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.

Paragraph: Chazz Smith told a rally of over 80 people in the Capitol rotunda that his younger cousin had everything, yet opioids still took his life in 2016 . Authorities blamed counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl that looked like generic Vicodin. Smith said Prince’s death shows the power that addiction can hold on anyone. “We’ve lost legends, we’ve lost potential legends, and that’s a shame,” Smith said. The rally preceded a hearing before a House health and human services committee on a bill to require manufacturers and wholesalers that sell or distribute opioids in Minnesota to pay registration fees ranging as high as $500,000 for the biggest companies. The current fee is just $235. The measure is a different approach from the “penny a pill” tax that passed the Senate last year but stalled out in the House amid industry opposition. It would raise about $20 million annually to fund prevention, treatment and education programs, and to support county child protection agencies that have been swamped by the crisis. Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan told the gathering that passing the bill is a priority for Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. Bill sponsors said at a news conference that the industry should pay its fair share for a crisis that it helped create. They pointed out that more than 400 people died of opioid overdoses in Minnesota in 2017, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. “In communities across the state, it appears that this opioid crisis that we’re in really has no end in sight,” said Rep. Liz Olson, a Duluth Democrat. “Without this swift legislative action, there indeed might not be an end. Parents have lost children, teachers have lost students, our first responders are asked to respond to impossible situations, and no other family deserves to go through this.” Other leading sponsors include Rep. Dave Baker, a Republican from Willmar, and Sen. Chris Eaton, a Brooklyn Park Democrat, who have both lost children to opioid overdoses. Baker’s son, Dan, 25, died in 2011 of a heroin overdose after becoming addicted to opiate pain pills for a back injury. Eaton’s daughter, Ariel, was 23 when she died of a heroin overdose in 2007. “I don’t want other families to go through the trauma that I did,” Eaton said. Sen. Julie Rosen, a Republican from Vernon Center, said the manufacturers and distributors have been “kicking and screaming a little bit” but now tell her they want to be part of the solution. “I asked them, ‘What does that look like?’ and I have not received an answer,” she added. “We’re spending billions on an issue you helped create,” Rosen said. “I don’t think we’re asking for a whole lot for the amount that they are shipping and manufacturing for the state of Minnesota, and the amount of deaths that we have.” The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, also known as PhRMA, opposed last year’s bill. While the trade group says it supports ”an extensive set of policy recommendations ,” including measures to curb overprescribing, it opposes this year’s bill as well. “Unfortunately, what’s being proposed — taxing legitimately prescribed medicines that patients rely on for legitimate medical needs to raise revenues for the state — ignores evidence-based solutions, sets a dangerous precedent and ultimately won’t help patients and families,” Nick McGee, the trade group’s director of public affairs, said in an email to The Associated Press. Claim: Minnesota lawmakers: Tax drug makers over opioid crisis.
Lawmakers and activists are making a push to force drug companies to pay more of the costs of the opioid crisis, and they got a boost Wednesday from a cousin of the most famous Minnesotan to die from the addictive drugs, the late rock star Prince.

Paragraph: The story does not talk about costs, which was disappointing. The costs of intensive medical therapy can easily be identified. Using an online pharmacy we calculated the costs to be about $1,500 to $2,000 annually for medical therapy, using generic drugs. Using the Health Care Blue Book, we found the average cost of coronary artery bypass sugery and hospitalization to be about $62,000. We think that this is important information for readers that should have been included. The quantification here was presented in such a way to make it clear to readers that there was no significant benefit found to surgical intervention, which is a fair conclusion to draw from the study. The story says, “In the Stich study, 41% of patients assigned to treatment with drugs alone died during the follow-up period, which averaged five years. That compared with a mortality rate of 36% among patients who received bypass surgery plus medication. Although the relative reduction in risk of death was 14%, the result didn’t meet tests for statistical significance, meaning it could have resulted from chance alone.” That’s a great way to describe the lack of statistical significance. It would have been even more powerful to show readers the actual number of patients who died in each group. The story provides great information about the study itself and about the overall state of the evidence supporting heart surgery. “How best to treat these patients has been fraught with uncertainty,” is one of the more notable phrases from the story. It also says, “Many patients aren’t evaluated for heart surgery to treat diseased arteries because they don’t suffer classic chest pain or because doctors worry that hearts weakened by heart failure won’t benefit from the procedure. Other doctors recommend immediate bypass surgery despite a lack of vigorous studies to support that strategy.” The story does not engage in disease-mongering and takes a very careful approach to describing the types of patients who would be affected by this study’s results. We also like the way they provided snapshots of patients who were in both arms of the study — surgery and non-surgery — at the end of the story, making it clear, as the study did, that both routes can be equally successful. The story brings in some strong independent voices who help make sense of this complicated study: James Fang, a cardiologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, Raymond Gibbons, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic, and Clyde Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Rarely do you see a story that spends as much time with independent experts as it does with the authors of the study. The story does a great job showing how the standard interventions for heart disease stacked up against each other in this study. We wish that some mention had been made of diet and exercise and that at least a sentence had been included about whether there might be differences in outcomes seen as a result of different medication patterns. The story doesn’t make it clear what exactly the patients were taking. The story makes it clear that the range of treatments studied by the authors are widely available. The story makes it clear that there is a great need for more evidence in this field and that this study will be surprising to many clinicians because of a long-held assumption that surgery is the superior option. tudies published in the early 1990s supported the view that bypass surgery provided a better long term outcome. The story does not rely on a news release. Claim: More Options Before Bypass Surgery, Study Finds
The piece gave readers some powerful information to help them sort through the range of factors that should be considered for any medical intervention. The only weakness our reviewers found with the story is the lack of comment about cost. Too often stories present medical options as false choices of best versus worst. They don’t take into consideration the very real differences between patients’ medical histories, diagnoses and expectations. This story should be applauded for giving readers a clear understanding of the complexities of shared decision-making between providers and patients. As noted by one of the experts quoted in the story, “You don’t have a good therapy and a bad therapy, you have a choice.” This is a message that the story gets across very well and is an important one for readers.

Paragraph: "There was no discussion of costs and we always think there should be – even if inconsequential. Overall, we would have wished for more specificity on the data that was reported. There were glimpses of specifity, as when the story reported: ""The latest study does suggest that some subgroups of women might benefit from fish-oil supplements. For instance, those with a history of clinical depression—and thus are at higher risk of post-partum depression—who took 800 milligrams of fish oil daily lowered their risk of getting depressed after the birth by about 4% compared with those who didn’t take fish oil. However, the difference wasn’t statistically significant because of the small number of women in the study who had been previously depressed, said Dr. Makrides, who is also a professor of human nutrition at the University of Adelaide."" But we were disappointed that the story didn’t disclose how much preterm birth risk was reduced – an issue of vital concern to many readers. A preemie and an induction (covered as a harm but also without any numbers provided) aren’t necessarily equal. On balance, we just didn’t get enough data on benefits. There was no broad discussion of safety or side effects. But one issue was raised that was not in the NYT story: ""Women in the fish-oil group had lower rates of pre-term births, particularly births earlier than 34 weeks of gestation. But, there was a trade-off: More women who took the supplement needed their labor to be induced or had caesarean sections because the babies stayed in the womb longer, said Dr. Makrides."" Because it at least nodded in the direction of a specific potential harm issue, this story gets a satisfactory score on this criterion. Satisfactory job and in little ways superior to the NYT story we reviewed on the same study. For example, the language in this story was much more clear and helpful: ""Several previous studies have shown that eating fish during pregnancy helped in the baby’s brain development and in reducing the risk of post-partum depression. That research, however, typically didn’t involve randomized, controlled studies. Instead, women were asked whether or not they chose to eat fish during pregnancy. It could be the case that eating fish is better than taking fish-oil supplements or that women who opt to eat fish are generally healthier and engage in other health-promoting behaviors, Dr. Oken said. The few trials conducted that separated participants, into a group taking fish-oil supplements and another that didn’t, weren’t well done, because the women often knew if they were getting the supplement, and in some cases there wasn’t a comparison group at all, she said."" There was no disease-mongering in this story. Barely adequate – in that the story at least cited the views of an editorial writer in addition to those of one of the study authors. Again, barely adequate in that the story at least discussed a bit about both DHA supplements and fish consumption – but wrapped this into broader healthy alternatives such as ""all pregnant women should strive for balance and eat a variety of foods, including fish."" The story makes it clear that fish oil is widely available and has been widely used for the described uses. However, it would have been helpful for readers/consumers if the story had discussed the challenge of assessing product purity, quality control, etc. – that it’s not just a simple matter of ""just take fish oil."" Past research on this topic is covered quite clearly. It’s clear that the story did not rely on a news release." Claim: Fish Oil Study Finds Little Benefit for Pregnant Women

Some important questions the story didn’t address: how did researchers measure development/intelligence at 18 months? What effect size were they hoping for? In a few small but significant ways, this story used language that explained the findings more clearly than the competing New York Times story. But both stories whiffed on some important questions. Read both full reviews to learn more.