if you're. going to. say that lindsay francis is broadcast around the world right here in washington d.c. tonight it could be the largest case of health care fraud in american history and it's taxpayers more than a billion dollars we take a deeper look at how criminals worked this system also the future of cash around the world many small businesses have a hard time covering the fees required to accept credit card transactions but now they're offered incentives and it could lead to a growing cashless society and i've got two guests here in the studio to go head to head on the student loan crisis plaguing our nation how we got here and how we're going to solve it by two must start right now.

wells fargo j.p. morgan citigroup have all disclosed their second quarter results and all three beat wall street's expectations they collected more money on interest but it wasn't all good news for j.p. morgan the nation's largest bank by assets said it expected weaker net interest income falling bond yields also way down the sector its net income rose thirteen percent to seven point zero three billion dollars details now in wells fargo the largest mortgage lender in the united states said its profit edged higher in the second quarter as the bank got a boost from rising interest rates and the planned sale of its insurance service businesses probably it's. grew five percent to five point eight billion dollars or

one dollar seven cents a share that was more than a dollar over analysts expectations and now to citi group the profit fell three percent as the banks set aside more money to cover souring loans especially its credit cards the new york based bank earned three point eight seven billion dollars or one dollar twenty eight cents per share the result still beat analyst forecasts of one dollar twenty one cents a share now city had a net interest revenue of eleven point one seven billion up six percent from a year earlier and at the closing bell on this news this is where the markets ended today the dow up eighty five points at twenty one thousand six hundred thirty seven seventy four the nasdaq up thirty eight to six thousand three hundred twelve forty seven the s. and p. five hundred up nearly twelve points to two thousand four hundred fifty nine twenty nine. and the poor in italy are suffering more than ever and their numbers are

unfortunately growing in two thousand and sixteen people living in absolute poverty in the country hit its highest level in more than a decade and this is despite a modest economic recovery absolute poverty as defined by the national institute of statistics covers those who are unable to afford goods and services essential to avoid grave forms of social exclusion total absolute poverty there jumped from seven point six percent to seven point nine percent of the population in just a year but breaking down the geography is interesting it's important to start in the south it's got a nine point eight percent poverty rate there travel up to the center it drops to seven point three and in the relatively wealthy north right at the business capital of milan it drops all the way down to six point seven still a very high number though and those dwelling in relative poverty with disposable income of less than around half the national average jumped to eight point five million people in two thousand and sixteen that's the highest since record keeping . all the way back in one thousand nine hundred seven italy is among the eurozone

its most sluggish economies gross domestic product is forecast to rise about one point one percent this year up point nine percent in two thousand and sixteen the ruling democratic party or p d as it's called is set to be hurt by this news as elections kick off just next spring. and more than four hundred people have been charged with defrauding the american health care system the defendants have reportedly squeezed out more than a billion dollars of taxpayer money in fake billing schemes stretching across the entire country and about a third of these people are charged with illegally prescribe ing and distributing painkillers which contribute to the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in u.s. history. joins me now in the studio to break down the case and please explain the medical fallout from this is being called the largest health care fraud takedown in american history and the numbers that i can show you will tell you why

a health care fraud sweeps like the one announced thursday take place each year but twenty seventeen is by far the biggest year yet forty one federal district participated in this year's takedown if we look at the past five years that's four times as many districts as four and five years ago when only ten districts took part and this year the department of justice announced it's charging four hundred twelve people including doctors compared with three hundred one the year before these defendants after fraud taxpayers of approximately one point three billion dollars as a result of this operation two hundred health care providers are now in the process of being suspended banned from participation in any federal health care programs so important to recognize that the individuals targeted within our takedown operations are in the business not of caring for patients but of manipulating them and exploiting them of the four hundred. defendants the justice department says one

hundred fifteen are doctors nurses and other licensed medical professionals more than one hundred twenty people are charged for their roles in prescribing and distributing opioids and other dangerous narcotics and as you heard from attorney general jeff sessions health and human services is working to suspend two hundred ninety five providers including doctors and pharmacists this week targeted schemes across the country where health care providers fraudulent lee billed medicare medicaid and tri care which is a health insurance program for military members and veterans and these schemes cost taxpayers one point three billion dollars according to the justice department these professionals billed for medically unnecessary prescription drugs that often were never even purchased by or distributed to the patient and others are charged with illegally distributing opioids contributing to a record number of americans dying of overdoses lindsay. i'm going to say right now that's disgusting that anyone would do that to peddle drugs and essentially being

killing people and cheating people out of this much harder and harder in cash cases that really caught your eye in this so there's quite a few cases obviously we're looking at four hundred twelve people seventy seven of which were charged in south florida alone and there's one case in particularly it's extremely interesting if not a little sensational it's about this addiction treatment center for and a home for recovering addicts apparently the people there were double billing for things like urine tests and the f.b.i. called this fraudulent activity and bogus treatments they billed insurance companies about fifty eight million dollars in this from two thousand and eleven to two thousand and fifteen but this isn't the most interesting part they actually offered kickbacks to current patients to attract new insured clients to keep the money flowing they were enticed him them with gift cards cash airline tickets even trips to strip clubs so this was the result of a two year investigation with former employees and former patients they say

patients were billed for treatments they didn't receive and that some of these people remain hunting for addicted clients that were insured to be able to move this forward another quick case in michigan there are dozens of defendants in michigan in one case there are nine defendants that were charged with prescribing medically unnecessary controlled substances some of which were sold on the streets and billing medicare for one hundred sixty four million dollars in medically unnecessary procedures so that's just a taste of the few of very many cases that they were able to announce this week that's a survey interesting to see how this all folds out and how it all unfolds and very important keep our eye on this especially as it pertains to the academic i'm sorry the prescription drug epidemic in this country thank you so much so and adversarial for that. elvis. cold war on cash is heating up again around the world but this time it's not

government officials suggesting that we work toward a cash free society. she joins me now here in the studio for more on that because we're talking about private businesses getting involved in this now right yes we are in fact talking about private business in this case which just launched a new program that discourages small businesses here in the u.s. and some a broad from using cash at all anymore for a few different reasons government officials all over the world have expressed support for cashless society the most common reason behind their argument is eliminated criminal activity considering cash is anonymous but it's no longer just the authorities that are in support of going cash free u.s. based credit card giant visa has announced the cashless challenge the company will offer small retailers or across america ten thousand dollars each to implement technology for digital payments in return for the cash companies will pledge to stop accepting cash from koreans and instead commit to debit and credit cards or

payment apps like apple pay in a statement jack for cell global head of product that said with seventy percent of the world or more than five billion people connected via mobile device by two thousand and twenty we have an incredible opportunity to educate merchants and consumers alike on the effectiveness of going cashless the situation is different in each country but the prospects for peace of pro these says programs in the u.s. are looking pretty good between twenty twelve and twenty fifteen the use of cash in the u.s. fell by eight percent while card and electronic payments jumped by six and four percent respectively and that decline is happening in many other parts of the world most notably in sweden by twenty fifteen cash withdrawals fell by one third while card payments increased by fifty percent at this rate sweden is expected to become the world's first true. cashless society but it's not just sweden that's amping up

digital payments many other european nations like belgium and france rely heavily on cards too and in canada over seventy percent of personal purchases are card base doesn't mean every country is on its way to becoming the next week but it does suggest that cash will not be king for much longer. ok so they're going to place the crown on someone else main driver behind these cashless programs that are getting so popular so for these it is not like the government officials that want to get rid of cash they say we want to get rid of terrorism it is all about profits because they know they can make money off of something like this if they were if the businesses started to transition from cas to digital payments they know they could charge more processing fees for the users and for the businesses that are moving towards these digital payment systems they would be using the says platform and they conducted their own study that showed if one hundred cities across the u.s. totally transition to digital payments they could these cities could bring in an

extra three hundred twelve billion dollars a year so they see dollar signs and they look at that and say let's make a profit off of that so let's give some of these smaller businesses that usually get hit with these credit card fees ten thousand dollars so we can take care of that give them the incentive to totally do away with cash so just put that to bed and do this what about the expansion of this are they going to other countries is this sort of a pilot program in a way in the u.s. and then in the u.k. as well and the same amount of companies in the u.k. will get the same amount of money of course in pounds a little different but you know it goes well here and in the u.k. we could definitely see it offered in other countries that love credit and debit cards like canada like as i said seventy percent of people there are relying on their cards versus cash but at the same time time it's important to keep in mind that this is certainly not a global phenomenon there. plenty of other countries that generally use half way more than they ever use cards and then mo in germany how germany is one of our

example it's a great example of poor rue jordi of their transactions are through catch so this is definitely a big transition period but in no way is cash going to be eliminated within you know the next five or ten years it will be over a much longer period of time right but then you can get hacked by someone sweden the head of security just got hacked found out he was in bankruptcy unbeknown to himself because he wanted to digitally applied for a loan in that country and then of course you know you get hacked by them in the government can track your payments yes and they don't really course mention the threat of hacking when they offer these problems it's something that you have to accept when you take on something like this but that i'm sure will create their own little cottage industry often that just a man of hacking that can happen especially for individuals it's one thing with your company and you can afford to you know perfect purchase that type of security right now for individuals if you don't have all that money then you know it's a really big risk to take on to totally transition right and your lack of security

is in the fine print got to watch out for that thank you so much for. your time now for a quick break stick around though when we get back i've got to gas with a very different viewpoint so what better thing to tackle than the crisis plugging millions and costing trillions we've got to break check out the numbers for the closing bell. when you fight your consent to public will. when the really close is project.

we can all middle of the room. is still exist. ricos treated as one visitor annoyed. and then. the portals recall. an idea what. the island is controlled by the us government and some puerto rican screw even dependents to know it was the only god you know it was. either like that i mean to sort out i mean. still many do wish to join the us hundreds more leave every day. with the country at a crossroads of the island is on the rise. of.

the united states has a one point three three trillion dollar crisis on our hands and that's on the low side at student debt the money borrowed from the government or from private lenders other institutions as well to fund what is usually a four year college degree sometimes that degree is useful sometimes that useless but it's a scored on the efforts of a young people in this country to get ahead financially to buy homes to start families it is starting americans off on the back foot of the forty four million people in student loan debt or the. eleven percent are in delinquency some blame the rise of the big business giants of higher education some blame predatory

lenders the list goes on no matter what or who they blame though capitol hill is giving us no real tangible remedies but it is giving us plenty of partisan talking points so it's time to hear some candid solutions put forward joining me now to discuss please welcome jocelyn garcia vice president of the united states student association and editor in chief of campus reform dot org thank you so much both of you for joining me just let's start with you let's address the elephants in the room in your view what do you think is really causing what's at the heart of the debt crisis for students in this country a great question and first of all thank you for having me and it's a pleasure working with you and speaking with you today so you know as you mentioned your student association is a national organization my service vice president representing one point five million students and so a lot of the perspectives and arguments are going to here are things that students

are currently deciding and they're that they're deciding that these are the needs that they need to answer your question as to what is the heart of this it's difficult to say that it's one thing it's a mix of right. brain but it's a very complicated argument i don't think it's not a simple answer it's not black or white yes actually rary. but i do think way it has a huge impact is that education has become a form of equality whereas before you know anyone really if they wanted to they could attain higher education so this is a business machine of funneling through these mounds of cash they're receiving from lenders from the government from from whoever from taxpayers included and it's turning out it's a degree factory pretty much and that's the exact a business of the degree exactly and you know one of the things that i. in addition to many of the students that we work with is that if you have the in-town just

intelligence if you have the capacity and you have the willingness to work for an education you should be able to have access to it but you know as you mentioned earlier many individuals they do have those criteria is but they still cannot access that education that you know has become that commodity that what i want to be if they don't want to be a slave to their bells six months after they graduate what about you i know that you talk a lot about you know not putting the burden on taxpayers and shifting some of the way we refinance and help people educate maybe taking some of that financing like what's your view on the crux of this problem well just spoke a minute ago about the commodification of higher education talking about how it's a business environment i would disagree in the sense that in business it is you have to compete for services you have to compete with the services right now what you're seeing no matter how much money we throw at the system through loans through grants federal private doesn't really matter the cost of tuition keeps rising clearly the problem isn't that we don't have enough money to throw at the issue the

problem is that colleges are not being forced to compete for that money the the loans rise the amount of money available rises to asian rises to gobble that up so you've got to figure out a different way of financing you might look at see income sharing agreements where you know instead of saying oh i'm going to take out a fifty hundred thousand dollar loan and spend decades in a lot of cases paying it back you say ok five six ten years x. percent of my income goes back to the lender and in that case you can say ok if i'm making one hundred thousand dollars that let's say six percent that's six thousand dollars if i'm making twenty thousand dollars it's only six percent or twenty thousand dollars the good news is you're not digging yourself into a gigantic debt hole that is going to impact as you pointed out earlier the ability to buy a home the ability to try and start a family in the ability to move forward in your life so we've got to figure out other ways of financing higher education has got to be that safety net the u.s. government could finance everyone's education but if big institutions are going to take advantage we're going to get nowhere right so one of the things you. you know payment plans teach for america is a great example of you go into it for two years and there's loan forgiveness and

things like that but what about you know you mention college some way of funding and i know bernie sanders talked about this a lot on the campaign trail and especially for people it was a big big draw what about when we're talking about paying for someone's education the extras the room board the books the study abroad because when people hear that especially conservatives they go wait a minute something breaks i'm not hearing i'm hearing take take take on not hearing how you're going to give give give so what's the way to speak across the board to people and say this is how we want to fund it and these are this is where we're going to slam on the brakes a little bit and that's a great how do you approach that yeah so just to be clear so when i say free college we're not talking about just tuitions three we're also talking about including those living expenses on those tax cuts because as of right now just even looking at the community college promise programs you know it's about a thousand dollars per student in many of these states but there are still students are houseless and are food insecure so and that's a that's

a low price exactly right and so and terms of being able to finance these things well i will on july of one is a full is that we have right now which is the cultural act and so it costs sixty two point six billion dollars to actually from us. and one of the things that. is articulated really well is imposing a wall street speculation which would raise times of benefits and. money that can be used to cover those living expenses and those textbooks and again when we say free college we're including those things because those also create multiple barriers and when a student is having access to higher education you know one is the accessibility but the other thing is whether they actually get to flourish with the money to get it over their head in the books exactly exactly and you know i'll just speak from my own experience. so you know i had the great opportunity ever saving federal and

state aid for now as a student at u.c. santa barbara right but i still had to work and now until three am only. for five years you know that's that's real. money and so you know i clock out i had three am when i start to go study if i have to pay for those living expenses and that food so we definitely do not want to believe that we're talking about yeah i'm still hard work going on and i think that the thing that needs to be noted there when we're talking about working our way through college which is fine is that you can't work your way through college you cannot get through college with work right i don't mean that i cannot anymore any more going to get a degree of that oh no i don't want this isn't this isn't a or this is not something that you know it's not it's not in fact the university of pennsylvania. and they say show kudo's they show their nine hundred fifty six hundred dollars one thousand nine hundred fifty nine it was almost thirteen hundred and now you're paying more than a house some in some cases just to get your medical degree back then with six hundred dollars inflation is not going to keep up with something like that if you

talk about inflation now it's not to me how how is inflation an excuse for not being able to afford college what if inflation had kept up if inflation had kept up i doubt we'd be talking about this just as seriously but it is so vastly outpace to the cost of the has vastly outpaced the rate of inflation your money now is not worth as much as it was ten twenty thirty years ago even then the value of a college degree i would argue has not kept up with the rate of inflation itself so you're paying essentially more money for a piece of paper that says you have studied this it's not as worth as much as it was thirty years ago so it's true you know the problem is that we've kind of decoupled the actual value of college from the cost and we can talk about yes we can roll more and more money living expenses all these other things but we're still not talking about tackling the underlying cause i want to talk about maybe two wishing freezes or something like they did up in wisconsin recently even something as mild as that. all the sudden you get the rhetoric that it's the end of higher education or scott walker wants to burn the university of wisconsin to the ground

he may actually want to burn the university i don't know can speak for what we don't seem to really want to talk about why is it so expensive should it be this is because i don't think it should be something that we can grant class three of us can agree that it should not be expensive and you know the very idea of free college a lot of people get reaction from the term because it makes people turn off but it's people who do you know that's what we're asking for and this is again like these are one point five million students that i work with constantly they're saying that this is what they want they're constantly organizing and debating this every single day and that's the need that they are saying you know we can do these statistics we can do these studies we can do this research but there you go around exactly these are the students experiencing these things and. and regards to the point to you me earlier about the competition i do think that there is competition right now there and in the customer service if they want to offer a service they better start lowering their prices right if it's their religion and also in terms of the value of education i do think that there's still time to fill

you with an education you want to ask you about so the value of a degree a lot of us would say there's value in education there is no way we can say that the value of a history degree is the same as a medical degree or a logic reactor the crisis when everyone's going to law school and you come out and they you can't find a lot a lot of job also drives to what do we do what do we do when the value of a degree in the job market doesn't work vocational training or what do we do maybe four year college isn't for everybody how do we handle this lower value of the actual degree do you know what i'm saying does that make sense absolutely how do we how do we increase the value i think you have to do in order to get people kind of out of that system and saying i remember when i was growing up all the rhetoric i got was you know how you have to go to college if you want to good job coming if you want to have a good life it's the key to financial success in america and even then that's when president obama was paying off student loans he only finished paying off a couple of years ago this is this is the man who is president of the united states

you can't achieve any more than he possibly did right there and he was still paying off student loans i think we need to get back to taking a serious look at vocational training i think that people need to see what is going to thousands of dollars into debt for a degree that i may or may not be using coming out of college really worth the cost of college and will have to start making that kind of value just judgement we've got to we've got to find a word what he got so very guards to people see in the worth of education i don't think has to do so much with the department or the job opportunities but for example a good friend of mine named. he you know he did actually go to college and he graduated with student loans but many of us family members they decided not to. go to college right because it was so inaccessible and so it's the money that they write that was making it seem like they have to decide whether they do have access to it or not and whether it's worth investing not a lot of these families are strapped in that same debt with that person exactly in

particular i'm going to color in the income thank you so much for joining me we're going to bring you guys back on talking about how i learned it also really did a whole show thank you so much sterling veron editor in chief for campus reform dot org and austin garcia vice president of the united states student association thank you both thank you so much that's all for now for all of us here for us thanks for watching you know. it is i will not be here. to give it up. but i'll build. on the. by then got to such an oddity. by the editor shows that while i'm.

not. going to. certainly not so. you know should be up to the multiple easy to mock turtleneck to soak up the good stuff you hold the rope but shows your you have mercy on the. ball even before people seem to say you're welcome or so but i'm also working. on a bit of nothing. else allowed me. to walk. down the aisle something not said. that. maybe maybe maybe for the.

dimension of the six thirty five if you have a career and a clear involves using your arsenal in your computer into the bin then also this. perhaps you sort of getting from that circular to going to have to stop doing all this i mean this is kind of you lou the minutes before. my world became smaller and smaller and smaller until i ended up winning it and box. a very strong magnetic field on a car i felt in my head. it's like a real hard pressure on my skin burns and that wireless access point there just continues with our students in the schools. we are just continually

our citizens in this microwave radiation it is certainly electoral small and it's getting worse. iraqi officials investigate reports all the islamic state is being executed after human rights watch called for a probe into a series of disturbing videos emerging online. recent poll reveals americans now see north korea as the biggest threat to u.s. security we look at how much blame can be attributed to the media. and the. news is staring controversy in austria.