Unemployment To Cost Young Americans $20 Billion Over Next Decade

Young Americans make up nearly half of America’s unemployed workforce, according to a study released Thursday, and the unemployment rate for Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 is a staggering 15.1 percent. But the bleak job prospects for young Americans isn’t just contributing to the nation’s persistently high unemployment rate. According to a study from the Center for American Progress, the long-term effects will hurt young Americans for years to come.

The negative effects of unemployment, in fact, will cost young Americans more than $20 billion over the next decade, CAP’s Sarah Ayres found:

Not only is unemployment bad for young people now, but the negative effects of being unemployed have also been shown to follow a person throughout his or her career. A young person who has been unemployed for six months can expect to earn about $22,000 less over the next 10 years than they could have expected to earn had they not experienced a lengthy period of unemployment. In April 2010 the number of people ages 20–24 who were unemployed for more than six months had reached an all-time high of 967,000 people. We estimate that these young Americans will lose a total of $21.4 billion in earnings over the next 10 years.

It isn’t just unemployment that is depressing wages for young workers, though. College graduates and young workers are increasingly being pushed in to low-wage jobs as better opportunities aren’t available to them because of a slacking job market. Low-wage jobs have made up a majority of the jobs added since the end of the recession, and there are now 13.4 million college graduates occupying them — a 19 percent increase since the start of the recession.

These losses also hurt the broader economy, as young Americans are less able to spend money. Reports have already shown that unemployment for young Americans is holding back the housing recovery and thus the overall economic recovery, and other reports paint an even worse picture. As Ayres noted, this unemployment will cost young Americans $1.6 trillion over their lifetimes, which will also reduce revenues for the federal government.

But even as youth unemployment remains in crisis, the government has cut more than $1 billion from youth job programs and continues to focus on reducing the deficit instead of policies that will create jobs and help young Americans — and the country as a whole — finally recover from the Great Recession.

View the original article here

Study: ‘Hobbled by High Cost, Hydrogen Fuel Cells Will Be a Modest $3 Billion Market in 2030′

Capital cost, not hydrogen supply, will limit adoption to a mere 5.9 GW, dashing dreams of a revolutionary energy future, says Lux Research

As I’ve said for a decade now, hydrogen fuel cells are not going to be a significant, cost-effective CO2 reducer. In a 2005 journal article, “The car and fuel of the future,” I noted that:

Using fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen from zero-carbon sources such as renewable power or nuclear energy has a cost of avoided carbon dioxide of more than $600 a metric ton, which is more than a factor of ten higher than most other strategies being considered today….

A 2013 study by independent research and advisory firm Lux Research finds that despite billions in research and development spent in the past decade, “The dream of a hydrogen economy envisioned for decades by politicians, economists, and environmentalists is no nearer, with hydrogen fuel cells turning a modest $3 billion market of about 5.9 GW in 2030.”

Hydrogen fuel cells won’t be a major contributor to solving the problem of manmade climate change until the market is 100 times larger, which simply won’t happen fast enough to matter to the climate fight, even in the unlikely event they ever become a cost-effective CO2 reducer.

The Lux study, “The Great Compression: The Future of the Hydrogen Economy” (client subs. req’d),  finds that “hydrogen demand from fuel cells will total 140 million kg in 2030, a meager 0.56% of global hydrogen demand.” Looks like I’m going to win my big hydrogen bet!

Here’s the rest of the news release from Lux:

Although the cost of hydrogen impacts fuel cell market adoption, hydrogen fuel accounts for only 35% of the total cost of ownership (TCO) for stationary applications and 21% of the TCO for mobile applications, with fuel cell capital costs and membrane replacement costs making up most of the difference.

“The hydrogen supply chain is not the most critical bottleneck for fuel cell adoption,” said Brian Warshay, Research Associate and the lead author of the report titled, “The Great Compression: the Future of the Hydrogen Economy.” “High capital costs and the low costs of incumbents provide a nearly insurmountable barrier to adoption, except in niche applications,” he added. In order to determine the economic viability and potential of an expansive hydrogen economy in the energy sectors, Lux Research conducted a detailed analysis of the costs of hydrogen generation, distribution, storage, and consumption in an effort to find the greatest constraints and opportunities. Among their findings:

Hydrogen generation accounts for less than 33% of the cost at the pump. The costs of hydrogen compression, storage, and distribution make up the majority of the cost of hydrogen, offering the greatest opportunities for improvement and innovation.PEM cells will have a $1 billion stationary market. Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells for telecom power and backup will reach $1 billion in 2030, while fuel cells of all types for residential, commercial and utility generation will not prove cost-effective.Mobile applications will be worth $2 billion. PEM fuel cells will reach $2 billion on the backs of forklifts and light-duty vehicles, while buses will remain miniscule. A robust hydrogen vehicle fueling infrastructure is necessary but ultimately insufficient to overhaul the passenger vehicle market.Hydrogen demand from fuel cells will total 140 million kg in 2030, a meager 0.56% of global merchant hydrogen demand across all industries.

It is long past time to end the hype about hydrogen.

Related Post:

jQuery(document).ready(function(){jQuery('#comment_submit').click(function(){if(jQuery('#comment_check:checked').length

View the original article here

JP Morgan Wins ‘Crisis Management’ Award For London Whale Scandal That Cost It $6 Billion

JP Morgan Chase accepted a “crisis management” award at an event Thursday night that rewarded the bank for the way it handled the London Whale trading crisis that cost the bank at least $6 billion. The trade set the financial world ablaze when the firm’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, announced it, considering JP Morgan had been the strongest megabank throughout the financial crisis and Dimon often bragged of its “fortress balance sheet.”

But the firm handled the crisis with flying colors, at least according to award presenters, the Wall Street Journal reports:

“J.P. Morgan Chase is winning for its handling of the $6.2 billion trading loss by the London Whale last year,” the event’s host, CNN anchor Ali Velshi, said. “I would say that’s what you call making lemonade out of lemons.”

Kathy Hu, an executive director in J.P. Morgan’s investor relations department, accepted the award and quipped: “Can I just say, ‘Crisis? What crisis?’”

The United States Senate took a slightly different view. In a bipartisan report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued last week, senators blasted the bank for misleading regulators and sidestepping regulations that should have banned the type of trades that kept the loss from occurring.

JP Morgan has been among the fiercest lobbyists against regulations like the Volcker Rule, which was meant to keep financial institutions that have the backing of taxpayers from engaging in risky forms of trading that result in large losses that could pose a risk to the overall economy. As U.S. News and World Report’s Pat Garofalo explained, this should have been a lesson in why the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act and the rules it contains should be strengthened. Instead, it won JP Morgan an award.

View the original article here

GOP Governors Refusing To Expand Medicaid Could Cost Their States’ Employers More Than $1 Billion

The Republican governors who are refusing to accept Obamacare’s optional expansion of the Medicaid program typically cite financial concerns; despite all evidence to the contrary, GOP leaders claim that accepting federal funds to extend health coverage to additional low-income American will end up being too costly for their states. According to a new study, however, they have it backwards. Continuing to resist health reform could be significantly financially riskier than simply agreeing to expand Medicaid.

Each governor resisting Medicaid expansion could end up costing the employers in their state over $1 billion dollars, a new Jackson Hewitt Tax Service report finds. That’s because, since the health reform law seeks to ensure that everyone has access to insurance, Obamacare holds businesses with more than 50 employees responsible for making sure their workers have adequate benefits. Employers won’t be penalized for failing to offer health care to their low-wage workers if those employees can access public insurance through Medicaid — but if states don’t expand their Medicaid pools, the workers who have no other way to get health care could end up costing their employers:

A clause in the 2010 health-care overhaul penalizes some employers when their workers aren’t able to obtain affordable medical coverage through the company. Employers can avoid those fees if their workers qualify for Medicaid as part of an expansion that as many as 22 states have rejected, according to a report today by Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc.

Without Medicaid, a “shared responsibility” payment of as much as $3,000 may be triggered for each employee who can’t get insurance through their company. In Texas, the largest state to refuse to increase Medicaid, employers may be liable for as much as $448 million in fines, the study found. In Florida, where the legislature has refused an expansion supported by Governor Rick Scott, employers may pay as much as $219 million. [...]

Of course, this won’t come as welcome news to many of the companies that have so far gotten away with denying their workers health benefits. Employers are decrying Obamacare’s “shared responsibility” provision for potentially raising their costs, threatening to slash their workers’ hours, freeze hiring and lay off staff, or raise the prices for their products.

But the health law is simply trying to work within an employer-based insurance system that hasn’t historically been able to ensure that poor Americans can access the benefits they need. If low-wage workers can’t qualify for public insurance programs because their governors won’t expand Medicaid’s eligibility levels, then they will need to be able to get health care from their employers. And if their bosses won’t provide it, they’ll have to turn to the subsidized insurance on Obamacare’s health exchanges — triggering the employer fine.

Even aside from Medicaid expansion’s potential to help alleviate the “shared responsibility” fee, several reports have projected that the states choosing to expand their Medicaid programs will actually save money by doing so. The financial benefits are largely thanks to the increased federal funding that will free up states’ funds for other purposes, but also because of the reduced strain of providing fewer health services for the uninsured once more people are covered.

View the original article here

The Nukes of Hazard: Two Years After $500 Billion Fukushima Disaster, Nuclear Power Remains Staggeringly Expensive

On March 11, 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant north of Tokyo was hit by a wall of water 43 feet high that destroyed or disabled enough equipment to cause three reactors to melt down.

Two years later, the people of Japan are bouncing back. The nuclear industry, not so much.

The United States has not (yet) built a new nuclear reactor since 1996 — new U.S. nuclear capacity has essentially flatlined. The U.S. still has far more nuclear power generation than any other country, though China, Russia, India, and Korea are actively constructing new reactors. A few U.S. building permits have trickled in since 2007, when an energy bill with incentives for new nuclear plants passed Congress. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that:

The first newly licensed nuclear-power plant to be built in the U.S. in decades, the Vogtle project in Georgia, has run into construction problems and may be falling years behind schedule, according to an engineering expert advising the state.

Nuclear power may continue to be a small wedge of our energy pie, but it is still not going to be more than a small wedge of the solution to human-caused climate change. Here’s why.

COST

A new nuclear reactor will set you back a cool $10 billion or more. The Department of Energy is promoting a plan to build as many as 50 small modular reactors per year starting in 2040. Constructed in factories, these reactors would cost “only” $3-5 billion each.

But before they even get to building a new reactor, the nuclear industry has relied upon about ten times as much in federal subsidies compared to those reluctantly offered to renewable energy developers. This is important to keep in mind as the industry complains about wind energy subsidies lowering electricity prices.

One of the arguments the nuclear industry has made over the last several decades is that though it is expensive right now, once the industry learns how to construct plants again, the financial structure changes as costs drop. This appears to be the opposite of true: Nuclear power has a negative learning curve.

Average and min/max reactor construction costs per year of completion date for US and France versus cumulative capacity completed.

Nuclear power has always been very expensive, and will continue to be staggeringly so, especially if we are to build in safety and redundancy measures needed to avoid future Fukushimas.

SAFETY

Japan faces combined clean up and compensation costs at Fukushima estimated to reach $500 billion. The timeline for decommissioning the ruined plant is 30-40 years. There is a $6 million robot deployed to inspect the damaged hallways that got lost in the plant and has not been seen for 17 months. And the cost estimates are just guesswork:

Cleaning up the mess will mean total demolition of the four damaged reactor facilities and disposal of the nuclear waste in a yet-to-be determined site, an end-game likely to face opposition from potential host communities.

Japan has rejected the “sarcophagus” option used at Chernobyl, where the damaged reactor was encased in a massive concrete envelope. This is partly because of the difficulty of monitoring an entombed facility to ensure safety, said Kentaro Funaki, director of the industry ministry’s office in charge of decommissioning.

Estimates for total costs are mostly guesswork. “Only God knows,” said Chuo University’s Annen.

Whatever the final bill, Japanese consumers are likely to end up paying much of it, either through taxes, higher electricity rates or both, even as Japan’s government struggles with massive public debt and the costs of an ageing population.

If you ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the safety record of U.S. reactors (as the Associated Press did), they would say “the performance is quite good.” Only five out of 104 reactors had safety issues at the end of the year. However, a Union of Concerned Scientists report found that during the whole year, 40 out of the 104 had at least one serious safety incident. This map shows you the locations of 12 reactors that almost melted down in 2012.

Are U.S. reactors learning from the Fukushima accident? Not really:

Even before the new rules are completely in place, the NRC is considering a new regulation related to the Japan disaster: requiring nuclear operators to spend tens of millions of dollars to install filtered vents at two dozen reactors.

NRC staff recommended the filters as a way to prevent radioactive particles from escaping into the atmosphere after a core meltdown. The filters are required in Japan and throughout much of Europe, but U.S. utilities say they are unnecessary and expensive.

The Nuclear Energy Institute said filters may work in some situations, but not all. … “We’re not against filtering. It’s how you achieve it,” said Marvin Fertel, the group’s president and CEO. …

“It’s not the time to be rash with hasty new rules, especially when the NRC has added 40-plus ‘safety enhancements’ ” to its initial requirements following the Japan disaster, said Sen. David Vitter, R-La., senior Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Emissions

The only reason people consider nuclear as an alternative to fossil fuels is due to relatively low lifecycle emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear energy are low enough to be in the range of many other renewable forms of electricity generation. Their emissions occur not during electricity production, but through everything else required to commission and decommission a nuclear plant: “plant construction, operation, uranium mining and milling, and plant decommissioning.”

The problem is you couldn’t build the reactors fast enough to make a difference. Even prior to the disaster at the Fukushima reactor, nuclear power was never a climate cure-all as we reported back in 2007: If the world built about 2 nuclear plants each month for 50 years — along with some 10 Yucca Mountains to store the waste – nuclear power would still be under one-tenth of the solution to global warming.”

Those numbers make clear nuclear power will not be a large piece of the pie in lowering emissions to stabilize below 450ppm.

Waste

The availability and security of nuclear waste storage are unresolved problems. The courts have decided that the executive branch and the states need to resolve the issue of where to put the waste, and all they appear to have concluded in three decades is “not in Nevada.”

The issue of where to put the growing national pile of nuclear waste (2,000 tons a year in spent fuel alone) is unlikely to be resolved in the next three decades. Whatever the solution ultimately is, it won’t come cheap.

What do proponents say about waste concerns? “Blah, blah, blah.”

Water

One nuclear reactor uses 35-65 million litres of water each day. Large mounts of water are also used in the uranium mining process.

Two plants in Georgia use more water than all the water used by people living in Atlanta, Augusta and Savannah combined.

* * *

Climate hawks have always had an ambivalent relationship with electricity powered by nuclear fission, primarily because, while it is low-carbon, it is so damn expensive. So although we have a hundred or so plants in the U.S. that will be with us for the foreseeable future, it is much more cost-effective to continue to promote and rely on truly clean, cost-effective renewable energy and energy efficiency.

jQuery(document).ready(function(){jQuery('#comment_submit').click(function(){if(jQuery('#comment_check:checked').length

View the original article here

Medicare’s Projected Spending Has Dropped $500 Billion Without Lawmakers Cutting A Dime

Medicare will spend $511 billion less between now and 2020 than was predicted two and a half years ago, according to the latest number crunching by the Center On Budget and Policy Priorities. More importantly, this drop occurred completely separate from any changes in government policy — rather, it resulted from an overall slowdown in the growth of health care costs.

The last time the Congress and the President actually altered Medicare policy in order to bring down the program’s spending was when they passed health reform in March of 2010. By comparing the Congressional Budget Office’s projections from August of that year with their projections from earlier this month, and by leaving out the the SGR cuts and the Medicare cuts in sequestration, the CBPP was able to isolate how much Medicare’s spending is anticipated to drop due purely to changes in the health care markets. And the drop is considerably larger than the proactive cuts in Medicare spending the Simpson-Bowles plan was calling for back in December of 2010:

According to the CBO itself, its projections for Medicare and Medicaid spending between now and 2022 dropped 3.5 percent since its previous projection in August of 2012.

Spending on Medicare and Medicaid is the main driver of the country’s long-term debt problem. But because the programs buy health care, larger economic forces in the health care market that drive up costs also drive up their spending, regardless of any specific policy enacted by lawmakers. Conversely, if health costs begin to slow, that will bring spending down — and there’s evidence that’s exactly what’s happened over the last few years.

Between 2009 and 2011, all spending in the health care system, both public and private, grew at 3.9 percent — the lowest annual rates we’ve seen in 52 years. 2012 looks like it will turn out to be similarly sluggish. Some of this is certainly due to the recession and ongoing depression. But an increasing number of economists and experts are convinced a big piece of the slowdown is also a more permanent restructuring of the way health care markets buy, sell, and deliver care.

No small part of that change may be due, in turn, to the passage of Obamacare, which put in place a host of new incentives and reforms to move health care delivery in a more efficient direction. And if Obamacare’s reforms continue pushing the health care system to adapt, then the United State’s fiscal future could continue to improve without lawmakers having to cut a dime.

View the original article here

The $188 Billion Price Tag From U.S. Extreme Weather From 2011 To 2012

By Daniel J. Weiss and Jackie Weidman

The United States was subjected to many severe climate-related extreme weather over the past two years. In 2011 there were 14 extreme weather events — floods, drought, storms, and wildfires — that each caused at least $1 billion in damage. There were another 11 such disasters in 2012. Most of these extreme weather events reflect part of the unpaid bill from climate change — a tab that will only grow over time.

CAP recently documented the human and economic toll from these devastating events in our November 2012 report “Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle- and Lower- Income Americans.” Since the release of that report, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has updated its list of “billion-dollar”-damage weather events for 2012, bringing the two-year total to 25 incidents.

From 2011 to 2012 these 25 “billion-dollar damage” weather events in the United States are estimated to have caused up to $188 billion in total damage. [1] The two costliest events were the September 2012 drought — the worst drought in half a century, which baked nearly two-thirds of the continental United States — and superstorm Sandy, which battered the northeast coast in late October 2012. The four recently added disastrous weather events were severe tornadoes and thunderstorms.

Here is an update of vital extreme weather event data after the addition of these four events:

67 percent of U.S. counties and 43 states were affected by “billion-dollar damage” extreme weather events in 2011 and 2012.1,107 fatalities resulted from these 25 extreme weather events in 2011 and 2012.Up to $188 billion in damage was caused by these severe weather events in 2011 and 2012.$50,346.58 was the average household income in counties declared a disaster due to these weather events—3 percent below the U.S. median household income of $51,914. [2]356 all-time high temperature records were broken in 2012.34,008 daily high temperature records were set or tied throughout 2012, compared to just 6,664 daily record lows—a ratio of 5-to-1.19 states had their warmest year ever in 2012.

Below are descriptions of each of the four weather events in 2012 that were not included in our previous report.

April 12: Tornadoes

Nearly 100 tornadoes touched down across Kansas and other midwest states over a two-day period in mid-April 2012, resulting in six deaths. Extensive damage to schools, hospitals, businesses, and homes was estimated to cost $1.8 billion. Many towns were without power for extended periods of time. Fourteen counties in Kansas were declared disaster areas because of the storms. Households in these disaster-declared counties earn, on average, an annual income of $47,027 — 9 percent below the U.S. median household income.

April 28: Severe Storms

Severe weather in Oklahoma and surrounding states caused at least $4 billion in damage and one confirmed fatality in late April 2012. Storm damage throughout the area was primarily caused by 38 confirmed tornadoes and severe hail. Oklahoma was most heavily impacted — six Oklahoma counties were declared disaster areas in the wake of the storm. Households in the counties that were disaster areas earn, on average, an annual income of $39,638 — a staggering 24 percent below the U.S. median household income.

May 25: Severe Storms

Twenty-seven confirmed tornadoes touched down over a broad swath of the United States, including from Oklahoma to New Hampshire. The tornadoes and outburst of severe hail, straight-line winds, and thunderstorms caused one fatality and approximately $2.5 billion in damage. Most of the damage occurred in Oklahoma and the entire state was declared a disaster area. New Hampshire and Vermont also had some disaster-declared counties. Households in these disaster-declared counties earn, on average, an annual income of $45,431 — 12 percent below the U.S. median household income.

June 29: Derecho

A derecho is a “widespread, long-lived wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Such a storm ravaged eastern and northeastern states in June 2012. It caused 28 fatalities and ripped through a 700-sqaure-mile swath of the mid-Atlantic region, leaving 3.4 million homes there without power. The storm caused at least $3.8 billion in damage in 215 counties in Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. All were declared disaster areas.

These events, along with the seven other “billion-dollar” weather events in 2012, made it the second-most-extreme weather year on record, according to the U.S. Climate Extremes Index.

NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt says that when it comes to higher temperatures and extreme weather, “what matters is this decade is warmer than the last decade, and that decade was warmer than the decade before. The planet is warming. The reason is because we are pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

The U.S. National Climate Assessment draft released in January 2013 indicates that the effects of climate change will continue to threaten the health and vitality of our communities as extreme weather becomes more frequent and/or severe. One of the report’s key findings is that U.S. coastal communities are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise, storms, floods, and subsequent erosion. And scientists predict that precipitation events across the United States are likely to be heavier. These risks pose serious threats to our electricity grid, infrastructure, clean water, and sewage treatment system in the most affected places.

The climate-related extreme weather events of the past several years have become the new normal. We must act now to reduce the industrial carbon pollution responsible for climate change and help communities become more resilient to the coming storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires.

Disaster Relief

Disaster relief has suddenly become a partisan issue. This became overwhelmingly clear during recent debates in the Senate and the House of Representatives over the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act (H.R. 152), which provided $50.7 billion in emergency aid for superstorm Sandy victims. [3] The measure was passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama on January 29, 2013 — an unacceptable 91 days after the storm devastated the northeast corridor.

Despite passing with support from all but one voting Democrat in the House and Senate, the vast majority of Republicans in each chamber opposed essential aid to hurricane victims. These conservative lawmakers attempted to deny financial assistance to those in need, even after some of them previously requested disaster funding for their own states. All 36 Republican senators who voted against the Sandy aid bill are from states that experienced at least one “billion-dollar damage” extreme weather event in the past two years. In fact, 98 percent of lawmakers in either chamber who voted against the bill — 211 of the 216 Republicans — represent states that experienced at least one “billion-dollar damage” extreme weather event in the past two years.

The debate over congressional passage of disaster recovery assistance raises serious concerns about whether Congress can both aid disaster victims in a timely fashion and work to help communities minimize damages from future storms and other extreme weather. In order to help these communities reduce their vulnerability to extreme weather, Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) and 37 of her colleagues urged President Obama to appoint a blue ribbon panel to develop a a “community resilience fund” dedicated solely to providing the financial and technical assistance to vulnerable communities hit by extreme weather events. Dedicated funding for predisaster mitigation will protect lives, shield middle- and lower-income households from the worst impacts of extreme weather, and save taxpayers money over time.

For more information on this proposal, please see CAP’s December 2012 column “An Ounce of Prevention: Increasing Resiliency to Climate-Related Extreme Weather.”

Methodology

This Center for American Progress analysis compiled data from multiple sources. Extreme weather events data were from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center, or NCDC. Counties affected by each event were compiled from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Declared Disasters database.

In order to assess income levels for the most affected counties, we used median household income (2006–2010) data and number of households (2006–2010) data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s State and County QuickFacts. The 2006–2010 values are an average over the five-year period. We compared the percent difference between the average annual median household incomes for the affected counties in each weather event to the U.S. median — $51,914. We accounted for the population of each county when calculating these values. The cost per household was calculated by taking the cost of the event divided by the total number of households for each event.

Endnotes

[1] The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will release final 2013 disaster cost estimates in mid-2013.

[2] U.S. median income figures are based on the 2005-2010 Census Bureau average.

[3] This was the second installment of Sandy aid. The first installment of $9.7 billion was passed on January 1, 2013.

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress. Jackie Weidman is a Special Assistant at the Center.

jQuery(document).ready(function(){jQuery('#comment_submit').click(function(){if(jQuery('#comment_check:checked').length

View the original article here

GOP, Dems Call For Repeal Of $30 Billion Medical Device Tax

A bipartisan group of 180 House members — consisting of about 40 percent of the House — has reintroduced a bill to end the 2.3 percent tax on medical devices that was imposed under President Obama's healthcare law.

That tax took effect at the start of 2013, and is expected to raise a few billion dollars a year in tax receipts for the government, and $30 billion over 10 years. But opponents of the tax say it will hinder innovation and job creation in the medical device industry.

"Placing a new tax on the backs of U.S. medical innovators and entrepreneurs who employ more than 400,000 Americans is not a prescription for economic growth or job creation," said Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.), who sponsored the bill. "In fact, companies have already laid off thousands of employees as a result of this onerous new tax, and more jobs will be lost now that this tax is in effect.

"It's not only costing our country jobs and deterring innovation, but more importantly, it will reduce patient access to cutting edge medical products and treatments that save lives."

Paulsen introduced a similar bill in the last Congress. The latest version would repeal the tax without offsetting spending cuts.

Last year, the House Ways & Means Committee amended his bill to provide for an offset, something that could happen again in the new Congress. Ways & Means attached language that would pay for ending the tax by requiring the government to recapture all overpayments of health insurance subsidies provided in the healthcare law. Under current law, only some of these overpayments must be returned to the government.

Overpayments of the subsidies are anticipated because the subsidies are based on prior years' income, and if it is discovered later that a family's income increases, some repayment would be required.

This offset led to a veto threat from President Obama, who argued that requiring all overpayments to be returned would be a tax on middle-class families. Republicans rejected the argument that recapturing subsidy overpayments is a tax, and said Democrats have also proposed this kind of offset before.

The House approved the amended bill last summer, in a 270-146 vote in which 37 Democrats supported it. But Obama's veto threat froze the bill in the Senate, which never considered it.

It remains to be seen whether the bill can grow more legs in this Congress now that the tax has taken effect. The effort to repeal the tax has bipartisan support in both chambers — in addition to the bipartisan House bill, H.R. 523, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) will introduce a companion in the Senate.

"Repealing the medical device tax eliminates barriers to medical innovation, ensuring patients have access to life saving technologies and reduces the burden on tight R&D budgets, spurring job growth in the industry," said Rep. Ron Kind (Wis.), the leading Democrat on the House bill.

"Supporting and promoting American manufacturing, innovation, and research and development will increase our economic competitiveness and ensure our economy is built to last."

View Comments

View the original article here

ObamaCare Exchange Subsidy Cost Hiked By $233 Billion

The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday quietly raised the 10-year cost of ObamaCare's insurance subsidies offered via the health law's exchanges by $233 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office review of its latest spending forecast.

The CBO's new baseline estimate shows that ObamaCare subsidies offered through the insurance exchanges — which are supposed to be up and running by next January — will total more than $1 trillion through 2022, up from $814 billion over those same years in its budget forecast made a year ago. That's an increase of nearly 29%.

The CBO upped the 10-year subsidy cost by $32 billion since just last August.

In part, this jump is because more people will get insurance via the exchanges than it had forecast. Where the CBO had seen 22 million enrolled in an exchange in 2022, it now figures 25 million will be.

That explains only part of the cost hike. The rest is largely the result of the CBO's sharp increase in what it expects the average subsidy will be.

Average Subsidy Rising

Last year, the CBO said the average exchange subsidy for those getting federal help when ObamaCare goes into effect next year would be $4,780. Its latest estimate raised that to $5,510 — a 15% increase. All these numbers are up even more from the CBO's original forecast made in 2010, which had the first-year subsidy average at $3,970.

The CBO also expects 7 million workers will lose their employer coverage due to ObamaCare, almost twice as many as it had previously said would be dumped. It expects tax penalties on individuals and companies who don't buy insurance to be $36 billion higher from 2014 to 2019 than it originally forecast.

On the other hand, the budget office has lowered the program's Medicaid costs, in part because of the Supreme Court's decision letting states opt out of that part of ObamaCare. As a result, the CBO didn't change its overall ObamaCare spending much.

Still, if those other savings fail to materialize, ObamaCare's overall cost could end up far higher than promised. That could prove another blow to the beleaguered health care law, which has seen most states reject setting up the insurance exchanges amid mounting worries that they won't be running in time, concerns about premium spikes, and fears that millions of families could be left without any affordable health care coverage.

So Much For 'Cheap' Plans

View the original article here

How the US Can Save $500 Billion in Medicare: UnitedHealth

The U.S. could save more than $500 billion in Medicare and Medicaid spending over the next ten years, by more aggressively coordinating medical care for seniors and the poor, according to new research from health insurer UnitedHealth Group.

The report is aimed squarely at Washington, as leaders on Capital Hill wrangle over debt reduction options ahead of automatic budget cuts due to take effect in two months.

"It's either going to be a debate that's purely focused on cutting people's benefits, or it's going to be a debate that's focused on further cuts to doctors and hospitals," said Simon Stevens, UnitedHealth executive vice president, who chairs the insurer's Center for Health Reform & Modernization.

(Read More: Medicare Premium Increase Plan Redefines 'Well-Off')

But in the report, which Simon co-authored, he argues there should be third strategy: to focus on cutting costs, while improving care.

Under the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, the government has begun to align reimbursement rates more on the quality of care for seniors in Medicare, rather than simply paying fees for each procedure.

The UnitedHealth report contends Medicare could save another $200 billion over the next ten years by more aggressively adopting cost-saving managed care initiatives.

Similarly, the report contends the federal government could save an additional $150 billion by integrating managed care for the 9 million low-income seniors and disabled who are enrolled in both Medicare and need-based Medicaid, and who account for a large share of spending in both programs.

Under Obamacare, roughly 2 million of this so-called dual-eligible population will be enrolled in coordinated care programs this year. But Stevens argues the government should expand the program faster, in order to save more.

"All of these options have got a very strong empirical, practical track record behind them," Stevens said. "We've got a sense of what works and what doesn't work."

View the original article here

Banks Paid Nearly $11 Billion In Fines In 2012

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

18 new taxes and penalties totaling $836 billion

Slide 8 | Obamacare in Pictures

To pay for new government spending under Obamacare, the law includes 18 new taxes and penalties that will affect every American, costing taxpayers $836 billion through 2022.

View the original article here

By the Numbers: $1 Billion

Thursday is the fourth day of National Women’s Health Week. Women often play a leading role in making medical decisions for their families, but their own health needs are often unmet, which is why President Obama worked to make health care more accessible and affordable for women across the country through his health reform law, the Affordable Care Act.

For example, women who purchase health insurance on the individual market pay an additional $1 billion each year because insurance companies charge them more than men, simply because of their gender. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, health insurers will be prohibited from discriminating against women by charging higher premiums.

President Obama’s health reform law also requires new health insurance plans to cover preventive services such as mammograms, pap smears, and well-woman visits with no co-pay or deductible. Because of this provision in the Affordable Care Act, more than 20.4 million women with private health insurance have received preventive health services at no additional cost.

For more information:

View the original article here