AirTalk for Thursday, April 11, 2013

Contact: Producers Joel Patterson, Jasmin Tuffaha, Fiona Ng

626-583-5100

SCHEDULE FOR AIRTALK WITH LARRY MANTLE

Thursday, April 11, 2013

 

***IRS SEGMENT NOT CONFIRMED, DO NOT PROMOTE***

11:06 –11:20

Topic: IRS auditing your emails without search warrants:

Guest:  TBA, ACLU

 

11:20 –11:40

Topic: CA bill seeks to end tax breaks for Boy Scouts for gay ban

A bill introduced by California Senator Ricardo Lara would take away certain nonprofit tax benefits away from certain youth groups that ban gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual from becoming members. The move is largely seen as a way to pressure the Boy Scouts of America to lift its ban on gay members. The Youth Equality Act is the first state legislation in the country linking a nonprofit’s tax-exempt status to its stance on gay rights. Having cleared a Senate and Finance Committee vote yesterday, the bill now heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee for review. It needs a two-thirds vote from both houses of the California Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature to become law. If passed, certain youth non-profit groups would need to pay corporate taxes on donations, membership fees and other sources of income. In addition, they’d need to pay sales taxes on food and beverages sold at fundraisers. Is the bill constitutional? Should the tax code be used to put an end to certain forms of discrimination?

Guest: Matthew McReynolds, staff attorney at the Pacific Justice Institute

BY PHONE

Guest: Eugene Volokh, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law

BY PHONE

Guest: John O’Connor, Executive Director of Equality California

BY PHONE

 

11:40 -12:00

Topic: Are shared medical appointments a solution to physician shortages? Under the Affordable Care Act, a surge of people will need healthcare, but how will medical professionals be able to accommodate everyone? The Annals of Family Medicine projects that an additional 34 million people will receive health insurance and will need over 51,000 more primary care physicians by 2025 to meet that need. When Massachusetts law mandated health care coverage for its estimated half a million uninsured, wait times for primary care physicians increased. To solve this problem, some physicians in Massachusetts started practicing “shared medical appointments” (SMA), also known as group visits. In this model, five to 13 patients see the doctor at once for a session that can last up to two hours. For example, patients with diabetes who have similar difficulties share an appointment. After each patient signs a confidentiality agreement, the doctor and perhaps a team of various medical personnel examine each patient one-by-one. Then the doctor leads a discussion with the entire group about questions and symptoms. In addition to getting more time with a physician, patients are learning from one another’s medical experiences. Doctors are able to see more patients in a day and do not need to repeat general information over and over. Also, instead of waiting for months for an individual appointment, patients would not have to wait as long for a group visit. There are plenty of concerns about shared medical appointments. Many patients are reluctant to discuss private information with other people, especially information related to illegal drugs and sexual problems. Some doctors also find the group setting to be awkward and prefer the confidentiality of individual appointments. Have you ever participated in a shared medical appointment? Is this new model a plausible solution to health care needs? If group visits gain popularity, would those unwilling to be in a group visit wait longer for individual visits? Are group visits a step forward in health care reform or an attempt to stretch resources?

Guest: Evelina Sands, Administrative Director at Northshore Physicians Group in Massachusetts; she has been instituting shared medical appointments for three years.

BY PHONE

Guest: Wells Shoemaker, M.D., Medical Director of the California Association of Physician Groups, practiced primary care pediatrics for 25 years on the Central Coast and has conducted shared medical appointments. He currently works with medical groups across the state for quality improvement, health disparities, and primary care revitalization. He co-leads Governor Brown’s current task force on Health System Redesign for California.

BY PHONE

 

12:06 – 12:30

Topic: The Comeback Kids: Scandal-plagued Mark Sanford is close to winning back his old seat in the House. And now Anthony Weiner tells the New York Times that he's thinking about running for Mayor of NYC. Is a sex scandal still the career ender it once was or has the art of the comeback made it possible to get past those PR nightmares? It would be fun to talk to a PR expert who specializes in repairing reputations and getting their clients back into the public eye. How do you make the public forget something that once outraged them? Do we love a return to glory as much as we love a fall from grace? Is it harder for politicians than it is for celebrities or sports stars? Does it take a special kind of person to be able to regain the public trust?

Guest: Lisa Gritzner, President of Cerrell (pron: Ser-RELL) Associates public relations firm.

BY PHONE

 

12:30 – 12:40

OPEN

 

12:40 – 1:00

Topic: Do interfaith marriages last? Author Naomi Schaefer Riley’s new book, “’Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America,” examines why interfaith marriages are becoming more common but sometimes end in unhappiness and divorce. In a national study that Riley commissioned, she found that over 40% of marriages are between people who hold different religious beliefs. Her study showed that Jews are the most likely to marry people of other faiths and Mormons are the least likely. But the most interesting finding is that interfaith couples are generally more unhappy and unstable than marriages where only one belief is involved. Couples with different political affiliations are happier than those with different religious beliefs. In an interfaith marriage herself, Riley is a Conservative Jew married to a former Jehovah’s Witness. She admits that it’s been tough. Interfaith couples most often run into difficulties when raising children, and Riley says interfaith marriages may be why less young Americans identify themselves with a religion. Why are interfaith marriages becoming more common? If you’re in an interfaith union, what has your experience been? What are the struggles involved?

Guest: Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of “’Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America” (Oxford University Press), former Wall Street Journal editor and writer

BY PHONE

 

Warm regards,

Jasmin Tuffaha    office: 626.583.5162 

Producer, “AirTalk with Larry Mantle” 

 

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