The World and Everything in It - August 3, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

President Biden is doubling down on pressure to make hospital pricing more transparent.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Also, a new report says COVID-19 did originate at the Wuhan Lab.

Plus our August Classic Book of the Month: The Picture of Dorian Gray.

And seeing God’s Providence in nature.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, August 3rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BUTLER: And I’m Paul Butler. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time now for news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: House GOP investigation: coronavirus leaked from Wuhan lab » Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said the evidence paints a clear picture of how the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The ranking Republican on the panel, Congressman Michael McCaul released a report on a third installment of an investigation into the origins of the virus.

It declared that the "preponderance of the evidence proves the virus did leak from the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] and that it did so sometime before September 12, 2019.”

MCCAUL: They were genetically manipulating at the lab this gain of function that was taking place.

Gain of function is a form of research that genetically alters organisms. McCaul said scientists collected samples from caves.

MCCAUL: Bat samples, and then genetically modify them into a super SARS-like virus.

The committee’s Republican staff assembled the report. It stated “We now believe it’s time to completely dismiss the wet market as the source.”

But U.S. intelligence agencies, which are also investigating, have not yet made a determination about the source of the virus.

New York gov. announces new regulations for NYC transportation workers » Gov. Andrew Cuomo said workers in New York City's airports and public transit system will have to get coronavirus vaccinations or face weekly testing. But he stopped short Monday of mandating masks or inoculations for the general public.

Instead, he made this appeal to New York businesses …

CUOMO: Private businesses, I am asking them and suggesting to them: go to vaccine-only admission.

He also said more hospitals should require workers to get COVID-19 vaccines.

Cuomo said he doesn’t have the legal authority to impose those mandates, as emergency powers granted by the legislature have expired.

Poll: Americans’ optimism dashed by delta variant surge »  Meantime, a new poll shows that Americans’ are no longer optimistic about a recovery from the pandemic this year.

Gallup surveyed about 3,500 adults. The poll suggests that with new cases surging, more Americans, 45 percent to 40 percent, said the situation in the United States is getting worse, not better.

That’s in stark contrast to the month of June when 89 percent said things were improving.

And eight out of 10 of those surveyed believe life won’t get back to normal till the end of the year or longer.

U.S. expands scope of Afghans eligible for relocation » The Biden administration on Monday expanded a program to relocate Afghan citizens who face persecution from the Taliban for helping the United States. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown reports.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: The U.S. government is widening the range of Afghans eligible for refugee status. That will now include current and former employees of U.S.-based news organizations, U.S.-based aid and development agencies and other relief groups that receive U.S. funding.

Current and former employees of the U.S. government and the NATO military are also covered.

However, the move comes with a major caveat that may severely limit the number of people who can benefit: applicants must leave Afghanistan to begin the adjudication process that may take 12-14 months in a third country. And the U.S. does not intend to support their departures or stays there.

Nevertheless, the State Department said the move means that “many thousands” of Afghans and their immediate families will have the opportunity to permanently resettle in the United States.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

Poland grants visa to Belarus Olympian who fears for safety » Poland is coming to the aid of an Olympic sprinter from Belarus who feared for her safety after she said her team’s officials tried to force her to fly home.

Krystsina Tsimanouskaya said the standoff began after she criticized sporting officials on social media for entering her into the 4x400 meter relay without her permission.

That set off a massive backlash in state-run media back home, where authorities relentlessly crack down on government critics. After that, the 24-year-old said she was rushed to the Tokyo airport but she refused to board the plane. Instead, she asked police for help.

Pavel Latushka is a top Belarusian dissident now residing in Poland. He said the Polish government is stepping up.

LATUSHKA: First of all, they’re ready to give her a national visa. Secondly, they will organize any consult and diplomatic assistance for the Belarusian citizen, it’s very important.

Belarus’ authoritarian government has gone to extremes to silence its critics. The government recently diverted a commercial jetliner, forcing it to land under false pretenses, in order to arrest a man critical of dictator Alexander Lukashenko.

And a quick word of correction from yesterday’s newscast. I absentmindedly referred to Tim Kaine as the governor of Virginia. But Kaine is of course a U.S. Senator representing Virginia.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: transparency in healthcare.

Plus, the downsides to climate-controlled worship.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 3rd of August, 2021.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler.

First up on The World and Everything in It, competition in healthcare.

Before leaving office this year, former President Trump implemented a hospital price transparency rule. It mandates that hospitals disclose the prices they’ve negotiated with insurance companies.

And now President Biden is strengthening that rule and adding others. WORLD’s Sarah Schweinsberg reports.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: Jennie Ayres was in a lot of pain.

AYRES: It seemed like my knee was getting worse. All I could do is walk versus you know, going to a class and exercising.

Ayres saw a specialist. He recommended a knee replacement. She scheduled her surgery at the hospital he recommended last fall. No questions asked.

AYRES: I did not shop around.

When it was all over, she got her hospital bill: $40,000 dollars.

Ayres is a part of a Christian medical sharing ministry. Her provider told her it would negotiate the bill down based on what knee replacements cost at other hospitals around the country.

The final price tag? $14,000.

Ayres says that was a learning experience. She had never known that hospital bills aren’t set in stone.

AYRES: I hadn't had a surgery to kind of know that I had negotiating power until I had my surgery. So as a cash payer, you don't realize that these big conglomerates have the ability to do that. And you do, too.

Like President Trump before him, President Biden wants more patients to realize they do have the power to negotiate prices with hospitals… just like insurance companies do.

The White House also wants patients to be able to choose the hospital providing the treatment or procedure for the lowest price.

But in order to make those decisions, patients have to know what those prices are.

Cynthia Cox is a researcher at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a healthcare policy analysis group.

COX: If you went out to a restaurant, and you ordered some food, and you suddenly got a bill afterwards that your meal costs, you know, 100 times as much as you thought it would have. That's just not a fair system, and no other kind of aspect of our economy works that way, except for with health care.

Cox says besides making the healthcare market more fair, disclosing prices will also increase competition between hospitals for patients’ business. And that should drive down healthcare costs.

It’s been eight months since President Trump put the hospital price transparency rule into effect. But multiple surveys have found most hospitals haven’t complied. One found only 17 out of 100 randomly selected hospitals had posted their prices.

At the same time, most patients still don’t know the rule exists. A June Kaiser Family Foundation poll found only 14 percent of adults say they’ve researched the cost of treatment.

COX: One thing I found really interesting in our polling was that in fact, people who shopped for hospital prices were somewhat more likely to incorrectly say that there is no rule. I think it's because they had looked and didn't find the prices, you know, and and, in fact, concluded that they don't exist.

So, last month in an executive order, President Biden upped federal financial penalties for hospitals that don’t comply. One year of noncompliance could rack up a $2 million dollar fine.

The Biden administration also issued other recommendations and rules all aimed at increasing competition in healthcare.

President Biden echoed similar calls made by President Trump to lower prescription drug prices by importing cheaper medicines from Canada. He wants to work with states to create drug import plans.

The president also urged the Federal Trade Commission to ban a tactic called “pay for delay.”

That’s where pharmaceutical companies pay generic drug makers to keep their cheaper versions off the market.

Doug Badger is a scholar at the Heritage Foundation. He says banning the tactic is a good thing.

BADGER: To the extent that more generic alternatives become available to consumers, we will save money.

The Biden administration also wants the FTC to consider blocking future hospital mergers and to reexamine past ones. The administration argues the big mergers of the last decade have driven down competition and increased prices.

Doug Badger agrees.

BADGER: You get these huge hospital systems. And they dominate in local areas. So the fact that the Biden administration sees this as a problem, and is willing to address it, is very encouraging.

But will all of these changes actually make a big difference in driving down healthcare costs?

Tom Miller studies healthcare policy at the American Enterprise Institute. He says these are important measures to fix competition in the private healthcare sector.

But he says the blame for some of the biggest issues with healthcare doesn’t lay with private hospitals, insurance companies, or pharmaceuticals. The problem is with government regulation.

MILLER: There's multiple reasons why health care prices are high. And I would certainly like to see more competition, but if you want competition, you want robust competition, you want to facilitate greater entry into these markets. Some of the regulations we have make it harder for new entrants to come in. The burden of dealing with those regulations basically keep just the major players at the table, as opposed to new entrants.

Miller says the Biden administration is promoting limited competition. It’s trying to improve the private healthcare market while at the same time pushing for the government to get more involved.

The American Rescue Plan passed in March expanded Obamacare to 7 million more people for the next two years. The president has also proposed lowering Medicare eligibility from 65 to 60, and he’s said that he’d like to create a public healthcare option although Democrats haven’t proposed any official legislation yet.

Tom Miller also says the Biden Administration is working to undo Trump-era rules that allow states to transition away from a single, government-run insurance exchange market.

So he says until full free-market competition is unleashed, little will change.

MILLER: So the Biden administration as much as it talks about consumer choice and lower prices, they won't let people go off road and buy something different, that may stray from this is the insurance that's good for you. That's the general ambition to try to simplify, standardize, and politicize the options you have in healthcare, all within the wrapper of what they think is best.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Up next: investigating the origins of COVID-19.

As we reported, Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee released a report this week that plainly points to a Chinese lab leak as the cause of the pandemic.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have asserted for quite some time that the virus may well have leaked from a lab in Wuhan. The difference now is they’re not the only ones saying it publicly.

Many in Washington who were originally skeptical of the possibility have also changed their tune.

And President Biden has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to redouble their efforts to get to the bottom of how COVID-19 came to be.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It is worth noting that despite the Republican report’s declaration, intel agencies have not yet come to a determination on COVID’s origins.

But they will certainly get no help from China in conducting their investigation of a possible lab leak. And neither will the World Health Organization.

Beijing last month rejected the WHO’s terms for the second phase of its probe.

Joining us now with more insight on the matter is Dean Cheng. He studies Chinese political and security affairs at The Heritage Foundation. Dean, good morning!

CHENG: Good morning!

REICHARD: Even the director-general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, conceded that a WHO team that traveled to China earlier this year was premature in trying to rule out a lab leak. That was surprising because the WHO has shown great deference to Beijing. What did you make of the director-general’s reversal on a possible lab leak?

CHENG: Well, I think that several factors were in play. First is that especially as members of the WHO team went public and said, we actually got very little cooperation from the Chinese. The report looked more and more like, at best, a fig leaf and potentially a whitewash. Second of all is that at least some of the who members were themselves problematic in particular, Dr. Peter Dasha, who it turns out, had worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Urology. If you want a unimpeachable objective look, you probably don't want somebody who's been in business with the people you're investigating part of your investigating team. And then finally, what the initial report concluded was that among the theories that were considered plausible, was the frozen food hypothesis that somehow COVID was either spread or made its way through the frozen food food chain, potentially, from outside China, but that any possibility of a lab leak was simply rejected out of hand. And that I think that combination of factors just led people to sort of say, "You've really got to be kidding me."

REICHARD: What’s next for the WHO investigation? Is there any chance of getting to the truth in China?

CHENG: Well, China is an authoritarian government, which has the CCP exercising control over the media, over scientific institutions and bodies, over academia. So the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party goes to great lengths to make sure that whatever emerges narrative wise, evidence wise, is what is consistent with the party's line. So that automatically just imposed enormous obstacles. The longer that we get away from patient zero from where and how this started, the more obstacles that are between the analysts and the actual evidence. I think that Beijing is going to work very hard to try and make sure that whatever conclusion is reached, they, in particular the CCP, are not held responsible, that will make determining what actually happened very difficult. That being said, the Soviet Union was the same way. But at the end of the day, the anthrax outbreak in the Soviet Union, which at the time was also claimed to be purely natural, and certainly wasn't from any kind of lab was found to be, in fact, an accident at a Soviet lab. And the truth did emerge.

REICHARD: Some national security experts have said the United States and the global community must punish China in some ways for the cover-ups. But realistically, how could the United States and other countries even do that?

CHENG: Well, The most likely pathways are to express political unhappiness. So for example, there's been discussion about should there be diplomatic representation going to the Beijing Olympics, which are next year? Should there be a downgrading of scientific exchanges with the Chinese, especially given their unwillingness to be transparent? Should we allow the Chinese to chair key UN committees and subcommittees to allow them to to nominate what, they can nominate anyone, but you have to accept their supported candidates for key positions. That's been one of the controversies about the WHO head was that he had a lot of support from Beijing. So these are, these are political moves, because realistically, direct judgment against the Chinese is unlikely. The other things our supply chain issues, the Chinese demonstrated in their behavior regarding personal protective equipment that they would withhold PPE to countries that they didn't like, and try to use PPE to influence countries. So there is a lot of discussion these days about moving supply chains of things like this out of China to deny them that particular tool.

REICHARD: Dean Cheng with the Heritage Foundation has been our guest. Dean, thanks so much!

CHENG: Thank you for having me.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Restaurants trying to bounce back after the shutdowns now have another obstacle: not enough people willing to work.

So a restaurant in Stockton, California hired a robot.

The Sugar Mediterranean Bistro’s General Manager Ana Ortiz told KOVR-tv,

ORTIZ: It is a life saver. You know, it helps us bring out all of the food.

The robot looks kinda like Rosie from The Jetsons, a rack of food service trays rolling around the restaurant. That way, humans don’t have to run back and forth from the kitchen during the lunch hour rush. 

Ortiz doesn’t plan to move to an all-robot staff, though.

ORTIZ: We don’t want to give that up. We love to see our people. We love to see their faces.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 3rd.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: our Classic Book of the Month.

Reviewer Emily Whitten joins us now with her August selection: The Picture of Dorian Gray. As you’ll hear today the 19th century author Oscar Wilde may not be a positive role model, but his novel can help Christians understand some of the pressures of our own day.

Here’s Emily.

EMILY WHITTEN, REPORTER: Grove City professor Carl Trueman says it’s hard to miss the sexual revolution going on around us. It’s not always easy to see where that revolution came from. Trueman’s lectures titled the Makers of the Modern Revolution can help.

CLIP: What I want to do in this short series is give snapshots, brief glances of how some of the central ideas of our age were formulated [fade out] . . .

Over eight lectures, Trueman unpacks authors like Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and our author this month, Oscar Wilde.

TRUEMAN: What makes Wilde so significant, I think, for us today, culturally, is not just his his literary standing, but also the fact that he was a very flamboyant homosexual figure, in an era where homosexuality was not just culturally disapproved of, but was actually illegal in Britain. And Wilde suffers, ultimately for his homosexuality. And that is served to make him something of an iconic figure in the gay rights movement.

Trueman refers there to Wilde’s conviction in 1895 for gross indecency, which included homosexual acts with underage teens. He went to prison for two years, and some think it led to his premature death soon after at the age of 46.

TRUEMAN: There was a certain tragic feel to Wilde himself. When you read Wilde, when you read about Wilde, it's hard to see him as a happy man. Eventually, I think he was a divided man, a man divided against himself.

Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He was baptized as an infant in the Anglican church and baptized into the Roman Catholic church on his deathbed. In between, he spent most of his life rebelling against Christ and His Church.

So, why should Christians bother to read our Classic Book of the Month? For one thing, it’s not a gay diatribe. Male characters do talk too much about the beauty of other males. But Wilde himself took out any overtly gay content after pushback from his Victorian readers. In most versions today of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde instead focuses on serious ideas like sin and conscience.

TRUEMAN: Dorian Gray has his portrait painted. And the portrait is so beautiful, he makes this rather rash comment that you know, he wishes that his beauty could remain forever, like the portrait’s. And at that moment, what transpires in the novel is that his soul is sort of sold at that point.

Here’s the scene as read by Jake Urry.

CLIP: How sad it is, I shall grow old and horrible and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. If it were only the other way. If it were I who was to be always young and the picture that was to grow old. For that, I would give everything. I would give my soul for that.

Dorian Gray himself becomes frozen in time, his appearance never changing. But the painting shows all his corruption, including opium use and even murder. In this way, Wilde wrestles with the deception of beauty. Gray the man looks young and kind, but he’s really cruel and selfish.

Trueman says this reflects an important aspect of our modern era—life as public performance. We often over-value outward beauty, whether on social media or Hollywood’s red carpet.

TRUEMAN: And really, the Picture of Dorian Gray's is raising questions about the connection of beauty to morality and doing it in a way that I think is profoundly modern. And I would say profoundly helpful for Christians, even though Wilde himself is emphatically not an Orthodox Christian.

On the surface, the ending of the novel seems to caution against Gray’s selfishness. But then again, Wilde often puts his own ideas into the mouth of the tempter of the story, Lord Henry Wotton. Here’s a scene from the 1945 film version in which Lord Henry explains the purpose of life.

CLIP: To realize one’s nature perfectly. That’s what we’re here for. A man should live out his life fully and completely. Give form to every feeling, expression to every thought. Every impulse we suppress broods in the mind and poisons us. There’s only one way to get rid of a temptation and that’s to yield to it.

In other writings, Wilde advocated a similar way of thinking—what Trueman calls expressive individualism. It’s the idea that to live a good life, we have to express who we really are inside. Think gay pride parades.

TRUEMAN: Wilde is the great public performer. He dressed in a flamboyant way, he consciously defied the sexual mores of Victorian Britain. He's like a sophisticated Lady Gaga, if you like.

So, some read Gray as a character to emulate, despite his downfall. In a similar way, Wilde is hailed as a hero of the LGBTQ movement. As such, Christians can expect to see his book assigned more often in secular AP and college classes. But be aware that his promoters rarely mention his most unsavory acts.

TRUEMAN: And there are tragic and horrible stories about Oscar Wilde in North Africa with the French writer André Gide, indulging in pederasty, for example. So you know, Wilde was a man who himself lived very much according to his impulses...

We’ve barely scratched the surface here on how Wilde can help us understand the LGBTQ movement. I hope you’ll dig deeper with Carl Trueman’s free Makers of the Modern Revolution lectures on Youtube.

Clearly, Oscar Wilde lived a tragic, rebellious life. But his life wasn’t tragic primarily because of his sexual perversion. Rather, he lived a tragic life to the extent that he rejected Jesus Christ—the only One who could cleanse him and make him whole.

If you struggle with sexual sin, I hope you’ll respond to Christ’s loving invitation today: “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” 

I’m Emily Whitten.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Paul Butler.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Commentator Whitney Williams on nature and Providence.

SOUND: WALKING, CICADAS

WHITNEY WILLIAMS, COMMENTATOR: If God calls to us from the mountains, shall we go only Monday through Saturday?

If the sunrise over the lake stirs us to praise and the beauty of God’s creation generates wonder … if the peacefulness of a hike in the woods allows for undistracted prayer and solitude before the Lord … if the seemingly unending vastness of the ocean puts us in our rightful place, if the heavens declare the glory of God, if the skies proclaim the work of His hands, shall we pack up our tents, button up our button-downs, and rush back to our church building by 9 a.m. for worship?

The whole COVID shut down prompted many families to adopt a new outdoorsy-ness. They no longer had somewhere to be on Sunday mornings, after all. But that makes me wonder as things begin to normalize: Shall we once again shackle ourselves to a building each week for “church” or do we need to rethink this thing?

What happened to the hillside, seaside, lakeside, fireside, and outside gatherings that served as a backdrop for Jesus’ teaching? It seems that nowadays INside is our only option—with photos of mountain streams projected on the screens behind our worship lyrics.

It reminds me of the movie “Wall-E”: Humans, who took advantage of and trashed their earth, flee to space and sit in recliners with screens in front of their faces all day. They watch life instead of experiencing it themselves. Eventually, they come out of their fog. Did we miss an opportunity for God to lift us out of ours amid all the shut downs?

After all, the Bible says God’s invisible attributes, His eternal power, and His divine nature are clearly seen and understood through what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

“Ask the animals, and they will teach you,” Job says of the Lord’s sovereignty and might; “or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you … Let the fish in the sea inform you.”

I know what you may be thinking: “The only thing I’m being informed of in this mosquito-ridden, 110 degree heat is hell, Whitney.” And I hear you. I’m in Texas, after all. I’m just saying … wait, let me scratch my chigger bite … I’m just saying, when the weather cools off, maybe we should get a little more creative with our worship services. And I realize that some of us will have to get more creative than others based on our location, but the Spirit IS inside us, isn’t He?

Maybe once a month or even once a quarter, church leaders could say: “Hey church, instead of worshiping at the building this Sunday, we want you to go explore God’s creation with your family. The heavens are busy declaring, after all. Write down what you hear and we’ll reflect together next Sunday in the AC. But send in some photos. We need new ones for the screens.”

I’m Whitney Williams.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Tomorrow: infrastructure. We’ll unpack the Capitol Hill compromise on funding for roads, bridges, and a lot of other projects.

And, ministry at the Olympics. We’ll introduce you to some of the people sharing the gospel in Tokyo.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Paul Butler.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

Ruth told Naomi, her mother in law: "Where you go, I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God." (Ruth 1:16)

Go now in grace and peace.

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