Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 08032019 20240714

Our question to you, what is your experience with rising Prescription Drug costs . Are you worried about costs going up in the future . We want to hear from you. We are opening regional lines. If you are in the eastern are central time zones, 202 7488000. If you are living in the mountain or pacific time zones, 202 7848001. We are always on social media. The New York Times reported on this new Trump Administration plan earlier this week. The Trump Administration said they are taking steps to make it import less expensive Prescription Drugs from canada. The move has been supported by progressives. Fierceencountered opposition from the pharmaceutical industries. The fda plans to advise manufacturers on how to import hype priced drugs that are sold more cheaply in other countries. President trump is been clear that they are paying to high prices for Prescription Drugs available to other countries at lower prices. The rising price of prescription at thes a popular topic president ial debates and the timing of the announcement fell in between the two state when date schedule. On tuesday night, Bernie Sanders who has long supported the idea said he traveled to canada on sunday with a group of consumers who were buying insulin at 1 10 the price they pay in the United States. The hhs secretary was on msnbc on wednesday to discuss the plan to import pharmaceuticals from canada. This is what the secretary had to say. Quacks there are pathways to do this safely. We have tracking and tracing drugs that we think will enhance safety. The burden now is on states to come in with plans so we can approve them, to let cheaper drugs into the states. Year, you called it a gimmick. What is with the change of heart . Were going to be looking for solutions to help the american people. We are laying out the standards, young if you meet these, have to lower costs. We are working with vermont and florida and any state that would like to come up with plans. Host we want to hear from you on your experience. We want to show you something else. A representative speaking on how he has been impacted by drug prices. I have a pill in my pocket that is sold by Johnson Johnson and it keeps me alive. Its the most expensive thing on me. The research came from the department of defense. If you learn the study of blood cancer, it started because of sailors and soldiers getting mustard gas during world war i. Bey tried to help soldiers inoculated. I am lucky enough that i signed on the public option that was in the county where i was a county supervisor. Everybody told me dont do it. My kids and i went to the clinic and we got great service. Its a classic option, the public option would work in this country. I dont have the kind of costs you have. Thats my supplemental. Fully loaded, it costs 37. Where does that money go . Bill is calling from florida. Good morning. Caller good morning. The therapythrough at 1000 per pill. I would like to stand with Bernie Sanders and all of the people who are going to canada to receive insulin. Me that anyone who needs Prescription Drugs is being taken advantage of, especially these people with the diabetes. A lot of these medicines are bogus. The pharmacies have the ability to bring down the prices. They would rather gouge the american people. They have done this for years and years. Host you said earlier one of your pills was 1000. What are you doing to afford it . Have you found cheaper options . Are you making do the best you can . Caller i went to the contagious disease doctor in florida. , im not sure which one paid for it. I received the Medicine Within four days. It was 1000 per pill. I was diagnosed in 2002. I waited 16 years. They delivered the medicine and i feel the same. Its basically the same. I believe the hepatitis c situation as a scare tactic. Its fraudulent to begin with. I basically feel the same. I took it for three months at 1000 per pill. Years. Ll of these host lets talk to jeffrey in maryland. Good morning. Do . Er how do you ive been taking coper seen for 30 years. Banded in the United States. They wanted to put me on something for 7. 35 per bill. The other was . 40 per pill. I called candidate. They sent me the prescription for 90 pills for 50. I couldnt believe the difference in the price. Did you mean 50 per pill . Caller no. 50 for 90 pills. Host i wanted to be sure. Caller it was a 90 day prescription for 50. A little bitugh for us, the steps you took to find that drug in canada. How are you able to connect with somebody in canada to get that cheaper price . Caller ive been taking it so long. Thebody said to call Canadian Drug supply. I cant remember how who gave me the number. Was an 800 number. I faxed them the prescription. Me thearted sending pills when i needed them. Host are you worried that if the government gets involved with getting drugs down from canada that it will mess the system up . It seems like its working for you. Caller well, i dont know. I cant comment on that. Every time the government gets involved, they mess it up. I cant answer that question. Host you are satisfied with the prices you are getting from canada right now. Caller yes. Its the same prescription. The reason they stopped selling it, they said had not been tested long and upgrade i have been taking it for 30 years. It was a Standard Drug for arthritis. They said we cant give you that anymore. They had to give me the brand name. It won up from . 40 per pill at the time to 7. 35 per pill. I tried canada. Heard, the just monthly prescription cost can get high. Heres a look at what prescription costs go for americans right now. Than 25. Ss 25 and 50 between for 23 . This is the number that surprised me, or than 17 of people pay more than 100 per month for drug costs. We want to know if you are affected by this. We are open up regional lines. In the eastern or central time zone, 202 7488000. Mountain and pacific time zones, 202 7848001. We want to make a call for viewers in canada. We want to know what you think about the American Government get more of your Prescription Drugs sent to americans at cheaper prices. If you are in canada, we want to hear from you. Lets go to build from north carolina. Good morning. Caller good morning. My experience with prescriptions complaints. Ve no i am a retired auto worker. I take three or four prescriptions. They are very reasonable. One is for cancer. When i get the bottle every month, it says on their its over 11,000 per month. 43. Pay is i cant argue with that. I feel for people. I dont know if they are getting screwed or they dont have good insurance. Haveery fortunate and i medical insurance that the union handles. This goes through my retirement. You think about the idea that the federal government will start making it easier for getting Prescription Drugs from canada . Caller i dont think its a bad idea. If you can get them less the American Companies may have to lower their prices to be competitive. Outrageouss stuff is if you dont have good insurance. I like anybody should have to affordbecause they cant prescriptions. There has to be some kind of solution. Host a poll came out earlier this year, taken back in february. A majority of adults say Prescription Drugs of made their lives better. They have made their lives a lot better. 20 said a little bit better. Prices, a large majority of americans say the costs of Prescription Drug is unreasonable. Only 17 say the costs they pay for Prescription Drugs is reasonable. This is a poll that came out from the Kaiser Family foundation back in february. Katie is calling from florida. Think drug prices are reasonable right now . Good morning. Caller thank you for taking my call. I diabetic. A type the prices go up. Six yearsmember when into being diabetic, they decided to change nonprescription insulin. It into aded to turn pharmaceutical product. They created that way and changed the price structure of it. Its been continually going up. Prescription, it didnt used to be. Over 300k its well per bottle. It used to be seven dollars per bottle. I dont know what its going for in canada. Sometimes get it if you go to a veterinarian. Get your old insulin from a veterinarian if you really have to. Its insane the way its happening now. Host how are you able to afford the insulin . Talk a little bit more about that. Ive heard of people getting insulin from veterinarians. Caller i do know that some people who cant get insulin give it to their cats and dogs. They can get it from there that. Its pretty interesting. What people have to do to stay alive. How are you affording . Caller i am getting it through. Friend of mine if they take to help me out. A lot of people help each other in that circumstance. Its pretty interesting. When you going is to your doctors office, you can see the pharmaceutical reps coming in and out. They walk right in. Its amazing. A lot of doctors will be dont need toings be prescribed. They are always pushing cholesterol medicine. Doctor my to the cholesterol numbers are low. The doctor will say that even , its its below 200 probably still a good idea. Sometimes you can see they are pushing it because the pharmaceutical reps want them to. I dont know what they get in return. Its a scary situation. This is testimony from a congressional hearing from someone else with diabetes. They were also talking about insulin prices. It hurts to know that some diabetics travel to mexico or canada for insulin or buy it off the black market. For people under the age of 30 died last month due to rationing and not been able to afford insulins got wrenching. Survey done by international, they ration. My freshman and sophomore year college, i had to ration my insulin. I dont understand why i was denied medicaid. The last prescription i received from my doctor came with a note saying this is the last prescription i can fill for you. My professors knew my predicament. Some could care less and did not care to help me in class. I spent the majority in the bathroom or sleep. Take less food so i could less insulin. Reality that many people face every day. Go to our followers of social media to see what they have to say about the rising Prescription Drug prices. This is one tweet. This is another follower. Another tweet says this. One final tweet says a child in my family is required to take a pill every day to live. Once again, we want to know your experience with the cost of Prescription Drugs. The regional lines are open. 202 7488000 for eastern and central time zones. 202 7488002 four mountain and pacific time zones. Diane is calling from indiana. Good morning. Im on medicare. Im older. Something called the doughnut. You can have your meds evaluated against whatsapp there. You pick the plan that suit your finances the best. Bid you added drug after youve chosen the plan for the next year. When you hit that doughnut, you dont know what is going to pop up. Canadang that sent me to was the drug celebrex. It has become generic. Year i had signed on with a certain rug company. My drug company had a tenyear nameact to sell it as a brand. Even though i could go to walmart and get it for a lower i couldnt use my they had toause sell it to me at the nongeneric price. Theseare all kinds of agreements from one drug company to the next as you schedule and d option. R your part i just caution people to be aware that could happen. Watch and see what happens when you hit that doughnut. Lots the point at which a of medicare runs out. My runs out in july. Some drug costs are much more expensive and dependent on the drug company to negotiate the best bargain. Tot what you going to do afford the drug costs . The following october, i changed Drug Companies. I went back to the medicare website. I typed in all of my drugs. I wrote down all of my drugs. Hotline. The it told me the company was the best for you. The next year, i was able to get the generic. That was at a lower price. I did not have to send off to from july the generic to the end of the year. It is different as people have to go out, its dependent on their employers negotiating. When i was younger and teaching, it depended on the insurance committee. People who would be with a different plan then the union negotiated because they had different lists of drugs. Now its very hard to get everybody covered by an employer plan when it comes to extensive medicine. Universalocate for health care because i think it gives the government more power to go up against the Drug Companies. You are dealing with one negotiator. To get it. Going im not surprised by insulin. Thatre told for 10 years there is a huge diabetes epidemic on the way as we are facing this problem with obesity. Our patient numbers are going to climb. Im not surprised the Drug Companies are not positioning into diabetes and doing what they did to the opioid crisis. They are just targeting a different population. Opioids, they made the population growth. Now, the population is growing itself by the number of problems we have with obesity. Host lets talk to wilma in san antonio. Good morning. Caller good morning. I feel sorry for the people like myself who are allergic to everything you. Realave to take the medication. Real medications like what . Take 500have to every three months. Pravastatin is the generic. That was cheaper. Husband, his medications were 900 every three months. Especially ifrd, you are allergic to generic. To carl in talk portland. Good morning. Caller thanks for taking my call. Wife. Caregiver for my shes an elderly lady. Quite a few drugs. I guess you could say she does take them at times. Im trying to wonder if she is addicted to drugs and all. Is point im trying to say the body is a very complicated organism. We are at the mercy of the doctors giving us advice. Its in their best interest to give you one pill after another. Caution giving people to get that second opinion. Keep trying to lower prices. Its an open market for these. Nbc did a study earlier this year to look at how brand named prices have been changing from 2012 to 2017. They did a chart i would like to show you. Its used for smoking, it went 200 to almost and 2017. En 2012 humalog is used for diabetes. It went to over 200. Almostwent from 200 to 400. Lipitor used for cholesterol to almost 300. Lyrica jump from 100 to more than 400 between 2012 and 2017. The numbers keep going on for all of these different drugs. Nbc poll thatm an was done, looking at brand name drugs. Representative alexandria cassio cortez talked about the pharmaceutical companies. This is what she had to say. Something thats not talked about that ceo pay is tied to stock price. Right now, they are not incentivized to invest in research and development. They are incentivized to raise the stock price. There is a lot of debate as to what can be structured, whether we can go singlepayer or maintain our insurance system the way that it is and make it more competitive, one very clear if wethat we can see is eliminate stock buybacks, we can by half whenst compared to research and development. The wall street journal did an investigation on how much ceos get paid in 2018. This is what they found. 27. 9o of pfizer made million in 2018. Bristolmyers squibb, the ceo made 18. 6 Million Dollars. 17. 6 million. Lets get back to talking about how Prescription Drug prices affect you. Lets talk to jd in maryland. Good morning. Caller good morning. Ive heard a lot of people that are trying to navigate the pricing system. It is complicated. I am a pharmacist and i teach at the university of maryland. That tell your audience people have access to medication experts. The pharmacist is it just there to help you get your prescriptions, fill your prescriptions, they are there to help you get ones you can afford it. You can get the Drug Companies to come down on some of the pricing. It will help you with your Medicare Part d. Some people will try to do that. Other people can talk to their pharmacist who knows what they are taking right now and trying whiche them an idea medicare plan. Host since we have an expert on viewers whenll our you have a prescription that is very expensive, once the first thing you should ask a pharmacist . Youer the first thing should have is a description discussion with the provider. Famous Surgeon General said medications dont work well when people dont take them. Are writing a prescription that the patient cant afford, thats the critical conversation that needs to happen in the office. Host what you were saying is before you leave the doctor, you should ask how much its going to cost. Which it depends on system you are getting your care through. If you are in an hmo, they will probably have a formula. A lot of people are still getting there private doctor. The physician is not connected with the pharmacist. That discussion has to happen. This has to happen before you leave the office. Will they know the pricing . No. With thework pharmacist that you get your prescriptions filled that and say what are some alternatives. Now im in the pharmacists office. Host the pharmacist come back. Nd tells me its 100 per pill what do i do then . You have a couple of choices. You are going to have to have that conversation. You make the Perfect Point. You cant afford to take it. That prescription is worthless to you. You need to find an alternative. Alternativeseral the prescriber may not be familiar with. They can look up something that is affordable. Surehysician wants to make you are taking medication so that you can improve your health outcome. Of itay not be cognizant if you dont have the conversation. If you dont tell the doctor was wrong, they cant treat you. You have to tell them this isnt going to work for me. Theirof people dont know drug benefits very well. Thats important to research before you sign up for the plan. Host what do you think about the plan to import cheaper Prescription Drugs . Are from other with the pharmacy industry. What you think about making it easier to get lower drugs from canada . Both pharmacy and pharmaceutical, we have a lot of knowledge about both. Down to his security of the supply chain. Practicesacturing ensure standards are met . Companies that are producing outside the country, they are thel subject to selling in United States. They have to meet fda standards. Its called reimportation. It goes to canada to sell for less, it has to be reimported. How thehis week pharmacy students have already started. I was explaining to them that this area is always changing and this came out about two different pathways to reimport medication from outside the country, it shows they are , trying outside the box to give alternatives to some of the high prices so americans can afford to take their medication. Medications dont work well when patients dont take them. Host lets talk to kelly in new york. Good morning. Caller thank you for taking my call. I got a nasty surprise when i got my prescription this month. New york decided to put a tax on opioids. Surgery 30 years ago and ive been in pain for the last six years. It doubled the cost of my prescription. Ive tried other things. Ive tried physical therapy and all that. I could not function without taking the opioid. I am just appalled that they are putting a tax on it. They say its supposed to go toward people who are addicted. There is a difference between being addicted and dependent. Quality of life better. I am still in pain, at least i can function. To have them taxing people who are in pain, i had spinal surgery. I just cant believe it. They think they are going to make 100 million more. I am pretty upset about that. To tax it. E going other states are looking into taxing it. This are people who need to get through the day. I wish they put some of this hundred Million Dollars toward research on the people who need it versus the people who are addicted. I know people who are addicted. Some people get addicted and some people dont for some reason. I think they should be researching why some people get addicted. I am appalled that they put this tax on it for people who are in so much pain. Int lets talk to lead trenton. Good morning. I hope everything is going well. My comment is i think there needs to be more of a balance profits these drug for thes make and consumer to be better educated. By thehat do you mean consumer being better educated . Caller shop around a little bit more. I am a diabetic. Jersey, there is a get it fort you can free. One alternative on the consumer side. Walmart has a lot of medicine for free, or it very low prices. I think theres got be a balance between how much these Drug Companies are making, a matter of making a profit. The consumer has to be more educated and do more research ourselves. Im a diabetic. I think that balance needs to be closere bit more together. I hope i making sense. Host the question i would have for you is is this capitalism . Shouldnt they be allowed to make as much money for the drug is the market will bear . Caller capitalism has got to have a cap. You cant be making money over peoples lives. Theres got to be a balance in there. The Health Care System we are in now, its more on the money side and less peoples lives. Our country needs to have a healthy population. There has to be a healthy population. Where is that balance . We have a chart here that shows the Pharmaceutical Company profit from 2018. Pfizer made 4. 1 billion. Merck made 1. 95 billion. Bristolmyers squibb made 1. 9 billion. These are the Pharmaceutical Company profits. Letswe are doing this, go to some of our social media followers and see what they have to to say about the conversation we are having on rising Prescription Drug costs. Lets go back to the phone lines. Lets talk to ronald calling from boston. Good morning. Caller this is ronald. Good morning. Im calling from roxbury. Rafted in 1963. I was in south korea in 1964. I was in the vietnam war. Im getting older. Do isst thing you can slap a fine on them. They slap a fine on the people doing this. Them 1 million, 2 million all the way down the line. That will straighten them out. Candidate is ok. Canada is ok. They seem to have a good system. If they dont straighten up, slap them with a fine. Lets talk to laura in ohio. Miss pronounce i the name of your town. Caller you did it right. Everything we talked about is in moderation. Everything is in moderation. Why cant we look at capitalism and the profits in the same manner . You have that in the Pharmaceutical Company, you really have it in the insurance industry. You also have it in real estate, with people being charged out outrageous prices. There has to be a cap on it. Caps in place . T you can only make a certain percentage of profits unless you are turning it right back into jobs or improvements. If you get money from the government, there should be a cap on how much you are allowed to charge back to the people for that medication. Start putting caps on research, doesnt that mean they will do Less Research . The new drugs wont come out as quickly . Caller they are getting money from the government. They are getting money to Research Pharmaceuticals and medications. There should be a cap on how much they are allowed to make. The people of already invested. Youve already got the money. You are getting it on the selling and. Thats double dipping. In most eights, its illegal. Why is not illegal for the pharmaceutical companies . To collect inlk oregon. Good morning. Caller i am allergic to bees. Get ast time i went to wascription refilled, it 550 for the epipen. I cant pay that. You used to make your own kit. You would have a vial and a syringe. Prescribe oftor file. It was under 50. 550. A big savings from the atitary developed the pen. Its been around since the 1800s. I dont know why they charge so much for the mechanism, which is the epipen. I dont think its fair. During a hearing back in may, Lindsey Graham asked why the United States pays more for Prescription Drugs than other countries. You go to another country, they say this is all we are going to pay. Yes. Somebody has to to make up the gap . And not sure i understand. Ask says im going to pay this much, thats it . We just tell them to pay more . I think thats what we should do. I think we should use our trade agreements to do that. Exactly. They dont have the negotiating power, especially in the singlepayer system. Youre going up against a government, you dont have much choice. Say, in thejust hearing of the Senate Finance committee, they asked if they made a profit. To a person, they said yes. They are still making profits, its just the a or making a lot more from us because we dont protect americans. Like being left holding the bag. Man make one comment . Its rational for the Drug Companies to take low prices and other countries because the cost is relatively low. This, they get more profit if they leave it. Y are going to have to especially poor countries, a drug company wont sell. Host lets go to kevin calling from indiana. Good morning. Caller good morning. Much wanting to know how the senators make when they know breakers are going on in medicine before they sell it. A lot of them have gotten rich off stuff like that. Think politicians are making money directly off Pharmaceutical Company profits . Caller indirectly. It was just a few years ago where they could buy stock, they could invest in companies. They knew they had breakthroughs. I feel like it comes handinhand. I love all of our president s. I hate every one of our senators. They dont get nothing done. We live in the freest country in the world. Limitswish we put term on those senators. We wouldnt have to have all of these debates. Lets talk to dave in new york. Good morning. Indiana,wo that man in thats a deliberate of body. They are supposed to discuss issues. What i find ironic is the Trump Administration and the Republican Party who bash socialism are going to go to canada and raid their medical system to get cheaper drugs because they cannot come up with a system of their own to protect the american people. I hear is howngs im supposed to educate myself. They are supposed to be experts. Arent they going to school . Arent they supposed to look out for me . Its ironic what we do in this country. We are last in the medical system because we dont protect the average citizen. Why drug costs are lower. Once the solution to the problem . The government has got to step in and tell the pharmacies this is what we are willing to pay. Doesnt walmart do that . The people who make tied. They say this is what we are going to pay. Thats it. Countriesh the other do. Cant we study this problem and come up with a solution to help our people . Different system. Japan has a good system. Why cant we get past this . Lets get past earning a bach and help the average person out. Jason is calling from tennessee. Good morning. Caller you have a great show. Say, thent to Insurance Companies are putting the squeeze on people. Go through the program, its 500 per bottle. Thate two other medicines i get at discounted rates at walmart. Theyve got to put caps on these prices. Its ridiculous. Im in tennessee. I cant get to canada to get my stuff cheaper. We want to see where their money is coming from and see if they are backing and pharma. Forcing a cap on a product, isnt that anticapitalism . Is that something other industries would not be allowed to do . They can make as much money as they want. Regulate the price so that its affordable. Thats what im getting at. I dont care for a or making 100 billion a year. Theyve got to put price regulation in. Paying 500 a bottle, this is ridiculous. When a quiz show got brought to congress, everybody watch that. Theyve got to do it. Its the same thing. It needs to be regulated. The Insurance Companies know they are going to get paid regardless of price. There are other factors involved. This has to be brought out into the open. Host larry is calling from tuscaloosa. Caller how are you doing this morning . With the experience pharmacists. The gentleman from marilyn said he was a pharmacist. If youre having problems with your medicine, get with your doctor and get with the pharmacists. They might be able to find cheaper medicine. With my experience, my wife needed medicine. It wasi went shopping to see ife could find a cheaper drug deal. Then we couldnt. I went back to the same pharmacist. There was another pharmacist and she ran my insurance. My wife has all kinds of insurance. She said the medicine was five dollars. I told her when we came here the first time we had a pharmacist say it was 1000. She said she did not run your insurance. Everyone is taking a bite excuse me out of the pockets of the federal government, including the senators, including the people that make the drugs and the pharmacists. All of them need to share that piece of the pie. What you have to do is look at makeerson who is trying to a way from people on drugs and need the medicine. Like the preexisting insurance. The state of alabama and other states are trying to stop people from having insurance. You have to look at those types of things going on. Experienced the way they are doing now. The medicine could be cheaper. You could have the insurance, but if they dont run your insurance, you are going to pay there is no way youre going to pay cheaper prices. Host coming up, we will talk about Consumer Rights following the data breach at capital one. Ed mierzwinski will join us in studio. Later on we will turn our attention to the Interest Rate cut announced by the fed. The Washington Posts heather long will walk us through that means. We will be right back. If you want more information on members of congress, border cspans congressional directory at cspanstore. Org. This weekend on book tv, formert 7 45 eastern, policy director for senator Elizabeth Warren talks about the effect in this of government involvement in promoting opportunity and equality. A public option for broadband would introduce competition into some of these concentrated markets. This is not a pieinthesky idea. Hadtanooga, tennessee has one gigabyte download internet, extremely fast internet as a public option since 2010. More than 100,000 of their people and businesses take advantage of the public option. Sunday at noon eastern, indepth is live with author and historian lee edwards. At 9 00 p. M. Eastern on afterwards, author michael malice talks about his account of the far right movement and its origins in his latest book the new right. There is no agreement other than who the enemy is and with the nature of the enemy is. There are those that favor an authoritarian police state, those that are anarchists, and those that are internationalists in the sense i will be a citizen of the world and that i dont owe allegiance to a particular nation. There are those that are America First to will take the country back. Will have very Little Washington journal continues. Host we are back with Ed Mierzwinski, the Consumer Program director at the u. S. Public interest and research group. We will talk about what really happened with the capital when data breach and how it affects you. Good morning. Happenedk about what with this incident with capital one. Was it a hack, a breach . What is the difference . Case itn capital ones was a hack that resulted in a breach. Hacks,eaches were not they were just stupid practices by the company. Sometimes wrongdoers come in and hack the company. This case a disgruntled apparently disgruntled former engineer at a couple of Internet Companies was working on cloud servers. We used to think of bank was like fort knox. All your information was inside a safe. It was really protected. Digitally banks are now using outside services. Your money is not necessarily your money may still be in the bank but your information is in the cloud. The internet. There are companies that provide that service. Somebody took advantage of a loophole in the cloud server and got access to 100 million accounts. Account information. Host we hear about this it seems like every month, every few weeks. A data company or a store or a Government Agency loses this loses these databases. What is the practical effect of this happening for the consumer . Guest consumers are starting to lose hope. They are losing trust in their institutions. The practical effect is you could become a victim of Identity Theft. Your information could be used to take advantage of you. If you are take if your credit card number is stolen, and a lot of the breaches are things like credit card numbers. Credit card numbers have a very short shelf life on the internet, on the dark web, the underside of the internet. Bad guys sell credit card numbers for a few weeks or a few months. If the hack result in losing your Social Security number and your birthdate, those items are financial dna. They have a very long shelf life. They can be kept on the shelf for a long time and then sold for a lot of money because if youve got my Social Security number, you can create new accounts in my name. That is the big practical risk to consumers. Host how many consumers were affected this time with this capital one breach . Guest the capital one breach is a mixed breach. Pieces 100 Million Consumers were affected by the breach. Andmillion canadians 140,000 americans lost Social Security numbers. Again, the financial dna. The rest of the consumers lost a lot of information that could be used for additional phishing attacks. ph. ng is spelled with a if you have information, you can call a consumer or sent emails to try to pretend you were from the irs or pretend you are from the bank and try to get more information that will enable them to again commit Identity Theft in your name. Consumers dont answer phone calls that claim they are from your bank. If you get a call that says they are from your bank, hang up and look at the number on the back of your card. Call that number and say i just got a call and i wanted to confirm it really was the bank. The irs never calls anybody. Thescams are up with all breaches. Host how do you find out if you were affected by the breach . With capitalpeople one cards . Guest thats a great caption question. This points out one of the big flaws in our Digital Economy today. Companies are keeping information for too long and they are collecting too much information. A lot of the information in the capital one breach isnt from account holders. Its apparently from people who might have applied for a credit card at one point or another. Why did they keep that information for 10 years . Thats a question Congress Needs to answer as it considers new legislation on privacy. It needs to say companies should collect less information, should not keep it as long as they keep it, and they should get rid of it when they dont need it. Companies just say computer power is cheaper than ever. Computer storage memory is cheaper than ever. We can collect all kinds of information and save it forever until we figure out a use for it. That is the wrong way to run a host we will open up the lines again for this call about Consumer Rights for the section about Consumer Rights and data breaches. Eastern and central times and, 202 7488000. If you are in the mountain and pacific time zones, your telephone number is 202 7488001. If you were personally affected by this latest capital one data breach or affected by any of the data breaches in the last year or so, we want to hear from you and your experience. Your number will be 202 7488002. Always mind we are reading on social media, twitter and on facebook. Out you were found affected by this capital one data breach. What should you do . Guest no matter where you found out about the data breach, no matter the company, Government Agency, health care provider, university or other data collector that lost your information, the best idea for a consumer is to get the free credit freeze provided by federal law. Let me explain. The big loophole in the credit granting process today is that the Credit Bureaus make it hard and complicated for you to get your Credit Report because they dont want someone else to get your Credit Report. A wrongdoer does not want your Credit Report. They apply for credit in your name with your Social Security number and name and his address. The bank or usually retailer or Cell Phone Store that is considering giving you credit, they contact the Credit Bureau. Ae Credit Bureau says its contact from a retailer or a bank. They are a trusted thirdparty, not a consumer. We know they are good. That is the loophole that wrongdoers exploit. They apply for credit in your name and they get credit in your name. They never get your Credit Report. That is the problem that consumers face. The credit freeze 20 years ago, consumer advocates and attorneys got together in a telephone call in 1998 or 1999. We said, how do we stop this . The Credit Bureaus are we string reports to creditors without really verifying the creditor is who it says it is. We said, what if we had the right to freeze our Credit Reports unless we are applying for credit . It is frozen. It was a term developed. When you do want to apply for a car loan, you unfreeze your credit temporarily. We fought for years to get these passed statebystate, one by one. After the horrendous equifax ago we starteds changing all the state laws. We had enough power. Finally we had enough power to convince the states. Shouldnt the right to freeze your Credit Report be free . You can freezer Credit Reports and then you can be very happy that nobody can get into your Credit Report and apply for new credit in your name. Host how do you do that . Guest by just going to the Credit Bureaus and saying i want to credit freeze. Website, type in credit freeze and you will find a how to do that. You should be able to get the freeze at all three automatically. Host who are the others . Guest transunion, equifax and experian. Older americans favor member tr w. They sold their Credit Report business to a new Company Called experian. They come up with these fancy names. Host lets go to the phones. Lets start with joe calling from charlotte, tennessee. Good morning. Caller good morning. Good morning, america. Employeea disgruntled that apparently got this got into this. They got thew if if this was encrypted, which i would hope that it was, it could take them 500 years to crack the encryption. What is the story on that . I will be listening off air. Guest it was an apparently disgruntled employee at one of the cloud server companies, not of capital one. The person had skills. Definitely had skills and was credited with knowing what she was up to and what she was doing. I dont think or dont know if the information was encrypted but i can tell you certainly equifax, which in my opinion was a much greater breach because 148 million americans lost their Social Security numbers and other information, the Equifax Breach was involving unencrypted information. Josephines talk to from myrtle beach, south carolina. Good morning. Caller hello. Guest hi. Host go ahead, josephine. Caller how does someone find out if their information was released . Breachin the capital one i believe you can contact capital one. I think they will be reaching out to you. I need to find out more information about that one. The Equifax Breach was recently settled between the federal trade commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and most state attorneys general. They set up a website where you can use a tool to find out if your information was breached in that case. I dont recommend that people try to remember the addresses of websites to use. I recommend people start at ftc. Gov and they will tell you how to find the equifax website. You click at the ftc and you know you not going to a scammer site. If you start to type the website and you make a mistake, scammers have bought all the names that are very similar to the real website and are trying to fool you. Ftc. Gov. Straight to equifax if you remember how to spell equifax. Host is capital one doing enough to Contact People being affected by the breach . They released a statement on this earlier. Here is the capital one statement they released. Capital one immediately fixed the configuration vulnerability this individual exploited and probably begin working with federal Law Enforcement promptly began working with federal Law Enforcement. We will continue to investigate. Are they moving fast enough . Guest i dont think so. These companies usually dont tell consumers quickly enough. There are so many breaches were companies hammond hall. How. Hem and equifax was warned by a government hacking investigatory agency that they should update their software. They allegedly told the entire company about it, but the one person equifax had one person that was supposed to close their vulnerability. That person apparently did not have a supervisor or any backup. They blamed essentially one person forgetting to update this. Equifax did not tell the public about it until september. Were inguys apparently the equifax servers from at least may until july. Thats a big company that only has one job, buying and selling information about consumers. They did not do a good job. Its unbelievable. They should do much better. Host should congress be doing something about this . Guest congress is considering rod privacy fudges leash and affect how companies, including data collectors and all companies, use and collect information. Its a much bigger issue. I dont think congress should do anything about data breaches because the states have already solved the problem. You are protected under state law. As long as a company follows the strongest state law, you are in good shape. Companies want a weak federal law to preempt for trump all the state laws. Host do all 50 states have these protection credit freeze laws . Guest all states have them. They are a little different. The credit freeze law is now a federal law. We have the federal law that protects you at the freeze level. All states have a separate data breach law. Some are not as good but again i think if a company has customers or clients in every state, your best example your lawyer should tell you to comply with the california law, not from some other state law. Host lets talk to sabrina from asheville, north carolina. Good morning. Caller good morning. I recently tried to apply for some loans online. I went to Google Play Store and downloaded a bunch of apps that said they could help me apply for loans. As soon as i put my information in i started getting im talking tons and tons of scammers calling on my phone. Way if i was to want to apply for a loan on the web . What is the best way for me to tell it was actually legit . How are the scammers getting the information off of google . How are they getting their apps placed on googles play store for us to download . That is not done in one state. That is national. Im just asking what kind of protection do we have there . Guest thats a very good question. Apps to obtain information about loans, i dont recommend the metal. I would recommend going to a bank or credit union. Many Online Loan Companies are predatory payday lenders that attempt to evade state law by operating on the internet. Many states, including the District Of Columbia and 14 or banned paydayes lending with a 36 rate cap, apr. The scammers go into every state. Worse than the fact that some try to sell highpriced loans in the states that banned may sell apps information to actual scammers. They dont really want to give you a loan. They want to collect your information so they can trick you into a lot of other scams. Host would you say it is not a good idea to conduct Financial Transactions over the phone with anybody . Guest over the internet people can do their banking but they have to be careful. I would never conduct banking in an open wifi such as in an airport or train station or on a train. You have got to be careful with things like that. With apps, people may have heard about the socalled face app. Not facebook but face app. You took a picture of your face. They aged you to make you look older. I want the one that makes you look younger. Was not out that app doing a lot that was different from what others were doing, just collecting a lot of information, but they were uploading it without giving you getting your consent and the company is owned by russians. Thats the reason that one app got a lot of play. There are a lot of bad apps set up to steal your information. You want to make sure your phone does not have a lot of apps, and if you have not given apps full authority to look at your contacts, all your locations. Take a look at your phone. You should find at least five apps you can delete delay or lessen the amount of permissions it has. Online loans is one of the biggest areas for unfair ripoffs. Horistine fromto bedford, ohio. What is your question. I stop so many people calling me . There is number one number with 15 x or numbers onto it. With 15 extra numbers onto it. I get 10 to 15 calls a day. Host a little off topic but those scam calls, i get them myself. Guest congress is trying to stop robo calls. Many of the callers are calling you from other countries, not over regular telephone lines anymore. They are calling you from internet connected telephone systems. They are using many gimmicks. You can fit in attire robo country to country and you can make millions of calls. Contact your Telephone Company and tell them to make sure they are using all of the antirobo calling devices they can put on your call. Guyscommon is that the bad is and yourur area local prefix. I never answer them unless it says its the name of a friend of mine who lives there. Dont answer calls they dont come from people you recognize. Host how often should americans check their Credit Reports . Guest annually. You can do that for free your Credit Report is now available for 15 years. Is you dont need credit monitoring. The credit freeze is better than credit monitoring. Credit monitoring is a subscriptionbased program that equifax will be providing for free to its victims. Many other people get ads for credit monitoring. They paid 19. 99 per month and you dont need it. Host lets say your data was affected and you started noticing charges you did not make on your credit card. What do you do . Guest if the charges are in your name on an existing card, call your bank. If its items on your Credit Report that suggest you have a new Credit Report im sorry, items that suggest you have a new credit card that you dont remember getting or dont have, then you call the federal trade commission and look at the page they have on how to fight Identity Theft and contact the Credit Bureaus. You dont pay for that account that isnt your account. When the debt collector calls and says im calling about the account from x bank and you never had an account, you contact the ftc and the Credit Bureaus. Host lets talk to sean from virginia. Good morning. Caller good morning. I was thinking maybe they should make Online Banking illegal to prevent any scams from happening or anybodys identity from being taken. We did not have Online Banking in the past. It would completely eliminate it. I know it is off subject but about the scammers calling people, it is a problem. I wish the government would do something about it. One lady got scammed at 40,000 in taxes out of 40,000 in texas an committed suicide. Guest online baking has a lot of benefits. What i was talking about would be with the previous color is not using my own bank to do online transactions. I was talking about applying for loans on the internet. Loan in ai need a Google Search engine. You will only be contacted by scammers. Online benefits occur with Online Banking the same it benefits you and a lot of other ways from the online marketplace. You have to be careful. Scams existed before the internet. There are more of them now they were before but they are kind of the same scam, just digitized. Host lets get one more question from joe from ash, north carolina. Good morning. Caller good morning. Got a message on her internet that says give them 750 and they were given they will give you 100,000 from ups. She got a phone call from Social Security. I know they dont call you. I figured what the hell. I called up for a day and a half, four different phones. I made the guys life miserable. Nobody calls me back. That is how i handled this with these scumbags. Guest i have heard of people doing what you did. Is concerning you got to go through that. Wife went through that you got her off the list. Most people dont know how. My best recommendation to everybody is understand that the irs does not call you, your bank does not call you. The debt collector that calls you probably isnt really a debt collector in many cases if you dont think you are when he debts. My strong advice with data breaches goes back to just get a credit freeze. Freeze your Credit Reports. You will sleep better. Host mike from harrisburg, pennsylvania. Good morning. Caller how are you doing . Nerve ordy gotten the started to think this whole dataalization, Computer Internet thing is just a complete and total failure . Considering all the data breaches, the gigantic data breaches that happen day after day. Is anybody thinking about cann ing all of that is a failed experiment . Guest i dont think you can put the internet back in a can. It is open, out there and providing a lot of benefits. We need to solve the problems that it creates and provide more consumer protections. Congress had a very light touch on the internet. It did not enact any rules about collecting information. They are now struggling with it. The phone companies at the big tech companies, facebook and google, they want to pass a law that allows them to continue all their collection and use of our information without real consent. They only want to go after bad guys like data preachers. That is wrong data breachers. Take the Credit Bureaus. We are not their customers. We pick our bank, our credit union, our friends. We dont pick a Credit Bureau. They are a data collector in the business of selling and buying information about us without our permission. They should do a better job. We need to clean up the internet, not get rid of it. Host your advice for people who think they have been affected by any kind of data breach, freeze your credit. Guest it is a right. You can freeze your credit at each of the three Credit Bureaus. It doesnt count if you only do it at one. If you freeze it now under federal law, it will be frozen at all three. When you want to get a new car, you simply unfreeze it temporarily. Host we would like to thank Ed Mierzwinski from the Consumer Program director from the Interest Research group. Thank you so much. Coming up next week talk with heather long of the Washington Post about the Interest Rate cuts announced wellen Peter Canellos talk about his piece on historical sites and the telling of the american story. We will be right back. The house will be in order. Hasor 40 years, cspan provided america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the country so you can make up your own mind. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. This morning at 10 30 a. M. Eastern on cspan, we will show you the first of two democratic president ial primary debates in detroit hosted by cnn. Sunday morning at 10 30 a. M. Eastern, the second round of president ial primary debates. Watch today and sunday at 10 30 a. M. Eastern on cspan, cspan. Org, or listen with the free cspan radio app. Reagan is an intellectual. He is an intellectual. He is comfortable with ideas. He understands the power of ideas. With that kind of foundation, an intellectual foundation, a political leader can do all kinds of marvelous things. Lee edwards will be our guest on indepth sunday from noon to 2 00 p. M. Eastern. He is the author of just right, and a collection of biographies on william f buckley, Perry Goldwater and ronald reagan. Joining with your phone call, tweets and facebook questions. Live sunday from noon to 2 00 p. M. Eastern. Be sure to watch our live coverage of the 2019 National Book festival on saturday, august 31, on book tv on cspan2. Washington journal continues. Host we are back with Washington Post economic correspondent heather long. She will talk about what the fed did this week and how it affects us. Good morning. Tell me what fed chair Jerome Powell actually announced this week and its impact. Guest we had the first cut in Interest Rates in over 10 years, since the great recession. It is pretty momentous to see that rate cut happening. It is happening mainly because of the trade war. Jerome powell at his press conference after the announcement said that this was mainly driven by trade tensions and by Slower Growth overseas. Other parts of the world have caught a cold economically and we want to make sure the United States does not catch that cold. In terms of real people, i looked at houses last week. This is very fresh for me. You look up the mortgage rate, the cost to borrow money. What the Federal Reserve did is they took the rates down. It will be cheaper for companies and individuals to borrow money going forward. Host is this only affecting people who are wanting to buy a house and Mortgage Rates . Does it affect any other area . Guest yes, a lot of different people. Auto loans if youre looking for a car. If youre borrowing money to start a business. Credit cardholders. They should go down a little. Credit card rates have been a record highs lately so you were getting a little bit of relief but not like this is going to hugely help someone who has been struggling to pay all their bills. Host what reason did the for chero the fed chair give for the rate cut now . Guest mainly the trade war. That is making other parts of the world skittish and impacting the United States. One thing the chairman stressed is in amanufacturing technical recession. Output is shrinking. Business investment is going down. Basically businesses have been spooked by the trade war. The spending has totally dried up. The big concern is they stop spending and investing. Are they going to turn around and stop hiring . We got good job numbers on friday but of the companies were to dry up hiring that would be a major red flag for the economy. Host what is the Interest Rate now . How much was the cut . Guest we are still very low. Anybody alive in the 1980s think this is incredibly low. We went from 2. 5 down to about 2. 25 . A modest quarter rate cut. Anyone who has read the president s tweets knows that he wanted to see a full percentage point. He wanted 1. 5 . The fed did not do that but they did take that tiny step and it was a significant step that they have not done in more than a decade. Host lets look at what President Trump tweeted. With the market wanted to hear from jay powell and the Federal Reserve was that this was the beginning of a lengthy and aggressive rate cutting cycle which would keep pace with china, the European Union and other countries around the world. As usual, powell let us down but at least he is in the quantitative tightening which shouldnt have started in the first place. No inflation. We are winning anyway, but im not getting much help from the Federal Reserve. What is quantitative tightening . Guest to provide history a little bit. We were in the midst of the financial crisis. The Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy started buying a lot of bonds. They bought Treasury Bonds and those terrible mortgagebacked securities we heard about that caused the crisis. Assetsalance sheet or ballooned. At one point ahead about 4 trillion worth of these assets sitting on their books. That is not normal. That was called quantitative easing. President trump called it quantitative tightening as they tried to sell it back a little bit. It was like a small paring back but the president argued that was harming the economy because it was not like tightening your belt loop one notch. For the past year to begin to sell some of those assets. Host lets look at what fed chair powell actually said when he talked to reporters after announcing the rate cut and what he thinks the impact will be on the economy. [video] trade is unusual. There isnt a lot of experience in responding to global trade tensions. That we have not faced before and we are learning by doing. It is not the same as watching Global Growth where you see banks weakening, central and governments responding with fiscal policy. Seems toe tensions it have a significant effect on Financial Market conditions and on the economy. They have all been a different way. We have to follow them. I want to be clear here. Orplay no role in assessing evaluating trade policies other uncertaintye policy has an effect on the u. S. Economy in the short and mediumterm. We are not criticizing trade policy. Host what is the most important thing you took away from what chair powell said . Guest it was widely telegraphed they were going to do this rate cut, the 25 basis point modest rate cut. What was a surprise was trying to figure out what are they going to do next. Are they going to do more . It is not just President Trump calling for more cuts. Wall street is pricing in two more cuts, one in september and one in december. He saw the markets go down as they thought it does not sound like he seems very keen on more rate cuts, or a little uncertain. The biggest takeaway i had was the clip you just played. Hes a very genteel person who does not like to criticize anyone. What he was saying is trade policy right now is a little crazy and we are not really sure what to do. That was kind of the essence of the message he was just delivering. These are unprecedented trade moves in modern u. S. History. We will try to do them as much as we can to keep the economy strong. White house, we cant do it all. Host if you want to join the conversation about the weouncement of the rate cut, will open up our regular lines for this segment. If youre a republican, you can call in at 202 7488001. Democrats, your line is 202 7488000. Ndependents, 202 7488002 we are always reading on social media, on twitter and on facebook. Samuel fromo ellenwood, georgia. Good morning. Caller good morning. At 91 yearsis old how would this affect the cd rate . Guest thats an excellent question from georgia. The answer is not the one you are going to want to hear. When they cut Interest Rates, the Savings Rates and the cd rates will go down. I am bracing myself. I have some money in my savings account and im waiting for that email to come from my bank saying the right im receiving on my savings is going to go down. I will say the good thing about certificate of deposit, if you have taken went out for nine months or 12 months, the rate is locked in for that period one youou buy another will find the rates will be lower. Host don from dunellen, new jersey. Good morning. Are you there . Caller can you hear me . Host go ahead. Caller i want to make a general have her comment generally on Interest Rates in general. I sort of a call being able to get money back from a savings ago. Nt up to 10 years sometimes up to 5 . What happened to the Interest Rates that banks were able to pass along to their consumers . What was the reason for why is that nobody can get any money for their money anymore . Thanks. Guest we also remember if you were alive in 2008, you wont forget the moment. Whats happened in this country is renters went to zero. Had experience of getting paid pennies if not nothing on savings accounts and checking accounts. While the rates have gone up a that is still5 , not very high. Not the 5 we saw before the great recession. Second of all, the other thing that happened is banks have gotten a bit more greedy. We have to be honest about that. I wrote a piece about this back in january or february. We are seeing normally when the Interest Rates go up the Savings Rates go up. Yet the average savings rate in aboutountry is still paid. 1 despite the fact Interest Rates until this week were sitting at 2. 5 . We have never seen that white of a gap between what the Federal Reserve rate is and with the bank rate is. There is a lot of question marks about whats going on and whether the policy needs to shift to encourage banks to be paying closer to the fed rate as they had in the past. Host you were talking earlier about the uncertainty the fed has for americas trade policies right now. President trump just tweeted a few seconds ago about his trade policy and heres what he tweeted. Countries are coming to us one to negotiate real trade deals, not the onesided horse show deals made by past administrations. They dont want to be targeted for terrace by the u. S. Tariffs by the u. S. Whats the difference between chairman powell and President Trump . What is that relationship like . Are they completely Different Things . Guest President Trump selected Jerome Powell for this position. That was almost two years ago now. Things have changed a lot in that time. President trump has set up chairman powell to be his fall man. Any time dog market goes down or anytime we have some weak economic data, boy, is it fed chair powells fault. Fed chair powell has tried to say out of this. He does not punch back very hard. His point has been america, mr. President , we are working for the same goal and that is to keep this expansion going. Down with the fall back into a recession that will mean people out of jobs and people losing money. He has said we are doing everything we can to keep the economy on track and this should help the president and the country. Host the president is also tweeting about the fed. He continued by saying, things are going very well with china. They are paying us tens of billions of dollars made possible by the many devaluations and pumping in massive amounts of cash to keep their systems going. So far our consumer is paying nothing and no inflation. No help from fed. Guest thats right. Hes obsessed. He tweets about it almost everyday. Most people are not thinking about the Federal Reserve every day. There is so much to unpack. A couple of key points. The white house constantly argues there is no impact on america from these tariffs and is the chinese paying. That is boulder and wrong bolderdash. And wrong. The reality is the vast majority of these tariffs are being paid by american businesses. Those businesses will either be less profitable or pass on the costs to you and me. There is a cost to americans from this. By my calculation and the Tax Foundation calculation, but tariffs in place are costing a family of four about 850 more dollars a year. Do you notice that every time . That is spread out over 12 months. You were not always realizing the extra dollar or two a day are facing, but there is a cost to this. Host diana calling from livingston, new jersey on the democratic line. Good morning. Caller good morning. That is the problem. We are in a dangerous time because we have a president who was going to bully and overrun our institutions like the department of justice and now the fed. These people think hes helping them. When he lowers the Interest Rates it hurts all of our pensions in distress. And they are in distress, especially in the Teamsters Union and the bakers union. There is a plan to fix these things. There was a plan to fix Social Security but hes neglecting all of our problems, the middle class problems. There was the Butch Lewis Act that the house passed that the senate probably will not bring up because of mcconnell. They are blocking every legislation helping people. Sweet account or savings account with a major bank like chase, they give you 1. 1 interest and they make loads of money. Guest a lot of great points. The good news is so far the Federal Reserve does seem to be holding up against pressure from the president. This is a case where the Federal Reserve is designed to be an independent institution similar to the Supreme Court. At the moment it is holding up. People asked me how much influence you think the president is having on the Interest Rate decisions. Look, probably about 5 . These people are human and while they try to put their earmuffs on and ignore the president is saying every day it has some influence. The greater influence is what they are seeing in the economy and the markets. A stronger case would be there is more bullying from the markets going on right now than there is from the white house. Host michael from plainfield, illinois on the independent line. Good morning. Caller good morning. As a preamble to my question, my underequipped understanding is 70 of any economy is based on Consumer Spending. This is what i want to know. Im an older person, 69, a veteran, disabled. But i cant work. I would like to get a job but i just cant physically do it because of this the question becomes, i depend on the interest. Classically as you get older you move into fixed income. There is nowhere to move. The japanese tried to fix their problem in the 1980s by cutting Interest Rates that is zero. Did not work. It has taken them 40 years to unravel it. My question is, how can the is thearket rise when it only game in town . People are just really throwing good money after bad, smoke and mirrors, and where exactly is this going to end up . It has got to collapse because the jobs that are being created pay nothing. You cant live on a 12 an hour job. Can you please comment on that . Guest michael, you would make a great Federal Reserve reporter. You just articulated very well that there is a cost lowering Interest Rates. President trump makes it sound like this is free money and we should be lowering rates to spurn borrowing from consumers and companies. There is a cost of that. When you have too low Interest Rates, it does what you say. It spurs risky borrowing. Thats how we ended up with the. Com bubble. That is how we ended up with the housing bubble leading into 2008. What we saw on wednesday from the fed, two people dissented. A big part of the people they reason they did that was because they said there is a cost to having too low of Interest Rates and we dont want to spur bubbles that could be way more harmful later on. I dont think we are at that point right now but its a concern. Host john from silver spring, maryland on the democratic line. Good morning. Caller good morning. Are brilliant reporters about the economy, did anyone ask the fed about why hes doing what hes doing right now when the economy is doing well . It is a sad thing that the men who filed six times bankruptcy tried to run this business. It does not make any sense. Most of all i am not seeing any ands speaking up about this saying something to this president. You were going in the wrong direction. It is time for people to speak up. The farmers, the people in michigan who lost jobs as he promised he will create more jobs. What makes me very angry most of the time is him saying china will pay the tariff. We are paying for it. His is the economy hes doing Something Like this. It feels like a drunk guy driving the bus. If we dont speak up, we will have a bad economy. Host people tell us the economy is healthy. Why the rate cut . Guest great question. Is the question i be getting all week. I wrote an entire piece of that headline. If the economy is doing so well, why are we cutting Interest Rates . Here is what the fed argues. Its like getting an amortization shot. You are not sick yet but we see some signs all around us of starting to be problems in the economy. They want to head this off before they become really big problems. This is a preventative type measure, may be like when your parents tell the kids to drink more vitamin c during the winter to try to stave off colds. Host those backtoschool shots. Guest they call this preventative or insurance measures. Host are they pointing to anything that might become a problem for the economy or just saying in general are making sure nothing goes wrong . Guest the key thing now one of the callers made this point. 70 of the u. S. Economy is driven by Consumer Spending. You and i getting these people going out to buy stuff. We are good at buying things in the u. S. Host taxfree weekends. At thethe big concern Federal Reserves business been equally collapsed in the second quarter. It fell to. 6 , basically no business spending in this country. The concern is if businesses turnaround what is the next thing they are going to cut . The neck think they will potentially cut is hiring. If they cut hiring, thats fewer jobs and fewer people with paychex. That means fewer people spending. Thats the real concern that can truly think the economy, that Consumer Spending goes down and they want to prevent anything that could potentially get people out of work and those paychecks. Host jeff from florida. Caller good morning, everybody. How are you doing today . Guest great. Believe the fed cares about the economy and i figured instead ofy cut 10 , a few people getting raises, every one foot be a race and they would be a lot more spending the economy. In 2008 when the economy fell, it hurt a lot of people. Is what really caused the collapse of the economy. Thank you for your time. Guest a lot of good points. We just got the latest report card on the jobs on friday, just a few hours ago. If there isis that enough of a wage increase. The average Hourly Earnings are going of 3. 2 . That is well above inflation. Its one of the better rates we have seen in over a decade. The Economic Policy institute did a nice break down. Most of the increases are going to what i would consider the working class, people earning 12 to 14 an hour. They are seeing some of the highest increases right now. Thats a very positive step. Partly because of a good economy, partly because states voted to increase minimum wage. Host host lets talk to frank out of maryland on the democratic line. Good morning. Caller good morning. Youuld like to comment to comment on my strategy. I had to retire early. I have a small pension that isnt enough, so what i have been doing is taking my savings that im earning,. 15 , and living on my savings and putting off taking Social Security, which earns me about 7 per year, as opposed to 1. 15 per year. It i is that a good strategy . Guest im sure the Washington Post would like me to say i shouldnt be offering Financial Advice because im not a financial advisor, but many years ago, i used to be in the investment in visor e advisory profession, and i will holdhat if you are able to off taking Social Security another year or so, i would do that. My recommendation to you is shop around. 15 account and there are a lot of accounts that pay better. Off the top of my head, american express, a couple of online banks is offering it, hsbc, one of the foreign banks have been offering a rate above 2 . I would shop around on my savings account. Host lets talk to carl on the republican line. Morning. Good morning. Caller its tom, not carl. Host ok, tom, go ahead. Good under is it obama when he had low Interest Rates and bad under trump . Guest thats a great question. What we need to remember is a little higher Interest Rate is a sign of health in the economy, so Interest Rates, historically in this country, were close to 5 . At the moment, we are at 2. 5 . It as good ord bad or whats not. The goal, for years, has been to try to get Interest Rates away from zero, increase them back up the economy improves. What we have started to see, around 2014, is an improving economy that started under president obama and it continued under President Trump. I think what youre looking for is what is that sweet spot, like looking for the goldilocks level of Interest Rates. That is what the fed is trying to figure out right now. Almost everyone agrees zero is not where we want to be. 5 is probably not where we want to be, but where is that Perfect Point in the middle . They were trying to find that under obama and find it under trump. Host we would like to thank heather long, economic correspond her for the Washington Post for coming here and hashing through the fed, Interest Rates, and the Trump Administration. Thank you so much. Guest good to be here. Host next will be our spotlight on magazine segment which will focus this week on u. S. Historical sites and the telling of American History. Politicolos from will be here. We will be right back. I live in a country where there are no Public Transportations, no that i could walk, and a woman, to leave the house and do anything in her life, she needs a car. To function or drive this car, she needs a man. Announcer sunday night on q and a, saudi arabia and womens rights activist talks about her book, a saudi a womans awakening to challenge the saudi governments ban on women drivers. For us, the right to drive is more act of civil disobedience, because a woman is not supposed to drive. We show that we are able, we are capable of driving our own life and being in the drivers seat of our own destiny by doing this act of civil disobedience. Announcer watch sunday night at a thick eastern on cspans q a. 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. Watch our exclusive interview on donald trump as you reflect on his two and half years in office and the debt ceiling. Pres. Trump the European Union is doing poorly, china is doing really poorly, and you take a look at other countries, they are not to doing well. We are the hottest country in the world. We have a strong military, a lot stronger after this last budget. At some point, very soon, i will be able to cut back, but we had to rebuild our military. We didnt have a choice. Announcer an interview with President Trump, today on cspan. Watch anytime online at cspan. Org and listen wherever you are using the free cspan radio app. Announcer washington journal mugs are available as cspans new cspan store. 02 cspanstore. Org. Check out all of the cspan products. Go to cspanstore. Org. Check out all of the cspan products. Host we are back with Peter Canellos, editoratlarge with politico and we talk about his story, are americans falling out of love with their landmarks . Good morning. Guest good morning. Host why did you decide to write this article . Guest i was shocked when i heard about the very persistent since the colonials got their first taste of history there. Visitors ship is about half of what it was in the late 80s. You look at somebody someplace like gettysburg, an amazing sight, americas greatest clash, the High Water Mark of the confederacy and turning born of the civil war point of the civil war. It is down about a quarter of what it was in the 1970s. These are surprising statistics. When a collie photographer bought it to our attention, we decided to do a photo essay and to also kind of meditate on what it is that has decreased our interest in these Historic Sites. With, from back talking to people and looking at some of the numbers, is that this sort of cold war era american story, the tale of great events and visiting the scenes where the homes and meeting places of great figures in American History, people have lost interest in it. Ands no longer relevant credible to people in quite the same way. 1980s, 1970s, peoples all american freedoms as being under siege during the cold war. Today, they see many of the threats to the United States freedoms being within. It is a different kind of story, so these sites have suffered a lot. Host as a kid who grew up in the 1980s, i remember my parents taking me to these places when we would travel outside of the south. Why are these people not going to these places and what is the reason behind the drop . Guest i think the reason is that they dont relate to the events that went on there anymore. Buts a sad development, also an understandable development when you consider some of the changes in society. Some of the stories did not take full account of some of the less flattering aspects of American History. Is ave a culture now that more diverse culture and we have a deeper understanding in the realm of history of some of these events. The story hasnt evolved or changed. People have kind of lost interest. We fight these battles over statues of civil war generals and things like that, and it serves to discourage people from relating to the core story of the civil war and of americas fight for freedom. Host do you see part of the problem being a lot of the information we used to be able to get only from history books and from these National Sites is now available on the internet . Guest maybe. I think during the cold war, when you and i were growing up, i think there was an emphasis on the heroic story of freedom. We were countering the soviet union. People felt that was an exit stencil threat to the United States existential threat to the United States. I think a lot of the train to make interesting Trans American history occurred that was a triumphant story during that time. Now, it is a more cynical age, and i do think those who care about American History and american leaders need to think about ways to update that story and to make it relevant for younger people, because it is a crucial part of our unity as americans. Host i want to read from your article here. This was almost the key point for me. Today, america finds itself in need of a National Story that acknowledges the pain of the to overcome,uggle but also emphasizes the ways that all americans pursue a common path to righteousness. It should be a story that does not look away from suffering but doesnt demand victims and fingerpointing. What did you mean by that . Guest the narrative that drew a lot of people to gettysburg, colonial williamsburg, philadelphias National Historical park, those kinds of places, was a revolution era story of americans fighting against here any and achieving freedom. Todays understanding says we achieved freedom for some people but not for all people. Women, 100 plus years, africanamericans, 100 plus years, immigrants, native americans, oughts and people are left out of the story, and we need to take writer acknowledgment greater acknowledgment that. It is consistent with an evolving understanding of what American History is. The problem was that there was never a story it was never incorporated into a new National Story. I think president obama came close to doing it right at the beginning of his presidency, on the night he won the presidency when he said that only in this country can this kind of breakthrough have occurred. And talked about the long fight to make it a more perfect union. It was sort of a perfecting the union has been a consistent theme. Some ofbama presidency, that full unity was lost. It wasnt all president obamas fault, it may have been his critics, maybe both, but it didnt take hold in the way it might have taken hold. Now, we are in a much more divisive moment when we have the making america make America Great again message which a lot of people tune out and see it as something that is part of a very needrvative fringe, and we a unifying story here in the United States. Host we want you to join this conversation. We will open up our regional lines again. That means if you live in the eastern or central time zone, call 202 7488000. If you live in the mountain or pacific time zones, your phone line is 202 7488001. If you have visited a Historic Site in the last year, which we we have a have special line for you, and we want to hear about your experience there and how it could improve. Your phone line is 202 7488002. Keep in mind, we are always reading on social media, on andter cspanwj facebook. Com cspan. You take on the maga narrative and i want to read a paragraph where you talk about this. Older americans who grew up on the american story and felt its magnitude, now grieve of the lost sense of american exceptionalism. That yearning they dry them and likeminded people to trump posture lie fourth celebration at the lincoln memorial. Aga narrative is the romper placement for the much National Story of the cold war years. It asserts the greatness of america, not as an inspirational actualut as a kind of claim about the the story regards all other countries as competitors to vanquish as if the proof of american success lies in the struggle of others. Tell us about that paragraph. Guest [laughter] i think Older Americans who grew up as we did, during the cold war, and learned our history from the books we were taught in public schools, but also in visiting these sites and hearing this great story, they feel as though that story has been tarnished by critics, that people have come and eaten away at it, attacked it, tried to undermine it, and those people are antiamerican. In point of fact, dissent and revisionism have been a part of American History since the colonial days. That is annk effective critique, but i think President Trump has tapped into. Ome of that host iris, which historical site have you visited in the last year . Caller there are too many to name. Everything we could see. I really believe people are living such a, i dont know, perverted lives that we didnt know, as we growing up, and they dont like the simplicity. It is too drab and too plain, they are too busy. They are always texting, you know . They are looking for new. Fe used to go through li without finishing our homes. I never finished my living room, but we got along great and everything was cool. We took the kids and visited everything there was, and nobody wants to connect with their roots anymore. I dont know what they are in such a hurry to get to, but they dont want to see plain, drab, ordinary. It is just the way it is. Think the caller is onto something. She is talking about the extent hashich social media supplanted a kind of public convening of civic interests, talk about the decline of civil life which is a in referenceich is to people not visiting more historical sites. The internet has a vulcanizing effect to society. And you go online, you look for likeminded people and hear likeminded stories. You dont hear a national narrative. You hear the critiques of smaller groups. I think that discourages people from identifying with a strong National Story. Host we see a couple of people on social media lines who seem to agree with you. One person tweets millennials dont care much about that history. Heres another tweet that says intelligent people still flock to historical sites all over the world. Lack of interest has much to do with our failed Education System and the need for technological entertainment because so few are talked to think for themselves. Should our historical sites start doing more, going to where the people are, fan demanding the people coming to them . Guest i think they are trying to incorporate a more complicated narrative. They are trying to add more interactive elements. In the belief that children today are so accustomed to getting feedback online that they are going to want to have answers delivered to them quickly when they visit these sites, i think there is also something those commenters are on that contemplation, visiting of envisioning something yourself and experiencing it may have been something kids learned 40 years ago, and now, in a culture of more instant gratification, people are processing information in a very different way. Host do you think the reinterpretation we were talking about earlier, of American History, trying to make it more complex and making it more inclusive, is that turning off people from coming to these sites . We were talking about the confederate statues where there are places they are being contextualized not being turned down. Is that turning people away from these sites . Guest i think a little bit. The people who are the custodians of these sites, historians, and politicians need to take a count of the need for a sort of coherent National Story beyond this, not something that is constantly picked at and changed all around. The battle over some of the monuments makes a lot of sense when it is like you are naming a highway for somebody. When it is a statue that commemorates a battle where somebody fought or perhaps died, it is a very different thing. You are learning history and experiencing history. The two messages have gotten confused a little bit in peoples minds. You can go to gettysburg and be and by what happened there by the courage of the confederates who ran up the hill and charged to run to their deaths. You can be inspired half mile away where lincoln delivered the gettysburg address. Its a little more complicated, kind of message. It does not require an allegiance to the confederacy or hatred to the confederacy and some constant shunning kind of way. It requires a kind of understanding of what came out of the civil war, the new birth of freedom that lincoln proclaimed. Host good morning. Caller yes, i agree that it is educational and we are not teaching the children at school our history, but the problem really is that it is a false history. The narrative spun from the beginning is false. We that we are older now and see history is getting more inclusive, how can we not be pessimistic about the direction of this country . You know . It is not inclusive, and that is all i have to say. Guest i think that is true. I think people feel, in light of current understanding and a more inclusive society, that the message delivered in the cold war, that tale of heroism was too simple a stick. It wasnt fully true. What we need to do is find a version of it that looks at what we share in common and what has been successful, as much as what has not been successful. That honors the process of trying to perfect to that union and improve that story. That is what president obama was onto at his time, and it never quite took hold. He never emphasized it quite people who see it as a simple tale of heroism should take note of all of the many, many injustices in American History. People who only see injustices have to look at the successes and ways in which the American Experience have it that has improved for people. Host david is calling from new york city, new york. David, good morning. Which historical site have you visited in the last year, david . Caller i visited the hamilton grange. I grew up with my bicycle club and we all bicycled up to the hamilton grange and other sites in the area. Wenti was going to say, i to a lot of historical sites because i dont drive. The Public Transportation system is horrible in this country and they dont welcome cyclists. If i were to take a train or bus, i wouldnt be allowed to have my bicycle taken to the historical site, lets say mount vernon, gettysburg, or medicines estate. I think that is a big issue madisons estate. I think that is a big issue. Guest i dont have any clear info in this, but a lot of these were introduced to introduce on school trips. Maybe the reason to respond to a more complicated narrative has discouraged schools from going places, but that solves the transportation problem that the caller was referring to. Host we are still a very car based culture, and if you are not living near we are lucky we live here in washington, so we can get to Arlington National cemetery, the capital, Supreme Court, but if you are not in a city or nearby, you have to take a car or bus to these places. Guest yeah. Perhaps that is something that the National Park service can take into consideration more. Money into new museums that have reinterpreted their core sites. The National Parks have had a boom at the same time some of the historical sites have suffered a little bit. But, the question of access is a very important one. Having some sort of reliable and inexpensive transportation would certainly help. Host lets talk to chris who lives in scottsdale, arizona. Chris has also visited a historical site. Where did you go . Caller i went i took my son to concho peak. I think it is a historical site. They had a civil war reenactment and it was beautiful, but i dont know, maybe it was accurate and maybe it wasnt, but it was sterilized in the sense, there was an africanamerican woman there, but there were no africanamericans in this reenactment. I dont know if that is accurate or not, but i think part of the problem is that a lot of it has been sterilized. [indiscernible] and honors that suffering, if we did that, that would pull more people in, because again, nowadays, people realize this , and there accurate was a lot of suffering of dozens in the africanAmerican Experience. Guest i think thats an excellent point. That also goes to the fact that a lot of historical sites are in private hands. We think in terms of the National Park service sites, but even some of the most important and biggest ones are actually privately controlled. While the National Park service is made an effort to have a much more inclusive presentation, not every site has, and that may be discouraging people. In the case of civil war reenactors, these tend to be private groups that studied the battles and tried to reenact the battles, and that is an excellent point. There were many africanamerican soldiers in the civil war on the union side. If the battle was reenacted and there are not africanamericans, it is not an accurate portrayal. Host lets talk to scott calling from connecticut. Scott, did i pronounce that correctly . Caller yes you did. That was a sanction of the me higgins, so i am close to historical sites associated with the mohicans. Thatw through our guest the 1960s in particular held up a mirror to the United States not only because of the cold war, but because of full can folk rock music. Full and folk rock music. Civil rightse have movements, Animal Rights movements, you can go on and on. I think there is a disconnect from nature in general in this country that has gotten worse. I would say if you looked at the statistics of people visiting our National Parks, i dont know if the attendance has gone up or down, but i would say most of the visitors are probably foreign visitors as opposed to u. S. Citizens, at least from my experiences that seems to be. If you go to places like antietam, you go right to burnside bridge because you used to read about it with ruth histories or, war when i went to san antonio for the first time, even when my train came in in the middle of the night, i went right to the alamo and took a photograph of it with the full moon the background, because i idolized the park from davy crockett. I think there is a disconnect in america now. Guest i hate to agree that some of the mystique is gone from those sites. People who grew up with davy is aett and the alamo, it powerful experience to see the alamo. If you dont have that story and you dont have an understanding of what happens, the alamo is this thing in the middle of san antonio, having been there. There is an interesting question about history and nature, and whether they are related at all. I think they are. Your appreciation of the Natural World is your appreciation of things that came before and are thata part of the culture may not be tangibly there. I think an appreciation of the io go hand in hand, and, as said, statistics show attendance at National Parks is up, but it also is true that there is a tremendous increase in foreign tourism, so maybe that accounts for more of it. Host i want to touch on something you just said, there are a lot of people who learn the story of the alamo from the tv show davy crockett. How much does entertainment have to do with our interpretation of what American History is . A lot of people learned about civil war from gone with the wind. That is when they discovered it. But, all of those are entertainment that doesnt exactly tell the historical story, but maybe they make people want to go back and learn the real stories . How much does entertainment have to do with our interpretation of history and desire to go see these historical site . Guest i think that is huge. There are few historical movies these days. Lincoln was probably the last major hit of historical movies. We have seen Marvel Comics take on that role right now. I think if somebody read gone with the wind or saw gone with the wind early on, they would have an attachment to the civil war. It is certainly a onesided attachment to the civil war from gone with the wind, although there is much i admire in that novel. Said, an you inducement to learn more. And, to understand the sort of dramatic reality of the past. What kids sometimes struggle with in learning history as it seems like a whole pile of facts, and an entertainment presentation makes it real. You see real people interacting. I tend to give the kids of my friends the book Johnny Tremaine , which i love. That is something that inspires people to become interested in the american revolution. Its not the whole story, but it is something that gets people in the time and thinking about it. Host lets talk to lynn from atlantic beach, florida. Lynn has also visited a historical site. Where did you go . Toler i took a trip massachusetts for the first time with my 10yearold grandson, an ultimate field trip. Concord and talked about the beginning of the revolution, and then we talked about the literary life in the 1800s. We went to walden pond. One of the greatest visits is going to quincy and stand on the sidewalk and look through the neighborhood in which john adams birth place is situated, and imagining abigail stood there and looked out at the sea of boston while her huston was at congress, that is amazing. And, we went to plymouth stood there and thought about our ancestors who came over on the mayflower. My grandson is very steeped in American History. Monticelloop will be to study about sally hemmings, timer surface and thomas jefferson, and we will go down to the First Permanent settlement in the continental United States and study that. This Little Family is learning history. Guest [laughter] thats a very inspiring story. I think it points up the role that grandparents could play in this. The nuclear family, getting in the Station Wagon and heading to the historical sites, which people did in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, if that is not as common right now, certainly grandparents who have grown up in the 60s and 70s, that is a great mission, take your kids to the places that inspired you and you are a child. There is more modern interpretation of them, and that is only good. That is more information, but you can share that kind of feeling that the caller ancient when she envisioned mentioned when she envisioned Abigail Adams looking over boston, imagining the city has been sacked by the british and it trying to discern whether her husband will come back and what the future holds for that city and the nation. It is a very inspiring thing. I take my hat off to that woman who is teaching her grandson about it. Host lets talk to clyde calling from san antonio, texas. Clyde, good morning. Caller good morning. I thank you from mississippi and so on my originally. I was born in new orleans. I was in the military, so i have had to visit i have had the chance to visit many historical sites, including the alamo, vicksburg battlefield, et cetera. I guess it was by this man, old americans grew up on american stories, and i called it a myth, especially when you include this maga thing in their and a person who seemly there, and a person who seemingly coined his phrase and his negative attributes as he meanders through this thing called the accident or the presidency. To agree with or i have no empathy for people who want magic. The myth of america is just that, and i would encourage these older people and the younger people as well to crack a book and find out what america really is, what it has been since its inception, and what it is now. Guest there is a lot of wisdom in that interpretation. I think there is a tremendous danger if people see the american story and maga as one in the same, or get turned off to the whole idea of a positive story about American History because it has been coopted by one side of the political equation. That is a very damaging thing. At the same time, i dont doubt anything be called or said. Certainly caller said. Certainly, if people are inspired to read books, they will see a full story of American History, and perhaps, that will change their perceptions and they can visit these sites and get the full nuanced share. What i would say picture. What i would say is that there is not an inherent tension between a new instant interpretation of American History and appreciation of American History. They are and can be one in the same. Politically, i realize one side is taking advantage of peoples feeling discouraged about the lack of american story, but that should not mean the other side shouldnt steak its own claim to it, and we all shouldnt and we shouldnt all work to a national narrative. Host ivos been a fan of how the more information we have charles, good morning. Caller yes. Im supposedly one of the people because[indiscernible] ive lived through a lot of the American History. What amazes me is the total ignorance of many of the critics and most of the young people now. They know nothing, have been taught to nothing. They have no appreciation of the complexities of life or history. It is all simplified. Tragedy, to see this country full the part on the basis of racial identity and radical views of what life is like, what it is. I dont know if any of these people that have lived in a third world country have lived in a third world country and have traveled the world have seen the difference, but the real problem is the ignore ends. If you read anything about the founding or about the history, these people were complex people. They werent cardboard figures. Humanlike every other being, had contradictions. But, that is not a bullet now. We have heard of the society, a lot of emphasis on stem and teaching science and math and upgrading our students performance in those areas. That is an admirable mission. It is an open question whether the teaching of history and basic tax has suffered in that timeframe. System the educational and leaders of countries or of states and local governments that help to set some of the priorities in our schools need to keep in mind that having a population with a common set of reference points, not necessarily equal interpretations and understandings, but reference points in American History, is a very important thing, and is that a rhodes, so too does that soic fiber that erodes, too does that civic fiber. Host what should the government or private groups do to reinvigorate the love of these historical sites . Guest we talked about a lot of things that people can do. The people who are in charge of these Historic Sites, whether they are National Park service or private sites, need to think about new ways to engage young people, particularly, and how to satisfy some of the changing ways in which young people process information and develop an interest in these kinds of sites and activities. That is one thing. At the National Leadership level, it has often been commented that our politics is way too divided. That has deftly hurt our ability to tell a coherent National Story. I also think spending more money on the teaching of history and bringing more intellectual energy to it, all good. Can do. Ething everybody like the woman who took her grandchildren on a trip, there are things you can do for your own grandkids and kids, things to do for your community, for your schools. Americans need to make it more of a priority. Host we want to thank heather long thank Peter Canellos, editoratlarge for politico. Thank you so much. For the final segment of the day, we go back to talking to our callers about their experience with the rising Prescription Drug costs. If you are in the eastern or central time zone, 202 7488000. Mountain and pacific, 202 7488001. We want to know about what your experiences are with rising Prescription Drug costs. We will be right back. Announcer this weekend, tonight at 8 00 eastern on lectures in history, comparisons between Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson on the constitution. You take a look at the whole cartoon, it is a very different impression of what people thought of johnson and the constitution at the time. Not that he was a defender, but that he did not understand the constitution, it was above his acting, and that he was in unconstitutional ways. Announcer sunday at 6 00, a preview of the art exhibit in the national archives. Women in new jersey who were Americans First voters, when new jersey became a state in 1776, the new jersey state constitution made no mention of sex when discussing voting qualifications. It only had a property requirement, so women who own enough property, primarily those and single women, so not all women in new jersey, could and did vote in elections at the local, state, and national level. Announcer at 8 00 p. M. , on the presidency, john farrell talks about nixons early life and career. And early 1948, he campaigned for the martian plan. He went to every rotary club, chamber of commerce, vfw, and American Legion hall. Every crowd that would take him. Them hishem he owed best judgment, not his obedience. He convinced them. When the Party Primaries were held in california in the summer of 1948, Richard Nixon did not just win the republican nomination, he won the mination. C no announcer explore our nations passed on American History tv, every weekend, on cspan3. Announcer washington journal continues. Host once again, for this segment, we will talk about your experiences with rye using drug risk rising drug prescription prices. Administration is talking about ways to safely import Prescription Drugs from canada and other countries for their lower prices. We want to know what your experience is with the rising cost of Prescription Drug prices. We have a little here from representative jamie raskin who was at a congressional hearing, talking about the role the governments role of research and development of new Prescription Drugs. Heres what he had what he had to say. The nih, which invests billions of dollars in science and medical research to fight the killer diseases that our population is struggling with, when they come up with breakthroughs, those scientific inventions and discoveries are used by these companies. So, should the Public Investment in the research be also considered when deciding about the regulation of Prescription Drug prices . The gentlemans time has expired but you may answer the question. Yes, we believe it should and we also think we should Pay Attention when we talk about the drug companys financing clinical trials, that we give them tax breaks for that. The orphan drug act gives them, for the trials done, it takes break. Taxpayers are not only Financing Research through nih but through various tax advantages. By the way, dont stop that. Keep it going. I need new drugs, or im going to die. That is straight up a fact. We want it, but we want the drugs to come forward at prices we can afford. Host even before the Trump Administration announced its plans to work on getting lower Prescription Drug prices from canada, the pharmaceutical industry had already started and paying up its lobbying efforts in washington. Heres a story from the fiscal times that talks about this. I will read a little to you. As Congress Considers legislation to lower drug prices, the pharmaceutical industry spent a record amount on lobbying in the first half of the year. Ae Financial Times had reports based on congressional findings. The pharmaceutical research and manufacturing of america, a leading Industry Trade group, spent 16. 1 million on lobbying in the first six month of the year, up 4 from the money is spent in the first half of 2018. Million over 27. 5 the full year in 2018. Also a record. Large Drug Companies put significant money into lobbying efforts as the Financial Times details. Pfizer spent 7. 1 million, up from the first half of 18. Mark spent 5 million up from 4. 1 million. Three point 7 million. Johnson johnson, 3. 6 million. Gilly gilead sciences, 2. 9 million. The pharmaceutical Care Management association spent 2. 1 million on lobbying, a 40 from the same period a year before. Lets talk to some of our callers and hear about their experiences. We go to mike calling from stratford, connecticut. Good morning. Caller good morning, jesse. How are you doing . Host just fine. Go ahead. Caller i would like to say that the americans have short memories. 20 years ago, our less than honorable politicians legislated into law that the government cannot negotiate the price of Prescription Drugs involving medicare. That was backed up by aarp. In other words, they are because of it. If they say they want to sell a drug that is worth one dollar for 100, the government sits on their hands and cannot say a thing. Ed into lawislatw and it is sickening. They should vote everyone of them out. Corruption is unbelievable, contrived, and now they get together, both parties, what could we do about it . They are the cause of it. Mike, the solution, what is your solution . Is the solution to vote them out . What do we do between now and then . Caller vote them out, and like they say, capitalism, right . In other words, if you sell doughnuts, and say you want to ask 10 per doughnuts, what if people dont have to buy your doughnuts . Therefore, that is capitalism. If you are dumb enough to overcharge, people wont buy your doughnut area with medical care, you are forced to do it. It is like back a couple hundred years ago, if you had a cattle on a range and somebody shut off their water, you wouldnt except that. You cant say that is capitalism, they are starving me out. These are necessities of life, so the politicians are only themselves. The solution is to get rid of them when more people become aware of they are doing quality of life without it, the doctors listen to the politicians. Them. Re petrified of why should i go to the doctor. Doctor . I will go to washington and they will describe them. A friend had his bills cut down, and they said call your congressman, and that is true. They put their hands in everything, and they destroy everything they touch because they are corrupt as could be. Host lets talk to virginia calling from maryland. Virgina, good morning. Caller good morning to you. How are you . Host im good. Go ahead, virginia. Caller i think it is Insurance Companies cam in connection with these pharmaceuticals. If you have insurance, you can pay as much as three dollars for a drug somebody elses paying 500 for. Something needs to be looked at as far as how those Insurance Companies are negotiating with the pharmaceuticals to bring a rate down that much. My sister pays 750 for drug i pay six dollars for. It is ridiculous. They need to be looked at. Host what is the solution, virginia . Caller i wish i knew. [laughter] caller i really dont have an answer to that. It is so complex. Do towhat do you plan to make your drugs affordable . Im already blessed and the fact that i have retirement from a good company and the negotiate they negotiate with the Insurance Companies to bring the prices down, but for the people out there, i would suggest looking into all of these plans. Walgreens has one with this prescription card that brings the price down, and there are several programs existing right now that can help. Basically, coming from drugstores, it is crazy but true. David mitchell, the president and founder of patients for affordable drugs, testified in front of congress and has this to say about patents for Prescription Drugs. When Drug Companies do what you just described, file new patents on old drugs, 78 of all the patents filed on drugs are filed on existing drugs. If they are filing patents on existing drugs to extend their monopoly on those old drugs, they are not doing what we all say we want up here, investing in invasion. Investing in research and development that will bring a cure for her boy that may cure my cancer before i die. You guys really have got to stop this abuse that allows them to milk old drugs by gaming the system, instead of doing what we need them to do, invest in innovation and new drug development, and we have to keep in mind a lot of that is subsidized to the american public. You have to get them back focused on developing new drugs instead of just milking profits from old drugs. Host the next caller is calling from massachusetts. In morning. Good morning. Caller hi. The reason i think we could make a big difference with Prescription Drug costs would be if we were to open it up to markets such as canada, to be able to compete with. The problem is that the patents are in place, but for insulin specifically, they have a significantly lower cost in canada than we do with the companies we buy from right now. There has been no r d and influence for so many years, so they are milking the prophets of the products and basically putting it to the country. The things one of that we could do is, like that man said earlier, shorten the patents or end the patents and stop letting them extended so there is a monopoly, so we have competition. Also, i think that we would be instead ofssibly, having them transfer the r d costs in the patent, during the patent time, maybe look at ways to get creative financing, so they would be able to capture and may be fund raise money for the r d costs and not pass them off in the early years. Host lets go to jerry calling from montana. Caller yes, good morning. A hearthusband who had transplant from 1989, and we found out that we were well insured, we were fine, but everyone else who had a transplant ended up on medicaid. There was no way that these people could survive without going on medicaid because of the drug costs of those antirejection medicines at the time. Now, of course, lots of divorces free,e that set the man to go free on medicaid and his wife could continue to live and survive economically. Changed for a lot of these people was when president bush helped put through the Prescription Drug bill. The man who thought it was just a gimmick, it wasnt. Cap ona 6,000 outofpocket at that time. That meant you could budget 500 per month and by the time you got to that point, the federal ernment picked up my husband passed away and i went on a blood thinner. I knew all of the ins and outs of pharmaceutical dealings, and i never qualified for any of their assistance, fortunately. I went into mexico and i asked how much are these bills . It was 80 for one month supply. In the United States, it was 800. I go to canada next week, because im only 40 miles from there, and im going to check their prices. If you open the market with those countries, and they let us be opened with them, because we cannot take all of their drugs into the states and leaving things for them, that was one of the worries. I think it would level the field. Host we have shown you bits and pieces of it all morning, but wrapping up the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing of Prescription Drug prices, Elijah Cummings of maryland have this to say. It is not just living, it is living equality a quality life, a life of quality. I think all of you for being and this may make you feel hope, we will have the drug company folks sit in the same seats as soon as we come back. We will try to understand some of why they are doing what they are doing. I do believe that and by the way, as i close, the first conversation i had with President Trump was something he said, and i will never forget it. He said the Drug Companies are getting away with murder. That is what he said, getting away with murder. And, he is right. Every time somebody cannot afford their medication, every time they cant they have to , people have to share insulin and all of the things you talked about, they are. Im not putting it all on the Drug Companies, but this is the United States of america. This is the greatest country out here. We ought to be able to resolve these issues. To jamess talk calling from new chester calling from new york. Good morning. Caller good morning. I want to comment that canada has what we would choose it to have, being socialized medicine. Canada, people can get medicines without bankrupting themselves. It also goes the same for Health People have accused democrats of being socialist, but Social Security is a form of socialism. I dont think anybody in this country would want to give up Social Security. I dont say that we have to be come a totally socialist country, but certain aspects of our economy should be controlled by government and not by the profit motives. Why should the profit motive be the thing that drives health care . That is criminal. People are dying because of it. Host james, you live in new york, do you go to candidate to get some of your Prescription Drugs . Caller no, i dont. Its too far. Host what do you do to make your Prescription Drugs affordable . How are you affording your Prescription Drugs . Exerciseortunately, i d most of my life, and im in good health. Although i am 83 years old, i dont really need to many drugs, just let pressure pills just Blood Pressure pills, which is a nominal expense. My heart goes out to these people that are broke, paying for medicines that the Drug Companies are making incredible profits on. That are out of patent. There is no reason why insulin should cost the amount of money insulin should cost insulin costs. Medicines,any other where the profits are outrageous. Profits made by these companies is criminal. Host lets talk to phyllis calling from michigan. In morning. Caller good morning. We are watching you and i want good morning. Caller good morning. We are watching you, and my husband was a firefighter. The station got closed down and they were trying to consolidate. When they did that, he lost his Health Insurance through the company, and now he works through the state of michigan, an 8,000e deductible. We have paid over 9,000 to pay for drugs, copays, and doctors. A lot of it we put on charge. We are in our 70s. I think something should be done to help the seniors a little more than what they have been doing, and as you get older, drugs are in this is how drugs are a necessity to a lot of people. This government has to address the fact and get it down. If candida can do it, the United States can do it also. This is something that has got us baffled, and im happy to be able to talk to you today and how you and tell you how we feel. For sharing this information so people know what people are going through with this drug thing. We are both on heart medicine, which is very expensive, and every month we have to have it, so we have to take it, along with Blood Pressures and all those, so please, help them get something done for the United States. Host we would like to thank all of our callers and guests who have called in for todays show. Tune in again tomorrow morning at 7 00 a. M. For another edition of washington journal, and everyone have a great saturday. 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