captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, march 12: the road to the white house turns through ohio and florida as donald trump defends his raucous rallies; in our "signature segment," babies going through withdrawal because their mothers took opioid painkillers or heroin during pregnancy; and medical bills that surprise you because they turn out not to be covered by insurance. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: lewis b. and louise hirschfeld cullman. bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the citi foundation. supporting innovation and enabling urban progress. the john and helen glessner family trust.

supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening, and thanks for joining us. the 2016 presidential race is focused on five states holding primaries tuesday. because they are usually "swing states" in november, florida and ohio are key battlegrounds. republicans and democrats in illinois, north carolina and missouri will also be voting. today, republicans in wyoming and washington, d.c., were holding conventions to choose some of their delegates to send to the national convention in cleveland in july. republican delegate leader

donald trump spoke to rallies in cleveland and dayton today, where he addressed the pre-rally melee that occurred in chicago last night which led him to cancel the event. >> we want to get along with everybody, but when they have organized professionally staged wiseguys, we've got to fight back. we've got to fight back. >> sreenivasan: at the university of illinois pavilion, some trump supporters and trump protesters had engaged in fist fights, and, as the event cleared out, fighting continued outside, where police made five arrests. all of trump's rivals are blaming him for his supporters' behavior. >> donald trump has created a toxic environment, and a toxic environment is allowed his supporters and those who sometimes seek confrontation to come together in violence. >> this is a man who in rallies has told his supporters to basically beat up the people who are in the crowd and help pay their legal fees. >> now responsibility for that lies with protesters who took the violence into their own hands. but in any campaign,

responsibility starts at the top. >> sreenivasan: newshour correspondent john yang was at trump's first rally in ohio today and joined me earlier by phone. what did you see? >> so, it was a typically robust, enthusiastic supportive crowd for donald trump this morning at the dayton airport. it was about 5,000 or several thousand people in a hangar. the fire marshal closed it off after a certain point. another, say, 100 or so, lined up along a fence outside to watch trump's 757 land and taxi in to the hangar, or to behind the hangar. only about maybe 100 or so protesters outside. a handful managed to get inside but those inside mainly made their presence known by standing silently and holding up signs. one i saw, an eight and a half

by 11 piece of paper hand printed, "trump equals hate." but there were no disruptions, nothing like last night. >> sreenivasan: the supporters you spoke with, what was their reaction to what happened last night? >> they were angry with the protesters. one said the protesters expressing their first amendment rights were denying them-- denying donald trump and his supporters their first amendment rights. >> sreenivasan: the candidate addressed this a little bit on stage. what did he say and what was the rough the decision to cancel for safety. interestingly enough, he said that a lot of the supporters, a lot of the protesters were supporters of-- as he put it-- our communist friend bernie sanders. he called on sanders to tell his supporters to stoop. he said, "my people--" referring to the trump forces "are nice." >> sreenivasan: newshour correspondent john yang on the campaign trail in ohio today. on the democratic side, hillary

clinton campaigned in missouri and ohio today while bernie sanders campaigned in missouri and illinois. the biggest prize among the five states holding presidential primaries tuesday is florida. for democrats, the sunshine state offers 246 of the delegates needed to win the party's nomination, and, asalysy will award them in proportion to the candidate's share of the popular vote. for republicans, all 99 of the republican party's delegates will go to the winner, no matter his margin of victory. joining me now to discuss the florida primary is anthony man, a political reporter from t "south florida sun-sentinel." so, the candidates are not right where are you today, but how hectic has this campaign traffic been? >> reporter: it has been incredible. it has just been very, very campaign centric, candidate centric. >> sreenivasan: what are the top issues facing floridians? >> the top issue facing floridaians really are similar to the things that we're hearing about elsewhere in this the country. there's this general kind of anger and agitation at

government. i hear that a lot on the republican side. and there is some general concern about the economy. we've had a comeback in florida from the depths of the great recession, but not the greatest jobs in the world. they aren't paying tremendously well. housing is repounding, but that makes it more expensive here. that really is probably one of the top things on people's mind. a lot of people are concerned about cuba and president obama's opening to cuba. that's a concern, particularly in miami-dade county, which has a lot of cuban american voters. >> sreenivasan: on the the republican side, it seems that this is the do-or-die state and moment for marco rubio and his attempts at trying to slow the momentum of donald trump. >> reporter: absolutely. he would look very bad if he didn't win his home state. and he's been insisting and his top advisers have been insisting now for weeks that he absolutely was going to win it. the polls pretty consistently show him behind donald trump,

but some are within the margin of error, and he insists he can pull it off. but he made the pitch at an event yesterday, where i saw him, that people in florida should abandon cruz and kasich if they want to stop donald trump, and he actually conceded that voters in ohio should do the same thing and not vote for him and not vote for cruz if they want to stop donald trump. he's really put everything on-- riding on florida. >> sreenivasan: on the democrats' side, how much does the diversity of the population play into the calculus here? many of the democrats that voted for president obama were african american, and right now, hillary clinton seems to be data recorder better with minority voters. >> reporter: right. that makes a huge difference here in florida. we have a large african american population, a large hispanic population. although, there are more hispanic republicans here in florida than a lot of other parts of the state. but those seem to be big strongholds for her.

the campaign is working to shore up that area. they've had rallies with bill clinton in the african american community recently, and they're on spanish language tv to shore up support among hispanic voters, and they've been targeting ads to african american voters. and we also have an older-than-average democratic voting population here in florida, and older voters who really tend to turn out to vote here, they are another strong area for hillary clinton. >> sreenivasan: all right, anthony man, a political reporter from the south florida "sun-sentinel," thanks so much for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> sreenivasan: the united states began what south korea calls their biggest ever war games today with tensions on the korean peninsula already running high. the massive amphibious landing on south korea's east coast against simulated north korean defenses comes only weeks after the united nations imposed tough new sanctions against north korea for its recent nuclear test and launch of a long-range rocket. >> we believe that by training together, we grow stronger.

and we believe that with strong alliances and partnerships in our area and responsibility, we bring peace and stability to this region. >> sreenivasan: some 17,000 american troops, dozens of u.s. warplanes, ships and 300,000 south korean military personnel are taking part. the north denounced the exercises and threatened a pre- emptive "blitzkrieg" against the south and the u.s. iraqi officials allege islamic ste militants today carried out their second chemical weapons attack this week. the attack happened in the northern iraqi town of taza, near kirkuk, which was also struck wednesday. iraqi officials say rockets fired by isis contained a mix of low-grade mustard gas and chlorine. 600 people were hospitalized for burns, dehydration and suffocation, and a three-year- old girl was killed. u.s. and german investigators have arrived in taza to help iraqi officials confirm the presence of chemical agents. the national weather service issued flash flood warnings today in parts of louisiana state expected to be hit with

more rainfall. flooding from five days of heavy rain has forced thousands of louisiana residents to leave their homes and is blamed for three deaths. the louisiana national guard has rescued more than 1,700 people since midweek. next door, in mississippi, officials say 1,000 homes could be flooded from the storms. the rate of women electing to undergo double mastectomies to avoid cancer has tripled in the past decade, but that isn't helping them live longer. a new study in the journal" annals of surgery" finds that between 2002 and 2012, women with cancer in one breast who chose to have both breasts removed derived no benefit from removing the healthy breast. the study's author says the survival rate among women who choose double mastectomies is the same as women who decide to have only part of one affected breast removed. >> sreenivasan: this week, the u.s. senate passed a bill to expand state and local programs

to fight the nation's opioid drug epidemic. the abuse, primarily of painkillers and heroin, caused almost 29,000 overdose deaths in the u.s. in 2014. the bill, which now goes to the house of representatives, comes as the risk of opioid abuse among women has soared, and that includes pregnant women whose babies are also at risk. in tonight's "signature segment," special correspondent alison stewart reports on how exposure to opioids affects newborns, and how these babies and mothers are getting help. >> stewart: to the trained ear, the high-pitched cry of this three-week-old baby girl is a sign that something isn't right. nurse heather mishlick at east tennessee children's hospital is taking care of her. >> if you just kind of walked by a baby and you didn't know what was going on, those would be the things that popped out to you the most, like, you know, why is that baby crying so loud? you know, why is that baby shaking? and you know, why can't we console that baby?

>> stewart: the answer is the infant is going through withdrawal from prescription opioids that her mother took while pregnant, leading to a condition called neonatal abstinence syndrome, or n.a.s. >> their temperatures are high. their extremities are really stiff. there may have been feeding problems initially. >> stewart: this baby's mother, who we will refer to as katie-- which is not her real name, she asked to remain anonymous-- says her daughter had all those symptoms when she was first born. >> when i first had her, she was really bad. like, she had tremors real bad. it was the worst thing i could ever, ever see for an infant to be withdrawing. >> stewart: the number of american babies born withdrawing from opioids, either prescription painkillers or heroin, increased fivefold from 1.2 per thousand births to 5.8 per thousand births between 2000 and 2012. in tennessee, nas babies are so prevalent, this hospital has a

special unit to treat them. katie says she was first prescribed opioids for back pain four years ago and then became addicted. a treatment center put her on methadone, an opioid medication used to wean addicts off the drug. then, she unintentionally become pregnant. >> i wished i wouldn't have been on it when i got pregnant. i wished i could go back and change it. but i can't. and i wished i could take he pain away. >> stewart: katie was told to continue her methadone treatment because if an addicted mother- to-be tries to quit opioids cold turkey, that can jeopardize the pregnancy. vanderbilt university medical center neonatologist and nas researcher dr. stephen patrick says a premature birth can be more harmful to a baby than going through withdrawal. >> women who are in medication- assisted treatment, for example, they're more likely to have an infant with drug withdrawal but less likely to have a pre-term infant. that's a better thing. the tradeoffs between pre-term birth and neonatal abstinence

syndrome, i would rather have an infant with neonatal abstinence syndrome. >> stewart: that's because premature babies often have long-term medical complications whereas nas is a treatable condition. nas babies need a lot of skin- to-skin contact to be soothed and are kept in dimly lit rooms to prevent overstimulation. when that isn't enough, which was the case for katie's daughter, the babies are actually given a low dosage of an opioid like morphine to wean them off the dependence they developed in utero from their mothers. >> the purpose of treatment is to give them the right dose of opiate that's going to alleviate their symptoms and make them more comfortable and safe during the withdrawal period. >> stewart: diagnosing nas is challenging. there are a range of symptoms which can take a couple days after birth to appear. nurses use a checklist to" score" symptoms and their severity, including: shaking arms and legs; excessive sneezing; and stiffness to the neck.

few hospitals regularly test expecting mothers for illicit drug use when they arrive at a maternity ward. if pregnant women don't disclose their opioid use, doctors and nurses may not be on alert for nas symptoms in the newborns and could be missing many cases. dr. patrick recommends universal drug screening as long as it is used to provide medical care and not to criminally charge addicted mothers. >> sometimes universal drug screen can be seen as punitive, and n some communities that can lead to a punitive response. and so, you know, that's where things become a bit more complicated when we talk about universal drug screening. i would say that probably the way that we're doing it now, where we're just doing it kind of ad hoc, also is biased, right? we tend to drug test those that may not look like us or may come from other places, and we may miss many cases. so, i think moving toward a universal approach is important, but it has to be in the context of a more global response to how we treat this problem. >> stewart: every baby exposed

to opioids is not born withdrawing from opioids. doctors don't know why some do and some don't. university of north carolina pediatrician carl seashore says that the type of opioid a mother is using, whether it's an illicit drug like heroin or an opioid medication like buprenorphine to treat her addiction, doesn't necessarily predict nas. >> you can have a mother who was perfectly compliant with methadone or buprenorphine replacement therapy during pregnancy on a relatively low dose, no other substances, comes out, has a normal delivery without any other stressors, and, for whatever reason, that baby might withdraw. and on the contrary, we might have a woman who's using illicitly and erratically, and the baby never develops symptoms of withdrawal. so, you really have to manage these babies on a case-by-case basis. >> stewart: take, for example, dr. seashore's patient, brittany, who was addicted to opioids and took heroin up until her third trimester of pregnancy when she sought treatment. her two-day-old son had few signs of nas.

>> i was really, really, really scared because i didn't actually know if he would make it or not. i was just so overwhelmed when he came out, and they were, like, he was healthy. i was so surprised. >> there have been just a few mild and scattered symptoms of potential withdrawal but nothing that has led to the need for pharmacologic treatment. and so, we're going to continue to monitor them for at least another day and see how things are going, continue to encourage her to do what she's been doing. >> stewart: brittany and her baby boy were discharged after a few days in the hospital. she's continued to get treatment and support through horizons, a drug treatment program for pregnant women and mothers at u.n.c. >> right now, my goals are just to move forward and do the right thing and be a good mom to my kids. >> stewart: dr. patrick, at vanderbilt university medical center, says there has not been enough research about the long- term effects of nas on a child.

>> studies that we know that have looked at methadone and heroin suggest that there may be some subtle problems with attention, some visual problems that are subtle, and some with language. and we know these are not overwhelming effects looking at the literature. and you know, i think one of the issues that we have is that there hasn't been a single study that has followed infants that have been exposed to prescription opioids long-term, so we really need some big, prospective studies to look at that. >> she's doing a lot better. she don't have the tremors like she did or nothing. she's not nearly as fussy. >> stewart: after several weeks of treatment at east tennessee children's hospital, katie was excited to take her baby girl home. >> and i know i'm not going to go back to the pain pills. and i've got her now, so she'll help me. >> sreenivasan: watch our first report on the effects of america's opioid epidemic on addicted mothers and their newborns. visit www.pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: now, an update on our january "signature segment" on the surge in earthquakes in oklahoma.

the state went from a handful of magnitude 3.0 quakes-- the kind you can feel-- before 2009 to more than 900 last year. the likely cause: salty wastewater that bubbles up during oil and gas drilling. energy companies then re-inject that water back into the ground. this week, the state's oil and gas regulator instructed companies to reduce wastewater injections by 40% across a central area of the state, covering 10,000 square miles. so far this year, oklahoma has had more than 200 earthquaof magnitude 3.0 or greater. one out of three american adults who have private health insurance coverage nevertheless receive what "time" magazine calls a "surprise" medical bill, according to a survey conducted by consumer reports. the unwelcome surprise is for procedures they think are covered by insurance but are not, ranging from a few hundred dollars for an emergency room visit to tens of thousands of dollars for an operation. reporter haley sweetland edwards wrote the story "you only think you're covered" for this week's issue of "time" magazine, and

she joins me now from miami to discuss it. so, what is the trap that people are getting caught into? you basically break it down to this in-network versus out-of-network chasm. >> reporter: people will go to an in-network hospital, see an in-network provider, and over the cowrps of that medical visit, interact with other medical providers who are out of network. so an in-network hospital will contract with out-of-network providers-- radiologists, anesthesiologists, lab technicians, all of those people, even though they're working at an in-network hospital can be out of network and often are. >> sreenivasan: there's no way for a consumer ton when you walk in who is in network. it's not like they're wearing different colored uniforms? >> right. and even when patients ask ahead of time, "i'm going in for this procedure, is my doctor in network, is my anesthesiologist

in new york." they don't know whether to ask is the consulting surgeon on duty that day who marine be in the operating theater be in network. >> sreenivasan: as you say in the story if i break my arm and go the e.r., i'm supposed to get in-network. but that's not the whole story. >> obamacare takes us a step in the right direction where they say if you break your arm and are whisked off to the hospital, the other end of that ambulance ride, no matter where they show up your insurance company has to charge you as if that facility is in network, which is great. it's better than it was before. but it doesn't protect frueveryone else working at that facility, whether or not they're in nairk. so you can still get hit later with these surprise bills from the providerses themselves, from the drug makers, from the device makers. >> sreenivasan: so you just rattled off different interests all trying to figure out who get the bill. so what are states doing to try

to fix this or if there's any federal legislation? what's happening. >> it's been halting. there are about 10 states that have passed different legislation, attempting to address this problem. california and florida have transparency measure measures i, that patients theoretically are suppose to be told ahead of time whether there will be an out-of-network provider. they are also supposed to protect patient patients in emey situations. but it's really stop-and-go. >> sreenivasan: reporter haley sweetland edwards joining us from miami from "time" magazine. thanks so much. >> thanks so much for having me. which are. >> finally holocaust survivor is now the world's oldest man. israel kristal is 112 years and 1 sphaept days old. the guinness book of world records certified it.

and it's daylight saving time. set your clocks and wawches ahead one hour before going to ge bedtonight. that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm hari sreenivasan, have a good night. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: lewis b. and louise hirschfeld cullman. bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the citi foundation. supporting innovation and enabling urban progress. the john and helen glessner family trust. supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs

station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

announcer: explore new worlds and new ideas through programs like this, made available for everyone through contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. hello. i'm susan lucci, and welcome to my music. you know, i'm really an incurable romantic, and tonight we are going to share some favorite love songs, right here on pbs. ♪ do that to me one more time ♪ once is never enough with a man like you... ♪ ♪ through the years ♪ you've never let me down ♪ you turned my life around... ♪ i know i'll never ♪ love this way again