Drug Pricing, Sexual Assault, Drones, Chinese Threat

Guest: Joel Hay, PhD, Professor of Pharmaceutical Economics at the University of Southern California Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics  A wave of high profile price increases on generic drugs prompted a US Senate committee to start investigating. At a hearing to kick off that investigation, specialists from all corners of the health care system testified they’re powerless to rein-in out-of-control prescription costs. Today we’re asking what the pharmacy’s role is in all of this. Why does the same prescription cost $10 at one pharmacy and $60 at another? Do pharmacies mark up the cost of drugs? Do they have deals with drug makers or health care companies to get an extra cut when they fill certain prescriptions? And by the way, where have all the independently-owned corner drug stores gone?

Guest: Mark Jacobson, PhD, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford  Most of the talk about shifting to renewable energy in America also includes an admission that some coal, gas or nuclear will still have to be part of the mix. After all, the sun’s not always shining, the wind not always blowing. How would we keep the lights on when it’s dark and still?

Guest: Julie Valentine, Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner and Nursing Professor at BYU  Every few minutes, someone in America is sexually assaulted, but the vast majority of those rapes do not get reported. Of those that do, it’s highly unlikely the perpetrator will spend even a day in jail. Keep in mind, when the crime is rape, the crime scene is literally the victim’s body, so evidence has to be collected immediately and processed later. However, that DNA and other evidence, collected in what’s called a “rape kit,” is highly likely to end up sitting on a shelf in some police precinct, never to be tested for a DNA match. Best estimates by media outlets and the department of justice place the national backlog of untested rape kits in the tens of thousands.

Guest: Richard Jost, JD, Director of the Drone practice with law firm Fennemore Craig and Professor of Law and Unmanned Aerial Systems at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas  Drones are a hot Christmas item – the FAA expects about a million to be sold this holiday. Get ready to see more buzzing over the park when you take your family or the next outdoor concert you attend – or, maybe outside your windows. Federal regulators – and legal experts – are scrambling to catch up with the explosion of light-weight, relatively inexpensive flying robots often equipped with high-powered cameras. Aviation officials are particularly concerned about the dozens of close encounters drones are having with passenger planes. But our conversation is concerned with privacy questions.

Guest: Peter Navarro, PhD, Professor at the Merage School of Business at the University of  California-Irvine and Author of “Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism means for the World”  What is America’s single greatest foreign policy challenge? Some might say a nuclear Iran or maybe an increasingly threatening ISIS, or perhaps an aggressive Russian president. Peter Navarro, however, suggests America’s greatest foreign policy challenge could be a crouching tiger. His new book, “Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World” assesses the probability of conflict between the United States and the rising Asian superpower.