First Evidence That Offshore Wind Farms Are Changing the Oceans

Posted on September 24, 2017 by David Posnett

Wind turbines can support vast colonies of marine species in areas where they were previously rare.

by Emerging Technology from the arXiv September 22, 2017

 

Offshore wind farms are becoming increasingly common in our oceans. In Europe, the goal is for them to supply over 4 percent of the continent’s electricity by 2030. And that’s triggering a wind power boom—the amount of electricity they generate is expected to increase 40-fold by 2030.

Offshore wind turbines are huge—much bigger than their land-based counterparts. They can be over 200 meters tall—twice the height of the Big Ben clock tower in London—and generate up to nine megawatts of power. But most of their mass is in the concrete and steel bases that sit underwater.

Naturally, these bases become home to complex ecosystems. In the North Sea, where most of the European farms are being built, these ecosystems are dominated by blue mussels. These feed by filtering phytoplankton from the water. Mussels are also a food source for other marine animals, such as fish and crabs, and this has the potential to significantly alter the food web.

                The geography of offshore wind farms in the North Sea.

And that raises an important question. How are offshore wind farms, and the new colonies of blue mussels they support, changing the oceans?

Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Kaela Slavik at the Helmholtz Centre for Materials and Coastal Research in Germany and a few pals, who have investigated the impact of offshore wind power on marine ecosystems for the first time. Their conclusions are stark—they say offshore wind platforms are changing the nature of marine ecosystems in complex, unanticipated, and beneficial ways.

The team’s method is straightforward. Their goal is to measure the current changes in the marine ecosystems caused by offshore wind farms and then create a computer model that they can use to predict future changes.

The team starts with measurements of the biomass of blue mussels that a typical wind turbine can support—some four metric tons of the shellfish. Using maps of current and planned windfarms in the North Sea, it’s then straightforward to estimate the total mass and distribution of blue mussels supported by wind farms now and in 2030.

That gives an interesting result. Mussel beds are currently concentrated around the coast, but wind farms are offshore. “Once all the planned wind farms are in operation, they will provide habitat for mussels that are equal to 20 percent of the current stock from natural mussel beds along the coast,” say Slavik and co.

The next steps are harder. An important question is how the new mussel colonies will change phytoplankton levels in the ocean. Slavik and co investigate this using water and satellite measurements. But this is complex data that varies significantly from year to year.

Beyond that, the team studies the simulated effect of blue mussels as “ecosystem engineers”—how they support other species in the North Sea.

Their conclusions make for interesting reading. Slavik and co say one important effect of offshore wind farms is that they act as marine preservation areas, because fishing and bottom trawling is not allowed for safety reasons. So these areas can support greater biodiversity than unprotected areas.

Blue mussels themselves also significantly change this environment. They support other species, since their shells and shell litter are habitats for other creatures. The way blue mussels filter feed makes water clearer, and they concentrate nutrients for other species. This increases “the degree of habitat complexity, encouraging a higher level of species richness,” say the team.

One unanticipated consequence of all this is that these new ecosystems can support alien species which would not otherwise be able to gain a foothold. One example is the marine splash midge, which is native to Australasian waters and transported on the hulls of ships. “It has been observed at offshore wind farms in Denmark and along the Swedish Baltic coast,” say Slavik and co.

But the long-term consequences of this change in biodiversity is unknown. “Through these changes in biodiversity, offshore wind farms could shape the marine ecosystem beyond their physical boundaries,” say the researchers.

Mussels are also food for larger species such as crabs and certain fish, which are themselves prey for seals. So it’s no surprise that seals have already begun to migrate to off shore wind farms off the coast of Denmark.

For the most part, Slavik and co are cautiously positive about the changes that offshore wind farms cause, but they are quick to point out that the longer-term effects are still unknown. “Many of the ecosystem feedbacks and hence changes to ecosystem services are yet unknown and need to be studied both in situ and in future system-wide synoptic studies,” they say.

So more work is obviously needed, particularly in other areas where offshore wind farms are planned. The ecosystems that the North Sea support are obviously different from those in other oceans. Just how the platforms will change ecosystems in other parts of the world isn’t clear.

But this study shows for the first time that offshore wind farms are changing our oceans. Clearly, we need to know more about how this will happen.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1709.02386: The Large Scale Impact of Offshore Windfarm Structures on Pelagic Primary Production in the Southern North Sea

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An Act of Mass Suicide

Posted on September 24, 2017 by David Posnett

If the U.S. Adopts the G.O.P.’s Health-Care Bill, It Would Be an Act of Mass Suicide

 

By

September 22, 2017

There is not a single metric of health or health care that the Graham-Cassidy plan—co-sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina—makes better.

Photograph by Mark Peterson / Redux

The fundamental thing to understand about Senate Republicans’ latest attempt to repeal Obamacare is that the bill under consideration would not just undo the Affordable Care Act—it would also end Medicaid as we know it and our federal government’s half-century commitment to closing the country’s yawning gaps in health coverage. And it would do so without putting in place any credible resources or policies to replace the system it is overturning. If our country enacts this bill, it would be an act of mass suicide.

In my surgery practice in Boston, I see primarily cancer patients. When I started out, in 2003, at least one in ten of my patients was uninsured. Others, who had insurance, would discover in the course of their treatment that their policies had annual or lifetime caps that wouldn’t cover their costs, or that they would face unaffordable premiums going forward because they now had a preëxisting condition. When he was governor of Massachusetts, it was Mitt Romney, a conservative, who brought Republicans and Democrats together to make a viable state system of near-universal coverage. That system then served as a model for the A.C.A. The results have been clear: increases in coverage have markedly improved people’s access to care and their health. For the last four years, health-care costs in Massachusetts have risen more slowly than the national average—while the national numbers themselves have been at historic lows. I have not seen a single uninsured patient—zero—in a decade. And now comes an utterly reckless piece of legislation that would destroy these gains.

To review how we got to this point: last spring, the House passed a health-care-reform bill that proposed to hollow out the A.C.A.’s funding, insurance mandates, and protections for people with preëxisting conditions. It was immensely unpopular with the public. The problem was not just that twenty-three million Americans would lose their health insurance if the bill becomes law but also the Republicans’ vision of a health system where insurance with deductibles of five thousand dollars and more, and little or no primary-care coverage, would become the norm. This summer, Senate Republicans failed to secure enough votes to pass a modified version of the House bill. Later, in a dramatic late-night session, the Senate also rejected, by a single vote, a “skinny” repeal bill. That bill would have repealed only the parts of the A.C.A. that required large businesses to insure their workers and all Americans to carry coverage. It would have resulted in a mere sixteen million more uninsured people, according to estimates.

The Republican bill currently being rushed to a vote was put forward by a group of senators led by Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, and Bill Cassidy, of Louisiana. As has become the apparent rule for Republican health-care bills, there have been no hearings or committee reviews of the Graham-Cassidy bill. And, this time, lawmakers and the public do not even have a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the effects the bill would have on the budget, insurance costs, or the uninsured rate.

This is unprecedented: senators are moving ahead with a vote on a bill that would alter the health care of every American family and the condition of a sixth of our entire economy, without waiting to hear any official, independent estimates of the consequences. The irresponsibility is as blithe as it is breathtaking. Before becoming a senator, Cassidy spent twenty-five years working as a physician in hospitals devoted to the uninsured. I find it baffling that a person with his experience would not recognize the danger of this bill. But here we are.

The Graham-Cassidy bill goes even further than the bill passed by the House. It would bring to a virtually immediate end not only the individual and employer mandates but also the whole edifice of the Medicaid expansion, insurance exchanges, and income-based coverage subsidies set up under the A.C.A. Graham-Cassidy expects all fifty states to then pass, and implement, alternative health systems for tens of millions of people within two years—with drastically less money, in most states, than the current law provides. This is not just impossible. It is delusional.

Like the House bill, Graham-Cassidy would cut Medicaid payments for traditional enrollees—the elderly in nursing homes, pregnant women in poverty, disabled children, etc.—by a third by 2026. A portion of the money saved would go into a short-term fund for states to use for health-care costs. The rationale is that this would give states “flexibility” to design coverage for their residents as they see fit. But the amount of funding provided is, by multiple estimates, hundreds of billions of dollars below what the A.C.A. provides. The bill also nakedly shifts funds from Democratic-leaning states that expanded Medicaid under the A.C.A. to Republican-leaning states that didn’t. Analyses indicate that states like California, Massachusetts, and New York will receive block-grant funding anywhere from thirty-five to almost sixty per cent below the health-care funding their residents would receive under current law. Much of those missing funds would be transferred to states like Texas, Mississippi, and Wisconsin. And special deals to make further shifts from blue states to red states such as Alaska are being negotiated to win votes.

As for what states can do with the funds they do receive, they would not be allowed to use them to enroll people in Medicaid, or able to establish a single-payer system. And states would not be receiving enough to continue Obamacare on their own. The only options for spending are for commercial coverage. States will be permitted to let insurers bring back higher costs for people with preëxisting conditions and to reinstate annual and lifetime limits on coverage. And then, starting in 2026, the funding turns out to only be temporary. Under the bill’s provisions, unless further action is taken then, four trillion dollars will be removed from health-care systems over twenty years.

With these massive sums being flung around, it is easy to forget that this is about our health as human beings. The evidence is that health-care programs like the A.C.A. save lives. The way they do so is by increasing the number of people who have affordable access to a regular source of care and needed medications. Such coverage has been shown to produce a substantial and increasing reduction in mortality—especially among those with chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, cancer, or H.I.V.—in as little as five years.

Virtually all of us, as we age, will develop serious health conditions. A critical test of any health reform, therefore, is whether it improves or reduces our prospects of having the continuous care and medicines we need when we come to have a chronic illness. The Graham-Cassidy bill fails this test. It will terminate Medicaid coverage and insurance subsidies for some twenty million people. The entire individual-insurance market will be thrown into a tailspin. Federal protections for insurance coverage will be gone.

Every major group representing patients, health-care professionals, health-care institutions, and insurers has come out vociferously against this plan. Governors from Alaska to Ohio to Virginia have opposed the bill. In a highly unusual, bipartisan statement, the national association representing the Medicaid directors of all fifty states has also opposed the bill. The top health official in Louisiana, Cassidy’s home state, has opposed the new plan. There is not a single metric of health or health care that the Graham-Cassidy plan makes better. This bill is a national calamity. It should not even come to a vote.

Atul Gawande, a surgeon, and public-health researcher, became a New Yorker staff writer in 1998 and is a best selling author of numerous books.

COMMENT:

As a retired cancer doc and researcher, who worked in the field for 35 years, I share Dr. Gawande’s experience and comments.  I too predict that patients will die without affordable access to medical care.  Delayed access or withheld access, to chemotherapy for example, due to absence of funds is something cancer docs have seen over and over again.  Please check out Tears for Liz on this blog site.  D Posnett, MD

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Memo to Trump Fans: Conman-in-Chief Will Betray You All

Posted on September 20, 2017 by David Posnett

I Told You So: Trump Is a Conman-in-Chief

OPINION

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY THE DAILY BEAST

WHAT’D YOU EXPECT?

 

He’s swindled and lied to everyone he’s dealt with his entire adult life. So why did you, Trump voter, think you’d be any different? Wake up.

Rick WilsonRICK WILSON

09.18.17 1:00 AM ET

The gift of a brilliant actor, great con man, or devious traitor is to be able to hold the facade of normalcy, courage, integrity, or our other higher virtues up to the world and convince it for a time to see the face they want it to see. For the actor, it’s to inhabit the character on stage or screen until the curtain call comes or the credits roll. For the con man, it’s to take that last dollar from the victim of a long con. For the traitor, it’s to pass that last tranche of intelligence on to his handlers from a foreign government.

No matter how skilled their performances, the essential nature of a man’s character is always there, waiting to be revealed in times of stress or challenge. People living a lie are always, as Aristotle reminds us, “… at war with and in opposition to themselves.” In the end, there’s always a tell and always a glimpse behind the mask, and stress is what reveals it.

No institution in the world stresses a man like the American presidency. That glorious burden and singular honor tests, ages, and wears on every person who carries it. The incumbent’s true character, good and bad, is revealed to the world.

Before this week, the essential character of Donald Trump wasn’t a secret—he was always a flamboyant liar, a raging narcissist, and a man driven by impulse and expedience—but to the victims of the biggest political con in American history those were part of his roguish charm. He was always an actor, playing the successful dealmaker and negotiator.

Trump voters are world-champion rationalizers. They knew he was a bastard, but he was their bastard. They knew he was a lying, amoral, narcissistic snake, but by God, he was their snake. American conservatives who knew better sold their virtue, ideology, and principles once Trump won the White House, nodded sagely and intoned, “But Gorsuch.” The last two weeks have been a delicious comeuppance for all of them, as Trump has burned them to the ground by forging a new alliance with the Democratic leadership of Congress and leaving his Republican frenemies in the dirt.

Trump’s fans love his attacks on the GOP. Regardless of the eventual consequences for the party, they defend Trump’s erratic behavior and Russia ties. The Charlottesville disaster was a heavy burden. The blame game from Trump’s failure to sell Congress on an Obamacare repeal raised the tensions. The attacks on GOP senators set teeth on edge. The first flirtation with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi over the debt ceiling was like a slap.

Then Trump’s full-fledged triple backflip on DACA and the wall struck like a political earthquake. The sense of shock and betrayal in his base is magnificent. They foolishly believed Trump would never betray them on immigration, despite his lifetime of serial lying and deception.

The clickservative media and Trumpsplainers on the right have demanded since the election that we listen to the Trump voters, and that we understand their economic anxiety and the sense that Washington betrayed them over the decades. These may all be true and explicable motivations for their choice of Trump, but those normalizing Trump tend to elide and dismiss the centrality of anti-immigration hysteria and racial animus in Trump’s campaign.

Was every Trump voter motivated by a xenophobic fury at brown people coming here to live a better life? Of course not, but all voters motivated by a xenophobic fury at brown people coming to live here were Trump voters, and he shamelessly, consistently, and viciously played that card.

There’s a popular argument among Trump apologists that the wall, deportations, and DACA weren’t linchpins of Trump’s campaign rhetoric. This is cheap and sloppy historical revisionism. He opened his campaign with an attack on Mexicans. At Trump rallies, “build the wall” was the tentpole of his speeches and central to the crowd’s Pavlovian call-and-response. His attacks on Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and the rest of the 2016 primary field were predicated in large measure on their alleged weaknesses on immigration. Anti-immigrant rhetoric was the hot wire connecting more traditional working-class Republican and Reagan Democrat voters who remain firmly convinced that Mexicans took their jerbs after the passage of NAFTA. It was also a talisman among the alt-righters, who believe that allowing immigration (legal and otherwise) “browns” their desired lily-white America.

The glorious, Fatal Attraction-level bonkers fury of Ann Coulter and the rest of Trump’s true believer cohort over his DACA flip produced an ocean of furious MAGA tears, incoherent rage, and promises to walk away from Trump if he didn’t get back on his wall-building, kid-deporting rhetoric of 2016. The Breitbart comments section, always a perfect focus group of what the Trump base believes on any given day, turned ugly, and for once it wasn’t directed against the Republican Party, but against Trump himself. At best, Trumpsplainers evoked the hoary Trump-fan trope of “You don’t understand Trump’s 87-dimensional quantum chess game, man.”

The Republican leadership learned last week when he rolled them on the debt ceiling that Trump is an honorless man. This week, Trump’s most passionate supporters saw him throw away their signature issue for a pat on the head from two of the most liberal Democrats in the political universe. Schumer and Pelosi got more than they would have in the hated Gang of Eight agreement with a little well-timed flattery. Trump’s fans get red hats, attacks on the media, and open borders, amnesty, and Dreamers.

As members of the reviled Never Trump movement, it’s not just an end-zone celebration play to say we warned you. We warned you over and over that Trump’s brand isn’t success; it’s betrayal. We warned you that he believes in nothing, and so he will break any promise, shaft any ally, and abandon any position. Hate us all you want, but if you think this is the last time he’ll shank his faithful, you might want to review the last 40 years of his personal and business behavior.

Actors act. Con men con. Traitors betray. It’s what they do. This week was just the latest example from the Conman-in-Chief.

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Graham-Cassidy — The Last-Ditch Effort By Republicans To Replace ACA: What You Need To Know

Posted on September 20, 2017 by David Posnett

Republican efforts in Congress to “repeal and replace” the federal Affordable Care Act are back from the dead. Again.

By Julie Rovner 

Sen. Lindsey Graham (right), stands with Sen. Bill Cassidy (left), Sen. Dean Heller and Sen. Ron Johnson (second from right), as well as former senator Rick Santorum (center), to announce their legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare through block grants. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

 

While the chances for this last-ditch measure appear iffy, many GOP senators are rallying around a proposal by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), along with Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)

They are racing the clock to round up the needed 50 votes — and there are 52 Senate Republicans.

An earlier attempt to replace the ACA this summer fell just one vote short when Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted against it. The latest push is setting off a massive guessing game on Capitol Hill about where the GOP can pick up the needed vote.

After Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year, Republicans would need 60 votes ­— which means eight Democrats — to pass any such legislation because special budget rules allowing approval with a simple majority will expire.

Unlike previous GOP repeal-and-replace packages that passed the House and nearly passed the Senate, the Graham-Cassidy proposal would leave in place most of the ACA taxes that generated funding to expand coverage for millions of Americans. The plan would simply give those funds as lump sums to each state. States could do almost whatever they please with them. And the Congressional Budget Office has yet to weigh in on the potential impact of the bill, although earlier estimates of similar provisions suggest premiums would go up and coverage down.

“If you believe repealing and replacing Obamacare is a good idea, this is your best and only chance to make it happen, because everything else has failed,” said Graham in unveiling the bill last week.SIGN UP

Here are five things to know about the latest GOP bill: 

1. It would repeal most of the structure of the ACA.

The Graham-Cassidy proposal would eliminate the federal insurance exchange, healthcare.gov, along with the subsidies and tax credits that help people with low and moderate incomes — and small businesses — pay for health insurance and associated health costs. It would eliminate penalties for individuals who fail to obtain health insurance and employers who fail to provide it.

It would eliminate the tax on medical devices. 

2. It would eliminate many of the popular insurance protections, including those for people with preexisting conditions, in the health law.

Under the proposal, states could “waive” rules in the law requiring insurers to provide a list of specific “essential health benefits” and mandating that premiums be the same for people regardless of their health status. That would once again expose people with preexisting health conditions to unaffordable or unavailable coverage. Republicans have consistently said they wanted to maintain these protections, which polls have shown to be popular among voters.

3. It would fundamentally restructure the Medicaid program.

Medicaid, the joint-federal health program for low-income people, currently covers more than 70 million Americans. The Graham-Cassidy proposal would end the program’s expansion under the ACA and cap funding overall, and it would redistribute the funds that had provided coverage for millions of new Medicaid enrollees. It seeks to equalize payments among states. States that did not expand Medicaid and were getting fewer federal dollars for the program would receive more money and states that did expand would see large cuts, according to the bill’s own sponsors. For example, Oklahoma would see an 88 percent increase from 2020 to 2026, while Massachusetts would see a 10 percent cut.

The proposal would also bar Planned Parenthood from getting any Medicaid funding for family planning and other reproductive health services for one year, the maximum allowed under budget rules governing this bill. 

4. It’s getting mixed reviews from the states.

Sponsors of the proposal hoped for significant support from the nation’s governors as a way to help push the bill through. But, so far, the governors who are publicly supporting the measure, including Scott Walker (R-Wis.) and Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.), are being offset by opponents including Chris Sununu (R-N.H.), John Kasich(R-Ohio) and Bill Walker (I-Alaska).

On Tuesday 10 governors — five Democrats, four Republicans and Walker — sent a letter to Senate leaders urging them to pursue a more bipartisan approach. “Only open, bipartisan approaches can achieve true, lasting reforms,” said the letter.

Bill sponsor Cassidy was even taken to task publicly by his own state’s health secretary. Dr. Rebekah Gee, who was appointed by Louisiana’s Democratic governor, wrote that the bill “uniquely and disproportionately hurts Louisiana due to our recent [Medicaid] expansion and high burden of extreme poverty.”

5. The measure would come to the Senate floor with the most truncated process imaginable.

The Senate is working on its Republican-only plans under a process called “budget reconciliation,” which limits floor debate to 20 hours and prohibits a filibuster. In fact, all the time for floor debate was used up in July, when Republicans failed to advance any of several proposed overhaul plans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could bring the bill back up anytime, but senators would immediately proceed to votes. Specifically, the next order of business would be a process called “vote-a-rama,” where votes on the bill and amendments can continue, in theory, as long as senators can stay awake to call for them.

Several senators, most notably John McCain, who cast the deciding vote to stop the process in July, have called for “regular order,” in which the bill would first be considered in the relevant committee before coming to the floor. The Senate Finance Committee, which Democrats used to write most of the ACA, has scheduled a hearing for next week. But there is not enough time for full committee consideration and a vote before the end of next week.

Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office said in a statement Tuesday that it could come up with an analysis by next week that would determine whether the proposal meets the requirements to be considered under the reconciliation process. But it said that more complicated questions like how many people would lose insurance under the proposal or what would happen to insurance premiums could not be answered “for at least several weeks.”

That has outraged Democrats, who are united in opposition to the measure.

“I don’t know how any senator could go home to their constituents and explain why they voted for a major bill with major consequences to so many of their people without having specific answers about how it would impact their state,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the Senate floor Tuesday.

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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Welcoming refugees brings unexpected economic benefits

Posted on September 20, 2017 by David Posnett

The Trump Administration continues to govern with a blind eye toward inconvenient facts and analyses.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s top white nationalist advisor in the White House, reportedly rejected a study proving refugees contribute significantly more to U.S. revenue than they cost.   From The New York Times:

Trump administration officials, under pressure from the White House to provide a rationale for reducing the number of refugees allowed into the United States next year, rejected a study by the Department of Health and Human Services that found that refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenues over the past decade than they cost.

The draft report, which was obtained by The New York Times, contradicts a central argument made by advocates of deep cuts in refugee totals as President Trump faces an Oct. 1 deadline to decide on an allowable number. The issue has sparked intense debate within his administration as opponents of the program, led by Mr. Trump’s chief policy adviser, Stephen Miller, assert that continuing to welcome refugees is too costly and raises concerns about terrorism.

The leaked study showed refugees hugely contribute to the U.S. economy:

The internal study, which was completed in late July but never publicly released, found that refugees “contributed an estimated $269.1 billion in revenues to all levels of government” between 2005 and 2014 through the payment of federal, state and local taxes. “Overall, this report estimated that the net fiscal impact of refugees was positive over the 10-year period, at $63 billion.”

The NYT reports it’s not clear who rejected the report, but it has Stephen Miller’s xenophobic, anti-immigrant, white nationalist fingerprints all over it:

It was not clear who in the administration decided to keep the information out of the final report. An internal email, dated Sept. 5 and sent among officials from government agencies involved in refugee issues, said that “senior leadership is questioning the assumptions used to produce the report.” A separate email said that Mr. Miller had requested a meeting to discuss the report. The Times was shown the emails on condition that the sender not be identified. Mr. Miller personally intervened in the discussions on the refugee cap to ensure that only the costs — not any fiscal benefit — of the program were considered, according to two people familiar with the talks.

Earlier this year, The Business Insider published data supporting the rejected administration report.   A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows refugees provide a net contribution to the economy through the taxes they pay over time, countering the notion that they are a drag on the economy due to a reliance on social benefits.
The report from Notre Dame economists William Evans and Daniel Fitzgerald finds that “over their first 20 years in the United States, refugees who arrived as adults aged 18-45 contributed more in taxes than they received in relocation benefits and other public assistance.”  The Notre Dame study drew on State Department data to create a sample of 20,000 refugees who entered the country between 1990 and 2014.
The authors also find that “the younger the refugees were when they resettled in America, the more likely they were to catch up with their native-born peers educationally and economically.”
This chart captures their findings, showing that refugees on average cross the threshold from net beneficiaries to net contributors around the 9th year after migration.

8 21 17 immigration COTDNBER

The research also found that refugees who arrived before the age of 14 had, by ages 19-24, graduated from high school at the same rates as American youth. By ages 23-28, those refugees displayed the same college graduation rates as the US-born population.

“Refugees who arrived as children of any age have much higher school enrollment rates than U.S.-born respondents of the same age,” the research finds.

The US spends an average of $15,148 in relocation costs and $92,217 in social benefits over an adult refugee’s first 20 years here, the NBER said, citing the Notre Dame report. Over that period, the average adult refugee pays $128,689 in taxes — $21,324 more than the benefits received.

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Governors’ Letter Opposing the Graham-Cassidy Bill

Posted on September 20, 2017 by David Posnett

September 19, 2017

The Honorable Mitch McConnell Majority Leader
United States Senate
317 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510

 

The Honorable Charles E. Schumer Minority Leader
United States Senate
322 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Majority Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Schumer:

As you continue to consider changes to the American health care system, we ask you not to consider the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson amendment and renew support for bipartisan efforts to make health care more available and affordable for all Americans. Only open, bipartisan approaches can achieve true, lasting reforms.

Chairman Lamar Alexander and Ranking Member Patty Murray have held bipartisan hearings in the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and have negotiated in good faith to stabilize the individual market. At the committee’s recent hearing with Governors, there was broad bipartisan agreement about many of the initial steps that need to be taken to make individual health insurance more stable and affordable. We are hopeful that the HELP committee, through an open process, can develop bipartisan legislation and we believe their efforts deserve support.

We ask you to support bipartisan efforts to bring stability and affordability to our insurance markets. Legislation should receive consideration under regular order, including hearings in health committees and input from the appropriate health-related parties. Improvements to our health insurance markets should control costs, stabilize the market, and positively impact coverage and care of millions of Americans, including many who are dealing with mental illness, chronic health problems, and drug addiction.

We look forward to continuing to work with you to improve the American health care system.

Sincerely,

 

John Hickenlooper Governor
State of Colorado

Bill Walker Governor State of Alaska

John Kasich Governor State of Ohio

Steve Bullock Governor
State of Montana

 

Tom Wolf
Governor
State of Pennsylvania

John Bel Edwards Governor
State of Louisiana

Charles D. Baker Governor
State of Massachusetts

 

Terence R. McAuliffe Governor
State of Virginia

Brian Sandoval Governor
State of Nevada

Phil Scott Governor
State of Vermont

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Jimmy Kimmel Shreds the Graham-Cassidy Bill

Posted on September 20, 2017 by David Posnett

From his monologue:

 

“I know you guys are going to find this hard to believe. But a few months ago, after my son had open heart surgery … a senator named Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, was on my show and he wasn’t very honest,” Kimmel said, kicking things off. Here’s a transcript of most of Kimmel’s remarks, which got heated, especially toward Cassidy — and he had a few choice words for people who will criticize him for politicizing his son’s health problems.

It seemed like [Cassidy] was being honest. He got a lot of credit and attention for coming off like a rare, reasonable voice in the Republican Party when it came to health care for coming up with something he called — and I didn’t name it this, he named it this — the Jimmy Kimmel test, which was in a nutshell: No family should be denied medical care, emergency of otherwise, because they can’t afford it. He agreed to that. He said he would only support a health-care bill that made sure a child like mine would get the health coverage he needs no matter how much money his parents make.

And that did not have annual or lifetime caps. These insurance companies, they want caps, to limit how much they can pay out. So for instance, if your son has to have three open heart surgeries, it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece. If he hits his lifetime cap of, let’s say, a million dollars, the rest of his life, he’s on his own.

Our current plan protects Americans from these caps and prevents insurance providers from jacking up the rates for people who have preexisting conditions of all types. And Sen. Cassidy said his plan would do that, too. He said all of this on television many times.

(Clip of Sen. Cassidy on CNN saying, “I ask, does it pass the Jimmy Kimmel test? Would the child born with a congenital heart disease be able to get everything she or he would need in the first year of life? I want it to pass the Jimmy Kimmel test.”)

So last week, Bill Cassidy and Sen. Lindsey Graham proposed a new bill, the Graham-Cassidy bill. And this new bill actually does pass the Jimmy Kimmel test, but a different Jimmy Kimmel test. With this one, your child with a preexisting condition will get the care he needs — if, and only if, his father is Jimmy Kimmel. Otherwise, you might be screwed.

Now, I don’t know what happened to Bill Cassidy. But when he was on this publicity tour, he listed his demands for a health-care bill very clearly. These were his words. He said he wants coverage for all; no discrimination based on preexisting conditions; lower premiums for middle-class families; and no lifetime caps. And guess what? The new bill? Does none of those things.

Coverage for all? No. Fact, it will kick about 30 million Americans off insurance. Preexisting conditions? Nope. If the bill passes, individual states can let insurance companies charge you more if you have a preexisting condition. You’ll find that little loophole later in the document after it says they can’t. They can, and they will.

But will it lower premiums? Well, in fact, for lots of people, the bill will result in higher premiums. And as far as no lifetime caps go, the states can decide on that, too, which means there will be lifetime caps in many states. So not only did Bill Cassidy fail the Jimmy Kimmel test, he failed the Bill Cassidy test. He failed his own test. And you don’t see that happen very much.

This bill that he came up with is actually worse than the one that, thank God, Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and John McCain torpedoed over the summer. And I hope they have the courage and good sense to do that again with this one, because these other guys who claim they want Americans to have better health care — even though eight years ago they didn’t want anyone to have health care at all — they’re trying to sneak this scam of a bill they cooked up in without an analysis from the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office.

They don’t even want you to see it. They’re having one hearing. I read the hearing’s being held in the Homeland Security Committee, which has nothing to do with health care. And the chairman agreed to allow two witnesses, Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham, to speak.

So, listen, health care is complicated. It’s boring. I don’t want to talk about it. The details are confusing, and that’s what these guys are relying on. They’re counting on you to be so overwhelmed with all the information you just trust them to take care of you, but they’re not taking care of you. They’re taking care of the people who give them money, like insurance companies. And we’re all just looking at our Instagram accounts and liking things while they’re voting on whether people can afford to keep their children alive or not.

Most of the congresspeople who vote on this bill probably won’t even read it. And they want us to do the same thing, they want us to treat it like an iTunes service agreement. And this guy, Bill Cassidy, just lied right to my face.

(Clip of Kimmel and Cassidy’s interview from May — Kimmel: “Do you believe every American regardless of income should be able to get regular checkups, maternity care, etc., all of those things, that people who have health care get and need?” Cassidy: “Yep.”)

So “yep” is Washington for “nope,” I guess. And I never imagined I would get involved in something like this, this is not my area of expertise. My area of expertise is eating pizza, and that’s really about it. But we can’t let them do this to our children, and our senior citizens, and our veterans, or to any of us.

And by the way, before you post a nasty Facebook message saying I’m politicizing my son’s health problems, I want you to know: I am politicizing my son’s health problems because I have to. My family has health insurance, we don’t have to worry about this. But other people do, so you can shove your disgusting comments where your doctor won’t be giving you a prostate exam once they take your health-care benefits away.

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Letter to Sen. McCain

Posted on September 19, 2017 by David Posnett
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) speaks during a press conference about his resistance to the so-called "Skinny Repeal" of the Affordable Care Act on Capitol Hill in Washington
From Max Plesset MD (Springs, East Hampton)
Dear Senator McCain,
I have always respected your independence, judgement and thoughtful decision making. Now you have a serious malignancy and I am sorry for that. Undoubtedly you are receiving the best of care that the American health system has to offer. However, it is clear that the Graham-Cassidy bill will jeopardize the kind of care you are getting for a large number of our citizens and your constituents in Arizona. By transferring most if not all of the current federal health care dollars to block grants to the states many people, especially medicaid patients, will be at the mercy of the state spending priorities. Please uphold your integrity as you did before by voting no on this bill. Thank you for considering my email.
to send email to Sen. McCain:
Posted in AHCA, Health Care, Medicaid, Planned Parenthood, Pre-existing Conditions, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Letter to Sen. McCain

Oceans in Peril

Posted on September 19, 2017 by David Posnett

Title image from Oceans of Acid.

By Judith S. Weis  OpEd in the East Hampton Star Sept. 14, 2017

While some politicians claim that climate change is a hoax, and climate scientists try to refine their models and forecasts of exactly how much warming will take place in the next few decades, marine scientists can see clearly the evidence of what has already happened.

Everyone has heard about melting glaciers and dying coral reefs, but climate change is doing something else that is equally dangerous. The oceans absorb about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels. In one way that’s good, because it slows down the warming, but it is making the seawater more acidic. CO2 in the ocean combines with water to form carbonic acid and makes the water more acidic — in fact 30 percent more acidic in recent decades.

This affects marine animals; the most severe effect is impairing shell formation in animals with calcium carbonate shells, such as clams and mussels. This has already occurred: In the Pacific Northwest, oyster larvae in hatcheries are unable to make their shells properly. Tiny planktonic snails are showing eroded shells. Acidified water poses an additional stress to corals already suffering from rising temperatures. Another effect is on behavior. Acidified waters impair the sense of smell of fish, causing them to be unable to find their home reef and to move toward, rather than away from, the odor of a predator.

Another reason global warming has not been too bad yet is because the ocean absorbs most of the earth’s excess heat. But oceans are warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, half of the increase in ocean heat content since 1865 has occurred over the past two decades. Warmer water holds less oxygen, but the respiration rate of animals (except for marine mammals) increases with temperature, so they need more oxygen at the same time that less is available. A warmer ocean has less turnover (vertical water movements), which normally brings nutrient-rich water up from deep water to the plankton that photosynthesize near the surface. With fewer nutrients, they photosynthesize less and animals can’t get enough food.

Many species are moving north to find more suitable environments, including species of commercial importance. Lobsters are disappearing from Long Island and southern New England, but increasing in the Gulf of Maine and Canada. Commercial catches are regulated by regional management agencies, but now these animals are fewer where they had been, and are increasing in places where they weren’t important before.

The most dramatic responses to warming oceans are in corals. When stressed, corals eject the single-celled symbiotic algae that live in their tissues, which normally photosynthesize and provide the coral with most of its nutrition. When they are ejected, the coral is “bleached” and appears white. While they can still get some nutrition by catching plankton with their tentacles, most species get less than half of their nutrition this way, so if the stress persists and zooxanthellae do not return, corals die. About 30 percent of the Great Barrier Reef of Australia died in 2016-17. This is devastating not only for the corals, but also for the thousands of other species that depend on the reef, including humans, who depend on it for $6 billion in tourism revenue annually. An excellent documentary about this tragedy, called “Chasing Coral,” is available on Netflix.

Major changes are occurring in the polar regions, where the extent of sea ice is diminishing rapidly. As ice melts, the water gets fresher and normal algal blooms diminish, providing less food at the bottom of the food chain on which the rest of the ecosystem depends. Some species that rely on sea ice, like Adelie penguins in Antarctica and polar bears in the Arctic, are in trouble.

Closer to home, sea level rise is one effect that is apparent in coastal regions. Sea level rise results from water expanding when it warms plus addition of new water from melting glaciers. It is happening faster than was predicted. Increased flooding from storms is common, and many areas (e.g., South Florida) have flooded streets even on sunny days. Since much of the world’s population lives in coastal areas, threats to human lives and well-being are becoming apparent.

In Bristol Bay, Alaska, the ability of local communities to access subsistence resources is impaired. Changes in the timing of ice freeze and melt are affecting safety, making it difficult to travel to neighboring villages and in some cases causing loss of life. Residents of some small low-lying Pacific islands have already moved elsewhere, and such “climate refugees” will increase in the future, which can cause political and social problems. Despite this, the Trump administration has recently undone a regulation that required that development near the coast take sea level rise into consideration, to reduce the risk of future damage.

Natural communities are also at risk. Coastal salt marshes in the intertidal zone are very important ecosystems that reduce storm surge and winds, absorb pollutants, and provide habitat for a variety of crabs, shrimp, fishes, birds, and mammals. In the face of rising seas, marshes must either increase their elevation or move inland. Increase in elevation results from new sediments being deposited and organic matter accumulation from marsh plants. Many marshes in the Northeast do not have adequate input of new sediments to increase their elevation, so moving back is the only option. (The marshes in Accabonac Harbor are increasing with sediments but not organic matter from plants, and have not been keeping up with sea level rise over the past decade.)

In developed regions, there are roads, sidewalks, etc., immediately inland, so there is no place for the marshes to go. Subject to “coastal squeeze,” many marshes that protect us from storm surge and winds will disappear. Recently, the East Hampton Town Board very wisely used the community preservation fund to buy some properties adjacent to marshes to allow for migration.

Another component of forecasted climate change is increased rainfall in the Northeast. This will intensify the nitrogen problem in estuaries, since more rain means more runoff and nitrogen going into the water. Much of our local nitrogen problem is due primarily to leaching from septic systems, but the expansive green lawns in the Hamptons suggest there is a lot of fertilizer runoff also. Warmer water in the future will also accelerate algal blooms.

What can be done? We need rapid decreases in emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. While governmental actions are vital, and it is important to keep up the pressure on elected officials to do more, collectively individuals can make a difference. Examine your “carbon footprint.” Does your car use a lot of gas? Next time, buy a hybrid or electric. Do you drive short distances that you could walk or bike or take public transportation? How high is your electric bill? Could you keep your house a bit warmer in the summer and a bit cooler in the winter to save energy?

I am surprised and saddened to see so few houses around here with solar panels. Solar technology has improved greatly and the price has gone down. Could you eat less meat and more vegetables? Animal agriculture, especially beef, creates a huge amount of greenhouse gases. Studies indicate that the most important thing you can do — if you are still in a position to do this — is reduce the number of children you have.

All these actions will make the quality of life better for the children and grandchildren you do have.

Judith S. Weis is a professor emerita at Rutgers University. She has a house in Springs.

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Graham Cassidy Obamacare Repeal Bill May Pass

Posted on September 17, 2017 by David Posnett

Senator says Obamacare repeal bill close to enough votes to pass, but there’s reason to be skeptical

  • The Graham-Cassidy bill would strip away $80 billion in federal funding support for health coverage.
  • Prior bills that were likewise expected to lead to big increases in the number of uninsured Americans failed in the Senate.
  • Obamacare defenders started rallying Thursday to defeat the latest bill.
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Senator says Obamacare repeal bill close to enough votes to pass, but there's reason to be skeptical

Senator says Obamacare repeal bill close to enough votes to pass, but there’s reason to be skeptical. A leading Senate sponsor of another bill that seeks to repeal and replace key parts of Obamacare claimed Friday that it has almost enough votes from fellow Republicans to pass. But the so-called Graham-Cassidy bill continues to face the same kind of hurdles that doomed previous GOP efforts in the Senate to undo major provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

 

And there is a new hurdle: Republicans have just 15 days to pass the bill under the reconciliation process being used to grease the skids for repeal of the ACA.

That is a very tight procedural timeline — but the chance that it can be done led Obamacare supporters to mobilize Thursday.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La, told reporters that the bill now has the support of up to 48 or 49 Republicans. That is just one vote shy of the 50 senators that the bill needs to win passage, given that Vice President Mike Pence would break any tie in his fellow Republicans’ favor.

 

“I’m confident we’ll get there on the Republican side,” Cassidy said, according to the Washington Examiner. “People are coming out and saying they are for it, either publicly or privately.”

“Talking to a few more,” Cassidy said, according to Vox.com

But similar optimistic comments by other senators in recent months about the prospects of previous Obamacare repeal bills have been proven wrong, badly.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in July dramatically voted no against a last-ditch, early morning effort by the GOP to pass a version of repeal.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Tenn., had voted for that prior bill. But the libertarian Paul on Friday cast cold water on the Graham-Cassidy bill.

Graham-Cassidy also could face the same opposition from two moderate Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, that with McCain’s vote doomed late July’s bill.

The latest bill, released Wednesday, would eliminate Obamacare’s requirement that most Americans have some kind of health insurance or face a fine, and that large employers offer affordable health coverage to workers or pay a penalty.

And it would wipe out Obamacare funds that now subsidize the purchase of private health plans by millions of low- and middle-income people, and eliminate the expansion of Medicaid benefits to millions of poor adults.

In its place, Graham-Cassidy would award individual states block grants of money to craft their own health insurance system. But net federal spending related to support of health coverage would drop by many billions of dollars.

The bill has yet to receive an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.

Previous CBO “scores” of the other Obamacare repeal bills found that they would lead to 20 million or more people lacking health insurance by 2026.

That big number spooked several GOP senators, and led to a widespread public backlash against the bills.

Graham-Cassidy is likely to receive a similar, or perhaps even worse CBO score in terms of the number of newly uninsured, given its design.

In an analysis posted Wednesday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote that the bill “would have the same harmful consequences as those prior bills.”

“It would cause many millions of people to lose coverage, radically restructure and deeply cut Medicaid, and increase out-of-pocket costs for individual market consumers,” said the liberal think tank.

CBPP also noted that there would be an $80 billion reduction in the amount of federal money spent nationally on insurance support, and published a chart detailing the funding losses per state.

Despite that, defenders of Obamacare were taking very seriously the chance that the bill could pass, and sought to remobilize the kind of public opposition that helped defeat prior bills.

Among them was Andy Slavitt, who ran the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Barack Obama.

Brad Woodhouse, director of the Protect our Care Campaign, in an email Friday blasted the Graham-Cassidy bill, but noted Republicans “are only a handful of votes away from passing it.”

“Given Republicans will have to ram this partisan repeal bill through the Senate in the next two weeks in order to meet this September 30 deadline there will be no time for a regular process for the public to fully understand the impacts on their health care — with no time for adequate hearings, consultations with experts, constituent input, and amendments,” Woodhouse wrote.

“Republicans in the Senate are resorting back to a secret, partisan process to force through health care repeal out of public view. The American people need to know the facts about how this bill will impact them. ”

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., also took to Twitter to rally people to oppose the bill.

If the GOP does not pass the Graham-Cassidy bill, it is extremely unlikely that they will be able to approve any Obamacare repeal legislation before the midterm elections in 2018.

That fact could add some momentum to the latest repeal effort.

 

SENATORS TO CALL/OR EMAIL:

JOHN MCAIN  ph: (928) 445-0833.   https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact-form

LISA MURKOWSKI  https://www.murkowski.senate.gov/contact/email

SUSAN COLLINS   https://www.collins.senate.gov/contact

Posted in ACA, AHCA, Health Care, Pre-existing Conditions, trumpcare, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Graham Cassidy Obamacare Repeal Bill May Pass