The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 7 July 2015

Air Date: 
July 07, 2015

Photo, left: The Kerch Strait from Landsat. Tuzla Island (Ukrainian: Тузла; Russian: Тузла; Crimean Tatar: Tuzla) (from Turkish "tuzluk" - saturated solution of salt in water for salting fish) - is a sandy islet in the form of a spit located in the middle of the Strait of Kerch between the Kerch Peninsula in the west and the Taman Peninsula in the east. Administratively, it's part of Kerch city in eastern Crimea.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
Hour One
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block A: Edward Paul Lazear, Hoover & WSJ, in re: [JB & LK:  . . . the new Greek economics minister is Euclid Tsakalotos , "an Oxford Marxist." Tsipris's administration: "Hard-left socialist with Communists in the govt." The really smart businessmen and –women left decades ago to avoid 100% tax. If the taxation was rational, the diaspora would return.]  If you look across states, you'll see that in the states [U.S] that suffered the deepest downturns (recessions), you have  a lot of slack resources, which you can push back to capacity. In a [highpoint], it's much harder to press forward. Right-to-work states have lowest wages, tend to grow more rapidly (Nevada, Utah, Texas, North Dakota, et al.).
(1 of 2)
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block B: Edward Paul Lazear, Hoover & WSJ, in re:  Why the Recovery Still Limps Along. Worst have high taxes. Ohio has had challenges, but look at Kasich's [tax-cuts] effect on Ohio: pretty strong in employment.  California raising taxes but in a recovery; Cal is about dead-center in my study. It's the home of technology, with much growth;  land prices have skyrocketed. When you face a 13%-plus tax rate on the margins, makes you think twice. Tax policies have worked against the solvency of the state.
    Why the Recovery Still Limps Along, A number of current and former governors will be running for president in 2016, and each will tout his state’s accomplishments and claim credit for the positives, deserved or not. Politics aside, cross-state comparisons provide a real-world experiment that helps show which economic policies work and which don’t.  (2  of 2)
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: Scott Atlas, Hoover Senior Fellow & WSJ, in re: Putting the King v. Burwell ruling aside, the fact remains that premiums are skyrocketting and choices are shrinking. Hillary Clinton is "thrilled" by the ruling; "if a Republican is elected, that's the end of Obamacare. We need to have a Democrat to protect, defend and fix the Affordable Care Act."  The irony is that it's the growing govt payments for insurance that cause the biggest damage to America. Private health insurance correlates with the best care. Problem with the law is that mandated benefits and the rest have made private insurance unaffordable to anyone not rich.  Obamacare mandates include chiropractic and acupuncture, which seem to have increased prices by 10%.   Marriage therapy, in vitro fertilization, lactation services and the rest, may add as much as 50%.  People are forced to buy loaded contracts they can't afford, which in turn forces the govt to subsidize. It's a spectacularly poorly-written law. The theory was that young people would buy this and subsidize the elderly – but the young aren’t. They prefer a penalty – and furthermore, you can escape the penalty by a lot of loopholes.  Insurance used to protect us from significant, unexpected, high expenses, now it's evolved into paying almost everything, making healthcare seem to be free.  Doctors are fleeing Medicaid, and Medicare is increasingly govt-run. Top specialists are running away from Medicare, too.  More than 20% o doctors refuse new Medicare patients.   In 2017, when risk corridors go away, the govt no longer will  . .  Wave of medical takeovers, meaning less competitiion, oligopolies, higher premiums.  Rural Americans have almost no choice.  Competition among insurers is dramatically reduced by this law that promised to increase competition.
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Repairing the Obamacare Wreckage  By Scott Atlas 
Despite the Supreme Court decision to uphold the subsidies for private insurance in King v. Burwell, the fundamental problems with the Affordable Care Act remain. Ironically, it is the growing government centralization of health insurance at the expense of private insurance that must be addressed.
The 107 million people on Medicaid or Medicare in 2013 will increase to 135 million by 2018, a growth rate tripling that of private insurance, according to projections by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. At the same time, private health-care insurance premiums are expected to skyrocket in 2016, many by more than 30%.
This will not improve American health care. Private insurance is superior for both access and quality of care. Reforms should therefore be focused on how to maximize the availability and affordability of private insurance for everyone, regardless of income or employment, rather than put more people into government insurance while causing private insurance to become unaffordable to all but the affluent.
Why is private health insurance so important? Insurance without access to medical care is a sham. And that is where the country is heading. According to a 2014 Merritt Hawkinssurvey, 55% of doctors in major metropolitan areas refuse new Medicaid patients. The harsh reality awaiting low-income Americans is dwindling access to quality doctors, hospitals and health care.
Simultaneously, while the population ages into Medicare eligibility, a significant and growing proportion of doctors don’t accept Medicare patients. According to the nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, 29% of Medicare beneficiaries who were looking for a primary-care doctor in 2008 already had a problem finding one.
Numerous reports in the top medical journals like CancerAmerican Journal of Cardiology, Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, and Annals of Surgery clearly show that patients with private insurance have better outcomes than similar patients on government insurance. It is highly likely that restrictions in access to important drugs, specialists and technology account for these differences.
Of the many negative effects of the Affordable Care Act, the increasing unaffordability of private insurance might be the most damaging. Thanks to its regulations on pricing and coverage, the law has already forced termination of private health insurance for more than five million Americans. The Congressional Budget Office is now projecting that as many as 10 million people will be forced off their chosen employer-based health insurance by 2021—a tenfold increase in the 2011 projections at the onset of the law.
According to a December 2014 Heritage Foundation study, the exchanges remain “considerably less competitive at the state level in 2015 than the 2013 individual market,” the last year before implementation of ObamaCare. How much less competitive? More than 21% less competitive based on a comparison of the number of participating exchange insurers across all 50 states in 2015 (310) with the number of carriers in the individual market in 2013 (395).
Because government reimbursement for health care is often below cost, costs are shifted back to private carriers, pushing up premiums. Nationally, the gap between private insurance payment and government underpayment has doubled since ObamaCare, according to a 2014 study by Avalere Health for the American Hospital Association. Premiums for private policies will certainly continue to rise, ultimately beyond the reach of the middle class.
To revive and expand private health insurance, the first step is to reduce onerous regulatory requirements. This means eliminating unnecessary coverage mandates that have ballooned under ObamaCare. So-called minimum essential benefits, including unproven treatments by chiropractors, along with zero co-pay preventive services, have increased prices by as much as 10%. It also means reducing the 2,271 state mandates requiring coverage for everything from acupuncture to marriage therapy. These unnecessary mandates represent the biggest controllable factor driving up insurance costs.
Modifying ObamaCare to give everyone the option of lower cost, high-deductible plans restores insurance to its fundamental purpose—protection from significant, unexpected expenses. It would also would make health-care consumers more value-conscious, increasing demand for more efficient and affordable care. The amounts that individuals can contribute to health-savings accounts also should be raised to at least the equivalent of IRA contributions ($5,500 or $6,500 if over 50) from the current $3,350.
Improving access to private insurance for the most vulnerable—the Medicaid population—is critical to improving their access to quality care. So far only Arkansas and Iowa have received approval from the Department of Health and Human Services and implemented a “private option” in which Medicaid funding provides assistance to purchase private health insurance through the exchanges. While this approach is still burdened by mandated benefits and other costly regulations, it is clearly a step in the right direction. A handful of states, including Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arkansas, have or plan to make health-savings accounts part of their Medicaid benefit.
Reforming America’s health care rests on reducing costs while improving access to the best doctors and hospitals. That comes from private insurance, not government insurance.
Dr. Atlas, a physician, is a senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
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Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block D: Larry Kudlow, in re: Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency in now-familiar language, which has been rebutted by most GOP candidates. Jeb Bush is married to a Mexican and sees it personally.  Rick Perry is governor on the border; he handled it vividly; the two together could be beacons for the GOP. Every time someone spoke clearly on this, Trump called him a "failure"; even said that Perry had done nothing about the border - which was exactly wrong. George Pataki was the first to criticize Trump's language; Trump called him a poor governor of New York – also quite wrong, Trump's language was horrible; and on a second bounce Trump is insulting others.   Trump has no political experience at all. Trump did the same thing to Gov Romney.  Pataki points out that the GOP absolutely must reach out extensively to African-Americans, both because it's the party of Lincoln and because it's obvious economically.
Hour Two
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re:  Putin is about to get a chance to show that Russia is not that isolated. The BRICS emerging economies will launch a development bank at a summit this week which President Vladimir Putin hopes will help reduce Western dominance of world financial institutions and show Moscow is not isolated.
At a meeting in the remote Russian city of Ufa, originally a fortress built on the orders of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa also aim to put the last touches to a $100-billion contingency currency reserves pool. The BRICS account for a fifth of the world's economic output and . . .
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author, in re: Vladimir Putin sends special message to Obama for 4th July ...Vladimir Putin has sent Barack Obama a special message to mark US ... Mr Putin, who appears to be doing his utmost to deny Ukraine of its . . .  ; Putin congratulates Obama on Independence Day
Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech at the opening of the Army-2015 international military forum in Kubinka, outside Moscow, Russia, June 16, 2015. Putin said on Tuesday Russia would add more than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles to its nuclear arsenal this year and a defense official accused NATO of provoking a new arms race.
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author, in re:  Putin Urges Equality, Respect in Independence Day Message to ...Vladimir Putin's Independence Day greeting calls for US-Russia ...     [Recitation of recent Western-Russian confrontations.]
Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech at the opening of the Army-2015 international military forum in Kubinka, outside Moscow, Russia, June 16, 2015. Putin said on Tuesday Russia would add more than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles to its nuclear arsenal this year and a defense official accused NATO of provoking a new arms race.
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author, in re: Duma Approves Construction of $4 Billion Kerch Bridge to Crimea  The State Duma has approved plans to build a bridge from the Russian mainland to Crimea,
Hour Three
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block A:  An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America, by Nick Bunker (1 of 4)
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block B:  .An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America, by Nick Bunker (2 of 4)
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block C:  An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America, by Nick Bunker (3 of 4)
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block D: An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America, by Nick Bunker (4 of 4)
Hour Four
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block A:  Salena Zito, RealClear Politics & Pittsburgh Tribune-Review & Pirates fan, in re:  Click here for link PHILADELPHIA-It's not hard to imagine how life was conducted in 1776 as you stand where 56 men signed a document severing them from Great Britain. River rock remains the bumpy surface for the grid of streets between old buildings that grandly stand more than 200 years after serving as the seat of defiance, rebellion and, yes, treason.
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block B: Paul Gregory, Hoover, n re: The more likely course is that Greece will become a banana republic (witness Argentina or, even worse, Zimbabwe). Fractured Greek politics won’t allow a united anti-crisis policy to emerge. The ruling party, blaming everyone except itself for the disaster, will jockey to gain control of resources for its followers. Money will be printed as fast as it can be, the black market will become the real market, and so it goes. [more]
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block C: John Cochrane, Hoover, in re: Seven Greek economic teasers  Why does Greece have its own banks when Louisiana does not?
Tuesday  7 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: An overview of New Horizons’ mission, in graphics  The journal Nature has put together a nice graphic summarizing New Horizons’ mission and its fly-by of Pluto next week. The key section shows that it's going to take a long time to get all the data back: Dawn recovers from safe mode  Beginning on June 30, Dawn experienced an as-yet unexplained “anomaly” that put it into safe mode for several days.
According to JPL, engineers have uploaded “configuration changes” that solved the problem, and the spacecraft has returned to normal operations, continuing its second mapping orbit of Ceres. From this position, they're gathering wide-angle images of the entire planet, from which they'll construct a detailed global map to be used as a baseline during later, more detailed, close-up orbits. For example, they released this very nice image today of what's called “Spot 1,″ shown on the right. I've cropped it to focus on the spot itself. Looks almost like scattered snow on the surface, doesn’t it?
Astronomers propose giant super Hubble replacement  A major university consortium that manages many ground- and space-based telescopes has proposed that a new giant optical space telescope be built to replace Hubble. A report published today by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C., lays out the rationale for another orbiting observatory. It will have a mirror as big as 12 meters across, both to look for habitable planets around other stars and to peer deep into the early aeons of the universe. Hubble has a mirror 2.4 meters across, so the proposed replacement would be significantly larger. In fact, if it's built, this new space telescope would make it bigger than any ground-based telescope that exists today.
As the article notes, the cost overruns and delays of the infrared James Webb Space Telescope — which went from a $1 billion budget to $8 billion — will likely make Congress reluctant to fund a new giant project like this. Nonetheless, this report gives us a hint of where the astronomy community wants to head in future decades. For the past two decades they've pooh-poohed the construction of a new and larger optical space telescope. It appears from this report that this culture is now changing.