of social media you've probably seen 'em, or maybe even taken one. It's a photo of yourself, by yourself or with a friend, family or maybe with an inanimate object.
Sure, we've been taking self-photos for some time but its become so much easier with the advent of smart phones, less likely you are to just get the top of your head or an ear. They've become so ubiquitous that the term itself has been named international word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries.
Joining us to talk more about the "selfie" is Katherine Martin, head of the U.S. Dictionaries Program for Oxford.
The cost of tradition: Holding on to quinceañeras in the US
Waves of Latino immigrants have introduced the Quinceañera or "Sweet 15" into the American mainstream. It's often a glitzy affair with rituals to mark a girls transition into womanhood. As the Latino population in Las Vegas has grown over the past decade or so, so has the business of Quinceañeras. Families empty their pockets to throw a party, sometimes bigger than a wedding, for their little girls.
From our Fronteras Desk in Las Vegas, Kate Sheehy reports.
The mannequins in Casa de Calderon are adorned with dresses fluorescent in orange, pink and green, jeweled bodices and layers of tulle.
“I can make the dreams of the girls come true in a gown,” said Elizabeth Calderon.
She makes these elaborate gowns by hand at the shop she and her husband own in East Las Vegas. She said the dress is the most personal detail for a quinceañera.
“It’s incredible how it’s been growing. It’s very, very popular,” she said.
But style doesn’t come cheap. She said sometimes parents pay several thousands of dollars just for the dress, which is only a small part of paying for a huge bash.
“Sometimes — you’re not going to believe this — sometimes they stop making payments on their homes, sometimes they sell their cars," the dressmaker said.
For Julissa Canal’s quiceañera, 200 people fill the party hall Palacio del Sol. Her mother, Erica Arellano, is nervous.
“There’s so many details, and you’re running around until the last minute because you’re worried you forgot something, and also it’s a lot of money,” she said.
Arellano said with the help of extended family, they forked out $15,000 for the event. At the entrance is a poster-size picture of Julissa. The tables are decorated with silver and blue to match Julissa’s sparkling dress. There’s a buffet, a fancy cake, a DJ and, later, a live band.
Alberto Hernandez is the owner of Palacio del Sol. It’s one of about 35 venues off the strip that host these parties. He said quinceañeras are 75 percent of his business. Hernandez said lately he sees more working class families struggling to pay for these huge celebrations.
“It used to be people that they’d pay up front $7,000 or $8,000 cash, with no problem, and now people are coming every paycheck with $300, $400," he said.
Many Latino immigrants, like Julissa’s mother, didn’t have the money decades ago for their own glamorous Sweet 15. So many times this celebration is more important to immigrant parents than their American-raised daughters.
Valerie Ochoa is a 19-year-old student at a local university. She said she didn’t feel like turning 15 was a big deal, and she didn’t want all the attention a quiceañera brings. But her grandma felt otherwise.
“And so she went and she bought a big dress and these really glittery shoes, and she called me into her room one day and was like, ‘Oh, come try on your quinceañera stuff,’ ” she said.
Thankfully, Ochoa said her party was a smaller affair, at her family’s church. And she said she wasn’t angry with her grandma.
“For once I let her, let my grandma put me in this crazy dress and do something like this for me, even though I didn’t want to, but I think it was important to her," Ochoa said.
Calderon said that for many parents, the sense of pride and tradition is worth the financial sacrifice.
“They try their best to get the special dream for their little girl,” she said.
Calderon’s family didn’t have the money for a fancy quinceañera for her. Still, she remembers her 15th birthday fondly. She had flowers in her hair and a cake. But she said that now she designs dresses that she would have wanted to wear.
“Because even the American people, they say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I wish I can wear a gown like that, at least once!’ What I think is that every woman would like to have a day like that," she said.
Five suspects arrested in $45 million ATM bank heist
Five suspects have been arrested in connection to a bank heist that can only be compared to the movie "Ocean’s Eleven."
The heist resulted in the theft of $45 million from ATMs around the world. How did thieves pull off such a massive scheme? They hacked into the computers of bank card processors.
Kim Zetter of Wired joins us to talk more about this scheme.
In jazz-loving Culver City, music instruction starts in kindergarten
Culver City is known as a hub for jazz in the U.S., drawing top acts from around the country. Among them, musician and composer Stanley Clarke, and Bebop great Phil Woods.
In this town, KPCC's Mary Plummer says the love of jazz starts young. Really young.
Tuesday Reviewsday: The Entrance Band, Jenni Rivera, Yeawhon Shin and more
It's time for Tuesday Reviewsday our weekly new music segment. This week we're going to be talking about rock with Justino Aguila from Billboard Magazine and music critic Steve Hochman.
Steve's Picks
Artist: Yeawhon Shin
Album: Lua Ya
Release Date: Nov. 19
Songs: “Lullaby,” “The Moonwatcher and the Child”
ECM Records, the German label known as long-time home to Keith Jarrett, Arvo Part among others, has more often than not sought out the spaces between jazz, classical and world music — or the places where they all blend together. That’s rarely been truer than on this new album featuring South Korean singer Yeahwon Shin.
Working just with pianist Aaron Parks (who has his own new ECM solo album Arborescence out now) and accordionist Rob Curo (a devotee of the Brazilian forro style), Shin uses her richly understated voice on a collection of lullabies drawing on her Korean childhood and inspired by her own recent motherhood. The results, whether on original material and largely improvised interpretations of traditional melodies, such as the opening “Lullaby,” or songs familiar in Korea such as “Remembrance,” could in places pass for French chanson, 19th or 20th century European art song, melancholy forro or its Portuguese cousin fado, yet fully integrated with Shin’s Korean roots. Lullabies, yes, but well-worth staying awake to hear.
Artist: The Entrance Band
Album: Face the Sun
Release Date: Nov. 19
Songs: “Fine Flow,” “No Needs”
Is it ent-rance, as in to going through a door? Or en-trance, as in to cause a state of bliss? Really it’s both — the purposeful, pointed homonym usage certainly intentional — for this trippy L.A. power trio. Guitarist-singer Guy Blakeslee, bassist Paz Lenchantin and drummer Derek James have been traveling their spaceways since 2006, an expansion on the solo acoustic work Blakeslee had been doing simply under the name Entrance.
Over the time they’ve developed a seemingly telepathic interplay that’s thrilling to see and hear unfold live, matched with a physical exuberance on stage that’s, well, entrancing. That still comes through on this album, even without the visual aspect, the songs building with a free-flowing energy. Blakeslee’s unaffected vocals and fluid guitar playing lead the way in the opening “Fine Flow,” ebbing and — yes — flowing over the course of nearly nine minutes, giving a sense of that live power. But in other places on this album, such as “No Needs,” the approach is condensed effectively into more structured pop contexts, but still retaining that sense of exhilarating freedom and power.
Justino's Picks
Artist: Gerardo Ortiz
Album: Archivos de Mi Vida (Archives of My Life)
Release Date: Nov. 25
Songs: “Mujer de Piedra” (Woman of Rock)
Regional Mexican singer/songwriter Gerardo Ortiz, who was recently at big winner at the Billboard Mexican Music Awards, has become one of the genre’s biggest names. At 24 he has also become one of his generation’s most successful artists. Known for his corridos and norteño-inspired compositions, Ortiz continues to have a thriving career thanks to meshing traditional Mexican music with other sounds in order to achieve a modern sound.
The Pasadena-born singer, who was raised in Mexico, is again proving that his current album (with a release date of Nov. 25), Archivos de Mi Vida (Archives of My Life), is proving popular among his fans. The current single, “Mujer de Piedra” (Woman of Rock), features Ortiz performing in the style of banda with the clarinet, horns and the tuba playing important elements in the delivery of this song.
Artist: Jenni Rivera
Album: 1969-Siempre En Vivo Desde Monterrey Parte 1
Release Date: Dec. 3
Songs: “Dos Botellas de Mezcal” (Two Bottles of Mescal)
American-born singer Jenni Rivera, who died in nearly a year ago while working in Mexico after her small plane crashed shortly after departing from Monterrey, is being remembered and celebrated by her family, friends and fans. This album is a live recording of her last concert at Arena Monterrey, where she performed in front of about 17,000 fans.
Known as the Diva of Banda music, Rivera spent two decades building a career going from an unknown to a major star. The album is scheduled for release on Dec. 3, but the single “Dos Botellas De Mezcal” (Two Bottles of Mescal) is already receiving wide attention especially with women who saw themselves in Rivera. The narrative of the song’s story is based on a woman drinking her worries away after a break-up.
Artist: Ednita Nazario
Album: El Corazón Decide (The Heart Decides)
Release Date: Oct. 22
Songs: “La Más Fuerte” (The Strongest One)
Puerto Rican-born Ednita Nazario returns with a new album featuring her soulful vocals which shine with her power ballads about love and romance. Nazario has recorded about two dozen albums in her career and many more compilations have been sold around the world. The album’s single, “La Más Fuerte” (The Strongest One) beautifully highlights Nazario’s voice with the accompaniment of a piano which helps the song build in a touching and endearing way. Nazario’s iconic voice has always worked well with these types of sweeping romantic ballads to the delight of fans around the world.
Hear what Leonardo da Vinci's Viola Organista sounds like 500 years later (video)
It's time for a blast from the past:
That is the Viola Organista, a 15th century instrument designed by that ultimate Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci. What you can't see is that this music is issuing from what appears to be a piano.
The man playing it is Polish musician Slawomir Zubrzycki. He built the instrument from plans found in da Vinci's notebooks and debuted it at the Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland.
The Viola Organista resembles a grand piano with a keyboard. It has sixty-one strings inside but instead of hammers that strike them, the keys control four spinning wheels wrapped in horsehair. Their movements act like a bow on a cello string, creating the rich sounds you hear, similar to full string ensemble.
Report: California fails to keep track of toxic waste
California has some of the toughest hazardous waste laws in the country, which makes this next story even more astonishing than it would have been anyway.
The Los Angeles Times published an investigative piece this week that highlights enormous flaws in how the state tracks toxic waste. This is how big the problem is: 174,000 tons of waste has gone missing over the last five years. Nobody knows what happened to it.
Los Angeles Times reporter Jessica Garrison joins the show to explain.
Texas silver mine, border county's largest taxpayer, shuts down
After two years of hopes of an economic injection to a poverty-plagued part of the border, a Texas silver mine is shutting down at least until next year. 85 people are jobless, the mine's under a safety investigation and the company is ruffling feathers by taking one of the country's poorest counties to court to cut its tax bill.
Fronteras reporter Lorne Matalon from Marfa Public Radio reports.
Dueling Dinosaurs, and the humans fighting over their remains
A fossil known as the Dueling Dinosaurs goes up for auction in New York on Tuesday.
It is two intertwined dinosaur skeletons, one carnivore, one herbivore, that appear to be caught in duel to the death. The fossil is scientifically significant due to the active pose, but it may never be studied.
National Geographic dinosaur writer Brian Switek joins the show to discuss why the secrets of the Dueling Dinosaurs could be lost in the confines of a private collection.
The Gettysburg Address gets a graphic novel treatment
President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 150 years ago.
The speech, delivered 4.5 months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg, is regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history. But now a new book has a completely different take on the speech and what it meant at the time.
RELATED: Gettysburg Address: 6 cool things to know on the 150th anniversary
L.A.-based writer Jonathan Hennessey's new book is called "The Gettysburg Address: A Graphic Adaptation."
Interview Highlights:
On why he decided to take on the Gettysburg Address as a graphic novel:
"There's many people out there who will never choose to sit down and look at the 600 page biography of Abraham Lincoln or even a one volume work on the civil war so I'm a great lover of this visual format. You can get so much done with so little. The comic book format or the graphic novel format, if you want to talk about it in a classy way, I think was an interesting way to take apart the speech from all angles."
On the factors that lead up to the Civil War:
"The key thing that was going on at the time was the expansion of the United States. We were a nation divided by some states where slavery was legal and other states where slavery had been legal at one time, but was not anymore. The country was still moving into the west. California had become a state in the 1850s, but there was still all this open territory and there were people who wanted to take the opportunity of that territory so there was really a race between the slave states and the non-slave states because every new state that entered into the Union would bring more congressmen, would bring more senators, would bring much more influence in the federal government. And it was really a race to control the future of America.?
On how this book project came about:
"What I present to my partner Aaron McConnell is I present him with a script. I will actually take a page, figure out what I want him to draw in each pan`el and write a description of every panel and figure out what is the best way for the idea to flow across the page. Even when you turn the page, what idea can set up and then pay off as you turn the page."
On his favorite part of the Gettysburg Address:
"I find the last few lines about government of the people, by the people and for the people, of course, being the most stirring one. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is so important because the Civil War was about slavery, yes, but it was also very much about a question of what is the United States? What is the Union? Is it just a pragmatic governmental co-op for some sovereign states to perform certain tasks. Or is it a way that the whole people, no matter where they lived were dedicated to bringing this radical idea of freedom into practice.
"Lincoln's vision of what the United States is was that it was that, that it was this very, very sacred covenant of a people with ideas, with a philosophy, with a whole idea of popular sovereignty. And in the south, they really looked upon it in a different way. That it was just a contract, a compact that could be walked away from like a divorce. His vision of government of the people, by the people, for the people really sums up his vision of what the United States is."
Chris's Collection: Alhambra's First Federal Savings Bank model
Now to some more recent history, mid-century, or thereabouts. It's time for another installment in our segment, Chris's Collection.
Chris Nichols is editor at Los Angeles magazine, and he's also quite the collector of things from eras gone by. From time to time, he brings some of his treasures into the studio for a little show and tell.
Today he has brought in a model of Alhambra's First Federal Savings Bank.
January deadline looms at Port of Oakland to upgrade trucks or install filters
Truckers in the Port of Oakland grabbed headlines last week when they demanded an extension — and extra funding — to a January 1st deadline. That's when they're supposed to upgrade their engines to meet California pollution standards.
Meanwhile, general freight and construction truck drivers face a separate deadline in January to start replacing their vehicles or install filters that can cost as much as a truck. That rule applies to most of the big rigs on the state's roads, but it's an especially heavy burden for small operators.
The California Report's Chris Richard has more.
Journalists covering Syria's civil war now prime targets for kidnappers
According to the Associated Press, at least 30 journalists have been kidnapped or have gone missing during the Syrian civil war. That's an unprecedented number, and it's almost eliminated news coverage in the country.
It also marks the escalation of a trend that has been growing over the past decade or so. Journalists, once given a certain immunity in war zones, are now considered prime targets.
For more on this, we turn to someone who has first-hand experience. In 2008, while reporting from Afghanistan for the New York Times, David Rohde was kidnapped and held for seven months before escaping his Taliban captors.
Now a columnist for Reuters, Rohde joins the show to talk about his experience.