I think it is fair to say that every governor has had a significant and important priority. That has been true in massachusetts. Because wherever i campaigned, i found people to talk about it. With their stories. It broke my heart. Over the course of the last several years, working on a bipartisan basis with our legislature and others, we have made progress dealing with this epidemic. In massachusetts, after years and years and years of doubledigit increases in opioid prescriptions, overdoses, and deaths. The first time and a long time, in 2017, we had a 30 reduction in prescriptions. Overdoses leveled off. The way that was referred to by most people, it was sort of positive but muted. In the reason it was muted is because we have so far to go. People to take some comfort with a trend continued and inserted to go like that. There is a lot that went into that. You are talking about where we should go next. Some of the things i believe that have worked, i will spit to that and others. Sp
A deal tonight that touches the live of every single American Health care. Anthem says its buying rival cigna for 250 million. The deal comes just weeks after aetna says it wants to buy humana quickly altering the landscape to five major insurance carriers to just three, assuming the announced deals get regulatory approval. Both anthem and cigna saw their shares lower in trading. The wave of consolidation is raising a number of questions about the power of these companies, competition and costs per patient. Reporter anthem and cigna say together theyll be able to cut out more than 2 billion in overhead costs and ultimately that will be good for consumers. It will improve our ability to serve customers across commercial medicaid medicare and International Markets and create greater efficiencies and affordability for our customers. Reporter the sheer scale of the 54 billion merger will attract regulatory scrutiny. The combined company will have more than 50 million members, covering 1 in
A deal tonight that touches the live of every single American Health care. Anthem says its buying rival cigna for 250 million. The deal comes just weeks after aetna says it wants to buy humana quickly altering the landscape to five major insurance carriers to just three, assuming the announced deals get regulatory approval. Both anthem and cigna saw their shares lower in trading. The wave of consolidation is raising a number of questions about the power of these companies, competition and costs per patient. Reporter anthem and cigna say together theyll be able to cut out more than 2 billion in overhead costs and ultimately that will be good for consumers. It will improve our ability to serve customers across commercial medicaid medicare and International Markets and create greater efficiencies and affordability for our customers. Reporter the sheer scale of the 54 billion merger will attract regulatory scrutiny. The combined company will have more than 50 million members, covering 1 in
Switch shares up about 24 this afternoon. Well look at whether that treasury move could help juice the market for ipos coming up. Meanwhile, the new blade runner sequel hits theaters this weekend were going to look at whether this film can revitalize the struggling box office. Lot of fingers crossed in hollywood here as they bring Harrison Ford back one more time. Well see. Good luck. Hope it works. Lets begin today with a jobs report, though. Eyeopening number hs this morning. Our senior economics reports Steve Liesman joins us from austin with a breakdown of those numbers. Steve . Reporter yeah, bill, you had to cast your eyes down on this number here. But whats happening right now is people are really throwing out the weak number on the top line and looking to the details of the report and they find strength here. Let me show you what theyre talking about here the top line number minus 33,000 quite a bit below the 80,000 estimate you have the revisions to the prior months which were
This is what i am looking at. Most in europe give us the action today. Chinese exports seemed to be underscoring the resilience of the global recovery. We are also looking at crude, claiming climbing above 51 and record climbing above 51 a barrel. Bitcoin at a record. Lets get to the bloomberg first word news. Nejra European Central Bank Officials are considering cutting monthly bond buying by a half, starting in january. The program may be kept active for at least nine months. They said reducing quantitive easing for 30 230 billion euros a month is a feasible 30 billion euros a month is a feasible option. The president of the atlanta fed sees says he is not sure the fomc will raise rates in december. This quantifies a strengthening inflation. I think there is much more to learn about what is happening in terms of inflation dynamic. I would say that inflation is starting to pick up. Chinas overseas shipments rose from a year earlier, narrowly missing estimates. Imports rose. That resul