Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.

Input: Consider Input: Paragraph: Though modest, it was the first such price drop in 45 years, according to nonpartisan economic experts at the federal Department of Health and Human Services, who deliver an annual report on the nation’s health care spending. The price drop was for retail pharmacy prescriptions, not medications administered in hospitals or doctor’s offices. HHS experts said the last time retail prescription drug prices declined was in 1973, when they went down by 0.2%. The price drop comes amid questionable prospects for major legislation to curb prescription drug costs. Nonetheless, it was a nugget of decent news in a sobering, broader report on rising U.S. health care spending. The HHS report found that spending on prescription medicines at pharmacies accounted for 9% of the total $3.6 trillion national health care tab in 2018. Total U.S. health care spending grew by 4.6% last year, averaging $11,172 per person. In the real world, U.S. spending is concentrated on the sickest patients, with 5% of the population accounting for half of costs. Because of strong overall economic growth last year, health care spending as a share of the national economy declined slightly, from 17.9% in 2017 to 17.7%, the report found. Legislation pending in Congress to curb drug costs would mainly benefit older people on Medicare, who are the biggest consumers of medicines. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is forging ahead with a floor vote next week on her bill authorizing Medicare to negotiate prices for the costliest drugs, including insulin. Under her bill, private insurance plans would be able to get Medicare’s prices as well. But President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are solidly opposed to Medicare negotiations. Instead Trump is backing a bipartisan Senate bill that would require drugmakers to pay rebates to Medicare if they hike prices above inflation. As a candidate Trump had called for allowing Medicare to negotiate directly. Both bills would cap what Medicare recipients must pay annually in out-of-pocket costs for their prescriptions. The HHS report made no forecast of future prescription drug prices. It’s unclear if the 1% price decline seen last year may be the beginning of a sustained trend or was merely a temporary pullback by drug companies getting pummeled by Trump and lawmakers of both parties. Thursday’s report found that nearly 9 out of 10 prescriptions dispensed are for generic drugs, which puts downward pressure on prices. Even though prices of brand-name drugs increased more moderately, they still accounted for most of the spending on prescriptions — nearly 79%. The government’s findings on prices for brand-name drugs dovetailed with  an analysis earlier this year by The Associated Press. In the first seven months of 2019, drugmakers raised list prices for brand-name prescription medicines by a median of 5%, the AP found. That was down from about 9% or 10% over those months the prior four years. The AP’s findings suggest that an easing in drug prices may continue this year. Reducing prescription drug costs remains one of the top priorities for consumers. The White House claims that Trump has already delivered historic price cuts, but a recent Gallup poll found that 66% of adults believe the president has made little or no progress. The government study was published online by the journal Health Affairs. Claim: US report: Prescription drug prices down slightly last year.

Output: Prices for prescription drugs edged down by 1% last year, a rare result driven by declines for generics and slow, low growth in the cost of brand-name medications, the government said Thursday.


Input: Consider Input: Paragraph: "The cost of the drug wasn’t mentioned – a big oversight. Other news stories pegged it at about $35,000 a year. Adequate job. The story explained: ""But experts stress that Benlysta is not a miracle drug: It only worked in 35 percent of North American patients tested and was not effective for patients with the deadliest form of the disease. Additionally, it did not show positive results in African Americans, who are disproportionately affected by lupus."" There was no discussion of harms. An NPR story, by comparison, pointed out that ""There are side effects, of course, and some of them are pretty serious. In clinical tests involving about 2,100 people, 11 taking Benlysta died compared with 4 getting placebo. About 6 percent of people taking Benlysta got serious infections compared with 5.2 percent on placebo."" The story offered an interesting historical perspective on the evidence: ""The company originally tested Benlysta, known generically as belimumab, as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. When a mid-stage trial in lupus patients failed to meet researchers’ goals in 2006, many analysts wrote the drug off and downgraded the company’s stock. But when scientists reanalyzed the data they found that the drug helped block the antibodies that cause lupus symptoms in a subset of patients."" No disease mongering of lupus. Two independent sources were quoted. Not applicable. With no other new drug approved for lupus in 56 years, there’s not been much to compare it with. The story did state that some experts thought this ""could prompt development of other drugs that are even more effective in treating the debilitating immune system disorder."" The focus of the story is FDA approval of the new drug. The headline explains that the FDA approved the first new drug for lupus in 56 years. It’s clear the story did not rely solely on a news release." Claim: FDA approves first new drug for lupus in 56 years

Output: "Good caveats, including in the patient profiled, who said, ""It’s a bittersweet thing for me because I have friends with lupus for whom this drug won’t work. There’s no one-size-fits-all for lupus and I’m just extremely fortunate that my lupus is mild and is helped by Benlysta."" The story should have discussed potential harms and costs. As the story explained, this was not only the first new lupus drug approved in 56 years, but it could be ""a milestone that medical experts say could prompt development of other drugs that are even more effective in treating the debilitating immune system disorder."""


Input: Consider Input: Paragraph: The invention of the shopping cart during the Dirty Thirties altered how consumers shopped for groceries by removing the weight of accumulated goods from the equation. Thanks to the new wheeled assistance, those looking to reprovision could shop longer and for greater quantities than in the days when prospective purchases were all toted by hand. But the newfangled gadgets also created yet another common field upon which harmful bacteria and viruses could be easily passed from one person to another, because the handles of shopping carts are grasped by a great many people day in and day out. And, of that horde of shoppers, some will undoubtedly be carrying some nasty bugs on their unwashed hands. Yet, just as we rarely think about giving our purses, briefcases, and backpacks a good scrub-down, so do shopping carts fly under our germ awareness radar. The very folks that fuss with disposable toilet seat covers often won’t think twice about manhandling a grocery cart around a store for half an hour, even though the surface they’re hanging onto so fiercely for that interval has likely been coughed on, sneezed on, and grasped by shoppers who’d just finished handling packages of raw chicken and meat, or who just weren’t the sort to wash their hands all that often. As for the fold-out child’s seat found in most carts, even though it is routinely graced by the diapered bottoms of infants, it remains the cart’s transport region of choice for fruits and vegetables, items that are often eaten uncooked or unwashed. According to a four-year study conducted by the University of Arizona’s Environmental Research Lab and sponsored by Clorox, grocery carts are veritable petri dishes teeming with human saliva, mucus, urine, fecal matter, as well as the blood and juices from raw meat. Swabs taken from the handles and child seats of 36 grocery carts in San Francisco, Chicago, Tucson, and Tampa showed these common surfaces to rank third on the list of nastiest public items to touch, with only playground equipment and the armrests on public transportation producing more disgusting results. In terms of playing host to germs and bacteria, the carts are far worse than public bathrooms, which at least are cleaned more often. Bacteria and viruses such as E.coli, staphylococcus, salmonella, and influenza can live on grocery carts, a sorry fact most shoppers are blissfully unaware of. There are efforts afoot to render these surfaces less germ-laden. In March 2007, a bill (A4109) was introduced into the New Jersey State Assembly calling for supermarkets to provide shoppers with sanitary wipes to clean off their carts. In February 2007, Arkansas passed its “Health-Conscious Shopper Act” (HB1040), which encourages businesses in that state to voluntarily provide consumers with sanitation wipes to use on the carts. Nice-Pak Products of Rockland County, New York, the company that enhanced your fried chicken eating experience with Wet-Naps, has devised a wipe specifically for use in sanitizing shopping cart handles and child seats. Its SaniCart is designed to remove salmonella, staphylococcus, and other germs from such surfaces. As of late 2005, more than 6,400 supermarkets were using them. Meanwhile, another system on the market focuses on cleaning the entire cart rather than just parts of it. PureCart is a sort of drive-through washer that sanitizes the whole contraption. It works by coating the carts with a safe mist of a peroxide-based disinfectant, the same solution used to clean dialysis machines and poultry processors. Critics of the various efforts to clean up the carts point out that a great many things routinely used by the public also harbor germs and viruses, therefore targeting the handles and child seats of shopping carts will not render the common world free of contagion. While it is true that which causes illness also lurks upon the latches of bathroom stall doors, elevator buttons, and stairwell handrails (to name just a few bacterial hot spots), those shared surfaces are generally handled relatively fleetingly compared to the interval the average person hangs onto the handle of a shopping cart or the length of time a leaky-diapered baby or a food item is left resting on the cart’s fold-out seat. Those looking for a less technological approach to staving off the nasties ferried about by their shopping buggies should attempt to fall into the habit of always washing their hands as soon as they return home from any retail foray and eschewing touching their faces or blowing their noses in the interim. In April 2007, the truth about the nasty state of shopping carts was bent to a hellish purpose when an e-mailed rumor about Hispanics polluting the wheeled conveyances with staph infections spread through Guntersville, Alabama. In that anonymous note, Dr. John Packard Jr., a local pediatrician, was falsely described as having advised a patient that her baby, along with twelve other children, had picked up the potentially deadly contagion from an infected cart at a local grocery store. The doctor was moreover reported to have said Hispanics had put it there, themselves being immune to that form of bacteria. Hispanics have no special immunity to staphylococcus. All the statements attributed to Dr. Packard were not his; they were the invention of the letter’s anonymous writer. As for the wave of illness that had supposedly felled thirteen children who had come into contact with the sickness-laden carts, Packard assured the community no such infection existed and that the alleged incidents never happened. Additional Information: Shared surfaces most favored by germs: Claim: Handles of shopping carts are laden with germs.


Output: One study ranked grocery cart handles and child seats third on a list of nastiest public items to touch.