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Climate change could double the cost of your beer

by RachelleWoodhou Posted on October 16, 2018

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Beer drinkers might pay more for and find less of their favorite beverage as climate change comes for barley. Scientists expect that extreme droughts and heat waves will become more frequent and intense in the regions that grow the grain.

Many farmers are already adapting to the slowly warming planet — with advanced plant breeding techniques to create more drought-resistant grains, for example, and by using more efficient irrigation systems to conserve water — but a new study out Monday in the journal Nature Plants says that many regions won’t be able to cope with the arid conditions of the future. The work was done by a group of researchers in China along with Steven J. Davis, an environmental scientist at the University of California Irvine.

The team looked at the areas around the world that grow barley, which is turned into malt for beer, and projected what will occur under five different climate warming scenarios by 2100. Using models of both economic activity and climate change, the group made predictions about what will happen to barley production, as well as beer price and consumption.

During the most severe climate events, the study predicts that global beer consumption would decline by 16 percent, an amount about equal to the total annual beer consumption of the United States in 2011. It also expects average beer prices to double. Each country would be affected differently. The price of a single pint of beer in Ireland, for example, will rise by $4.84, followed by $4.52 in Italy and $4.34 in Canada. American tipplers will see beer prices rise up to $1.94 under the extreme events, the study said, and barley farmers will export more to other nations.

Davis, who has published several papers on climate change and the Chinese economy, says many extreme drought and heat events will force farmers to feed barley to livestock instead of selling it to domestic breweries. “When we have these shortages, our models suggest people are going to feed the barley to the livestock before they make beer,” Davis said. “That makes sense. This is a luxury commodity and it’s more important to have food on the table.”

The effects of climate change are already being felt by craft brewers, says Katie Wallace, director of social and environmental responsibility at New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado. In 2014, the U.S. barley-growing region — Montana, North Dakota, and Idaho — was hit by an extremely wet and warm winter that caused crops to sprout early, rendering much of it useless. Farmers were forced to tap into reserves in storage.

In 2017 and again this past summer, the Pacific Northwest was hit by severe drought that affected production of hops that give unique flavors to craft brews. Wallace says that climate change is on the minds of all craft brewers as they plan for how to avoid future shortages of both barley and hops. “It’s stressful,” Newman said. “We are seeing an increased level of vulnerability and some near escapes in some cases. All of these things have happened periodically, but the frequency is growing.”

The craft beer industry is already planning for the future, says Chris Swersey, a supply chain specialist at the Brewer’s Association, a trade group that represents 4,500 small breweries across the country. Swersey says he is skeptical of the paper’s findings, mainly because it assumes that the amount and location of barley production will stay the same as it is today. He says barley growing is already moving north to Canada, while researchers are hoping to expand barley’s range with winter-hardy breeds.

“The industry is already aware that barley production is shifting,” Swersey says. “We need to be thinking ahead and be smart about what is our climate going to look like 50 or 100 years from now.”

It’s not just the little guys who are thinking of climate change. The king of U.S. beer production remains Budweiser, which produces the No. 1 (Bud Light) and No. 3 (Budweiser) top-selling brands. Budweiser buys barley from a vast network of farmers in the northern U.S. and is investing in new breeds of drought-resistant barley strains, according to Jessica Newman, director of agronomy for Budweiser. “It’s all about getting the right varieties, getting the right mix, and getting the right technology to our growers,” Newman says from her office in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

She says Budweiser’s crop science lab in Colorado is working on new barley strains dubbed Voyager, Merit 57, and Growler. “We are breeding for drought resistance and sprout resistance,” Newman said. “If we see rainfall coming earlier, or if it rains in the wrong time of year, the barley can sprout and it wouldn’t be used. We also want it to use less water and fewer agricultural chemicals.”

Climate scientist Davis says he and his colleagues wrote the study as a thought exercise to perhaps stoke conversation about how climate change affects our daily lives. “A paper on beer might seem a little bit frivolous when it’s dealing with a topic that poses existential threats,” Davis said. “But some of us have a personal love of beer and thought this might be interesting.” Climate change won’t just alter the weather; it’ll also hit our grocery tabs and hobbies.

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Climate change could double the cost of your beer

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That Time Scientists Discovered a Planet Called "Vulcan"

by FranchescaTimmon Posted on October 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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Live long and prosper. NBC Television via Wikimedia Commons

It’s not often you hear a scientist praise the virtues of failure, but this week’s guest on the Inquiring Minds podcast is no ordinary scientist.

Stuart Firestein, who previously wrote a book about the value of ignorance, tells host Indre Viskontas that “science is really about the stuff we don’t know.” The professor and former chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University explains that failure is often what leads to new discoveries.

To illustrate his point, Firestein describes the discovery of two new planets. The first, Neptune, was found in 1846 when scientists noticed that Uranus’ orbit wasn’t where it was supposed to be according to Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. As Firestein says, Uranus was “wobbling around” and hadn’t gone as far as scientists had expected. At first, it seemed like there must be something wrong with Newtonian physics. But eventually, scientists came up with a better explanation: There must be another planet invisible to telescopes whose gravitational pull was causing the “perturbations” in Uranus’ orbit. Using calculations, those scientists found Neptune, proving Newton was right all along.

“In that case, the failure led to a new discovery,” Firestein says.

The planet Neptune NASA

But a contradictory case soon led to a far different result. A few years later, scientists began to notice a “funny wobble” in Mercury’s orbit, too. Naturally, some thought there must be another new planet that, like Neptune, was causing the shakiness. They named this mysterious planet Vulcan. As it turned out, however, Vulcan didn’t exist. Mercury’s orbit could actually be explained by Einstein’s theory of relativity, which contains a different description of gravity than Newton’s laws. In other words, perhaps Newton really wasn’t quite right all along. But scientists’ efforts to apply his laws helped them vastly improve their understanding of our solar system.

That’s a story that is repeated over and over in science, according to Firestein. “It’s imperfection,” he says, “that is often the source of unexpected discoveries and creativity.”

The same principle applies to other disciplines. Firestein describes a 1996 study in which some participants were exposed to phrases associated with old age, while others received neutral words. After reading the lines, each participant walked down a hallway, and the results were telling. Those who read the words associated with old age—such as “Florida” and “bingo”—walked slower than those who read neutral phrases or ones associated with youth, Firestein says.

But there was just one problem. When researchers in Belgium tried to repeat the study, they weren’t able to replicate the results. Since the phrases in the Belgian study were given in French, rather than in English, Firestein says, the experiment was not a direct replication of the original. So was it a failure? Not according to Firestein.

In fact, he says, an example like this actually “increases our knowledge” because it can prompt scientists to examine variables and nuances that can be “very, very subtle.”

To Firestein, science is a study in trial and error. “Science is a process,” he says. “It never stops.”

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook.

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That Time Scientists Discovered a Planet Called "Vulcan"

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French Prisons May Be Producing Dangerous Terrorists

by BTZBrittan Posted on August 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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Earlier this week, two ISIS-linked extremists killed a priest and stabbed another parishioner during morning mass at a Catholic church in Normandy, the 11th terrorist attack on French soil since January 2015. One of the alleged attackers was identified as Adel Kermiche, a French teenager who was imprisoned briefly for attempting to travel to Syria, likely to join ISIS. He was released into his parents’ custody with an ankle monitor in March.

While Kermiche was likely already dedicated to violent jihad, the radicalization of young Muslims in lockup is a growing concern for officials in France, where a majority of the nation’s more than 65,000 prisoners are Muslim. Two of the three Frenchmen involved in last January’s Charlie Hebdo killings met in prison, where they were radicalized by another inmate. The mastermind behind the November 2015 attack on the Bataclan theater in Paris became radicalized while imprisoned in Belgium, his father said. A man who fatally stabbed a police officer and his wife in their Magnanville, France, home last month had been flagged by prison officials for trying to convince other inmates to join him in jihad. And at least one other perpetrator of a major terror attack in France in recent years also served time—although it’s unclear what role that played in the subsequent attack.

France, hoping to curb this apparent trend, has instituted de-radicalization programs in a number of prisons. Inmates incarcerated on terror-related charges, or whom prison officials believe are susceptible to radicalization, are boxed off from the general population and offered the services of psychologists, teachers, imams, and other professionals, with the goal of coaxing the inmates toward healthier perspectives. But the preliminary verdict of some French prison officials is that the programs are not working.

Mourad Benchellali is a French anti-radicalization lecturer who spent a total of four years imprisoned at Guantanámo Bay and France’s Fleury-Mérogis prison—Europe’s largest penitentiary—for training with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. He has been called in to speak with inmates in the de-radicalization units at six prisons. “If you put all these people together who are only thinking about radical Islam, who are only talking about it, it’s hard to break that mentality,” Benchellali told me. It’s also risky, he adds, to put people in the program who aren’t yet radicalized, because constant interactions with committed terrorists could push salvageable inmates over the edge.

But there’s something more fundamental at play here—something US authorities can learn from, notes Mark Hamm, a former director of education and programming for the Arizona Department of Corrections who now studies prison radicalization at Indiana State University. Many young Muslim inmates—often children of immigrants from former French colonies in North Africa—come from impoverished backgrounds, and feel alienated and rejected by French society. This makes them easy marks for charismatic radicals. “They feel like France doesn’t want them,” Benchellali says.

It’s not hard to see why they feel that way. Muslims make up less than 10 percent of France’s population but more than half of its prisoners. Muslim women are legally barred from wearing face veils in public. During the 2012 presidential election cycle, French candidates debated whether Muslim butchers were lying to their customers about selling them halal meat (akin to kosher meat). The state of emergency France instituted in response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks last January has resulted in police raids on thousands of Muslim homes, mosques, restaurants, and other establishments—hundreds of Muslims have been placed on house arrest without a court order. (Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International cried foul in recent reports.) French authorities have closed mosques and expelled from the country imams they deemed too radical, and the prime minister recently proposed banning foreign funding for French mosques to cut down on potential cash flows from extremist groups. And the anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping Europe amid the Syrian refugee crisis was deepened by the latest wave of attacks in France, Belgium, and Germany.

In this hostile atmosphere, Benchellali says, radicalism becomes an attractive route for young Muslim inmates—separated from friends and family, and thus more susceptible to emotional manipulation—to resist a system they feel has attacked them. Radicalism makes them feel like they belong.

A recent study by the Brookings Institute found—to the authors’ surprise—that the single biggest predictor of whether a person traveled from a particular country to join terrorist groups in the Middle East was whether or not French was (or used to be) the originating country’s official language. Four of the five countries that produce foreign fighters at the highest rate—France, Belgium, Tunisia, and Lebanon—were Francophone (Jordan is the fifth). Partly to blame, the authors surmised, is the French political culture in those countries—specifically, the aggressive French approach to secularism. (Unconvinced, France’s ambassador to the United States scoffed that the study didn’t “make any methodological sense.”)

In the United States, there has been periodic worry about prisoner radicalization. Such concerns peaked in the years after the September 11 attacks, waned, and have popped up again thanks to a 2010 Senate report that cited dozens of American former convicts who had traveled to Yemen—possibly to fight with Al Qeada—and also President Obama’s proposal, earlier this year, to transfer dozens of Guantanamo inmates to US prisons. Congress introduced a bill last December that would require federal prison volunteers to undergo background checks to look for ties to terrorist groups.

The number of inmates radicalized in American prisons who went on to commit terrorist acts—whether Islamic extremists, right-wingers, black nationalists, or otherwise—Hamm says, is minute. In a study of prison radicalization in Western nations from 1969 to 2011, Hamm found just 51 such cases—nearly 80 percent of which involved radical Islamists—Benchelalli adds that radicalization is not happening “en masse” in French prisons either. Yet despite the small numbers, “the acts they commit are spectacular,” Hamm says.

The small sample size makes it hard to draw up a profile of the American inmates most likely to become radicalized, Hamm says. But there are some patterns: Radicalization tends to follow a prison gang model, with charismatic leaders calling the shots. Among African Americans—who make up the largest percentage of prisoners—many of those who become radicalized bounce from one religion to the next, converting to southern Baptist Christianity, for example, then to Islam, joining the Nation of Islam, and then progressing to yet more radical forms of the religion, Hamm says. Data on the religions of US inmates is scarce, but Islam is the fastest-growing prison religion in America, France, and other Western nations, Hamm says. Whereas a previous generation of prisoners adopted Marxism as the ideology of the oppressed, Hamm and other scholars say, the younger inmates have replaced it with Islam.

In a failed 2005 plot that received widespread attention, several radical Islamists planned to bomb synagogues and an Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, along with several military bases. The attack was planned and ordered by Kevin James, a black inmate incarcerated on robbery charges at California State Prison in Sacramento (a.k.a. New Folsom). A former Crip, James had converted to Islam in prison and radicalized a fellow convert from a rival faction of the gang who led the plot on the outside upon his release. (He was later convicted of charges related to the plot.)

American prison inmates become radicalized for reasons similar to inmates in France, Hamm told me. “The social and political contention of the times have always had an impact on prisoners,” he says. Inmates entertain themselves by reading the newspaper and magazines and watching the news when it’s available: “Identities are formed around these conversations.”

New Folsom, a maximum-security prison, is among the nation’s most dysfunctional, Hamm says. “Radicalization doesn’t happen in well-managed, small, medium-security prisons,” he says. “It does happen in large, overcrowded, mismanaged, maximum-security prisons where rehabilitation, treatment, and work have disappeared.”

France’s prisons are notoriously overcrowded—former president Nicolas Sarkozy once called them “the disgrace of the Republic.” And with few trained imams available for religious guidance, Benchellali says, questioning Muslim inmates turn to their peers for answers.

Hamm told me he’s skeptical about French prison officials’ assessment that the de-radicalization program—which has been in operation for a little over a year—isn’t working. “It’s too early” to tell, he says. “You need longitudinal studies” to determine that. In any case, the best cure for prison radicalization, he says, is you “give people hope and you give them something to do. You keep them busy. You don’t neglect them. You don’t let them turn into gang bangers and people who are racist.” What helped Benchellali in prison, he says, was doing things like playing sports and talking to non-radical inmates about topics other than terrorism.

Meanwhile, the anti-Muslim backlash to terror attacks will only drive more such attacks, Georgetown professor Daniel Byman argued on Slate earlier this month. “More vitriol and hostility toward French and European Muslims,” he said, makes it “easier for ISIS to gain recruits and score victories.”

Indeed, in a video released just two months before the Charlie Hebdo attack, French ISIS fighters called on French Muslims to join the Islamic State or wage jihad at home, because in France, one fighter noted, “just wearing the niqab is very difficult.”

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French Prisons May Be Producing Dangerous Terrorists

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Climate Activists Sued Their Country to Force It to Pollute Less. They Just Won.

by Antonio50E Posted on June 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A court in The Hague has ordered the Dutch government to cut its emissions by at least 25 percent within five years, in a landmark ruling expected to cause ripples around the world.

To cheers and hoots from climate campaigners in court, three judges ruled that government plans to cut emissions by just 14 to 17 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2020 were unlawful, given the scale of the threat posed by climate change.

Jubilant campaigners said that governments preparing for the Paris climate summit later this year would now need to look over their shoulders for civil rights era-style legal challenges where emissions-cutting pledges are inadequate.

“Before this judgment, the only legal obligations on states were those they agreed among themselves in international treaties,” said Dennis van Berkel, legal counsel for Urgenda, the group that brought the suit.

“This is the first time a court has determined that states have an independent legal obligation towards their citizens. That must inform the reduction commitments in Paris because if it doesn’t, they can expect pressure from courts in their own jurisdictions.”

In what was the first climate liability suit brought under human rights and tort law, Judge Hans Hofhuis told the court that the threat posed by global warming was severe and acknowledged by the Dutch government in international pacts.

“The state should not hide behind the argument that the solution to the global climate problem does not depend solely on Dutch efforts,” the judges’ ruling said. “Any reduction of emissions contributes to the prevention of dangerous climate change and as a developed country the Netherlands should take the lead in this.”

After a legal campaign that took two and a half years to get to its first hearing in April, normally dispassionate lawyers were visibly moved by the judge’s words. “As the verdict was being read out, I actually had tears in my eyes,” Roger Cox, Urgenda’s lead advocate, told the Guardian. “It was an emotional moment.”

Young activists in court said that the ruling had gone some way to restoring Dutch national pride, which has been dented as Denmark, Germany and even the UK overtook the Netherlands, once seen as a European climate leader, in the green economy race.

The Dutch Labor MP Eric Smaling cautioned though that “some people will feel proud but others are more unhappy about the influx of refugees. So far climate action has too much been the last baby of a relatively leftist elite.” He called for a wide coalition to spread the climate action message before elections in early 2017.

The Dutch government has not decided whether to appeal the court’s decision yet, but opposition politicians are steeling themselves for the prospect.

Stientje Van Veldhoven, an MP and spokesperson for the D66 Liberal opposition in parliament noted that the government had yielded to a comparable, if more limited, ruling ending gas extraction in part of the giant Groningen gas fields earlier this year.

“The government has never ignored a court ruling like this one before, but there has never been a ruling like this before either,” she said. “Everybody has a right to appeal.” Veldhoven has requested a parliamentary debate on Wednesday’s court ruling.

In a statement on behalf of prime minister Mark Rutte’s cabinet, the Dutch environment minister Wilma Mansfeld said that the government’s strategy was to implement EU-wide and international agreements.

“We and Urgenda share the same goal,” Mansfeld said. “We just hold different opinions regarding the manner in which to attain this goal. We will now examine what this ruling means for the Dutch state.”

Some 886 plaintiffs organized by Urgenda had accused the Dutch government of negligence for “knowingly contributing” to a breach of the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) maximum target for global warming.

Their legal arguments rested on axioms forbidding states from polluting to the extent that they damage other states, and the EU’s “precautionary principle” which prohibits actions that carry unknown but potentially severe risks.

An article by the UN climate secretariat obliging states to do whatever is necessary to prevent dangerous climate change was also cited. So was the UN climate science panel’s 2007 assessment of the reductions in carbon dioxide needed to have a 50 percent chance of containing global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

Several legal sources said that ideas outlined in the Oslo Principles for climate change obligations, launched in the Guardian in March, appeared to have been influential in the judge’s reasoning.

James Thornton, the CEO of the environmental law group ClientEarth, hailed what he said had been a “courageous and visionary” ruling, that would shape the playing field for future suits.

“There are moments in history when only courts can address overwhelming problems. In the past it has been issues like discrimination. Climate change is our overwhelming problem and this court has addressed it. The Dutch court’s ruling should encourage courts around the world to tackle climate change now.”

Serge de Gheldere, the president of Klimaat Zaak, which is pursuing an almost identical case to Urgenda’s in Belgium, said: “This gives us a lot of hope as it sets an incredible precedent. The government in Belgium will take a lot of notice of whats happened here today. This could be the first stone that sets an avalanche in motion.”

Professor Pier Vellinga, Urgenda’s chairman and the originator of the 2-degree target in 1989, said that the breakthrough judgment would have a massive impact. “The ruling is of enormous significance, and beyond our expectations,” he said.

The court also ordered the government to pay all of Urgenda’s costs.

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Climate Activists Sued Their Country to Force It to Pollute Less. They Just Won.

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Beer Brewers Unite to Call for Action on Climate Change

by FaustinIllingwo Posted on March 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared at the Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A group of 24 brewers from across the country have come together to cut greenhouse gas emissions from their operations and call for strong national action to address climate change.

The breweries, which include Smuttynose Brewing Company, Guinness and Allagash Brewing Company, have signed onto the Climate Declaration organized through the sustainable business group Ceres. The declaration pledges that each company will take its own action to reduce emissions from its business, and will also support political action at the national level.

Jenn Vervier, director of strategy and sustainability at New Belgium Brewery, which is based in Fort Collins, Colorado, said action on climate change makes a lot of sense for the brewery because it uses a lot of energy in heating, cooling and transportation, and uses a lot of water. Rising emissions, too, are expected to have negative effects for the beer industry because it relies on the cultivation of barley and hops, which are sensitive to changes in the climate.

New Belgium Brewery has already installed 300 kilowatts of solar at its brewery in Colorado, and it capture methane generated in its operations, which it then burns to generate 15 percent of its electricity.

Vervier said the advocacy for national climate action also makes sense for brewers. “Even if we were to be ourselves climate neutral, it’s such a small drop in the bucket,” she said. “It’s going to take a cleaner grid to lower the emissions from manufacturing.”

Julia Person, sustainability manager at the Craft Brew Alliance, which owns the brands Redhook, Widmer Brothers and Kona, said the commitment to addressing their impact also has clear economic benefits. The company lowered its greenhouse gas emissions 8 percent in 2014, she said, which saved it more than $250,000 in energy costs. It has also reduced the amount of water needed to produce a gallon of beer to 3.5 gallons—much lower than the craft brewery average of 6 to 8 gallons, Person said.

“It’s good for business, it’s not just good for the environment,” said Person. “We’re lowering our operating costs. It’s doing the right thing and having a benefit.”

Also signing the declaration: Aeronaut Brewing Company, The Alchemist, Aspen Brewing Company, Brewery Vivant, Bouy Beer Company, Chuckanut Brewery and Kitchen, Deschutes Brewery, Fort George Brewery and Public House, Fremont Brewing Company, Georgetown Brewing Co., Guinness, Hopworks Urban Brewery, Ninkasi Brewing Company, Odell Brewing, Rockford Brewing Company, Smuttynose Brewing Company, Snake River Brewing Co., Standing Stone Brewing Co., and Wet Dog Café & Brewery.

The brewers hope that their advocacy reaches consumers, too. “Beer is near and dear to people’s hearts. It’s part of people’s everyday activity,” said Vervier of New Belgium. “I think when people see their favorite brands speaking out, it gives them courage to speak out. I think it makes it relatable for people.”

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Beer Brewers Unite to Call for Action on Climate Change

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This Map Shows The West’s Spreading Anti-Terror Crackdown

by FreddyHoliday Posted on January 20, 2015

Mother Jones

On the heels of the Paris attacks, a wave of anti-terror raids, arrests, and new security policies have swept the Western world in at least seven countries. Around two dozen suspects in four countries were apprehended on Thursday and Friday of last week. On Tuesday, counter-terrorism operations continued in France, Germany, and Greece. The map below plots the efforts thus far from Canada, the US, Germany, Ireland, France, Greece, and Belgium. Click on each city for further details.

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This Map Shows The West’s Spreading Anti-Terror Crackdown

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Today Is the 100th Anniversary of the WWI Christmas Truce

by WalkerB27aru Posted on December 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Go to war and every politician will thank you, and they’ll continue to do so—with monuments and statues, war museums and military cemeteries—long after you’re dead. But who thanks those who refused to fight, even in wars that most people later realized were tragic mistakes? Consider the 2003 invasion of Iraq, now widely recognized as igniting an ongoing disaster. America’s politicians still praise Iraq War veterans to the skies, but what senator has a kind word to say about the hundreds of thousands of protesters who marched and demonstrated before the invasion was even launched to try to stop our soldiers from risking their lives in the first place?

What brings all this to mind is an apparently heartening exception to the rule of celebrating war-makers and ignoring peacemakers. A European rather than an American example, it turns out to be not quite as simple as it first appears. Let me explain.

December 25th will be the 100th anniversary of the famous Christmas Truce of the First World War. You probably know the story: after five months of unparalleled industrial-scale slaughter, fighting on the Western Front came to a spontaneous halt. British and German soldiers stopped shooting at each other and emerged into the no-man’s-land between their muddy trenches in France and Belgium to exchange food and gifts.

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Today Is the 100th Anniversary of the WWI Christmas Truce

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Gouging the Gougeable: Yet Another Triumph of the American Health Care System

by JillianLowin Posted on December 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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Len Charlap has had a couple of outpatient echocardiograms recently. Elisabeth Rosenthal tallies up the damage:

The five hospitals within a 15-mile radius of Mr. Charlap’s home here charge an average of about $5,200 for an echocardiogram, according to an analysis of Medicare’s database. The seven teaching hospitals in Boston, affiliated with Harvard, Tufts and Boston University, charge an average of about $1,300 for the same test. There are even wide variations within cities: In Philadelphia, prices range from $700 to $12,000.

….In other countries, regulators set what are deemed fair charges, which include built-in profit. In Belgium, the allowable charge for an echocardiogram is $80, and in Germany, it is $115. In Japan, the price ranges from $50 for an older version to $88 for the newest, Dr. Ikegami said.

Because Mr. Charlap, 76, is on Medicare, which is aggressive in setting rates, he paid only about $80 toward the approximately $500 fee Medicare allows. But many private insurers continue to reimburse generously for echocardiograms billed at thousands of dollars, said Dr. Seth I. Stein, a New York physician who researches data on radiology. Hospitals pursue patients who are uninsured or underinsured for those payments, he added.

This is now such a common story that it’s hard to work up the outrage it deserve. Is this practice corrupt? Merely venal? Or just crazy? I don’t even know anymore. What I do know is that if an outpatient echo costs $80 in Belgium and $500 via Medicare, there’s no conceivable justification for a $5,200 charge. It bears no relationship to the actual cost of the test, and is designed primarily to gouge the occasional uninsured patient who has no choice in the matter along with the (inexplicable) occasional insurance company willing to pony up even for obviously outrageous charges. One of the hospitals that performed an echocardiogram on Charlap didn’t even bother denying that this is what they’re doing:

In a statement, the hospital in Princeton that performed Mr. Charlap’s first, more expensive echocardiogram noted that “the vast majority of customers” paid much less than the listed prices. It added that its pricing reflected the need to offset losses because many programs, including Medicare, reimburse less than the cost of delivering services.

I doubt that Medicare is reimbursing less than the cost of performing an echocardiogram, but you can see what’s going on here. The “vast majority” of patients do indeed pay far less than list price. So why have such a high list price? In order to gouge the tiny minority who are gougeable.

It’s lovely the way American medicine works, isn’t it?

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Gouging the Gougeable: Yet Another Triumph of the American Health Care System

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Belgium Might Not Be a Country by the Next World Cup

by NannieWhitelegg Posted on July 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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When the Belgian soccer team takes the field today against the United States, it could be for the last time—and not just for this World Cup. By the time the next Cup kicks off in 2018, Belgium may not exist at all.

Belgium was an invention of the 19th century: culturally and linguistically, it’s divided cleanly between the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south. Brussels, the capital of both Belgium and the European Union, is right in the middle. Recently, politicians in Flanders—which became wealthier than industrial, coal-mining Wallonia in postwar Europe—have pushed for independence, leading to serious strife between the country’s two largest political parties.

Those parties, the Dutch-speaking New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) and the French-speaking Christian Democrats, failed to form a government last week when Flemish leaders walked away from coalition talks. The last time Belgium couldn’t form a government was in 2010; it took the parties 18 months to finally do it. The N-VA is a separatist party whose support has skyrocketed in Flanders; in Wallonia, right-wing politicians are asserting ties to France, and French National Front leader Marine Le Pen—who has compared Muslim immigration to Nazi occupation—said her country would welcome the Walloons “with pleasure.”

The crisis happens to fall during one of the Belgian soccer team’s best World Cup showings. The Red Devils won all of their group stage games and are favored to knock out the United States for a spot in the quarterfinals. The team’s success is providing a rallying point for the country, if only for a short time. The team is made up of players from both Flanders and Wallonia; as a Belgian journalist told Yahoo, “When the national team plays everyone gets behind them, everyone supports them…No one is thinking about politics when the team is playing. Everyone is together and united.”

Right now, there’s no scheduled vote on separation in Belgium—like the one happening in Scotland later this year—but the situation could escalate. So while Belgian fans will cheer on their Red Devils in Dutch and French today, when it’s time to fly home, those cheers just might turn into arguments.

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Belgium Might Not Be a Country by the Next World Cup

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Why Are American Doctors Paid So Damn Much?

by pa98grv Posted on November 20, 2013

Mother Jones

Conservatives have picked up today on a Kaiser Health News piece reporting on doctor complaints that insurers plan to pay them less for Obamacare patients than for other patients:

Insurance officials acknowledge they have reduced rates in some plans, saying they are under enormous pressure to keep premiums affordable. They say physicians will make up for the lower pay by seeing more patients, since the plans tend to have smaller networks of doctors. But many primary care doctors say they barely have time to take care of the patients they have now.

Matt Yglesias is unsympathetic. He says American doctors are very well paid and should quit griping: “If we ever reach the point where American doctors have been squeezed so badly that they start fleeing north of the border to get higher pay in Canada, then we’ve squeezed too hard. Until that happens, forget about it.”

That’s pretty cold. But if you really want to know what’s going on, take a gander at the chart below. It’s from the OECD, so it includes all of the world’s relatively rich countries:

That’s damn peculiar, isn’t it? If Econ 101 is to be believed, higher pay should produce more doctors. And yet, even though the United States pays doctors far more than any other country on the globe, we’re in the bottom third. We have more doctors per capita than poorish countries like Mexico and Poland, but far fewer than Belgium and Britain and Germany—all of which pay doctors considerably less than we do here. So what’s going on?

As Matt says, the basic answer is that U.S. doctors operate as a cartel. They artificially limit their own ranks, which drives up their compensation:

What we really ought to be doing is working to further pressure the incomes of doctors through supply-side reforms. That means letting nurse-practitioners treat patients without kicking a slice upstairs to an M.D., letting more doctors immigrate to the United States, and it means opening more medical schools. Common sense says that since the population both grows and ages over time, there should be more people admitted to medical school today than were thirty years ago. But that’s not the case. Instead we produce roughly the same number of new doctors, admissions standards have gotten tougher, and doctors have become scarcer.

This is yet another reason not to shed too many tears for doctors. They’ve basically brought this on themselves. If the market were allowed to produce as many doctors as there’s demand for, they’d already be getting paid less. Right now they’re enjoying the substantial rents that come from squeezing their own supply, and they’ve fought like lemmings for decades to keep it that way. You can hardly blame them for that, but there’s no reason the rest of us should put up with it. It’s time to fight back.

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Why Are American Doctors Paid So Damn Much?

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