From one of the largest public corruption cases in state history to a new airline entering the Hawaii market, these are the top five Hawaii news stories of 2019:
Kealoha corruption case carries over into 2020
TMT construction delayed by protesters
21 people perish in 3 aircraft crashes
Pali Highway closed for almost entire year
Southwest expands airline service into Hawaii market
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Greta Thunberg named Time Person of the Year
Greta Thunberg was named Time magazine's 2019 Person of the Year. She is youngest figure to receive the distinction in its 92-year history.
"She became the biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet this year, coming from essentially nowhere to lead a worldwide movement," Time Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal said at the announcement on Wednesday. "She embodies youth activism."
The 16-year-old Swedish climate activist has become an iconic face in the fight to save the planet from climate change. Last year, she began spending her Fridays protesting by herself outside the Swedish parliament, and that effort grew to her leading a host of student-led climate strikes involving millions of people all around the world.
"She became the biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet this year, coming from essentially nowhere to lead a worldwide movement," Time Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal said at the announcement on Wednesday. "She embodies youth activism."
The 16-year-old Swedish climate activist has become an iconic face in the fight to save the planet from climate change. Last year, she began spending her Fridays protesting by herself outside the Swedish parliament, and that effort grew to her leading a host of student-led climate strikes involving millions of people all around the world.
Monday, December 09, 2019
Medicare for all?
[12/9/19 Star-Advertiser]
Should U.S. adopt 'Medicare for All'?
Yes by Robert Weissman
By almost every relevant metric, we do the worst or nearly the worst among all rich countries.
We are the only country to permit tens of millions to go uninsured, far more people in the United States report skipping care because of cost issues than other countries, our infant mortality rate is atrocious and our life expectancy trails other nations and is actually dropping.
There’s no excuse for any of this in such a rich nation. We can solve all of these problems — by expanding coverage, eliminating underinsurance and co-pays and improving health care and health outcomes — with “Medicare for All.”
Medicare for All would cover everyone, and end the outrage of a system that permits 27 million Americans to go uninsured.
No by Chris Talgo
For decades, the left has advocated for nationalizing the country's health-care system under a Medicare-for-all type of plan. Despite their rhetoric, however, this scheme would do much more harm than good.
M4A is completely unaffordable and would push the United States even further into the debt abyss. According to a study by the Mercatus Center, it "would add approximately $32.6 trillion to federal budget commitments during the first 10 years of its implementation (2022-2031)." The United States is already more than $23 trillion in debt; adding an extra $30 trillion in federal spending over the next decade would cause economic Armageddon.
[12/9/19] Misinformation about Medicare for All
[10/16/19] Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s refusal to answer repeated questions at Tuesday night’s debate about how she would fund Medicare for All underscores the challenge she faces finding a politically acceptable means to meet the idea’s huge price tag — a challenge that only intensified today with the release of an eye-popping new study.
The Urban Institute, a center-left think tank highly respected among Democrats, is projecting that a plan similar to what Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders are pushing would require $34 trillion in additional federal spending over its first decade in operation. That’s more than the federal government’s total cost over the coming decade for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid combined, according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office projections.
In recent history, only during the height of World War II has the federal government tried to increase taxes, as a share of the economy, as fast as would be required to offset the cost of a single-payer plan, federal figures show. There are “no analogous peacetime tax increases,” says Leonard Burman, a public-administration professor at Syracuse University and a former top tax official in both the Bill Clinton administration and at the CBO. Raising that much more tax revenue “is plausible in the sense that it is theoretically possible,” Burman told me. “But the revolution that would come along with it would get in the way.”
At the debate, as throughout the campaign, Warren refused to provide any specifics about how she would fund a single-payer plan. Instead, whether questioned by moderators or challenged by other candidates, she recycled variants on the same talking points she has used in venues from campaign town halls to a recent appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Rather than explaining what revenue she would raise to fund the plan, Warren insisted that under single payer, middle-income families would save more money with the elimination of health-care premiums, co-pays, and deductibles, regardless of any taxes imposed. “Costs will go up for the wealthy and for big corporations, and for hard-working middle-class families, costs will go down,” she said at the debate.
That calculation itself is disputed. And it begs the question: Even if families would eventually save under a single-payer system, a President Warren would still need to identify a politically plausible funding plan to pass such a program through Congress. By all indications, that looms as an extremely daunting project.
[6/5/10] Bob Jones' choice as the best health care insurance system for America
[4/21/19] Hospitals would get less from Medicare for all
[4/11/19] Krugman on Medicare for All (and the Green New Deal)
[2/27/19] House Democrats introduce Medicare-for-all bill
[2/24/19] WASHINGTON — "Medicare-for-all" can mean different things to different people.
Should U.S. adopt 'Medicare for All'?
Yes by Robert Weissman
By almost every relevant metric, we do the worst or nearly the worst among all rich countries.
We are the only country to permit tens of millions to go uninsured, far more people in the United States report skipping care because of cost issues than other countries, our infant mortality rate is atrocious and our life expectancy trails other nations and is actually dropping.
There’s no excuse for any of this in such a rich nation. We can solve all of these problems — by expanding coverage, eliminating underinsurance and co-pays and improving health care and health outcomes — with “Medicare for All.”
Medicare for All would cover everyone, and end the outrage of a system that permits 27 million Americans to go uninsured.
No by Chris Talgo
For decades, the left has advocated for nationalizing the country's health-care system under a Medicare-for-all type of plan. Despite their rhetoric, however, this scheme would do much more harm than good.
M4A is completely unaffordable and would push the United States even further into the debt abyss. According to a study by the Mercatus Center, it "would add approximately $32.6 trillion to federal budget commitments during the first 10 years of its implementation (2022-2031)." The United States is already more than $23 trillion in debt; adding an extra $30 trillion in federal spending over the next decade would cause economic Armageddon.
[12/9/19] Misinformation about Medicare for All
[10/16/19] Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s refusal to answer repeated questions at Tuesday night’s debate about how she would fund Medicare for All underscores the challenge she faces finding a politically acceptable means to meet the idea’s huge price tag — a challenge that only intensified today with the release of an eye-popping new study.
The Urban Institute, a center-left think tank highly respected among Democrats, is projecting that a plan similar to what Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders are pushing would require $34 trillion in additional federal spending over its first decade in operation. That’s more than the federal government’s total cost over the coming decade for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid combined, according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office projections.
In recent history, only during the height of World War II has the federal government tried to increase taxes, as a share of the economy, as fast as would be required to offset the cost of a single-payer plan, federal figures show. There are “no analogous peacetime tax increases,” says Leonard Burman, a public-administration professor at Syracuse University and a former top tax official in both the Bill Clinton administration and at the CBO. Raising that much more tax revenue “is plausible in the sense that it is theoretically possible,” Burman told me. “But the revolution that would come along with it would get in the way.”
At the debate, as throughout the campaign, Warren refused to provide any specifics about how she would fund a single-payer plan. Instead, whether questioned by moderators or challenged by other candidates, she recycled variants on the same talking points she has used in venues from campaign town halls to a recent appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Rather than explaining what revenue she would raise to fund the plan, Warren insisted that under single payer, middle-income families would save more money with the elimination of health-care premiums, co-pays, and deductibles, regardless of any taxes imposed. “Costs will go up for the wealthy and for big corporations, and for hard-working middle-class families, costs will go down,” she said at the debate.
That calculation itself is disputed. And it begs the question: Even if families would eventually save under a single-payer system, a President Warren would still need to identify a politically plausible funding plan to pass such a program through Congress. By all indications, that looms as an extremely daunting project.
[6/5/10] Bob Jones' choice as the best health care insurance system for America
[4/21/19] Hospitals would get less from Medicare for all
[4/11/19] Krugman on Medicare for All (and the Green New Deal)
[2/27/19] House Democrats introduce Medicare-for-all bill
[2/24/19] WASHINGTON — "Medicare-for-all" can mean different things to different people.
For
some, it's a single government-run health insurance plan for the whole
country. To others, it's giving consumers a choice to buy into Medicare
or keep their private insurance.
But whatever the form, the proposals are built on the premise that health insurance should be a guaranteed right.
Sen.
Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent seeking the 2020 Democratic
presidential nomination, launched the debate over "Medicare-for-all."
Now, other Democratic presidential hopefuls are staking out their
positions on the concept, which President Donald Trump decries as
socialism.
But government-backed
insurance is already part of daily life, covering more than 130 million
Americans. A new report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services projects that federal, state and local governments will be
paying nearly half the nation's health care tab by 2027.
A primer on Medicare and Medicare-inspired plans that have become a central focus for Democrats:
TRADITIONAL MEDICARE
Enacted
more than 50 years ago to cover people age 65 and older, Medicare
remains the government's flagship health care program. About 60 million
are enrolled, including some 9 million disabled people.
Benefits
include coverage for hospitalization, doctors' services, prescription
drugs, tests and imaging, rehab, medical equipment, and hospice. But
Medicare does not cover long-term care, routine dental care, hearing
aids or eyeglasses.
Medicare has significant copayments, and many beneficiaries purchase supplemental private insurance to protect against costs.
With
baby boomers aging into Medicare, taxes are not enough to cover future
costs. In just seven years — 2026— it's projected that the program's
giant trust fund for inpatient care won't have enough to cover medical
bills due.
'MEDICARE-FOR-ALL'
Two
bills, one by Sanders and another from House Democrats, would set up a
government-run health insurance plan for the entire country. It's also
called "single-payer" because a federal agency would pay the bills. Or
just "M4A."
Government coverage would replace private health insurance, including employer-sponsored plans that insure about 160 million people. Benefits for seniors would be improved beyond what Medicare now offers, with coverage for dental, vision and hearing aids. The House bill includes a new long-term care program.
Patients
would not have to pay premiums or deductibles, and cost-sharing would be
eliminated or greatly reduced. But taxes would go up significantly.
Costs would be limited through government-set payment rates across the
health care system.
Neither proposal
has a cost analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, but several
independent studies have estimated that government spending on health
care would increase dramatically, in the range of about $25 trillion to
$35 trillion or more over a 10-year period.
Democratic
presidential hopefuls Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten
Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California, and Elizabeth
Warren of Massachusetts are co-sponsors of the Sanders' plan. So is
Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, who is considering a run.
Some co-sponsors also support less ambitious proposals to advance the goal of coverage for all.
MEDICARE BUY-IN
Several
Democratic lawmakers have unveiled plans that would let older adults
buy into Medicare. The idea would build on the Obama-era Affordable Care
Act because ACA subsidies would be available to help pay premiums for
those who qualify.
Sen. Sherrod
Brown, D-Ohio, who is weighing a presidential campaign, has proposed
giving people between the ages of 50 and 64 the option of buying into
Medicare. His "Medicare at 50" bill was co-authored by Sens. Debbie
Stabenow, D-Mich., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.
While
that's not "Medicare-for-all," it would provide a backstop for a
demographic group whose members can suddenly find themselves uninsured
due to layoffs, plant closings, or involuntary retirement.
Presidential
hopefuls Booker, Gillibrand, Harris, are co-sponsors. So is Merkley.
And the list includes Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who's running for the
Democratic nomination and is not a co-sponsor of the Sanders bill.
MEDICARE PUBLIC OPTION
Legislation
from Merkley would allow people of any age to buy into a new public
plan modeled on Medicare. Employers would have the option of offering it
to workers. Financial assistance with premiums would be available
through the Affordable Care Act.
The
"Choose Medicare" bill echoes an earlier "public option" proposal for
government-run insurance to compete with private coverage, which
Democrats ultimately backed away from during the Obama years after
strong industry opposition.
The plan
would also improve benefits under traditional Medicare, setting a limit
on seniors' cost-sharing. And it would authorize Medicare to negotiate
drug prices.
Sens. Booker, Gillibrand and Harris are co-sponsors.
MEDICAID BUY-IN
Some
Democrats are proposing legislation that would allow states to open
their Medicaid programs up to people willing to pay premiums.
Although
Medicaid started out as a federal-state collaboration to cover the
poor, it now insures about 75 million people, making it the largest and
most diverse government health program.
The Medicaid buy-in idea builds on the Obama-era expansion of that program to low-income adults, adopted by most states.
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