A storm system forecasters called historic blasted through New Mexico this week, spawning tornadoes, forcing a freight train to plunge from the bridge it was crossing, turning semis onto their sides, causing other vehicle crashes and knocking out power for hours in Las Vegas, NM.At least it was a dry wind.
Here's more fallout from the health care law: Until now, customers could walk into an insurance office or go online to buy standard health care coverage any time of year. Not anymore.
Many people who didn't sign up during the government's open enrollment period that ended Monday will soon find it difficult or impossible to get insured this year, even if they go directly to a private company and money is no object. For some it's already too late.
With limited exceptions, insurers are refusing to sell to individuals after the enrollment period for HealthCare.gov and the state marketplaces. They will lock out the young and healthy as well as the sick or injured. Those who want to switch plans also are affected. The next wide-open chance to enroll comes in November for coverage in 2015.
A federal judge in Washington ruled the Trump administration can make sharp cuts to subsidies Medicare pays some hospitals for pharmaceuticals, a blow to the American Hospital Association and others fighting in court and Congress to halt the reductions.
The hospital association and two other health-care trade groups had filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services in an attempt to stop the cuts. But U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras on Friday dismissed the case, saying the plaintiffs cannot sue before exhausting other avenues to challenge the cuts, as required by law. The other trade-group plaintiffs were the Association of American Medical Colleges and America’s Essential Hospitals.
Judge Contreras’s ruling means Medicare can proceed with the cuts, scheduled to start Jan. 1. The administration estimates the cuts will reduce annual drug spending by Medicare and beneficiaries—who pick up some of the cost of certain drugs—by about $1.6 billion.
“Flat out, this is a win for patients,” said Rena Conti, a University of Chicago associate professor who studies health policy.
IRS goes against Trump's "order. IRS backs off Trump's Obamacare order, will enforce ACA coverage reporting rule.What's going on with the Affordable Care Act (ACA)? It depends on where you're looking for answers.I find it amazing that a government agency that works directly for the executive branch ignores the President of the United States. Tell me again about draining the swamp. Tell me again there's no "deep state." But I digress.
Federal lawmakers remain in a quandary over how to deal with the ACA, or as it's known (for now) Obamacare.
The Internal Revenue Service, however, made it clear this week that it plans to follow the health care law's reporting requirements as long as they are officially on the books.
That's a reversal of a prior IRS position.
However, given the confusion with the law, both under its namesake president and since Donald J. Trump moved into the Oval Office, the tax agency's position change isn't surprising.
ObamaCare bailout: insurers have nothing to worry about. Now that Trump is cutting deals with Pelosi and Schumer, the health insurers will do just fine, thank you. It appears the insurers will continue to get their money from DC to fund ObamaCare, but at the same time, the insurers will reduce coverage, cut and run.I wrote that tongue-in-cheek. I surmised it was going to happen but did not have a link, nor was I even interested. Now tonight, while reading today's on-line edition of The WSJ this story: a plan to fund health insurer payments coalesces. A deal to fund insurer payments critical to the health law took shape, even as conservative lawmakers and the White House push an alternative.
The contours of a deal to fund insurer payments critical to the Affordable Care Act took shape Thursday, even as conservative lawmakers and the White House pushed an alternative plan to repeal parts of the law.
Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) said he hoped to reach an agreement with Democrats by the end of next week on the insurer payments, which offset subsidies they provide low-income consumers.
At a hearing Thursday, Mr. Alexander suggested he would be willing to authorize the subsidy payments for multiple years, as Democrats are demanding, in exchange for “structural changes” to the ACA, also called Obamacare.And so it goes.
Iowa asked for federal permission to alter major provisions of the Affordable Care Act next year, a proposal that will be closely watched by officials in other states who hope to rewrite parts of the health law as Republican efforts to do so in Congress have stalled.
Iowa’s plan, which state officials said they are already preparing to implement pending federal approval, would go further than proposals that other states have made so far to revamp the health law’s rules. The Iowa setup would offer just one type of insurance plan in the individual market and reshape the subsidies that help people buy coverage, among other changes.
State officials, who are formally filing for federal approval under a special waiver setup allowed by the ACA, argue they need to repair an exchange market that is expected to be down to just one insurer that has requested sharp rate increases for 2018.
States including Idaho, Minnesota and Oregon have submitted applications for less-sweeping waivers that aim to blunt insurers’ expense for covering the claims of people with costly health conditions.
In total, 13 states have passed laws authorizing state officials to craft ACA waiver requests, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. At least six others are considering such legislation.
“The most urgent thing for states is to stabilize the markets,” said Rosemarie Day, a health strategist and former chief operating officer of the Massachusetts exchange. But the waiver process also “opens the door to trying to accomplish some things Republicans are trying to do,” like limiting benefits currently required under the ACA. “This could be a backdoor way.”OMG, a backdoor way. Well, if Schumer and McCain are blocking the front door ...
Some states, such as Oklahoma, have signaled they intend to seek waivers that, like Iowa’s, could make big changes to the ACA. If those proposals proceed and are granted by the Trump administration, the upshot could eventually be a patchwork of different insurance setups across the country. However, the ACA includes firm conditions that such waivers must meet, including that coverage must be as affordable and comprehensive as it is under the federal law’s setup."Must be as affordable...." Don't make me laugh. That's an easy bar to meet. And as comprehensive as the federal law -- look at the bronze plans -- about the only thing they guarantee is family planning and end-of-life counseling, also easy bars to jump.
Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen, a Republican, said the state has worked with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and that it hoped to get its new system up and running before individual-plan enrollment kicks off in November.
“We’re doing everything that’s needed to start it up as though we already had a yes,” he said. Iowa is also asking federal officials to move faster than the 180-day waiver review timeline designated by the ACA.The founding fathers, even if some were slaveholders, had great sense when it came to states' rights.
As of July 1, 2017, electricity prices in the state of South Australia are the highest in the world, exceeding Denmark’s due to price increases of between 15.3 and 19.9 percent by its three major electric utilities.
In nearby New South Wales the problem is not much better, with more than 60,000 households at risk of having their power cut off because they cannot afford the bills.
Further, South Australia is faced with the possibility of brownouts and blackouts due to the intermittency of wind power. During a power outage last September, electricity prices rose to 200 cents per kilowatt-hour—about 20 times higher than the average U.S. electricity price. The blackout, which impacted 1.7 million people, started when a wind farm suddenly stopped providing 200 megawatts of power and destabilized the grid. Despite the blackout and high prices, South Australia plans to invest another $100 million in renewable energy.
South Australia’s reliance on wind power makes large blackouts more likely because the electricity generated is intermittent and does not coincide with the times of day when power is needed most. Intermittent renewable energy, wind and solar power, represent 53 percent of South Australia’s electricity mix. What’s more, the state closed its last coal-fired power station, thereby providing less back-up power during peak demand.
The shut down of the coal-fired generator at Port Augusta last year destroyed a supply of affordable energy for the state’s households and businesses.There is so much more at the link, but this is a good start.
Major businesses in South Australia have threatened to suspend operations entirely until the electricity price is lowered and some smaller operations have already closed.
Gasoline is expected to reach as far north as Charlotte, North Carolina within a day of Line 1's restart. Gasoline shipments on Colonial's system are expected to reach as far north as Baltimore, Maryland, by Tuesday and to reach their northern terminus in Linden, New Jersey, near New York Harbor, by Wednesday.
EIA's weekly retail price for regular gasoline for the Lower Atlantic (PADD 1C) was $2.17/g as of Monday, November 7, virtually unchanged from the previous week, and 6 cents/g below the national average. -- EIA
In the midst of seeking investor approval for a merger with SolarCity Corp., Tesla made a surprise announcement that it’s acquiring a small German engineering firm to help automate and accelerate production at its factories.
The carmaker led by tech industrialist Elon Musk said in a blog post today that it plans to buy Grohmann Engineering, based in Prüm, Germany, and rename it Tesla Grohmann Automation.
The firm, led by founder Klaus Grohmann, specializes in highly automated manufacturing techniques and will help Tesla fulfill Musk’s goal of designing the “machine that builds the machine,” his vision of advanced vehicle production that’s a step change from current conventions.
Apple previously said it is "confident" the ruling "will be overturned" by European courts, but noted the process is "likely to take several years."
Apple said it has "provisioned several billion dollars for the U.S. for payment," but it does not expect any near-term impact on its financial results.
Monthly insurance premiums for popular plans on HealthCare.gov are rising by 25 percent on average next year, according to government data. But the increases will be more dramatic in certain parts of the country, the numbers show.Premium rate rise in major cities in these states:
Take somebody living in Phoenix, where the cost of the premium for a benchmark plan is growing by a whopping 145 percent to $507 a month in 2017 when compared to this year, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks how premiums are changing in some major cities.
In Birmingham, Ala., health care premiums for a similar plan are climbing by 71 percent next year to $492 a month. And in Oklahoma City they are growing by 67 percent.
Basically DeCaprio was told by Al Gore (who has made a hundred millions of dollars by preaching global warming after he retired from political life, gained a bunch of weight and had nothing to do) that anthropological global warming is real, and from that point onward DeCaprio was convinced. LOL!
Then DeCaprio presents the ole “97% of scientists” lie that has traveled around the world. In reality 66% of scientists have no opinion about AGW — Those opinions were conveniently thrown out of the messaged John Cook study. Then DeCaprio presents cherry picked anecdotal evidence, without ever questioning whether it’s a case of Texas Sharpshooting. Why didn’t he present the Vostok Station / Greenland ice core data to put the last 100 years IN PERSPECTIVE versus the last 5,000 years, 11,000 years and 420,000 years?
And if he’s such a big fan of anecdotal evidence over temperature data then why didn’t he mention that Greenland used to be green? That 20,000 years ago New York was covered by a mile thick glacier? Why didn’t DeCaprio interview Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, who is not part of “Big Oil” and doesn’t buy into AGW?
Because DeCaprio suffers from confirmation bias. The rest of this propaganda piece (I mean movie) continues under the ASSUMPTION that humans are causing the planet to warm and we all need to agree to tax ourselves more. No thanks.The movie, by the way, bombed.
Inside the Affordable Care Act’s Arizona Meltdown.
Nearly every county in the state now has only one insurer selling plans through the health-care law’s exchange, and premiums are soaring.The Obama administration has said those Americans with a "modest" annual salary of $25,000 will be offered health insurance at subsidized (not free) rates (with high deductibles and high co-pays.
| 10/18/2016 | 10/18/2015 | 10/18/2014 | 10/18/2013 | 10/18/2012 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 32 | 67 | 190 | 184 | 186 |
Finalized rates for big health insurance plans around the country show the magnitude of the challenge facing the Obama administration as it seeks to stabilize the insurance market under the Affordable Care Act in its remaining weeks in office.
Market leaders that are continuing to sell coverage through HealthCare.gov or a state equivalent have been granted average premium increases of 30% or more in Alabama, Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Mississippi and Texas, according to information published by state regulators and on a federal site designed to highlight rate increases of 10% or more.
In states including Arizona, Illinois, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, the approved rate increases for the market leader top 50%.
In New Mexico, the Blue Cross Blue Shield plan agreed to resume selling plans through the online exchanges after sitting out last year, but has been allowed to increase rates 93% on their 2015 level.
Dominant insurers in Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland and Oregon have been allowed to raise premiums by 20% or more, and rate increases from similarly situated carriers in Colorado, Florida and Idaho are brushing up against that threshold.Does anyone even care any more?
A growing number of people in Obamacare are finding out their health insurance plans will disappear from the program next year, forcing them to find new coverage even as options shrink and prices rise.
At least 1.4 million people in 32 states will lose the Obamacare plan they have now, according to state officials contacted by Bloomberg. That’s largely caused by Aetna Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and some state or regional insurers quitting the law’s markets for individual coverage.
Sign-ups for Obamacare coverage begin next month. Fallout from the quitting insurers has emerged as the latest threat to the law, which is also a major focal point in the U.S. presidential election. While it’s not clear what all the consequences of the departing insurers will be, interviews with regulators and insurance customers suggest that plans will be fewer and more expensive, and may not include the same doctors and hospitals.
It may also mean that instead of growing in 2017, Obamacare could shrink.
As of March 31, the law covered 11.1 million people; an Oct. 13 S&P Global Ratings report predicted that enrollment next year will range from an 8 percent decline to a 4 percent gain.Anyone still supporting ObamaCare is simply not paying attention or have a personal, vested interest, of which there are many.
The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2016 is 2.1 percent on October 7, down from 2.2 percent on October 5, 2016.
The forecast of the contribution of inventory investment to third-quarter real GDP growth fell from 0.28 percentage points to 0.24 percentage points after this morning's wholesale trade report from the U.S. Census Bureau. The forecast of real government spending growth fell from 0.1 percent to –0.1 percent following this morning's employment release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
****************************Critics warned people not to hop aboard, that disaster was inevitable. But the president, his allies in Congress and lots of big insurance companies assured everyone that, even though they couldn't see the blueprints, they had, in fact, designed an unsinkable ship of government-run health care.Now, billions of dollars and 17 failed co-ops later (actually 18, now, from an original 23), the captain and crew of USS Obamacare are demanding that everyone stay below-deck and continue bailing out their sinking ship and the insurance companies taking on more and more red ink in Obamacare exchanges.
The number of announced layoffs by U.S.-based companies rose in September to the highest level in two months.
Employers announced plans to cut 44,324 jobs last month, a 38 percent increase from August, when total job cuts of 32,2188 fell to lowest total since May.
September's was the highest monthly total since July, when 45,346 layoffs were announced.
Despite the monthly rise, September's total was 25 percent below the announced job cuts a year ago.
The biggest job cutter last month was the education sector, rising by 363 percent to 8,671.
Fueling the cuts was the collapse of for-profit college ITT Technical Institute, which sustained 8,000 job losses.
Cuts in the computer industry in September totaled 4,152 jobs. The sector's year-to-date layoffs were second only to the energy sector, which announced 98,733 cuts for the nine-month period.October 8, 2016: disappointing 156,000 jobs added in September -- USA Today. Honest analysis unlike Bloomberg. To the best of my knowledge, USA Today is the only major news outlet that noted this is the consecutive month in which the jobs number was disappointing.
Payroll growth was disappointing for a second straight month in September as employers added 156,000 jobs, which raised questions about the health of an economy that was expected to perk up from a prolonged slump in the second half of the year.Reported last month: the Goldilocks number. Jobs created in August much less than forecast; expectations had been for 180,000. In fact, only 151,000 jobs were added, well below the magic number of 200,000 necessary for economy growth. Unemployment unchanged from a revised upward revision one month earlier.
Suppliers of basic materials are leading the stock market lower in afternoon trading Friday after a solid report on hiring in the U.S. last month. [I can't make this stuff up.]Later, 11:48 a.m. Central Time: wow, who wrote this report "September jobs report close to "Goldilocks" number." Wow. Here it is -- the Fed's Fischer. Talk about spin. Worthless. I guess that's why the market is down 101 points -- the jobless number was so incredibly great. LOL. Folks give Matt Drudge a lot of grief, but it certainly seems he has not lost touch with middle class Americans.
Over the two years that I had been posting these updates, it had become clear/obvious that the figures were often suspect, if not outright falsified. On November 18, 2013, it was reported that, indeed, unemployment figures have been falsified.
In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.
The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.
And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.
| 10/7/2016 | 10/07/2015 | 10/07/2014 | 10/07/2013 | 10/07/2012 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 33 | 67 | 192 | 182 | 190 |
The inventory of drilled-and-uncompleted wells (DUCs) in the U.S. Lower 48 grew by nearly 1,900 between the months just before oil prices and rig counts collapsed and early 2016—a 50% increase in a roughly two-year period, according to new DUCs data in the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) September Drilling Productivity Report (DPR—See the DPR DUC report here.).
Since January’s peak of nearly 5,600 DUCs, producers have been working down the national inventory of DUCs, with the DPR showing the overall count closer to 5,000 as of August (2016) ––but that is still up more than 1,300 from the December EIA’s 2013 baseline. This incremental growth in the number of “dormant” wells is key to understanding and predicting how long production can remain supported or grow in a low-rig count environment. Moreover, there are regional differences in the DUCs inventory counts and trends that provide critical insights on how various market factors are impacting drilling activity. Today, we walk through the EIA DUCs data for each of the producing regions.
Starting from the top left graph in Figure 1—the Bakken—the EIA DUCs spreadsheet estimates the Bakken carried 569 DUCs in December 2013. The inventory since then has been somewhat volatile but generally grew by nearly 300 (53%) to a peak of 866 DUCs in April 2016. Since then, DUCs in the Bakken have come down somewhat from that peak to near 800, but are still over 200 higher than in December 2013.NDIC reported the number of DUCs in North Dakota in excess of 900, well above the peak the EIA reported.
Minnesota’s Democratic governor said Wednesday that the Affordable Care Act is “no longer affordable” for many, a stinging critique from a state leader who strongly embraced the law and proudly proclaimed health reform was working in Minnesota just a few years ago.
Gov. Mark Dayton made the comments while addressing questions about Minnesota’s fragile health insurance market, where individual plans are facing double-digit increases after all insurers threatened to exit the market entirely in 2017. He’s the only Democratic governor to publicly suggest the law isn’t working as intended.
Dayton’s comments follow former President Bill Clinton’s saying last week that the law was “the craziest thing in the world” before he backtracked.
“The reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable for increasing numbers of people,” Dayton said, calling on Congress to fix the law to address rising costs and market stability.Much more at the link.
Tennessee is ground zero for ObamaCare's nationwide implosion. Late last month the state insurance commissioner approved premium increases of up to 62% in a bid to save the exchange set up under the Affordable Care Act.Very. Near. Collapse.
"I would characterize the exchange market in Tennessee as very near collapse," the Tennessee insurance commissioner said.
Then last week BlueCross/BlueShield of Tennessee announced it would leave Nashville, Memphis, and Knoxville.And it just gets worse from there. I don't think I will even link the article. As noted earlier, only the folks climbing out of the ObamaCare rubble are learning about this for the first time.
BC/BS said they had experienced losses approaching $500 million over the course of three years on ACA plans. This is unsustainable.
Over the past few weeks, Samsung has been replacing recalled Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that have faulty exploding batteries with new devices, but an incident today suggests the South Korean company's smartphone woes aren't over.
A Southwest flight from Louisville to Baltimore was today evacuated just before it pulled out of the gate because a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone started smoking. While no one was injured, there is a serious problem -- the Galaxy Note 7 in question was a replacement device that had been deemed "safe" by Samsung.
According to The Verge, the owner of the Galaxy Note 7, Brian Green, had replaced his original Galaxy Note at an AT&T store on September 21. The smartphone had a green battery icon and box the device came in features a black square, both of which are indicators of a replacement Note 7.
| 10/4/2016 | 10/04/2015 | 10/04/2014 | 10/04/2013 | 10/04/2012 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 32 | 68 | 190 | 183 | 189 |
The increase in waterborne flows to the East Coast in response to the recent Colonial Pipeline outage illustrated the flexibility of supply in the U.S. motor gasoline market. At the same time, the lack of a lasting impact from the loss of 8.3 million barrels of gasoline to a key U.S. demand region highlighted the degree of oversupply in the market. Today we look at how waterborne flows helped to mitigate the effects of the Colonial Pipeline outage, and how flexibility in the East Coast motor gasoline market enabled it to handle unexpected supply constraints with minimal disruption.
Colonial Pipeline is the largest source of refined product supply for the U.S. East Coast. Colonial’s primary route (from Houston to Linden, NJ) consists of four distinct segments, which, like the “arms” and “legs” of an X, meet at Greensboro, NC. One of the two Houston-to-Greensboro lines is dedicated to moving motor gasoline (Line 1, capacity, 1.37 MMb/d), and the other line (Line 2; capacity, 1.16 MMb/d) can be used to ship either distillate (diesel and heating oil) or gasoline, each of which can be move sequentially through Line 2 in “batches”.
At Greensboro, these products go into breakout tanks; from there, gasoline and distillates are sent further north (again in batches) on two mainline pipes. Line 3 (capacity, 885 Mb/d) runs from Greensboro to Linden––where it connects with the Intra Harbor Transfer (IHT) system, which facilitates deliveries to terminals across the New York and New Jersey area. Line 4 is a 32-inch-diameter pipe (capacity, ~700 Mb/d) that runs from Greensboro to Colonial’s Dorsey Junction terminal near Baltimore, MD.
In the first half of 2016, the United States exported 4.7 million barrels per day (b/d) of petroleum products, an increase of 500,000 b/d over the first half of 2015 and almost 10 times the crude oil export volume. While U.S. exports of distillate and gasoline increased by 50,000 b/d and nearly 140,000 b/d, respectively, propane exports increased by more than 230,000 b/d. Propane surpassed motor gasoline to become the second-largest U.S. petroleum product export, after distillate. --- EIA
Minnesota's top health insurance regulator says the state's individual market is in "an emergency situation" amid big rate increases for next year.
Department of Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman said Friday that the five companies offering plans through the state's exchange or directly to consumers were prepared to leave the market for 2017.
He said big rate increases were the tradeoff to convince all but one company to remain for now.
