Thursday, April 16th, 2020
Eoin Higgins, - Common Dreams
Stephan: Most of the media is focused on the pathetically inadequate checks for ordinary folk all bearing, it should be noted, Trump's name in an unprecedented act of malignant narcissism,. But, I believe, that is just the cover story. The real story is that Trump and his friends are raiding the American treasury in an unprecedented way. And for the illness profit corporations there is an additional trick; a kind of bribery. Shower us with money or we are going to raise healthcare premiums enormously. Here's the story.
A lobbyist told The Hill in an interview Tuesday that unless the insurance industry receives a federal bailout, companies intend to raise premiums on Americans due to the effects of the coronavirus outbreak on private employer-based plans—a threat that progressives said only strengthens the case for a single-payer, Medicare for All system.
“Nationalize them,” Boston-based activist Jonathan Cohn said of insurance companies.
American Benefits Council senior vice president for health policy Ilyse Schuman said that employer-based healthcare plans were unlikely to handle the stress of an increase in benefit claims from the disease without hiking prices for consumers.
“They’ll be left with no option but to pass costs along to employees in the form of higher premiums next year,” said Schuman. “That’s really why we’re asking Congress to step in and protect employer-sponsored coverage.”
According to The Hill, insurers are already asking for federal relief from the burden of paying out claims:
America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the leading trade group for insurance companies, and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association urged congressional leaders in a letter last week to provide temporary “federal risk mitigation programs to support the financial stability of plans that incur extraordinary, unplanned costs in 2020 and 2021 […]
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Thursday, April 16th, 2020
Stephan: Here is some good news. But at the same time, it is a horrific commentary on America and its gun psychosis.
Credit: wsilver / Flickr
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted just about every aspect of American life. But there have been a few unintentional positive consequences from the nationwide lockdown.
Air pollution in the U.S. has dropped significantly, giving us a glimpse at what a post-carbon world may look like. NASA revealed that NO₂ pollution over New York and other major metropolitan areas in northeastern USA was 30% lower in March 2020.
Americans are also adopting shelter dogs and cats like never before. Since coronavirus first landed in the U.S. there have been countless stories of shelters running out of pets.
There is also one massive unintended consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic: March 2020 was the first March since 2002 that there wasn’t a school shooting in the United States.
Most schools in the U.S. were shut down in early March to stop the spread of the virus.
in March 2002, a 13-year-old student brought a gun to school along with a hit list, but was subdued by a school resource offer before he had the chance to pull the trigger.
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