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The US government is shut, but can the Democrats stop healthcare getting cut?
It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service.
I'm Leanna Byrne.
Snapchat wants you to subscribe and Spotify gets a new boss.
Yes, here we are, folks.
The US government is officially shut down.
750,000 federal workers will be furloughed.
It's costing roughly $400 million a day.
So what are all of the implications?
Here's Michelle Flurry, our correspondent in New York.
Any department that is part of the federal government is effectively shut.
Spending bills that would fund these government services to October and beyond.
There was no agreement on that between Republicans and Democrats.
All of this now means that all of these services are currently on hold.
It can be things like park services or, in the case, very important to investors here on Wall Street.
It could be data.
So we're expecting Friday's jobs report.
That won't happen now.
All the areas and ways in which government touches your lives.
That is what effectively, is shut at the moment.
Now, Michelle, your answer to this question might be how long is a piece of string?
However, I'm going to ask it anyway.
How long do you think this might go on for?
Well, I think that's anyone's guess.
I mean look, the last time this happened was in 2018, during Donald Trump's first term, and that shutdown was horrible the longest in history, at 35 days.
There is a difference between then and now.
That was what they call a partial shutdown.
In other words, some departments were still being paid and still functioning.
This is a complete shutdown.
And so there will be more pressure on lawmakers to try and kind of come together and end this.
But at the moment, Republicans and Democrats don't seem able to see eye to eye.
That was Michelle Flurry in New York.
Now, at its core, this is a clash over priorities.
Democrats want to secure health care funding, while the White House is intent on cutting federal spending.
And until there's a compromise, the government remains shut.
To explain, here's Benjamin Summers.
He used to be part of the president's Biden's administration and is now professor of health care economics at Harvard.
There are really two big categories of coverage for Americans that the Democrats are arguing need to be protected.
The first is something that relates to the Affordable Care Act's private health insurance marketplaces.
They're also called Obamacare in 2014 and provides coverage to people who can't get coverage through work.
And so they receive subsidies from the federal government to help them buy private insurance.
In 2021.
During the pandemic, the Biden administration made the subsidies to help people get coverage more generous, but they only raise those subsidies temporarily.
They're scheduled to expire at the end of 2025 if Congress doesn't extend them further.
And independent estimates are that more than 4 million people could become uninsured if these expire.
The other big bucket of coverage that's at risk relates to the new law that was passed this summer, signed into law by President Trump.
This is focusing on Medicaid coverage.
And this is the program that covers low-income Americans and it's combined between the federal government and the states.
The big changes in the law that was signed this summer.
First is that it would require many of the people in the program to report on work activities to the government in order to keep their coverage.
This is estimated that it's going to lead to as many as 5 million or more people becoming uninsured.
And then there are other parts of that law that will further undermine Medicaid coverage.
More frequent eligibility checks, which again kind of add red tape and will lead people to lose coverage.
They're going to cut some of the ways that states raise money to pay for their part of Medicaid and that will put a lot of pressure on state budgets and lead to more cutbacks.
And finally, there's some direct changes to eligibility, particularly for legal immigrants, such as refugees and asylees, who would no longer be able to qualify.
What's the knock-on effect on the health care system as well?
Hospitals rely on Medicaid to provide reimbursement for patients that they are obligated by law, as well as by mission, to care for.
There are significant fears, especially in safety net and rural hospitals, that these cuts could lead some to either have to cut back services or close entirely.
Economically speaking and I'm not sure if you have an opinion on this is it actually more costly in the long run to let subsidies lapse and cut Medicaid compared to actually maintaining them?
It's certainly more costly.
If we take the total cost, public health impact and we think about lives lost, we know that when Medicaid was expanded under the Affordable Care Act, numerous studies have shown health benefits, including increased survival.
Now, do you actually save healthcare dollars in the long run by covering people?
Generally speaking, no.
Healthcare costs more when we're providing services.
But I think we need to view that as an investment.
When we provide insurance to people, we know from the research that they're healthier, they're more likely to have a high quality of life, they're going to live longer.
Those are the sorts of investments that policymakers should be making.
And the real risk here is we might save a little money, but it's going to come at the expense of hospitals closing, people getting sick and dying.
And that's not a tradeoff worth making.
Benjamin Summers from Harvard there.
With me now, Russ Mould, Investment Director at AJ Bell.
Russ, investors are reacting quite strongly to this shutdown, aren't they?
They're following it very closely, Liana.
I mean, the stock market is down very slightly today.
Actually American government borrowing costs the interest rates they're charged.
They're not moving much.
It's the dollar that's showing the strain.
It's down a little bit today, taking its losses for the year to 10% to 12%.
And this reflects longer-term concerns over the febrile nature of American politics and the huge American government debt and how it can fund that.
And that's why gold and silver are going up.
Again gold to a new all-time high, near 3900 an ounce, and silver at 47 an ounce, its highest level since 2011.
Those metals do well when markets think the authorities aren't in control.
Absolutely.
OK, Ross, thank you very much.
So Australia's in the middle of a sunscreen scandal.
18 products pulled from the shelves after tests show some offered far less protection than claimed.
One brand promising factor 50 actually came in at factor 4.
Regulators say the problem isn't just with the creams themselves but with the US lab behind much of the testing.
And with Australians having the world's highest rates of skin cancer, people are pretty angry.
Still with us, Russ Mould.
Interesting story, Spotify's founder Daniel Ek is stepping back.
So what are investors making of that one, Russ?
The shares went down yesterday.
They've actually rallied a little bit on the New York Stock Exchange today.
So maybe they're getting used to it because Mr. Ek is not stepping away.
He's stepping up to become executive chairman, saying he's going to focus on competitive position and strategy.
Spotify is the world's biggest music streaming service provider.
It's got Apple, YouTube, Amazon and lots of other competitors operating.
And he's appointed co-chief executives.
I think that's maybe interesting.
Two people he's worked with a very long time, know each other very well.
But normally with co-bosses there's always one who probably wants to have more influence than the other in the end.
So we'll see how that works out.
Yeah, you don't see that very often, do you?
It doesn't tend to work well at football clubs with football managers.
There are legion examples where it's not worked out very well.
Yeah, you can't share the number seven, you know.
It's funny though, Spotify finally turned a profit last year.
So do you think he's just kind of saying, okay, I'm going to step up, job done?
That's not the way he's portraying it, Mr. Eckers.
He's saying, I want to focus on long-term strategy.
But I think the share prices, certainly it's wobbled yesterday, raised that worry.
Don't forget, it does make a billion dollars a year, this business, but its stock market valuation is 122 billion.
That's discounting an awful lot of future growth, not just keeping the competition at bay.
700 million users, though.
I mean, it's doing pretty well.
Apple's got 90 million, I think.
Oh, OK.
Never mind.
Well, talking from one tech company to another, have you ever used Snapchat, Ross?
I'll leave that to my teenagers.
Your teenagers use it, okay well, at least you don't use it because it's actually about to start charging people for keeping old photos and videos.
So it's got this memories feature.
That's been free since 2016, but if you've saved more than 5 gigabytes you will soon have to pay.
So Russ, you might be on the hook.
Now Snap is saying it's never easy to switch from free to paid, but insists it'll be worth it.
So Russ, you might be on the hook.
You might be on the hook.
I'm going to change that, No.
Okay, bad dad.
You're just going to be like, no, no, sorry about that.
In fairness, this is kind of how things are going.
You have to pay for all of those gigabytes.
All right, Russ Mould, thanks so much for being with us.
That is it from us at World Business Express.
Please subscribe to get the latest search for World Business Express, wherever you bake your podcasts.
I'm Leanna Byrne.
Thanks for listening.
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