Author Archives: HassanD97urycmei

Obamacare Is Doing Well, But Trump and Ryan Can Change That If They Want

by HassanD97urycmei Posted on April 11, 2017

Mother Jones

Today brings a couple of pieces of tentative good news for Obamacare. First there’s this:

The Trump administration says it is willing to continue paying subsidies to health insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act even though House Republicans say the payments are illegal because Congress never authorized them….The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to reduce deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs for certain low-income consumers. The “cost-sharing” subsidies, which total $7 billion a year, compensate insurers for these discounts.

….House Republicans sued the Obama administration, saying that the spending — in the absence of an appropriations law — was unconstitutional. A Federal District Court judge agreed and ordered a halt to the payments, but suspended her order to allow the government to appeal.

This is a huge deal. CSR payments are critical for insurance companies, and the Trump administration could have decided to stop defending the law and let House Republicans kill the payments by default. That could still happen, but it sounds like it won’t happen this year, at least. This was the single biggest bit of uncertainty facing insurance companies this year, and this announcement should ease a lot of their short-term concerns.

So with this temporarily out of the way, how does the overall Obamacare market look? According to Standard & Poors, profit levels for insurers are still too low, but they’re improving and the market seems to be in pretty good shape:

The U.S. ACA individual market shows signs of improvement, as most insurers’ 2016 results were better than 2015 results….2016 results and the market enrollment so far in 2017 show that the ACA individual market is not in a “death spiral.”

….We believe the continued pricing correction and network design changes, along with regulatory fine-tuning of ACA rules, will result in closer to break-even underwriting results, on average, for the individual market this year….As insurers continue to adjust their products and pricing, we expect some premium rate increase in 2018 as well. If it remains business as usual, we expect 2018 premiums to increase at a far lower clip than in 2017.

S&P’s biggest worry is Congress futzing around with things: “Every time something new (and potentially disruptive) is thrown into the works, it impedes the individual market’s path to stability.”

Two things are pretty clear. First, contrary to what folks like Donald Trump and Paul Ryan say, the Obamacare market is not on the verge of collapse. It’s working pretty well and is likely to get better in the future. But second, Trump and Ryan certainly have the power to put Obamacare on the verge of collapse if that’s what they want to do. Now we just have to wait to find out what they want to do.

Originally posted here:  

Obamacare Is Doing Well, But Trump and Ryan Can Change That If They Want

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Exxon is looking for ways to slash carbon emissions

by HassanD97urycmei Posted on August 19, 2016

Exxon is looking for ways to slash carbon emissions

By on Aug 19, 2016Share

A new breakthrough in climate-change-fighting technology may come from, of all places … Exxon?

It’s not as crazy as it sounds. Exxon and other fossil fuel companies are under pressure from lawmakers and stakeholders to publicly own up to its role in causing climate change.

Instead of, say, diversifying its portfolio in renewables, the oil giant is looking for an alternate way to decrease their footprint — one that will let them keep burning fossil fuels.

Reuters reports that scientists from ExxonMobil and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a method to reduce carbon emissions from chemicals manufacturing. Currently, this is done using heat, but using a new method of reverse osmosis at room temperature theoretically would reduce the industry’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by up to 45 million tons if the technology were widely adopted, according to the company.

Now, if only they’d use all that brain power to create a time machine, go back to 50 years, and warn us about climate change when their own scientists first warned executives about it.

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Exxon is looking for ways to slash carbon emissions

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Emailgate Continues to Be a Nothingburger

by HassanD97urycmei Posted on August 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Bob Somerby on emailgate:

Yesterday, Candidate Clinton said it again, during a press avail:

“No matter what anybody tries to say, the facts are stubborn. What I did was legally permitted, number one, first and foremost, OK?”

It certainly wasn’t OK on today’s Morning Joe! In that program’s opening segment, everyone said that statement was false—without naming the law or regulation Clinton had violated.

Meanwhile, there’s that passage from the New York Times’ front page, two Sundays ago:

“When she took office in 2009, with ever more people doing government business through email, the State Department allowed the use of home computers as long as they were secure…There appears to have been no prohibition on the exclusive use of a private server.”

We never assume the Times is right concerning such matters. But as is always the case in these matters, the heated discussion of “emailgate” begs for clarification—a service the national press corps is rarely equipped to provide.

I’m perfectly willing to believe that Clinton’s use of a private server was unwise. It probably was, something that I think even she’s acknowledged. And Clinton has certainly provided some dodgy answers about what she did, which naturally raises suspicions that she might have something to hide. This kind of chary parsing on her part may be due to nothing more than her longstanding distrust of the press, but that only makes it understandable, not sensible.

That said, even when I do my best to take off my tribal hat and look at this affair dispassionately, I just don’t see anything:

Using a private server was allowed by the State Department when Clinton started doing it.
Removing personal emails before turning over official emails appears to be pretty standard practice.
None of the emails examined so far has contained anything that was classified at the time it was sent.
There is no evidence that I know of to suggest that Clinton used a private server for any nefarious purpose. Maybe she did. But if you want to make this case, you have make it based on more than just timeworn malice toward all things Clinton.

What am I missing? I don’t begrudge the press covering emailgate. Republicans are all over it, which makes it a newsworthy issue whether we like it or not. And there has been an inspector general’s investigation, as well as an ongoing FBI investigation. That makes it newsworthy too.

But I still want to know: what exactly is being investigated at this point? If you just want to argue that Clinton showed bad judgment, then go to town. That’s a legitimate knock on a presidential candidate. But actual malfeasance? Where is it?

Credit:

Emailgate Continues to Be a Nothingburger

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