AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Time now for your comments about two reports from Friday's program. First, our Planet Money story on the rising demand for breast pumps. The portable machines can cost several hundred dollars and make it easier for new mothers to continue nursing. The pumps are in the news because they're now covered by insurers, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. As we heard Friday, that's caused a boom in business for stores like Yummy Mummy in New York City.
Here's CEO Amanda Cole.
AMANDA COLE: We are opening a call center. We now have a warehouse in Illinois. We're doubling the number of employees. Like, within a two-week timeframe, doubling the number of employees we have.
CORNISH: Well, Dana Quealy is a lactation consultant in Honolulu and she did not like the tone of our report. She thought we presented breast pumps as a novelty rather than as an important medical device. Instead of spending time in a boutique, Quealy writes, that we should have gone NICU at any NYC hospital and we would have appreciated the expensive health care dollars at work and would have heard from any neonatologist, nurse, or mother the benefits of breast milk and the value of a breast pump.
Onto your letters about a different subject now.
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CORNISH: Sylvia Poggioli's report on the work of Italian music teacher Francesco Lotoro. Over the last two decades, Lotoro has collected 4,000 pieces of music - songs, symphonies, operas written by concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust.
FRANCESCO LOTORO: The artist is able to separate the external situation from the creativity that belongs to the mind, to the heart.
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CORNISH: Many of you were moved by this story. Sam Rickless of San Diego writes that he was close to tears. He says, a large number of my extended family died in the concentration camps. My mother was an opera singer and this is a subject that is dear to my heart. Sandra Erlanger of Solon, Ohio, writes: This was an amazing moving story for anyone, not just people like me whose grandparents were killed in Theresienstadt. I want to thank Sylvia Poggioli for reporting this story so well.
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CORNISH: To tell us what you think about a story you hear on our program, write us at npr.org. Just click on Contact Us at the bottom of the page.
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CORNISH: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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