September 15, 2020 • 20 mins
Oracle may have won the bidding war over TikTok, or at least that’s what is being reported; although few specifics are being given. That’s important because it remains unclear whether the sale will be enough to avert the ban on operating in the U.S. threatened by President Trump. Axios Technology editor Kyle Daly joins us to provide insight on what happens next.
Then, as fires rage largely out of control in California and Oregon, it’s good news/bad news with the strong winds which both aid in improving air quality and assist in further spreading the flames. Thomas Fuller, San Francisco Bureau Chief for the New York Times will have an update on the fires and the prospect of further federal intervention.
And finally, as the U.S. approaches 200k deaths and millions more hospitalized in the fight against COVID19, the bill is coming due, much to the surprise of many under the belief that COVID-19 treatment would be paid for by the federal government. Robbie Whelan, correspondent for the Wall Street Journal will break down who is responsible for which costs and to what degree.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Tuesday, September in Los Angeles. I'm Mo Kelly in
for Oscar Ramirez, and this is the Daily Dive. Oracle
may have won the bidding war over TikTok or at
least that's what's being reported, although few specifics are known.
That's important because it remains unclear whether the sale will
(00:22):
be enough to avert the ban on operating in the
US threatened by President Trump. Axios Technology editor Kyle Daley
joins us to provide insight on what happens next. Then.
As fires rage and largely out of control in California
and Oregon, it's good news bad news with the strong
winds which both aid in improving air quality and assist
(00:44):
in further spreading the flames. Thomas Fuller, San Francisco Bureau
chief of The New York Times, will have an update
on the fires and the prospect of further federal intervention.
And finally, as the US approaches two hundred thousand deaths
and millions more hospitalized in the fight against COVID nineteen,
the bill is coming due much to the surprise of many,
(01:07):
under the belief that COVID nineteen treatment would be paid
for by the federal government. Robbie Wheeland, correspondent for The
Wall Street Journal, will break down who is responsible for
which costs and to what degree it's news without the noise.
Let's dive in. We did get a proposal over the
(01:28):
weekend that includes Oracle as the trusted technology partner, with
Oracle making many representations for national security issues. There's also
a commitment to create TikTok Global as a US headquartered
company new Jobs. Joining us now on the program is
Axios technology editor Kyle Daily. Kyle, how are you doing today?
(01:50):
I'm good. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you
for coming on. You know, Oracle has won this bidding
war for TikTok, But what do we know about either
the terms or scope of the deal from what you
can tell at this point, so not a lot, which
is kind of where we are right now. So Microsoft,
for the last several weeks at least have been favored
(02:11):
to win this, as you said, getting a war to
take control of TikTok's US operations. At one point, Walmart
became involved in the financial side of it, and then
the winds kind of shifted over the weekend and as
it turned out, Fight Dance, which is TikTok's parent company
(02:33):
in China went with a proposal from Oracle instead, and
it's not from what we can tell, an outright acquisition.
There may be, you know, some sort of minority stake involved,
but the way it's being framed is trusted technology partner,
and what that is is not really clear right now.
There is a deal, um Pleasure making desk, he and
(02:57):
other administrations officials apart reviewing that right now, will presented
to the President probably later this week, um, because TikTok,
if there's not a deal in place, gets banned, uh
come Sunday. Now they will probably ly the challenges to
that if it comes to that. But you know, nevertheless,
they're just thick o'clock yet, um. And so you know,
(03:18):
right now we're sort of grasping in the dark. It's
a sort of a strange situation where it's it's a
deal that's not quite a deal, and we just don't
know a lot yet about the terms of it. Why
do you think there has been this specific focus on
TikTok as opposed to other companies like Tencent or Huawei,
(03:40):
which have been around longer and have acknowledged ties to
the Chinese government. Yeah sure. Um so yeah, as you know,
TikTok is owned Bye Bye Dance, which is a Chinese company,
and you know Chinese command economy. Um, it's it's not
a controversial statement to say that Chinese corporations are sort
(04:04):
of intermingled with uh CCP, the ring party there. You know,
Beijing has a lot of control companies can say and do.
Um And certainly when we're talking about tech companies, at
least domestically, they have pretty expansive surveillance powers. Um. So
there has been a focus in the US on sort
(04:26):
of trying to push back at least on Chinese technology
card variant software in American systems. You mentioned qualawey. The
Trump administration has been trying to kind of spent them
out increasingly network equipment is not going to be US
five G networks. The government's trying to encourage other company.
(04:49):
But yeah, you know, the Chinese economy has has grown,
the tech economy has learn, and there are some of
these major multinational corporations that are operating throughout well including
in the US. So there's sort of this mixed response
to that. In the US. You mentioned ten Cents as well,
that they own a whole bunch of stuff. They invest
(05:11):
in US tech companies. They sort of have their fingers,
but they also run some weech at, which is it's
sort of like What's app, but it includes this whole
vast array of applications, the commerce platform, social media. This
is really widely US and SHIRE And at the same
time that the Trump administration is looking to potentially band TikTok,
(05:35):
it's doing the same but we chat and that's playing
a little more under the radar, so there is sort
of an overreaching push there. One thing that makes TikTok
a little confounding is that there's no particular evidence that
any TikTok users data has been perfectly accessed by Beijing.
TikTok operated as sort of a separate, parallel company under
(05:58):
the bike Dance umbrella. There s vers in the US
and Singapore. They don't actually send data to China, so
there is a risk that Beijing could bigfoot like Dance
leadership and compel them to turn over TikTok data. But
more than that, there's sort of this broadergy. I wonder
whether there is any type of dots which can be
(06:18):
connected from what's going on with TikTok right now, and
the larger trade agreement which is still being hashed out
with the Chinese government. Is there anything that we can
connect here or should try to connect. I don't know
if there's anything super direct. I think that because the
trade talks with China had not necessarily gone as well
(06:39):
as President Trump, they have hope. The administration is now
sort of looking to other levers to exert power against Beijing,
but it doesn't fit neatly into the conventional trade or disco.
He is Kyle Daily, a technology editor. Thank you for
coming on today, sir, Thank you so much for it's
(07:07):
really hard for all of us to wrap our heads
around the devastation that these fires have caused, and the
pain and the suffering that so many Oregonians have endured
over the past few days. Joining us now is Thomas Fuller,
San Francisco, bureau chief for The New York Times. Thank
you for coming on today. How are you? I'm doing
all right, all things considered, stronger winds could help improve
(07:31):
the air quality, which is abysmal right now, but also
it provides pardon the phrase, fuel for the fires which
are going on all over the West Coast. It seems
like a catch twenty two situation, does it not. So
I'm in Oreville right now, which is right on the
edge of the fire. The winds haven't picked up just yet.
But I'll tell you what the real catch twenty two is.
(07:52):
So these winds this week, we're supposed to be coming
off of the Pacific Ocean, and usually those winds would
kind of clear the air. The problem is the meteorologists
tell us that for the past week or so, the
winds have been going in the opposite direction, and they've
pushed smoke over the Pacific, and so that smoke is
(08:12):
sitting there and now it's coming back to us. So
we're not getting new smoke, we're getting old smoke. So
that's one problem. And of course the other problem is
for firefighters. You can imagine if they're used to fighting
a fire with winds coming in one direction and then
suddenly they're coming degrees from the opposite direction, then they
have to move people around and redeploy. So these aren't
(08:34):
the monster winds that really have reaked havoc in the
last few years. We were talking about winds that somewhere
around fifteen to thirty miles an hour, but that's enough
to reinvigorate some of these fires. I would say more
acreage is burning here in California, but it seems more
people are being displaced in Oregon. Is that accurate and
(08:54):
is that a trend continuing as you see it? I
think that is accurate. I mean we have more than
three million acres here Burne in California. Oregon has around
a million acres. Now, people around Portland's are being threatened,
and so we don't have that same kind of population
center that the population density. Our fires are happening more
(09:19):
in remote areas. We have, for instance, the sound of
Very Creek near Orville, which were flattened by fire. We
have sort of more remote forest of communities, whereas in
Oregon two communities right along I five were wiped out,
and the threat around Salem, the threat in the suburbs
(09:40):
of Portlands is alarming. California, as we made the distinction
and differentiation between California Oregon, California deals with fires on
some level each year, but this year particularly seemingly it's
exponentially worse. Are there any readily identifiable reasons that we
can point to or is it just a ConfL lens
(10:00):
of events and circumstances on this one occasion. We certainly
had those freak lightning storms in August that started us
off on the wrong foot that ignited hundreds of fires,
and many of those fires still burned today, So that
was very different from last year. Other than that, we've
(10:22):
had very hot summer. We've had these heat waves that
have really desiccated the vegetation, and you know, as someone
who lived through them up here in northern California, it
was certainly some of the hottest temperatures that you know,
I've experienced it going forward, since you talk about the
specific circumstances and factors which impacted this particular fire season,
(10:47):
are we possibly if I can find some good news
in this, are we possibly on the downside of this
fire season? As temperatures begin to cool. Traditionally, the most
danger fires come with the Diabo winds, come with the
very strong winds in the mid to late fall in September,
(11:12):
in October, in November, even though the temperatures are cooler,
it's the winds that really propel the fires, and those
we haven't seen yet, so we don't know what's going
to happen the next few weeks. But certainly, if we
look at past years, the most devastating, most deadly fires
have been in the weeks and months to come. The
(11:34):
President is making an unscheduled visit today. The politics of
the visit aside in a federal management since what is
it a president or federal management can do to help
alleviate this situation. Well, you know, everything is polarized in
our country, even the explanation for wildfires the last the
(11:56):
Democrats say that climate change is the biggest either. And
Trump has not acknowledged the role of climate change, at
least not recently in the fires. And he talks about
sweeping the forest floor and forest management, and both are true.
You know, the forest are much thicker than they have
been in the past, certainly than they were before Europeans
(12:19):
arrived in this part of the world, and the climate
is changing as well. You have both of those working
in concerts. The federal government owns somewhere around a little
less than of the forest land in California, So certainly,
if forest management is something that needs to be changed reformed,
(12:44):
it's the purview of the federal government. He is Thomas Fuller,
San Francisco BUREAUCI for the New York Times. Mr Fuller,
thank you for coming on the Daily Dive today, and
thank you for all that you're doing to keep people informed.
Thank you. So it's almost as though the federal government
(13:08):
and the private insurance industry have set up a system
of something that looks like universal healthcare only for one illness.
Joining us now is Robbie Wheeland, correspondent for the Wall
Street Journal. How are you today, sir? I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me. Almost two hundred thousand Americans are
dead due to COVID nineteen in just the United States.
Millions more have required some level of care, with hospital
(13:30):
stays ranging from hours to months. Patients are paying large
out of pocket fees despite a federal safety net which
was set up to avoid such situations. What was supposed
to happen and what has happened relative to COVID coverage,
well the being in the pandemic, the federal government set
up a system that was supposed to kind of make
(13:51):
sure that nobody got any large surprise bills for these
unexpected medical costs that they have to pay out of pocket.
And they did that by giving about a hundred and
seventy million billion dollars Congress authorized this money to what
was called the provider Relief Funds, and these funds were
meant to sort of offset the high costs that hospitals
and other providers might have for treating people who got
(14:11):
the disease. At the same time, the private insurance industry
stepped up and sort of across the board, the big
insurers all agreed to waive cost sharing with patients. So
what that means is when you every year when you
meet your deductible after that point, you know, any care
you get in a hospital under normal circumstances, you've got
to pay some percentage like that, And all of those
(14:32):
agreements are are waived, and the insurers are covering d
percent of costs after decivables were met for private insurance
holders for COVID nineteen only. That's the only illness that
is covered in this way, and so it's almost as
though the federal government and the private insurance industry have
set up a system of something that looks like universal
healthcare only for one illness. So that was the goal,
(14:53):
and so far it's gone fairly well. But there are
obviously cracks in the system, as there are in any system,
and and some patients are still vulnerable to big unexpected costs. Okay,
let's drill down on that. Let's say I'm a person
who's obese, I have comorbidities as they say, high blood pressure, diabetes,
and then I go to the hospital and I'm also
(15:14):
diagnosed with COVID nineteen. How does that person know, or
any person know whether such a delineation will be made
that his treatment is going to be COVID related and
covered for sorts. If you have a positive COVID nineteen
test that's administered in the hospital, then you automatically will
be build under the building codes related to COVID nineteen. So,
(15:36):
no matter what other complicating conditions you have, if you
have a secondary infection, or if COVID starts attacking more
than just your lungs and also can attack the heart,
the kidneys, and other organs, whatever it may be, as
long as you have that diagnosis positive test for COVID,
you're going to be protected by the various protections that
have been put in place. Now, the bigger distinction is
(15:56):
not whether or not you have comorbidities or whether or
not you have any of their condition. The bigger distinction
is what your insurance coverage is. So we tried to
look at this in terms of kind of the ford
most common profiles for insurance coverage in the US, and
I can go through them if you'd like, But they're
generally speaking, people who have good private insurance to their employer,
people who are uninsured, no coverage at all, and then
(16:19):
people who are on either Medicare the federal insurance program
that's most commonly used by by older Americans, or Medicaid,
which is the one mostly used by low income Americans.
So how you're covered and what sort of plan you
have is going to be the biggest determinant of how
much you pay. And the way it breaks down is basically,
if you have good health insurance their employer's private, you're
(16:39):
gonna pay probably almost nothing, close to nothing. There may
be some out of so some outpatient costs like going
to a clinic for dialysis related to a kidney problem
stemming from COVID, or maybe some prescription drug co payments
that you might have to pay your pocket, but generally speaking,
these big bills that people get in the hundreds of
thousands of dollars, patients are not being asked to pay
very much of those, then we got the uninsured. The
(17:01):
uninsured as well, paradoxically, are pretty lucky in the situation
because the Cares Act that Congress passed in March mandates
that if you're uninsured and you go to a hospital,
the hospital is not supposed to charge you. They're supposed
to go to the federal government and say, look, here's
how much we spent on this COVID patient. We would
like to be reimbursed for that from this patient the
provider relief funds, and that usually happens. But one of
(17:23):
the main hurdles to that is it's a mountain of paperwork.
Imagine you've gone through this horrible illness, you've had weeks
in the hospital, and you might have lost your job
at the same time. One of the most common symptoms
of COVID nineteen that persists for a long time is
called brain fog, where people have persistent confusion and forgetfulness.
Under those conditions, it's very tough to ask a patient
(17:44):
to fill out all this paperwork and make sure that
they get taken care of. So the resources are out
there for the uninsured, but they have to sort of
take things into their own hands, which I know can
be very difficult for a lot of patients. You kind
of hinted at it. I guess an adjacent conversation to
be had as I close our conversation is the larger
universal healthcare debate. How much, if at all, is this
(18:04):
COVID nineteen coverage being used as a template or even
a test case. Dare I say for how universal coverage
could be used or implemented here in the US. I'm
not sure that the federal authorities who and and the
lawmakers who drafted the Cares Act, we're thinking about it
exactly that way. What I do know is that the
effect has been something like a universal healthcare system for
(18:27):
one disease. And the real worry, and this is the
way you can think about it, kind of as a
test case. The real worry is that the federal funds
that have been authorized are not going to be enough
to get us past a possible fall surge in cases.
So if we don't have a vaccine by the end
of the fall, and if we do see another big
second wave of cases, then the federal government funds that
have been allocated for this might simply run out. At
(18:47):
that point. We'll have somebody of a test case, because
we'll be able to see, Look, here's one particularly costly
disease to treat, and we tried to treat it largely
with public funds. And here's how how long it talks.
Here's how fast those funds out, and so that will
be sort of a test case. Can you imagine you
can imagine and extrapolate from there. If this is how
much it cost and how long the funds lastly, for
one illness COVID nineteen, you can imagine how much more
(19:09):
quickly they run out for every single disease that affects Americans.
This conversation is seeming like is just beginning more than anything.
He is Robbie Wheeland, correspondent for The Wall Street Journal,
Mr Wheli, and thank you for coming on today, sir,
Thanks for having me once again. All Right, that's it
(19:31):
for today. Join us on social media at Daily Dive
pod on both Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment,
give us a rating, and tell us two stories you
are interested in. Follow us on I Heart Radio, or
subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of The
Daily Dive was produced by Victor Wright and engineered by
(19:52):
Tony Sorino. I'm mo Kelly in for Oscar Ramirez and
this was your daily dive. US
It's Tuesday, September in Los Angeles. I'm Mo Kelly in
for Oscar Ramirez, and this is the Daily Dive. Oracle
may have won the bidding war over TikTok or at
least that's what's being reported, although few specifics are known.
That's important because it remains unclear whether the sale will
(00:22):
be enough to avert the ban on operating in the
US threatened by President Trump. Axios Technology editor Kyle Daley
joins us to provide insight on what happens next. Then.
As fires rage and largely out of control in California
and Oregon, it's good news bad news with the strong
winds which both aid in improving air quality and assist
(00:44):
in further spreading the flames. Thomas Fuller, San Francisco Bureau
chief of The New York Times, will have an update
on the fires and the prospect of further federal intervention.
And finally, as the US approaches two hundred thousand deaths
and millions more hospitalized in the fight against COVID nineteen,
the bill is coming due much to the surprise of many,
(01:07):
under the belief that COVID nineteen treatment would be paid
for by the federal government. Robbie Wheeland, correspondent for The
Wall Street Journal, will break down who is responsible for
which costs and to what degree it's news without the noise.
Let's dive in. We did get a proposal over the
(01:28):
weekend that includes Oracle as the trusted technology partner, with
Oracle making many representations for national security issues. There's also
a commitment to create TikTok Global as a US headquartered
company new Jobs. Joining us now on the program is
Axios technology editor Kyle Daily. Kyle, how are you doing today?
(01:50):
I'm good. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you
for coming on. You know, Oracle has won this bidding
war for TikTok, But what do we know about either
the terms or scope of the deal from what you
can tell at this point, so not a lot, which
is kind of where we are right now. So Microsoft,
for the last several weeks at least have been favored
(02:11):
to win this, as you said, getting a war to
take control of TikTok's US operations. At one point, Walmart
became involved in the financial side of it, and then
the winds kind of shifted over the weekend and as
it turned out, Fight Dance, which is TikTok's parent company
(02:33):
in China went with a proposal from Oracle instead, and
it's not from what we can tell, an outright acquisition.
There may be, you know, some sort of minority stake involved,
but the way it's being framed is trusted technology partner,
and what that is is not really clear right now.
There is a deal, um Pleasure making desk, he and
(02:57):
other administrations officials apart reviewing that right now, will presented
to the President probably later this week, um, because TikTok,
if there's not a deal in place, gets banned, uh
come Sunday. Now they will probably ly the challenges to
that if it comes to that. But you know, nevertheless,
they're just thick o'clock yet, um. And so you know,
(03:18):
right now we're sort of grasping in the dark. It's
a sort of a strange situation where it's it's a
deal that's not quite a deal, and we just don't
know a lot yet about the terms of it. Why
do you think there has been this specific focus on
TikTok as opposed to other companies like Tencent or Huawei,
(03:40):
which have been around longer and have acknowledged ties to
the Chinese government. Yeah sure. Um so yeah, as you know,
TikTok is owned Bye Bye Dance, which is a Chinese company,
and you know Chinese command economy. Um, it's it's not
a controversial statement to say that Chinese corporations are sort
(04:04):
of intermingled with uh CCP, the ring party there. You know,
Beijing has a lot of control companies can say and do.
Um And certainly when we're talking about tech companies, at
least domestically, they have pretty expansive surveillance powers. Um. So
there has been a focus in the US on sort
(04:26):
of trying to push back at least on Chinese technology
card variant software in American systems. You mentioned qualawey. The
Trump administration has been trying to kind of spent them
out increasingly network equipment is not going to be US
five G networks. The government's trying to encourage other company.
(04:49):
But yeah, you know, the Chinese economy has has grown,
the tech economy has learn, and there are some of
these major multinational corporations that are operating throughout well including
in the US. So there's sort of this mixed response
to that. In the US. You mentioned ten Cents as well,
that they own a whole bunch of stuff. They invest
(05:11):
in US tech companies. They sort of have their fingers,
but they also run some weech at, which is it's
sort of like What's app, but it includes this whole
vast array of applications, the commerce platform, social media. This
is really widely US and SHIRE And at the same
time that the Trump administration is looking to potentially band TikTok,
(05:35):
it's doing the same but we chat and that's playing
a little more under the radar, so there is sort
of an overreaching push there. One thing that makes TikTok
a little confounding is that there's no particular evidence that
any TikTok users data has been perfectly accessed by Beijing.
TikTok operated as sort of a separate, parallel company under
(05:58):
the bike Dance umbrella. There s vers in the US
and Singapore. They don't actually send data to China, so
there is a risk that Beijing could bigfoot like Dance
leadership and compel them to turn over TikTok data. But
more than that, there's sort of this broadergy. I wonder
whether there is any type of dots which can be
(06:18):
connected from what's going on with TikTok right now, and
the larger trade agreement which is still being hashed out
with the Chinese government. Is there anything that we can
connect here or should try to connect. I don't know
if there's anything super direct. I think that because the
trade talks with China had not necessarily gone as well
(06:39):
as President Trump, they have hope. The administration is now
sort of looking to other levers to exert power against Beijing,
but it doesn't fit neatly into the conventional trade or disco.
He is Kyle Daily, a technology editor. Thank you for
coming on today, sir, Thank you so much for it's
(07:07):
really hard for all of us to wrap our heads
around the devastation that these fires have caused, and the
pain and the suffering that so many Oregonians have endured
over the past few days. Joining us now is Thomas Fuller,
San Francisco, bureau chief for The New York Times. Thank
you for coming on today. How are you? I'm doing
all right, all things considered, stronger winds could help improve
(07:31):
the air quality, which is abysmal right now, but also
it provides pardon the phrase, fuel for the fires which
are going on all over the West Coast. It seems
like a catch twenty two situation, does it not. So
I'm in Oreville right now, which is right on the
edge of the fire. The winds haven't picked up just yet.
But I'll tell you what the real catch twenty two is.
(07:52):
So these winds this week, we're supposed to be coming
off of the Pacific Ocean, and usually those winds would
kind of clear the air. The problem is the meteorologists
tell us that for the past week or so, the
winds have been going in the opposite direction, and they've
pushed smoke over the Pacific, and so that smoke is
(08:12):
sitting there and now it's coming back to us. So
we're not getting new smoke, we're getting old smoke. So
that's one problem. And of course the other problem is
for firefighters. You can imagine if they're used to fighting
a fire with winds coming in one direction and then
suddenly they're coming degrees from the opposite direction, then they
have to move people around and redeploy. So these aren't
(08:34):
the monster winds that really have reaked havoc in the
last few years. We were talking about winds that somewhere
around fifteen to thirty miles an hour, but that's enough
to reinvigorate some of these fires. I would say more
acreage is burning here in California, but it seems more
people are being displaced in Oregon. Is that accurate and
(08:54):
is that a trend continuing as you see it? I
think that is accurate. I mean we have more than
three million acres here Burne in California. Oregon has around
a million acres. Now, people around Portland's are being threatened,
and so we don't have that same kind of population
center that the population density. Our fires are happening more
(09:19):
in remote areas. We have, for instance, the sound of
Very Creek near Orville, which were flattened by fire. We
have sort of more remote forest of communities, whereas in
Oregon two communities right along I five were wiped out,
and the threat around Salem, the threat in the suburbs
(09:40):
of Portlands is alarming. California, as we made the distinction
and differentiation between California Oregon, California deals with fires on
some level each year, but this year particularly seemingly it's
exponentially worse. Are there any readily identifiable reasons that we
can point to or is it just a ConfL lens
(10:00):
of events and circumstances on this one occasion. We certainly
had those freak lightning storms in August that started us
off on the wrong foot that ignited hundreds of fires,
and many of those fires still burned today, So that
was very different from last year. Other than that, we've
(10:22):
had very hot summer. We've had these heat waves that
have really desiccated the vegetation, and you know, as someone
who lived through them up here in northern California, it
was certainly some of the hottest temperatures that you know,
I've experienced it going forward, since you talk about the
specific circumstances and factors which impacted this particular fire season,
(10:47):
are we possibly if I can find some good news
in this, are we possibly on the downside of this
fire season? As temperatures begin to cool. Traditionally, the most
danger fires come with the Diabo winds, come with the
very strong winds in the mid to late fall in September,
(11:12):
in October, in November, even though the temperatures are cooler,
it's the winds that really propel the fires, and those
we haven't seen yet, so we don't know what's going
to happen the next few weeks. But certainly, if we
look at past years, the most devastating, most deadly fires
have been in the weeks and months to come. The
(11:34):
President is making an unscheduled visit today. The politics of
the visit aside in a federal management since what is
it a president or federal management can do to help
alleviate this situation. Well, you know, everything is polarized in
our country, even the explanation for wildfires the last the
(11:56):
Democrats say that climate change is the biggest either. And
Trump has not acknowledged the role of climate change, at
least not recently in the fires. And he talks about
sweeping the forest floor and forest management, and both are true.
You know, the forest are much thicker than they have
been in the past, certainly than they were before Europeans
(12:19):
arrived in this part of the world, and the climate
is changing as well. You have both of those working
in concerts. The federal government owns somewhere around a little
less than of the forest land in California, So certainly,
if forest management is something that needs to be changed reformed,
(12:44):
it's the purview of the federal government. He is Thomas Fuller,
San Francisco BUREAUCI for the New York Times. Mr Fuller,
thank you for coming on the Daily Dive today, and
thank you for all that you're doing to keep people informed.
Thank you. So it's almost as though the federal government
(13:08):
and the private insurance industry have set up a system
of something that looks like universal healthcare only for one illness.
Joining us now is Robbie Wheeland, correspondent for the Wall
Street Journal. How are you today, sir? I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me. Almost two hundred thousand Americans are
dead due to COVID nineteen in just the United States.
Millions more have required some level of care, with hospital
(13:30):
stays ranging from hours to months. Patients are paying large
out of pocket fees despite a federal safety net which
was set up to avoid such situations. What was supposed
to happen and what has happened relative to COVID coverage,
well the being in the pandemic, the federal government set
up a system that was supposed to kind of make
(13:51):
sure that nobody got any large surprise bills for these
unexpected medical costs that they have to pay out of pocket.
And they did that by giving about a hundred and
seventy million billion dollars Congress authorized this money to what
was called the provider Relief Funds, and these funds were
meant to sort of offset the high costs that hospitals
and other providers might have for treating people who got
(14:11):
the disease. At the same time, the private insurance industry
stepped up and sort of across the board, the big
insurers all agreed to waive cost sharing with patients. So
what that means is when you every year when you
meet your deductible after that point, you know, any care
you get in a hospital under normal circumstances, you've got
to pay some percentage like that, And all of those
(14:32):
agreements are are waived, and the insurers are covering d
percent of costs after decivables were met for private insurance
holders for COVID nineteen only. That's the only illness that
is covered in this way, and so it's almost as
though the federal government and the private insurance industry have
set up a system of something that looks like universal
healthcare only for one illness. So that was the goal,
(14:53):
and so far it's gone fairly well. But there are
obviously cracks in the system, as there are in any system,
and and some patients are still vulnerable to big unexpected costs. Okay,
let's drill down on that. Let's say I'm a person
who's obese, I have comorbidities as they say, high blood pressure, diabetes,
and then I go to the hospital and I'm also
(15:14):
diagnosed with COVID nineteen. How does that person know, or
any person know whether such a delineation will be made
that his treatment is going to be COVID related and
covered for sorts. If you have a positive COVID nineteen
test that's administered in the hospital, then you automatically will
be build under the building codes related to COVID nineteen. So,
(15:36):
no matter what other complicating conditions you have, if you
have a secondary infection, or if COVID starts attacking more
than just your lungs and also can attack the heart,
the kidneys, and other organs, whatever it may be, as
long as you have that diagnosis positive test for COVID,
you're going to be protected by the various protections that
have been put in place. Now, the bigger distinction is
(15:56):
not whether or not you have comorbidities or whether or
not you have any of their condition. The bigger distinction
is what your insurance coverage is. So we tried to
look at this in terms of kind of the ford
most common profiles for insurance coverage in the US, and
I can go through them if you'd like, But they're
generally speaking, people who have good private insurance to their employer,
people who are uninsured, no coverage at all, and then
(16:19):
people who are on either Medicare the federal insurance program
that's most commonly used by by older Americans, or Medicaid,
which is the one mostly used by low income Americans.
So how you're covered and what sort of plan you
have is going to be the biggest determinant of how
much you pay. And the way it breaks down is basically,
if you have good health insurance their employer's private, you're
(16:39):
gonna pay probably almost nothing, close to nothing. There may
be some out of so some outpatient costs like going
to a clinic for dialysis related to a kidney problem
stemming from COVID, or maybe some prescription drug co payments
that you might have to pay your pocket, but generally speaking,
these big bills that people get in the hundreds of
thousands of dollars, patients are not being asked to pay
very much of those, then we got the uninsured. The
(17:01):
uninsured as well, paradoxically, are pretty lucky in the situation
because the Cares Act that Congress passed in March mandates
that if you're uninsured and you go to a hospital,
the hospital is not supposed to charge you. They're supposed
to go to the federal government and say, look, here's
how much we spent on this COVID patient. We would
like to be reimbursed for that from this patient the
provider relief funds, and that usually happens. But one of
(17:23):
the main hurdles to that is it's a mountain of paperwork.
Imagine you've gone through this horrible illness, you've had weeks
in the hospital, and you might have lost your job
at the same time. One of the most common symptoms
of COVID nineteen that persists for a long time is
called brain fog, where people have persistent confusion and forgetfulness.
Under those conditions, it's very tough to ask a patient
(17:44):
to fill out all this paperwork and make sure that
they get taken care of. So the resources are out
there for the uninsured, but they have to sort of
take things into their own hands, which I know can
be very difficult for a lot of patients. You kind
of hinted at it. I guess an adjacent conversation to
be had as I close our conversation is the larger
universal healthcare debate. How much, if at all, is this
(18:04):
COVID nineteen coverage being used as a template or even
a test case. Dare I say for how universal coverage
could be used or implemented here in the US. I'm
not sure that the federal authorities who and and the
lawmakers who drafted the Cares Act, we're thinking about it
exactly that way. What I do know is that the
effect has been something like a universal healthcare system for
(18:27):
one disease. And the real worry, and this is the
way you can think about it, kind of as a
test case. The real worry is that the federal funds
that have been authorized are not going to be enough
to get us past a possible fall surge in cases.
So if we don't have a vaccine by the end
of the fall, and if we do see another big
second wave of cases, then the federal government funds that
have been allocated for this might simply run out. At
(18:47):
that point. We'll have somebody of a test case, because
we'll be able to see, Look, here's one particularly costly
disease to treat, and we tried to treat it largely
with public funds. And here's how how long it talks.
Here's how fast those funds out, and so that will
be sort of a test case. Can you imagine you
can imagine and extrapolate from there. If this is how
much it cost and how long the funds lastly, for
one illness COVID nineteen, you can imagine how much more
(19:09):
quickly they run out for every single disease that affects Americans.
This conversation is seeming like is just beginning more than anything.
He is Robbie Wheeland, correspondent for The Wall Street Journal,
Mr Wheli, and thank you for coming on today, sir,
Thanks for having me once again. All Right, that's it
(19:31):
for today. Join us on social media at Daily Dive
pod on both Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment,
give us a rating, and tell us two stories you
are interested in. Follow us on I Heart Radio, or
subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of The
Daily Dive was produced by Victor Wright and engineered by
(19:52):
Tony Sorino. I'm mo Kelly in for Oscar Ramirez and
this was your daily dive. US
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