Health Exchange Tech Problems Point To A Thornier Issue

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I'm Robert Siegel. It's been one week since the healthcare.gov website went live. The rollout of the federal
site where people can sign up for health insurance has been bumpy to say the least. And then overnight,
healthcare.gov went down again for additional software fixes. The Obama administration says the technology
powering the marketplace is buckled under unexpectedly high traffic.
But as NPR's Elise Hu reports, healthcare.gov's glitches point to a much thornier problem.
ELISE HU, BYLINE: Like many others, Philadelphia-based jazz musician Suzanne Cloud(ph) tried to sign up
online for health insurance, but she hit a technical snag, a few snags.
SUZANNE CLOUD: It kind of like - and something went wrong and it just went to a page with all kinds of html
stuff.
HU: The Obama administration says contractors built a system that could handle 50,000 people using the site at
once. But when coverage signup opened last Tuesday, the traffic was five times larger than what they planned for.
JAY CARNEY: That is the principal reason that there's a problem.
HU: White House press secretary Jay Carney.
CARNEY: We are doing several things at once, including adding server capacity and making software changes to
make the system more efficient to handle higher volume.
HU: We don't know whether high volume translates to high enrollment because the administration won't release
enrollment numbers for another month. On one of her later attempts to sign up, Suzanne Cloud hit the part of the
process that gets complicated for the computer.
CLOUD: The site is supposed to assess the information that you've given them and then give you what you're
eligible for. I've never gotten beyond that point.
HU: In order for the software to check on which coverage and subsidies you're eligible for, it has to ping requests
to the IRS database, Social Security records and Homeland Security data within seconds.
CLAY JOHNSON: It's, you know, called an integration catastrophe really where you've got lots of different
software talking to lots of different things, and an unprecedented amount of scale.
HU: Clay Johnson was a programmer inside government as a White House Innovation Fellow. He looked for
ways that the federal government could improve its tech services and save money.
JOHNSON: I think that there's something more to it here.
HU: He points to a bigger picture problem that's not limited to healthcare.gov. It's how the government selects the
contractors hired to build these IT behemoths.
JOHNSON: You know, one might look at this and go, hey, why can't we get, you know, the smartest people from
Google and from Facebook and from Twitter to come and help work out these problems? The problem is is that
the way that federal contracting works is so burdensome that the only people that get contracts like this are

experts in lobbying or experts at the regulations that require you to sort of get those contracts. And they're not
experts at doing the job of building these websites.
CLOUD: The main contractor behind the federal health exchange software is a global firm called CGI Federal,
which didn't want to speak to us for this story. Johnson says it's not that CGI or other contractors behind
healthcare.gov are bad, they're probably just not the best, because the best people at these tech solutions don't
bother applying.
JOHNSON: In order to fix these problems in the long term, what we've got to do is encourage the federal
government to open its doors to smaller, more agile vendors who are better at solving these larger problems.
HU: Johnson calls for simplifying the bidding process so more firms compete against incumbents, making
everyone up their game. He proposes starting small, with tiny contracts, because changing a deeply entrenched
contracting environment is a systemic, complicated and long-term challenge. For the shorter term issues with
health exchange signup, the White House message is this.
CARNEY: Well, we're not satisfied with the performance. We can do better.
HU: Despite her many failed attempts to sign up, Suzanne Cloud is staying hopeful.
CLOUD: Just calm down, be patient.
HU: It's a reminder she gives herself every day. She still hasn't completed her healthcare enrollment. Elise Hu,
NPR News, Washington.

State Health Exchanges: The Good, The Bad, And The Glitches
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Suzanne Cloud, that jazz musician we just heard, lives in Pennsylvania, one of the majority of states using the
federal government's system for the new health insurance marketplace. And as we've just heard, the federal
system has been plagued with problems. But what about the 16 states and District of Columbia that decided to set
up their own insurance exchanges? How are they doing?
We're going to get a report card from Jocelyn Guyer. She's with the health policy consulting firm Manatt Health
Solutions. They advise states, foundations and businesses on understanding federal policy when it comes to
implementing the Affordable Care Act. Jocelyn Guyer, thanks for coming in.
JOCELYN GUYER: Thanks.
BLOCK: And let's talk first about some success stories. Which states seem to be doing pretty well?
GUYER: We've got a handful of states that are doing well. Kentucky is at the top of the list, but also Rhode
Island, Connecticut and New York are doing well. And then, to varying degrees we're seeing Minnesota,
Washington, Oregon also having relatively smooth rollouts.
BLOCK: Okay. Well, you put Kentucky at the top of that list. And let's talk about that. They've recorded 14,000
completed applicants, have about 7,000 people enrolled. What did Kentucky do right, as far as you can tell?
GUYER: Kentucky did a couple of things right. It was a little bit less ambitious about its website. It has fewer
bells and whistles than the federal site in some of the other states and so they were able to really focus in on the
quality and make sure that the site was running well and test it thoroughly.
The other thing is that the Kentucky site is run by an agency that includes all the key parties who have to be
involved - the Medicaid agency, the folks running their marketplace and the Human Resources agency, which
traditionally is responsible for some of the key tasks around figuring out who is eligible for coverage.
BLOCK: Well, let's talk about some of the states with problems, and in particular, let's talk about Maryland. It
was an early adopter of the marketplace. They've been working on the system for three years but they had a whole
lot of trouble when they started out last week. They had to delay the opening of the exchange, I think, for four
hours and then when it did open, lots more problems. So what went wrong there?
GUYER: A couple of things. Well, the first thing that happened is a good news story, which is, like the federal
exchange, Maryland had many more people seeking them out than they had expected. At the same time,
Maryland, like the federal exchange, also clearly has significant technology issues that it is working through and
confronting.
BLOCK: Right. And we've heard these described as glitches. It kind of reminds me of "The Princess Bride" when
Inigo Montoya says, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. These sound like
more than glitches to me. These sound like fundamental problems with the site.
GUYER: I think of a glitch as you fly to Ohio and you forget your toothpaste. This is more like the airlines have
lost your luggage or they've cancelled your flight. These are more serious issues than glitches and we are seeing
them across the country.
BLOCK: And anything that ties this together, in terms of what is going wrong when people are not able to get
onto the system or once they get there, they can't get to where they need to go?
GUYER: I think part of what happened is that people anticipated that the really tricky part of this process would
be bumping up against the federal hub. And that's the system that helps states verify your income, makes sure that

you're a citizen or lawfully residing. And many states were very focused on making sure the connections to that
hub would go well.
In some respects, what's tripped them up has been what seems like it should have been an easier task, which is
making sure people could create accounts and then get their identity established. To me, in some respects, it's a
little bit like, you know, when I get my kids to finally do their homework over the weekend and then they forget
to turn it in.
BLOCK: When you look overall at how enrollment has gone in this first week, would you have expected to have
seen more people enrolled by now or is this about where you thought we'd be?
GUYER: Well, I would've expected to see more people enrolled, but I will say that we actually have - there's a
little bit of a hidden story, which is that some states are finding very efficient ways to sign people up for the
Medicaid coverage that's a key part of the Affordable Care Act. And there's states like Illinois, West Virginia and
Arkansas, and what they're doing is using information they already have on hand to identify people who are
eligible for Medicaid and then making it very easy for them to go ahead and sign up for that coverage.
And together, they've gotten close to enrolling over 100,000 people using those simplified enrollment strategies.
And that may be the hidden story of success from this first week or two.
BLOCK: Jocelyn Guyer with Manatt Health Solutions, a health policy consulting firm here in Washington.
Jocelyn, thanks.
GUYER: Thank you.

Imam: 'We Can't Imagine' The Beauty Of Paradise After Death

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I'm Robert Siegel. This week we're hearing from people about a subject for which there are no hard facts, no
confirmation, but a great deal of deeply held belief. What do we think about what comes next?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHEEK TO CHEEK")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (singing) Heaven. I'm in heaven.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED CLIPS)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Everybody now alive will die some day.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: We will retain an awareness beyond this life.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: Whatever the soul wishes for and desires in paradise, that will be there.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: There'll be no more suffering and tears.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: Where we finally learned to be reconciled with God and each other.
SIEGEL: Yesterday, we heard from Reverend Gabriel Salguero, an evangelical Protestant, with some of what he
believes about the afterlife. Today: Mufti Asif Umar. He's a Muslim scholar and cleric in St. Louis. Umar is the
29 year old son of immigrants from India. I asked him what he believed, but he made no I-believe statements in
response. Mufti Umar told me what Muslims believe. For example: when you die, angels ask you three questions.
Questions about your faith, to which there are correct answers.
MUFTI ASIF UMAR: Once these questions are answered in that manner, then they will be shown by those two
angels their place in paradise. A door will open inside their grave, and it will be said to them that, yes, you have
answered correctly. And this will be the abode that will be prepared for them once the Judgment Day is over.
So the place of the grave will then be a source of comfort to that person. Just as a mother holds her child very
close to her, that sense of comfort that the child feels, this is the sense of comfort that a believer will feel inside
his or her grave.
SIEGEL: What happens to people who don't answer the three questions as you did?
UMAR: The grave will tighten on them so much and, you know, the ribs will be crushed. So that's, you know, if a
person was a disbeliever.
SIEGEL: On Judgment Day how does God decide since most of us commit good deeds and bad deeds? Is there a
weighing of our record?
UMAR: You know, there are sayings of the Prophet Muhammad which mention that each person will be asked
certain questions, like, how did you spend your life and how did you spend your youth? You know, how did you
earn your wealth and how did you spend it?

And, you know, they will have to answer in front of God. And then, at the same time, the different acts will be
judged. For example, the first thing that God will judge a person on will be their prayers. Did they pray to God?
Did they pray to only one god?
Whatever good deeds the person has versus their bad deeds, we believe that they will be put in a scale. So if the
good deeds outweigh the bad deeds, then, you know, they will be considered successful, whereas if the bad deeds
outweigh the good deeds, then they will be punished.
SIEGEL: Doesn't God already know the answers?
UMAR: He does know the answers but that just shows how just he is. To make the person comfortable to know
that, yes, we were actually judged in the court of God. If a person was punished, for example, in the hellfire
without even being judged by God, they may just be throw into the hellfire and they may think that, like, what is
this? But God actually judges each and every person. It just magnifies again the description of God, one of his
attributes being the just, the most just.
SIEGEL: Everybody gets a fair hearing in this.
UMAR: Yes. Correct.
SIEGEL: If you're sent to the hellfire is that a permanent sentence for eternity or can one escape it?
UMAR: You know, the only sin that Muslims believe is not forgivable by God is the sin of associating partners
with him. So, for those who committed many sins in this world, but they still had the belief in one God in their
heart, you know, they may face some time in the fire of hell, but eventually we do believe that it is possible to be
removed from the hellfire after serving a punishment.
There's actually a saying, again of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, which mentions that the last
person to be taken out from the hellfire who has just an atom's weight of belief in their heart, even the lowest of
paradise for that last person will be 10 times larger than this world, and its valuables will be 10 times more
valuable than everything contained in this world from its beginning until its end. So if that's the lowest paradise,
you know, one can just imagine how large the greatest paradise would be.
SIEGEL: There are many non-Muslims who have heard exactly one thing about Muslim expectations of the
afterlife, which is that those who die as martyrs enjoy the company of many virgins and paradise after death. Do
you believe in that?
UMAR: Anyone who dies as a true martyr in Islam, will, of course, enjoy the pleasures of paradise. And one of
the pleasures of paradise is, you know, maidservants, and any type of desire that one wants to fulfill in paradise,
one will get to enjoy. And this is what, you know, God has mentioned in the Quran. But again, when we're talking
about a martyr, you know, we're not talking about someone who has committed an act against, you know,
innocent people.
SIEGEL: Yeah.
UMAR: Or any - for example, a suicide bomber. This is not the belief in Islam at all. It's completely against the
teachings of Islam.
SIEGEL: Do you believe that in the afterlife we meet up with loved ones from this life?
UMAR: Yes, I do. For those of our loved ones who will be fortunate to be in paradise, you know, if we are
fortunate to be in paradise as well, each and every person will be entitled to his or her own paradise. While at the
same time, you know, they will be able to meet up with each other and just as in this world how, you know, a
group of friends gets together and sits down, has a nice conversation, inhabitants of paradise will be able to get
together and have these types of conversations, you know, in their palaces or in their abodes that God has
prepared for them.

There's a saying of the Prophet Muhammad that says that the prophet Adam was created at the height of 60 cubits,
which is about 90 feet.
SIEGEL: That's very big.
UMAR: Yeah, that's very big. So this will be the appearance of the inhabitants of paradise. They will actually be
that height.
SIEGEL: People will be giants, you say.
UMAR: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
UMAR: Ninety feet tall.
SIEGEL: Yeah.
UMAR: Correct. And there will be an age of peak strength which, you know, they will remain that age for
eternity.
SIEGEL: Will there be Cardinals games in paradise to talk about?
(LAUGHTER)
UMAR: Again, you know, whatever the soul wishes for and desires in paradise, then that will be there. So if an
inhabitant of paradise asked God that, you know, can we have Cardinals games going on here in paradise, then
certainly God will, you know...
SIEGEL: Well, you might as well ask for season tickets at that point.
(LAUGHTER)
UMAR: Certainly. Anything that you can get, you know, in this world. But, you know, God is basically saying in
the Quran that there is a limit to one's imagination and what can think, because in paradise what one will be able
to see there is something that no heart can even think of. So you can just imagine...
SIEGEL: But here, Mufti, here there seems to be a contradiction I want you to resolve for me.
UMAR: Mm-hmm.
SIEGEL: Which is on the one hand you're saying the Quran would say what happens in the afterlife in paradise is
beyond imagination. On the other hand, you come away with rather detailed descriptions of it.
UMAR: Yes. I mean, see, in the Quran, God does give some descriptions of paradise. But even by the
descriptions, we can't imagine how the certain things that have been described in paradise, how beautiful they are.
Or we can't imagine how severe the torment of the hellfire is.
There are certain verses in Quran which describe, you know, torments of the hellfire, and some beautiful
descriptions of paradise. But even by those descriptions, we cannot imagine the true beauty of it until one actually
sees it.
SIEGEL: Well, Mufti Umar, thank you very much for talking with us.
UMAR: Thank you, Robert.

SIEGEL: Mufti Asif Umar, is the imam and religious affairs director of the Islamic Foundation of Greater St.
Louis. You can join our conversation about the afterlife on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, or Instagram using the
hashtag nprafterlife.

Sleigh Bells: Stomping The Fine Line Between Sweetness And Menace
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
The musical duo Sleigh Bells makes music that is very noisy and very fun. Band members Alexis Krauss and
Derek Miller create hard-edged pop songs influenced by hip-hop, heavy metal, marching band rhythms and
stadium chants. Our music critic Will Hermes says their third album, "Bitter Rivals," both leans on what has
worked for them in the past and pushes their boundaries.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WILL HERMES, BYLINE: Formula can be a blessing and a curse. The Ramones had one that was so great they
were kind of trapped by it. Sleigh Bells' formula is breathtakingly great, too, and their third record reconfirms it.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HERMES: The group is still defined by brutal stomp-clap rhythms, guitar noise, over-modulated shout-singing
and Alexis Krauss' suburban, tough-girl persona. But this is album three, and on it, you can hear Sleigh Bells
fighting against their formula. It's a positive development. There's more melody, more singing, a lot of acoustic
guitar, although the instrument takes a beating, and some impressively bulked-up '90s-style R&B.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HERMES: Even more startling are the down-tempo songs, which somehow manage to sound both sweet and
menacing, like this one, titled "To Hell With You." It sounds like a '60s girl group conducting military drills.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HERMES: The upshot of this record is Sleigh Bells trying to figure out how to make their subversive pop music
actually pop without losing the subversiveness. It's a fine line and they are thoroughly stomping on it.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: The new album by Sleigh Bells is called "Bitter Rivals." Our critic, Will Hermes is author of the book,
"Love Goes To Buildings On Fire."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: Let us know what you like about the program and what you don't like. You can write to us at NPR.org.
Just click on the work Contact at the bottom of the page.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And if you want to hear something again or catch up on what you've missed, it's all online at
NPR.org/AllThingsConsidered.
SIEGEL: And to follow our program and us on Twitter, I'm Robert Siegel @RSeigel47.
BLOCK: I'm @NPRMelissaBlock. Our co-host Audie Cornish is @NPRAudie.
SIEGEL: And the show is @NPRATC.

Letters: Some Cheers, Some Boos, For Afterlife Series

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
It's time now for your letters. Most Americans agree that there is an afterlife. But what does it look like? What's
waiting for us on the other side? What if there isn't another side? Well, this week's series of discussions about the
afterlife started with my conversation yesterday with the Reverend Gabriel Salguero. He is the pastor of The
Lamb's Church in New York City, and he is president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NEWS)
REVEREND GABRIEL SALGUERO: So I'm going to see people from across the geographic spectrum and
across the racial/cultural spectrum. I think that - I don't think there's a need for religion in heaven because we are
already in the presence of the absolute.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Well, many of you had your own opinions on the afterlife and our conversation. William Saidel(ph) of Cherry
Hill, New Jersey, wishes that conversation never happened. He writes this: Why in the world is ALL THINGS
CONSIDERED wasting a valuable block of time in a news show featuring a story about investigating beliefs
about the afterworld, something we can never know about no matter how deep the thoughts any commentator
could make on the topic?
SIEGEL: Others listeners were more direct.
BLOCK: I never heard such twaddle, writes Frank Harris of Horseshoe Bay, Texas.
SIEGEL: But J.C. Harris(ph) of Des Moines, Washington, enjoyed my conversation with Reverend Salguero.
And he wrote this on our website: It is becoming rarer and rarer to hear the views of the religious on NPR. He
was a fine speaker, not just because his views somewhat match my own, but his gentle and thoughtful sincerity
really came through.
BLOCK: And some of you shared your own philosophy on the afterlife. Peter Burrows(ph) from Commerce City,
Colorado, isn't sure of what comes next, but he's keeping his options open. Refers back to Pascal's wager and he
puts his version this way: I live by what I call Burrows' hedge. My working life has been spent in engineering and
science, and I'm confident in the assumption that God does not exist. But he goes on, just in case, it's an easy side
bet to live life in a way that, if I find out later I'm poorly informed about the afterlife or whatever's next, I'm not
going to be in any big trouble.
SIEGEL: My series of conversations continues today with an interview about Islam and the afterlife. You can
weigh in about this life or the next by visiting npr.org and by clicking on contact us

Verdi's Gift: Wringing Catchy Music From Touchy Subjects

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Today, we mark one of this year's two great operatic bicentennials. Two hundred years ago this May, Richard
Wagner was born in Leipzig. And 200 years ago this week, a baby was born in an Italian town midway between
Bologna and Milan. When his father, a local innkeeper, registered the baby's birth with the local French imperial
authorities, the boy was given a properly French official first name: Joseph. But nobody called him that. They
called him Giuseppe. Giuseppe Verdi.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: Giuseppe Verdi's operas include "Aida" "Rigoletto," "La traviata," "Nabucco," lots more famous operas.
And for more on the life and works of Giuseppe Verdi, here is John Mauceri, who's an American conductor,
producer and arranger who joins us from London. Welcome to the program.
JOHN MAUCERI: Thank you for having me.
SIEGEL: Two hundred years ago, Verdi was born, and we're still talking about him and his operas are performed
all over. Why is Verdi so enduring?
MAUCERI: Well, you know, I think one of the incredible achievements that he had besides the fact that the wrote
30 operas, which makes his input into the repertory huge, was that he had this ability to create popular music
dramas that were about something. So there's this kind of earworm music where you get these tunes that you just
know from the day you were born, seemingly, and yet when you see the operas, you realize that they're actually
about important subjects, which are just as important today.
SIEGEL: When you say important subjects (unintelligible) "La traviata" is about sexual mores of...
MAUCERI: Well, wait a minute. Let's go even further than that. I mean, has anybody put a prostitute on a stage
as the main character and she's the best person in the story? I mean, all the guys around her who are pretending to
be this and that, you know, they're all cowards and they're hypocrites, and she's the one who becomes the most
valuable, the most courageous heroine on the stage.
SIEGEL: "Aida" was hardly contemporary, but you would say it also raised a big issue.
(SOUNDBITE OF OPERA, "AIDA")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing in foreign language)
MAUCERI: That one, like a number of Verdi operas, is about racism. I mean, you know, the slave girl, who is
Ethiopian, i.e., black African is in love with the military leader who is Egyptian. So that opera deals with racism
as well as imperialism and slavery. So there you are again.
(SOUNDBITE OF OPERA, "AIDA")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing in foreign language)

SIEGEL: So when these operas were first staged, people could expect great tunes but also some drama that
resonated with important concerns about life and society.
MAUCERI: Yeah. And those concerns were so important that the censors were always watching, and there were
sometimes what - we hear about riots or demonstrations of the public at some of those premiers because it was
provocative and it was about important issues.
SIEGEL: For Italians, is Verdi a latter-day Dante, Petrarch, one of the great Italians in the pantheon?
MAUCERI: Yeah. For Italians, there's no question that Verdi stands as the greatest composer they ever produced.
He's just the guy. He is just - equals music. And that is an extraordinary achievement. After all, the Italians
invented opera in 1598. They named it. So for them to choose one person to be on their money, to be the names of
their music conservatories says everything you might want to know about the Italian's attitude toward Giuseppe
Verdi.
SIEGEL: Is it true, really, that "Traviata" or "Aida" actually got bad reviews when they first came out?
MAUCERI: Oh, yeah. When I was a student in college, I did a paper on Verdi in New York, and I went into the
archives. And I read the reviews in The New York Times and the New York Herald of the day after the first
"Traviata," the day after the first "Macbeth," they are so condescending. And so they refer to him as Senor Verdi.
You know, there's a great review of "Macbeth," saying, you know, within the first five minutes, we realized that
Senor Verdi was totally incapable of encompassing Shakespeare's great play.
And, first of all, he was being reviewed as if it were an open - a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. That is the
only thing I could say is that it had the same vitriol that you sense with certain kinds of critics when they talk
about Broadway musicals. In other words, he was not Stephen Sondheim. He was Andrew Lloyd Webber. And it
would be as if Andrew decided to write a musical based on "King Lear," you know...
SIEGEL: So who was the Stephen Sondheim of those days? Who was the person who we thought was writing
great operas?
MAUCERI: That was a very good question. Generally, Wagner.
SIEGEL: Wagner, yeah.
MAUCERI: Yeah, yeah. Because he was serious. And that's why when - presumably the question was asked after
Wagner had written one of his tones on the theory of the theater, they - someone came up to Verdi and said,
Maestro Verdi, we've just read Maestro Wagner's books on the theory of the theater. Do you have a theory of the
theater? And Verdi took a moment and said, yes, I do. The theater should be full.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: Is there a particular moment from a Verdi opera which you've called upon to present the single piece of
evidence that demonstrates what this man was all about and what he created that you would directly be visiting
music colleges from Mars to listen to?
MAUCERI: Well, that's, of course, a hard question. But what comes to mind is the central moment of the first
scene of act two of "La traviata"
(SOUNDBITE OF OPERA, "LA TRAVIATA")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing in foreign language)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Singing in foreign language)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing in foreign language)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Singing in foreign language)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing in foreign language)
MAUCERI: Here's why. In the second act of "La traviata," we know that the girl, our Violetta, who is a
courtesan, has moved in with her boyfriend. And she has decided to become a middle-class housewife as it were.
And Violetta and her beloved meet only for something like two minutes in the very center of this act.
And she says, love me, Alfredo, love me. And she leaves. She leaves him presumably forever. And this is why
Verdi is so amazing. The scene is totally symmetrical, as if it were built, you know, like a Greek temple. And yet
the passion of this little two-minute moment, it's the only moment in that entire 40-minute scene where the two
protagonists meet.
(SOUNDBITE OF OPERA, "LA TRAVIATA")
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Singing in foreign language)
MAUCERI: I have to say that it is one of the most shattering moments in music theater. And she sings this tune,
(singing in foreign language), which is the motive of her descent toward death. So that, for me, is that great
moment.
SIEGEL: John Mauceri, thank you very much for talking with us today.
MAUCERI: I'm very happy to be with you, Robert.
SIEGEL: Conductor John Mauceri, talking with us about Giuseppe Verdi, who was born in Italy 200 years ago
this week.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

Obama: End Shutdown, Raise Debt Ceiling, Then We'll Talk

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
This afternoon, President Obama spent an hour answering questions from reporters at the White House. He,
again, urged Republicans to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling. He also said he'll negotiate with the
GOP on anything but not while the nation's economic credibility is on the line.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If you're in negotiations around buying somebody's house, you don't get to
say, well, let's talk about the price I'm going to pay, and if you don't give the price then I'm going to burn down
your house.
BLOCK: NPR's Ari Shapiro was in the briefing room, he has this report.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: This news conference comes at just about the halfway point between the start of the
government shutdown and the end of the nation's borrowing authority. Obama hoped the shutdown would never
happen. He says the latter crisis of defaulting on the nation's bills must never happen.
OBAMA: To actually permit default, according to many CEOs and economists, would be - and I'm quoting here "insane, catastrophic, chaos" - these are some of the more polite words. Warren Buffet likened default it to a
nuclear bomb, a weapon too horrible to use.
SHAPIRO: The Treasury Department says on October 17th, the government will no longer have the ability to
borrow money to pay its bills. That could lead the U.S. to default on its debts. More and more Republicans are
asking whether blowing through that deadline is really so bad. They say the dire warnings amount to rumors and
fear mongering. Obama recognized that chatter and insisted that failing to raise the debt ceiling could create
another recession.
OBAMA: And this is the creditworthiness of the United States that we're talking about. This is our word. This is
our good name. This is real.
SHAPIRO: A few hours before this news conference, Obama spoke with House Speaker John Boehner. Based on
descriptions from both sides of the conversation, nobody's position has changed. But there might be a glimmer of
hope. This afternoon, Obama said if Republicans lift this threat for a short while, even if they only fund the
government and raise the debt ceiling for a few weeks or months, he'll meet them for negotiations.
OBAMA: This will not get resolved. We're not going to calm creditors until they see Speaker Boehner call up a
bill that reopens the government and authorizes the secretary of Treasury to pay our bills on time.
SHAPIRO: While he expressed hope that Congress will do what he wants, he also said the administration is,
quote, "exploring all contingencies." And he said Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will give Congress more detail in
a hearing on Thursday.
OBAMA: Let me be clear: no option is good in that scenario. There is no silver bullet. There is no magic wand
that allows us to wish away the chaos that could result if, for the first time in our history, we don't pay our bills on
time.
SHAPIRO: He firmly ruled out taking any unilateral action to raise the debt ceiling. Obama said if he used the
14th Amendment to make an end run around Congress, as some as have suggested, the move would get tied up in

litigation, and at the minimum, it would make people buying Treasury bills nervous. At this moment, Obama was
scheduled to be in Asia, attending some important trade summits. He called off that trip to deal with these crises.
And he said that kind of last minute cancellation does real damage to American credibility abroad.
OBAMA: In the same way that a CEO of a company, if they want to close a deal, aren't going to do it by phone,
you know, they want to show up and look at somebody eye to eye and tell them why it's important and shake
hands on a deal, the same thing is true with respect to world leaders.
SHAPIRO: Obama said the U.S. can bounce back from this sort of thing once or twice, but not all the time.
OBAMA: And to all the American people, I apologize that you have to go through this stuff every three months,
it seems like. And Lord knows I'm tired of it.
SHAPIRO: Sounding rueful, he said, at some point, we've got to break these habits. Ari Shapiro, NPR News, the
White House.

Supreme Court Weighs Easing Limits On Campaign Contributions

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court once again took up the debate over money and politics. Just three years ago, a
five-to-four conservative majority ruled that corporations are entitled to indirectly spend unlimited amounts on
candidate elections as long as they do it separately from the candidates own campaign.
Well, today the court moved on to the subject of direct contributions to campaigns. At issue was the overall cap
on contributions by wealthy donors. NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: Since the post-Watergate campaign finance reforms of the 1970s, Congress has
always maintained limits on aggregate amounts that individuals can give to candidates, and the Supreme Court
has consistently upheld those limits. The law bars individuals from giving more than a total of $48,000 to
candidates and $75,000 to party committees.
Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon bumped up against the limit when he gave to 16 candidates. Wanting
to give to 12 more, he challenged the cap in court, backed by the Republican National Committee. On the
Supreme Court steps today, his lawyer, Erin Murphy, denied she was arguing for more speech for the wealthy.
ERIN MURPHY: Ultimately, the First Amendment's answer is that we just want more speech from everybody.
It's not a question of who gets to speak. Everybody gets to speak as much as they want to and in the ways that
they find most effective.
TOTENBERG: But advocates of campaign finance reform hotly disputed that claim, among them Reverend
William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP.
REVEREND WILLIAM BARBER: The Supreme Court, if it rules in favor of the McCutcheons, will be
undermining our democracy and allowing it to be bought and paid for by the highest bidder.
TOTENBERG: Inside the high court, lawyer Murphy assured the justices that striking down the aggregate limits
would not give undue influence to wealthy donors. Various rules and regulations enacted since 1976 would
prevent that, she explained.
Justice Breyer said he'd examined all those rules and found, for all practical purposes, no change. And if you want
to say is this reality, turn on your television set where it certainly is. Justice Kagan posed this question: Suppose
there are 150 House members of one party who have completely safe seats and 30 or 40 of their party who are at
risk, so the 150 safe seat members give a joint fundraiser. Any individual can contribute the maximum $5,200 to
each of them for the primary and general election cycles. That way, the 150 raise $800,000, and they can then
transfer that money to the 30 or 40 members who are at risk.
Lawyer Murphy doubted the scenario, but said, even if you accept it, you can't have a law that's designed to
prevent circumvention when it limits everyone's speech. Justice Ginsburg, whose speech is at stake? Most people
couldn't come near the limit.
Next up was lawyer Bobby Burchfield, representing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell
wants to get rid of all contribution limits, seeing them as an infringement on free speech. Justice Kagan said that
if the aggregate limits are eliminated, I can write checks totaling $3.5 million to the Republican Party or the
Democratic Party. Worse yet, the speaker of the House or some other office holder could solicit that money. Are
you suggesting that party leaders are not going to owe me anything? Lawyer Burchfield replied: gratitude and
influence are not considered to be quid pro quo corruption.
Defending the aggregate limits in the law, the government's lawyer Donald Verrilli faced a battery of skeptical
questions from the court's five conservatives. Chief Justice Roberts, possibly the swing vote in this case, asked a
question that he repeated in various forms throughout the argument. I agree with you on the aggregation, he said,

but it has the consequence of limiting how many candidates an individual can support. How can it be that you can
give the maximum $5,200 to nine candidates, but not 10? Is there any way to get around that problem?
Solicitor General Verrilli observed that Mr. McCutcheon is only limited in direct contributions to campaigns. He
can spend as much of his considerable fortune as he wants to independently advocating for the election of more
candidates. Justice Scalia: If gratitude is corruption, don't these independent expenditures evoke gratitude?
Verrilli replied that the court, for nearly 40 years, has drawn the legal lines this way, distinguishing between
independent expenditures and direct contributions.
Justice Kennedy, incredulous: So your answer is that's the law? Justice Kagan puckishly poked her conservative
colleagues on that point. I suppose that if this court is having second thoughts about its rulings, that independent
expenditures are not corrupting, we could change that part of the law. Nobody in the court chamber thought
Justice Kagan was seriously expecting that to happen.
Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.

Asian Allies' Anxieties Rise Amid Washington Paralysis

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
The ongoing government shutdown has costs - lots of them - not just here at home but also overseas. In response
to the shutdown, President Obama canceled a trip this week to visit four nations in Asia. As NPR's Frank Langfitt
reports, that's disappointed and worried some of America's friends in the region who are counting on the U.S. to
stand up to an increasingly assertive China.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: The disappointment over President Obama's no-show in Asia is palpable.
RICHARD HEYDARIAN: Overall, Obama's inability to come has deepened anxieties of allies in the region.
HUANG JING: Psychologically, there will be a far-reaching impact.
SIMON TAY: It's the worst thing that could happen for perhaps the worst reason.
LANGFITT: Those were comments from Richard Heydarian, foreign policy adviser to the Philippine Congress;
Huang Jing, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore; and Simon Tay, who chairs the
Singapore Institute of International Affairs.
After two wars and a financial crisis at home, President Obama pledged to rebalance or pivot American foreign
policy towards Asia, which is becoming the world's center of economic gravity. But as Simon Tay says, there's
been skepticism over America's staying power.
TAY: For sometime already, people are wondering about whether the pivot, which was declared just two years
ago, could really be sustained.
LANGFITT: Leaders here hope Mr. Obama would allay those concerns this week. Instead, his cancelation only
raised more questions. Huang Jing of the National University of Singapore says it just didn't look good.
JING: People are going to say, oh, you cannot even put your own house in order. How could you take care of
Asia Pacific?
LANGFITT: Worse, the shutdown has become a source of humor. Richard Heydarian says it was a punchline
yesterday at a current affairs forum in Manila.
HEYDARIAN: They are all making jokes and quips about America. Oh, they were saying like, do Americans
even have enough money to sustain their own state operations? Can they be a functional state to begin with, never
mind them being a super power?
LANGFITT: For the Philippines, a close U.S. ally, declining American power is nothing to laugh about. The
country is locked in a David-and-Goliath dispute with China over islands in the South China Sea.
HEYDARIAN: For the Filipinos, the viability of America as a state with, you know, enough fiscal resources, it's
a very important issue.
LANGFITT: With Mr. Obama in Washington, China's President Xi Jinping had the stage in Asia to himself. He
spoke at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, meeting in Indonesia, which President Obama had

planned to attend. Simon Tay notes President Xi even became the first foreign leader to address Indonesia's
parliament.
TAY: Which is ironic because in the last 10 years, Indonesia has become a compelling story for democracy. And
rather than having the U.S. leader be the first person to address that joint house, it has been the Chinese.
LANGFITT: Secretary of State John Kerry has come to Asia in Mr. Obama's place. At a speech yesterday at
APEC, he opened with a joke.
SECRETARY JOHN KERRY: In 2004, obviously, I worked very, very hard to replace a president. This is not
what I had in mind.
(LAUGHTER)
LANGFITT: Mr. Kerry then insisted the political stalemate back home had no bearing on America's
commitments here.
KERRY: No one should mistake what is happening in Washington as anything more than a moment of politics.
LANGFITT: Ernie Bower focuses on Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington. He says despite concerns here, the United States can and should become more engaged in Asia.
ERNIE BOWER: I'm confident for a couple of reasons. One, just the geopolitical math is compelling. Asia is
where the majority of our trade is coming. It's the largest growth region in the world.
LANGFITT: And for all the gloomy talk, the U.S. is still the world's dominant military power. Bower thinks
America's engagement in Asia ultimately depends on political will. And if President Obama can make it back
here on another trip, well, that would probably go a long way. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Shanghai.

Ups And Downs In Oil And Gas But Gas Remains A Cheaper Heat
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. For many parts of the country, winter has
already struck and struck hard. Residents in those areas have started turning up their thermostats and according to
federal predictions, they're likely to notice an increase in how much it costs to heat their homes. As Fred Bever
from member station WBUR reports, after years of natural gas being the cheapest heating option out there, the
price is starting to go up.
FRED BEVER, BYLINE: Federal forecasters say temperatures this winter will probably be similar to last year's
although slightly warmer in the West and slightly cooler in the East. Michael Halpert is deputy director at the
federal Climate Prediction Center. He says there are no big weather patterns developing that would change the
winter outlook.
MICHAEL HALPERT: Things such as the El Nino or La Nina phenomena. Right now, we have neutral
conditions. We've had neutral conditions now for well over a year, and it looks like that's going to continue.
BEVER: OK. So that's good for stability in heating bills. But it's not just about how often the furnace fires up. It's
also the cost of the fuel that keeps it stoked. Take oil for instance.
JULIUS WALKER: We can see the supply tightness easing.
BEVER: Julius Walker is the senior energy markets strategist at UBS Investment Bank. He says oil supplies were
limited through late summer by unrest in the Middle East and labor strikes in Libya. But that's changing.
WALKER: Libya in itself - Libyan production, at least in the west of the country, is recovering. We're seeing
some more Sudanese oil supplies reach global markets, and we're seeing continued strength in outputs of U.S.
shale oil and other sources of supply.
BEVER: So that looks good too. Walker is expecting a pullback in crude oil prices, and federal economists are
predicting about a 2 percent cost reduction for homes that heat with oil. It's a different story for natural gas, which
is used in more American homes than any other heating fuel.
Tancred Lidderdale is senior economist at the federal Energy Information Administration, which issued today's
forecasts.
TANCRED LIDDERDALE: So over the last four years, gas prices have been falling and reached a bottom as
natural gas production boomed. Now, actually we see gas prices turning around, starting to rise slowly, and that's
contributing to higher gas prices this winter.
BEVER: Still, even with a predicted 13 percent increase in the cost of heating a home with natural gas, it remains
much more efficient and cheaper than burning oil for heat.
GEORGE PATON: I want to go all the way to 3.5.
BEVER: Which brings us here, to the boiler room of the century-old Hyde Mansion, near the coast of Maine. It's
now a boarding school, and George Paton is the facilities manager. He says until just last year, the campus was
heated by oil.
PATON: It was state of the art in 1913 so...
BEVER: The Hyde School's heating system is state of the art again, with a brand new natural gas-fired furnace.
Paton says the makeover was an easy sell to the school's trustees once they realized that the $200,000 cost of the
retrofit would be immediately paid back by equal savings on lower natural gas prices.

PATON: They're savvy business people. They said, a one-year payback? Let me think about that for a minute.
OK. Let's go. You know, I mean, it's turned out very well.
BEVER: Even with higher natural gas prices this year, the school's heating fuel bill will be about half of what it
was. And according to a long-term federal forecast that extends to 2040, heating with natural gas likely will never
again be as expensive as oil. For NPR news, I'm Fred Bever.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

Researches Who Theorized 'God Particle' Get Physics Nobel

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block. The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded this morning to two scientists from Europe.
Both men independently proposed the existence of the so-called god particle as part of a mechanism to explain
how the universe works. As NPR's Geoff Brumfiel reports, the award was expected but one winner is nowhere to
be found.
GEOFFREY BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: This Nobel Prize has been a long time in coming. The work that won it was
done way back in 1964 by three physicists, a British scientist named Peter Higgs, who works at Edinburgh
University, and two researchers out of Belgium named Francois Englert and Robert Brout. Brout passed away a
few years ago and both Higgs and Englert are in their 80s.
The Prize committee had no problem contacting Englert this morning.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Are you there with us, Professor Englert?
FRANCOIS ENGLERT: Yes, I am on the phone.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Good day and congratulation. How do you feel right now?
ENGLERT: Well, thank you very much. I feel very well, of course.
BRUMFIEL: But Peter Higgs was nowhere to be found.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Actually, we tried quite hard to get a hold of him, but of all the numbers we tried, he did
not answer.
BRUMFIEL: This was surprising because everybody thought that Higgs was going to win this year. Whether it's
referred to as the Higgs mechanism, the Higgs field, the Higgs boson, the theory literally has his name all over it.
In the time since Higgs and Englert first proposed it, it's become a fundamental part of physics. Today, physicists
believe the Higgs mechanism is literally everywhere.
JOE INCANDELA: You could almost think of it as a liquid, a liquid you can't see.
BRUMFIEL: Joe Incandela is a researcher at Cern, the big particle physics lab in Switzerland. This liquid has a
unique property. It can focus the energy of certain sub atomic particles. According to Einstein, energy equals
mass, E=MC2 so the Higgs mechanism gives particles like electrons mass.
INCANDELA: This field, this mechanism that was described in the field made it possible for the electron to have
mass and atoms to exist and for us to exist.
BRUMFIEL: But until last year, there was no proof it actually existed. It was just a set of equations. Then, last
summer, physicists at Cern announced they'd finally detected a particle called the Higgs boson. It was the
smoking gun. Incandela headed one of the teams that made the discovery and they were all watching on giant
screens at the laboratory when the Nobel announcement was made.
INCANDELA: Before they can even finish his last name, the place erupted into huge applause. Everyone, as far
as I can tell, has smile on their face today. It's a great day for us.

BRUMFIEL: But in the midst of all this, where is Peter Higgs? His personal assistant, Alan Walker(ph), says he
doesn't know.
ALAN WALKER: My assumption is he is somewhere in Scotland.
BRUMFIEL: At an undisclosed location?
WALKER: Well, it's a location I don't know.
BRUMFIEL: Walker says Higgs doesn't like the limelight. He hasn't told anyone where he is. It's even possible he
doesn't know he's won the prize.
WALKER: And I don't know whether he has a radio with him. He certainly doesn't use a mobile phone, unless
he's got one without my knowledge. And he may well be somewhere which may or may not have a TV, so who
knows?
BRUMFIEL: But if Higgs doesn't know he's won, he'll find out soon. The University of Edinburgh had already
scheduled a press conference for Friday, just in case. Peter Higgs has promised to be there. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR
News.