Read me >>> sharing illuminating journalism

[guido]

How Private-Equity Firms Squeeze Hospital Patients for Profits | The New Yorker

"In the late twenty-tens, local news outlets around the country began reporting on cases of surprise medical billing: patients who had been treated in hospitals that accepted their health insurance later received much larger bills than they were expecting. In one extreme instance, a forty-four-year-old schoolteacher in Austin, Texas, was admitted to a hospital after a heart attack, assured his insurance was accepted, and then received a hospital bill for $108,951. When patients complained, they were told that one or more of the doctors who had treated them at the hospital—an anesthesiologist, say, or a radiologist—was not actually in their insurance company’s network. In emergency situations, in which a patient was rushed to the E.R. by ambulance, there was no opportunity to disclose this or get consent. But some patients said that, even in cases of elective surgery, they weren’t given an opportunity to find a doctor who was covered by their health plan. The frequency and severity of the practice seemed to be increasing."

[randonneur]

Economic study around the costs of containment and economic restrictions around COVID-19. The conclusions might surprise you!

Containing COVID-19 Will Devastate the Economy. Here’s the Economic Case for Why It’s Still Our Best Option.

...the researchers set out to determine what level of working and purchasing would be best for society as a whole, by minimizing the combined costs from a recession and the loss of human life (again assuming no vaccine was on the horizon).

They found that in order to achieve the best-case scenario, containment measures would need to curtail economic activity considerably. Lockdowns and similar policies would have to reduce consumption of goods and services by an amount several times larger than would happen organically with no government mandates.

To be clear: such a drop would lead to a severe recession, with total consumption falling by more than the amount it fell in the 2008 recession.

Yet this steep drop in economic activity would help limit the spread of the virus, reducing the death toll by hundreds of thousands compared to the scenario with no containment. “If you ramp up containment, you can greatly reduce the number of deaths,” says Rebelo.

And based on that widely accepted economic cost of a lost life, the benefits of saving so many people outweigh the direct economic costs, severe as those costs may seem.

[guido]

Wildlife Collapse From Climate Change Is Predicted to Hit Suddenly and Sooner - The New York Times

"Scientists found a “cliff edge” instead of the slippery slope they expected. Climate change could result in a more abrupt collapse of many animal species than previously thought, starting in the next decade if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, according to a study published this month in Nature.

The study predicted that large swaths of ecosystems would falter in waves, creating sudden die-offs that would be catastrophic not only for wildlife, but for the humans who depend on it.

“For a long time things can seem OK and then suddenly they’re not,” said Alex L. Pigot, a scientist at University College London and one of the study’s authors. “Then, it’s too late to do anything about it because you’ve already fallen over this cliff edge.”

The latest research adds to an already bleak picture for the world’s wildlife unless urgent action is taken to preserve habitats and limit climate change. More than a million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction because of the myriad ways humans are changing the earth by farming, fishing, logging, mining, poaching and burning fossil fuels."

[guido]

As Coronavirus Rages, Trump Disregards Advice to Tighten Clean Air Rules - The New York Times

"Disregarding an emerging scientific link between dirty air and Covid-19 death rates, the Trump administration declined on Tuesday to tighten a regulation on industrial soot emissions that came up for review ahead of the coronavirus pandemic.

Andrew R. Wheeler, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said his agency will not impose stricter controls on the tiny, lung-damaging industrial particles, known as PM 2.5, a regulatory action that has been in the works for months. The scientific evidence, he said, was insufficient to merit tightening the current emissions standard.

“We believe the current standard is protective of public health,” Mr. Wheeler said in a telephone call with reporters Tuesday morning. “Through the 5-year review process we’ve identified a lot of uncertainties. Through those uncertainties we’ve identified that the current standard does not need to be changed.”

The published proposal says that Mr. Wheeler places “little weight on quantitative estimates” of the mortality risk associated with fine soot pollution."

[ericpmoss]

The Rich Aren't Waiting to Build a New World -- Why Are We?

[guido]

New study says Trump has ‘dangerously undermined truth’ with attacks on news media | Washington Post

"A new research report from a leading journalism organization says President Trump’s attacks on the news media have endangered American democracy and imperiled press freedom in other countries.

The report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) catalogues a lengthy list of Trump’s anti-press behaviors, from repeatedly tarring credible reporting with charges of “fake news,” to trying to bar reporters from the White House, to scrubbing or withholding information from government websites.

Trump’s attacks on the news media have “dangerously undermined truth and consensus in a deeply divided country” at a time when the nation faces the unprecedented challenge of the coronavirus, concludes CPJ, a New York-based organization that monitors press issues around the world."

[guido]

The western U.S. is locked in the grips of the first human-caused megadrought, study finds | Washington Post

"Only one drought in the past 1,200 years comes close to the ongoing, global warming-driven event. A vast region of the western United States, extending from California, Arizona and New Mexico north to Oregon and Idaho, is in the grips of the first climate change-induced megadrought observed in the past 1,200 years, a study shows. The finding means the phenomenon is no longer a threat for millions to worry about in the future, but is already here.

The megadrought has emerged while thirsty, expanding cities are on a collision course with the water demands of farmers and with environmental interests, posing nightmare scenarios for water managers in fast-growing states.

A megadrought is broadly defined as a severe drought that occurs across a broad region for a long duration, typically multiple decades.

Unlike historical megadroughts triggered by natural climate cycles, emissions of heat-trapping gases from human activities have contributed to the current one, the study finds. Warming temperatures and increasing evaporation, along with earlier spring snowmelt, have pushed the Southwest into its second-worst drought in more than a millennium of observations."

[Todd Amunrud]

Our Pandemic Summer - The Atlantic

Great insight at the long view and approach needed with good science. Also speaks to the limits of testing, treatment, and the system to support us in the near future.

[ericpmoss]

God I hate neoliberals. A segment of the Labour Party actively sabotaged Labour elections just to gut Jeremy Corbyn. They, like their American counterparts, would rather have a Trump/Johnson than Sanders/Corbyn. Pure evil IMO.

[guido]

Senate committee unanimously endorses spy agencies’ finding that Russia interfered in 2016 presidential race in bid to help Trump | Washington Post

"The Senate Intelligence Committee has unanimously endorsed the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia conducted a sweeping and unprecedented campaign to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

The heavily-redacted report, based on a three-year investigation, builds on a committee finding nearly two years ago that the January 2017 intelligence community assessment (ICA) on Russia was sound. The spy agencies also found that Russia sought to shake faith in American democracy, denigrate then-candidate Hillary Clinton and boost her rival Donald Trump."

[guido]

An Earth Day Reminder of How the Republicans Have Forsaken the Environment | The New Yorker

"The idea for Earth Day came to Gaylord Nelson all of a sudden one day in the middle of 1969. That summer, “teach-ins” about the Vietnam War were all the rage. It occurred to Nelson, then the junior U.S. senator from Wisconsin: How about a “teach-in” about the environment?

To attract the widest possible audience, Nelson, a Democrat, invited Representative Pete McCloskey, a Republican from California, to co-chair the event. The response was way more enthusiastic than either man had anticipated: on April 22, 1970, some twenty million Americans—a tenth of the country’s population—took to the streets. It was the largest public demonstration in U.S. history, and, as Jamie Henn, one of the founders of 350.org, has put it, it “had bite.” By the end of the year, a Republican President, Richard Nixon, had created the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This was followed in relatively short order by the passage of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. All of these measures were approved with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Today, as Earth Day turns fifty, it’s hard to imagine more dolorous circumstances for the occasion. COVID-19 has forced online (or cancelled) virtually all the celebrations and protests that had been planned for the anniversary. The Trump Administration has barely even taken the day off from gutting the nation’s environmental regulations. (Last week, the Administration weakened rules governing the emission of mercury and other toxic chemicals from power plants; late last month, it weakened fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks.)

Meanwhile, in Congress, environmental protection has become such a thoroughly partisan issue that across-the-aisle collaborations like Nelson and McCloskey’s are rarer than Amur leopards. Owing to this divide, environmental problems that have emerged since 1970 have simply gone unaddressed. Congress has not passed—or even really come close to passing—a single piece of legislation aimed at addressing climate change. (All the steps taken by the Obama Administration to try to curb carbon emissions were done through regulation.) Precisely at the “moment when such legislative action is most needed,” James Morton Turner, a professor at Wellesley College, and Andrew Isenberg, a professor at the University of Kansas, have written, it has become “almost politically unimaginable.”"

[ides1056]

watch: Michael Moore Presents "Planet of the Humans" Documentary: We Are Losing The Battle To Stop Climate Change | Video | RealClearPolitics

[guido]

New York and Boston Pigeons Don’t Mix - The New York Times

"Almost one in five Americans lives in the megacity that is the Northeast, a sprawling cluster of paved surfaces, bitter sports rivalries and clashing opinions about which city’s drivers are rudest.

Each city on the road up Interstate 95 from Washington, D.C., to Boston prides itself on its uniqueness. But it turns out parts of the animal world have their own senses of geography.

At the genomic level, a new study finds, most of the Eastern Seaboard’s pigeons are all mixed up. That means those birds shuffling through Central Park, clucking on the National Mall, hanging out in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor or getting chased down a Philadelphia back alley by Gritty? All one interconnected population, denizens of an unbroken avian super-metropolis.

Except New England pigeons, that is, which seem to keep to themselves."

[theflashunc]

God I hate neoliberals. A segment of the Labour Party actively sabotaged Labour elections just to gut Jeremy Corbyn. They, like their American counterparts, would rather have a Trump/Johnson than Sanders/Corbyn. Pure evil IMO.

Ah yes, it's the Establishment's fault the Democratic frontrunner coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire flopped and after five years of solid campaigning, still did poorly in African American communities.

I get Jim Clyburn was a massive boost of Biden's campaign in South Carolina, but if Sanders even shows up in the South Carolina results instead of getting beat like a tin drum, the primary goes a different direction.

Now the choices are continue to push Biden to move left, or stay home. What's better, a Biden coalition government where progressives get 30% of what's on their agenda? Or the last four years?

I too get frustrated by the speed -- or lack thereof -- the party is moving left to support policies that will make this country, in my view, a better place for all of us. But I also get the Democratic party is an extraordinarily wide tent and I can't get everything I want in a candidate.

Bernie's not gonna see the mountaintop, but only continued work from progressives within the party -- not taking the ball and going home -- is what will get there. Just 5 years until AOC is elgible to run for the office...

[mzilliox]

Ah yes, it's the Establishment's fault the Democratic frontrunner coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire flopped and after five years of solid campaigning, still did poorly in African American communities.

I get Jim Clyburn was a massive boost of Biden's campaign in South Carolina, but if Sanders even shows up in the South Carolina results instead of getting beat like a tin drum, the primary goes a different direction.

Now the choices are continue to push Biden to move left, or stay home. What's better, a Biden coalition government where progressives get 30% of what's on their agenda? Or the last four years?

I too get frustrated by the speed -- or lack thereof -- the party is moving left to support policies that will make this country, in my view, a better place for all of us. But I also get the Democratic party is an extraordinarily wide tent and I can't get everything I want in a candidate.

Bernie's not gonna see the mountaintop, but only continued work from progressives within the party -- not taking the ball and going home -- is what will get there. Just 5 years until AOC is elgible to run for the office...

plus if he manages to name a (black? woman?) VP, when he supposedly goes totally senile and they decide hes unfit to serve, booyah, batter up. or some such silver lining. hes also got a decent labor record and way better environmental record than given credit for. i know hes still in the pickets of the corporations, but thats our reality, its better to deal with reality than try to avoid it.

Meanwhile, this Kushner guy is getting creepier like that batman scarecrow villain... eeew. i guess youd have to be creep to marry a lady whos dad admittedly want to hump her. maybe we love reality tv too much here? Kushner Appears to Break Law Running Campaign from White House - CREW

[htwoopup]

This one is, to a large degree, more appropriate somewhere in Cooks sub forum. But then again, it could go in the Covid threads as it does bring up what the disease is doing societally.

And, it is enlightening journalism when one reads an article written beautifully by an insider about an industry that one is not conversant in.

My Restaurant Was My Life for 2 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore? - The New York Times

[guido]

The Lab That Discovered Global Warming Has Good News and Bad News - The New York Times

"The good news is that the pandemic shows “science works.” The bad news? Global warming may be far more dangerous than a pandemic."

[Scott G.]

If you are baking bread or need inspiration to bake bread.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...-bread-in-lyon

[ericpmoss]

[ericpmoss]

What's Coming Next