Bevos

eagleye13 Loc: Fl

Now wasn't that fun

Bevos

Actually I don't do utubes because they use up so much of my bytes. But I did watch it on Fox when they ran a replay of it.

eagleye13 Loc: Fl

it is a shame not having unlimited internet and You Tube access.
So much info and entertainment.

Bevos

Yes. But it is SOO expensive. I live on a VERY LIMITED Income. SS. Which is even less since Hubby passed . SO I really have to watch my expenses. I DO enjoy the Internet, and get about 4 hrs a day on it, but using u-tubes would use it right up and I would have none, unless I want to pay dearly for it. But, I have other things to do, so I do my Internet thing then get on with my day.

eagleye13 Loc: Fl

Thank you for your input, Bevos.

Progressive One

‘Dreamer’ sues over deportation
Trump administration is accused of sending the 23-year-old from California to Mexico despite DACA status.
By Cindy Carcamo
A 23-year-old man has sued the Trump administration over his deportation to Mexico in February, saying he has permission to live and work in the United States under an Obama-era immigration program that protects young people who were brought into the country illegally as children.
If his claim is correct, it is believed he would be the first person with protected status under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, to be deported under President Trump.
Juan Manuel Montes, a Mexican national who has lived in the U.S. since he was 9, filed a lawsuit Tuesday demanding that federal officials release information about why he was deported.
Montes, who has learning disabilities after suffering a traumatic brain injury when he was young, worked in California’s agricultural fields to help support his family and studied welding at a community college before he was deported to Mexico on Feb. 17 without explanation, his lawsuit alleges.
“I was forced out because I was nervous and didn’t know what to do or say, but my home is there,” Montes said in a statement.
Montes says he was approved for DACA in 2014, received a renewal in 2016, and that his DACA status and work permit were valid.
Montes was walking to a taxi station in the border town of Calexico after visiting with a friend when a Border Patrol official on a bicycle stopped him and asked for identification, according to a statement from the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant rights organization that is part of a group representing Montes in his lawsuit. Montes did not have ID with him, having left it in his friend’s car, the statement said.
Montes was taken to a Border Patrol station where, he alleges, he was made to sign documents and not allowed to see an immigration judge or attorney. He was also not given copies of the documents he signed, the lawsuit states. In the middle of the night, he was taken to Mexicali, Mexico.
“Juan Manuel was funneled across the border without so much as a piece of paper to explain why or how,” Nora A. Preciado, a staff attorney at the immigration law center, said in a statement. “The government shouldn’t treat anyone this way — much less someone who has DACA. No one should have to file a lawsuit to find out what happened to them.”
In March, Montes and his attorneys filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Customs and Border Protection, asking for all records of his interaction with the agency, but they have not received any additional information, the complaint states. Montes also unsuccessfully sought information from Citizenship and Immigration Services and from the Calexico Port of Entry.
In a statement late Tuesday, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Montes was arrested after “illegally entering the U.S. by climbing over the fence in downtown Calexico.”
Montes “admitted under oath during the arrest interview that he had entered illegally,” Ralph DeSio, the agency spokesman, said in the statement.
However, the lawsuit contends that the fence-climbing incident happened separately — days after Montes was initially deported by Border Patrol agents.
DeSio also said Montes’ DACA status expired in August 2015, and that he had been convicted of theft, for which he received probation.
Montes attorney Karen Tumlin said the border protection agency is incorrect and that federal documents show Montes’ DACA was due to expire in 2018. The lawsuit states that Montes has a single misdemeanor offense but that it doesn’t disqualify him from DACA.
News of Montes’ deportation spread fast, prompting immigration rights organizations to launch a petition demanding that Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly allow Montes to return to the U.S.
Montes’ deportation is a departure from Trump’s promise to protect from deportation people who were brought to the U.S. as children.
An estimated 742,000 so-called Dreamers — those protected by DACA — live in the U.S. About 1 in 3 lives in California.
Greisa Martinez, advocacy director with United We Dream and a beneficiary of the DACA program, called the deportation an “attack.”
“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and we’ve got Juan’s back,” she said.
cindy.carcamo@latimes.com
Twitter: @thecindycarcamo

Progressive One

L.A. counters travel ban with tourism campaign
The new ‘Everyone is welcome’ message is designed to encourage international visitors.
THE CAMPAIGN features a music video that will play on the social media sites for Discover Los Angeles, the tourism board for the region. It shows people hugging, dancing and skateboarding near iconic tourism spots. ( Discover Los Angeles)
By Hugo Martin
Los Angeles tourism officials launched an advertising campaign Tuesday with the message “Everyone is welcome” — a clear response to President Trump’s proposed travel ban.
The campaign features a 93-second music video showing people of various ethnic backgrounds hugging, dancing and skateboarding near iconic L.A. tourism spots including the Original Farmers Market, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Venice Beach and Olvera Street.
As “Real Love Baby” by Father John Misty plays, two young men share a kiss on a rainbow-colored staircase and a jogger greets a friend sitting on a restaurant patio in a wheelchair, holding the world’s calmest Chihuahua.
The video will play on the social media sites for Discover Los Angeles , the tourism board for the region. It will also appear in social media feeds in Canada, Mexico, China, Britain and Australia. Discover Los Angeles doesn’t have any plans currently to buy TV advertising time for the message.
Although the video doesn’t mention Trump by name or attack his travel bans, Los Angeles tourism officials said the campaign was intended to fight the message that L.A. doesn’t welcome foreign visitors.
“Diversity and inclusivity have always been cornerstones of Los Angeles culture, but there has never been a more crucial time to reinforce these points,” said Ernest Wooden Jr., chief executive of Discover Los Angeles.
Trump has attempted to impose two travel bans, both temporarily prohibiting visitors from largely Muslim countries. Both have been blocked by federal courts , pending reviews.
Travel industry experts say they fear that Trump’s bans have sent the message that the U.S. — home to a $2.1-trillion travel industry — isn’t open to all tourists.
There is yet no conclusive data to show that travel has dropped since Trump’s most recent ban was announced. However, a survey of 324 corporate travel managers from the U.S. and Europe found that 37% of U.S. travel managers expect the new ban will reduce travel to the U.S. while 47% of European managers said they expect a reduction.
The survey, conducted on behalf of the Global Business Travel Assn., a trade group for the world’s business travel managers, also found that the ban made 34% of travel managers worried about harassment of U.S. travelers visiting the Middle East.
Los Angeles County hosted 47.3 million visitors last year, representing the sixth consecutive year of record-breaking tourism.
In L.A. County, an “anti-welcome” message could mean the loss of 800,000 international visitors over a three-year period, according to a forecast by Tourism Economics, an independent research firm.
International visitors spend an average of about $920 during each visit Los Angeles, totaling a potential loss of $736 million in direct tourism spending.
hugo.martin@latimes.com
Twitter: @hugomartin

Bevos

The IDIOT BROKE THE RULES!!! He left the US WITHOUT PERMISSION or even NOTIFYING the Authorities!! THAT was against the RULES HE AGREED to, to have the status he HAD!! He has now LOST his status and is going to be deported!! YEA!!!

Progressive One

yeah.....you can go to bed tonight will a real sense of victory.....


Montes, who has learning disabilities after suffering a traumatic brain injury when he was young, worked in California’s agricultural fields to help support his family and studied welding at a community college before he was deported to Mexico on Feb. 17 without explanation, his lawsuit alleges.

Progressive One

Capitol Journal
It’s time to fix the top-heavy income tax
GEORGE SKELTON in sacramento
Californians already carry the nation’s heaviest state income tax burden by far. That’s especially true for the wealthy. But President Trump and Congress could make it a lot more onerous.
They’re mulling over the notion of eliminating the ability to deduct state and local taxes on federal 1040s. It’s a plan hatched by House Republicans. Trump is drafting his own tax “reform” after indicating while running for election that he’d keep those deductions.
But the president is eager for any big congressional victory, especially after the Obamacare embarrassment. And no one seems to know precisely what policy he’s committed to beyond blocking immigrants from the Middle East and building a Mexican border wall.
Scrapping the state income tax deduction would particularly torment some blue states that voted for Hillary Clinton and rely heavily on the levy — places such as New York, Oregon, Massachusetts, Maryland and California.
In California, the ability to deduct state and local taxes saved federal taxpayers $101 billion in 2014, the latest year for which there are data, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.
California’s state income tax is very high and progressive, with rates ranging from 1% to 13.3%. The state with the second-highest rate, 9.9%, is Oregon. But unlike California, Oregon doesn’t also impose a state sales tax.
Californians are projected to fork over roughly $83 billion in state income taxes this year, supplying 69% of the general fund. Imagine the howls if we could no longer deduct that hefty levy on our federal returns.
This came to mind last week as I glanced at the latest report of who pays what in California state income tax. We really like socking the rich.
The Franchise Tax Board reported that for 2015, the latest year analyzed, the top 1% paid nearly half — 47.6% — of the total state income tax. These people earned 24% of the taxable income. They represented only about 161,000 tax returns out of a total 16.1 million.
On the lower end, the bottom 60% supplied just 2.2% of the tax take while earning 16.8% of the income.
California is a Bernie Sanders dream. He ran for president preaching that the wealthiest 1% should pay much more. They provided 37.8% of the federal tax in 2013, significantly less than one-percenters sent to Sacramento.
Leaning heavily on the rich to finance state government may or may not be fair. That’s not the issue. The problem, as I’ve written many times, is that it’s a dangerously volatile fiscal strategy. It invariably jeopardizes vital programs such as education, healthcare and public safety.
California’s state tax system is a rickety relic of the mid-20th century. And it’s long past time to lift it into the 21st. The revenue stream has become unreliable because it depends too much on high-income earners, especially their capital gains. During an inevitable recession, capital gains go bust and the revenue slows to a trickle, creating massive budget deficits.
Example: During the recession in 2008, a 3.7% decline in the California economy resulted in a 23% plunge in state revenue.
What’s sorely needed is a more reliable tax system that doesn’t resemble a yo-yo. That means perhaps reducing the top income tax rate at least a couple of points, taxing capital gains at a lower rate (as the feds do) and easing the sales tax rate while extending it to services, like other states do.
California taxes sales of retail goods, but not services. Certainly not lawyer and accountant services, let alone Dodgers tickets. And California’s economy now is reliant mainly on services.
Neither Gov. Jerry Brown nor either party in the Legislature has a stomach for seriously addressing this dilemma. Raising some taxes, even while lowering others, would be highly controversial. There’d be winners and losers. And it would be fought to the death by special interests.
But that’s where the possibility of the feds killing state and local tax deductions comes into play. If state income taxes can’t be deducted, that might provide a new incentive to lower them while extending the sales tax to services. The sales tax already basically isn’t deductible for Californians.
“We’d be protecting California from Trump,” says state Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys), who has been on a crusade to make state taxes less volatile but hasn’t found many followers. Since all the Washington talk, however, some lawmakers have started showing interest, he says.
State Controller Betty T. Yee has been a tax reform advocate. But, she says, “I’ve kind of pulled back a little bit, waiting to see what Trump is going to do.”
Trump should scrub the state and local tax deductions. Why should the federal government subsidize Californians’ high taxes by reducing their pain?
President Reagan tried to do it.
“I don’t believe that we can justify a system that forces taxpayers in low-tax states to subsidize the big-spending policies of a few high-tax states,” Reagan said, speaking not only as president but a former California governor. “That really is taxation without representation.”
Reagan succeeded only in dumping the sales tax deduction. Then states with no income tax to deduct complained. One was Texas. And when Texan George W. Bush was elected president, taxpayers were given an option to deduct either the state income or sales tax.
Reagan was right. Eliminate them all. Lower the federal rates. And inspire weak-kneed Sacramento politicians to bring state taxes up to speed.
george.skelton@latimes.com

Progressive One

Trump Saved Carrier Jobs. These Workers Weren’t as Lucky.
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZAPRIL 23, 2017

Jim Sholle at a union meeting in March. He lost his job after 21 years at a factory in Huntington, Ind., that supplies parts to Carrier, the furnace and air-conditioner maker. “I feel used up,” he said. Credit A J Mast for The New York Times
HUNTINGTON, Ind. — These are the Indiana workers whose jobs President Trump didn’t save.

After assembling circuit boards for Carrier furnaces at a factory here for 21 years, Jim Sholle, 56, walked out of the plant for the final time last month. But he still finds himself waking up every morning at 4:30, ready to work the 6 a.m.-to-2 p.m. shift.

“I’m a routine guy, and I’m not boohooing,” he said. “But I feel used up.”

Pat Saylors, 57, is still employed, but her days here are numbered, as they are for more than 700 other blue-collar workers. Production is set to end by late December at the plant, this town’s largest private employer, and each month several dozen of them are being let go.

“I loved my job,” said Ms. Saylors, who earns $17.31 an hour as a materials specialist, readying parts for the workers on the assembly line. She joined the company 40 years ago, when the plant was in tiny Converse, Ind., and then followed her job to Huntington when the factory here opened in 1990.
Ms. Saylors is typical of the factory’s work force, which is mostly female, with an average age around 50. She joined a few months after graduating from high school, as did her daughter Amanda, who is now 33.


“It’s all I’ve ever known,” she said.

During Mr. Trump’s campaign, the fate of more than 2,000 Carrier jobs that the company wanted to move to Mexico from Indiana, including those in Huntington, were Exhibit A in his attacks on the free-trade policies of his predecessors, both Democratic and Republican.

So when President-elect Trump announced on Thanksgiving that he was near a deal with Carrier’s corporate parent, United Technologies, to save them, Mr. Sholle and Ms. Saylors thought they were among the lucky ones.

It was not to be. Thanks to public pressure from Mr. Trump and a generous package of tax breaks negotiated by Gov. Mike Pence, now the vice president, Carrier did agree to keep making some of its furnaces in Indianapolis, preserving roughly 800 of 1,400 jobs there.

But the plant in Huntington operated by United Technologies Electronic Controls, or UTEC, was not part of that deal — nor would it be helped by the “buy American” mandate for federal infrastructure projects that Mr. Trump promised in Wisconsin last week. And by early next year, the components used for furnaces still assembled in Indianapolis will come instead from Monterrey, Mexico, where it takes a day to earn what workers here make in about an hour.

The economy in Huntington, a town of 17,000 in rural northeast Indiana, is quite different from what workers in Indianapolis face, however, as is the culture. Despite some notable closings, many factories remain, with 21 percent of local workers employed in manufacturing, a higher proportion than in more than 90 percent of the other counties in the country.

And as Mr. Sholle’s reluctance to complain suggests, the anger about the economy and about Washington that was so evident in Indianapolis and other parts of the Midwest that Mr. Trump carried is more muted here. Not that it’s absent — more than 70 percent of Huntington County voters supported Mr. Trump — but the pain is further below the surface.

Photo

Susan Cropper, left, and her sister, Sandy VanDiver, who work in the Huntington plant. Ms. Cropper said she directed most of her anger over the factory’s closing at United Technologies and its executives, not President Trump. Credit A J Mast for The New York Times
For the most part, the workers do not fault Mr. Trump for failing to preserve their jobs, even as he took credit for keeping the Indianapolis plant open.

“I support him 100 percent,” said Tami Barnett, a 27-year veteran who left at the end of March. “I was very pleased he saved the jobs in Indianapolis. Do I wish he could have saved mine? Absolutely. But he did his best.”
Susan Cropper, 55, who works in the plant with her sister, Sandy VanDiver, 58, said she did not regret voting for Mr. Trump in November, either.

“I’m glad he stepped in, but it’s a letdown,” she said, adding that most of her fury was reserved for Carrier and its executives.

Asked about the failure to keep the Huntington plant open, a White House spokesman said last week that Mr. Trump was “incredibly proud to work with United Technologies to save nearly 1,000 jobs in Indiana and will continue to work with major companies to ensure he is doing all he can to increase American manufacturing, job creation and economic growth.”

Huntington’s mayor, Brooks Fetters, admits when pressed to being frustrated that he never heard back from Mr. Pence’s office after he called late last year to find out why Huntington was not helped.

“Right or wrong, that’s where we are,” said Mr. Fetters, a moderate Republican. “We’re not in panic mode.”

And in any case, he said, “German stoicism runs deep in northern Indiana, and you take your lumps.”

Huntington has managed to adapt by luring new metalworking and automotive suppliers in recent years, according to Mark Wickersham, director of economic development for Huntington County.

“We are not a dying town,” he said, citing the $1.4 million expansion last fall of a learning center opposite the high school, where teenagers as well as adults can earn certificates in fields like advanced manufacturing and health care.

A look at the companies that changed plans, announced new ones or stood their ground after being criticized by the president. The latest: Exxon, Hyundai and G.M.


OPEN GRAPHIC
Although retraining offers only modest hope for workers in their mid- to late 50s who possess only a high school diploma, Mr. Fetters insists the UTEC workers do not have to face a dismal economic future if they can learn new skills.

“At 4 percent unemployment, if you’re not working, there’s a reason and it’s not a good one,” Mr. Fetters said. “As mayor, I don’t have jobs for people who can just use a rake and a shovel. I do have jobs for equipment operators.”

The mayor is right — up to a point. It’s true that local auto parts suppliers, machine tool makers and other industrial companies are hiring. But only a few positions are available at any time.

Not far from the soon-to-be-shuttered UTEC plant, with its parking lot full of late-model S.U.V.s and pickups, Ecolab is hiring. The hourly wage is equal to what UTEC paid, but only four jobs are open at the plant, which makes soaps and sanitizers, with two of them offered to United Technologies employees.

Beyond that, Ecolab’s 100-strong work force is not expected to rise significantly, according to Tracey Hartman, the company’s human resources manager in Huntington.

Like other longtime workers, Mr. Sholle received a severance package, including a $17,700 payment in his case. But he worries that he is not healthy enough to start over at another factory, and after he paid out $10,000 to cover taxes and medical expenses, the severance does not buy him that much time. His health insurance runs only through September.

More than a means to a paycheck, working in the UTEC factory was a way of life, with female workers especially developing the kind of deep bonds more common in small towns than big cities.

“We weren’t blood family, but we were family,” said Ms. Barnett, who worked in aftermarket sales and service. When she had a heart attack and needed quadruple bypass surgery in 2007, colleagues held bake sales and donated close to $2,500 to help her offset the loss of income during her 14-week recovery.

“That’s a lot of money to me, and I was overwhelmed by the caring and compassion,” Ms. Barnett said.

The decision last year to close the plant came as a shock, she added. “We made the company billions in profits. It’s a slap in the face.”

Photo

Tami Barnett left the Huntington plant in March. When she needed quadruple bypass surgery 10 years ago, colleagues held bake sales and donated nearly $2,500 to help her offset the loss of income during her recovery. Credit A J Mast for The New York Times
Workers like Ms. Barnett and Ms. Saylors might have been surprised, but outsourcing factory jobs was hardly a secret on Wall Street.

To improve earnings amid slow growth in recent years, a key strategy of United Technologies executives has been to shrink the company’s manufacturing footprint and move production to countries where labor is cheap.

At a meeting with analysts last month to discuss the outlook for 2017, the head of the division that includes Carrier, Robert J. McDonough, boasted that profit margins had doubled over the last five years.

“Part of it has been moving factories to lower-cost locations, there is no question about that,” he said. “I think everybody knows that’s been part of the formula for us.”

Why was Mr. Trump more successful in Indianapolis than in Huntington? “We were the redheaded, bucktoothed stepchild,” Mr. Sholle said bitterly. “We never even got mentioned in the coverage.”

There is some truth to the latter part of Mr. Sholle’s assessment. More than two hours north of Indianapolis and some distance from the nearest Interstate, Huntington, like other rural corners of the country, rarely gets much attention from outsiders.

At the same time, true to the spirit of its understated residents, Huntington’s political and union leaders shied away from the spotlight that their counterparts in Indianapolis sought out. Some feared that criticizing United Technologies publicly would undercut negotiations to save jobs.

About 100 jobs in sales, marketing and engineering will remain in Huntington after manufacturing ceases, and the company has been adding to its white-collar staff here. Unfortunately, most of the workers on the assembly lines would never be considered for these jobs because they lack college degrees and other credentials, like engineering experience.

While it is too late for the likes of Jim Sholle and Pat Saylors, even United Technologies’ chief executive, Greg Hayes, suggested recently that the years of cost-cutting at Carrier, the furnace and air-conditioner maker, had gone too far, putting short-term profits ahead of long-term growth.

The need to stay competitive was the reason the company gave for moving the jobs from Indiana to Mexico, but Carrier’s market share actually eroded slightly last year. So Carrier is making a course correction.

“We need to make investments, as I said before, in the sales force,” Mr. Hayes told analysts on Wall Street in December. “We need to get more feet on the street.”

“Bob is focused on it,” Mr. Hayes added, referring to Mr. McDonough’s new marching orders to invest, in what sounded like a mix of goal and threat. “Bob’s senior leadership team is focused on it, and we’ve got to get everybody in the organization focused on it equally, so more work to do there.”

Progressive One

One Iowa patient makes the case for single-payer care
MICHAEL HILTZIK
Back in mid-2016, Iowa customers of Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, the dominant company in the state’s individual insurance market, got a shock: Premium increases of 38% to 43% were in store for many of them for this year.
Three weeks ago they got a bigger shock: Wellmark was pulling out of Iowa’s individual market entirely, leaving the state with one company selling individual policies. Wellmark placed some of the blame on congressional Republicans’ failure to come up with a coherent repeal plan for the Affordable Care Act, leaving plans for 2018 in legislative limbo. With Wellmark’s departure, Iowa’s individual market may be down to a single insurer next year.
But Iowa has another problem that appears to be unique for a state its size: one single state resident whose care costs $1 million a month. That’s enough to all but destroy an individual insurance market that comprises about 30,000 customers. Indeed, that one patient’s care, according to Wellmark, was responsible for 10 percentage points of the 43% premium increase this year.
The patient has not been identified; nor has his or her medical condition, beyond a statement by Wellmark that he or she suffers from a complicated and severe genetic disorder. Speculation in the healthcare industry about the reasons for the expense focuses on the cost of the patient’s medications.
The important aspect of the Iowa case is what it tells us about the importance of spreading risk in the healthcare market, and the limitations of the Republican nostrum of segregating seriously ill patients into high-risk pools. The idea is to keep their costs from driving up everyone else’s premiums.
The case also points directly to the benefits of a single-payer healthcare system.
“The idea of single-payer is that there’s just one risk pool,” says Steffie Woolhandler, a New York physician who is co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program , the nation’s leading advocacy group for single-payer healthcare. “That’s what makes the care of very high-cost patients affordable.”
Before the Affordable Care Act, obviously, patients like our unnamed Iowan would be in mortal trouble. He or she would likely have been rendered uninsurable either by outright rejection or by surcharges that would make insurance unaffordable. Even if he or she had obtained coverage, the usual pre-ACA lifetime benefit limits of $1 million-$5 million would have kicked in early in the first policy year.
“Most likely the patient would quickly run through their private insurance,” conjectures health insurance expert David Anderson of Duke. “At that point, s/he would most likely either qualify for Medicaid, put on charity care or left to die.” (How the patient received treatment before the ACA isn’t known.)
Anderson calls this “fundamentally an uninsurable scenario” in which “a high-cost risk pool or invisible reinsurance or a prospective reassignment system would make sense.” These are all elements of a Republican Obamacare repeal plan put forth earlier this month and based, if haphazardly, on a program Maine created before the ACA. Any of these options would spread the patient’s cost to a pool larger than the one consisting of Wellmark’s roughly 30,000 Iowa customers.
But there are three limitations to these ideas even if the pool encompasses an entire state, Anderson observes.
One is that some states are so small that even one such patient will break the bank. California could manage it, Wyoming could not, Iowa will struggle.
Another is that high-cost patients don’t always appear randomly, but sometimes in clusters.
Zika cases, for example, will show up heavily in Southeastern states with inadequate Medicaid funding, Anderson argues. And genetic diseases of the sort suffered by the Iowa patient may be geographically concentrated in part because “ most people live near their families rather than being randomly distributed.”
The third problem is that high-risk pools and reinsurance funds tend to be hopelessly underfunded. This was the case in most of the 35 states with high-risk pools prior to the Affordable Care Act, including California. Without sufficient public funding to cover all their high-cost residents adequately, most imposed waiting lists for coverage, time limits on eligibility and premiums so high that many patients couldn’t afford them at all. The proposals for high-risk pools coming from congressional Republicans are similarly stingy.
“What high-risk pool could tolerate a patient costing a million dollars a month?” asks Woolhandler. “It would have to be a huge pool.”
The only fair and effective way to manage such patients, especially the few with truly stratospheric medical costs, is to make them part of a nationwide pool. A risk pool on that scale would represent the functional equivalent of single-payer healthcare. And that’s leaving aside some of the other virtues single-payer advocates cite, including the ability to negotiate prices on pharmaceuticals with the bargaining power of the entire country, and the virtual elimination of insurance company and provider billing office overhead.
As unusual as the Iowa patient may be, extremely high-cost treatments may not be extreme outliers for much longer. Drug treatments for “orphan” diseases with a few hundred or thousand cases are becoming more expensive, but so are drugs for more common conditions such as cancer or high-cholesterol disease. State budgets are going to be increasingly hard-pressed to cover these costs. The healthcare cost crisis is spreading nationwide, which makes it a national problem demanding a national — meaning a federal — solution.
Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see facebook.com/hiltzik or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com
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Bevos

Did you just make that up???

Bevos

There you go again. Just TAKING UP SPACE. I guess it must be what you do BEST!!!