Benny Johnson needed to escape the Internet.
In less than two
years, he had built himself up into a Washington media-insider
celebrity: one of the most trafficked news writers on one of the most
trafficked Web sites in the world, Buzzfeed.com. He wrote light but
irresistible stories that were more like lists: "19 Times American Politicians Tried to Look Normal and Failed"; "The 17 Most Canadian Things About Ted Cruz." People began to recognize Benny from his Twitter avatar. They called him Buzzfeed Benny.
Then
he was exposed as a plagiarist. Forty-one of his articles were based on
the work of other writers, unattributed. He lost his job and an
identity that had opened doors and put him on guest lists all over
Washington.
"This is what happens when it all collapses," he says now. "It's a jarring moment."
His
friends rescued him, he tells me. When the Twitter mob was crucifying
him as the symbol of everything wrong with Internet journalism, they
whisked him out of D.C., lured him onto a boat, and hit the open waters
to hunt for crabs. They confiscated his phone, he says, and locked it in
a safe to buffer him from the angry roar of social media.
Less
than a year later Benny is back on the Internet, this time as a boss — a
"content director," for the conservative-leaning Web site IJReview.com. The website isn't yet three years old and already has monthly traffic rivaling Fox News.
Other
disgraced journalists have found forgiveness too. But Benny rebounded
unusually quickly, fielding offers within weeks of his dismissal from
media organizations eager to get a piece of the addictive new breed of
storytelling perfected by this 29-year-old. D.C. has always been the
city of second chances, now it just moves at meme speed. And no one can
ride a meme like Benny Johnson.
Benny's brand of journalism is taking over. Even if
you don't recognize his name you've seen his type of work infiltrating
your Facebook feed. As "viral politics editor" at Buzzfeed Benny worked
to make the wonky world of D.C. interesting to the kinds of people who
favor articles like "The 25 Most Awkward Cat Sleeping Positions." He compared members of Congress to characters from the television show "Arrested Development." He documented the seven ugliest federal buildings in D.C. He walked 3.5 million readers through the Army's "Spectacular Hidden Treasure Room."
"I have this incredible access, and all I've ever wanted was to bring people along," Benny says.
Benny
wears his hair long on top and short on the side, a style made popular
by the Seattle rapper Macklemore. Square-jawed, with eyes that dart back
and forth under thick glasses, he looks like a skittish Clark Kent. He
likes pipe tobacco, wearing suits patterned like American flags, and
making fun of people for being hipsters. He grins so much, through
criticism and compliments alike, that he can seem like the
personification of the shruggie guy that started showing up in your
Twitter feed last year.
(You know: ¯\_(¿)_/¯ That's Benny for you.)
If
you're on a constant search for viral topics, it's helpful not to know
boundaries. Benny breezes uninvited into parties with the excitement of a
puppy smelling bacon. He sidles up to strangers and starts a
conversation like they're old friends.
"When I went through my
divorce, he acted like a brother to me," says Jill Collins, a
public-relations specialist who has worked with Benny but isn't exactly
close with him. "He would call me up, say he was going to take me out.
He even offered to let me stay at his place. He's either the nicest,
most genuine person I've ever met, or the best actor."
The
shamelessness is part of Benny's charm, but it can also be his blind
spot. During the Arab Spring, he published an item comparing Tahrir
Square to "Jurassic Park." The online magazine Slate asked: "Is this the
worst thing Buzzfeed's ever done?"
Traditional journalists
scoffed at his lists of photos and animated GIFs, but they'd kill for
Benny's reach. His explainer on President Barack Obama's push to bomb
Syria was clicked on 860,000 times, helped by the funny reaction videos
of MTV personalities Benny added to the text. ("The votes for military
action are not looking like they will pass" was illustrated by reality
star Lauren Conrad weeping a mascara-stained tear.) Almost a million
readers — many of whom probably knew nothing about Syria — gave this
"listicle" a click.
But Benny isn't content just sitting behind a
computer. At the Supreme Court, he noticed the funny way interns sprint
down the steps to carry a big ruling to their media bosses and turned
that into a story. He found the secret Dunkin Donuts inside the Library
of Congress. He assigned his team to parade a cardboard cutout of
Hillary Clinton through a conservative conference to film the reaction
of the rambunctious crowd. He doesn't care if you think it's dumb as
long as you check it out.
"A hate click is just as valuable as a love click," he says.
When
Benny joined Buzzfeed in 2013, the site was trying to transcend its
reputation for jokey pop-culture riffs and feel-good listicles ("13
Simple Steps to Get You Through a Rough Day") by adding political
reporters and narrative journalists. Benny straddled the two Buzzfeed
identities.
A University of Iowa chemistry major, he got into
media not through the student newspaper but his activism as a campus
Republican. After working in a German lab, he began contributing to the
conservative Web site Breitbart.com in 2010 and adopted its firebrand
tone.
"Why not instead send the Imam to Pakistan where he can help
shovel out drowning families, or to Somalia where he can persuade
vicious Islamic Radicals to stop murdering in the name of his peaceful
religion?" he wrote in an article decrying plans to build the
"blasphemous Ground Zero Mega Mosque." But Benny says now he was just
trying to fit in.
"Sometimes I was just writing a lot for the
audience," Benny says. "I knew well what they wanted to read. Even if I
didn't believe it."
It
paid off. Benny landed a full-time gig at Glenn Beck's The Blaze in
2011. Soon he was mimicking the work of his favorite website: Buzzfeed.
"I just loved everything they were doing," he says. He started a
correspondence with Ben Smith, the former New York Daily News and
Politico journalist whom Buzzfeed hired to run a serious media
enterprise, and talked himself into a job in 2013.
He rose
quickly, writing more than 500 posts in less than a year and a half, and
racking up some major Web traffic hits with posts on political topics, a
rare score for Buzzfeed. Even with the investment in serious reporting,
recent reports suggest that little of its traffic comes from its news
stories.
Benny became a known quantity, a guy about town. He threw
a July 4th barbecue where he served his guests shark meat, then paraded
them over to the Capitol to crash a private party. His online persona
had just as much swagger. He wasn't afraid to pick a fight.
"Repeat
after me: Copying and pasting someone's work is called 'plagiarism,'"
Benny tweeted last July, after seeing an IJR article about George H.W.
Bush's colorful socks that resembled one of his posts.
Some found
this a surprising charge. Buzzfeed had its own reputation for cribbing
other people's work. A post that got more than 15 million page views,
"21 pictures that will restore your faith in humanity," was widely
criticized for being a clip job from Reddit and a site called
Nedhardy.com.
And Benny had a particularly big target on his back.
Many found his style grating. There was the time he tweeted that he was
eating fried chicken and waffles to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s
birthday, and his overheated post revealing that Sen. Cory Booker,
D-N.J., had once replied to a Twitter messages from a stripper. After
just one year at Buzzfeed, Salon.com made him No. 3 on their annual
"Hack List."
"Repeat after me," tweeted someone going by
@Blippoblappo, echoing Benny's rebuke to IJR about the socks article,
"@bennyjohnson shouldn't call out plagiarism because he does it all the
time."
On a blog called Our Bad Media, Blippoblappo and another
Twitter personality, @Crushingbort, named three examples of Benny's work
that cribbed from Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, and other sources. "It was
so easy to spot this stuff, you have to conclude that there was
essentially no editorial oversight," they wrote in an email to The
Washington Post.
Smith, his Buzzfeed boss, defended him, telling
Gawker that Benny was "one of the Web's deeply original writers." But
after an internal review found that almost 10 percent of his work — such
as "DC's Version Of The Royal Baby Is A Gigantic Flower That Smells
Like Poo" — included plagiarized passages, Smith fired him. (Smith
declined to comment for this story.)
The Twitter shaming came
on in a fury. To describe Benny's work as "viral," sniped Guardian
contributor Jeb Lund, "does an allusive disservice to more noble
organisms like the AIDS virus."
Benny took the hit."If I had it to
do over again, I would have attributed and appropriated. It would have
been easy," he says now. "But there is a culture of 'get this piece out,
get this out now.' "
Buzzfeed brass did their own soul-searching
and removed more than 4,000 old posts that they said no longer met their
standards. Other than Benny, though, no one was fired.
"The first
person through the wall's going to get bloody," Benny says. "But
somebody's got to make the first Joe Biden GIF listicle."
And so, Benny found himself out to sea.
Or, you know, something like that.
"Well, we weren't on the boat the whole time," Benny clarifies the next time he tells me the story of his getaway.
His
girlfriend had brought him out to Virginia's Chincoteague Island, he
says now, a place famous for its population of wild horses. She's the
one who locked the phone in the safe, he acknowledges in the retelling.
They stayed in a condo. Friends came and went.
Maybe not as epic
as a soul-cleansing boat expedition with friends, but Benny's ready with
a new headline. "What could be more Buzzfeed than soothing your soul on
an island filled with ponies?" he says.
Within weeks of being
fired, Benny landed a job at the National Review Online. A few months
later, IJR — the same site that had copied his socks story — stole him
away.
IJR might not sound prestigious, but it's a sleeping giant.
The site gets about 20 million monthly visitors according to recent
searches on Quantcast, occasionally beating Fox News or the Drudge
Report. The site was founded in 2012 by a former Republican staffer,
Alex Skatell, who wagered there was a big audience whose political
worldview was not being represented by viral news sites. Last year he
had 10 staffers. This year he moved a team of 50 into a 9,000-square
foot office in Alexandria.
So when they reached out to Benny with a
pitch about wanting more original content, Benny didn't just see a
website that had once ripped him off. He saw conservative Buzzfeed. "I
get to be the Ben Smith," he says.
Depending on how you look at
it, Benny is either the problem with Internet media, or the solution. He
is both the content monkey recycling old videos of the time Hillary
Clinton did a Forrest Gump parody and the journalist driving to
Baltimore to track down the business owner whose pizza shop was burned
to the ground by protesters.
Either way, IJR is right about
something: This particular moment in Internet media is all about his
brand of pithy, grabby, irreverent stuff. Even politicians are taking a
page from this playbook, as they use the Web to bypass journalists and
communicate directly with voters. When Obama was selling his health care
bill, he sat between two ferns for an interview with the comedian Zach
Galifianakis. When John Boehner was attacking the president's free
community college proposal he used Taylor Swift GIFs. To Benny, this
isn't a sign of the decline of media. It's an opportunity.
"The
thing that really got to me was that people said Benny wasn't creative,
that he needed to take from other people to be creative," says Benny's
girlfriend, Katelyn Rieley. "He's the most creative person I've ever
met."
Sometimes that creativity can get him a little carried away.
Here's Rieley's version of the trip to Chincoteague: They spent the
vacation alone, she says; there were no other friends. Nor was there
much boating, though they did some crabbing from the dock. Rieley says
she didn't lock his phone in a safe; she simply powered it down and
stowed it in her bag.
As a journalist who has now fully
investigated the story of the boat and the safe, I am inclined to
believe her account. But I have to admit that his packaging of the
anecdote is far more compelling.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
From the community: Terri Cunliffe Named CEO of Covenant Retirement Communities, Inc.
The board of directors of Chicago-based Covenant Retirement
Communities (CRC), owner and operator of 14 senior living communities
nationwide, has named Terri Cunliffe as its chief executive officer,
effective June 1, 2015. Cunliffe, who has served as CRC's COO since 2010
and has been part of the organization for more than 25 years, succeeds
current CEO Rick Fisk. The Holmstad, based in Batavia, is one of its 14
communities.
Beginning her career as a nursing home part-time receptionist, Cunliffe has held a series of progressive leadership roles within CRC, including nursing home administrator and executive director at Covenant Village of Florida. As CRC's senior vice president of health and wellness and executive vice president of operations, Cunliffe effected change by developing and implementing the company's LifeConnect® approach to whole-person wellness. The program enables CRC to connect residents with resources and opportunities to help them fulfill their needs, interests and goals through educational and cultural programming, on- and off-campus activities and excursions.
While serving as COO Cunliffe developed the organization's new customer service and hospitality platform - 'We Believe.' The platform, which is currently being implemented across CRC's 14 senior living communities, focuses on enhancing the communities' customer service and resident relations by focusing on individuality, hospitality, congeniality and spirituality.
"It has been a privilege to be a part of an organization that is committed to the Evangelical Covenant Church's mission, and provides its employees the opportunity to impact the lives of others on a daily basis while practicing their faith at work," says Cunliffe. "Our residents and staff inspire me daily, and I look forward to continuing to work with our executive leadership team and board of directors to further Covenant Retirement Communities' strategic vision of assisting and meeting the needs of future generations of residents and staff."
"Throughout her tenure with Covenant Retirement Communities, Terri has earned the respect of the staff and board members as well as colleagues in the senior living industry," says Neil Warnygora, executive director at Covenant Village of Northbrook. "With her long history with the organization and strengths - enthusiasm, experience, business savvy, and wellness perspective - Terri is the right person for this position and will effect positive change that will continue to reflect the mission of the Evangelical Covenant Church and Covenant Retirement Communities."
A licensed nursing home administrator in the state of Florida, Cunliffe has been an active leader in LeadingAge Florida, formerly known as Florida Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, since 1995. She was named FAHSA Executive of the Year in 1999, received its chairman's award in 2005 and was the organizations' chair from 2009-2011.
Cunliffe earned a Bachelor of Science degree in long-term care administration from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn. and a master's degree in health services administration from Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
About Covenant Retirement Communities
Covenant Retirement Communities is one of the nation's largest not-for-profit senior services providers. It serves 5,000 residents at 14 retirement communities nationwide and is a ministry of the Evangelical Covenant Church. For more information, visit www.covenantretirement.org.
This item was posted by a community contributor. To read more about community contributors, click here.
Beginning her career as a nursing home part-time receptionist, Cunliffe has held a series of progressive leadership roles within CRC, including nursing home administrator and executive director at Covenant Village of Florida. As CRC's senior vice president of health and wellness and executive vice president of operations, Cunliffe effected change by developing and implementing the company's LifeConnect® approach to whole-person wellness. The program enables CRC to connect residents with resources and opportunities to help them fulfill their needs, interests and goals through educational and cultural programming, on- and off-campus activities and excursions.
While serving as COO Cunliffe developed the organization's new customer service and hospitality platform - 'We Believe.' The platform, which is currently being implemented across CRC's 14 senior living communities, focuses on enhancing the communities' customer service and resident relations by focusing on individuality, hospitality, congeniality and spirituality.
"It has been a privilege to be a part of an organization that is committed to the Evangelical Covenant Church's mission, and provides its employees the opportunity to impact the lives of others on a daily basis while practicing their faith at work," says Cunliffe. "Our residents and staff inspire me daily, and I look forward to continuing to work with our executive leadership team and board of directors to further Covenant Retirement Communities' strategic vision of assisting and meeting the needs of future generations of residents and staff."
"Throughout her tenure with Covenant Retirement Communities, Terri has earned the respect of the staff and board members as well as colleagues in the senior living industry," says Neil Warnygora, executive director at Covenant Village of Northbrook. "With her long history with the organization and strengths - enthusiasm, experience, business savvy, and wellness perspective - Terri is the right person for this position and will effect positive change that will continue to reflect the mission of the Evangelical Covenant Church and Covenant Retirement Communities."
A licensed nursing home administrator in the state of Florida, Cunliffe has been an active leader in LeadingAge Florida, formerly known as Florida Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, since 1995. She was named FAHSA Executive of the Year in 1999, received its chairman's award in 2005 and was the organizations' chair from 2009-2011.
Cunliffe earned a Bachelor of Science degree in long-term care administration from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn. and a master's degree in health services administration from Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
About Covenant Retirement Communities
Covenant Retirement Communities is one of the nation's largest not-for-profit senior services providers. It serves 5,000 residents at 14 retirement communities nationwide and is a ministry of the Evangelical Covenant Church. For more information, visit www.covenantretirement.org.
This item was posted by a community contributor. To read more about community contributors, click here.
Court upholds key parts of Texas' strict anti-abortion law
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld Texas' strict abortion
restrictions that could soon leave only seven abortion clinics open in a
state of 27 million people.
The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allows Texas to enforce Republican-backed restrictions that require abortion clinics to meet hospital-level operating standards, a checklist that includes rules on minimum room sizes, staffing levels and air ventilation systems. The restrictions, approved in 2013, are among the toughest in the nation.
Owners of traditional abortion clinics, which resemble doctor's offices more than hospitals, say they would be forced to close because the new rules demand millions of dollars in upgrades they can't afford. That would mark the second large wave of closures in as many years in Texas, which had 41 abortion clinics in 2012, before other new restrictions took effect that require doctor admitting privileges.
"Not since before Roe v. Wade has a law or court decision had the potential to devastate access to reproductive health care on such a sweeping scale," said Nancy Northrop, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. "We now look to the Justices to stop the sham laws that are shutting clinics down and placing countless women at risk of serious harm."
Texas will be able to start enforcing the restrictions in about three weeks unless the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to halt the decision, said Stephanie Toti, an attorney for the center. Only seven abortion facilities in Texas, including four operated by Planned Parenthood, meet the more robust requirements.
Abortion-rights groups said they will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which temporarily sidelined the law last year.
If the law takes effect, some women in the state would live hundreds of miles away from a Texas abortion provider. But that argument didn't sway the three-judge panel making the decision for the New Orleans-based appeals court, which is considered one of the most conservative in the nation. The judges noted that a New Mexico abortion clinic was just across the Texas border, and said clinic owners in Texas failed to prove that a "large fraction" of women would be burdened.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office argued before the appeals court in January, praised Tuesday's ruling.
"Abortion practitioners should have no right to operate their businesses from sub-standard facilities and with doctors who lack admitting privileges at a hospital," Paxton said.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and other conservatives say the standards protect women's health. But abortion-rights supports say the law is a thinly veiled attempt to block access to abortions in Texas, which has been the site of one of the nation's largest abortion fights for two years. Toti said roughly a half-dozen other states require similar standards for abortion clinics, but unlike in those states, the Texas law doesn't allow clinics to be grandfathered or seek waivers.
About 18 abortion clinics are currently open in Texas, though the number fluctuates depending on whether a facility has a doctor with hospital admitting privileges.
Under the new restrictions, the only remaining abortion facilities in Texas would be in major cities. One exception would be a Whole Woman's Health clinic in McAllen, near the Texas-Mexico border, which the 5th Circuit exempted from some restrictions — but Toti said even those exemptions are so limited that it may not be practical to keep that clinic open.
For women in El Paso, the closest abortion provider in Texas would require a 1,200-mile round trip to San Antonio, or they would have to cross state lines. The appeals court found that option suitable, noting that a clinic was just across the border in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.
"Although the nearest abortion facility in Texas is 550 miles away from El Paso, there is evidence that women in El Paso can travel the short distance to Santa Teresa to obtain an abortion and, indeed, the evidence is that many did just that," the court wrote.
Attorneys for the state dismissed opponents' arguments about women being burdened by fewer abortion facilities, saying that nearly 9 in 10 women in Texas would still live within 150 miles of a provider.
Associated Press
The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allows Texas to enforce Republican-backed restrictions that require abortion clinics to meet hospital-level operating standards, a checklist that includes rules on minimum room sizes, staffing levels and air ventilation systems. The restrictions, approved in 2013, are among the toughest in the nation.
Owners of traditional abortion clinics, which resemble doctor's offices more than hospitals, say they would be forced to close because the new rules demand millions of dollars in upgrades they can't afford. That would mark the second large wave of closures in as many years in Texas, which had 41 abortion clinics in 2012, before other new restrictions took effect that require doctor admitting privileges.
"Not since before Roe v. Wade has a law or court decision had the potential to devastate access to reproductive health care on such a sweeping scale," said Nancy Northrop, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. "We now look to the Justices to stop the sham laws that are shutting clinics down and placing countless women at risk of serious harm."
Texas will be able to start enforcing the restrictions in about three weeks unless the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to halt the decision, said Stephanie Toti, an attorney for the center. Only seven abortion facilities in Texas, including four operated by Planned Parenthood, meet the more robust requirements.
Abortion-rights groups said they will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which temporarily sidelined the law last year.
If the law takes effect, some women in the state would live hundreds of miles away from a Texas abortion provider. But that argument didn't sway the three-judge panel making the decision for the New Orleans-based appeals court, which is considered one of the most conservative in the nation. The judges noted that a New Mexico abortion clinic was just across the Texas border, and said clinic owners in Texas failed to prove that a "large fraction" of women would be burdened.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office argued before the appeals court in January, praised Tuesday's ruling.
"Abortion practitioners should have no right to operate their businesses from sub-standard facilities and with doctors who lack admitting privileges at a hospital," Paxton said.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and other conservatives say the standards protect women's health. But abortion-rights supports say the law is a thinly veiled attempt to block access to abortions in Texas, which has been the site of one of the nation's largest abortion fights for two years. Toti said roughly a half-dozen other states require similar standards for abortion clinics, but unlike in those states, the Texas law doesn't allow clinics to be grandfathered or seek waivers.
About 18 abortion clinics are currently open in Texas, though the number fluctuates depending on whether a facility has a doctor with hospital admitting privileges.
Under the new restrictions, the only remaining abortion facilities in Texas would be in major cities. One exception would be a Whole Woman's Health clinic in McAllen, near the Texas-Mexico border, which the 5th Circuit exempted from some restrictions — but Toti said even those exemptions are so limited that it may not be practical to keep that clinic open.
For women in El Paso, the closest abortion provider in Texas would require a 1,200-mile round trip to San Antonio, or they would have to cross state lines. The appeals court found that option suitable, noting that a clinic was just across the border in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.
"Although the nearest abortion facility in Texas is 550 miles away from El Paso, there is evidence that women in El Paso can travel the short distance to Santa Teresa to obtain an abortion and, indeed, the evidence is that many did just that," the court wrote.
Attorneys for the state dismissed opponents' arguments about women being burdened by fewer abortion facilities, saying that nearly 9 in 10 women in Texas would still live within 150 miles of a provider.
Associated Press
Southeast Side man charged with neglecting dogs he kept for fighting
A man is facing several animal cruelty charges after officers
confiscated 10 pit bulls held in “deplorable conditions” at his
Southeast Side home, police said.
Juan Zamora, 49, of the 9700 block of South Avenue L in the East Side neighborhood, faces felony animal cruelty, felony neglect of owner’s duties and felony possession of dog-fighting equipment charges.
Zamora appeared in bond court Tuesday afternoon and was ordered held on $75,000 bond, according to court records.
Police executed a “dog-fighting related search warrant” at Zamora’s home about 11:45 a.m. last Thursday and found the 10 dogs, according to a police news release. Police turned over the dogs to Chicago’s Animal Care and Control for treatment.
Zamora wasn’t at home when police served the warrant, and turned himself in to police on Monday.
All 10 dogs, 3 females and 7 males, were at the animal care shelter, and they appeared to be in good health, said Ivan J. Capifali, deputy director of animal care and control. None of the dogs had to be destroyed, he said.
Police weren’t releasing further information.
Juan Zamora, 49, of the 9700 block of South Avenue L in the East Side neighborhood, faces felony animal cruelty, felony neglect of owner’s duties and felony possession of dog-fighting equipment charges.
Zamora appeared in bond court Tuesday afternoon and was ordered held on $75,000 bond, according to court records.
Police executed a “dog-fighting related search warrant” at Zamora’s home about 11:45 a.m. last Thursday and found the 10 dogs, according to a police news release. Police turned over the dogs to Chicago’s Animal Care and Control for treatment.
Zamora wasn’t at home when police served the warrant, and turned himself in to police on Monday.
All 10 dogs, 3 females and 7 males, were at the animal care shelter, and they appeared to be in good health, said Ivan J. Capifali, deputy director of animal care and control. None of the dogs had to be destroyed, he said.
Police weren’t releasing further information.
Letters to the editor: Elgin area volunteers head to D.C.
State cuts would hurt River View Rehab Center
The residents at River View Rehab Center are at risk as the state considers drastic cuts to Medicaid funding. Nursing homes across the state suffered $15 million in cuts for May and June and are now facing the possibility of $230 million in cuts for all of Fiscal Year 2016.
Such cuts would have a serious impact on the quality of care at River View. We would be forced to decrease staffing to bare minimums and eliminate extras that create the home-like environment our residents and their families have come to expect. We would also be forced to cut the level of activities for residents, and would be forced to delay needed renovations.
Remember, our residents are the ones who worked their whole lives, paid their taxes, served our country and built our community. But, in many cases, they have outlived their resources. When it comes to deciding where to cut, our residents must be our top priority.
Please join me in calling on elected officials in Springfield to hold the line on Medicaid funding for nursing homes.
Arshad Rahman, Administrator
River View Rehab Center
Elgin
Wildcats will become part of suburban zoo
Leave it to the idiots beyond the burbs to want to hunt wildcats. First of all, most hunters drink gallons of beer before they hunt, which means they shoot at loud sounds. Those loud sounds are usually other hunters who also downed gallons of beer.
As for the wildcats, they aren't as stupid as the hunters. They quickly find those places where hunters don't usually shoot. One is the south side of Chicago where the houses shoot back (with AK's). Another place is the Chicago burbs because those living in the burbs shoot back with something even more terrifying than AKs: lawyers.
The result is the wildcats join the zoo of varmints and critters already at home in the burbs: bears, cougars, wolves coyotes, foxes, raccoons, opossums, hawks, buzzards, deer, ground hogs, rats mice — and occasionally eagles. Note please that while the hunters may or may not threaten the wildcats, the bears, cougars, wolves, coyotes, foxes and eagles are a different story, altogether. It means wildcats always have the nearest tree in mind as they quest after rodents. Sooner or latter, they run for it only to find a house cat already occupying a branch. Still, as long as it finds an empty branch, both of them will only have eyes for whatever treed them.
Such is life in the suburban zoo.
Len Robertson
St. Charles
Elgin area volunteers head to D.C. to lobby for solution
Following the release Pope Francis' much-anticipated encyclical dealing with climate change, three volunteers from the Fox Valley chapter of Citizens' Climate Lobby will meet in Washington with their representatives and senators to press for legislation that places a fee on carbon and returns revenue to households.
The Fox Valley CCL members who are traveling to the nation's capital to attend the 6th International Citizens' Climate Lobby Conference, will spend a day, June 23, visiting the offices of senators DIck Durbin and Mark Kirk, as well as representatives Randy Hultgren and Peter Roskam. Their message: We need to reduce the risk of climate change by reducing the carbon pollution we currently emit. We can achieve that with a market-based solution that places a steadily-rising fee on carbon and gives the revenue back to consumers, thereby shielding families from the economic impact of higher energy costs.
As the advocates prepare to go to Washington, Pope Francis is releasing his encyclical — a papal letter sent to all bishops in the Catholic Church — calling for action to address climate change. Titled "Laudato Sii" (Praised Be), the encyclical speaks about the need to care for God's creation and to protect the most vulnerable from the ravages of global warming. Francis' encyclical comes in advance of his visit to the U.S. in September, when he will address a joint session of Congress and also speak at the UN General Assembly in New York. The pontiff's actions are timed to encourage nations to reach agreement on a global climate change accord in Paris at the end of the year.
"It's very exciting that the Pope's encyclical is being released just before we go to lobby our members of Congress," said Sandy Kaptain and Deni Mathews group leaders for the Fox Valley CCL chapter. "With one third of Congress being Catholic, Francis' message is bound to have a big impact."
In their meetings with members of Congress, CCL volunteers hope to assuage fears that placing a price on carbon will be detrimental to the economy. A study from Regional Economic Models, Inc. found that CCL's proposal, known as Carbon Fee and Dividend, would actually ADD 2.8 million jobs over 20 years while cutting carbon emissions in half.
"If it's done the right way, pricing carbon can actually be good for our economy," Kaptain said. "That can happen if we give all the money back to households. It will act as an economic stimulus."
The CCL International Conference in Washington is being held June 21-23, and features keynote speaker Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, who was named one of Time Magazine's most influential people and who also appeared in Showtime's award-winning series about climate change, "Years of Living Dangerously."
Sandy Kaptain,
Elgin
The residents at River View Rehab Center are at risk as the state considers drastic cuts to Medicaid funding. Nursing homes across the state suffered $15 million in cuts for May and June and are now facing the possibility of $230 million in cuts for all of Fiscal Year 2016.
Such cuts would have a serious impact on the quality of care at River View. We would be forced to decrease staffing to bare minimums and eliminate extras that create the home-like environment our residents and their families have come to expect. We would also be forced to cut the level of activities for residents, and would be forced to delay needed renovations.
Remember, our residents are the ones who worked their whole lives, paid their taxes, served our country and built our community. But, in many cases, they have outlived their resources. When it comes to deciding where to cut, our residents must be our top priority.
Please join me in calling on elected officials in Springfield to hold the line on Medicaid funding for nursing homes.
Arshad Rahman, Administrator
River View Rehab Center
Elgin
Wildcats will become part of suburban zoo
Leave it to the idiots beyond the burbs to want to hunt wildcats. First of all, most hunters drink gallons of beer before they hunt, which means they shoot at loud sounds. Those loud sounds are usually other hunters who also downed gallons of beer.
As for the wildcats, they aren't as stupid as the hunters. They quickly find those places where hunters don't usually shoot. One is the south side of Chicago where the houses shoot back (with AK's). Another place is the Chicago burbs because those living in the burbs shoot back with something even more terrifying than AKs: lawyers.
The result is the wildcats join the zoo of varmints and critters already at home in the burbs: bears, cougars, wolves coyotes, foxes, raccoons, opossums, hawks, buzzards, deer, ground hogs, rats mice — and occasionally eagles. Note please that while the hunters may or may not threaten the wildcats, the bears, cougars, wolves, coyotes, foxes and eagles are a different story, altogether. It means wildcats always have the nearest tree in mind as they quest after rodents. Sooner or latter, they run for it only to find a house cat already occupying a branch. Still, as long as it finds an empty branch, both of them will only have eyes for whatever treed them.
Such is life in the suburban zoo.
Len Robertson
St. Charles
Elgin area volunteers head to D.C. to lobby for solution
Following the release Pope Francis' much-anticipated encyclical dealing with climate change, three volunteers from the Fox Valley chapter of Citizens' Climate Lobby will meet in Washington with their representatives and senators to press for legislation that places a fee on carbon and returns revenue to households.
The Fox Valley CCL members who are traveling to the nation's capital to attend the 6th International Citizens' Climate Lobby Conference, will spend a day, June 23, visiting the offices of senators DIck Durbin and Mark Kirk, as well as representatives Randy Hultgren and Peter Roskam. Their message: We need to reduce the risk of climate change by reducing the carbon pollution we currently emit. We can achieve that with a market-based solution that places a steadily-rising fee on carbon and gives the revenue back to consumers, thereby shielding families from the economic impact of higher energy costs.
As the advocates prepare to go to Washington, Pope Francis is releasing his encyclical — a papal letter sent to all bishops in the Catholic Church — calling for action to address climate change. Titled "Laudato Sii" (Praised Be), the encyclical speaks about the need to care for God's creation and to protect the most vulnerable from the ravages of global warming. Francis' encyclical comes in advance of his visit to the U.S. in September, when he will address a joint session of Congress and also speak at the UN General Assembly in New York. The pontiff's actions are timed to encourage nations to reach agreement on a global climate change accord in Paris at the end of the year.
"It's very exciting that the Pope's encyclical is being released just before we go to lobby our members of Congress," said Sandy Kaptain and Deni Mathews group leaders for the Fox Valley CCL chapter. "With one third of Congress being Catholic, Francis' message is bound to have a big impact."
In their meetings with members of Congress, CCL volunteers hope to assuage fears that placing a price on carbon will be detrimental to the economy. A study from Regional Economic Models, Inc. found that CCL's proposal, known as Carbon Fee and Dividend, would actually ADD 2.8 million jobs over 20 years while cutting carbon emissions in half.
"If it's done the right way, pricing carbon can actually be good for our economy," Kaptain said. "That can happen if we give all the money back to households. It will act as an economic stimulus."
The CCL International Conference in Washington is being held June 21-23, and features keynote speaker Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, who was named one of Time Magazine's most influential people and who also appeared in Showtime's award-winning series about climate change, "Years of Living Dangerously."
Sandy Kaptain,
Elgin
Roche takes another shot at Alzheimer's after Biogen success
GENEVA — Roche Holding is weighing a second test for an experimental
Alzheimer's drug that failed in an initial study, after a similar
offering from Biogen showed promise in slowing the memory-robbing
ailment.
Roche stopped a trial of gantenerumab in December because patients weren't benefiting more than those receiving a placebo. Four months later, Biogen said that its drug slowed the progression of the disease, supporting a long-held hypothesis that targeting a protein linked to the telltale plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients may yield a treatment.
Roche may re-run its trial with a higher dose and other adjustments to the study, said Paulo Fontoura, head of neuroscience clinical development for the Basel, Switzerland- based company. Like Biogen's medicine, gantenerumab is an antibody that targets the beta amyloid protein, suggesting that if Biogen's drug works, so should Roche's.
"Dose is one of the key factors we are looking at now," Fontoura said in a telephone interview. "The two molecules are remarkably similar. It's more to do with how the experiment was set up."
There are 47.5 million people suffering from Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia -- more than the population living with HIV/AIDS. The number is set to almost double by 2030, according to the World Health Organization, which estimates that the global cost of dementia care was $600 billion in 2010.
The only drugs now available, including Eisai Co.'s Aricept, can alleviate symptoms such as declining mental function. But the benefits are short-lived and there's no cure. Among 244 drugs tested in Alzheimer's between 2002 and 2012, only one -- Lundbeck A/S's Ebixa -- has won marketing approval, a study published last year found.
Gantenerumab appeared to be the latest casualty when Roche halted its trial. But the Swiss company was buoyed after Biogen said its drug, aducanumab, lowered plaque in the brain and reduced cognitive decline by as much as 71 percent.
"Everyone was excited to see that data" because it renewed confidence in targeting beta amyloid, Fontoura said.
Roche is still analyzing its study to figure out why it didn't get the same result. Biogen's trial was small and the results need to be confirmed in larger studies that Biogen is doing, according to Fontoura.
"The Biogen data is a little bit of a surprise, because typically you need much larger sample sizes to see that much of a signal," he said. "In Alzheimer's unfortunately we're still in a world where we do need pretty large datasets to get a robust signal."
Biogen expects to begin late-stage studies of its drug this year, spokeswoman Catherine Falcetti said in an e-mailed response to questions.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company plans to test two doses, including a lower dose in patients with a genetic mutation linked to higher risk of Alzheimer's. Those patients had the highest rates of side effects in Biogen's initial study.
Roche is also evaluating a second trial of gantenerumab it's conducting for mild Alzheimer's, to see if there are ways to increase the chance of success, Fontoura said.
Roche gained gantenerumab through a partnership with Morphosys AG, which stands to earn payments if the therapy meets developmental targets, and royalties on sales.
Morphosys shares rose on Tuesday because Roche's plan to revisit gantenerumab shows it's "more confident" in the drug's potential, Olav Zilian, an analyst at Helvea SA in Geneva, said in an e-mail. The stock had plunged the most in a decade when Roche stopped the trial.
Safety is an important factor in finding Alzheimer's treatments. In Biogen's study, more than half of patients with a genetic predisposition to the disease experienced brain swelling, and one-third stopped treatment because of it.
"We're in a relatively desperate situation," said Ian Le Guillou, a spokesman for the London-based Alzheimer's Society. "We have no effective treatments for Alzheimer's and really people would be willing to accept side effects if we could show that the treatment was effective."
Roche may have a trump card: a drug called crenezumab that may be safer and more effective than gantenerumab.
While a study of crenezumab in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's failed to meet its main goals, an analysis of those with the earliest stages of the disease found a 35 percent reduction in cognitive decline. Roche is now testing higher doses of the drug, licensed from AC Immune of Switzerland, Fontoura said.
"As we've found and Biogen has found, at higher doses of these antibodies, you may start to see some safety events," he said. "If crenezumab can really prove to be an efficacious molecule that has less of that, then it will obviously be a very valuable tool for clinical use."
Roche stopped a trial of gantenerumab in December because patients weren't benefiting more than those receiving a placebo. Four months later, Biogen said that its drug slowed the progression of the disease, supporting a long-held hypothesis that targeting a protein linked to the telltale plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients may yield a treatment.
Roche may re-run its trial with a higher dose and other adjustments to the study, said Paulo Fontoura, head of neuroscience clinical development for the Basel, Switzerland- based company. Like Biogen's medicine, gantenerumab is an antibody that targets the beta amyloid protein, suggesting that if Biogen's drug works, so should Roche's.
"Dose is one of the key factors we are looking at now," Fontoura said in a telephone interview. "The two molecules are remarkably similar. It's more to do with how the experiment was set up."
There are 47.5 million people suffering from Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia -- more than the population living with HIV/AIDS. The number is set to almost double by 2030, according to the World Health Organization, which estimates that the global cost of dementia care was $600 billion in 2010.
The only drugs now available, including Eisai Co.'s Aricept, can alleviate symptoms such as declining mental function. But the benefits are short-lived and there's no cure. Among 244 drugs tested in Alzheimer's between 2002 and 2012, only one -- Lundbeck A/S's Ebixa -- has won marketing approval, a study published last year found.
Gantenerumab appeared to be the latest casualty when Roche halted its trial. But the Swiss company was buoyed after Biogen said its drug, aducanumab, lowered plaque in the brain and reduced cognitive decline by as much as 71 percent.
"Everyone was excited to see that data" because it renewed confidence in targeting beta amyloid, Fontoura said.
Roche is still analyzing its study to figure out why it didn't get the same result. Biogen's trial was small and the results need to be confirmed in larger studies that Biogen is doing, according to Fontoura.
"The Biogen data is a little bit of a surprise, because typically you need much larger sample sizes to see that much of a signal," he said. "In Alzheimer's unfortunately we're still in a world where we do need pretty large datasets to get a robust signal."
Biogen expects to begin late-stage studies of its drug this year, spokeswoman Catherine Falcetti said in an e-mailed response to questions.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company plans to test two doses, including a lower dose in patients with a genetic mutation linked to higher risk of Alzheimer's. Those patients had the highest rates of side effects in Biogen's initial study.
Roche is also evaluating a second trial of gantenerumab it's conducting for mild Alzheimer's, to see if there are ways to increase the chance of success, Fontoura said.
Roche gained gantenerumab through a partnership with Morphosys AG, which stands to earn payments if the therapy meets developmental targets, and royalties on sales.
Morphosys shares rose on Tuesday because Roche's plan to revisit gantenerumab shows it's "more confident" in the drug's potential, Olav Zilian, an analyst at Helvea SA in Geneva, said in an e-mail. The stock had plunged the most in a decade when Roche stopped the trial.
Safety is an important factor in finding Alzheimer's treatments. In Biogen's study, more than half of patients with a genetic predisposition to the disease experienced brain swelling, and one-third stopped treatment because of it.
"We're in a relatively desperate situation," said Ian Le Guillou, a spokesman for the London-based Alzheimer's Society. "We have no effective treatments for Alzheimer's and really people would be willing to accept side effects if we could show that the treatment was effective."
Roche may have a trump card: a drug called crenezumab that may be safer and more effective than gantenerumab.
While a study of crenezumab in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's failed to meet its main goals, an analysis of those with the earliest stages of the disease found a 35 percent reduction in cognitive decline. Roche is now testing higher doses of the drug, licensed from AC Immune of Switzerland, Fontoura said.
"As we've found and Biogen has found, at higher doses of these antibodies, you may start to see some safety events," he said. "If crenezumab can really prove to be an efficacious molecule that has less of that, then it will obviously be a very valuable tool for clinical use."
Commentary: Hurray, American Pharoah! Now, let's end horse racing.
Now that American Pharoah has captured the first Triple Crown in
decades, many are wondering what that means for the future of horse
racing, and of the colt himself. The New York Times's Joe Drape believes
the feat will give horse racing "a badly needed shot in the arm," with
no indication of whether the hypodermic metaphor is meant to be ironic.
American Pharoah's trainer, Bob Baffert, said he wants the horse to race
as long as possible, though he did give a nod to the idea of letting
the three-year-old quit while he's ahead.
Here's my wish: That American Pharoah goes out on a high note, and with him, the entire sport of horse racing.
Frankly, it's a wonder that horse racing has lasted this long. Idealists would point to the sport's long history in this country and to the unique place horses occupy in the American consciousness. But save for a few big races each year that are ultimately more cultural events and excuses to drink than marquee athletic showcases, the sport has been on a steady decline. And despite its blue-blood reputation, the "sport of kings" is really just the sport of vice, kept afloat by a system of gambling and doping that amounts to institutionalized animal abuse.
The main controversy today is over an anti-bleeding drug known as Lasix. In the U.S., it's often administered on the day of the race, along with up to 26 other permitted substances; race-day medications are banned in almost every other country. Several top trainers have banded together to push for a plan to ban race-day medications in the U.S., citing the negative effects on the health of the animal and the reputation of the sport. Those resistant to change, including the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, claim that injecting drugs is actually good for a horse's health.
This argument about what's "best" for the horses blatantly overlooks the sport's role in endangering their health in the first place. Lasix is used to treat bleeding in the lungs, a condition called exercise induced pulmonary hemorrhage. EIPH is for the most part found only in racing animals, camels and greyhounds as well as horses. There are two theories of what causes EIPH in horses — that is, the mechanism by which hemorrhaging occurs — but as the disease's name would suggest, it's undoubtedly related to abnormally strenuous physical activity. You can debate the benefits of Lasix all you want, but it's clear the best thing for a horse's health would be to keep him off the track.
Horse racing is inherently cruel, and the problems start, literally, from birth: As the Indianapolis Star's Gregg Doyel notes, we should expect nothing less than physical breakdown from an animal bred to sustain an abnormally muscular carriage on skinnier-than-usually legs. What you don't see behind the veil of seersucker and mint juleps are the thousands of horses that collapse under the weight of their science-project bodies. This weekend at Belmont, all eyes on American Pharoah meant nobody was paying attention to Helwan, the four-year-old French colt who had to be euthanized on the track after breaking his left-front cannon bone. It was Helwan's first time racing on Lasix.
Helwan's breakdown is by no means an outlier. In 2008, a national audience watched in horror as Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line at the Kentucky Derby with two broken ankles and had to be immediately euthanized. In 2006, then-undefeated Barbaro suffered a similar injury at the Preakness and was eventually put down as well.
In 2012, the New York Times conducted a thorough investigation of the dangers of racing and the unchecked doping that furthers the risks, revealing that, "24 horses die each week at racetracks across America." From 2009 to 2012, 6,600 horses suffered injuries or breakdowns. In that same period, 3,600 horses died at state-regulated tracks.
It's easy for the public to overlook these facts. Most Americans only care about horse racing during the month-long Triple Crown season. And just as in sports played by humans, the high-profile stars get all the attention while the plight of the little guy goes ignored. The horses at the most risk are cheaper animals competing in lower-tier races, known as claiming races. According to the Times, horses in claiming races suffer injuries or breakdowns at a 22-percent higher rate than upper-tier horses, partially because drug regulation is much more lax than on the Triple Crown circuit.
It's true that abuses and safety concerns exist to varying degrees across all sports. But the more we have learned about health risks in football and hockey, and of performance-enhancing drug use in baseball and cycling, the more we stepped up our efforts to rectify the problems. As football players learn of the game's long-term health dangers, many rethink their participation. But this exposes racing's fundamental ill: A horse can't consent.
"He's the one that won — it wasn't me," Baffert said after American Pharoah's win at Belmont, reminding us who the athlete really is in racing: "It was the horse." It's time to rethink a sport in which the athlete has no say in the terms of his participation.
Kavitha Davidson writes about sports for Bloomberg View.
Here's my wish: That American Pharoah goes out on a high note, and with him, the entire sport of horse racing.
Frankly, it's a wonder that horse racing has lasted this long. Idealists would point to the sport's long history in this country and to the unique place horses occupy in the American consciousness. But save for a few big races each year that are ultimately more cultural events and excuses to drink than marquee athletic showcases, the sport has been on a steady decline. And despite its blue-blood reputation, the "sport of kings" is really just the sport of vice, kept afloat by a system of gambling and doping that amounts to institutionalized animal abuse.
The main controversy today is over an anti-bleeding drug known as Lasix. In the U.S., it's often administered on the day of the race, along with up to 26 other permitted substances; race-day medications are banned in almost every other country. Several top trainers have banded together to push for a plan to ban race-day medications in the U.S., citing the negative effects on the health of the animal and the reputation of the sport. Those resistant to change, including the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, claim that injecting drugs is actually good for a horse's health.
This argument about what's "best" for the horses blatantly overlooks the sport's role in endangering their health in the first place. Lasix is used to treat bleeding in the lungs, a condition called exercise induced pulmonary hemorrhage. EIPH is for the most part found only in racing animals, camels and greyhounds as well as horses. There are two theories of what causes EIPH in horses — that is, the mechanism by which hemorrhaging occurs — but as the disease's name would suggest, it's undoubtedly related to abnormally strenuous physical activity. You can debate the benefits of Lasix all you want, but it's clear the best thing for a horse's health would be to keep him off the track.
Horse racing is inherently cruel, and the problems start, literally, from birth: As the Indianapolis Star's Gregg Doyel notes, we should expect nothing less than physical breakdown from an animal bred to sustain an abnormally muscular carriage on skinnier-than-usually legs. What you don't see behind the veil of seersucker and mint juleps are the thousands of horses that collapse under the weight of their science-project bodies. This weekend at Belmont, all eyes on American Pharoah meant nobody was paying attention to Helwan, the four-year-old French colt who had to be euthanized on the track after breaking his left-front cannon bone. It was Helwan's first time racing on Lasix.
Helwan's breakdown is by no means an outlier. In 2008, a national audience watched in horror as Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line at the Kentucky Derby with two broken ankles and had to be immediately euthanized. In 2006, then-undefeated Barbaro suffered a similar injury at the Preakness and was eventually put down as well.
In 2012, the New York Times conducted a thorough investigation of the dangers of racing and the unchecked doping that furthers the risks, revealing that, "24 horses die each week at racetracks across America." From 2009 to 2012, 6,600 horses suffered injuries or breakdowns. In that same period, 3,600 horses died at state-regulated tracks.
It's easy for the public to overlook these facts. Most Americans only care about horse racing during the month-long Triple Crown season. And just as in sports played by humans, the high-profile stars get all the attention while the plight of the little guy goes ignored. The horses at the most risk are cheaper animals competing in lower-tier races, known as claiming races. According to the Times, horses in claiming races suffer injuries or breakdowns at a 22-percent higher rate than upper-tier horses, partially because drug regulation is much more lax than on the Triple Crown circuit.
It's true that abuses and safety concerns exist to varying degrees across all sports. But the more we have learned about health risks in football and hockey, and of performance-enhancing drug use in baseball and cycling, the more we stepped up our efforts to rectify the problems. As football players learn of the game's long-term health dangers, many rethink their participation. But this exposes racing's fundamental ill: A horse can't consent.
"He's the one that won — it wasn't me," Baffert said after American Pharoah's win at Belmont, reminding us who the athlete really is in racing: "It was the horse." It's time to rethink a sport in which the athlete has no say in the terms of his participation.
Kavitha Davidson writes about sports for Bloomberg View.
Record job vacancies signal U.S. can sustain employment gains
WASHINGTON — The good news on the jobs front continued as American
employers put out a record number of help-wanted signs in April,
signaling gains in hiring can be sustained.
The number of positions waiting to be filled increased by 267,000 to 5.38 million, the most in data back to December 2000, from 5.11 million in March, the Labor Department reported Tuesday in Washington. Openings were widespread among industries, including health care, retailers and providers of professional services.
As vacancies mount and unemployment wanes, employers will be pressured to boost wages to attract the most talented workers. The report contains some of the metrics Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen tracks to determine the health of the job market as policy makers discuss when to raise interest rates.
"It's a tight labor market -- it's good for job seekers," said Jeremy Schwartz, an economist at Credit Suisse in New York. "The labor market is continuing to do quite well, and even as we're approaching full employment, payroll growth is not slowing down."
The 267,000 increase in openings for April was the largest since March 2012. Vacancies in health care jumped by 100,000 to 910,000, while retailers sought 543,000 employees, almost 30,000 more than in March.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, adds context to monthly payrolls figures by measuring dynamics such as resignations, help-wanted ads and the pace of hiring. Although it lags the Labor Department's other jobs data by a month, Yellen follows the report as a measure of labor-market tightness and worker confidence.
Some 2.7 million people quit their jobs in April, little changed from March, Tuesday's report showed. The quits rate, which was 2 percent when the recession started at the end of 2007, fell to 1.9 percent in April from 2 percent in March.
"The measures of the strong economy are pointing in the same direction," Labor Secretary Tom Perez said in a June 5 phone interview. "People don't quit unless they think they're going to get a better job."
The hiring rate -- the number of people who got new jobs divided by the number who worked or were paid -- fell to 3.5 percent in April from 3.6 percent. Hires decreased to 5.01 million from 5.09 million, according to Tuesday's figures.
The report follows figures last week that showed employers added 280,000 workers to payrolls in May, more than forecast, and the unemployment rate edged up to 5.5 percent from 5.4 percent as more Americans entered the workforce.
In another sign of a tightening job market, the number of workers saying they are so discouraged by job prospects that they've given up looking dropped by 193,000 in May to 563,000, the fewest since October 2008, according to last week's report from the Labor Department.
Another report Monday showed other parts of the economy were emerging from a first-quarter slump. Sales by wholesalers climbed 1.6 percent in April from the prior month, the biggest gain since March 2014. Distributors also boosted inventories by 0.4 percent, more than forecast, indicating stockpiling for better times will contribute to economic growth this quarter.
The April job postings data showed the employment picture has remained resilient after the strongest year for job gains since 1999, even as other parts of the economy suffered under a stronger dollar, West Coast port labor disruptions and severe weather in the first quarter. Monthly job gains have averaged 217,400 so far this year after an average 259,670 in 2014.
Wage growth has been slower to materialize in this expansion. Average hourly earnings showed more signs of life in May, with the year-over-year increase in wages climbing to 2.3 percent for the highest since August 2013. A separate Labor Department measure of paychecks, the Employment Cost Index, rose in the first quarter by the most since the end of 2008.
Employers including Dublin, California-based Ross Stores Inc. are seeing faster pay increases on the horizon.
"We expect wage rates are going to move up over the next few years," Chief Financial Officer Michael Hartshorn said in a May 21 earnings call. Even as labor costs rise, "there is a silver lining here in that the customer has more money in their pocket because of higher wage rates that could well help our top line as well."
About 1.6 people are vying for every opening, compared with about 1.8 when the last recession began in December 2007, according to Tuesday's report.
In the year that ended in April, employers added a net 2.8 million jobs, representing 60 million hires and 57.2 million separations.
The number of positions waiting to be filled increased by 267,000 to 5.38 million, the most in data back to December 2000, from 5.11 million in March, the Labor Department reported Tuesday in Washington. Openings were widespread among industries, including health care, retailers and providers of professional services.
As vacancies mount and unemployment wanes, employers will be pressured to boost wages to attract the most talented workers. The report contains some of the metrics Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen tracks to determine the health of the job market as policy makers discuss when to raise interest rates.
"It's a tight labor market -- it's good for job seekers," said Jeremy Schwartz, an economist at Credit Suisse in New York. "The labor market is continuing to do quite well, and even as we're approaching full employment, payroll growth is not slowing down."
The 267,000 increase in openings for April was the largest since March 2012. Vacancies in health care jumped by 100,000 to 910,000, while retailers sought 543,000 employees, almost 30,000 more than in March.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, adds context to monthly payrolls figures by measuring dynamics such as resignations, help-wanted ads and the pace of hiring. Although it lags the Labor Department's other jobs data by a month, Yellen follows the report as a measure of labor-market tightness and worker confidence.
Some 2.7 million people quit their jobs in April, little changed from March, Tuesday's report showed. The quits rate, which was 2 percent when the recession started at the end of 2007, fell to 1.9 percent in April from 2 percent in March.
"The measures of the strong economy are pointing in the same direction," Labor Secretary Tom Perez said in a June 5 phone interview. "People don't quit unless they think they're going to get a better job."
The hiring rate -- the number of people who got new jobs divided by the number who worked or were paid -- fell to 3.5 percent in April from 3.6 percent. Hires decreased to 5.01 million from 5.09 million, according to Tuesday's figures.
The report follows figures last week that showed employers added 280,000 workers to payrolls in May, more than forecast, and the unemployment rate edged up to 5.5 percent from 5.4 percent as more Americans entered the workforce.
In another sign of a tightening job market, the number of workers saying they are so discouraged by job prospects that they've given up looking dropped by 193,000 in May to 563,000, the fewest since October 2008, according to last week's report from the Labor Department.
Another report Monday showed other parts of the economy were emerging from a first-quarter slump. Sales by wholesalers climbed 1.6 percent in April from the prior month, the biggest gain since March 2014. Distributors also boosted inventories by 0.4 percent, more than forecast, indicating stockpiling for better times will contribute to economic growth this quarter.
The April job postings data showed the employment picture has remained resilient after the strongest year for job gains since 1999, even as other parts of the economy suffered under a stronger dollar, West Coast port labor disruptions and severe weather in the first quarter. Monthly job gains have averaged 217,400 so far this year after an average 259,670 in 2014.
Wage growth has been slower to materialize in this expansion. Average hourly earnings showed more signs of life in May, with the year-over-year increase in wages climbing to 2.3 percent for the highest since August 2013. A separate Labor Department measure of paychecks, the Employment Cost Index, rose in the first quarter by the most since the end of 2008.
Employers including Dublin, California-based Ross Stores Inc. are seeing faster pay increases on the horizon.
"We expect wage rates are going to move up over the next few years," Chief Financial Officer Michael Hartshorn said in a May 21 earnings call. Even as labor costs rise, "there is a silver lining here in that the customer has more money in their pocket because of higher wage rates that could well help our top line as well."
About 1.6 people are vying for every opening, compared with about 1.8 when the last recession began in December 2007, according to Tuesday's report.
In the year that ended in April, employers added a net 2.8 million jobs, representing 60 million hires and 57.2 million separations.
Congress is responsible for hospitals' price-gouging
U.S. hospitals are price-gouging the people who can least afford it,
according to a new paper. But don't blame them. Blame Congress.
The paper, written by Ge Bai at Washington and Lee University and Gerard F. Anderson at Johns Hopkins and published Monday in Health Affairs, compared the 2012 list price for services at 4,483 hospitals to what Medicare paid that year for the same services. Because Medicare rates are a proxy for what it actually costs hospitals to provide a given service, the difference between the two numbers indicates how much hospitals are marking up their prices.
Bai and Anderson found that, on average, hospitals charge for a service at 3.4 times their actual cost. What's more striking is what happened at the top of the distribution: The highest-priced 10 percent of hospitals charged at least 5.7 times what Medicare paid, while the 50 most expensive hospitals charged an average of 10.1 times more.
For people covered by Medicare or Medicaid, which have their own fee schedules, those differences are irrelevant. The same is true for people on private insurance, so long as the hospital is in their coverage network. But if you're among the 30 million or so adult Americans who don't have health insurance, or if you wind up at a hospital that's not in your network, then in most cases you're at the mercy of a hospital's prices. That can mean chewing through your savings, relying on whatever discounts the hospital is willing to provide or declaring bankruptcy.
You could read these results to mean that too many hospitals are for-profit enterprises, which describes 49 of the 50 highest-charging hospitals (compared with just 30 percent of hospitals nationwide): Half of the 50 were run by Community Health Systems Inc., and another quarter by the Hospital Corporation of America. (Both companies said in statements that their hospitals offer discounts to the uninsured.)
But these data are better interpreted as evidence of policy failure. The Affordable Care Act took some steps to stop hospitals from price-gouging the uninsured, requiring they charge these patients no more than what commercial health plans will pay. But those protections only apply to nonprofit hospitals, which, as Bai and Anderson's data suggest, aren't the problem. And if for-profit hospitals are willing to offer meaningful discounts to the uninsured, as they contend, why not enshrine those policies in legislation? Meanwhile, there remains little protection against high out-of-network prices -- and that has become more important as insurers narrow their networks to reduce costs.
The conservative response to these types of problems is more transparency: Force hospitals to post their prices, and people will respond by shopping around. The answer to market failure is, by this reading, more market.
Bai and Anderson explain the limits of that approach. First, it requires that prospective patients know the diagnostic codes for each individual service they'll receive, which each hospital may bundle differently. That requires knowing which services the physicians involved will order. That, in turn, means knowing which physicians will be involved in the first place. And all that goes out the window if the service is an emergency.
There are fixes for this. California has a law that prevents hospitals from charging most uninsured patients no more than what Medicare pays. From the 1970s until last year, Maryland required each of its hospitals to charge all payers the same price for services, and it recently switched to an even more radical system of global budgets for hospitals, under which they get a fixed amount of money for treating all patients.
The problem isn't an absence of options but an absence of time. By wasting the past five years on a fake debate over Obamacare -- premised on a theoretical Republican alternative that the party still can't agree on, culminating in a disingenuous argument over the precise meaning of "established by the state"-- Congress and the states have squandered time that could have been spent fixing some of the actual problems that still plague U.S. health care.
The culprit behind hospital price-gouging isn't the people who run those hospitals. It's the policy makers who can't get around to fixing it.
_ Christopher Flavelle writes editorials on health care, economics and taxation for Bloomberg View.
For more columns from Bloomberg View, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/view
The paper, written by Ge Bai at Washington and Lee University and Gerard F. Anderson at Johns Hopkins and published Monday in Health Affairs, compared the 2012 list price for services at 4,483 hospitals to what Medicare paid that year for the same services. Because Medicare rates are a proxy for what it actually costs hospitals to provide a given service, the difference between the two numbers indicates how much hospitals are marking up their prices.
Bai and Anderson found that, on average, hospitals charge for a service at 3.4 times their actual cost. What's more striking is what happened at the top of the distribution: The highest-priced 10 percent of hospitals charged at least 5.7 times what Medicare paid, while the 50 most expensive hospitals charged an average of 10.1 times more.
For people covered by Medicare or Medicaid, which have their own fee schedules, those differences are irrelevant. The same is true for people on private insurance, so long as the hospital is in their coverage network. But if you're among the 30 million or so adult Americans who don't have health insurance, or if you wind up at a hospital that's not in your network, then in most cases you're at the mercy of a hospital's prices. That can mean chewing through your savings, relying on whatever discounts the hospital is willing to provide or declaring bankruptcy.
You could read these results to mean that too many hospitals are for-profit enterprises, which describes 49 of the 50 highest-charging hospitals (compared with just 30 percent of hospitals nationwide): Half of the 50 were run by Community Health Systems Inc., and another quarter by the Hospital Corporation of America. (Both companies said in statements that their hospitals offer discounts to the uninsured.)
But these data are better interpreted as evidence of policy failure. The Affordable Care Act took some steps to stop hospitals from price-gouging the uninsured, requiring they charge these patients no more than what commercial health plans will pay. But those protections only apply to nonprofit hospitals, which, as Bai and Anderson's data suggest, aren't the problem. And if for-profit hospitals are willing to offer meaningful discounts to the uninsured, as they contend, why not enshrine those policies in legislation? Meanwhile, there remains little protection against high out-of-network prices -- and that has become more important as insurers narrow their networks to reduce costs.
The conservative response to these types of problems is more transparency: Force hospitals to post their prices, and people will respond by shopping around. The answer to market failure is, by this reading, more market.
Bai and Anderson explain the limits of that approach. First, it requires that prospective patients know the diagnostic codes for each individual service they'll receive, which each hospital may bundle differently. That requires knowing which services the physicians involved will order. That, in turn, means knowing which physicians will be involved in the first place. And all that goes out the window if the service is an emergency.
There are fixes for this. California has a law that prevents hospitals from charging most uninsured patients no more than what Medicare pays. From the 1970s until last year, Maryland required each of its hospitals to charge all payers the same price for services, and it recently switched to an even more radical system of global budgets for hospitals, under which they get a fixed amount of money for treating all patients.
The problem isn't an absence of options but an absence of time. By wasting the past five years on a fake debate over Obamacare -- premised on a theoretical Republican alternative that the party still can't agree on, culminating in a disingenuous argument over the precise meaning of "established by the state"-- Congress and the states have squandered time that could have been spent fixing some of the actual problems that still plague U.S. health care.
The culprit behind hospital price-gouging isn't the people who run those hospitals. It's the policy makers who can't get around to fixing it.
_ Christopher Flavelle writes editorials on health care, economics and taxation for Bloomberg View.
For more columns from Bloomberg View, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/view
Virus specialists probe S.Korea's deadly MERS-CoV outbreak
HONG KONG — Infectious disease specialists from around the world
began probing South Korea's outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome
coronavirus amid criticism that officials took too long to implement
infection-control measures.
Nearly a month after MERS-Cov arrived in a traveler returning from Qatar, Acting Prime Minister Choi Kyung Hwan said Tuesday the government will begin an aggressive response to end the outbreak this week. One patient under quarantine orders from South Korea flew to Hong Kong and traveled to Huizhou and Shenzhen while sick, risking spreading the infection in southern China.
"They missed opportunities to contain the virus at the very beginning," said Leo Poon, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong's School of Public Health. The first infected "patient was not diagnosed with MERS for a long time, which means he had opportunities to shed MERS for quite a while and could have infected more people in that period."
An eight-person team convened by the World Health Organization began studying on Tuesday how 95 people were infected with the virus -- seven of them fatally -- and will offer recommendations to contain the epidemic, said Alison Clements-Hunt, a WHO spokeswoman in Manila.
"This mission should bring us a step closer to having a better understanding of the nature of the virus," she said.
Mission participants, invited by South Korea's health ministry, include Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director-general for health security; Abdullah Assiri, a health official from Saudi Arabia; Martin Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Malik Peiris, director of the University of Hong Kong's School of Public Health.
The health ministry added 8 new MERS-CoV cases Tuesday, after reporting 23 on Monday and 22 on Sunday. That suggests government infection-control efforts are working, Clements-Hunt said. With more than 2,500 people being monitored for symptoms, more infections are likely. It may take as long as 14 days for symptoms to appear after exposure to the virus, she said.
"Infection control has dramatically improved," said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis, who has had discussions with South Korean investigators though isn't part of the mission.
Health officials need to continue tracking down and checking everyone in contact with an infected person, he said.
While the South Korean response to MERS-CoV is "very encouraging," the initial response was mishandled, said Benjamin Neuman, a virologist at the University of Reading's School of Biological Sciences.
"It took 11 days from the announcement of the first case until the major effort to find and isolate contacts of infected people got under way," Neuman said. "Eleven days is a long time for a virus like MERS -- enough time to infect a second wave of cases and begin a third, as we have seen."
WHO was notified on May 20 by South Korea of its first MERS-CoV case -- which occurred in a 68-year-old man who'd traveled to Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar from April 18 to May 4, according to a May 24 statement. The man fell ill on May 11, sought medical care the following day, was hospitalized on May 15 and discharged two days later.
That evening, he sought treatment in the emergency room of another hospital and was tested positive for MERS-CoV three days later, when he was transferred to another facility for isolation. The following day, someone in contact with the man at home and a patient who shared his hospital room were confirmed to have the virus also, setting off the outbreak in South Korea.
All of the cases in South Korea have been linked to exposure to MERS-CoV in a hospital or clinic, suggesting the virus is spreading among patients and health-care workers rather than more broadly in the community.
Patients were treated in more than 20 South Korean hospitals, which weren't immediately identified by authorities so as to alert doctors to patients potentially exposed to the virus, Poon said.
"If that information had been shared, people there would have been on higher alert and health-care workers could have paid particular attention to potential cases," he said.
Previous MERS-Cov outbreaks were all subdued by implementing WHO guidelines around infection control and finding and monitoring everyone in contact with infected people, WHO's Clements-Hunt said.
The mission will assess South Korea's infection control measures and determine whether guidelines need to be amended, she said, adding that the first case in South Korea wasn't picked up straight away and that doctors, epidemiologists and lab technicians there hadn't seen the virus before.
After some initial problems, the government is now complying with WHO guidelines and will make changes to its public health response procedures, said Song Dae Sub, a professor of pharmacy at Korea University in Seoul, who is assisting the investigation.
Regulations for managing infectious diseases in hospitals will be "amended extensively," he said, adding that, unlike China, which has battled highly pathogenic bird flu and SARS, South Korea hasn't had as much experience with emerging pathogens.
"It seems to have taken the country by surprise," said Raina MacIntyre, head of the school of public health and community medicine at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "This highlights the need for countries to have good preparedness plans in place and not just ones that sit in a ministerial office -- it needs to be communicated right down to the people working on the front line."
_ With assistance from Sam Kim and Heesu Lee in Seoul.
Nearly a month after MERS-Cov arrived in a traveler returning from Qatar, Acting Prime Minister Choi Kyung Hwan said Tuesday the government will begin an aggressive response to end the outbreak this week. One patient under quarantine orders from South Korea flew to Hong Kong and traveled to Huizhou and Shenzhen while sick, risking spreading the infection in southern China.
"They missed opportunities to contain the virus at the very beginning," said Leo Poon, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong's School of Public Health. The first infected "patient was not diagnosed with MERS for a long time, which means he had opportunities to shed MERS for quite a while and could have infected more people in that period."
An eight-person team convened by the World Health Organization began studying on Tuesday how 95 people were infected with the virus -- seven of them fatally -- and will offer recommendations to contain the epidemic, said Alison Clements-Hunt, a WHO spokeswoman in Manila.
"This mission should bring us a step closer to having a better understanding of the nature of the virus," she said.
Mission participants, invited by South Korea's health ministry, include Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director-general for health security; Abdullah Assiri, a health official from Saudi Arabia; Martin Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Malik Peiris, director of the University of Hong Kong's School of Public Health.
The health ministry added 8 new MERS-CoV cases Tuesday, after reporting 23 on Monday and 22 on Sunday. That suggests government infection-control efforts are working, Clements-Hunt said. With more than 2,500 people being monitored for symptoms, more infections are likely. It may take as long as 14 days for symptoms to appear after exposure to the virus, she said.
"Infection control has dramatically improved," said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis, who has had discussions with South Korean investigators though isn't part of the mission.
Health officials need to continue tracking down and checking everyone in contact with an infected person, he said.
While the South Korean response to MERS-CoV is "very encouraging," the initial response was mishandled, said Benjamin Neuman, a virologist at the University of Reading's School of Biological Sciences.
"It took 11 days from the announcement of the first case until the major effort to find and isolate contacts of infected people got under way," Neuman said. "Eleven days is a long time for a virus like MERS -- enough time to infect a second wave of cases and begin a third, as we have seen."
WHO was notified on May 20 by South Korea of its first MERS-CoV case -- which occurred in a 68-year-old man who'd traveled to Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar from April 18 to May 4, according to a May 24 statement. The man fell ill on May 11, sought medical care the following day, was hospitalized on May 15 and discharged two days later.
That evening, he sought treatment in the emergency room of another hospital and was tested positive for MERS-CoV three days later, when he was transferred to another facility for isolation. The following day, someone in contact with the man at home and a patient who shared his hospital room were confirmed to have the virus also, setting off the outbreak in South Korea.
All of the cases in South Korea have been linked to exposure to MERS-CoV in a hospital or clinic, suggesting the virus is spreading among patients and health-care workers rather than more broadly in the community.
Patients were treated in more than 20 South Korean hospitals, which weren't immediately identified by authorities so as to alert doctors to patients potentially exposed to the virus, Poon said.
"If that information had been shared, people there would have been on higher alert and health-care workers could have paid particular attention to potential cases," he said.
Previous MERS-Cov outbreaks were all subdued by implementing WHO guidelines around infection control and finding and monitoring everyone in contact with infected people, WHO's Clements-Hunt said.
The mission will assess South Korea's infection control measures and determine whether guidelines need to be amended, she said, adding that the first case in South Korea wasn't picked up straight away and that doctors, epidemiologists and lab technicians there hadn't seen the virus before.
After some initial problems, the government is now complying with WHO guidelines and will make changes to its public health response procedures, said Song Dae Sub, a professor of pharmacy at Korea University in Seoul, who is assisting the investigation.
Regulations for managing infectious diseases in hospitals will be "amended extensively," he said, adding that, unlike China, which has battled highly pathogenic bird flu and SARS, South Korea hasn't had as much experience with emerging pathogens.
"It seems to have taken the country by surprise," said Raina MacIntyre, head of the school of public health and community medicine at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "This highlights the need for countries to have good preparedness plans in place and not just ones that sit in a ministerial office -- it needs to be communicated right down to the people working on the front line."
_ With assistance from Sam Kim and Heesu Lee in Seoul.
Can Republicans win by losing at the Supreme Court?
With the Supreme Court poised to issue blockbuster rulings on
same-sex marriage and health care, Republicans have a blueprint for
victory: They need to lose.
Republicans have played a leading role in asking the court to undercut the health-care act by barring tax subsidies for people who buy insurance in at least 34 states. GOP state officials are urging the court to uphold their gay-marriage bans.
Yet legal success on either front would throw the party-and its presidential candidates-into a political thicket. A victory on health care could strip insurance from more than 6 million people, including policyholders in the states set to cast the first votes for the Republican nomination: Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
And ruling against gay marriage would make the issue a focal point for the 2016 general election, leaving Republicans to argue against a right supported by six in 10 Americans.
Both rulings are due by the end of June as the court finishes its nine-month term with its traditional flurry of major opinions.
In both cases, Justice Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts hold the votes that might save Republicans from what could be a political disaster. Kennedy's track record suggests he will join the four Democratic appointees to back marriage rights, while Roberts cast the vote that saved the health-care act in a case three years ago.
_ Health care
A ruling against the act would throw American health care into a new period of turmoil. Unless the justices delayed the effective date of the decision-something the court hasn't done since 1982-it would almost quadruple the average premium for affected policyholders in a matter of months.
What's more, the ruling might send the individual insurance markets in the affected states into what economists call a "death spiral": The higher premiums would mean that only the sickest and most desperate buy insurance. That would cause premiums to rise even more.
That scenario would pressure Republicans on multiple levels. In the states, officials who until now have resisted the health-act act would face calls to set up exchanges so that residents could continue to collect the tax credits. In Washington, Republican lawmakers would suddenly have to shift from trying to dismantle the health-care act to managing the fallout.
"If the Supreme Court rules against it, they're going to have to have an answer for the millions that now are relying on this insurance," said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and ex-aide to former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi. "They'll have to provide a credible alternative."
Senate Republicans led by Ron Johnson of Wisconsin (who is up for reelection next year) are already proposing a bill that would extend the tax credits through the 2016 election. The measure, however, would also repeal the law's individual and employer mandates, which require people to acquire insurance and businesses to offer it.Those provisions would almost certainly mean White House opposition, making the bill as it stands more a political statement than an avenue to fill the hole the high court ruling might open.
"I'm not sure it will be enough to say, 'We've got an approach but the president will veto it,'" said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion specialist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "Something will have to happen pretty quickly so those people are not without coverage."
_ Gay marriage
On gay marriage, the party's longstanding opposition has left it at odds with public opinion. The latest Gallup poll shows record support for legalized same-sex marriage, with 60 percent favoring and 37 percent opposed. Same-sex couples can now wed in 36 states.
A Supreme Court ruling against gay marriage would set up a new round of state-by-state fights. Some of those battles would occur in court, as judges sort out the effects of earlier rulings legalizing marriage.
Other fights would take place at the ballot box. Marriage advocates could try to put the issue before voters in Ohio and Michigan, two presidential swing states where gay marriage is currently illegal.
Supporters might also look to Arizona and Colorado, states that now have gay marriage because of court rulings. A Supreme Court decision potentially would nullify those rulings, forcing supporters to turn to ballot initiatives.
The fracas would leave Republican candidates in a bind, forcing them to try to placate the social conservatives who are key to winning the party's presidential nomination without alienating middle-of-the-road voters who support gay marriage and who are key to winning the general election.
"Having it continue to go through a domino effect isn't necessarily helpful for Republican candidates who are trying to appeal a wider section of voters than just social conservatives," Bonjean said.
A ruling legalizing gay marriage wouldn't entirely take the issue off the political table. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. R. is calling for a constitutional amendment to allow states to ban the practice. And many opponents would view the Supreme Court decision as an overreach and an infringement of religious rights, says Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.
"I don't think this is the final chapter at all," Anuzis said. "I think it will focus the fight and again probably re- energize people because now they will have a very specific target."
Even so, people on both sides of the issue say many Republicans would prefer seeing gay marriage fade as a political issue.
"They'd probably be better off losing the gay marriage issue, politically that is," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington. "It would remove the issue from the debate, and the GOP is now on the wrong side, politically, of the debate."
Republicans have played a leading role in asking the court to undercut the health-care act by barring tax subsidies for people who buy insurance in at least 34 states. GOP state officials are urging the court to uphold their gay-marriage bans.
Yet legal success on either front would throw the party-and its presidential candidates-into a political thicket. A victory on health care could strip insurance from more than 6 million people, including policyholders in the states set to cast the first votes for the Republican nomination: Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
And ruling against gay marriage would make the issue a focal point for the 2016 general election, leaving Republicans to argue against a right supported by six in 10 Americans.
Both rulings are due by the end of June as the court finishes its nine-month term with its traditional flurry of major opinions.
In both cases, Justice Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts hold the votes that might save Republicans from what could be a political disaster. Kennedy's track record suggests he will join the four Democratic appointees to back marriage rights, while Roberts cast the vote that saved the health-care act in a case three years ago.
_ Health care
A ruling against the act would throw American health care into a new period of turmoil. Unless the justices delayed the effective date of the decision-something the court hasn't done since 1982-it would almost quadruple the average premium for affected policyholders in a matter of months.
What's more, the ruling might send the individual insurance markets in the affected states into what economists call a "death spiral": The higher premiums would mean that only the sickest and most desperate buy insurance. That would cause premiums to rise even more.
That scenario would pressure Republicans on multiple levels. In the states, officials who until now have resisted the health-act act would face calls to set up exchanges so that residents could continue to collect the tax credits. In Washington, Republican lawmakers would suddenly have to shift from trying to dismantle the health-care act to managing the fallout.
"If the Supreme Court rules against it, they're going to have to have an answer for the millions that now are relying on this insurance," said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and ex-aide to former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi. "They'll have to provide a credible alternative."
Senate Republicans led by Ron Johnson of Wisconsin (who is up for reelection next year) are already proposing a bill that would extend the tax credits through the 2016 election. The measure, however, would also repeal the law's individual and employer mandates, which require people to acquire insurance and businesses to offer it.Those provisions would almost certainly mean White House opposition, making the bill as it stands more a political statement than an avenue to fill the hole the high court ruling might open.
"I'm not sure it will be enough to say, 'We've got an approach but the president will veto it,'" said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion specialist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "Something will have to happen pretty quickly so those people are not without coverage."
_ Gay marriage
On gay marriage, the party's longstanding opposition has left it at odds with public opinion. The latest Gallup poll shows record support for legalized same-sex marriage, with 60 percent favoring and 37 percent opposed. Same-sex couples can now wed in 36 states.
A Supreme Court ruling against gay marriage would set up a new round of state-by-state fights. Some of those battles would occur in court, as judges sort out the effects of earlier rulings legalizing marriage.
Other fights would take place at the ballot box. Marriage advocates could try to put the issue before voters in Ohio and Michigan, two presidential swing states where gay marriage is currently illegal.
Supporters might also look to Arizona and Colorado, states that now have gay marriage because of court rulings. A Supreme Court decision potentially would nullify those rulings, forcing supporters to turn to ballot initiatives.
The fracas would leave Republican candidates in a bind, forcing them to try to placate the social conservatives who are key to winning the party's presidential nomination without alienating middle-of-the-road voters who support gay marriage and who are key to winning the general election.
"Having it continue to go through a domino effect isn't necessarily helpful for Republican candidates who are trying to appeal a wider section of voters than just social conservatives," Bonjean said.
A ruling legalizing gay marriage wouldn't entirely take the issue off the political table. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. R. is calling for a constitutional amendment to allow states to ban the practice. And many opponents would view the Supreme Court decision as an overreach and an infringement of religious rights, says Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.
"I don't think this is the final chapter at all," Anuzis said. "I think it will focus the fight and again probably re- energize people because now they will have a very specific target."
Even so, people on both sides of the issue say many Republicans would prefer seeing gay marriage fade as a political issue.
"They'd probably be better off losing the gay marriage issue, politically that is," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington. "It would remove the issue from the debate, and the GOP is now on the wrong side, politically, of the debate."
Obama defends health care law: 'Critics stubbornly ignore reality'
President Barack Obama on Tuesday declared his health care law a
firmly established "reality" of American life even as the legality of
one of its key elements awaits a decision by the Supreme Court.
"This is now part of the fabric of how we care for one another," Obama said of the law, one of his most prized domestic policy accomplishments.
For the second day in a row, Obama mounted a stout defense of a law that remains unpopular with the public and under legal challenge but that has contributed to 14.75 million adults gaining coverage since its health care exchanges began signing up people in 2013.
Obama's remarks, made at the annual Catholic Health Association Conference in Washington, amounted to a political argument for the law just weeks before the high court is expected to render its decision in a case that could wipe out insurance for millions of Americans.
Obama poked fun at opponents for issuing "unending Chicken Little warnings" about what would go wrong under his health care program.
"The critics stubbornly ignore reality," he said.
Anticipating the president's speech, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said it was Obama who was "jousting with reality again."
"I imagine the families threatened with double-digit premium increases would beg to differ, as would the millions of families who received cancellation notices for the plans they had and wanted to keep," McConnell said. His office issued an email citing news accounts about surging health care costs, potential rate hikes and cancelled health plans.
At issue in the Supreme Court case is whether Congress authorized federal subsidy payments for health care coverage regardless of where people live, or only for residents of states that created their own insurance marketplaces. In the other states, residents can buy insurance through a federally run marketplace.
Nearly 6.4 million low- and moderate-income Americans could lose coverage if the court rules people who enrolled through the federal site weren't eligible for the subsidies.
The decision rests on the court's interpretation of a short phrase in the voluminous law. But Obama, wielding statistics and personal anecdotes, made a case that the law is so established that it has woven itself into the health care system.
"Five years in, what we are talking about is no longer just a law, it's no longer just a theory. It isn't even about the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. This isn't about myths or rumors that folks try to sustain," he said.
"There is a reality that people on the ground day to day are experiencing."
Obama was speaking to a friendly audience. The Catholic Health Association split with the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops to support the Obama administration in 2013 in shaping a compromise over the law's birth control coverage. Sister Carol Keehan, the association's president and CEO, introduced Obama, saying the Affordable Care Act "took the first step toward guaranteeing health care for everyone in our great nation."
While the president highlighted the accomplishments of the health law, its adoption has not been without flaws. The initial sign up period was marred by a faulty web site, and a report Tuesday from a government watchdog agency found new problems verifying tax credit claims.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released an audit that found the Internal Revenue Service did not get the required information on 1.7 million households in a timely manner from Department of Health and Human Services. As a result, the audit said, the IRS was unable to verify that people claiming health insurance tax credits on their tax returns had in fact purchased coverage.
Moreover, public opinion remains mixed. A recent Washington Post-ABC poll found that a majority of Americans continue to oppose the law. But the poll, conducted at the end of May, also found that 55 percent of those surveyed don't want the Supreme Court to block any subsidies.
Should the court rule against Obama, Congressional Republicans say they are working toward legislation to temporarily replace the subsidies for people losing them, probably until sometime in 2017, when they hope a Republican will be president.
Then, they hope to repeal the entire law and replace it with one with fewer requirements for coverage.
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Tuesday that House and Senate lawmakers were "very close" to a bill creating temporary tax credits that they would unveil after the court's decision. It would likely erase some of the law's requirements, such as for employer coverage of workers, which means it would almost certainly be vetoed should it reach Obama.
Republicans have proposed several plans for addressing the Supreme Court case, but have not united behind one.
Associated Press
"This is now part of the fabric of how we care for one another," Obama said of the law, one of his most prized domestic policy accomplishments.
For the second day in a row, Obama mounted a stout defense of a law that remains unpopular with the public and under legal challenge but that has contributed to 14.75 million adults gaining coverage since its health care exchanges began signing up people in 2013.
Obama's remarks, made at the annual Catholic Health Association Conference in Washington, amounted to a political argument for the law just weeks before the high court is expected to render its decision in a case that could wipe out insurance for millions of Americans.
Obama poked fun at opponents for issuing "unending Chicken Little warnings" about what would go wrong under his health care program.
"The critics stubbornly ignore reality," he said.
Anticipating the president's speech, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said it was Obama who was "jousting with reality again."
"I imagine the families threatened with double-digit premium increases would beg to differ, as would the millions of families who received cancellation notices for the plans they had and wanted to keep," McConnell said. His office issued an email citing news accounts about surging health care costs, potential rate hikes and cancelled health plans.
At issue in the Supreme Court case is whether Congress authorized federal subsidy payments for health care coverage regardless of where people live, or only for residents of states that created their own insurance marketplaces. In the other states, residents can buy insurance through a federally run marketplace.
Nearly 6.4 million low- and moderate-income Americans could lose coverage if the court rules people who enrolled through the federal site weren't eligible for the subsidies.
The decision rests on the court's interpretation of a short phrase in the voluminous law. But Obama, wielding statistics and personal anecdotes, made a case that the law is so established that it has woven itself into the health care system.
"Five years in, what we are talking about is no longer just a law, it's no longer just a theory. It isn't even about the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. This isn't about myths or rumors that folks try to sustain," he said.
"There is a reality that people on the ground day to day are experiencing."
Obama was speaking to a friendly audience. The Catholic Health Association split with the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops to support the Obama administration in 2013 in shaping a compromise over the law's birth control coverage. Sister Carol Keehan, the association's president and CEO, introduced Obama, saying the Affordable Care Act "took the first step toward guaranteeing health care for everyone in our great nation."
While the president highlighted the accomplishments of the health law, its adoption has not been without flaws. The initial sign up period was marred by a faulty web site, and a report Tuesday from a government watchdog agency found new problems verifying tax credit claims.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released an audit that found the Internal Revenue Service did not get the required information on 1.7 million households in a timely manner from Department of Health and Human Services. As a result, the audit said, the IRS was unable to verify that people claiming health insurance tax credits on their tax returns had in fact purchased coverage.
Moreover, public opinion remains mixed. A recent Washington Post-ABC poll found that a majority of Americans continue to oppose the law. But the poll, conducted at the end of May, also found that 55 percent of those surveyed don't want the Supreme Court to block any subsidies.
Should the court rule against Obama, Congressional Republicans say they are working toward legislation to temporarily replace the subsidies for people losing them, probably until sometime in 2017, when they hope a Republican will be president.
Then, they hope to repeal the entire law and replace it with one with fewer requirements for coverage.
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Tuesday that House and Senate lawmakers were "very close" to a bill creating temporary tax credits that they would unveil after the court's decision. It would likely erase some of the law's requirements, such as for employer coverage of workers, which means it would almost certainly be vetoed should it reach Obama.
Republicans have proposed several plans for addressing the Supreme Court case, but have not united behind one.
Associated Press
In GOP stronghold, worries about end of health care
In Georgia's Gwinnett County, where Republicans rule, few really love the Affordable Care Act. Few want to lose it either.
In parts of the county, about 1 in 8 people get insurance from the federal health-care program, making Gwinnett, near Atlanta, one of the biggest per-capita users of the Affordable Care Act. The coverage is advertised in road signs along busy Jimmy Carter Boulevard near Lilburn. It's the reason enrollment has dropped at low-cost clinics in Snellville and Norcross. It's seeped into the Asian, Latino and African immigrant communities, becoming a mainstay for retail workers, contractors and the downsized.
As the Supreme Court prepares to rule on a case that could make the plan's private insurance unaffordable in Georgia and at least 33 other states, Gwinnett, where all five of the county commissioners belong to the Republican Party that has been leading the fight against the health care law, illustrates how for many the program has become a fact of life. Obamacare is both groused about and accepted, like taxes and the weather.
"I couldn't buy insurance for myself after my husband retired, not until Obamacare," said Ghada Nadhan, 63, an assistant manager of a food store who immigrated from Syria more than two decades ago. "Now I am afraid."
Now before the Supreme Court, the King v. Burwell case threatens to make the plan unaffordable by ending federal subsidies that hold down premium costs based on income. A suit backed by conservative activists, citing a single phrase in the law, says those subsidies aren't allowed in states that didn't create their own health-care exchanges.
Led by the free-market Cato Institute in Washington, those opponents helped persuade Republican governors not to form state-run exchanges, as a tactic for undermining the health-care act.
More than 13 million Americans could lose tax credits that help pay for insurance coverage by next year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, California. Florida, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia, the states with the most to lose, received a combined $19 billion, according to a December report by Democratic staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
All four states declined to create exchanges and could have spiraling premium increases if the court nixes their subsidies. In Georgia, premiums would rise 381 percent without the credits, according to a June 3 analysis by Kaiser.
"It's not something that should be done based on a twisted interpretation of four words in, as we were reminded repeatedly, a couple-thousand-page piece of legislation," President Barack Obama said Monday at a news briefing in Germany. "Part of what's bizarre about this whole thing is we haven't had a lot of conversation about the horrors of Obamacare because none of them have come to pass."
In Gwinnett, attitudes about the plan depend a lot on subsidies, said Luis De La Rosa, an insurance salesman who advertises in a Hispanic part of Lilburn. He says ending the federal help would be a disaster.
"The people who say it doesn't work now are the people who aren't getting the subsidies and facing fines if they don't enroll," he said.
They're also people who aren't sick, he said.
"That's an advantage people forget. Before, you couldn't get insurance if you were sick."
Gwinnett is a microcosm of a changing nation. Once overwhelmingly white, it's now one of the nation's most ethnically diverse counties, largely because of its immigrant population. It had 73,839 people enrolled in the plan's insurance exchange as of May, the most in the state. Two Gwinnett zip codes had 12 percent of residents enrolled in the plan, the most outside of Florida.
The plan has had the biggest impact on the area's low-cost medical facilities. At Gwinnett Community Clinic in Snellville, staff began calling former patients this year after a 30 percent enrollment drop.
"The reason they were gone is that they now had insurance," director Sheila Adcock said.
The same thing happened in Norcross, at a clinic run by Boat People SOS. Daily caseloads dropped to 10 from 20 after the organization helped enroll immigrants in Obamacare, said Han Nguyen, a health navigator.
Even enrollees with generous subsidies have complaints, said Adcock, who heard some during her phone outreach.
"If you are a person in poverty, you're not used to the idea of co-pays and deductibles, and you're wondering what you are paying for," she said.
Charles Pierre, 58, a Haitian immigrant and substitute teacher, was among those signed up by Nguyen. He said his subsidized premium has already almost doubled, to $45 a month from $23, and that he also has a $35 co-pay to see a doctor.
Pierre said he likes the security the insurance brings but would have to drop it if the subsidy disappears and the price goes up again.
"It's going to be a struggle for me to pay for it," he said. "What I earn is not changed."
Valerie Dalton, 64, got her insurance in February, after her banking job was eliminated and she could no longer afford the $700 monthly price to stay on her former employer's plan.
She said her plan's premiums are about $360 per month, a price she still thinks is high but that she won't have to pay for long. Next month she'll turn 65 and be eligible for Medicare.
"I'm not politically active at all, but I feel badly that they are threatening this," she said. "I think it's really sad."
In parts of the county, about 1 in 8 people get insurance from the federal health-care program, making Gwinnett, near Atlanta, one of the biggest per-capita users of the Affordable Care Act. The coverage is advertised in road signs along busy Jimmy Carter Boulevard near Lilburn. It's the reason enrollment has dropped at low-cost clinics in Snellville and Norcross. It's seeped into the Asian, Latino and African immigrant communities, becoming a mainstay for retail workers, contractors and the downsized.
As the Supreme Court prepares to rule on a case that could make the plan's private insurance unaffordable in Georgia and at least 33 other states, Gwinnett, where all five of the county commissioners belong to the Republican Party that has been leading the fight against the health care law, illustrates how for many the program has become a fact of life. Obamacare is both groused about and accepted, like taxes and the weather.
"I couldn't buy insurance for myself after my husband retired, not until Obamacare," said Ghada Nadhan, 63, an assistant manager of a food store who immigrated from Syria more than two decades ago. "Now I am afraid."
Now before the Supreme Court, the King v. Burwell case threatens to make the plan unaffordable by ending federal subsidies that hold down premium costs based on income. A suit backed by conservative activists, citing a single phrase in the law, says those subsidies aren't allowed in states that didn't create their own health-care exchanges.
Led by the free-market Cato Institute in Washington, those opponents helped persuade Republican governors not to form state-run exchanges, as a tactic for undermining the health-care act.
More than 13 million Americans could lose tax credits that help pay for insurance coverage by next year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, California. Florida, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia, the states with the most to lose, received a combined $19 billion, according to a December report by Democratic staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
All four states declined to create exchanges and could have spiraling premium increases if the court nixes their subsidies. In Georgia, premiums would rise 381 percent without the credits, according to a June 3 analysis by Kaiser.
"It's not something that should be done based on a twisted interpretation of four words in, as we were reminded repeatedly, a couple-thousand-page piece of legislation," President Barack Obama said Monday at a news briefing in Germany. "Part of what's bizarre about this whole thing is we haven't had a lot of conversation about the horrors of Obamacare because none of them have come to pass."
In Gwinnett, attitudes about the plan depend a lot on subsidies, said Luis De La Rosa, an insurance salesman who advertises in a Hispanic part of Lilburn. He says ending the federal help would be a disaster.
"The people who say it doesn't work now are the people who aren't getting the subsidies and facing fines if they don't enroll," he said.
They're also people who aren't sick, he said.
"That's an advantage people forget. Before, you couldn't get insurance if you were sick."
Gwinnett is a microcosm of a changing nation. Once overwhelmingly white, it's now one of the nation's most ethnically diverse counties, largely because of its immigrant population. It had 73,839 people enrolled in the plan's insurance exchange as of May, the most in the state. Two Gwinnett zip codes had 12 percent of residents enrolled in the plan, the most outside of Florida.
The plan has had the biggest impact on the area's low-cost medical facilities. At Gwinnett Community Clinic in Snellville, staff began calling former patients this year after a 30 percent enrollment drop.
"The reason they were gone is that they now had insurance," director Sheila Adcock said.
The same thing happened in Norcross, at a clinic run by Boat People SOS. Daily caseloads dropped to 10 from 20 after the organization helped enroll immigrants in Obamacare, said Han Nguyen, a health navigator.
Even enrollees with generous subsidies have complaints, said Adcock, who heard some during her phone outreach.
"If you are a person in poverty, you're not used to the idea of co-pays and deductibles, and you're wondering what you are paying for," she said.
Charles Pierre, 58, a Haitian immigrant and substitute teacher, was among those signed up by Nguyen. He said his subsidized premium has already almost doubled, to $45 a month from $23, and that he also has a $35 co-pay to see a doctor.
Pierre said he likes the security the insurance brings but would have to drop it if the subsidy disappears and the price goes up again.
"It's going to be a struggle for me to pay for it," he said. "What I earn is not changed."
Valerie Dalton, 64, got her insurance in February, after her banking job was eliminated and she could no longer afford the $700 monthly price to stay on her former employer's plan.
She said her plan's premiums are about $360 per month, a price she still thinks is high but that she won't have to pay for long. Next month she'll turn 65 and be eligible for Medicare.
"I'm not politically active at all, but I feel badly that they are threatening this," she said. "I think it's really sad."
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