Finally Somebodycare
January 27, 2021
Want answers? We’ve got you covered: DP 1/22 Quiz Answers. Hats off to Tran P., who scored a perfect 8 on last week’s quiz (2 fewer questions than usual, due to the holiday). Check in next week for another chance to test your current affairs acumen!
“America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.” — Walter Cronkite
First Obamacare, Then Nobodycare. Now, Again Somebodycare.
(Samuel Corum via Getty Images)
Getting the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through Congress and signed into law on March 23rd, 2010 was no easy feat for President Obama. America’s private healthcare system, the costliest on earth, meant that for-profit insurance companies were much more concerned about their bottom line than providing the most comprehensive, affordable coverage for the largest number of Americans. The ACA’s goal was to change the system, by expanding the range of coverage and options available, while reducing the amount individuals and families paid in uncompensated care. All Americans were required to have health insurance; for those who couldn’t afford a plan, government assistance was available.
_Naturally, such a sweeping change had its critics. Over time, as the public began benefitting from changes made by the ACA, its popularity increased appreciably. But Obamacare, as it was pejoratively nicknamed, was universally unpalatable for Congressional Republicans, who spent years trying to defeat it.
What Republicans couldn’t accomplish through Congress or the courts, President Trump managed to do with a number of executive actions aimed at gutting the ACA so severely it would simply become inoperable. One way was to reduce outreach and opportunities for enrollment in the ACA’s insurance exchanges. Millions of people lost health insurance in the first three years of the Trump administration. Then came the pandemic, and millions more Americans lost their employer-provided health insurance.
Now that President Biden has taken office, he is using the same methodology exploited by his predecessor to reverse the damage. This week Biden will sign executive orders reopening federal marketplaces selling ACA health plans, and lowering Trump-imposed barriers to joining Medicaid. HealthCare.gov, the online insurance marketplace for Americans without affordable coverage through their jobs, will swiftly reopen for at least a few months. Additionally, federal money will be reinstated for advertising and for community groups known as navigators, who help people enroll. The Trump administration had eliminated that funding, calling it wasteful.
Biden’s attempts to expand health insurance through the ACA and Medicaid are coming at a time when two cases that could weigh heavily on the outcome are before the Supreme Court. One case is an effort to overturn rulings by lower federal courts, which have held that state rules requiring some residents to work or prepare for jobs in order to qualify for Medicaid are illegal. The second case involves yet another attempt to overturn the entire ACA. (Brookings; USA Today; WaPo, $)
Who’s Ready For Round Two? Not Big Pharma.
(STR/AFP via Getty Images)
- An independent report from the non-profit Access to Medicine Foundation is warning that the world’s largest pharmaceutical firms are not prepared for the next pandemic. The foundation’s executive director highlighted an outbreak of the Nipah virus in China, with a fatality rate up to 75%, as potentially the next big pandemic risk.
- “Nipah virus is another emerging infectious disease that causes great concern … [it] could blow any moment,” she said, adding: “The next pandemic could be a drug-resistant infection.” Nipah can cause severe respiratory problems and encephalitis (swelling of the brain); it has a mortality rate of 40% to 75%, depending on where the outbreak occurs.
- Nipah is one of 10 infectious diseases out of 16 identified by the World Health Organization as the greatest public health risk where there are zero projects in pharmaceutical firms’ pipelines. Others include rift valley fever, common in sub-Saharan Africa, along with Mers and Sars. The latter two are respiratory diseases caused by coronaviruses — less infectious, but with far higher death rates than Covid-19. (Guardian)
Britain Won’t Let Human Rights Cut Into Their Profits
- Researchers with the Department for International Trade (DIT) report that over the past five years, British ministers and officials have approved the sale of military hardware to 58 of 73 countries subject to arms embargoes, trade sanctions, or other restrictions.
- These sales include sniper rifles to Pakistan, assault rifles to Kenya, and naval equipment to China. Five countries listed by the DIT as key export markets for British arms makers — Bahrain, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia — also appear on the UK Foreign Office’s latest list of 30 “human rights priority countries.”
- While the exports are legal, the researchers say such sales represent “a systemic failure to consider the human rights record of states before exporting weapons to them.” Britain has authorized millions in sales of arms to China, despite its treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority. Most of the sales to China are military radar equipment for its fast-growing navy, now the world’s largest.
- The UK itself increasingly regards the Chinese navy as a strategic threat, amid fears that its warships could even sail around the north of Russia to enter the Atlantic. (Guardian)
Additional World News
- The ‘spiralling crisis’ pushing Hondurans to flee north (Al Jazeera)
- Italy’s Prime Minister Resigns After Weeks of Infighting (NYT, $)
- Iran blocks Signal messaging app after WhatsApp exodus (Al Jazeera)
- As Angry Farmers Take to New Delhi’s Streets, Protests Turn Violent (NYT, $)
- EU citizens offered financial incentives to leave UK (Guardian)
- China’s Big Tech clampdown: Why some businesses stand to benefit (Al Jazeera)
- Covid: Dutch curfew riots rage for third night (BBC)
- Egypt’s military dominates 10 years after revolution (Al Jazeera)
- Earth is now losing 1.2 trillion tons of ice each year. And it’s going to get worse. (WaPo, $)
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Covid Behind Bars? No Pros, Many Cons
- Nearly 50,000 people are incarcerated in New York’s prisons and jails, yet the state still has no discernible plan for vaccinating this hard-hit group. New vaccine guidelines announced two weeks ago covered millions of additional state residents, with no mention of prisoners. And now that state supplies of vaccine are dwindling, the virus that tore through correctional facilities last spring is roaring back behind bars.
- Recently over 5,100 people living and working in New York prisons have tested positive for Covid-19; 12 have died. How to prioritize those who receive shots first has become a political football. Some states plan to vaccinate prison and jail workers before prisoners, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends vaccinating everyone at a state’s correctional facilities simultaneously.
- Then there are states like New York that haven’t addressed those behind bars at all. But with guards, lawyers, workers, and people entering and leaving custody, moving between facilities and the community at large, failing to vaccinate prisoners has public health implications extending far beyond prison walls. (NYT, $)
This Election Doesn’t Get The SEAL of Approval From Everyone
- Adam Newbold is a former member of the Navy SEALs, trained as an expert in sorting information from disinformation, a clandestine commando who spent years working in intelligence alongside the CIA, someone who would mock the idea of shadowy anti-democratic plots as “tinfoil hat” thinking. Despite his background, or perhaps because of it, Newbold succumbed to years of Donald Trump’s endless lies, divisive rhetoric, and baseless conspiracy theories.
- He was convinced, against all evidence, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and that people like him were right to rise up. He was one of thousands of ordinary people who surged into Washington on January 6th to support a dangerous president. They believed the fabricated theory — constantly reinforced by a Trumpian echo chamber — that the election was rigged by a cabal of liberal power brokers pushing the nation to the brink of civil war.
- Even after the insurrection, Newbold remained convinced that unnamed elites had quietly pulled off a coup by manipulating election software, and warned the country was still on the precipice of war. “I’ve been to countries all over the world that are indoctrinated by propaganda,” he said. “I have no doubts; I’m convinced that the election was not free and fair.” (NYT, $)
Additional USA News
- Mitch McConnell Relents On Senate Filibuster Stalemate (NPR). Perhaps hope for unity after all.
- BlackRock Chief Pushes a Big New Climate Goal for the Corporate World (NYT, $)
- Unions just got a rare bit of good news from the Supreme Court (Vox)
- Biden raises election meddling with Putin in first phone call (BBC)
- CDC Makes The Case For Schools Reopening (NPR). But wait, what about the bars?
- California Ends Strict Virus Restrictions as New Cases Fall (NYT, $)
- The Black middle class is a mirage (Vox)
- Sen. Joe Manchin will determine how much President Biden can achieve on climate (WaPo, $)
- Three Weeks Inside a Pro-Trump QAnon Chat Room (NYT, $)
Would You Like A Vaccine With Your Order?
- There’s something to be said about being in the right place at the right time, even if it means hanging around a Safeway or a Walgreens at closing. It’s been especially fortunate for some end-of-day shoppers, including young, healthy ones, who’ve managed to receive a leftover dose of a coveted coronavirus vaccine simply by being an available body.
- These “vaccine chasers” can be young people, entire families, even seniors unable to secure an appointment. But getting a random shot depends on who you know and your access to local news.
- In Los Angeles County, for example, it was reported that vaccine chasers waiting outside clinics had “heard about the opportunity through word of mouth in their social and professional networks.” In Dallas County, at an inner-city vaccine hub meant to reach underserved neighborhoods, almost 20% of the shots went to people driving in from the three wealthiest zip codes in the county.
- The Trump administration had a vaccination goal of 20 million people by the end of 2020. However, by January 11 only about 9 million people had received their first of two doses. That’s not because people refused to get vaccinated. Demand is high. There’s just not enough vaccine to go around, and often it’s not getting to the most vulnerable first.
- Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines must be administered within hours after doses are thawed from a subzero storage temperature. So if for some reason not enough of the priority 1A and 1B groups are present, rather than letting the vaccine go to waste, providers might give a dose to whomever is standing around. It’s not a perfect delivery system. Fingers crossed there’ll be a much better one real soon. (Vox)
Additional Reads
- Could understanding the history of anti-vaccine sentiment help us to overcome it? (Guardian)
- How Reddit and WallStreetBets blew up GameStop’s stock (Vox). A devastating blow to efficient market economic theorists everywhere.
- Egyptian archaeologists unearth dozens of tombs at Saqqara necropolis (ArsTechnica)
- Kyrgyzstan ballads, Okinawan folk, Ugandan hymns … the album rewriting global music history (Guardian
- How do you act drunk on screen? (BBC) Method actors have it the easiest.
- The history of the connected battlespace, part one: Command, control, and conquer (ArsTechnica)
- North Korea Targets—and Dupes—a Slew of Cybersecurity Pros (Wired)