WITF Smart Talk Podcast

Pennsylvania’s independent pharmacies say that while they are working hard to offer service during the pandemic, pharmacy benefit managers are making their jobs nearly impossible.

Once the pandemic crisis hit, PBM’s responded by cutting reimbursement rates for many unrelated drugs. Independent pharmacies bear the brunt of these cuts because they must cover the difference if the reimbursement rate does not cover the cost.

PBM’s were established in the 1960’s to reduce health-care costs by basically performing the function of a drug demand aggregator, or buyer. What started as a model to help lower health care costs, PBM’s are now being scrutinized as part of the problem in price transparency.

Patricia Epple, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association, along with Chuck Kray, a pharmacist with Hershey Pharmacy, appear on Smart Talk to discuss the threat to Pennsylvania’s independent pharmacies by what they call “price gouging.”

Report for America is a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. WITF and PA Post are two of the more than 160 other news organizations across the country selected for the program.

Appearing on Smart Talk Wednesday is Report for America co-founder Charlie Sennott, along with reporters Alanna Elder and Anthony Orozco, who are covering central Pennsylvania’s growing Latino communities for WITF and PA Post.

 

 

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The saying that every cloud has a silver lining might in fact ring true during the coronavirus pandemic. There is plenty of bad news, to be sure, but every so often there is good news, too.

Since the nation and Pennsylvania went under stay-at-home orders in March there is a noticeable improvement in air quality. Major cities like Los Angeles and New York are experiencing some of their best air quality in decades; reports that are echoed in big cities around the world.

In central Pennsylvania, the Clean Air Board tracks air quality in the state and reports that air quality has improved markedly throughout the region, with no “alert” days since March 1.

But can it last? As 24 counties in Pennsylvania begin a phased reopening on May 8, will air quality suffer?

Appearing on Smart Talk Tuesday are Thomas Au, President of the Clean Air Board of Central Pennsylvania, along with American Lung Association Director of Environmental Health Kevin Stewart. The ALA recently released the State of the Air 2020 report and they join the program to discuss this and the impact of air quality on lung health, and observations at the Department of Environmental Protection air quality monitoring sites during the pandemic shutdown.

This is National Teacher Appreciation Week and to mark the occasion the National Education Association commissioned a parent’s poll to gauge their support for teachers during the coronavirus crisis.

Rich Askey is the President of the Pennsylvania State Education Association and he joins Smart Talk to share the poll results.

Smart Talk will also talk to three area educators about how they are tackling teaching from a distance. Joining Smart Talk are Susan Sneath, Ed.D., Chief Academic Officer with the Harrisburg School District, Kassandra Shute a first-grade teacher and Traci Moyer, 8th-grade English as a second language teacher.

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The bad news for Pennsylvania schools keeps pouring in.

Financial analysts met last week and issued a dire prognosis on the budget fall-out from the coronavirus pandemic.

Tax revenues that support Pennsylvania schools are so unpredictable that best guess estimates put shortfalls in the neighborhood of more than one billion dollars. And that is just an estimate that they determined from tax revenue numbers from the Great Recession and forecasting even deeper cuts.

Hannah Barrick, assistant executive director with the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials, appears on Smart Talk Monday to discuss the figures that go into the estimate.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf ordered all schools closed in the state in the middle of March and for all intents and purposes many working families were thrust into teleworking from home in order to be with their kids.

Stay-at-home orders soon followed and nearly two months later more than half of American workers are working remotely.

Researchers see this abrupt change as an opportunity to study how employees adapt and to identify the innovation that has helped speed this transition.

Professor Eddy Ng, Ph.D., the James and Elizabeth Freeman Professor of Management at Bucknell University joins us on Smart Talk Monday to share the research plan and the search for study participants. Individuals who have transitioned to working remotely can participate in the study through this survey link.

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Former Pennsylvania Governor and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is speaking out about the nationwide protests against stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns. Ridge is especially critical of those who attended the rallies armed with semi-automatic rifles and other firearms — many who called themselves patriots.

The former governor authored an opinion column on the protests for USAToday this week that garnered a lot of attention and response.

Gov. Ridge appears on Smart Talk Friday to discuss his thoughts on protesters.

Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities have been hit hard by COVID-19. Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where over half of the COVID-19 deaths have occurred in nursing homes or other long-term care facilities. Nationally, the figure is a little over one-in-four deaths.

Lack of widespread testing for the coronavirus has been one of main culprits, according to the facilities, but many say they also are not getting protective equipment.

Pennsylvania Health Care Association (PHCA) President and CEO Zachary Shamberg joins us on Smart Talk Friday to describe how nursing homes are the front lines of the coronavirus battle.

Pennsylvania’s primary election has been pushed back to June 2 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The question for many is whether voters can safely cast ballots in person.

Democratic State Senator Wayne Fontana of Allegheny County introduced a bill that would change Pennsylvania’s voting system so that all elections are conducted entirely by mail. Sen. Fontana is on Friday’s Smart Talk.

 

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“We’re all in this together.” That is a sentiment that we’ve heard often during the last two months as the coronavirus has changed our ways of life significantly. Staying at home, not being able to visit or even communicate with others, losing jobs, worrying about our finances, and the anxieties that come with protecting ourselves from the COVID-19 virus and becoming ill.

All can affect our mental health.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness has another motto — “You’re not in this alone.”

The COVID-19 pandemic may leave many feeling alone or not part of a larger community. Especially vulnerable are those who suffered from a mental illness before their worlds were turned upside down.

The restrictions may have an impact on their state-of-mind and treatment.

On Thursday’s Smart Talk we’ll discuss mental health during the pandemic with Christine Michaels, National Alliance on Mental Illness, NAMI Keystone Pennsylvania, along with Richard S. Edley, PhD., President/CEO, Rehabilitation and Community Providers Association. NAMI Keystone Pennsylvania helpline: 1888-264-7972

Also, Republican State Senator Scott Martin is one of several Lancaster County government and local officials who have questioned why Lancaster County has been designated as a southeastern county in the state’s plan to lift coronavirus restrictions. Martin and others say the county is more like those in the south central region and not the heavily populated southeastern counties that may be under restrictions longer than other areas of the state.

It’s one of the topics we’ll talk about with Sen. Martin about on Thursday’s Smart Talk.

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Throughout the first weeks of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. we heard that food was plentiful at the nation’s grocery stores. Certain non-food items like toilet paper or cleaning supplies were in such demand that stores couldn’t keep them in stock and still are limiting purchases if the stores have those items at all.

Weeks later, though, there are concerns about the food supply chain. Again, it’s certain items like meat, frozen vegetables and pasta, but there are trends that are worrisome.

Meat, in particular, because the COVID-19 virus has infected thousands of workers in meat processing plants across the country who often work in close proximity to one another. President Trump has ordered meat processing plants to stay open because he says they are essential.

There also are instances of dairy farmers dumping milk into manure pits because they can’t get their products to market in a timely way before it could spoil and closed restaurants and schools are not buying dairy products.

Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association President and CEO Alex Baloga, along with Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture spokesperson Shannon Powers appear on Smart Talk Wednesday to talk about the impact of COVID-19 to the supply chain, as we have progressed more than a month into this crisis.

Also, the demand for food has made many realize how valuable grocery stores and their workers are.

The President of the Giant Company Nicholas Bertram joins us on Smart Talk to discuss how the central Pennsylvania food company is keeping shelves stocked, their recent hiring initiative and the emergency grant program with Team Pennsylvania.

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Consumer groups are behind a campaign to enact “right-to-repair” legislation in Pennsylvania. According to PennPirg, a consumer rights organization, “manufacturers often withhold critical information, tools, and parts to fix a wide range of products including cell phones, hospital equipment, tractors, and other devices.”

PennPirg says the proposal has taken on urgency during the coronavirus pandemic because hospitals sometimes don’t have what they need to repair ventilators – one of the most essential pieces of medical equipment during the pandemic.

Some repair information was released last week by at least one manufacturer.

Appearing on Tuesday’s Smart Talk to discuss right-to-repair are Emma Horst-Martz, Campaign Associate with PennPirg and Barbara Maguire, Vice President of Quality at ISS Solutions and Geisinger Clinical Engineering.

Also, while the world is in the pandemic, many people are sharing information on social media that may not be accurate. At the same time, many are sharing life stories, updates, and using social media to keep community alive. COVID-19 may have made Facebook more relevant. Government agencies are using social media to share updates.

Professor Charles Palmer, Executive Director for the Center for Advanced Entertainment and Learning Technologies, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology is on Tuesday’s Smart Talk to talk about the plusses and negatives of social media.

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Public health nurses are often under-appreciated for their role as first responders. Their job in the community is to educate and serve at-risk populations, with a focus on disease prevention.

Their responsibilities in the community have put them front and center in the battle to stop the spread of the coronavirus. But limited staffing and past budget cuts have made it harder for public health nurses to do their jobs.

Spotlight PA reporter Aneri Pattani investigated the impact this is having on tracking the spread and what public health nurses are expected to do. Pattani joins Smart Talk on Monday to share her findings.

Scientists around the globe are working at a frenetic pace to try and understand, treat and prevent the coronavirus; a novel, or new, virus with few treatment options.

Even though it is a new virus to medical researchers, it does have some similarities to other viruses. Symptomatically, COVID-19 can be mistaken for the flu; both cause fever, cough, and body aches. Both viruses are transmitted from person to person through droplets in the air from an infected person. That is essentially where the similarities between the viruses end.

Where facts are missing, there is plenty of speculation about COVID-19 all over the internet. With limited, and developing, factual information known about the virus, it is often hard to discern between what is truth and what is fiction.

Appearing on Smart Talk Monday to sort through both is Professor Tammy Tobin, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Biology at Susquehanna University. For individuals seeking web information, Dr. Tobin mentioned several websites that contain information about COVID-19: the Federal Drug Administration, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.

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Nearly a quarter of Pennsylvania’s Emergency Medical Services shut down between 2012 and 2018 due to a lack of funding and not enough emergency service technicians, paramedics or volunteers to staff ambulances. That was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, emergency responders face exposure to patients infected by the virus and risking their own health, as well as money being even tighter.

The pandemic has made a looming crisis even worse.

Where they are paid, paramedics and EMTs earn an average of $34,000 annually. In Pennsylvania’s more rural areas, ambulances are often staffed by volunteers. There are fewer of them than just a few years ago.

Ambulances count on reimbursements from private insurers, Medicaid and Medicare as well as contributions from the public. Often, the reimbursements go directly to the patient and don’t make it to the EMS.

Thursday’s Smart Talk examines emergency services with Jerry Ozog, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Fire and Emergency Services Institute and Donald DeReamus, Legislative Chair, Ambulance Association of Pennsylvania.

Also, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has instituted several changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent limitations. Included are the closings of the state’s driver license centers, extending expiration dates for licenses, registrations and inspections and restricting construction to emergency needs.

Yassmin Gramian, Pennsylvania’s Acting Secretary of Transportation, appears on Thursday’s Smart Talk to provide details.

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Pennsylvania’s state-owned universities were facing major financial challenges before the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the schools to online classes only, but the coronavirus outbreak has made the institutions’ situation even more dire.

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education’s 14 universities are projected to lose up to $100 million as a result of the spring semester being shut down.

Declining enrollments at the schools and stagnant state funding created financial hardship for the system.

Reform plans were underway but may now have to be accelerated.

The Chancellor of PASSHE, Dan Greenstein is on Wednesday’s Smart Talk to explain.

Also, many Pennsylvanians have questions about health insurance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who have been diagnosed with the virus and are being treated are also concerned about paying their medical bills while those who haven’t contracted the coronavirus hope their insurance is strong enough if they do come down with the illness.

Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Jessica Altman is on Wednesday’s Smart Talk to answer health insurance questions.

Consumer services hotline for questions or issues relating to insurance is 1-877-881-6388. Consumers can also visit the Pennsylvania Insurance Department for information.

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