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.
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Question: Paragraph: The governor, a Democrat, noted that hospitalizations are in the third week of a downward progression and the state is on pace to “blow through” a projected 42,000 tests per week beginning next week, ramping up to more than 100,000 by June. “I appreciate the ongoing concern that people have, but I think we’ve got the right balance going forward right now,” Lamont said during his daily media briefing. “I think you have a sense that we put public health and public safety first and foremost. Whatever we do, we’re doing very cautiously. ” In one of two letters, lawmakers noted how some parts of the state are still seeing increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases. The latest data show cases climbed by 609 from Wednesday, to nearly 35,500. But that comes as the state is ramping up testing. Meanwhile, the number of deaths spiked by 94 since Wednesday, for a total of 3,219. More than half of those are nursing home residents. “Reopening is essential — but to do it while the first wave of the pandemic is still raging will not lead to a second wave, it will simply add fuel to the first wave, delaying our eventual recovery,” the senators wrote to Lamont. Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano said he supports the first reopening date — Wednesday, May 20 — noting the state has the medical capacity to deal with an uptick in cases of the coronavirus. In the meantime, he said, the state is suffering in other ways because of current restrictions, noting an increase in domestic violence, drug abuse and mental health problems. “Those are all huge health care concerns,” he said. “Huge.” For most people, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death. In other coronavirus-related developments around Connecticut: ___ NURSING HOMES Representatives of nursing home and assisted living facilities in Connecticut said new data released Thursday evening show the coronavirus “still has a hold” on the state’s nursing homes. In a joint statement, the presidents of LeadingAge Connecticut, the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities and the CT Assisted Living Association, said the latest numbers also reveal “the pernicious character of the highly contagious virus, now known to be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers” and is “no way a reflection of the quality” of the facilities and the care they provide. The state’s figures show 163 nursing homes and 75 assisted living facilities in the state have had at least one positive case of COVID-19. In nursing homes, there have been 6,947 positive cases, 1,487 laboratory-confirmed COVID-associated deaths and 440 probable COVID-associated deaths. In assisted living facilities, there have been 874 positive cases, 207 laboratory-confirmed COVID-associated deaths and 69 probable COVID-associated deaths. ____ CASINO TOWNS A bipartisan group of eastern Connecticut state lawmakers on Thursday urged Lamont to to personally engage with Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribal leaders to determine how the state can help them reopen Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort Casino as soon as possible and support the roughly 10,000 workers who are currently out of work, as well as the hundreds of impacted local vendors. The lawmakers also called on Lamont to authorize the tribes to operate internet gambling and sports betting, a revenue source they argue is needed to help restart “two economic powerhouses” in the region. “The continued closure of the casinos is untenable,” they wrote, noting how the situation warrants the governor’s personal involvement. Both casinos have been shuttered since March 17. It remains unclear when they might reopen. “I really do care about the people. I care about getting those people back to work safely,” Lamont said. “I do worry a lot about the nature of a big gathering place like a casino. It does bring in people from all over the region, all over the Northeast region ... It can be a place that’s a source of high risk.” Paul Mounds, Lamont’s chief of staff, said the governor and his administration have been in constant contact with the tribes, with more discussions planned Friday. Meanwhile, Lamont said he’s not inclined to authorize internet gambling and sports betting in an executive order, but said he is open to further discussions. Also, he said he plans to ask his economic advisor to see if there’s a way to help target some federal assistance to the businesses impacted by the casino closures. ___ PRISON VIDEO VISITS The state Department of Correction says it has begun allowing 30-minute video calls between juvenile offenders and family members. The “video visits” are being conducted over the Zoom Cloud Meetings application from the York Correctional Institution for women and the Manson Youth Institution. The department says the visits can only be made to people on the offenders approved visitation list. Three authorized adult visitors may participate. Visitors under 18 may only participate if accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. In person visitation has been suspended during the pandemic and previously inmates had been limited to telephone calls with their loved ones. ___ HOSPITAL FLYOVERS The Connecticut Air National Guard conductED a statewide flyover Thursday to salute the state’s health care workers. The guard’s C-130H aircraft flew above hospitals and other health care facilities throughout the state. Numerous people posted photos of the four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft on social media as it flew overhead. Maj. Gen. Francis Evon, the adjutant general of the Connecticut National Guard, said it’s a way to show “appreciation to the thousands of heroes at the front line battling COVID-19.” ____ EDUCATION FUNDING Connecticut is receiving $111 million in federal coronavirus relief aid to help school districts during the global pandemic. The Connecticut State Department of Education is developing an application process for school districts, who can use the money for things like computer and software purchases, mental heath services and summer learning. Claim: Lamont moving ahead with May 20 reopening despite concerns.

Answer: Despite a call on Thursday by a group of Democratic state senators to delay plans to begin phasing out Connecticut’s COVID-19 restrictions next week, Gov. Ned Lamont said his administration is still moving ahead carefully toward the planned May 20 partial reopening of certain Connecticut businesses.


Question: Paragraph: For Simmers, a retired Hagerstown police officer, that helplessness developed into frustration as he and his then 18 year-old daughter Brooke ran into a series of roadblocks and administrative red tape in seeking treatment for her heroin addiction in late 2013. “We tried all the things that we thought would help,” said Simmers, during a special lecture sponsored by the Shepherd University Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Sport Studies at Erma Ora Byrd auditorium Monday night. However, after multiple tries to get and stay clean, accompanied by a succession of relapses, Brook Simmers, then 19 years-old, died of a heroin overdose in April 2015 when she was found in the back seat of her car in a church parking lot. Simmers’ attitude toward drug addiction was somewhat different in the early1980s after he had graduated high school. “When I finished school, President Ronald Reagan had a big push then for the war on drugs,” Simmers said. “The way we were going to do it is handcuffs and incarceration.” Simmers joined the Air Force where he trained dogs to sniff out narcotics. Discharged four years later, he was hired by the Hagerstown Police Department in the early 1990s where he was assigned to the narcotics unit and eventually became part of a Drug Enforcement Administration Task Force. “I was targeting users and dealers — any type of narcotics,” Simmers said. “My feeling back then was ‘make as many arrests as you possibly can.’ ” Simmers recalled the day his daughter called him in late 2013 to ask for help, telling him she had developed an addiction to the opioid pain killer Percocet. The next year and half would be an in-the-field education for Simmers and his daughter, running into seemingly counter intuitive administrative regulations to securing Brooke immediate addiction treatment. According to Simmers, Brooke was initially refused insurance coverage for treatment because she was deemed a non-critical candidate. “Her addiction had not progressed to the point where she needed in-patient treatment,” Simmers said “It was not serious enough, they said, because she had not been arrested, she had not overdosed, and she had not been hospitalized.” Instead, Brooke was approved for out-patient treatment where she would go to daily classes every night. “I didn’t want to take that as an answer,” Simmers said. “If you are having a heart attack with chest pains, the doctors are not going to say, ‘well you’re still conscious. Let’s not call an ambulance just yet.’” After attending two weeks of out- patient classes, Brooke dropped out, telling her father she had her addiction under control. She returned to work In a few months, Simmers again heard from his daughter. “She had lost her job, and she had started to look unkempt, which was very unlike her,” Simmers said. “You could tell that things were spinning out of control again. She said she was now addicted to heroin and was shooting up every morning.” Now 18 years old, Brooke had to be the one to commit to treatment. Brooke was eventually accepted to an in-patient treatment facility in early 2014. However, Simmers later found out that she had checked herself out against medical advice and had relapsed back to drug use. After a few more attempted recoveries and relapses — including an overdose at a heroin dealer’s house in Baltimore, Maryland. Seeing his daughter’s drug addiction struggles first hand changed Simmers perspective on drug abuse and its unrelenting pull on the user. “An addict is not a weak-minded person,” Simmer said. “I am not of that camp anymore.” In the wake of his daughter’s death, Simmers and his wife Dana decided to start “Brooke’s House,” a public charity whose goals is to build a long-term, residential treatment facility for young women suffering from addiction in Smithsburg, Maryland. The HPERS department presented Simmers with a $300 donation from the Vince Gonino Fund to help with the construction of Brooke’s House. “This is one small way for HPERS faculty and students to give back to community and help fight drug addiction,” said Professor Stacey Kendig, department chair of HPERS. ___ Information from: The Journal, http://journal-news.net/ Claim: Daughter’s addiction changed former officer’s perspective.

Answer: Kevin Simmers knows the feeling of helplessness in fighting heroin addiction first hand.


Question: Paragraph: Those ideas would represent tangible change and they have a realistic chance of being enacted. But it’s not like calling for Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Skeptics say the overall approach is underwhelming, and Trump risks being seen as an ally of the powerful pharmaceutical industry, not its disrupter. The White House Council of Economic Advisers has released a 30-page strategy for reducing drug costs, and it calls current policies “neither wise nor just.” The plan, outlined before Trump releases his new budget proposal Monday, focuses mainly on Medicare and Medicaid changes, along with ideas for speeding drug approvals and fostering competition. “Despite promises to drastically lower prices the mix of proposed changes does not appear likely to do so, even though there are some constructive proposals,” said John Rother, CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care, an advocacy group whose members include consumer organizations, medical societies, hospitals and insurers. Polls show the high cost of drugs is a top concern of Americans, regardless of political leanings. In his State of the Union speech, Trump seemed to foreshadow major change, saying “fixing the injustice of high drug prices” is a top priority this year. “And prices will come down substantially,” Trump added. “Watch.” As a candidate, Trump advocated Medicare negotiations and he called for allowing consumers to import lower-priced medicines from abroad. But the White House strategy paper veers away from such dramatic steps. His new health secretary, Alex Azar, was a top executive at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. Medicare negotiations and drug importation are unacceptable to the drug industry, which has spent tens of millions of dollars since Trump’s inauguration to influence the Washington conversation around drug prices, including a high-profile TV advertising campaign portraying its scientists as medical trailblazers. The White House strategy largely sidesteps the question of whether drugmakers set their prices too high to start with. Rather, it recommends changes to policies that the administration believes unwittingly lead to higher prices, and suggests ways to speed drugs to market and increase competition. It takes aim at foreign governments that dictate what drug companies can charge their own citizens. Trump often has noted that the same medications Americans struggle to pay for can be bought for much less abroad. The White House report examined 35 economically advanced countries, and found that U.S. consumers and taxpayers pay for more than 70 percent of drug company profits that fund innovation. “Other nations are free-riding, or taking unfair advantage,” according to the review. The industry defends its pricing by saying companies have to recoup considerable research and drug development costs within the limited window when brand drugs are protected from generic competition. But examples of profit-seeking abound. An investigation by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in 2015 found that the makers of the breakthrough hepatitis C drug Sovaldi decided to charge roughly $1,000 per pill even though the company’s own analysis showed a lower price would allow more patients to be treated. Gilead Sciences disagreed with the senators’ conclusion that it put profits before patients. The White House strategy recommends: —working with states to revise Medicaid rules so manufacturers don’t have an incentive to set artificially high prices due to the rebates they provide the program for low-income people. —changing the way Medicare pays for drugs administered in a doctor’s office so Medicare doesn’t reimburse based on a fixed percentage of a drug’s cost. Critics say the current system creates an incentive for doctors to prescribe more expensive medications. The Obama administration proposed a similar change, but had to back off. —changing a requirement that insurers in Medicare’s prescription program cover at least two different medications in each broad class of drugs. In some cases, that can tie the hands of insurers trying to negotiate lower prices. —requiring insurers to share rebates from drug companies with patients. Drugmakers use the rebates to help gain market share. Insurers say they plow the money into reducing premiums. But patient copayments are usually based on the full price of the drug, before rebates. The issue is a major source of friction between drug companies and insurers. —revising the Food and Drug Administration’s drug review and approval process to promote competition. Many of the ideas can be pursued by the administration through rule-making, which means Trump can drive change without a balky Congress. But whether that translates into a big hit with the public is unclear. There’s no estimate from the White House of the potential impact on prices. Financial analyst and former drug company executive Richard Evans said the administration plan would help bring down costs, but not to the same degree as giving Medicare a direct role in setting prices. “Convincing the average voter who is upset about drug prices that this is the path to righteousness is going to be a hard sell,” Evans said. Claim: On drug costs, modest steps follow Trump’s big promises.

Answer:
President Donald Trump makes big promises to reduce prescription drug costs, but his administration is gravitating to relatively modest steps such as letting Medicare patients share in manufacturer rebates.