Tag Archives: world

The Annual Medicare Doc Fix: Not as Bad as You Think!

by ElliottClaudio Posted on April 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s a bit of contrarianism for you today: Austin Frakt says that the much-maligned Medicare “doc fix” actually works pretty well. This is Congress’s annual charade in which it overrides the formula for Medicare reimbursements to doctors, resulting in doctors getting paid more—but without ever changing the formula itself. (Why? Because changing the formula would cost money, and they’d have to figure out how to pay for it. Better to just kick the can down the road each year.)

So from one point of view, the formula is just a joke. However:

From another point of view, the formula — as flawed as it is — has helped keep Medicare spending lower than it might otherwise have been. Instead of cutting physician payments by the large amount the S.G.R. demands, Congress has increased payment rates, but typically by only tiny amounts — at an annual rate of just 0.7 percent. That pace does not keep up with the typical cost of care.

The gap can be seen in the chart below. The bottom line illustrates how Congress has permitted Medicare physician payments to grow. The middle line shows an index of medical spending — spending at a typical physician’s practice over time — that is a proxy for the change in price for a typical, or average, medical treatment.

….The relatively gentle increases in Medicare payment rates makes clear that the formula is not the problem. I think that the formula has actually helped Congress be more fiscally responsible than it otherwise might have been. To physicians who fear a double-digit decrease in payment rates called for by the formula, a 0.5 percent or a 1.5 percent increase that Congress passes looks like a great deal.

So there you go. Two cheers for the Sustainable Growth Formula!

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The Annual Medicare Doc Fix: Not as Bad as You Think!

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Income Inequality Has Spurred a Boom in Private Security

by OdetteCordeaux Posted on April 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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This is a truly fascinating chart: countries with lots of income inequality—driven largely by the gains of the ultra-rich—also spend more and more of their money on security services. Gotta keep the hoi polloi at bay somehow, after all. However, the researchers who produced the chart also add some appropriately scholarly cautions:

Does the graph show that inequality causes a country to devote more of its labor force to guard labor? It is hard to be sure. It could be that people with a strong commitment to economic justice are, for some unknown reason, also more law-abiding, explaining the difference between Denmark and the United States. But the correlation evident in the graph could be evidence that economic disparities push nations to devote more of their productive capacity to guarding people and property. Fear and distrust of one’s neighbors and fellow citizens fuel the demand for guard labor. Economic disparities can contribute to both. Among the countries shown, a common measure of distrust of strangers is strongly correlated with both the guard-labor fraction and inequality.

Social spending, also, is strongly and inversely correlated with guard labor across the nations shown in the graph. There is a simple economic lesson here: A nation whose policies result in substantial inequalities may end up spending more on guns and getting less butter as a result.

Perhaps this is our dystopian, Piketty-esque future: a small class of ultra-wealthy rentiers; a breakdown of public safety because the rich employ their own private security forces and don’t feel like funding anything further; a retainer class of managerial drones; and then everyone else—sullen and resentful, but kept in line by the hard men in dark glasses toting automatic weapons and driving armored limos.

Actually, probably not. Eventually robots will provide better security services than fragile human beings, so the security forces will be out of jobs too. By then, however, even the ultra-wealthy won’t care if robots produce enough to make life lovely for everyone. Sure, they’ll still want their share of the still-scarce status goods—coastal property, penthouse apartments, original Rembrandts—but beyond that why should they care if everyone lives like kings? They won’t, and we probably will. As long as we don’t all kill ourselves first.

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Income Inequality Has Spurred a Boom in Private Security

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Deep Thought

by Blaine3524 Posted on April 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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Isn’t it about time for all of our cranky old white folks to retire from public life and spend the rest of their golden years on the golf course or the shooting range or whatever floats their boat? I suppose we have to continue inviting them to Thanksgiving dinner, what with them being family and all, but that’s about it. Beyond that, they should stick to ranting to their friends about how hard it is to get good help these days and otherwise leave the rest of us alone.

As for all their slick young white enablers, surely you guys have less nauseating ways of rising in the world? Roger Ailes doesn’t pay that well, does he?

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Deep Thought

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Friday Cat Blogging – 25 April 2014

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on April 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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If Vermeer painted cats, perhaps this is what a Vermeer cat would look like. All Domino needs is a pearl earring and a slightly more beguiling expression on her furry mug. Unfortunately, she’s sporting her all-too-common disdain for the stupid black box that I keep pointing in her direction while she’s trying to take a nice, peaceful nap.

And now for one last fundraising pitch. We’re getting close to the $100,000 goal for our investigative reporting fundraiser, and we have a few days left to get there. So how about a wee donation? If you value our reporting—or just want me to leave Domino alone so she can get her beauty rest—please donate $5 to the Mother Jones Investigative Fund. If you can afford it, make it $10. We’ll put it to good use. Here’s how to make a contribution:

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Friday Cat Blogging – 25 April 2014

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World Briefing : Afghanistan: Floods Kill Dozens

by Myrna Posted on April 25, 2014

Over 100 people have been killed and thousands have been left homeless by flash floods in northern and western Afghanistan, officials said Friday. See original article here: World Briefing : Afghanistan: Floods Kill Dozens Related ArticlesWorld Briefing | Asia: China: Legislature Toughens Environmental LawA Partnership to Help the Tallest Residents in Yosemite ParkObservatory: Blue-Footed Boobies, a Galápagos Treasure, Under Threat

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World Briefing : Afghanistan: Floods Kill Dozens

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John Boehner Speaks Up For Main Street Republicanism

by Sybil0169hkc Posted on April 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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I’ve always felt a little sorry for John Boehner. In another era—a non-tea party era—he would have been your basic Main Street Republican, willing to cut compromises to keep the country moving along in a tolerably orderly way. The kind of guy who would have taken his cues from the Middletown Rotary Club.

Speaking of which, Boehner spoke to the Middletown Rotary Club yesterday and let his hair down. For most Republicans, this would have meant getting caught making some kind of incendiary remarks about Obama thuggery and class warfare against job creators. In Boehner’s case, it meant some incendiary remarks about the, um, unrealistic attitudes of the more excitable members of his caucus:

On immigration: “Here’s the attitude. Ohhhh. Don’t make me do this. Ohhhh. This is too hard,” Boehner whined before a luncheon crowd at Brown’s Run County Club in Madison Township. “We get elected to make choices. We get elected to solve problems and it’s remarkable to me how many of my colleagues just don’t want to … They’ll take the path of least resistance.”

On Obamacare: “(To) repeal Obamacare … isn’t the answer. The answer is repeal and replace. The challenge is that Obamacare is the law of the land. It is there and it has driven all types of changes in our health care delivery system. You can’t recreate an insurance market over night.”

On the tea party: “I don’t have any issue with the tea party. I have issues with organizations in Washington who raise money purporting to represent the tea party, those organizations who are against a budget deal the president and I cut that will save $2.4 trillion over 10 years….I made it pretty clear I’ll stand with the tea party but I’m not standing with these three or four groups in Washington who are using the tea party for their own personal benefit.”

This is all about pragmatism, a cri de coeur against the Foxification of the Republican Party. And I guess it means one of two things. Either Boehner doesn’t really care much about holding onto his leadership position anymore, or else he’s sensed that there’s a burgeoning Main Street backlash against the radicalism of the tea party wing of the modern GOP.

Boehner has always wanted to govern, and he’s never believed that compromise was surrender. That’s not the kind of pol he is. But he’s been hemmed in by the demands of the tea party, and now maybe he’s starting to think it’s time to bust out. The Middletown Rotary Club is probably more interested in keeping things on an even keel than in endless confrontation and hostage taking that does nothing except hurt the economy. They think immigration reform is good for business, and even if they don’t like Obamacare, they probably understand by now that it’s not a catastrophe and it’s time to make the best of it. Maybe they’re finally starting to find their voice.

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John Boehner Speaks Up For Main Street Republicanism

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Aetna CEO: Obamacare Pretty Much On Track

by gorso6 Posted on April 24, 2014

Mother Jones

Aetna is one of America’s biggest health insurers, and it’s currently operating in 17 different Obamacare exchanges. On a call this morning, CEO Mark Bertolini passed along a couple of interesting factlets:

Bertolini said about half of the company’s premium increases, whatever they turn out to be, will be attributable to “on the fly” regulatory changes made by the Obama administration. He cited as an example the administration’s policy of allowing old health plans that were supposed to expire in 2014 to be extended another three years if states and insurers wanted to.

….Aetna has added 230,000 paying customers from ACA exchanges, and it projects to end the year with 450,000 paid customers. It said it can’t yet draw a “meaningful conclusion” about the population’s overall health status.

The first is interesting because it suggests that Aetna’s premium increases won’t be based on fundamentals. That is, they aren’t rising because the customers Aetna signed up were older or sicker than they expected. That’s good news, even if the regulatory shakeouts of Obamacare’s early days are causing a bit of pain.

And the second is interesting because Aetna apparently expects to double its Obamacare customer base by the end of the year. That’s roughly what the CBO projected earlier this year, and this is a bit of evidence suggesting that they got it right.

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Aetna CEO: Obamacare Pretty Much On Track

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World Briefing | Asia: China: Legislature Toughens Environmental Law

by Myrna Posted on April 24, 2014

The Chinese legislature decided Thursday to revise the country’s environmental protection law to allow for stricter punishments against companies or individuals caught polluting the environment, according to a report by Xinhua, the state news agency. Excerpt from: World Briefing | Asia: China: Legislature Toughens Environmental Law Related ArticlesOn the Environment: Forty-Four Years of Earth DayOp-Docs: ‘Animals Are Persons Too’Dot Earth Blog: Beneath the Surface of China’s Great Urban Rush

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World Briefing | Asia: China: Legislature Toughens Environmental Law

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If oil spills in the Arctic and no one is around to clean it up, does it just stay there?

by tadeusz444 Posted on April 24, 2014

If oil spills in the Arctic and no one is around to clean it up, does it just stay there?

By

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Who will save them after an oil spill?

Oil and shipping companies are salivating as the climate change that they helped cause melts away the ice at the top of the world. Planning and exploration is underway for an Arctic drilling and shipping boom. But what aren’t underway are meaningful preparations for responding to the oil that will inevitably be spilled into the remote and rugged Arctic environment by these accident-prone industries.

The National Research Council has catalogued these hazards in a new report, warning that the lack of Arctic infrastructure would become a “significant liability” should oil be spilled.

“It is unlikely that responders could quickly react to an oil spill unless there were improved port and air access, stronger supply chains, and increased capacity to handle equipment, supplies, and personnel,” wrote the council in a report requested by the American Petroleum Institute and various U.S. agencies. “There is presently no funding mechanism to provide for development, deployment, and maintenance of temporary and permanent infrastructure.”

The report identifies other issues that would hamstring oil spill responses. The U.S. Coast Guard, which coordinates federal responses to most oil spills, has a “low level of presence in the Arctic,” the report notes. “Coast Guard’s efforts to support Arctic oil spill planning and response in the absence of a dedicated and adequate budget are admirable but inadequate.”

It’s particularly challenging to prepare for oil spills in the Arctic. That’s because of the difficult terrain, because the environment is changing so quickly, and because little is known about how spilled oil behaves in such frigid environments.

Even if industry and government do get their acts together and prepare properly for an oil spill, the potential remedies are hideous to even think about. Two of the top responses discussed in the report include using toxic dispersants to dissolve oil and igniting the oil to help it dissipate as air pollution.

But with companies like Shell leading the oil-drilling charge in the Arctic, what could possibly go wrong? Oh, shit …


Source
Responding to Oil Spills in the U.S. Arctic Marine Environment, The National Academies Press

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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If oil spills in the Arctic and no one is around to clean it up, does it just stay there?

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Net Neutrality Finally Dies at Ripe Old Age of 45

by StarlaODoherty Posted on April 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Apparently net neutrality is officially dead. The Wall Street Journal reports today that the FCC has given up on finding a legal avenue to enforce equal access and will instead propose rules that explicitly allow broadband suppliers to favor companies that pay them for faster pipes:

The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose new open Internet rules on Thursday that would allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers, according to a person familiar with the proposal.

The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on “commercially reasonable” terms for all interested content companies. Whether the terms are commercially reasonable would be decided by the FCC on a case-by-case basis.

….The FCC’s proposal would allow some forms of discrimination while preventing companies from slowing down or blocking specific websites, which likely won’t satisfy all proponents of net neutrality, the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. The Commission has also decided for now against reclassifying broadband as a public utility, which would subject ISPs to much greater regulation. However, the Commission has left the reclassification option on the table at present.

So Google and Microsoft and Netflix and other large, well-capitalized incumbents will pay for speedy service. Smaller companies that can’t—or that ISPs just aren’t interested in dealing with—will get whatever plodding service is left for everyone else. ISPs won’t be allowed to deliberately slow down traffic from specific sites, but that’s about all that’s left of net neutrality. Once you’ve approved the notion of two-tier service, it hardly matters whether you’re speeding up some of the sites or slowing down others.

This might have been inevitable, for both legal and commercial reasons. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

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Net Neutrality Finally Dies at Ripe Old Age of 45

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