TASK DEFINITION: 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.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: "One theme Sen. Bernie Sanders has repeatedly touched on during his run for the Democratic nomination for president has been the high cost of prescription drugs. His comment during the Feb. 11 Democratic debate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was typical as he rattled off a list of problems with the U.S. health care system: ""In America, we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs."" We asked the Sanders campaign for the source of his claim. We didn't get a response. So we searched on our own. One organization that tracks such things is the International Federation of Health Plans, based in London. Their latest price report, from 2013, lists eight common drugs. Compared with England, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Canada, U.S. prices were far higher, sometimes dramatically so. Consider Nexium, the medicine widely used to treat acid reflux. A prescription that would cost $60 or less in other countries costs, on average, $215 in the United States. And that's just the average. Prices vary widely in this country: In 5 percent of the cases, the cost was $395. ""What Bernie says is true. There's nowhere that pays the same price as America,"" said Tom Sackville, the federation's CEO. In addition, ""there is this huge variation in price across America. Anything above the average is quite unjustified. When you get up to the 95th percentile, you're talking grand robbery."" The findings were similar in an April 2013 study published in the journal Health Affairs, which looked at the prices of brand name drugs in the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, France, Canada and Australia. In each of the three years studied -- 2005, 2007 and 2010 -- U.S. prices were consistently higher. The one exception: Switzerland. In addition, researchers found that, between 2005 and 2010, ""the gap between the United States and other countries seemed to widen."" And it wasn't just new drugs being embraced first in the United States that was driving up costs. They concluded that ""prices for older products rose faster in the United States than in other countries."" But Joel Farley of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Eshelman School of Pharmacy cautioned that the rule doesn't always apply to generic drugs. A 2008 comparison of 19 generic drugs found that some U.S. prices were lower than Canadian prices. ""In some cases it has to do with availability,"" he said. In other cases, a country may set the drug price low and in that fixed-price market ""there's no incentive to go lower."" The Wall Street Journal published an analysis in December that concluded 98 percent of 40 top branded drugs were more expensive in the United States than in England. In Norway, 93 percent of the 40 top branded drugs cost lessthan in the United States. And in Ontario, a comparison of 30 drugs showed that U.S. prices were also higher for 93 percent of the products. Why are the brand name prices so much lower in other countries, and why is there so much variation in the United States? Big customers can negotiate big discounts. So the countries with socialized medicine have a lot of leverage at the negotiating table, the experts told us. In the United States, hospitals, wholesalers and insurance companies all do their own negotiations. The Veterans Administration can -- and does -- negotiate dramatically lower prices. Under Medicaid, the drug companies are required to provide their medicines at a price that's as low as it is for any of their regular customers. But Medicare has been prohibited by law from negotiating lower prices since 2006, and that's a huge chunk of the U.S. health care industry. (When Barack Obama was first running for president, he promised to repeal that Bush-era restriction, but then backed off in an attempt to get passage of the Affordable Care Act.) The pharmaceutical industry says it needs the extra income to pay for research to keep new, desperately needed drugs coming. But with everyone getting a bargain, Americans are financing that research for the rest of the world, experts told us. Yet there's another way to look at the issue, said Amitava Dasgupta, a clinical toxicologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The tablet that costs a dollar in the United States may only cost 20 cents in India, but that drug is far more expensive to the average person in India because their income is so much lower. ""The U.S. subsidizes research for the world,"" he said. ""But I would look at that as philanthropy."" Our ruling Sanders said, ""In America, we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs."" When it comes to brand-name drugs, which yield the highest profit for the pharmaceutical industry, studies support Sanders' claim -- although not always on a drug-by-drug basis. In addition, the differences in price can be dramatic because the U.S. health care system is so splintered, and Medicare is prohibited by law from using its market share to bargain for lower prices. We found one study comparing the United States and Canada that found exceptions for generic drugs, where the profit margin is much lower and which make up a much smaller share of prescription drug spending. But on balance," Claim: In America, we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

SOLUTION: "Sanders said, ""In America, we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs."" When it comes to brand-name drugs, which yield the highest profit for the pharmaceutical industry, studies support Sanders' claim -- although not always on a drug-by-drug basis. In addition, the differences in price can be dramatic because the U.S. health care system is so splintered, and Medicare is prohibited by law from using its market share to bargain for lower prices. We found one study comparing the United States and Canada that found exceptions for generic drugs, where the profit margin is much lower and which make up a much smaller share of prescription drug spending."

PROBLEM: Paragraph: Interior minister Sajid Javid used an exceptional power on Saturday to release medicinal cannabis oil that had been taken from Billy Caldwell, 12, by customs officials at London's Heathrow Airport. Billy's mother, Charlotte Caldwell, had been pleading for the medication to be given back because without it her son suffered from life-threatening seizures. "This case .. has shone a light on the use of cannabis medicine in this country and highlighted the need for the government to explore the issue further, and our handling of these issues further," said Nick Hurd, a junior minister in charge of policing. "As a first step, I can announce today that the government is establishing an expert panel of clinicians to advise ministers on any individual applications to prescribe cannabis-based medicines," he told parliament. Under British law, cannabis is listed as a schedule 1 drug, meaning that it is not recognized as having a therapeutic value. Schedule 1 drugs can be used for research purposes and clinical trials but only under a Home Office license. "I recognize the need to ensure that the approach to licensing works more effectively," Hurd said. Billy Caldwell had been receiving medicinal cannabis oil on prescription by his family doctor for more than a year, but supplies ran out after the interior ministry ordered the doctor to stop prescribing it. Charlotte Caldwell and her son, who normally live in Northern Ireland, made a round trip to Canada to buy more supplies, but the oil was confiscated by customs when they re-entered Britain. Billy was hospitalized days later, suffering from seizures. His condition improved after the medicinal cannabis oil was handed back and on Monday he was discharged from hospital. Several members of parliament from different parties voiced support for the Caldwell family and to the idea of loosening the rules on therapeutic uses of cannabis in responses to Hurd's statement on Monday. Claim: UK signals changes on medicinal cannabis use after epileptic boy's case.

SOLUTION: The British government will look into possible changes to rules on the use of cannabis-based medicines, a minister said on Monday, after an epileptic boy whose medication was confiscated was hospitalized.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: With restrictive abortion laws either being proposed or passed in multiple states in May 2019, Snopes.com readers have inquired about years-old reports about U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais, an anti-abortion Republican legislator from Tennessee who had testified almost two decades earlier during his divorce proceedings that he encouraged two women to seek abortions. Laws dictating near-total bans on abortion in states such as Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio were widely viewed as potential legal challenges to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling and drew nationwide protests. Because DesJarlais touted an anti-abortion agenda in his role as a public official, his story, while not new, was being viewed by critics as an example of political hypocrisy on the issue: Congressman Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) didthree times. https://t.co/yCXHyjzuA3 Christopher J. Hale (@chrisjollyhale) May 17, 2019 The story about DesJarlais is a multi-layered one and stems from both an acrimonious divorce finalized in 2001 and a 2010 political election filled with mudslinging. Although DesJarlais, a physician, has won multiple re-election bids since the story surfaced, it resulted in his being reprimanded by the Tennessee medical licensing board over revelations that he slept with two patients, something he admitted to under oath during his divorce hearings. In 2010, DesJarlais unseated Democratic incumbent Lincoln Davis to represent Tennessee Fourth District in the U.S. House of Representatives but in the days leading up to the election, Davis' campaign launched attack ads centered on accusations that had been levied against DesJarlais a decade earlier. In the course of divorcing him, DesJarlais' now-ex-wife had accused him of "dry-firing" (i.e., pulling the trigger of an unloaded gun) outside her locked bedroom door to intimidate her, holding a gun in his mouth for three hours, as well as engaging in "an incident of physical intimidation at the hospital; and previous threatening behavior i.e. shoving, tripping, pushing down, etc." At the time, his campaign called those accusations "baseless". Those same divorce records were raised again in 2012 when DesJarlais was up for re-election. But unlike in 2010, hundreds of pages of hearings transcripts from 2001 were made public in 2012. (Snopes.com is not linking to the transcript because it contains the names of numerous private citizens.) The transcripts revealed that DesJarlais admitted to the incident with the gun, saying: "It was never a loaded gun. It was never a suicide attempt. It was an attention-seeking act and I've testified to that." He added that he thought his actions were "very shameful." During those same hearings, DesJarlais testified under oath that his wife at the time had one abortion before the two met. After the two entered into a relationship, he subsequently supported her decisions to undergo two abortions before the couple married in 1995. "The second two [abortions], one she was on [an] experimental drug called Lupron and was not supposed to have gotten pregnant," DesJarlais testified. "There were potential risks. It was a therapeutic. One was after she had gotten back from Desert Storm and things were not going well between us and it was a mutual decision." He added, "I don't think that it was easy for either one of us. I think it was a very difficult and poor choice and I think that there are probably regrets both ways." DesJarlais also testified that he had a sexual relationship with a then-24-year-old patient, and that the woman had claimed he got her pregnant. According to the transcript, as part of a reconciliation attempt the couple orchestrated a recorded phone call in an effort to find out whether the young woman was telling the truth. In the call, DesJarlais pressured the young woman to seek an abortion and offered to drive her to Atlanta for her to do so although he stated during his testimony he never believed her to be pregnant in the first place. DesJarlais' then-wife's attorney, L. Thomas Austin, asked him if the young woman was one of "the kind of women you prey on, Doctor," to which DesJarlais responded, "No. Obviously it was a huge mistake." During the same hearing, DesJarlais admitted to having an affair with a second patient while writing her prescriptions, lavishing her with an $875 watch and buying her a plane ticket to Las Vegas. He also admitted to flings with a representative from a drug firm and with co-workers. Media reports prompted Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a government-accountability advocacy organization, to file a complaint about DesJarlais' conduct with the Tennessee Department of Health, who fined him $500 for unprofessional conduct over his affairs with the two patients. DesJarlais responded to the controversy on a radio show in December 2012, saying that he believed "God gave me a second chance," adding: "And I think unless some people see some sort of political advantage to grace and redemption they don't want to practice it on their own. I don't know what the reason is behind that, but I know God's forgiven me. I simply ask my fellow Christians and constituents to consider doing the same for me." (Our attempts to reach DesJarlais' current spokesman, Brendan Thomas, were unsuccessful.) The story has continued to haunt Desjarlais. It came up in 2015 when he voted for a bill that would have banned most abortions after the 20th week, and again in 2017 in stories about Tim Murphy, an anti-abortion Pennsylvania Republican who retired after his mistress revealed he had asked her to get an abortion. Nevertheless, DesJarlais has won every bid for re-election since the story broke. Claim: Anti-abortion Republican U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais testified that he encouraged some women to have abortions.

SOLUTION:
"Despite a fixation by his political opponents on the details of a previous marriage from the 1990s, the people of Tennessee's Fourth District have shown they care much more about the Congressman's job in Washington than the details of a divorce," a spokesman for DesJarlais said in 2015.