Health insurance

Amazon Labor Union, With Renewed Momentum, Faces Next Test

The Amazon Labor Union has built momentum leading up to an election this week at an 800-person warehouse near Albany, N.Y.

A federal labor official recently endorsed the union’s election victory at a Staten Island warehouse in April, which Amazon has challenged, while workers’ frustrations over pay and safety have created an opportunity to add supporters and pressure the company to bargain.

But the union faces questions about whether it can translate such opportunities into lasting gains. For months after its victory at the 8,000-person warehouse on Staten Island, the union appeared to be out of its depths. It nearly buckled under a crush of international media attention and lost a vote at a second Staten Island warehouse in May.

At times, it has neglected organizing inside the original warehouse, known as JFK8, where high turnover means the union must do constant outreach just to maintain support — to say nothing of expanding. Christian Smalls, the union’s president and a former JFK8 employee, seemed distracted as he traveled widely. There was burnout and infighting in the group, and several core members left or were pushed out.

attempt to overturn its victory, which consumed time and resources, as supporters and leaders testified in hearings that dragged across 24 business days beginning in mid-June. The union delayed plans to train more workers as organizers. A national organizing call was put on hold.

a party in Hollywood and decided that the Amazon Labor Union “understood where we were coming from,” she recalled in an interview.

could spend years appealing the election result on Staten Island, and the company still has enormous power over JFK8 workers. After workers protested Amazon’s response to a fire at the site last week, the company suspended more than 60 of them with pay while, it said, it investigated what had occurred. The union filed unfair-labor-practice charges over the suspensions; Amazon said most of the workers had returned to work.

unusually high injury rates, among other safety issues. The facility was evacuated after a cardboard compactor caught fire last week, two days after the JFK8 fire, which was similar.

“The timeline to fix things is before something tragic happens,” Ms. Goodall said.

She accused Amazon of running an aggressive anti-union campaign, including regular meetings with employees in which it questions the union’s credibility and suggests that workers could end up worse off if they unionize.

Mr. Flaningan, the company spokesman, said that while injuries increased as Amazon trained hundreds of thousands of new workers in 2021, the company believed that its safety record surpassed that of other retailers over a broader period.

“Like many other companies, we hold these meetings because it’s important that everyone understands the facts about joining a union and the election process itself,” he said, adding that the decision to unionize is up to employees.

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How Disability Misunderstandings And Stigma Impact Mental Well-Being

Disability experts say it’s common for doctors to misunderstand bodily autonomy, which can impact a person’s mental health.

CDC data shows about 26% of Americans live with a disability, whether it’s physical or mental.

Conditions like anxiety, spinal injury, ADHD, amputation, depression, cerebral palsy — these are just some examples.

Advocates say there’s a lot of misunderstanding about a person who has a disability. And that stigma not only runs deep — it can also have a huge impact on that individual’s mental health.

Twenty-eight-year-old New Yorker Chloé Valentine Toscano knows beauty, from walking in fashion week to her Instagram reels to publishing in magazines like Allure.

“I’m a writer. I’m someone who likes the color pink. I like butterflies. I like learning a lot about anyone and anything,” she said. “I think we all have differences, and I want to understand differences. … For me, beauty is just being open-minded,” she said.

She also has fought face-to-face with ugly mental health struggles caused by doctors who didn’t understand disability.

“It is a journey,” Valentine Toscano said.

She lost motor function from her elbow down in 2014. She adapted and spent years living with — as she calls it — dead weight. She got into paralypmic swimming and started her career.

Then, after years of researching and soul searching, she chose to amputate her arm.

“I know amputation can be very traumatic because some people, a lot of people,will experience it through trauma,” she said. “But that wasn’t where I was in my case. So, it wasn’t traumatic talking about it, but it was traumatic playing a game with the yeses and the nos.”

Valentine Toscano spent three years fighting to get her procedure. She says some surgeons told her any elective amputation was too risky, even though she was healthy. Other rejections came after her surgery had been approved and scheduled.

“The answer I got from one, he said, ‘Well, some people just need to learn to live with what they’ve got.’ That made me feel like someone else who wasn’t in my body was telling me what was better for me,” she said. “It felt very frustrating to have it and very offensive to have someone say that.”

Bodily autonomy — or the right to control what happens to your body — is a common struggle in the disability community. And disability experts say misunderstanding that is common, and can cause undue stress as well as impact a person’s mental well-being.

In Valentine Toscano’s story, it happened a few times.

She recounted that in one appointment: “I cried, I broke down and I felt like the minute I expressed that emotion, he sent me in for a psych evaluation, which felt like I was being punished for expressing emotion.” And then she described the examination, saying: “She was asking me, she said, ‘Do you find that you’re unattractive because of your arm and that you would be more attractive without it?’ And I was like, ‘It’s not about that at all. It’s never been about that.’ … I felt angry and belittled and just, not heard, because I was asking for one thing and being evaluated for something that wasn’t even remotely there.”

Clinical Psychologist Dr. Linda Mona has spent the past two decades working on disability and how it relates to health care.

“If you haven’t been exposed to it personally — you have not been exposed to it through being a family friend, a lover, whoever that might be — And you’re not called to do it professionally and you don’t see it around you, you don’t think about it.”

She says, unfortunately, Valentine Toscano’s experience is all too common. Mental health experts with lived experience or expertise in disability are rare.

“It can be quite challenging to find somebody,” Mona said. “The other thing to think about is the steps that come before that, which is that it’s very hard for people to access education if they have disability, let alone graduate school. And internship and fellowship…”

Sixty-one million U.S. adults, which is about one in 4, have some type of disability, according to the CDC.

A 2021 anonymous survey of graduating medical students showed 7.6% identified as having a disability. But data collected directly from medical schools show that only about 4% of medical students disclosed their disability.

That stigma against disability —physical or mental — runs deep.

From 1867 to 1974 U.S. cities had laws governing who could be in public. Codes included fining or jailing those deemed “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or anyway deformed.”

Mona says it’s federal bias favoring able-bodied people.

“You’re best at home. You’re best tucked away. Or, you’re best institutionalized out of the way of anybody else who is displeased with the way that you look,” she said.

She adds structural stigmas fueled misconceptions about disabled people’s decision-making about their own bodies.

NEWSY’S LINDSEY THEIS: When we talk about bodily autonomy, what type of impact cannot have long term on someone’s mental well-being?

LINDA MONA: Trying to bring that in and make your choices can have a huge effect on your mental health in the long run. … It also happens a lot with pregnancy and people with disabilities. Right? So, you know, somebody has some kind of cognitive mental difference or physical difference. There’s, you know, constant questioning about, you know, ‘you want to be pregnant? You know what that’s going to do to your body?’ … I don’t think anybody thinks those types of decisions are a simple decision. They’re complex. But you have to trust that somebody has made that made that decision with that context in mind and not assume that they’re uninformed.

In summer 2021, Valentine Toscano had her amputation surgery. She calls it a dream come true.

“I just felt happy,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I got this is like a huge step in my life. It just felt like one of those, like, huge dreams. I got there. I got a huge part of my personality back immediately.”

Valentine Toscano uses a prosthetic, as needed. It’s bright pink and purple with a lot of glitter.

“If I could have decided to have been born with an arm with butterflies and sparkles on it, like right out of the womb, I would have picked that,” she said.

Valentine Toscano said her prosthetic cost $13,000.

“It’s something that’s very expensive,” she said. “I was fortunate to have it covered by health insurance. But that’s not something everyone has.”

Valentine Toscano continues to advocate and write, sharing her experience now from two different sides of disability. She’s also writing a book on the side.

She says the ability to share those stories in her voice and having others listen is not only good for her well-being, it’s truly beautiful.

Source: newsy.com

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STD, STI Cases Rise Each Year. Why Isn’t The U.S. Making Any Progress?

The pandemic might have made rising STD/STI numbers even worse. Health officials have urged action, but prevention efforts have stalled for years.

Public health has been top of mind for many the last couple of years, but there’s a public health problem that has largely flown under the radar: a growing rate of sexually transmitted diseases and infections.

The number of STD and STI cases among Americans have been rising steadily each year since 2014. Even the pandemic, which trapped millions inside their homes, didn’t really make a dent in those numbers, and it might have made it worse.

These rising numbers have led many health officials to raise an alarm and urge action. Many experts believe one of the causes behind this problem is the lack of knowledge about the basic principles of safe sex, typically taught in sex education classes.

In fact, a Centers for Disease Control survey from 2019 showed that nearly 46% of sexually-active high school students did not use a condom the last time they had sex. That’s a huge problem considering the fact that out of all new STDs reported to the CDC each year, half were among young people aged 15 to 24.

The numbers show there were 2.4 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in 2020, which is the most recent year of data.

Chlamydia is currently the most common STD in the U.S., with 1.6 million cases reported to the CDC that year. While its numbers saw a slight drop from 2016, the CDC notes that the drops are probably not really because of an actual drop in infections. Since chlamydia is usually asymptomatic, case rates are heavily influenced by screening coverage, which the pandemic worsened.

Although overall cases of STDs and STIs fell in the pandemic’s early months, the CDC acknowledges that’s likely due to the reduced frequency of in-person health care services, resulting in fewer screenings. STD test and lab supply shortages, the diversion of health workers to pandemic response teams, and lapses in health insurance due to unemployment also contributed. Plus, the pandemic came after years of cuts to public health funding.

As anticipated by many experts, numbers picked up again at the end of 2020, with other diseases like gonorrhea and syphilis surpassing 2019 levels, according to CDC data. Preliminary data from 2021 shows there were more than 2.5 million reported cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in that year, meaning STDs and STIs continued to increase during the second year of the pandemic too, with no signs of slowing.

The CDC says it’s likely, “…we may never know the full impact of the pandemic on STDs. What is clear, however, is the state of STDs did not improve in the United States. Prevention and control efforts remain as important as ever.”

But, the country’s prevention and control methods need work. Comprehensive sex ed programs would be a start on prevention among the most commonly affected age group, but robust public testing and information campaigns could help all Americans. Public health funding, however, has faced slashes for years, taking a toll on STD screening and prevention efforts.

“Public funding cuts will prevent the public health system, the safety net, of being able to track down people’s partners so that your index patient doesn’t get reinfected because their partner was also treated appropriately,” said Dr. Anna Maya Powell, co-director of the Johns Hopkins HIV Women’s Program. “It’s easy to say, ‘People should take personal responsibility and come in for care,’ but I think the picture is a lot more complex than that.”

Only 2.5% of all health spending in the U.S. — which is about $3.8 trillion — is spent on public health and prevention programs. Last year, the Biden administration did announce a $1.13 billion investment to strengthen the disease intervention specialists (DIS) workforce at the CDC, but much of that funding seems to be for the agency’s pandemic response.

Still, there’s reason for some optimism: There has been progress on STDs and STIs since the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s. The STI spread rapidly in the country then, especially among certain groups, like men who have sex with other men.

Years of public information campaigns and research into treatment brought numbers down through the early 2000s and to a stable level by 2013. More recent figures may seem to hint at further progress on the overall HIV cases during the early pandemic, but those figures are also misleading because of the sharp drop in testing.

Plus, many experts have criticized the focus of historic HIV treatment and prevention efforts as largely being focused on treating rich, white, gay men and transgender groups, leaving out many lower-income Americans, people of color and women.

Women in general face a greater burden when it comes to sexual health. Many studies have established that women have a higher biological risk for contracting many STIs and HIV than men, with a higher probability of transmission from men to women.

“Women tend to be more asymptomatic for a lot of a lot of the conditions we’re talking about,” Dr. Powell said. “Not having symptoms maybe gives people a false sense of security, and then they don’t come in to get the routine screening that they might have otherwise if things were open and accessible.”

Black women in particular suffer higher numbers of both HIV and other STDs like herpes, and many experts say public prevention efforts have failed to address these groups adequately. Overall, inconsistencies in access to health care and prevention programs across different demographics throughout the country have affected our national battle against STDs and STIs.

“We have had data that shows consistently what we need to be doing in the sexually transmitted infections, those cases in reproductive health,” said Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, director of health for the city of St. Louis, Missouri. “We need to make sure that those policies are as standardized as possible so that they’re easily implementable and therefore easy to track data, data that then feeds back into the funding.”

Source: newsy.com

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Student Loan Forgiveness Is Complicated, Because This Is America

If we want higher education to cost less, we should make it cheaper when people enroll.

But that’s not how we do things in the United States, where the first rule of personal finance is that it should never be simple.

Instead, we befuddle people with a menu of a half-dozen retirement accounts. We fetishize the tax code and its deductions and credits and refunds. We name gold, silver and bronze health insurance plans after precious metals but award no medals for clearing the enrollment hurdles.

And so it goes with President Biden’s executive action around student loan debt cancellation. The potential $20,000 in relief per person gets the headlines. But the sleeper element here is a new income-driven debt repayment plan that would help many people pay much less of their student loan debt over time, if they’re not big earners.

choose among H.M.O., P.P.O., P.F.F.S., S.N.P., H.M.O.-P.O.S. and M.S.A. plans. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services website has an acronym glossary with 4,420 entries, because personal finance is its own language. You learn as you go, or not at all.

Pamela Herd is a professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, with an expertise in these “administrative burdens.”

With certain social welfare benefits, Professor Herd explained in an interview this week, the original program designers believed that obstacles were appropriate. Anyone desperate enough should find a way to muddle through and prove their poverty, or so the logic went.

More recently, administrative burdens have resulted from the conviction that private sector actors — who are often seeking profits — would be the most efficient intermediaries between people and federal programs that involved money.

You see it in those Medicare Advantage Plans, and it was a feature of federal P.P.P. loans during the early stages of the pandemic. Rather than give employers money up front to keep people on the payroll, there were forgivable loans that required frazzled small business owners to beg a banker to bum rush a balky government website on their behalf.

And so it goes with the federal student loan system.

Both the income-driven repayment plans that have existed for years and a special debt cancellation program for public servants are already poster children for administrative burdens. Tracking your progress is a part-time job, complete with self-help Facebook groups of frustrated debtors and companies to help people manage the process.

And wouldn’t you know it? There are several third parties to which the federal government has outsourced the work of collecting student loan payments and enforcing the rules.

would go to 5 percent from 10 percent of discretionary income; the amount of a person’s income that doesn’t meet the definition of discretionary would rise; and there would be a new, more generous way of calculating how balances shrink or grow over time. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that something this complex would roll out smoothly or quickly.

And it would not be cheap. Estimates from the Penn Wharton Budget Model put the 10-year cost of the new repayment plan at anywhere from $70.3 billion to over $450 billion, depending on the implementation details and how students and schools change their borrowing and tuition-setting behavior. Again, it’s complicated.

By comparison, Mr. Biden had proposed spending $45.5 billion over five years to make up to six semesters of community college free nationwide. That would have paid for most of the cost, with states contributing the rest. No debt for tuition, no hoops to jump through.

Politics got in the way of free community college, and the Inflation Reduction Act that Mr. Biden signed last month did not include it. Instead, students who borrow would get a subsidy on the back end through the more generous repayment program, years later, if they know it exists, enroll without incident, clear every hurdle over a decade or two and their loan servicer doesn’t make a hash of it.

There are bad words and associated acronyms that we could use to sum all of this up as we scream into the void. But our framing could just as easily center on a single word: Respect.

Professor Herd surprised me this week when she said the word in passing. I asked her to elaborate.

“Respect includes everything from respecting people’s time to not treating them as if they are trying to cheat or game a system,” she said. “It’s about treating them as if they are full-fledged citizens and human beings who have basic rights to access services and benefits for which they’re eligible.”

It seems simple enough. But too much of our personal finance infrastructure becomes adversarial through its complexity. The “prove it” nature of Mr. Biden’s executive action, with its income measurements and repeated checking in with third-party servicers, does not help, as generous as it may turn out to be for people who would eventually pass muster.

Disrespect is calling student debt cancellation “forgiveness” when it’s really an apology for a dysfunctional higher education financing system. Disrespect is doing little to make tuition cheaper on the front end of this process. Disrespect is letting many for-profit schools continue to put people of color deep into debt for certificates or degrees that don’t mean much in the labor market.

Disrespect guarantees full-time employment for personal finance journalists, too. I’m lucky to have the work, but it shouldn’t be necessary in the first place.

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Why Does U.S. Life Expectancy Rank Poorly?

Life expectancy is a key metric used to determine the heath of a country. The World Bank says it’s improving around the world.

How long will you live? It could be an inspiring or scary question.

But to a demographer It’s neither. It’s a key metric that says a lot about the health of a country.

In 1960 the average American’s life expectancy was almost 70 years old, according to the World Bank.

The U.S. ranked 189th in the world.

Today the nation has made progress, with an average life expectancy of 77.

But other countries have made greater strides. As of 2020, the U.S. was ranked 61st out of 237 nations.

Why have other countries surged ahead? And how could the U.S. improve?

To answer these questions we’re focusing on three countries: the U.S., the richest country in the world, according to the World Bank; Japan, the third richest; and Chile, ranked 43rd.

We spoke to Joseph Chamie. He’s the former director of the United Nations Population Division.

“The U.S. was doing very well right after World War II in 1950, ’55, relative to those countries,” said Chamie.

During the post-war boom, Americans benefited from medical advances, like penicillin and open heart surgery.

Japanese men had a life expectancy of 24 during the war, thanks in part to combat and food shortages.

“Japan’s life expectancy was lower than the U.S. in the early fifties. Of course they have to rebuild their societies,” said Chamie.

The new Japanese government passed 32 health laws between 1946 and 1955 aimed at regulating doctors and nurses, requiring school lunches, reducing pollution and preventing infectious disease.

Japanese life expectancy shot up 14 years between 1947 and 1955, according to government data.

“In the case of Chile, it was even more remarkable,” Chamie said.

Chileans’ life expectancy was 54 years old in 1950.

“Chile in particular saw a dramatic increase in life expectancy. They were able to provide health care systems, developing that preventive care, dropping infant mortality rates,” Chamie said.

Meanwhile in 1961, Japan established universal health insurance.

The government covered half of everyone’s medical costs.

“But there are many factors in Japan that were contributing to a lower mortality. One of them, of course, was diet and obesity. Eating more fish and more vegetables than the American diet,” Chamie said.

Americans lived longer as the 20th century progressed, but we also developed some unhealthy habits.

“In the U.S. the diet started increasing with greater and greater reliance on prepared foods, commonly called junk foods, fast foods. More and more people involved in work and doing less exercise.”

“In the U.S., many people are lacking health care systems in place, so they are not taking preventive action early enough to deal with illnesses. Especially the last 20, 30 years, drug addiction, opioids have gotten a become an epidemic level proportion. Obesity has also gotten much higher,” said Chamie.

“Chile and Japan, they’re providing health care systems, and also supporting people so they feel integrated in society,” Chamie said. “They did some comparisons of Japanese who went to Hawaii and California. And you find that they changed their diet, increased obesity and also lower life expectancy because of that diet change.”

“We’re spending a great deal of money on our health care and doing not as well as many other countries, including China, Japan and Chile,” he continued. “Individual responsibility is certainly one area. Second, providing health care systems and adequate services to assist people so that they will live to old age.”

So many factors determine how long we’ll live. But Chamie says learning from other countries’ successes might help us improve longevity here at home.

Source: newsy.com

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Lots Of Spam Texts, Little Action To Stop Them. Newsy Investigates

A Newsy analysis of FCC complaints reveals how spammers are using text messages as a new tool. Why isn’t the FCC doing more to stop them?

Dejeuné Harris reads some of the robotext messages bombarding her phone.

“The account status is lost … Your renewable payment failed,” she said. “I was like ‘Oh my gosh, I missed a package.'”

Harris will often interrupt her work as a personal stylist to suss out whether the text is from a client or a con artist.

“They have been a nightmare, to say it kindly,” she said.

A growing, national nightmare: Complaints to the FCC about unwanted text messages eclipsed 15,000 last year, according to Newsy’s data analysis.

Considering some of the phone numbers people across America have complained about, one thing you notice is that there are tens of thousands of different numbers blowing up phones with unwanted text messages.

The one number flagged most widely nationwide isn’t a real number at all. It shows up on caller ID as a bunch of zeros. Many of the other phone numbers have inactive area codes.

“If somebody is hiding their identity or posing as somebody else, then right from the start, you know that there’s trouble,” U.S. Public Interest Research Group Consumer Watchdog Teresa Murray said.

Newsy found the most frequent complaints relate to political robotexts, along with messages about prizes won, mortgage and payday loans, prescription drugs and health insurance.

While some robotexts are legitimate, many are schemes to get your personal information or your money.

“Some of them are, you know, really kind of scary and legitimate looking,” Murray continued.

It’s SMS phishing, known as “smishing.” Some may be from a real person, like wrong number spam texts.

While Newsy was working on this story, investigative reporter Patrick Terpstra got a text from a number he did not recognize. It just said “Hi.”

Terpstra responded, asking, “Who is this?” The person replied, “This is Annie… Maybe i saved the wrong number.”

But texts like these don’t end there.

“Annie” just kept texting Terpstra, asking “What is your name” and telling him “encounter is fate.”

“Basically, the bad guys will try anything to get you to respond because guess what? Scammers can’t scam if they don’t engage with you,” Murray said.

Last year, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel proposed requiring wireless providers block illegal robotexts. A similar rule has helped to reduce annoying robocalls.

But the three other FCC commissioners have not yet publicly agreed to adopt a plan of attack for robotexts. When Newsy asked about that, two of the three commissioners declined to answer why not.

And Commissioner Brendan Carr’s office tells us: “He is happy to be working with Chairwoman Rosenworcel on her proposals for ending the scourge of illegal texts and calls.”

For now, you can take your own steps to fight junk texts. First, don’t respond. Also, block the phone number, and forward the text to 7726. That spells out “s-p-a-m” and will alert your cellphone provider.

“It’s definitely another job, another thing to add to my to-do list to like, decipher through text messages,” Harris said — trying to avoid what could be a scheme.

Source: newsy.com

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President Biden Signs Massive Climate And Health Care Legislation

President Joe Biden signed Democrats’ landmark climate change and health care bill into law on Tuesday.

President Joe Biden signed Democrats’ landmark climate change and health care bill into law on Tuesday, delivering what he has called the “final piece” of his pared-down domestic agenda, as he aims to boost his party’s standing with voters less than three months before the midterm elections.

The legislation includes the most substantial federal investment in history to fight climate change — some $375 billion over the decade — and would cap prescription drug costs at $2,000 out-of-pocket annually for Medicare recipients. It also would help an estimated 13 million Americans pay for health care insurance by extending subsidies provided during the coronavirus pandemic.

The measure is paid for by new taxes on large companies and stepped-up IRS enforcement of wealthy individuals and entities, with additional funds going to reduce the federal deficit.

In a triumphant signing event at the White House, President Biden pointed to the law as proof that democracy — no matter how long or messy the process — can still deliver for voters in America as he road-tested a line he will likely repeat later this fall ahead of the midterms: “The American people won, and the special interests lost.”

“In this historic moment, Democrats sided with the American people, and every single Republican in the Congress sided with the special interests in this vote,” President Biden said, repeatedly seizing on the contrast between his party and the GOP. “Every single one.”

The House on Friday approved the measure on a party-line 220-207 vote. It passed the Senate days earlier with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a 50-50 tie in that chamber.

“In normal times, getting these bills done would be a huge achievement,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during the White House ceremony. “But to do it now, with only 50 Democratic votes in the Senate, over an intransigent Republican minority, is nothing short of amazing.”

President Biden signed the bill into law during a small ceremony in the State Dining Room of the White House, sandwiched between his return from a six-day beachside vacation in South Carolina and his departure for his home in Wilmington, Delaware. He plans to hold a larger “celebration” for the legislation on Sept. 6 once lawmakers return to Washington.

The signing caps a spurt of legislative productivity for President Biden and Congress, who in three months have approved legislation on veterans’ benefits, the semiconductor industry and gun checks for young buyers. The president and lawmakers have also responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and overwhelmingly supported NATO membership for Sweden and Finland.

With President Biden’s approval rating lagging, Democrats are hoping that the string of successes will jump-start their chances of maintaining control in Washington in the November midterms. The 79-year-old president aims to restore his own standing with voters as he contemplates a reelection bid.

The White House announced Monday that it was going to deploy President Biden and members of his Cabinet on a “Building a Better America Tour” to promote the recent victories. One of President Biden’s trips will be to Ohio, where he’ll view the groundbreaking of a semiconductor plant that will benefit from the recent law to bolster production of such computer chips. He will also stop in Pennsylvania to promote his administration’s plan for safer communities, a visit that had been planned the same day he tested positive for COVID-19 last month.

“In the coming weeks, the President will host a Cabinet meeting focused on implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, will travel across the country to highlight how the bill will help the American people, and will host an event to celebrate the enactment of the bill at the White House on September 6th,” the White House said in a statement.

Republicans say the legislation’s new business taxes will increase prices, worsening the nation’s bout with its highest inflation since 1981. Though Democrats have labeled the measure the Inflation Reduction Act, nonpartisan analysts say it will have a barely perceptible impact on prices.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., on Tuesday continued those same criticisms, although he acknowledged there would be “benefit” through extensions on tax credits for renewable energy projects like solar and wind.

“I think it’s too much spending, too much taxing, and in my view wrong priorities, and a super-charged, super-sized IRS that is going to be going after a lot of not just high-income taxpayers but a lot of mid-income taxpayers,” said Thune, speaking at a Chamber of Commerce event in Sioux Falls. The administration has disputed that anyone but high earners will face increased tax scrutiny, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen directing the tax agency to focus solely on businesses and people earning more than $400,000 per year for the new audits.

The measure is a slimmed-down version of the more ambitious plan to supercharge environment and social programs that President Biden and his party unveiled early last year.

President Biden’s initial 10-year, $3.5 trillion proposal also envisioned free prekindergarten, paid family and medical leave, expanded Medicare benefits and eased immigration restrictions. That crashed after centrist Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said it was too costly, using the leverage every Democrat has in the evenly divided Senate.

During the signing event, President Biden addressed Manchin, who struck the critical deal with Schumer on the package last month, saying, “Joe, I never had a doubt” as the crowd chuckled.

Though the law is considerably smaller than their initial ambitions, President Biden and Democrats are hailing the legislation as a once-in-a-generation investment in addressing the long-term effects of climate change, as well as drought in the nation’s West.

The bill will direct spending, tax credits and loans to bolster technology like solar panels, consumer efforts to improve home energy efficiency, emission-reducing equipment for coal- and gas-powered power plants, and air pollution controls for farms, ports and low-income communities.

Another $64 billion would help 13 million people pay premiums over the next three years for privately bought health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Medicare would gain the power to negotiate its costs for pharmaceuticals, initially in 2026 for only 10 drugs. Medicare beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket prescription costs would be limited to $2,000 annually starting in 2025, and beginning next year would pay no more than $35 monthly for insulin, the costly diabetes drug.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., a powerful political ally to President Biden, noted during the White House ceremony that his late wife, Emily, who battled diabetes for three decades, would be “beyond joy” if she were alive today because of the insulin cap.

“Many seem surprised at your successes,” Clyburn told President Biden. “I am not. I know you.”

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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Biden To Sign Massive Climate And Health Care Legislation

By Associated Press
August 16, 2022

The legislation includes the most substantial federal investment in history to fight climate change and would cap prescription drug costs.

President Joe Biden will sign Democrats’ landmark climate change and health care bill on Tuesday, delivering what he has called the “final piece” of his pared-down domestic agenda, as he aims to boost his party’s standing with voters less than three months before the midterm elections.

The measure is paid for by new taxes on large companies and stepped-up IRS enforcement of wealthy individuals and entities, with additional funds going to reduce the federal deficit.

The House on Friday approved the measure on a party-line 220-207 vote. It passed the Senate days earlier with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a 50-50 tie in that chamber.

President Biden is set to sign the bill during a small ceremony in the State Dining Room of the White House, sandwiched between his return from a six-day beachside vacation in South Carolina and his departure for his home in Wilmington, Delaware. He plans to hold a larger “celebration” for the legislation on Sept. 6 once lawmakers return to Washington.

The White House announced Monday that it was going to deploy President Biden and members of his Cabinet on a “Building a Better America Tour” to promote the recent victories, though the administration has yet to announce specific travel by the president.

The measure is a slimmed-down version of the more ambitious plan to supercharge environment and social programs that President Biden and his party unveiled early last year.

President Biden’s initial 10-year, $3.5 trillion proposal also envisioned free prekindergarten, paid family and medical leave, expanded Medicare benefits and eased immigration restrictions. That crashed after centrist Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, said it was too costly, using the leverage every Democrat has in the evenly divided Senate.

Still, President Biden and Democrats are hailing the legislation as a once-in-a-generation investment in addressing the long-term effects of climate change, as well as drought in the nation’s West.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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Fetterman ‘Grateful’ As He Returns To Pa. Senate Race

Fetterman’s return after his stroke marks a significant development in the race to fill retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey’s seat.

Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman acknowledged he was lucky to be alive as he officially returned to the campaign trail Friday, more than 90 days after the Democrat suffered a stroke that threatened his life and political prospects in one of the nation’s premier Senate contests.

Fetterman spoke for nearly 11 minutes, haltingly at times, as he addressed several hundred voters packed inside a convention center on the shores of Lake Erie. It was the 52-year-old lieutenant governor’s only scheduled public rally this month as he gradually ramps up his public schedule.

“Tonight for me, it’s about being grateful — just grateful,” said Fetterman, who stood for the duration of his remarks. “Three months ago my life could have ended. It’s the truth.”

He said he may not have survived his stroke if he was in rural Elk County instead of being just 20 minutes away from a major stroke facility.

“Gisele saved my life,” he said, wearing his usual hooded sweatshirt and jeans.

Fetterman’s return marks a significant development in the race to fill retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey’s seat. The Pennsylvania contest offers Democrats perhaps their best pickup opportunity nationally as the two parties battle for Senate control in the November midterm elections. The chamber is now split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris giving Democrats the narrowest of majorities with her tie-breaking vote.

Republican nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz, a celebrity heart surgeon endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has railed against Fetterman’s prolonged public absence throughout the summer.

Oz posted a fake “Have You Seen This Person?” poster online last month. He needled Fetterman again Friday in an interview with Newsmax.

“We’re doing very well, campaigning all over the Commonwealth, which is a far cry from my opponent, who refuses to leave his home,” Oz charged.

Fetterman’s physical appearance is a central element of his nontraditional political brand.

At 6 feet, 9 inches, he sports a shaved head and tattooed arms. He’s also an unapologetic progressive with a working-class background who supports legalizing marijuana, abolishing the Senate filibuster and establishing a national government health insurance program for everyone — “Medicare for all” in progressives’ campaign jargon.

Fetterman’s health has been a dominant issue in the Senate contest since the days before the May 17 primary, when his campaign revealed he had a stroke. He required surgery to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator, and later disclosed that he also had a serious heart condition.

His doctor offered a blunt letter in early June detailing Fetterman’s decision not to take prescribed medication or see a doctor for several years after a 2017 health scare.

“If he does what I’ve told him, and I do believe that he is taking his recovery and his health very seriously this time, he should be able to campaign and serve in the U.S. Senate without a problem,” Dr. Ramesh Chandra wrote.

Fetterman is now taking his medication as prescribed, eating a low-sodium diet and walking 3 to 5 miles most days, campaign spokesman Joe Calvello said: “He’s following the doctor’s orders.”

On Friday night, Fetterman spoke haltingly throughout his remarks and sometimes fumbled his words. The crowd, which exceeded 1,300, according to the convention center staff, was energized throughout.

Calvello noted that Fetterman still has mild speech and hearing issues as he works his way back to full health.

“He’ll miss a word here or there when he’s speaking sometimes, or maybe in a crowded room he’ll miss hearing a word,” he said. “Besides that, he’s rock solid.”

The high-profile Senate contest has been playing out on television and social media despite Fetterman’s extended absence.

Fetterman, who has dominated Oz in fundraising, has been running television ads promoting his candidacy for months. The Democrat has also drawn millions of views from creative social media posts, including one featuring a character from the infamous MTV show “Jersey Shore” telling Oz to come home. Oz is a former New Jersey resident, and it has been a major issue throughout the campaign.

“He’s a New Jersey resident. He doesn’t live here. He’s not about us. He doesn’t care about us,” Fetterman said.

He concluded his remarks the way he opened them — with gratitude.

“Three months ago, I may not have made it. But now, I’m standing right here in Erie,” he said as the crowd erupted.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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Congress OKs Dems’ Climate, Health Bill, A Biden Triumph

The House used a party-line 220-207 vote to pass the legislation.

A divided Congress gave final approval Friday to Democrats’ flagship climate and health care bill, handing President Joe Biden a back-from-the-dead triumph on coveted priorities that the party hopes will bolster their prospects for keeping their hold on Congress in November’s elections.

The House used a party-line 220-207 vote to pass the legislation, which is but a shadow of the larger, more ambitious plan to supercharge environment and social programs that President Biden and his party envisioned early last year. Even so, Democrats happily declared victory on top-tier goals like providing Congress’ largest ever investment in curbing carbon emissions, reining in pharmaceutical costs and taxing large companies, a vote they believe will show they can wring accomplishments from a routinely gridlocked Washington that often disillusions voters.

“Today is a day of celebration, a day we take another giant step in our momentous agenda,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. She said the measure “meets the moment, ensuring that our families thrive and that our planet survives.”

Republicans solidly opposed the legislation, calling it a cornucopia of wasteful liberal daydreams that would raise taxes and families’ living costs. They did the same Sunday but Senate Democrats banded together and used Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote t o power the measure through that 50-50 chamber.

“Democrats, more than any other majority in history, are addicted to spending other people’s money, regardless of what we as a country can afford,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. “I can almost see glee in their eyes.”

Still, the final legislation remained substantive. Its pillar is about $375 billion over 10 years to encourage industry and consumers to shift from carbon-emitting to cleaner forms of energy. That includes $4 billion to cope with the West’s catastrophic drought.

Spending, tax credits and loans would bolster technology like solar panels, consumer efforts to improve home energy efficiency, emission-reducing equipment for coal- and gas-powered power plants and air pollution controls for farms, ports and low-income communities.

Another $64 billion would help 13 million people pay premiums over the next three years for privately bought health insurance. Medicare would gain the power to negotiate its costs for pharmaceuticals, initially in 2026 for only 10 drugs. Medicare beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket prescription costs would be limited to $2,000 starting in 2025, and beginning next year would pay no more than $35 monthly for insulin, the costly diabetes drug.

The bill would raise around $740 billion in revenue over the decade, over a third from government savings from lower drug prices. More would flow from higher taxes on some $1 billion corporations, levies on companies that repurchase their own stock and stronger IRS tax collections. About $300 billion would remain to defray budget deficits, a sliver of the period’s projected $16 trillion total.

Against the backdrop of GOP attacks on the FBI for its court-empowered search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate for sensitive documents, Republicans repeatedly savaged the bill’s boost to the IRS budget. That is aimed at collecting an estimated $120 billion in unpaid taxes over the coming decade, and Republicans have misleadingly claimed that the IRS will hire 87,000 agents to target average families.

Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., said Democrats would also “weaponize” the IRS with agents, “many of whom will be trained in the use of deadly force, to go after any American citizen.” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Thursday on “Fox and Friends” if there would be an IRS “strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small business person.”

Few IRS personnel are armed, and Democrats say the bill’s $80 billion, 10-year budget increase would be to replace waves of retirees, not just agents, and modernize equipment. They have said typical families and small businesses would not be targeted, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen directing the IRS this week to not “increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold” that would be audited.

Republicans say the legislation’s new business taxes will increase prices, worsening the nation’s bout with its worst inflation since 1981. Though Democrats have labeled the measure the Inflation Reduction Act, nonpartisan analysts say it will have a barely perceptible impact on prices.

The GOP also says the bill would raise taxes on lower- and middle-income families. An analysis by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which didn’t include the bill’s tax breaks for health care and energy, estimated that the corporate tax boosts would marginally affect those taxpayers but indirectly, partly due to lower stock prices and wages.

The bill caps three months in which Congress has approved legislation on veterans’ benefits, the semiconductor industry, gun checks for young buyers and Ukraine’s invasion by Russia and adding Sweden and Finland to NATO. All passed with bipartisan support, suggesting Republicans also want to display their productive side.

It’s unclear whether voters will reward Democrats for the legislation after months of painfully high inflation dominating voters’ attention and President Biden’s dangerously low popularity with the public and a steady history of midterm elections that batter the party holding the White House.

The bill had its roots in early 2021, after Congress approved a $1.9 trillion measure over GOP opposition to combat the pandemic-induced economic downturn. Emboldened, the new president and his party reached further.

They called their $3.5 trillion plan Build Back Better. Besides social and environment initiatives, it proposed rolling back Trump-era tax breaks for the rich and corporations and $555 billion for climate efforts, well above the resources in Friday’s legislation.

With Manchin opposing those amounts, it was sliced to a roughly $2 trillion measure that Democrats moved through the House in November. He unexpectedly sank that bill too, earning scorn from exasperated fellow Democrats from Capitol Hill and the White House.

Last gasp talks between Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., seemed fruitless until the two unexpectedly announced agreement last month on the new package.

Manchin won billions for carbon capture technology for the fossil fuel industries he champions, plus procedures for more oil drilling on federal lands and promises for faster energy project permitting. Centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., also won concessions, eliminating planned higher taxes on hedge fund managers and helping win the drought funds.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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