The Trump administration has lofty expectations about the state of the pharmaceutical industry, but not everyone appears to be a believer. Data from the White House predicts the administration’s deals with drug companies could save the economy more than half a billion dollars over the next decade. While Republicans are lauding this estimate, many Democrats are taking it with a grain of salt.

Touted as ‘transformative’
Trump’s deals could save $529 billion over the next 10 years, according to an analysis of data from the White House obtained by The Associated Press. Federal and state governments could “save a combined $64.3 billion on Medicaid during the next decade” because of Trump’s deals, according to the administration, said Josh Doak at the AP.

Government officials tout the president’s “drug-pricing deals as transformative and urged Congress to codify their principles into law” as part of “most favored nation” (MFN) pricing, said Doak. The White House has “reached voluntary agreements with 17 pharmaceutical companies” and hopes to “bring manufacturers of sole-source brand-name drugs and biologics into comparable arrangements,” said Colleen Cabili at Quartz. Details on the deal specifics remain unclear.

Mechanism ‘remains a black box’
Despite the White House’s optimism, many across the aisle are skeptical of the administration’s potential cost savings. Just prior to the White House’s analysis, 17 Democratic senators introduced legislation that would force Trump to provide details of the drug deals. “If these deals are actually lowering costs for patients, show us,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), one of the co-sponsors of the legislation, in a statement. Americans “deserve transparency.”

The “exact mechanism” for these savings “remains a black box,” said Angus Liu at the biopharma news website Fierce Pharma. Beyond the price of the drugs themselves, the White House has “yet to define how commercial markets, such as employer-sponsored insurance, will access those discounted rates.” The “math for these massive savings only adds up if the administration can expand its circle of agreements beyond the 17 Big Pharma firms initially targeted” by Trump. 

The so-called annoyance economy refers to the web of spam calls, customer service chatbots and impossible-to-cancel subscriptions, among other aggravations, that Americans have to navigate in their regular financial lives, whether it’s to rebook a canceled flight or stop paying for a service they are no longer using. All these small tasks, and the time and headaches they can involve, add up to a real financial cost. 

What’s the annoyance economy?
It includes the “everyday interactions that should be simple but often turn into fraught ordeals,” said a report from Neale Mahoney, a Stanford economist, and Chad Maisel, a policy fellow at Groundwork Collaborative, per The New York Times. Common examples include customer service calls, spam calls and texts, wait times, junk fees and health insurance paperwork.

Take this relatable scenario: “You call your insurance company about a nixed claim, get routed through a phone tree, wait 40 minutes, explain your problem to a chatbot that can’t help, then start over with a human agent who asks for the same information. By the time you hang up, you have burned an hour on what should have been a two-minute fix, and you might have to call again,” said Investopedia. 

The “accumulated cost” of the annoyance economy “adds up to $165 billion a year in lost time and wasted money for American families,” said the report. Some of its costs are a little less quantifiable, such as “delaying needed medical care because of overwhelming paperwork,” said The New Republic. 

Is it possible to avoid falling victim to it?
There are steps you can take to mitigate the impact. For one, pay attention to junk fees, which are often designed to slip by unnoticed. When a “charge doesn’t match an advertised price, contest it” by filing a complaint with the FTC, said Investopedia. Also, know your rights when canceling, as “several states now require businesses to make canceling as easy as signing up.” Finally, be proactive about blocking spam. Cut down on fielding pesky calls by exploring options to stop them, like registering your number at DoNotCall.gov.

Samaritan priests raise Torah scrolls as worshippers join in a dawn Passover ceremony on top of Israel’s Mount Gerizim. Fewer than 1,000 people follow Samaritanism, a Jewish-adjacent sect with roots in the biblical region of Samaria, located in the modern-day West Bank.
John Wessels / AFP / Getty Images

The vernal atmosphere of May is encouraging us all to gather newness around us and refresh our lives for the spring season. This month, readers have plenty of new books to choose from, including a touching immigration story, the memoir of a major voice in critical race theory, and a hallucinogenic mystery set in South America.

‘Abundance’
Grief takes center stage in this debut from Hafeez Lakhani about an Indian American family facing a medical crisis. Matriarch Sakeena is forced to consider all the choices that brought her from India to the Florida panhandle. The novel is an “epic, multigenerational family story, imbued with a strong sense of place and philosophically specific characters,” said Literary Hub. (out now, $28, Penguin Random House)

‘Backtalker: An American Memoir’ 
The mother of intersectionality and one of the foundational scholars of contemporary critical race theory, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw tells the story of how she got there by “starting to talk back,” said Literary Hub. This memoir charts Crenshaw’s “extraordinary journey from precocious child to renowned public intellectual,” said The New York Times. (out now, $30, Simon & Schuster)

‘Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun’ 
National Book Award finalist Mónica Ojeda’s “psychedelic” novel follows a pair of friends who travel to a “drug-soaked and pleasure-seeking techno-shamanistic festival in Ecuador, held at the foot of an active volcano,” said Literary Hub. It’s a novel of “friendship amid hidden pasts, uncertain futures and the supernatural from an exciting young writer.” (May 12, $20, Coffee House Press)