Tesla: $40 Car Washes While Standing Around Waiting For Car To Charge; ObamaCare: Insuring Only Those Who Are Already Sick -- WSJ Op-Ed -- August 7, 2016

Note: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here. If this information is important to you, go to the source. I post this to help me put the Bakken in perspective.

Tesla: adding insult to injury. Okay, so you've just plunked down $70, 000 and have just received your new Tesla. You can charge for free, but it's going to cost you $40 to get the car washed. 

Tesla is trying to take away the one drawback of the Supercharger system: standing around doing nothing for more than 30 minutes or so while your car gets a charge, and longer if there is line.

Surprisingly, Supercharger stations don’t even provide a simple squeegee and water for windshield washing. If you ever see a Tesla parked at a gas station, it’s safe to assume it’s there to clean it’s windshield.

Tesla Motors Inc is currently experimenting the service at its supercharger station at the Fremont Factory, and if the reviews come out to be good, the service shall be launched soon at the other stations too.

The wash system could be subscription service in itself with costs being $80 a month for the Model S and $90 for the Model X. Ideally, the costs for the Model 3 would be somewhat less expensive.

As of now, there has been no comment from the EV firm on the matter.The decision solely rests upon Tesla Motors Inc whether or not to proceed with the project, but the fact is, it is still a great deal of cash to pay for some efficiency at the charging station. For owners, who do not want to spend this much, and still want to kill their time could simply bring a work tablet, or a collection of their favorite shows.

Warren Buffett/BRK. From 24/7 Wall Street: major changes in Warren Buffeet holdings as Berkshire announces earnings.  In the first dozen or so listings, I saw hardly any changes despite the headline.

• Goldman Group, 11 million shares vs 12.6 million share at the end of 2015
• Graham Holdings, remains a very tiny stake in what remains of the Washington Post breakup
• AMEX: the same 151.6 million shares
• Apple: listed as a new position with almost 10 million shares (see updated report just one week later; now Apple is said to be up to 15 million shares)
• Coca-Cola: same stake of 400 million shares
• IBM: again a larger stake, averaging his cost basis lower; 81 million shares
• Wells Fargo & Co: same stake of 480 million shares
• Kraft Heinz: no change; 326 million shares
• Phillips 66: the same 76 million shares
• ATT: no longer listed as a stake; has been diminishing of late; tied to a stake in DirecTV
• Kinder Morgan Inc: same stake of 27 million shares
• Axalta Coating System: same stake of 23 million shares
• Bank of New York Mellow (big whoop): declines slightly from 25 million shares to 20 million shares
• Charter Communications: slightly larger at 10.326 million shares vs 10.281 million shares

... and so it went. I didn't see much new despite the headline. Having said that, there were a few interesting tidbits. Buffett has some of the same problematic decisions the rest of us have -- except involving somewhat larger sums of money.

Insider buying jumps. Also from 24/7 Wall Street, but no link. After the last story from 24/7 Wall Street, hardly seems worth the time to go to the article. Here's the headline: insider buying jumps at COP, Bank of America, Boeing.

WMT vs Amazon: from Business Insider --"everyone is underestimating Walmart's ability to crush Amazon." Actually, I think there's enough to go around for everyone. I doubt Jeff Bezos is concerned.

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Must Be A Really, Really Slow News Day

This tells me more about the size of China than about the likelihood of this contraption ever becoming mainstream. 

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The Death Spiral

Updates

Monday, August 8, 2016: close to home. SayAnythingBlog is reporting -- 

Obamacare Costing Hundreds of UND Graduate Students Their Health Insurance Next Week--

Hundreds of graduate students are losing coverage provided by the University of North Dakota, and Obamacare is most certainly the culprit.

The university first announced the change back in May. “As you may know, due to provisions in the Affordable Care Act, the university is no longer allowed to pay for graduate assistant health insurance. Instead, graduate assistants are required to obtain their own health insurance,” the university announced in an online posting.

The cut off date for his plan is August 15, 2016.

347 graduate students were covered by Graduate Health Insurance during spring semester 2016.

He added that the university had not reduced or eliminated insurance coverage in any other area due to Obamacare, and that UND signed a memorandum of understanding with Altru Health System allowing them to help students find new coverage.

Original Post

 

It will be interesting how/if/when Hillary Clinton runs ads on ObamaCare. What made me think of that is the increasing number of stories coming out about ObamaCare right now. I predicted that we would see that crescendo as we move into premium-setting season (August - September - October) and then open season starting in November. The dates may be off but probably not by much. Be that as it may, what I did not expect what mainstream and well-respected media outlets to start referring to the ObamaCare challenges as "a death spiral."

When I saw that in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal overnight several hours ago, it caught my attention, but to see this headline from Mark Perry, posted one hour ago, really stunned me:
"quotation of the day on the ObamaCare death spiral." Oh, now I see it. Mark Perry is linking the same WSJ op-ed I noted:

It’s hard to exaggerate the alchemy of distortions that are turning ObamaCare into such a pending disaster that big insurers like Aetna, Anthem, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, once supporters, can’t cut back their participation fast enough.

ObamaCare was always going to be a questionable deal for taxpayers if the only people who signed up were poorer people whose premiums were largely paid by taxpayers. That was fine as far as insurers were concerned. They can make a profit even if taxpayers are the only ones paying.

For insurers, the problem lies elsewhere: ObamaCare policies have proved so unattractive that even customers eligible for subsidies are turning away unless they also happen to be seriously or chronically ill. That’s because deductibles and copays keep going up with each successive renewal period. For a family of four on a bronze plan, the deductible is now above $11,000. This is the equivalent, in the case of routine illness or injury, of not being insured at all.

And the problem only gets worse as insurers, to stem their losses, keep hiking premiums, copays and deductibles. With each turn of the wheel, ObamaCare becomes an insurance program that appeals only to those who already know they face large health-care costs.

Not only is Hillary going to have to promise free college to all Americans but she is also going to have to promise free health care to all.

Of course, the bigger question is whether 50 years from now, we will call it ObamaCare, HillaryCare, or National Health Service. We don't call "social security" some name related to FDR.

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Sunday Reading

I'm back to reading again The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James, the 2007 Signet Classic edition. I wrote about this some years ago.