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Obamacare’s Growing Pains Are About What You’d Expect in a Newly Competitive Market

by Mamie2869mu Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Yesterday United Healthcare announced that they would be exiting the Obamacare exchanges after 2016. They were losing too much money and figured it was time to call it quits.

What does this mean? Here are a few bullet points:

UH is a relatively small part of Obamacare, accounting for about 5 percent of exchange members.
However, its presence is bigger in some states than others.
Overall, then, this is only moderately bad news for Obamacare as a program. In some places, however, it’s very bad news. And obviously, for the people affected who have to switch plans in 2017, it’s a huge pain in the ass.

Beyond this, the news depends on why UH is doing so badly:

It could be that UH simply isn’t competitive. If that’s the case, it’s nothing more than the expected result of marketplace competition. If other companies are more efficient or offer better products, you’re in trouble.
However, it’s also possible that UH’s exit exposes some fundamental problems with Obamacare. UH claims—without offering any real evidence—that people are signing up when they get sick and then dropping out. This is unsustainable in any insurance market, and if people really have found loopholes that allow this on a large scale, it’s bad news for Obamacare. It would be especially bad news since Republicans are rooting for Obamacare to fail and will refuse to allow any changes that might make it work better.

Generally speaking, I think that what we’ve been seeing recently is a fairly predictable consequence of setting up a competitive market: there’s going to be a lot of churn at the beginning, as companies figure out what works best. Some, like UH and the ill-fated co-ops, will drop out. Others will discover they were too optimistic and will raise rates. Others will gain market share at their expense because they’re better run or made better actuarial projections. In a few years, this will all settle down and we’ll finally have a pretty good idea of just how well Obamacare works and how much it costs.

We could have avoided this kind of thing by creating a simpler, more universal program, but that just wasn’t politically possible. Creating a competitive marketplace was the only way to get Obamacare passed. Unfortunately, competition has both pluses and minuses. In theory, it should provide lower prices and better value in the long run. But it might take a while to get there.

More detail is available from John Cohn and Megan McArdle.

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Obamacare’s Growing Pains Are About What You’d Expect in a Newly Competitive Market

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Obamacare Co-Op Closures: A Headache, Not a Catastrophe

by Amy3756yyoaopho Posted on November 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Six years ago the Obama administration backed away from offering a public option in Obamacare. In its place, we got nonprofit co-ops. Paul Krugman was not impressed:

Let’s be clear: the supposed alternative, nonprofit co-ops, is a sham. That’s not just my opinion; it’s what the market says: stocks of health insurance companies soared on news that the Gang of Six senators trying to negotiate a bipartisan approach to health reform were dropping the public plan. Clearly, investors believe that co-ops would offer little real competition to private insurers.

Well, both Krugman and the market were right: co-ops never signed up all that many patients, and now they’re failing. By next year there could well be none left.

This has led to a round of breathless news reports. The failures have “handed Republicans a new weapon in their campaign against the health law.” Patients are “scrambling” to find new coverage. The closures have left behind a trail of “human wreckage.”

Fair enough, I suppose. Co-ops probably were never a good idea, and their bankruptcies really are causing a lot of grief for the people who had signed up with them. Still, in the midst of all this, it’s worth pointing out what we’re talking about:

Roughly 500,000 co-op customers will have to switch insurance plans.
That’s out of 30 million people who already switch insurance plans each year.1
And because of Obamacare, co-op customers can shop for a new plan pretty easily.

It’s not unfair to make political hay out of this, especially if you thought co-ops were a bad idea to begin with. But the bottom line is that instead of 30 million people switching plans, about 30.5 million will switch plans next year—and they’ll be able to do it more easily than they could in the past. It’s a headache, but hardly a catastrophe.

1Mostly against their will. About 68 percent are forced to switch because they changed jobs or their employer decided to change carriers. Another 16 percent switched because their plan was too expensive. Less than 10 percent switched because their new plan offered better service.

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Obamacare Co-Op Closures: A Headache, Not a Catastrophe

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There’s a Big Untapped Market Out There for Insulting Libertarians

by CarmaDja7537 Posted on October 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ah, the mysteries of blogging. Over on the right, you’ll notice that a post of mine has been highlighted: “Here’s Why Libertarians Are Mostly Men.” But why? It’s four months old. It’s 200 words long. It probably took about 20 minutes to write. It offers up a theory that I pulled out of my ass.

And it has 161,000 Facebook likes. By contrast, my piece on lead and crime—by far the most important and most popular piece I’ve ever written for the magazine—has 87,000 likes after three years online. This quick post about libertarians is probably the most widely read prose I’ve ever written in my life.

Fine. My public has spoken. Less research, more Trumpesque insults aimed at libertarians. I’ll see what I can do.

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There’s a Big Untapped Market Out There for Insulting Libertarians

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MacArthur winner wants to make clean energy with fake leaves

by DomingoDDXA Posted on October 2, 2015

MacArthur winner wants to make clean energy with fake leaves

By on 2 Oct 2015commentsShare

What’s the difference between an artificial leaf and a solar panel? This isn’t the setup for a joke; it’s an actual question. Although believe me — that’s not for lack of trying.

The difference is that a solar panel turns sunlight into electricity, and an artificial leaf turns sunlight into fuel. (Ba dum tss!) This is an important distinction, because as much as we humans love our electricity, we’re not very good at storing it, and that’s a problem, because electricity can be as ephemeral as your college roommate’s desire to read Infinite Jest. The nice thing about fuel is that it is an energy storage device — that is, it stores the energy from sunlight in the chemical bonds of the fuel itself. This is what plants do when they convert sunlight and CO2 into oxygen and sugar (fuel), hence the term “artificial leaf.”

Another important difference between a solar panel and an artificial leaf is that you can actually buy a solar panel. Artificial leaf technology is still in research mode, but it won’t be for long if Peidong Yang has anything to say about it.

Yang, a professor of energy and chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, is one of this year’s MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant recipients. His lab has developed a “leaf” that uses nanowires between 100 and 1,000 times thinner than a human hair to capture sunlight. Bacteria cultured among the nanowires then use that sunlight to convert CO2 into oxygen and fuels like methane and butanol.

The Los Angeles Times recently caught up with Yang to discuss the technology and his hopes for the future:

How close are you to being able to use artificial photosynthesis on a large scale?

This year, we finally came up with a first-generation, fully-functional system — and that’s after 10 years of research. We demonstrated its feasibility, but in terms of robustness and cost and efficiency, it is not close to being commercially viable.

To do basic research, we have to be patient. I’m a big believer that discovery cannot be planned. It requires support from the government and industry. It will take the work of one or two generations of talented people to solve this problem.

Do you think artificial photosynthesis can ever compete with natural photosynthesis?

We want to learn from nature, but we have to be better than nature.

It took evolution millions of years to get green plants and leaves to their current stage, but their solar-to-chemical-energy efficiency is not that high. All they need to do is make enough energy to survive. To come up with a commercially viable technology, we have to do better than that.

Is that possible?

Theoretically, it is certainly possible. In solar panels the energy conversion efficiency is above 20%, much higher than what is happening in leaves. So in terms of design, we have the advantage — nature doesn’t have silicon to use. We do.

Yang isn’t the only one working on an artificial leaf. Earlier this year, a group at Caltech demonstrated an artificial leaf that could turn sunlight into hydrogen fuel at a relatively high efficiency. Their prototype is still too expensive for the market, but it was a promising proof of concept.

OK, OK — I got it: An internal combustion engine, an artificial leaf, and a solar panel walk into a bar.

The internal combustion engine orders a Sidecar, and the artificial leaf orders a Tequila Sunrise.

The bartender looks at the solar panel. “And another Sunrise for you?”

“No, thanks. It’ll go right through me.”

Source:

Q&A MacArthur ‘genius’ explains why artificial leaves need to work better than real ones

, The Los Angeles Times.

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China’s Climate Plan Isn’t Crazy and Might Actually Work

by EddyTorpy70 Posted on September 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama are planning to jointly announce long-awaited details of China’s plan to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by putting a price on carbon dioxide pollution. The plan, which will commence in 2017, will make China the world’s biggest market for carbon cap-and-trade, a system that sets a cap on the amount of CO2 that major polluters like power plants and factories can emit, then allows those entities to sell off excess credits (if they pollute less than the limit) or buy extra ones (if they pollute more than the limit).

The idea of a system like this is that it uses the market—rather than simply a government mandate—to force cuts in the emissions that cause climate change. Want to pollute? Fine, but it’s going to cost you. If you clean up, you can make cash selling credits to your dirtier neighbors. A similar type of policy, a carbon tax, imposes a different kind of financial incentive in the form of a fee paid to the government for every unit of CO2 emissions. Ultimately, the rationale behind both systems is the same: Because corporate polluters now have to pay a financial price price for their emissions, air pollution and fossil fuel consumption both go down, clean energy goes up, and the climate is saved.

Many environmental economists agree that some kind of carbon price—either cap-and-trade or a tax—is the most efficient and effective way to quickly curb fossil fuel consumption, and thus give us a chance at staving off global warming. Democrats in Congress attempted to enact a national cap-and-trade program in the US in 2009; it passed the House but was killed by the Senate Republicans. Since then, a national carbon pricing system has been a non-starter in Washington. But there are plenty of other examples of successful systems elsewhere that should make us optimistic about China’s new plan.

The Northeast United States: The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cap-and-trade market that includes nine states in the Northeast, set up in 2008. The program is widely considered a success and is expected to reduce the region’s power-sector emissions by 45 percent compared to 2005 levels by 2020. This year, the price of credits has been riding high, a sign that the market is working to create a powerful incentive to reduce emissions. The most recent auction of credits, in September, generated in $152.7 million for the states—revenue that is re-invested in clean energy programs and electric bill assistance for low-income households.

California: When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed through legislation in 2006 to set aggressive climate targets for the state, the key mechanism was a cap-and-trade program, which finally opened in 2013. So far, it seems to be working. Emissions are down, while GDP is up. In fact, the California program was a primary model for the Chinese system.

British Columbia: This Canadian province’s carbon tax, first enacted in 2008, is one of the most successful carbon pricing plans anywhere. Gasoline consumption is way down, and the government has raised billions that it has returned to citizens in the form of tax cuts for low-income households and small businesses. The program “made climate action real to people,” one Canadian environmentalist told my former colleague Chris Mooney.

Australia: For a country that is notoriously reliant on coal, Australia had been on the progressive side of climate politics after it passed a national carbon tax in 2012. The tax was scrapped just two years later, after then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott blamed it for a sluggish economic recovery and high energy prices. But the repeal actually yielded an unexpected insight into the success of the program: In the first quarter without the tax, emissions jumped for the first time since prior to the global financial crisis. In other words, the tax had worked effectively to drive down emissions.

Europe: Of course, carbon pricing systems aren’t without their flaws, and the European Trading Scheme has provided a good example of the risks. The system has often been plagued by a too-high cap, meaning the market becomes flooded with credits, the price drops, and polluters have little incentive to change. This month, regulators passed a package of reforms meant to restrict the number of credits and bolster the market. But even with the low price, the ETS has been effective enough to keep the EU on track to meet its stated climate goals.

Even with these good examples to draw from, there are still challenges ahead for China. How will the government allocate credits among different polluters? Will the polluters actually trade with one another? How effectively will the government be able to monitor emissions, to ensure that the credits actually match real pollution?

But at the very least, Republicans in the US just lost one their favorite excuses for climate inaction: That China, the world’s biggest emitter, is doing nothing.

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China’s Climate Plan Isn’t Crazy and Might Actually Work

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Monsanto Halts Its Bid to Buy Rival Syngenta—For Now

by Roslyn56Cpki Posted on August 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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After four months of hot pursuit, genetically modified seed/pesticide giant Monsanto formally ended its bid to buy rival Syngenta Wednesday—at least for now. Earlier in the week, Monsanto had sweetened its offer for the Swiss agrochemical behemoth—most famous for its controversial atrazine herbicide and neonicotinoid pesticides—to $47 billion, in an effort to convince Syngenta’s management and shareholders to accept the merger. They balked, and Monsanto management opted to halt the effort, declaring in a press release that it would instead “focus on its growth opportunities built on its existing core business to deliver the next wave of transformational solutions for agriculture.”

However, Monsanto may just be pausing, not fully halting, its buyout push. The company’s press release states that it’s “no longer pursuing the current proposal” (emphasis added) to buy its rival, and quickly added that the combination “would have created tremendous value for shareowners of both companies and farmers.” And as Dow Jones’ Jacob Bunge notes, Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant “has coveted Syngenta since at least 2011, and said in a June interview that he viewed the effort as ‘a long game.'”

The logic that has driven Monsanto’s zeal for a deal remains in place: It wants to diversify away from its reliance on seeds by buying Syngenta, the world’s biggest purveyor of pesticides (more on that here).

Meanwhile, Monsanto has been actively hyping up a new generation of pesticides, still in the development stage, which work by killing crop-chomping pests by silencing certain genes. But the company doesn’t expect the novel sprays to hit the market until 2020—a timeline that may be overly optimistic, as I show here.

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Monsanto Halts Its Bid to Buy Rival Syngenta—For Now

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Here’s What Sexperts Think About "Female Viagra" and Why You Shouldn’t Call It That

by RosalinSimms Posted on August 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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When news broke on August 18 that the Food and Drug Administration approved Addyi, the pill that is being incorrectly referred to as the “female Viagra,” it might have seemed like an obvious feminist win. Viagra has been around since 1998, but there hasn’t been anything remotely comparable on the market for women. Addyi is supposed to alleviate female hypoactive sexual desire disorder (or lack of sexual desire). But as we’ve reported, women on Addyi experienced an increase of only one sexual event per month during clinical trials.

So what’s really going on with the little pink pill? And what’s the latest science on low libidos? We asked Rachel Hills, author of the The Sex Myth, and Emily Nagoski, sex educator and author of Come As You Are, to weigh in:

What is female sexual dysfunction? Hills points out that when Viagra went on the market, it aimed to treat a very specific disease: erectile dysfunction. Viagra works by increasing blood flow to the penis to get an erection hard enough for sex; it does not cause arousal. Addyi targets the brain, and it does aim to increase arousal by stimulating the brain in a way that’s comparable to antidepressants. Hills says this is where it gets tricky, because “female sexual dysfunction” is not well-defined medically, and she thinks the term is being used too broadly. “It’s more amorphous than erectile dysfunction because the ‘disease’ is basically not wanting to have sex enough,” she says.

Do we need Addyi? According to Nagoski, there are two types of desire: spontaneous desire, which occurs without any physical prompting from a partner, and responsive desire, which comes from being in a sexual situation (think foreplay or dirty talk). Nagoski says it’s pretty normal for women to only experience responsive desire. But, maybe because men’s bodies work a little differently, women are led to believe that something is wrong with them if they don’t crave sex every day. Nagoski, who has worked as a sex educator for almost a decade, often hears women say, “Once my partner and I got started, everything was fine. It’s getting me started that’s the problem.” She thinks a lot of the hype surrounding Addyi is due to a lack of readily available information surrounding female sexuality.

Is this simply a pharmaceutical company trying to tap into a profitable market? A lot of the hype surrounding Addyi stemmed from good marketing, not a scientific breakthrough. “The most generous possible interpretation of the FDA responder analysis is that, of the thousands of women who were on the drug, a few experienced minimal benefit,” says Nagoski. Hills is also suspicious of the motives behind treating female sexual desire with a pill: “The entire question of female sexual dysfunction was motivated by the fact that there’s potentially a lot of money to be made in that.” There is certainly a lot of money at stake—Sprout Pharmaceuticals, the makers of Addyi, announced that Valeant Pharmaceuticals International acquired the pill for $1 billion.

Let’s talk about pleasure. Nagoski says the problem with Addyi is that it’s purpose is to create desire, but the point of desire falls flat if women aren’t experiencing pleasure. Hills and Nagoski believe the conversation about Addyi is too focused on how much sex women are having, regardless of whether the sex is good or not. For this reason, Hills says she doesn’t buy that Addyi is a feminist victory. “It’s certainly not that I think women should not have the right to sexual desire; it’s just that I think everyone has the right to desire as much sex as they want,” Hills says. “I worry about the desire for sex becoming an imperative.” Nagoski adds that framing a lack of desire as a medical problem reinforces the idea that there’s something wrong, which creates additional pressure that can impede libido. A focus on pleasure rather than desire could break that cycle.

So what’s the key to female sexual arousal? Nagoski details an interesting theory about this in Come As You Are. The way she sees it, the brain has what’s called a “dual-control model,” in which there is a sexual “accelerator” and a sexual “brake.” For the most part, men have more sensitive accelerators and women have more sensitive brakes—it’s easier for them to lose sexual arousal. The key is figuring out what’s hitting the brakes. Nagoski says it could be as simple as being distracted by grit on the sheets, or being worried someone will walk in. Or maybe it’s literally cold feet—a study by Dutch scientists found that wearing socks increased a woman’s chance of having an orgasm. Of course, if the sensitivity is trauma-related, Nagoski says seeing a sex therapist might be the best way to go. But for others, try to “take control of the issues you can take control of,” she says.

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Here’s What Sexperts Think About "Female Viagra" and Why You Shouldn’t Call It That

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China Finally Adopts Market-Based Value for its Currency, But We May Not Like the Results

by AdolphJanzen164 Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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For years the United States has been complaining that China artificially undervalues its currency, which makes their exports cheaper and gives them a trade advantage over American firms. In response, China has gradually let the renminbi rise. By 2015, it had roughly reached fair market value—though not all American politicians agreed about that.

But then the Chinese economy started going sour. Exports were down. The stock market crashed. Growth slowed. What to do? Answer: devalue the renminbi. But instead of doing it by fiat, pretend that you’re merely responding to market forces:

Every morning, Beijing sets a target for the trading of its currency against the U.S. dollar, then allows investors to buy and sell the currency for 2 percent more or less. Tuesday’s change relaxes the government’s control over setting that rate. The midpoint will now be set at the market’s closing rate for the previous day.

….Now, market forces could pressure the currency to depreciate rather than appreciate, making Chinese products comparatively cheaper….In China, the depreciation will be a boon for exporters and heavy industry, but bad news for companies that depend on imported goods. Shares of Chinese airlines plummeted on Tuesday, as analysts predicted that the higher cost of oil in U.S. dollars would weigh on their earnings.

It’s convenient to have a market-based policy as long as that produces a devaluation of the currency. But will Chinese authorities stick to this policy even when it means the renminbi will appreciate? Good question.

So what does it all mean? Here are a few obvious thoughts:

This is yet another vote of no confidence in the Chinese economy. When you put together everything that Chinese authorities have done over the past six months, I’d say they’re close to full-scale panic.
Investors are likely to push the renminbi even lower, and this is going to make life harder on anyone in China with dollar-denominated debt. This includes lots of local governments who have been financing the housing boom, which means this devaluation could hasten the housing bust everyone has been waiting for.
This will be a political issue in the US, but a tricky one. China is manipulating its currency to its own advantage—boo! hiss!—but has also adopted a policy that allows the renminbi’s value to be dictated by market forces—which is what we’ve been demanding all along. It will be interesting to see how all the Republican presidential candidates decide to respond to this.

Generally speaking, I think this should be taken as bad news. The world economy remains fragile, and if the Chinese economy is falling into recession—as the Chinese themselves seem to believe—it will affect all of us. And not in a good way. Stay tuned.

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China Finally Adopts Market-Based Value for its Currency, But We May Not Like the Results

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These biodegradable computer chips are made from wood

by MyrnaLigertwood Posted on July 14, 2015

These biodegradable computer chips are made from wood

By on 14 Jul 2015commentsShare

What if I told you that we could make computer chips out of biodegradable wood, instead of the semiconducting materials like silicon that we currently use and then promptly dump in landfills? Would you call me a dirty hippie and tell me to get real? How about if Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin, told you?

According to MIT Technology Review, Ma and his colleagues have indeed made such a chip:

The inventors argue that the new chips could help address the global problem of rapidly accumulating electronic waste, some of which contains potentially toxic materials. The results also show that a transparent, wood-derived material called nanocellulose paper is an attractive alternative to plastic as a surface for flexible electronics. …

In two recent demonstrations, Ma and his colleagues showed they can use nanocellulose as the support layer for radio frequency circuits that perform comparably to those commonly used in smartphones and tablets. They also showed that these chips can be broken down by a common fungus.

It’s worth noting that the nanocellulose doesn’t replace the actual electronic components on these chips, just the base on which those components lie. That’s still a big deal, though, because the electronic components on a chip are tiny compared to the base.

Ma told Technology Review that the chips are even ready for commercialization — but that the market might not be ready for them:

… He thinks it’s likely to take heightened environmental pressure, or a spike in the price of rare semiconductor materials like gallium, for the mainstream electronics industry to change its current practices and consider making chips from wood.

I’d say the environmental pressure is already there, but then again, who are we to make decisions based on what’s good for the environment?

Fortunately, there’s another reason to push for biodegradable computer chips. John Rogers, a materials scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told Technology Review that the military might be interested in using this technology for “transient electronics” that could conveniently disappear before they fall into the wrong hands. And if the military wants it, that means we’ll probably do it.

Source:
A Biodegradable Computer Chip That Performs Surprisingly Well

, MIT Technology Review.

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The New York Stock Exchange Has a Long History of Shutdowns

by KelleKYUxqg Posted on July 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Just after 11:32 am on Wednesday, the New York Stock Exchange experienced an extremely rare halt in all trading. NYSE leadership cited “an internal technical issue” and not, as many feared, a cyber attack.

It’s not the first time a random event has interrupted the 223-year-old stock exchange. Most memorably, the NYSE closed following V-J Day, when troops returned at the end of World War II, and for three full days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But the NYSE has closed for everything from the funerals of major world figures—such as Queen Victoria of England (1901), Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), and Richard Nixon (1994)—to extreme heat (August 4, 1917).

Here is a brief history of events that halted trading at the New York Stock Exchange.

September 1873: The collapse of the Jay Cooke & Company, a major financial institution, caused the New York Stock Exchange’s first closure, for 10 days, due to market calamity.

July 1914: The start of World War I in Europe shuttered the exchange for four months, the longest closure on record.

May 25, 1946: The NYSE shut down due to a railroad strike, part of one of the largest waves of strikes in US history.

1967 – 1996: Over this span of 29 years, eight ferocious blizzards either delayed the opening bell or closed the exchange early.

February 10, 1969: A snowstorm dubbed the “Lindsay Storm” shuttered the stock exchange for a day and a half amid 15.3 inches of snow.

July 21, 1969: This closure was planned, to celebrate the Apollo 11 moon landing.

July 14, 1977: The NYSE closed due to a major blackout across New York City.

October 27, 1997: A failsafe instantaneously stopped all trading for 30 minutes after the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 350 points.

May 6, 2010: The same circuit breaker that closed the NYSE in 1997 halted trading after a “flash crash” caused by automated high-frequency trading.

September 11, 2001: Terrorist attacks closed the exchange through September 14. The exchange also closed exactly a year later to mark the anniversary of the attacks.

October 29 – 30, 2012: The NYSE shut down while Hurricane Sandy battered the Eastern Seaboard. It was the first time a weather event closed the market for two full days in 124 years, after a snowstorm that dumped more than 40 feet of snow closed the exchange in 1888.

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The New York Stock Exchange Has a Long History of Shutdowns

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