Celebrating the Anniversary of AARP s Take on Today
Celebrating the Anniversary of AARP's 'Take on Today' Take on Today
On this week’s episode, we celebrate our one-year anniversary by bringing you our favorite moments, featuring Suze Orman, Tony Oppedisano, Tommy John and more.
The First Anniversary of AARP' s ' Take on Today'
Bob Edwards looks back at some of the best moments of the podcast
AARPBob Edwards (): Hello, I'm Bob Edwards with An AARP Take On Today. Bob Edwards (): Today we celebrate the one-year anniversary of An AARP Take On Today. In part, we hope this episode is an opportunity for new listeners to hear some of the icons we've had on our podcast, such as personal finance guru Suze Orman, baseball great Tommy John, Pulitzer Prize winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Hollywood producer Tony Oppedisano, who was a gateway into comedy legend Don Rickles' world. Bob Edwards (): At the end of the show, we have a special treat, a rebroadcast of an unreleased Aretha Franklin anthem called Stand Up For Yourself. AARP discovered the tune in its vault when the queen of soul died last year. But first, let's start with this week's news. Bob Edwards (): AARP Foundation and the Law Firm of Garrison, Levin-Epstein, Fitzgerald & Pirrotti filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Yale University employees today alleging that Yale's employee wellness program violates the Americans with Disability Act, commonly known as the ADA, and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, or GINA. Dara Smith (): We've looked at sort of average cost of living in New Haven, and it can be several months' worth of food or utilities, about a month's worth of rent or childcare. So it's a very significant amount of money. Bob Edwards (): That was Dara Smith. Dara Smith (): I'm a senior attorney at AARP Foundation in the litigation unit. The civil rights laws, the ADA and GINA, as we call them, basically forbid all medical exams and inquiries and genetic exams and inquiries in the workplace, with very narrow exceptions. Dara Smith (): One of those exceptions is for employee wellness programs, only if the programs are voluntary. And so, because this program charges people at what adds up to $1,300 a year for non-participation, that's not voluntary. So that's really at the heart of it. People have a right to choose not to reveal this information in the workplace. Bob Edwards (): Both the ADA and GINA are federal laws that protect employee privacy and allow workers to shield themselves from discrimination in the workplace. The AARP Foundation lawsuit argues that Yale's Health Expectations Program puts workers between a rock and a hard place. Dara Smith (): Folks have to certify that they've done a certain number of tests within the schedule provided by the employer. And that's regardless of whether or not their doctor says that they need to do it. That's just, there's the same rule for everybody, a series of tests. Dara Smith (): But another issue with the wellness program, maybe even a bigger one, is that, to participate in the program, you to agree to let your insurance release all of your claims data to the wellness vendors. Then they assess whether you are at risk of certain conditions, and if you are, your data gets sent to another wellness vendor who assigns you a health coach. And then the health coach tells you all of the things that you have to do to comply with the program. Sometimes it's medication, sometimes it's additional testing, sometimes it's any number of other compliance programs. Dara Smith (): And if you don't do any of those things, and also if your spouse doesn't do any of those things, you get charged. And if you're out of compliance, you're out of compliance for the whole quarter, so you get charged at least $300 before you can get back on track. Bob Edwards (): Oh my. The Yale policies have had a detrimental impact on plaintiffs Lisa Kwessell and Jason Schwartz. For one, they're fined every week for opting out of the health expectations program. Jason Schwartz (): For me, the $25 penalty is not going to destroy me financially. However, it does add up throughout the year to about $1,300 a year. Now, I am married. Okay? I have in-laws that live in the Philippines. That $1,300 is one or two plane tickets, or one and a half plane tickets, so that my daughter can go visit her grandparents in the Philippines. Lisa Kwessell (): I'm a part-time employee, so for the university to take another $100 a month out of my paycheck would not be a good thing. My taxes have gone up, my insurances have gone up. I have bills to pay. Fortunate I'm married. If I wasn't married, it probably would put me out on the streets, or I would be forced to go seek a full time job someplace else. Lisa Kwessell (): But it was more the principle of the matter. And then, as I started to speak to coworkers at the university, some that were in not great financial shape or had issues, I felt their pain as to how it was going to hurt them. And I knew that this was really wrong and something needed to be done about it to correct it Bob Edwards (): For another, they have serious privacy concerns. Lisa Kwessell (): When I read the terms and the conditions of Health Net, Trestle Tree, I thought, "Oh my God, no one has the right to know my personal health information. That is solely between me and my doctor. And why does my employer need to know? And furthermore, why are they doing business with a company that's going to sell my health information and share it with the world," and how this could be very detrimental to me if I had retired out of the university and went to go apply for another job elsewhere, and was denied the job because the other employer had privy to my health information, and that I was slagged or diagnosed with something, and would not get this job based on that, or just that they could penalize me as an older employee in the workforce at the university if I had been flagged or genetically diagnosed with something, and increase the cost of the premium that I pay, or even look at us in aggregate, and say, "Okay, well these people are all unhealthy, so we're going to get rid of them and we're going to hire them with a new batch of people that don't have any health issues." It was just really, really, really scary. Jason Schwartz (): It states very clearly that these third party firms are not held liable if there is a breach of their website, or their data mined, or anything like that. If any of our medical information leaks out to the public, they're not going to be held liable. Jason Schwartz (): This is pretty scary stuff that we're getting into here. Doctor/patient confidentiality is still a thing, and your health, it's an important thing. And it's the same thing as lawyer/client confidentiality, these are things that you don't want released to the public. They have no right being out in the public sphere where someone who's tech savvy can pull this information out of the air. And then it's out there, and everyone knows, the internet's been around for a while, once it's out there, it's out there. There is no way to put it back in the box. Bob Edwards (): This isn't the first time AARP and AARP Foundation have advocated for voluntary participation in workplace wellness programs. In October 2016, AARP successfully sued the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to invalidate federal wellness rules that allowed employers to penalize workers for keeping health information private. Visit AARP.org/political-advocacy to learn more. Bob Edwards (): Anniversaries are times to reflect, and the first anniversary of this podcast is no exception. When we sat down to create An AARP Take On Today, our goal was to bring the perspectives of older Americans, so often overlooked or eclipsed, front and center to the conversation. Bob Edwards (): Take Don Rickles, his reputation for never pulling a punch earned him the nicknames Mr. Warmth and the Merchant of Venom. Tommy John (): It's funny, Don had such an eclectic group of friends and fans as well, ranging in every age group from millennials all the way up to people in his own age bracket. And I would witness Don getting calls over dinner conversations from all kinds of people, from guys like Ryan Gosling to two guys that were almost like adopted sons to him, Bob Saget and John Stamos, asking him any range of advice, whether it be business advice, or romantic advice on girlfriends and stuff like that. Bob Edwards (): But as Tony said of Don Rickles, "We're all interconnected, old and young and in between." As we've uncovered, we're all aging, and each generation has a perspective that matters to another age group. Here's Tommy John. Tommy John (): ... these guys, you know, and the sad thing is not so much the major league ballplayers or minor league ballplayers, that's their job, and injuries are part of the business, but it's these young kids, high school, pre-high school, having to have the surgery. Tommy John (): Jim Andrews, so we were talking a couple of months ago, and he had parents came in, the kid was 12 or 13 years old that needed Tommy John's surgery. And that is the part of the surgery that makes you want to vomit, really. It shouldn't be. At that age, it should not be. Bob Edwards (): That was hall of fame baseballer Tommy John, for whom the surgery was named, talking about the dark legacy of his namesake procedure. Suze Orman (): If you look at the Me Too movement and Times Up movement, obviously it's a fabulous movement, both of those. But you really have to wonder what makes a woman say yes to something that she knows is violating her, that puts her down, that puts her in a situation that she doesn't want to be in. Suze Orman (): And the reason that happens, in my opinion, is because she needs the job, she needs the promotion, she needs the part in the movie or the play. And why does she need that? She needs it to make money. Why does she need to make money? Normally, it's to provide for her family. Suze Orman (): So the whole thing about the Me Too movement isn't about, "Women need to make money," and things like that. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It's women need to become powerful over their own money. And once they're powerful over their own money, then hopefully they'll never be in a situation where they have to say yes to something simply to make money to provide for those that they love. Bob Edwards (): That was Suze Orman, who joined us in a conversation about women's financial health, financial empowerment, and security in retirement. Bob Edwards (): The hallmark of our program is talking with people who are taking on the day with dedication and advocacy, sometimes paying a personal price, as Jack Gross, and recently added correspondent, Mike Ellison, discuss. Mike Ellison (): So at age 54, to hear that the United States Supreme Court decision came down against him, it burned Jack to the core. And it didn't stop there. Bob Edwards (): Despite 13 consecutive years of top performance reviews, Jack Gross was suddenly demoted by his employer, FBL Financial Group. After many of Jack's colleagues over the age of 50 were met with a similar fate, he decided to fight back against what he believed to be a clear injustice. And at first, the courts were on his side. However, the case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Jack Gross (): This is a little bit about ego for me now because, well, my name has been associated. There's a lot of people who had probably pretty good cases who would've had their day in court, but they'd go to an attorney and their attorney was saying, "Well, after the decision in the Gross case, these are so tough to prove. We don't want to take anything on a contingency basis like this anymore." So I understood a lot of people couldn't take this fight. And that's partly why I decided I was probably the one that should. Bob Edwards (): Looking back is also a chance to look forward. We commemorated the achievements of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins, and Apollo 11, who united the country in awe with their journey, our first to the moon. Ellen Stofan (): As the director of the Air and Space Museum, we've really tried to put together a really special celebration this entire week of, what did Apollo means to the country? To me, it's an exciting thing because it gives us a moment to say, "How do we take these iconic artifacts and inspire the next generation with them?" New ways of telling the stories, talking about the humans behind the artifacts, and the fact that those humans look like all of our [inaudible 00:14:12]. Ellen Stofan (): That's one of the amazing things to me about Armstrong's suit, the fact that it's dirty from the knees down because it's got bits of the moon embedded in the suit. So I think trying to get kids of all ages to get their head around the fact that these are pieces of another world, and humans accomplished this. When we put our minds to solving a big problem, look what we can do. Ellen Stofan (): And in fact, the technologies that have come back from Apollo affect our lives in ways we don't even realize, from the shingles on our roof, to materials in our clothes, to the nutritional supplements in baby formula. The Space Program touches people's lives. It drives our economy forward. Bob Edwards (): Indeed, looking forward, as the Air and Space Museum director, Ellen Stofan says, "is important." We find that the most exciting part of reflecting on the Apollo 11 mission today is the next chapter, the goal of sending a crew to the moon by 2024. Bob Edwards (): We want to thank our listeners who have supported us here at Take On Today. As promised, here's Aretha Franklin's previously unreleased anthem, Stand Up For Yourself. Aretha Franklin (): (singing). Subscribe:
On this week’s episode, we celebrate our one-year anniversary by bringing you our favorite moments, featuring Suze Orman, Tony Oppedisano, Tommy John and more.