Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

Ex Input:
The first Democrat-only televised debate is Wednesday, a natural forum for the three candidates to tout their agendas to a broader audience after several weeks of unveiling fresh items. Gretchen Whitmer, Shri Thanedar and Abdul El-Sayed agree on many issues, like raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, spending much more on roads and other infrastructure, shutting down twin oil pipelines in a waterway linking two of the Great Lakes and repealing the state’s emergency manager law. But there are some differences that are being emphasized more in the stretch to the Aug. 7 election. El-Sayed, Detroit’s former health director, has proposed a plan to provide all Michigan residents with government-financed “Michicare” until they reach Medicare age, including 600,000 who have no insurance. He hopes to make it a “wedge issue,” especially with Whitmer, who has not embraced the single-payer concept and whom he has criticized for accepting campaign donations from the political action committee of Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state’s dominant insurer. “Health care is a human right,” he said, contending that raising taxes to fund the Medicare-for-all-style system while eliminating premiums, deductibles and copays would save both residents and businesses overall. Whitmer is expected to announce her own health care plan before the primary and most recently has rolled out education and economic proposals while also focusing on her mantra to “fix the damn roads.” The former Senate minority leader frequently points to her role in the bipartisan expansion of Medicaid to more than 600,000 adults, including in a TV ad that is airing. “She’s the only candidate in the race who has actually expanded coverage for Michiganders,” said spokesman Zack Pohl. El-Sayed, who is courting the party’s liberal wing and in recent days outlined a plan to address high auto insurance premiums, proposes paying for Michicare with a 2 percent or 2.25 percent gross receipts tax on businesses, depending on their size, with the first $2 million exempt from taxation. He also would effectively raise the state’s 4.25 percent personal income tax to between 5 percent and 8 percent, via a graduated payroll tax. Thanedar, a multimillionaire businessman, also supports a universal, single-payer system but has not elaborated. He is recommending tax increases to fund signature facets of his economic plan — expanding child care subsidies to cover 345,000 additional low-income children, ten times more than now, and paying for 78,000 more 3- and 4-year-olds to attend preschool. He says the moves would allow thousands of women to re-enter the workforce and improve students’ educational outcomes. He wants to boost the 6 percent corporate income tax to 7.5 percent for businesses with at least $350,000 in gross receipts and assess a 10 percent tax on the portion of receipts exceeding $1 million. He also would assess an 8.85 percent personal income tax for individuals earning at least $200,000 and a 10 percent rate for millionaires. Households with less than $50,000 income would pay no income tax. “We are one big family. We need to chip in to make it helpful to the ones who need help,” Thanedar said during a recent joint Democratic-Republican debate on Mackinac Island. Both he and El-Sayed, if elected, would face steep obstacles, including a Republican-led Legislature — unless power shifts — and the constitutional requirement that voters approve a graduated income tax. Whitmer, with an eye toward the general election, has been more pragmatic — focusing on what her camp says is actually achievable in the current budget and political environment. While not ruling anything out, she has not called for changes to business or income taxes and has proposed repealing the taxation of retirement income that was enacted as part of a GOP-written tax overhaul. She pledges to work with lawmakers to fund an infrastructure bank to upgrade roads through user fees such as higher fuel taxes or, if that is unsuccessful, to ask voters to approve bonding. Thanedar wants to borrow money, while El-Sayed also proposes an infrastructure bank funded with increased fuel taxes and other revenue-raising mechanisms. The centerpiece of Whitmer’s jobs plan is providing a two-year maximum $3,040 annual scholarship to high school graduates who attend an in-state university, community college or receive technical training, as long as they do community service, maintain a certain grade point average and have a good attendance record. The estimated cost is $100 million a year. “It’s about creating a path for everyone in to a high-wage skill,” she said. ___ Online: Policy plans for — El-Sayed: https://abdulformichigan.com/issues — Thanedar: https://www.shri2018.com/ — Whitmer: https://www.gretchenwhitmer.com/issues/ ___ Follow David Eggert on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00 . His work can be found at https://apnews.com/search/David%20Eggert

Ex Output:
Democrats unveil new policies before gubernatorial primary.


Ex Input:
While governments in at least 20 other states obtained more than 30 million doses of the drug through donations from the federal reserve or private companies, Oklahoma and Utah instead bought them from private pharmaceutical companies. Top officials in both states chalked up the decisions to “the fog of war.”  Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Tuesday defended the state’s $2 million purchase, saying the drug was showing some promise. His health secretary attributed buying the 1.2 million hydroxychloroquine pills to something that happens in the “fog of war.”  Utah Gov. Gary Herbert at first defended the state’s $800,000 purchase of 20,000 packets of hydroxychloroquine compounded with zinc, but has since ordered an investigation of a no-bid contract with a local company that had been promoting the drugs. Herbert, a Republican, also canceled an additional plan to spend $8 million more to buy 200,000 additional treatments from the same company. A left-leaning nonprofit group in Utah filed a price gouging complaint Tuesday with state regulators, arguing the $40 per pack drug was grossly overpriced. Oklahoma’s attorney general requested an investigative audit on Tuesday of its Department of Health over spending and warned the agency about retaliating against employees who report wrongful government activities under the state’s Whistleblower Act. A spokesman for Attorney General Mike Hunter declined to comment on whether the request was related to the $2 million spent on the drug. Doctors can already prescribe the malaria drug to patients with COVID-19, a practice known as off-label prescribing, and many do. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday warned doctors against prescribing hydroxychloroquine for treating the coronavirus outside of hospitals or research settings because of reports of serious side effects, including irregular heart rhythms and death among patients. Preliminary results from a recent study done on coronavirus patients at U.S. veterans hospitals showed no benefit, casting more doubt on the drug’s efficacy during the pandemic. Those were the latest admonitions against the drug that Trump has regularly promoted in public appearances, touting its potential despite his own health advisors telling him it is unproven. Oklahoma acquired 1.2 million pills, or about 100,000 doses, on April 4 from FFF Enterprises, a California-based medical supply wholesaler, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health. Oklahoma state Rep. Melissa Provenzano, a Democrat from Tulsa, said the state’s purchase shows that Gov. Stitt’s actions don’t follow his claim that he relies on data to drive his decisions. “Two million dollars is a lot of money to waste, especially when we have unemployment claims approved yet going unpaid, health care professionals without proper protective equipment, and diagnosed cases and deaths continuing to rise,” Provenzano said. Stitt, a first-term Republican, said hydroxychloroquine was showing some promise as a treatment in early March, and he didn’t want Oklahoma to miss out on an opportunity to acquire it. “Now there’s some evidence the chloroquine may not be as effective, but I was being proactive to try and protect Oklahomans,” Stitt said Tuesday when asked about the purchase. “That’s always going to be my first instinct, to get the equipment and things we need that I’m seeing in the future would help Oklahomans.” Oklahoma’s Secretary of Health Jerome Loughridge said several physicians, including some in Oklahoma, were previously optimistic about the drug’s promise in treating COVID-19. He added that the drug is also useful for treating lupus and some other auto-immune diseases, so the state’s supply “will not have gone to waste.” “When we were battling sort of the fog of war at that point, we certainly acquired it on the potential that it would have utility,” Loughridge said. Jeff Burton, a former adjutant general of the Utah National Guard chosen to lead the state health department’s coronavirus task force, offered a similar explanation for why the state made its purchase. He said the state never received the pills and is trying to get its money back. “I chalk it up to fog of war,” Burton told the state’s pharmacy board. “There was a lot going on. It’s easy to judge it from (an) easy chair.. . . Since then we’ve decided that was not a wise purchase.”  Doctors in Oklahoma have been using the drug to treat patients with COVID-19, often in conjunction with a second drug, azithromiocin, but the results “just are not that promising,” said Dr. Douglas Drevets, chief of infectious diseases at University of Oklahoma Medicine. FFF Enterprises said it’s the company’s policy not to comment on transactions with customers. Utah gave a local company called Meds in Motion the $800,000 contract without taking bids from other companies under emergency procurement rules, said Christopher Hughes, director of Utah’s division of purchasing. State officials haven’t explained why they didn’t seek to get the drugs for free. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Saturday it has sent out 28.6 million tablets of hydroxychloroquine sulfate free of cost to states around the country. Several states including New York, Connecticut and Texas received donations of the medication from a private company based in New Jersey called Amneal Pharmaceutical, according to information compiled by The Associated Press. Utah taxpayers deserve to know what happened to allow a purchase that seems like a company taking advantage of the early, chaotic days of the pandemic, said Chase Thomas, executive director of the group called Alliance for a Better Utah that submitted the price gouging complaint. The complaint alleges Utah paid at least double the common price for the medication. “Whether they were buying drugs we didn’t need or paying too much for it when they could have gotten them for free, there just needed to be a lot more thought going into this,” Thomas said. Meds in Motion didn’t answer an email seeking comment about the allegations. Herbert declined to provide an update Tuesday about the investigation of the purchase. He said Friday the state’s legal counsel would aim to find out what, how and why it happened. He said he believed state officials acted in good faith as they scrambled to slow the spread of coronavirus, but acknowledged a mistake may have been made. “I have some questions about how it came about,” Herbert said Friday. “Bottom line is, we’re not purchasing any more of this drug.”  ___ McCombs and Whitehurst reported from Salt Lake City.

Ex Output:
Oklahoma, Utah face scrutiny over malaria drug purchases.


Ex Input:
"The mass shooting in Las Vegas prompted former Democratic Congressman Steve Israel of New York to write that these horrific events have little impact on public policy. In a New York Times op-ed, Israel walked through a list of shootings -- the murder of 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, the June 2016 mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub, and others -- and noted that despite the hand-wringing after each one, nothing changed. Israel said Democrats were unable to enact reforms, including ""our attempts to rescind the infamous Dickey Amendment, which prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from even researching the relationship between gun violence and public health."" ""The result?"" Israel wrote Oct. 2. ""The government can’t study gun violence but is spending $400,000 analyzing the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits."" There are two elements to sift through here: Does the Dickey Amendment block government research into gun violence and public health? And is Washington studying Swedish massage on rabbits? In 1996, with strong support from the National Rifle Association, Congress included an amendment by Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark., in its omnibus spending bill. The amendment said ""none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control."" In the same bill, Congress pulled $2.8 million aimed at gun injury research and assigned it elsewhere in the CDC. Ever since, Washington and the CDC have steered clear of funding research that could run afoul of that amendment. Israel said the provision prevents government-funded studies of the ties between guns and public health, but plenty of people say the rule is not binding. Dickey himself joined with the former head of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control Mark Rosenberg to challenge that long-held assumption. ""We believe strongly that funding for research into gun-violence prevention should be dramatically increased,"" they wrote in a 2016 public letter. ""We do not see the congressional language against using federal funds ‘to promote or advocate gun control’ as a barrier to this research."" An article on the Harvard Law Petrie-Flom Center blog argued that the amendment bars research aimed at promoting gun control and not all research. U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., echoed that point in a letter to the CDC, saying the meaning had been ""misconstrued."" But that belief had its own consequences. ""As a result, public health researchers at the CDC and other federal agencies have been discouraged from conducting scientific research on gun violence,"" Carper wrote March 17, 2016. ""Although the CDC self-directs a portion of its nearly $6.2 billion annual budget to a wide variety of intra- and extramural research, the CDC has been reluctant to devote funding to gun violence research without a specific appropriation from Congress."" Carper offered proof that the Dickey Amendment can co-exist with government gun violence studies. He noted that in 2015, the CDC assessed the causes of a rise in gun violence in Wilmington, Del. In general, the impact of the Dickey Amendment is more political than legal. Research could move forward, but without an explicit signoff from Congress, there’s been limited activity. After the 2012 Newtown slayings, President Barack Obama directed the CDC to conduct or fund research into the causes of gun violence. The impact was modest. ""As far as I can tell the CDC still correctly believes that gun research, or even mentioning guns, is too hot to handle,"" said director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center David Hemenway. Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research director Daniel Webster also said there’s been no new funding from CDC or the National Institutes of Health. Rosenberg told us, ""The research scientists at CDC are very anxious to do this research, but the recent directors of CDC have been willing to let this eminently solvable problem fester because they fear that the NRA will prod Congress into cutting public health programs that are viewed as more central and critical to CDC's mission."" As for the $400,000 spent on studying the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits that Israel mentioned, yes, the government did that. (The exact amount was closer to $387,000.) It gave the Ohio State University Sports Medicine Center money to build a small device that mimics the action of Swedish massage to see if the treatment reduced pain and inflammation. Rabbits were the test subjects. The treatment helped, by the way. Researchers found that with the right mix of force, duration and frequency, there was ""maximal recovery of muscle and joint function."" However, there’s an issue of timing with Israel’s statement. He said the government is currently spending money on this research. In fact, the study ended in 2014. Israel spokesman Harrison Feuer didn’t argue that detail. ""The larger point that Congressman Israel was looking to accurately make is that the government has funded studies into various endeavors that are less impactful than guns on public health,"" Feuer said. Israel said the Dickey Amendment prevents the CDC from researching the relationship between gun violence and public health. As a matter of law, it only prevents money going toward research aimed at promoting gun control. But as a matter of politics, that distinction is murky, and as a result, research has been limited. Israel’s point about Swedish massage on rabbits is off on the timing, but right on the substance. Israel’s statement has some technical flaws, but the broader thrust is accurate."

Ex Output:

"Steve Israel Says the Dickey Amendment ""prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from even researching the relationship between gun violence and public health. ... The government can’t study gun violence but is spending $400,000 analyzing the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits."