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welp today i am feeling frustrated that you still have to pay fucking $35 for a fucking flu shot in this country if you don't have insurance
#someone told me they thought it was free at cvs/walgreens w no insurance so i called them#they say $35#so i google the county health department and their website says you pay on a sliding scale if you have no insurance#so i go to the county health department and they said it cost $35 with no insurance!#they're the ones who are supposed to be cheap!!! and they couldn't even make it cheaper than cvs!!!!#like yeah sometimes they have free flu shot drives so i guess i'll be on the lookout for that#but i have a deadline of nov 1st for school so if i can't find something before then then i guess i'm shelling out the money#and it's not like i absolutely can't afford $35#i mean i'm living off of savings rn but yeah i could pay that much#i just feel very strongly that i shouldn't have to#for a fucking flu shot#so i'll keep looking for something cheaper i guess until i just have to get it one way or another#j.txt
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The ‘follow-up appointment’
https://wapo.st/2z4uWXR
The ‘follow-up appointment’
'For many people in medical debt, it leads to a courtroom' (THIS SHOULDN'T BE HAPPENING IN AMERICA)
By Eli Saslow | Published August 17 at 5:41 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted August 18, 2019 9:18 AM ET |
POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. — The people being sued arrived at the courthouse carrying their hospital bills, and they followed signs upstairs to a small courtroom labeled “Debt and Collections.” A 68-year-old wheeled her portable oxygen tank toward the first row. A nurse’s aide came in wearing scrubs after working a night shift. A teenager with an injured leg stood near the back wall and leaned against crutches.
By 9 a.m., more than two-dozen people were crowded into the room for what has become the busiest legal docket in rural Butler County.
“Lots of medical cases again today,” the judge said, and then he called court into session for another weekly fight between a hospital and its patients, which neither side appears to be winning.
So far this year, Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center has filed more than 1,100 lawsuits for unpaid bills in a rural corner of Southeast Missouri, where emergency medical care has become a standoff between hospitals and patients who are both going broke. Unpaid medical bills are the leading cause of personal debt and bankruptcy in the United States according to credit reports, and what’s happening in rural areas such as Butler County is a main reason why. Patients who visit rural emergency rooms in record numbers are defaulting on their bills at higher rates than ever before. Meanwhile, many of the nation’s 2,000 rural hospitals have begun to buckle under bad debt, with more than 100 closing in the past decade and hundreds more on the brink of insolvency as they fight to squeeze whatever money they’re owed from patients who don’t have it.
The result each week in Poplar Bluff, a town of 17,000, has become so routine that some people here derisively refer to it as the “follow-up appointment” — 19 lawsuits for unpaid hospital bills scheduled on this particular Wednesday, 34 more the following week, 22 the week after that. Case after case, a hospital that helps sustain its rural community is now also collecting payments that are bankrupting hundreds of its residents.
“Think of me as the referee,” the judge explained, as he called the first case. “It’s my job to be fair. I’m not going to be chugging for either side.”
On one side of the courtroom was a young lawyer representing the hospital, and he carried 19 case files that totaled more than $55,000 in money owed to Poplar Bluff Regional. Three nearby hospitals in Southeast Missouri had already closed for financial reasons in the past few years, leaving Poplar Bluff Regional as the last full-service hospital to care for five rural counties, treating more than 50,000 patients each year. It never turned away patients who needed emergency care, regardless of their ability to pay, and some people without insurance were offered free or discounted treatment. In the past few years, the hospitals’ total cost of uncompensated care had risen from about $60 million to $84 million. Its ownership company Community Health Systems, a struggling conglomerate of more than 100 rural and suburban hospitals, had begun selling off facilities as its stock price tanked from $50 per share in 2015 to less than $3 as the lawyer approached the judge to discuss the first case.
“We’re seeking fair payment for services we’ve provided. Nothing else,” he said.
Behind him in the courtroom were some of Poplar Bluff Regional’s patients — a population that was on average sicker, older, poorer and underinsured compared with the rest of the United States. More than 35 percent of people in Butler County have unpaid medical debt on their credit report, about double the national rate. Most of the 19 people on the morning docket had been treated in the emergency room and then failed to pay their bill for more than 60 days before receiving a summons to court. Many of them had insurance but still owed their co-pay or deductibles, which have tripled on average in the past decade across the United States. One patient owed more than $12,000 after being treated for a heart attack. Another was being sued for $286. If the hospital won a judgment, it had the right to garnish money from a patient’s paycheck or bank account or it could put a lien against a house.
“I’m hoping to negotiate a payment plan, but I can only afford $20 a month,” one patient told the court.
“I’m late for work, so if there’s someplace I can sign, I guess I’ll just sign,” said another patient, who owed more than $3,000 after spending six hours in the emergency room for chest pain.
“How am I supposed to pay $4,000 to see a doctor if I’m barely making $2,000 a month?” asked another.
One by one the patients came up to plead their cases until the judge called Gail Dudley, 31, who was sitting with her mother in the third row. She had gone to the emergency room at Poplar Bluff Regional in 2017 after passing out because of complications from Type 1 diabetes. The hospital had given her medication to stabilize her blood sugar, kept her overnight for observation, and then sent her home with a bill for $8,342, of which she was still responsible for about $3,000 after insurance. She’d tried to appease the hospital’s billing department by sending in an occasional check for $50, but with accumulating interest and penalty fees, the balance on her account had remained essentially the same for two years.
“I’m grateful for what they did for me, and I know I owe it, but I don’t have that kind of money,” she said.
The judge gestured in the direction of the hospital’s attorney and then looked at Dudley. “Would you like a chance to talk to this gentleman for a moment and see if you two can work something out?”
“Okay,” she said. “We might as well try.”
Matthew McCormick, 27, led Dudley into the hallway to begin the same negotiation he’d been having with dozens of hospital patients each week. On Thursdays he was listed as a hospital attorney for the court docket in Doniphan, population 1,997. Mondays it was Kirksville, Tuesdays were Bloomfield, and Wednesdays often brought him here, to a 95-year-old courthouse in Butler County, where he’d represented Poplar Bluff Regional on more than 450 billing cases so far in 2019.
“We’d like to find a way to work with you on this,” he told Dudley as they sat down together in the courtroom lobby. He reached out to shake her hand. He smiled and offered his business card. For the past year, he’d been working on behalf of the hospital as the newest attorney for a law firm called Faber and Brand, which promised to “use the judicial system to recover money owed.” McCormick’s cases hardly ever went to trial. More than 90 percent of the people being sued weren’t represented by an attorney and at least half failed to show up in court, resulting in default judgments in the hospital’s favor. The rest of the patients McCormick met came into court with little to offer in their own defense except for apologies and stories of poverty, poor health, unemployment and bad luck.
“I’m real sorry about this,” Dudley said. “If I’d been thinking straight, I would never have let them take me to the emergency room. I know I can’t afford that. I wish I could pay you all of it right now.”
“Let’s make this as easy as we can,” he told her. “Is there something you can pay? A little each month?”
“I don’t have anything extra,” she said, thinking about the paycheck she earned for a full-time job as a clerk at Goodwill, which totaled $736 every two weeks. After paying for rent and utilities on a subsidized three-bedroom apartment, groceries, and child care for her 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter, she sometimes ran out of money by the end of the month.
“How about $15 out of every paycheck?” she offered, even though she doubted she could afford it. When McCormick didn’t immediately respond, she revised her offer. “Thirty? How’s that?”
“Let’s say thirty,” McCormick said.
He had more patients waiting to negotiate, so he thanked Dudley and led her back into the courtroom to sign her judgment. It said she had agreed to a total claim of $3,021, plus $115 in court costs and 9 percent annual interest. She would send the hospital $60 each month until the balance was paid in full, and if she failed to make a payment the hospital could pursue garnishment of her wages.
“I’m glad you worked something out,” the judge said as he signed off on the agreement.
The court clerk handed Dudley a copy of the judgment, and once she was back outside the courtroom she took out her phone to run the math. If everything went right, and she somehow managed to save and pay $60 each month, she’d be sending checks to Poplar Bluff Regional for the next 5½ years.
In order to make 66 monthly payments, she had to somehow come up with the first, but her bank account was almost empty and payday was still a week away. Dudley left the courthouse, got into the car with her mother, then changed into a polo shirt for work. They drove away from the cobblestone streets of downtown and headed toward Goodwill.
“Could’ve been worse,” said her mother, Norma Garcia, 48. “Sixty isn’t so terrible.”
“It is if you don’t have it,” Dudley said. “Who do you know that’s sitting on an extra sixty each month?”
They drove past a dollar store, a payday lender and a fast-food restaurant advertising “full-time career opportunities” starting at $7.80 an hour.
“Maybe you can borrow it?” Garcia suggested.
“I don’t do credit cards or lenders,” Dudley said. “That’d just be another debt I couldn’t pay.”
“I meant from somebody.”
“Who?” Dudley asked. “Everyone we know is paying the hospital already.”
Their family had lived for three generations in Poplar Bluff’s predominantly black neighborhood just north of downtown, where according to credit records more than half of adults had debt in collections for unpaid auto loans, credit cards or medical bills. Dudley’s aunt had been sued twice by Poplar Bluff Regional and was forfeiting 15 percent of her paycheck to a court-ordered hospital garnishment. Her cousin was being sued for $1,200. Her sister owed $280.
But none of them had cycled through the emergency room as often as Dudley during the past several years. Her two pregnancies had complicated her diabetes, and she’d tried to save money by skimping on insulin. Instead of paying $50 every few months for a preventive medication, she had collapsed at work and been rushed to the emergency room, where she was sent home with thousands of dollars in now-unpaid bills. Poplar Bluff Regional was an ambitious rural hospital — a $173 million facility with a cancer center, a cardiac center, dozens of specialists and state-of-the-art surgical suites — and Dudley believed she was alive because of it. But during the past five years, the average amount that rural patients owed for hospital visits nationwide had doubled, and Dudley was earning $11 an hour at Goodwill as new hospital bills kept arriving in her mailbox.
She owed a $100 co-pay from another hospital visit in November 2018 that had already been sent to collections.
She owed $485 from another trip to the ER in April.
She owed $159 for lab tests, $85 for a doctor’s visit and now $60 for her first court-mandated payment, which was due at the end of the month.
“I’m trying to make peace with the fact that this debt could sit on me forever,” she said.
“Maybe I can help,” Garcia offered, even though she was on disability and avoiding her own billing notices from the hospital, seeking $365 in unpaid deductibles.
“It’s my bill to pay,” Dudley said. She’d been saving a little money for back-to-school supplies, and she said it was enough for her first month’s payment. “I’ll handle it,” she said. “There’s no other choice.”
There was one person in town who did believe patients had another choice, and over the past several years Daniel Moore had begun encouraging his clients to make it.
“Don’t pay one cent,” the lawyer had advised dozens of clients. “I don’t care how much the hospital says you owe. Fight them over it.”
Moore had been working for almost five decades as a self-described “old hillbilly lawyer” out of a converted house downtown. He specialized in criminal defense, with more than 400 cases pending all over the state, and he liked to align himself with the underdog. He’d been unable to afford a doctor himself while growing up on a farm with no running water, so when clients began coming to his office with bills from Poplar Bluff Regional that they could neither pay nor understand, he had agreed to take a look.
What Moore found in some of those itemized receipts didn’t make sense to him either: $75 for a surgical mask; $11.10 for each cleaning wipe; $23.62 for two standard ibuprofen pills; $592 for a strep throat culture; $838 for a pregnancy test. He searched through court records and discovered that the hospital was collecting hundreds of monthly garnishments from hourly employees at places like Quickstop, Earl’s Diner, Wendy’s, Instant Pawn and Alan’s Muffler.
He decided to represent several hospital patients free, and went to court against the hospital for a jury trial for the first time late in 2015. Moore’s client was a Poplar Bluff police officer with decent insurance, an Army veteran who went to the emergency room one afternoon because of chronic stomach problems. He’d been given a battery of tests in the ER, then treated with three IV medications before being discharged after three hours with a bill for $6,373. His insurance had paid some, but the hospital was suing him for co-pays totaling about $1,650, plus interest.
“The facts show that he came to the hospital and received treatment that alleviated his symptoms,” the hospital’s lawyer at the time told the jury. “He received three separate bills. He just didn’t pay the balance.”
“These charges are outrageous,” Moore told the jury. “He doesn’t owe the hospital anything.”
A billing manager from the hospital took the stand and said Poplar Bluff’s prices were in line with other hospitals in rural Missouri. She mentioned the high cost of providing care at rural hospitals, which must pay higher salaries in order to recruit doctors, nurses and specialists while also suffering more from federal cuts to Medicaid and Medicare compared with urban hospitals.
Moore began to question her about each charge on his client’s itemized receipt. Why, he asked, did it cost $800 to spend approximately 40 seconds with a doctor? Why was the hospital charging $211 for an oxygen sensor that was on sale for $16 at Walmart? Then Moore asked about three identical charges on the bill labeled “IV Push,” which each cost $365.
“An IV push, if I understand it, that’s the act of sticking the needle in that little port and then squeezing it,” Moore said. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” the billing manager said.
“So that takes maybe five seconds, right?”
“Yes.”
“So you, the hospital, think that act alone, not counting the drugs inside the IV, which cost thousands of dollars more — that act alone is worth $365.38?”
“Yes,” she said again.
“It makes me so mad,” Moore told the jury, in his closing argument. “If you’re content to let the hospital just crush people, then go on and give them their measly $1,650. But what you can do today is say, ‘Hey, we’re tired of this.’ How many times are we going to let working people take the shaft?”
“In reality, this is a simple bill,” the hospital’s lawyer countered. “All we’re asking for is his co-pay and his deductible. The hospital provided treatment. He still owes.”
The jury deliberated for less than an hour and then found in favor of Moore’s client, wiping away his hospital debts. But whatever sense of victory Moore felt was mitigated over the next months as Poplar Bluff Regional’s lawsuits continued to spread across the civil courts of Southeast Missouri, and he agreed to take on more free cases. “The hospital circuit,” Moore called it, which meant Mondays in Caruthersville, Tuesdays in West Plains and Wednesdays in Poplar Bluff.
On Thursdays it was Doniphan, a town of fewer than 2,000 people, where Poplar Bluff Regional had filed more than 300 lawsuits during the past several years. Moore drove past horse farms and timber plants, parking near an abandoned hospital. Ripley County Memorial had closed six months earlier, and there were locks on the doors and a sign taped above the ambulance bay.
“For Nearest Emergency Services, go 29 miles to Poplar Bluff Regional,” it said, and now several of those Poplar Bluff patients had been summoned right back to downtown Doniphan, to a red brick courthouse at the center of the town square.
They crowded next to each other on a wooden bench in the lobby, waving their hospital bills as fans against the late July heat while they waited for the courtroom to open and then entered one by one: a husband and wife who went for cancer treatments at Poplar Bluff Regional each week but couldn’t afford the co-pays. A community college student who owed more than $7,000 for treatment of a chronic heart condition. And then the judge, who had presided over hundreds of hospital cases during his career and also recused himself from one case a few years earlier, when the patient being sued was his wife.
“How are we all doing today?” he asked, as he looked down at a docket with 14 more cases between a hospital ownership company that couldn’t afford to keep losing money and patients who couldn’t afford to pay. Both sides were drowning in debt, fighting to stay above water, and pulling each other back down.
“It’s another full docket,” the judge said. “We might as well get started.”
Eli Saslow is a reporter at The
Washington Post. He won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for his year-long series about food stamps in America. He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing in 2013, 2016 and 2017
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Best Places To Live In Montana
Missoula sits west of the Rockies, and the combination of climatic factors at play gives the city something of its own microclimate, with spring flowers way ahead of much of the rest of the state and an uncanny knack for avoiding cold snaps in the winter.
Today's Missoula lies at the bottom of what once was Glacial Lake Missoula, a 3,000-square-mile (7,800 km2) proglacial lake which stretched from 60 miles (97 km) south and east of Missoula north to today's Flathead Lake and west to Idaho's Lake Pend Oreille Held in place by a glacial dam, this lake drained and refilled repeatedly over 2,000 years during the past Ice Age.
The first European Americans to visit what would become Missoula were members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition The expedition stopped twice just south of Missoula at Traveler's Rest; first from September 9-11, 1805, and again from June 30 - July 3, 1806.
In the late 1800s a thousand people lived in Garnet, their hopes pinned on gold — the town's amenities included a candy shop and 13 saloons. Home value is well below the national average, at $120,000. A general summary of the cost of living index in Missoula, MT is shown above.
Settlement in Missoula began five miles (8 km) to the west near modern Frenchtown in 1860 as a trading post founded by Christopher P. Higgins, who had been present at the Treaty of Hellgate, and business partner Francis L. Worden, with the expectation that the Mullan Road and any future railroad would necessarily pass through the valley.
Founded: Originally founded in 1956. Rather than accepting the toxins from the remnants of mines in the upper river valley, Missoula has set about cleaning them up. A local group, the Clark Fork Coalition, works to restore the watershed and helped remove a failing dam that was storing dangerous levels of toxins, so now the Clark Fork runs free again.
Due to the obvious amenities of living in an area with unparalleled recreational possibilities, gorgeous scenery, and low crime, to name just a few, competition for good jobs is fierce and there is no shortage of qualified applicants who are quite willing to work for less money than they could get elsewhere.
There's an active technology and ‘start up' sector in Montana, mostly centered around Bozeman, Missoula, and Billings, but most companies are small, with low pay compared to industry average, few promotion opportunities, and a pool of employers small enough that you might not be able to find a job doing what you do again for months if things go south.
Jobs in the service sector don't pay particularly well in any part of the country, but in Montana even professional positions pay less, sometimes much less than comparable jobs in most other parts of the U.S. This phenomenon is often referred to as the "Wilderness Tax", which I feel is a most apt description
The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks also works to keep bears and humans a healthy distance apart, and spreads the word about the best way to visit bear country: Secure your food and garbage in your car or a bear-proof container, and don't leave wildlife attractants lying around.
Missoula has more than 20 miles of bike lanes throughout the city, was voted one of the ten best cycling cities in the US, and is home to the headquarters of the international Adventure Cycling Association , where visiting cyclists can snag a free ice cream and relax in their Cyclists' Lounge.
The city is also home to both Montana's largest and its oldest active breweries as well as the Montana Grizzlies, one of the strongest college football programs in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
With above average schools on offer in the town, Whitefish would be a great place to raise a family. Set against a beautiful backdrop of mountains and scenic valleys, the city is home to the University of Montana. Promoter of marijuana law reform NORML has its state headquarters in Missoula, as does the Montana Hemp Council Forward Montana is a "left-leaning though officially nonpartisan group that seeks to engage young people in politics".
For a little over $150,000, you could own a quaint, cozy and charming 2-bedroom home near Helena City Park. As a general rule of thumb, the debt-to-income ratio (DTI) for homeowners or renters should be not more than 28 percent of gross income to be spent on housing related costs and not more than 36 percent of income on all expenses, including debts.
Cost of living here is a little dearer than you would want, ideally, but taking into consideration the local amenities, health facilitates and local economy, it is understandable. Hill County has the largest county park in the United States. So if you find a seasonal job for the summer, which a lot of people do when then move here.
77% of the people polled in Montana said its state was definitely the best state to live in. From east to west, these are Billings, Bozeman, Great Falls, Helena, Butte, Missoula, and Kalispell. Some of the best places to live in Montana include Billings, Bozeman and Missoula These cities offer thriving economies, vibrant culture and lots of things to do, including shopping, great restaurants and museums. If you are considering moving to Missoula Montana it is a good idea to get a few quotes form Long Distance Moving Companies that service the area regularly. This will save you both time and money on your relocation.
In and around Missoula are 400 acres (160 ha) of parkland, 22 miles (35 km) of trails, and nearly 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) of open-space conservation land with adjacent Mount Jumbo home to grazing elk and mule deer during the winter months. Montana offers a number of thriving place to call home, such as Helena, the state capital; Billings, a cosmopolitan; Great Falls, also known as Electric City; and Missoula, where you can ride your bicycle to get to work.
Winters are long and seem to drag on and on. Spring and fall are short and are generally the best times of year. These are transportation at 9%, utilities at 10%, goods and services at 33%, housing at 30%, groceries at 13%, and health care at 5%. The bulk of the cost of living index comes from the categories of goods and services and housing.
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best health insurance companies in ohio
BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare quotes from different companies :insurancehqreview.xyz
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Coronavirus: Eviction day fears for worried tenants in England and Wales
Image copyright Meghan Butt
Image caption Meghan Butt (exact) and Faith Taylor will wish to search out someplace unique
A 5-month ban on landlords evicting tenants in England and Wales ends this weekend, in stark distinction to someplace else within the UK.
Courts will initiate listening to cases place on assist owing to the coronavirus disaster from Monday.
Stricter principles will be in web site, however in Scotland and Northern Ireland bans are planned to be extended till March.
Renters dangle argued the monetary and perfect effects of the disaster mean they wish to aloof no longer be thrown out.
Amongst them are Meghan Butt and her wife Faith Taylor. They’re going thru a portion 21, so-called no-fault, eviction seek for that method they’ll dangle three months to switch away the property in Hackney, London.
“This dwelling has been a sanctuary at some point of lockdown, and our first as a married couple,” said Meghan, who analysis horticulture and runs a canine-strolling industry within the win 22 situation.
“It is if reality be told demanding to web site life for the time being anyway. This locations us on the fringe of our seats.”
The authorities within the fracture wants an stop to portion 21 evictions, however that can need legislation.
In the meantime, tenants are getting at the very least three months’ seek for of eviction in England – a timeframe ministers would possibly possibly presumably per chance take to lengthen – and six months in Wales, till at least 30 September, when put next with two months sooner than the coronavirus outbreak.
A watch by homelessness charity Shelter fast that extra than 170,000 inner most tenants were threatened with eviction by their landlord or letting agent, and 230,000 in England dangle fallen into arrears since the pandemic started.
Charity Christians In opposition to Poverty said: “The disaster is no longer over. For many folk, in particular these who were struggling financially sooner than the disaster, or no longer it is appropriate beginning.”
The District Councils Network (DCN) has estimated that as a lot as 500,000 of us would possibly possibly presumably per chance presumably be at risk of being evicted as they spend extra than half of their earnings on inner most housing lease, and health bodies dangle warned that homelessness or moves to overcrowded accommodation would possibly possibly presumably per chance risk better numbers of Covid-19 infections.
Citizen’s Recommendation warned that one in nine of us had reported falling at the assist of on family bills. With the eviction moratorium and a ban on face-to-face bailiff collection ending this weekend, “many of these struggling would possibly possibly presumably per chance face harsh enforcement”, the charity said.
A spokesperson for the Housing, Communities, and Local Government Division said the authorities had taken “unparalleled action” to assist renters at some point of the pandemic and would continue to assist these affected when the eviction ban lifts.
“We are working on how simplest to continue supporting renters and landlords at some point of the pandemic and can fabricate an announcement on the following steps quickly,” the spokesperson said.
With assorted ingredients of the UK having already presented extra abet for tenants going thru eviction, Ministers in England are now under stress to abet as a lot as a quarter of 1,000,000 tenants who’re at risk of losing their dwelling.
Councils dangle warned that housing departments will fight to take care of a steep upward thrust in homelessness applications.
With an acute shortage of temporary emergency housing, native authorities would possibly possibly presumably per chance wish to switch homeless other folks and families a long way from their locality and residential them in funds resorts.
The County Courts in England dangle a backlog of 40,000 eviction cases and or no longer it is feared they’re going to no longer dangle the capability to take care of tens of thousands extra, in particular when the authorities’s jobs furlough method ends in October.
Social distancing method most courts can no longer operate at elephantine capability and it is estimated that it’ll take a year merely to take care of the eviction disputes within the system sooner than lockdown.
Here is a broad misfortune to landlords who depend on rental earnings to pay their bills, including their very dangle housing costs.
If they’ll no longer evict powerful tenants or these who dangle predominant lease arrears, their companies would possibly possibly presumably per chance crumple.
The authorities is committed to ending ‘no fault evictions’ in its manifesto and some housing charities argue this would chop the collection of of us losing their dwelling and produce better certainty to the rental system.
But Ministers were consulting on this form of reform and dangle came across it demanding to devise a system that does no longer dangle unintended penalties.
With appropriate two days to switch till the ban ends, any trade in policy now is more seemingly to be characterised by their opponents as another closing-minute U-flip.
‘We appropriate need someplace gain’
David Batchelder, 35, became laid off from his job in pest alter before every thing of lockdown.
He lives in a flat in High Wycombe along with his companion, who works as a building company receptionist, and for the time being is a accept as true with-at-dwelling dad to at least one-year-aged daughter Miley.
Media playback is unsupported to your tool
Media captionDavid Batchelder: “I win no longer know what the long drag holds”
The fall in earnings and reliance on advantages method he is anxious about the long drag.
“In all honesty, [benefits] are no longer sufficient and appropriate win no longer quilt every thing,” he said.
“In complicated cases there would possibly possibly be a risk that we would possibly possibly presumably per chance stop up losing our dwelling. We would possibly possibly presumably per chance presumably accept as true with to know that we dangle bought someplace gain.
“The landlords were very appropriate so a long way, however they’ll most realistic most likely win so powerful. And if there became another coronavirus wave, this would presumably per chance presumably be very irritating as to what would possibly possibly presumably per chance occur.”
Attorneys and landlords’ teams dangle said that, despite the stop of the ban, there is shrimp expectation of of us that dangle confronted Covid-connected monetary problems being with out note fast to switch away properties.
Chris Norris, policy director for the Nationwide Residential Landlords Association, said: “Our analysis clearly presentations that the broad majority of landlords and tenants are working together constructively to assist tenancies wherever conceivable.
“We would just like the courts to take care of cases the put tenants are committing anti-social behaviour or the put there are long-standing lease arrears that haven’t got the rest to win with the pandemic.”
Government measures mean extra evidence is the largest from landlords for the courts to agree to a possession.
They have to negate evidence of what they know about the tenant’s conditions including the pause of the coronavirus pandemic on them and their dependants. With out it, the case would possibly possibly presumably per chance presumably be delayed.
Pre-outbreak cases that were place on assistance will require a re-activation seek for to be despatched to the court and the tenant
Courts can even prioritise cases the put there became anti-social behaviour or domestic violence appealing, and courts’ capability to hear cases will be restricted by social distancing restrictions.
“It is a long way never going that we are going to notice an fast spike in evictions and definitely no longer tenants kicked out onto the streets the following day. Landlords are streak by strict principles designed to tiresome the technique down,” said Jacqui Walton, from regulation firm Royds Withy King.
In Wales, tenants who dangle fallen into arrears are being aided with a saving method.
Landlords teams dangle called for extra abet in England to chop the monetary pressures on landlords, to boot to to mortgage holidays.
Recommendation for tenants
Anyone under risk of eviction can dangle to aloof initiate gathering evidence equivalent to receipts for lease paid or any communications along with your landlord
Landlords wish to present you seek for sooner than they’ll affirm to court for a possession negate. For many tenancy sorts this seek for have to now be at least three months in England or six in Wales, however lodgers would possibly possibly presumably per chance win much less seek for
If a possession negate had already been made in opposition to you sooner than 27 March 2020, then your landlord would possibly possibly presumably per chance affirm for this to be enforced when the ban involves an stop. That you can dangle to aloof gain 14 days’ seek for of the eviction date
Anyone now struggling to pay lease can dangle to aloof assert to their landlord, and organise a repayment thought to pay off arrears
These receiving housing succor or Neatly-liked Credit and unable to pay lease would possibly possibly presumably per chance presumably be in a put to win a discretionary housing price from the native council
Source: Electorate Recommendation
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T r u m p ’ s L i e s
A Verified, Fact Checked List Of Trump’s Public Statements With Are False! January to Present.
JAN. 21 “I wasn't a fan of Iraq. I didn't want to go into Iraq.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.)JAN. 21 “A reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.” (Trump was on the cover 11 times and Nixon appeared 55 times.)JAN. 23 “Between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote.” (There's no evidence of illegal voting.)JAN. 25 “Now, the audience was the biggest ever. But this crowd was massive. Look how far back it goes. This crowd was massive.”(Official aerial photos show Obama's 2009 inauguration was much more heavily attended.)JAN. 25 “Take a look at the Pew reports (which show voter fraud.)” (The report never mentioned voter fraud.)JAN. 25 “You had millions of people that now aren't insured anymore.” (The real number is less than 1 million, according to the Urban Institute.)JAN. 25 “So, look, when President Obama was there two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech. Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can't have that.” (There were no gun homicide victims in Chicago that day.)JAN. 26 “We've taken in tens of thousands of people. We know nothing about them. They can say they vet them. They didn't vet them. They have no papers. How can you vet somebody when you don't know anything about them and you have no papers? How do you vet them? You can't.” (Vetting lasts up to two years.)JAN. 26 “I cut off hundreds of millions of dollars off one particular plane, hundreds of millions of dollars in a short period of time. It wasn't like I spent, like, weeks, hours, less than hours, and many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. And the plane's going to be better.” (Most of the cuts were already planned.)JAN. 28 “Thr coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost gas been so false and angry that the times actually apologized to its dwindling subscribers and readers.” (It never apologized.)JAN. 29 “The Cuban-Americans, I got 84 percent of that vote.”(There is no support for this.)JAN. 30 “Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage” (At least 746 people were detained and processed, and the Delta outage happened two days.)FEB. 3 “Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” (There is no evidence of paid protesters.)FEB. 4 “After being forced to apologize for its bad and inaccurate coverage of me after winning the election, the FAKE NEWS @nytimes is still lost!” (It never apologized.)FEB. 5 “We had 109 people out of hundreds of thousands of travelers and all we did was vet those people very, very carefully.” (About 60,000 people were affected.)FEB. 6 “I have already saved more than $700 million when I got involved in the negotiation on the F-35.” (Much of the price drop was projected before Trump took office.)FEB. 6 “It's gotten to a point where it is not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it.” (Terrorism has been reported on, often in detail.)FEB. 6 “The failing @nytimes was forced to apologize to its subscribers for the poor reporting it did on my election win. Now they are worse!” (It didn't apologize.)FEB. 6 “And the previous administration allowed it to happen because we shouldn't have been in Iraq, but we shouldn't have gotten out the way we got out. It created a vacuum, ISIS was formed.” (ISIS has existed since 2004.)FEB. 7 “And yet the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? Forty-seven years.” (It was higher in the 1980s and '90s.)FEB. 7 “I saved more than $600 million. I got involved in negotiation on a fighter jet, the F-35.” (The Defense Department projected this price drop before Trump took office.)FEB. 9 “Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave ‘service’ in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!” (It was part of Cuomo's first question.)FEB. 9 Sen. Richard Blumenthal “now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” (The Gorsuch comments were later corroborated.)FEB. 10 “I don’t know about it. I haven’t seen it. What report is that?” (Trump knew about Flynn's actions for weeks.)FEB. 12 “Just leaving Florida. Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road that the FAKE NEWS media refuses to mention. Very dishonest!” (The media did cover it.)FEB. 16 “We got 306 because people came out and voted like they've never seen before so that's the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan.” (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all won bigger margins in the Electoral College.)FEB. 16 “That’s the other thing that was wrong with the travel ban. You had Delta with a massive problem with their computer system at the airports.”(Delta's problems happened two days later.)FEB. 16 “Walmart announced it will create 10,000 jobs in the United States just this year because of our various plans and initiatives.” (The jobs are a result of its investment plans announced in October 2016.)FEB. 16 “When WikiLeaks, which I had nothing to do with, comes out and happens to give, they’re not giving classified information.” (Not always. They have released classified information in the past.)FEB. 16 “We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban. But we had a bad court. Got a bad decision.” (The rollout was chaotic.)FEB. 16 “They’re giving stuff — what was said at an office about Hillary cheating on the debates. Which, by the way, nobody mentions. Nobody mentions that Hillary received the questions to the debates.” (It was widely covered.)FEB. 18 “And there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing.” (Refugees receive multiple background checks, taking up to two years.)FEB. 18 “You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?” (Trump implied there was a terror attack in Sweden, but there was no such attack.)FEB. 24 “By the way, you folks are in here — this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks.” (There was no evidence of long lines.)FEB. 24 “ICE came and endorsed me.” (Only its union did.)FEB. 24 “Obamacare covers very few people — and remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them — it was taken away from them.”(Obamacare increased coverage by a net of about 20 million.)FEB. 27 “Since Obamacare went into effect, nearly half of the insurers are stopped and have stopped from participating in the Obamacare exchanges.” (Many fewer pulled out.)FEB. 27 “On one plane, on a small order of one plane, I saved $725 million. And I would say I devoted about, if I added it up, all those calls, probably about an hour. So I think that might be my highest and best use.”(Much of the price cut was already projected.)FEB. 28 “And now, based on our very strong and frank discussions, they are beginning to do just that.”(NATO countries agreed to meet defense spending requirements in 2014.)FEB. 28 “The E.P.A.’s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands.” (There's no evidence that the Waters of the United States rule caused severe job losses.)FEB. 28 “We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a five-year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials.” (They can't lobby their former agency but can still become lobbyists.)MARCH 3 “It is so pathetic that the Dems have still not approved my full Cabinet.” (Paperwork for the last two candidates was still not submitted to the Senate.)MARCH 4 “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” (There's no evidence of a wiretap.)MARCH 4 “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” (There's no evidence of a wiretap.)MARCH 7 “122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!” (113 of them were released by President George W. Bush.)MARCH 13 “I saved a lot of money on those jets, didn't I? Did I do a good job? More than $725 million on them.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)MARCH 13 “First of all, it covers very few people.” (About 20 million people gained insurance under Obamacare.)MARCH 15 “On the airplanes, I saved $725 million. Probably took me a half an hour if you added up all of the times.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)MARCH 17 “I was in Tennessee — I was just telling the folks — and half of the state has no insurance company, and the other half is going to lose the insurance company.” (There's at least one insurer in every Tennessee county.)MARCH 20 “With just one negotiation on one set of airplanes, I saved the taxpayers of our country over $700 million.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)MARCH 21 “To save taxpayer dollars, I’ve already begun negotiating better contracts for the federal government — saving over $700 million on just one set of airplanes of which there are many sets.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)MARCH 22 “I make the statement, everyone goes crazy. The next day they have a massive riot, and death, and problems.” (Riots in Sweden broke out two days later and there were no deaths.)MARCH 22 “NATO, obsolete, because it doesn’t cover terrorism. They fixed that.” (It has fought terrorism since the 1980s.)MARCH 22 “Well, now, if you take a look at the votes, when I say that, I mean mostly they register wrong — in other words, for the votes, they register incorrectly and/or illegally. And they then vote. You have tremendous numbers of people.” (There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud.)MARCH 29 “Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong. Now worse!” (It didn't apologize.)MARCH 31 “We have a lot of plants going up now in Michigan that were never going to be there if I — if I didn’t win this election, those plants would never even think about going back. They were gone.” (These investments were already planned.)APRIL 2 “And I was totally opposed to the war in the Middle East which I think finally has been proven, people tried very hard to say I wasn’t but you’ve seen that it is now improving.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.)APRIL 2 “Now, my last tweet — you know, the one that you are talking about, perhaps — was the one about being, in quotes, wiretapped, meaning surveilled. Guess what, it is turning out to be true.” (There is still no evidence.)APRIL 5 “You have many states coming up where they’re going to have no insurance company. O.K.? It’s already happened in Tennessee. It’s happening in Kentucky. Tennessee only has half coverage. Half the state is gone. They left.” (Every marketplace region in Tennessee had at least one insurer.)APRIL 6 “If you look at the kind of cost-cutting we’ve been able to achieve with the military and at the same time ordering vast amounts of equipment — saved hundreds of millions of dollars on airplanes, and really billions, because if you take that out over a period of years it’s many billions of dollars — I think we’ve had a tremendous success.” (Much of the price cuts were already projected.)APRIL 11 “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late. I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve.” (He knew Steve Bannon since 2011.)APRIL 12 “You can't do it faster, because they're obstructing. They're obstructionists. So I have people — hundreds of people that we're trying to get through. I mean you have — you see the backlog. We can't get them through.” (At this point, he had not nominated anyone for hundreds of positions.)APRIL 12 “The New York Times said the word wiretapped in the headline of the first edition. Then they took it out of there fast when they realized.” (There were two headlines, but neither were altered.)APRIL 12 “The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism. I complained about that a long time ago and they made a change, and now they do fight terrorism.” (NATO has been engaged in counterterrorism efforts since the 1980s.)APRIL 12 “Mosul was supposed to last for a week and now they’ve been fighting it for many months and so many more people died.” (The campaign was expected to take months.)APRIL 16 “Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over!” (There's no evidence of paid protesters.)APRIL 18 “The fake media goes, ‘Donald Trump changed his stance on China.’ I haven’t changed my stance.” (He did.)APRIL 21 “On 90 planes I saved $725 million. It's actually a little bit more than that, but it's $725 million.”(Much of the price cuts were already projected.)APRIL 21 “When WikiLeaks came out … never heard of WikiLeaks, never heard of it.” (He criticized it as early as 2010.)APRIL 27 “I want to help our miners while the Democrats are blocking their healthcare.” (The bill to extend health benefits for certain coal miners was introduced by a Democrat and was co-sponsored by mostly Democrats.)APRIL 28 “The trade deficit with Mexico is close to $70 billion, even with Canada it’s $17 billion trade deficit with Canada.” (The U.S. had an $8.1 billion trade surplus, not deficit, with Canada in 2016.)APRIL 28 “She's running against someone who's going to raise your taxes to the sky, destroy your health care, and he's for open borders — lots of crime.”(Those are not Jon Ossoff's positions.)APRIL 28 “The F-35 fighter jet program — it was way over budget. I’ve saved $725 million plus, just by getting involved in the negotiation.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)APRIL 29 “They're incompetent, dishonest people who after an election had to apologize because they covered it, us, me, but all of us, they covered it so badly that they felt they were forced to apologize because their predictions were so bad.” (The Times did not apologize.)APRIL 29 “As you know, I've been a big critic of China, and I've been talking about currency manipulation for a long time. But I have to tell you that during the election, number one, they stopped.” (China stopped years ago.)APRIL 29 “I've already saved more than $725 million on a simple order of F-35 planes. I got involved in the negotiation.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)APRIL 29 “We're also getting NATO countries to finally step up and contribute their fair share. They've begun to increase their contributions by billions of dollars, but we are not going to be satisfied until everyone pays what they owe.” (The deal was struck in 2014.)APRIL 29 “When they talk about currency manipulation, and I did say I would call China, if they were, a currency manipulator, early in my tenure. And then I get there. Number one, they — as soon as I got elected, they stopped.” (China stopped in 2014.)APRIL 29 “I was negotiating to reduce the price of the big fighter jet contract, the F-35, which was totally out of control. I will save billions and billions and billions of dollars.” (Most of the cuts were planned before Trump.)APRIL 29 “I think our side's been proven very strongly. And everybody's talking about it.” (There's still no evidence Trump's phones were tapped.)MAY 1 “Well, we are protecting pre-existing conditions. And it'll be every good — bit as good on pre-existing conditions as Obamacare.” (The bill weakens protections for people with pre-existing conditions.)MAY 1 “The F-35 fighter jet — I saved — I got involved in the negotiation. It's 2,500 jets. I negotiated for 90 planes, lot 10. I got $725 million off the price.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)MAY 1 “First of all, since I started running, they haven't increased their — you know, they have not manipulated their currency. I think that was out of respect to me and the campaign.” (China stopped years ago.)MAY 2 “I love buying those planes at a reduced price. I have been really — I have cut billions — I have to tell you this, and they can check, right, Martha? I have cut billions and billions of dollars off plane contracts sitting here.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)MAY 4 “Number two, they’re actually not a currency [manipulator]. You know, since I’ve been talking about currency manipulation with respect to them and other countries, they stopped.” (China stopped years ago.)MAY 4 “We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world.” (We're not.)MAY 4 “Nobody cares about my tax return except for the reporters.” (Polls show most Americans do care.)MAY 8 “You know we’ve gotten billions of dollars more in NATO than we’re getting. All because of me.” (The deal was struck in 2014.)MAY 8 “But when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high — highest rating. The highest rating he’s ever had.” (Colbert's “Late Show” debut had nearly two million more viewers.)MAY 8 “Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows- there is ‘no evidence’ of collusion w/ Russia and Trump.” (Clapper only said he wasn't aware of an investigation.)MAY 12 “Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election.” (The F.B.I. was investigating before the election.)MAY 12 “When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?” (Clapper said he wouldn't have been told of an investigation into collusion.)MAY 13 “I'm cutting the price of airplanes with Lockheed.” (The cost cuts were planned before he became president.)MAY 26 “Just arrived in Italy for the G7. Trip has been very successful. We made and saved the USA many billions of dollars and millions of jobs.” (He's referencing an arms deal that's not enacted and other apparent deals that weren't announced on the trip.)JUNE 1 “China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020.” (The agreement doesn’t allow or disallow building coal plants.)JUNE 1 “I’ve just returned from a trip overseas where we concluded nearly $350 billion of military and economic development for the United States, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.” (Trump’s figures are inflated and premature.)JUNE 4 “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” (The mayor was specifically talking about the enlarged police presence on the streets.)JUNE 5 “The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.” (Trump signed this version of the travel ban, not the Justice Department.)JUNE 21 “They all say it's 'nonbinding.' Like hell it's nonbinding.” (The Paris climate agreement is nonbinding — and Trump said so in his speech announcing the withdrawal.)JUNE 21 “Right now, we are one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.” (We're not.)
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ALL THE ILLEGITIMATE OCCUPANT OF THE OVAL OFFICE LIES - [
Jan. 21 “I wasn't a fan of Iraq. I didn't want to go into Iraq.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.) Jan. 21 “A reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.” (Trump was on the cover 11 times and Nixon appeared 55 times.) Jan. 23 “Between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote.” (There's no evidence of illegal voting.) Jan. 25 “Now, the audience was the biggest ever. But this crowd was massive. Look how far back it goes. This crowd was massive.” (Official aerial photos show Obama's 2009 inauguration was much more heavily attended.) Jan. 25 “Take a look at the Pew reports (which show voter fraud.)” (The report never mentioned voter fraud.) Jan. 25 “You had millions of people that now aren't insured anymore.” (The real number is less than 1 million, according to the Urban Institute.) Jan. 25 “So, look, when President Obama was there two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech. Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can't have that.” (There were no gun homicide victims in Chicago that day.) Jan. 26 “We've taken in tens of thousands of people. We know nothing about them. They can say they vet them. They didn't vet them. They have no papers. How can you vet somebody when you don't know anything about them and you have no papers? How do you vet them? You can't.” (Vetting lasts up to two years.) Jan. 26 “I cut off hundreds of millions of dollars off one particular plane, hundreds of millions of dollars in a short period of time. It wasn't like I spent, like, weeks, hours, less than hours, and many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. And the plane's going to be better.” (Most of the cuts were already planned.) Jan. 28 “The coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost has been so false and angry that the Times actually apologized to its dwindling subscribers and readers.” (It never apologized.) Jan. 29 “The Cuban-Americans, I got 84 percent of that vote.” (There is no support for this.) Jan. 30 “Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage.” (At least 746 people were detained and processed, and the Delta outage happened two days later.) Feb. 3 “Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” (There is no evidence of paid protesters.) Feb. 4 “After being forced to apologize for its bad and inaccurate coverage of me after winning the election, the FAKE NEWS @nytimes is still lost!” (It never apologized.) Feb. 5 “We had 109 people out of hundreds of thousands of travelers and all we did was vet those people very, very carefully.” (About 60,000 people were affected.) Feb. 6 “I have already saved more than $700 million when I got involved in the negotiation on the F-35.” (Much of the price drop was projected before Trump took office.) Feb. 6 “It's gotten to a point where it is not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it.” (Terrorism has been reported on, often in detail.) Feb. 6 “The failing @nytimes was forced to apologize to its subscribers for the poor reporting it did on my election win. Now they are worse!” (It didn't apologize.) Feb. 6 “And the previous administration allowed it to happen because we shouldn't have been in Iraq, but we shouldn't have gotten out the way we got out. It created a vacuum, ISIS was formed.” (The group’s origins date to 2004.) Feb. 7 “And yet the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? Forty-seven years.” (It was higher in the 1980s and '90s.) Feb. 7 “I saved more than $600 million. I got involved in negotiation on a fighter jet, the F-35.” (The Defense Department projected this price drop before Trump took office.) Feb. 9 “Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave ‘service’ in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!” (It was part of Cuomo's first question.) Feb. 9 “Sen. Richard Blumenthal now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” (The Gorsuch comments were later corroborated.) Feb. 10 “I don’t know about it. I haven’t seen it. What report is that?” (Trump knew about Flynn's actions for weeks.) Feb. 12 “Just leaving Florida. Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road that the FAKE NEWS media refuses to mention. Very dishonest!” (The media did cover it.) Feb. 16 “We got 306 because people came out and voted like they've never seen before so that's the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan.” (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all won bigger margins in the Electoral College.) Feb. 16 “That’s the other thing that was wrong with the travel ban. You had Delta with a massive problem with their computer system at the airports.” (Delta's problems happened two days later.) Feb. 16 “Walmart announced it will create 10,000 jobs in the United States just this year because of our various plans and initiatives.” (The jobs are a result of its investment plans announced in October 2016.) Feb. 16 “When WikiLeaks, which I had nothing to do with, comes out and happens to give, they’re not giving classified information.” (Not always. They have released classified information in the past.) Feb. 16 “We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban. But we had a bad court. Got a bad decision.” (The rollout was chaotic.) Feb. 16 “They’re giving stuff — what was said at an office about Hillary cheating on the debates. Which, by the way, nobody mentions. Nobody mentions that Hillary received the questions to the debates.” (It was widely covered.) Feb. 18 “And there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing.” (Refugees receive multiple background checks, taking up to two years.) Feb. 18 “You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?” (Trump implied there was a terror attack in Sweden, but there was no such attack.) Feb. 24 “By the way, you folks are in here — this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks.” (There was no evidence of long lines.) Feb. 24 “ICE came and endorsed me.” (Only its union did.) Feb. 24 “Obamacare covers very few people — and remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them — it was taken away from them.” (Obamacare increased coverage by a net of about 20 million.) Feb. 27 “Since Obamacare went into effect, nearly half of the insurers are stopped and have stopped from participating in the Obamacare exchanges.” (Many fewer pulled out.) Feb. 27 “On one plane, on a small order of one plane, I saved $725 million. And I would say I devoted about, if I added it up, all those calls, probably about an hour. So I think that might be my highest and best use.” (Much of the price cut was already projected.) Feb. 28 “And now, based on our very strong and frank discussions, they are beginning to do just that.” (NATO countries agreed to meet defense spending requirements in 2014.) Feb. 28 “The E.P.A.’s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands.” (There's no evidence that the Waters of the United States rule caused severe job losses.) Feb. 28 “We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a five-year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials.” (They can't lobby their former agency but can still become lobbyists.) March 3 “It is so pathetic that the Dems have still not approved my full Cabinet.” (Paperwork for the last two candidates was still not submitted to the Senate.) March 4 “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” (There's no evidence of a wiretap.) March 4 “How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” (There's no evidence of a wiretap.) March 7 “122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!” (113 of them were released by President George W. Bush.) March 13 “I saved a lot of money on those jets, didn't I? Did I do a good job? More than $725 million on them.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.) March 13 “First of all, it covers very few people.” (About 20 million people gained insurance under Obamacare.) March 15 “On the airplanes, I saved $725 million. Probably took me a half an hour if you added up all of the times.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.) March 17 “I was in Tennessee — I was just telling the folks — and half of the state has no insurance company, and the other half is going to lose the insurance company.” (There's at least one insurer in every Tennessee county.) March 20 “With just one negotiation on one set of airplanes, I saved the taxpayers of our country over $700 million.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.) March 21 “To save taxpayer dollars, I’ve already begun negotiating better contracts for the federal government — saving over $700 million on just one set of airplanes of which there are many sets.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.) March 22 “I make the statement, everyone goes crazy. The next day they have a massive riot, and death, and problems.” (Riots in Sweden broke out two days later and there were no deaths.) March 22 “NATO, obsolete, because it doesn’t cover terrorism. They fixed that.” (It has fought terrorism since the 1980s.) March 22 “Well, now, if you take a look at the votes, when I say that, I mean mostly they register wrong — in other words, for the votes, they register incorrectly and/or illegally. And they then vote. You have tremendous numbers of people.” (There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud.) March 29 “Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong. Now worse!” (It didn't apologize.) March 31 “We have a lot of plants going up now in Michigan that were never going to be there if I — if I didn’t win this election, those plants would never even think about going back. They were gone.” (These investments were already planned.) April 2 “And I was totally opposed to the war in the Middle East which I think finally has been proven, people tried very hard to say I wasn’t but you’ve seen that it is now improving.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.) April 2 “Now, my last tweet — you know, the one that you are talking about, perhaps — was the one about being, in quotes, wiretapped, meaning surveilled. Guess what, it is turning out to be true.” (There is still no evidence.) April 5 “You have many states coming up where they’re going to have no insurance company. O.K.? It’s already happened in Tennessee. It’s happening in Kentucky. Tennessee only has half coverage. Half the state is gone. They left.” (Every marketplace region in Tennessee had at least one insurer.) April 6 “If you look at the kind of cost-cutting we’ve been able to achieve with the military and at the same time ordering vast amounts of equipment — saved hundreds of millions of dollars on airplanes, and really billions, because if you take that out over a period of years it’s many billions of dollars — I think we’ve had a tremendous success.” (Much of the price cuts were already projected.) April 11 “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late. I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve.” (He knew Steve Bannon since 2011.) April 12 “You can't do it faster, because they're obstructing. They're obstructionists. So I have people — hundreds of people that we're trying to get through. I mean you have — you see the backlog. We can't get them through.” (At this point, he had not nominated anyone for hundreds of positions.) April 12 “The New York Times said the word wiretapped in the headline of the first edition. Then they took it out of there fast when they realized.” (There were separate headlines for print and web, but neither were altered.) April 12 “The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism. I complained about that a long time ago and they made a change, and now they do fight terrorism.” (NATO has been engaged in counterterrorism efforts since the 1980s.) April 12 “Mosul was supposed to last for a week and now they’ve been fighting it for many months and so many more people died.” (The campaign was expected to take months.) April 16 “Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over!” (There's no evidence of paid protesters.) April 18 “The fake media goes, ‘Donald Trump changed his stance on China.’ I haven’t changed my stance.” (He did.) April 21 “On 90 planes I saved $725 million. It's actually a little bit more than that, but it's $725 million.” (Much of the price cuts were already projected.) April 21 “When WikiLeaks came out ... never heard of WikiLeaks, never heard of it.” (He criticized it as early as 2010.) April 27 “I want to help our miners while the Democrats are blocking their healthcare.” (The bill to extend health benefits for certain coal miners was introduced by a Democrat and was co-sponsored by mostly Democrats.) April 28 “The trade deficit with Mexico is close to $70 billion, even with Canada it’s $17 billion trade deficit with Canada.” (The U.S. had an $8.1 billion trade surplus, not deficit, with Canada in 2016.) April 28 “She's running against someone who's going to raise your taxes to the sky, destroy your health care, and he's for open borders — lots of crime.” (Those are not Jon Ossoff's positions.) April 28 “The F-35 fighter jet program — it was way over budget. I’ve saved $725 million plus, just by getting involved in the negotiation.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.) April 29 “As you know, I've been a big critic of China, and I've been talking about currency manipulation for a long time. But I have to tell you that during the election, number one, they stopped.” (China stopped years ago.) April 29 “I've already saved more than $725 million on a simple order of F-35 planes. I got involved in the negotiation.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.) April 29 “We're also getting NATO countries to finally step up and contribute their fair share. They've begun to increase their contributions by billions of dollars, but we are not going to be satisfied until everyone pays what they owe.” (The deal was struck in 2014.) April 29 “When they talk about currency manipulation, and I did say I would call China, if they were, a currency manipulator, early in my tenure. And then I get there. Number one, they — as soon as I got elected, they stopped.” (China stopped in 2014.) April 29 “I was negotiating to reduce the price of the big fighter jet contract, the F-35, which was totally out of control. I will save billions and billions and billions of dollars.” (Most of the cuts were planned before Trump.) April 29 “I think our side's been proven very strongly. And everybody's talking about it.” (There's still no evidence Trump's phones were tapped.) May 1 “Well, we are protecting pre-existing conditions. And it'll be every good — bit as good on pre-existing conditions as Obamacare.” (The bill weakens protections for people with pre-existing conditions.) May 1 “The F-35 fighter jet — I saved — I got involved in the negotiation. It's 2,500 jets. I negotiated for 90 planes, lot 10. I got $725 million off the price.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.) May 1 “First of all, since I started running, they haven't increased their — you know, they have not manipulated their currency. I think that was out of respect to me and the campaign.” (China stopped years ago.) May 2 “I love buying those planes at a reduced price. I have been really — I have cut billions — I have to tell you this, and they can check, right, Martha? I have cut billions and billions of dollars off plane contracts sitting here.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.) May 4 “Number two, they’re actually not a currency [manipulator]. You know, since I’ve been talking about currency manipulation with respect to them and other countries, they stopped.” (China stopped years ago.) May 4 “We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world.” (We're not.) May 4 “Nobody cares about my tax return except for the reporters.” (Polls show most Americans do care.) May 8 “You know we’ve gotten billions of dollars more in NATO than we’re getting. All because of me.” (The deal was struck in 2014.) May 8 “But when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high — highest rating. The highest rating he’s ever had.” (Colbert's Late Show debut had nearly two million more viewers.) May 8 “Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows — there is ‘no evidence’ of collusion w/ Russia and Trump.” (Clapper only said he wasn't aware of an investigation.) May 12 “Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election.” (The F.B.I. was investigating before the election.) May 12 “When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?” (Clapper said he wouldn't have been told of an investigation into collusion.) May 13 “I'm cutting the price of airplanes with Lockheed.” (The cost cuts were planned before he became president.) May 26 “Just arrived in Italy for the G7. Trip has been very successful. We made and saved the USA many billions of dollars and millions of jobs.” (He's referencing an arms deal that's not enacted and other apparent deals that weren't announced on the trip.) June 1 “China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020.” (The agreement doesn’t allow or disallow building coal plants.) June 1 “I’ve just returned from a trip overseas where we concluded nearly $350 billion of military and economic development for the United States, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.” (Trump’s figures are inflated and premature.) June 4 “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” (The mayor was specifically talking about the enlarged police presence on the streets.) June 5 “The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.” (Trump signed this version of the travel ban, not the Justice Department.) June 20 “Well, the Special Elections are over and those that want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN are 5 and O!” (Republicans have won four special elections this year, while a Democrat won one.) June 21 “They all say it's 'nonbinding.' Like hell it's nonbinding.” (The Paris climate agreement is nonbinding — and Trump said so in his speech announcing the withdrawal.) June 21 “Right now, we are one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.” (We're not.) June 21 “You have a gang called MS-13. ... We are moving them out of the country by the thousands, by the thousands.” (The real number of gang members deported is smaller.) June 21 “Your insurance companies have all fled the state of Iowa.” (They haven't.) June 21 “If [farmers] have a puddle in the middle of their field ... it's considered a lake and you can't touch it. ... We got rid of that one, too, O.K.?” (The Obama environmental rule to limit pollution in the country’s waters explicitly excludes puddles.) June 21 “Gary Cohn just paid $200 million in tax in order to take this job, by the way.” (Cohn sold Goldman Sachs stock worth $220 million.) June 21 “We’re 5 and 0.” (Republicans have won four special elections this year, while a Democrat won one.) June 21 “Last week a brand-new coal mine just opened in the state of Pennsylvania, first time in decades, decades.” (Another coal mine opened in 2014.) June 22 “Former Homeland Security Advisor Jeh Johnson is latest top intelligence official to state there was no grand scheme between Trump & Russia.” (Johnson, who had a different title, didn't say that.) June 23 “We are 5 and 0 ... in these special elections.” (Republicans have won four special elections this year, while a Democrat won one.) June 27 “Ratings way down!” (CNN's ratings were at a five-year high at the time.) June 28 “Democrats purposely misstated Medicaid under new Senate bill — actually goes up.” (Senate bill would have cut the program deeply.) June 29 “General Kelly and his whole group — they’ve gotten rid of 6,000 so far.” (The real number of MS-13 gang members who have been deported is smaller.) July 6 “As a result of this insistence, billions of dollars more have begun to pour into NATO.” (NATO countries agreed to meet defense spending requirements in 2014.) July 17 “We’ve signed more bills — and I’m talking about through the legislature — than any president, ever.” (Clinton, Carter, Truman, and F.D.R. had signed more at the same point.) July 19 “Um, the Russian investigation — it’s not an investigation, it’s not on me — you know, they’re looking at a lot of things.” (It is.) July 19 “I heard that Harry Truman was first, and then we beat him. These are approved by Congress. These are not just executive orders.” (Presidents Clinton, Carter, Truman, and F.D.R. each had signed more legislation than Trump at the same point in their terms.) July 19 “But the F.B.I. person really reports directly to the president of the United States, which is interesting.” (He reports directly to the attorney general.)
]
#MarchAgainstTrump#March Against Trump#Against Trump#Donald Trump#President#ALL THE ILLEGITIMATE OCC
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Essential Worker Shoulders $1,840 Pandemic Debt Due To COVID Cost Loophole
Carmen Quintero works an early shift as a supervisor at a 3M distribution warehouse that ships N95 masks to a nation under siege from the coronavirus. On March 23, she had developed a severe cough, and her voice, usually quick and enthusiastic, was barely a whisper.
A human resources staff member told Quintero she needed to go home.
“They told me I couldn’t come back until I was tested,” said Quintero, who was also told that she would need to document that she didn’t have the virus.
Her primary care doctor directed her to the nearest emergency room for testing because the practice had no coronavirus tests.
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The Corona Regional Medical Center is just around the corner from her house in Corona, California, and there a nurse tested her breathing and gave her a chest X-ray. But the hospital didn’t have any tests either, and the nurse told her to go to Riverside County’s public health department. There, a public health worker gave her an 800 number to call to schedule a test. The earliest the county could test her was April 7, more than two weeks later.
At the hospital, Quintero got a doctor’s note saying she should stay home from work for a week, and she was told to behave as if she had COVID-19, isolating herself from vulnerable household members. That was difficult — Quintero lives with her grandmother and her girlfriend’s parents — but she managed. No one else in her home got sick, and by the time April 7 came, she felt better and decided not to get the coronavirus test.
Then the bill came.
The Patient: Carmen Quintero, 35, a supervisor at a 3M distribution warehouse who lives in Corona, California. She has an Anthem Blue Cross health insurance plan through her job with a $3,500 annual deductible.
Total Bill: Corona Regional Medical Center billed Quintero $1,010, and Corona Regional Emergency Medical Associates billed an additional $830 for physician services. She also paid $50 at Walgreens to fill a prescription for an inhaler.
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Service Provider: Corona Regional Medical Center, a for-profit hospital owned by Universal Health Services, a company based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, which is one of the largest health care management companies in the nation. The hospital contracts with Corona Regional Emergency Medical Associates, part of Emergent Medical Associates.
Medical Service: Quintero was evaluated in the emergency room for symptoms consistent with COVID-19: a wracking cough and difficulty breathing. She had a chest X-ray and a breathing treatment and was prescribed an inhaler.
What Gives: On that day in late March when her body shook from coughing, Quintero’s immediate worry was infecting her family, especially her girlfriend’s parents, both over 65, and her 84-year-old grandmother.
“If something was to happen to them, I don’t know if I would have been able to live with it,” said Quintero.
Quintero wanted to isolate in a hotel, but she could hardly afford to for the week that she stayed home. She had only three paid sick days and was forced to take vacation time until her symptoms subsided and she was allowed back at work. At the time, few places provided publicly funded hotel rooms for sick people to isolate, and Quintero was not offered any help.
For her medical care, Quintero knew she had a high-deductible plan yet felt she had no choice but to follow her doctor’s advice and go to the nearest emergency room to get tested. She assumed she would get the test and not have to pay. Congress had passed the CARES Act just the week before, with its headlines saying coronavirus testing would be free.
That legislation turned out to be riddled with loopholes, especially for people like Quintero who needed and wanted a coronavirus test but couldn’t get one early in the pandemic.
“I just didn’t think it was fair because I went in there to get tested,” she said.
Carmen Quintero (right) still tries to keep a safe distance from her grandmother, Teresa Carapia, and two other family members over 65. Quintero says she worried about them as she tried to self-isolate with COVID-like symptoms.(Heidi de Marco/KHN)
Some insurance companies are voluntarily reducing copayments for COVID-related emergency room visits. Quintero said her insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, would not reduce her bill. Anthem would not discuss the case until Quintero signed its own privacy waiver; it would not accept a signed standard waiver KHN uses. The hospital would not discuss the bill with a reporter unless Quintero could also be on the phone, something that has yet to be arranged around Quintero’s workday, which begins at 4 a.m. and ends at 3:30 p.m.
Three states have gone further than Congress to waive cost sharing for testing and diagnosis of pneumonia and influenza, given these illnesses are often mistaken for COVID-19. California is not one of them, and because Quintero’s employer is self-insured — the company pays for health services directly from its own funds — it is exempt from state directives anyway. The U.S. Department of Labor regulates all self-funded insurance plans. In 2019, nearly 2 in 3 covered workers were in these types of plans.
Resolution: As lockdown restrictions ease and coronavirus cases rise around the country, public health officials say quickly isolating sick people before the virus spreads through families is essential.
But isolation efforts have gotten little attention in the U.S. Nearly all local health departments, including Riverside County, where Quintero lives, now have these programs, according to the National Association of County and City Health Officials. Many were designed to shelter people experiencing homelessness but can be used to isolate others.
Raymond Niaura, interim chairman of the Department of Epidemiology at New York University, said these programs are used inconsistently and have been poorly promoted to the public.
“No one has done this before and a lot of what’s happening is that people are making it up as they go along,” said Niaura. “We’ve just never been in a circumstance like this.”
Quintero still worries about bringing the virus home to her family and fears being in the same room with her grandmother. Quintero returns from work every day now, puts her clothes in a separate hamper and diligently washes her hands before she interacts with anyone.
The bills have been another constant worry. Quintero called the hospital and her insurance company and complained that she should not have to pay since she was seeking a test on her doctor’s orders. Neither budged, and the bills labeled “payment reminders” soon became “final notices.” She reluctantly agreed to pay $100 a month toward her balance — $50 to the hospital and $50 to the doctors.
“None of them wanted to work with me,” Quintero said. “I just have to give the first payment on each bill so they wouldn’t send me to collections.”
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The Takeaway: If you suspect you have COVID-19 and need to isolate to protect vulnerable members of your household, call your local public health department. Most counties have isolation and quarantine programs, but these resources are not well known. You may be placed in a hotel, recreational vehicle or other type of housing while you wait out the infection period. You do not need to have a positive COVID test to qualify for these programs and can use these programs while you await your test result. But this is an area in which public health officials repeatedly offer clear guidance — 14 days of isolation — which most people find impossible to follow.
At this point in the pandemic, tests are more widely available and federal law is very clearly on your side: You should not be charged any cost sharing for a coronavirus test.
Be wary, though, if your doctor directs you to the emergency room for a COVID test, because any additional care you get there could come at a high price. Ask if there are any other testing sites available.
If you do find yourself with a big bill related to suspected COVID, push beyond a telephone call with your insurance company and file a formal appeal. If you feel comfortable, ask your employer’s human resources staff to argue on your behalf. Then, call the help line for your state insurance commissioner and file a separate appeal. Press insurers — and big companies that offer self-insured plans — to follow the spirit of the law, even if the letter of the law seems to let them off the hook.
Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by Kaiser Health News and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!
from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/bill-of-the-month-essential-worker-shoulders-1840-pandemic-debt-due-to-covid-cost-loophole/
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Make America Confident Again; Musk’s No-Diesel Legal Weasel
Make America Confident Again; Musk’s No-Diesel Legal Weasel:
Confidently Overconfident
It’s one thing to be confident, dear reader. It’s another thing entirely to be blindly overconfident.
Today, we saw Wall Street give a pause to last week’s massive rally, following one of the most devastating monthly U.S. jobs reports ever. It seems that more than a few analysts are starting to realize just how dire the U.S.’s economic situation is.
For instance, ING Chief International Economist James Knightly does not buy into all the “quick recovery” hype. This morning, ING projected a 7% decline in U.S. gross domestic product. According to Knightly, 2020 will see a drop in corporate profits that will “dwarf” the 2009 financial crisis.
“Equally, the poor transparency for corporate profits — where even Amazon and Apple are struggling for guidance — suggests investors will need some strong compensation for holding equities,” ING said.
The problem, as ING notes, is that price to earnings (P/E) ratios are skyrocketing. That’s because stocks surged 35% off their March lows, while earnings fell off a cliff. The composite forward P/E ratio for S&P 500 companies currently rests near 23.
In other words, S&P 500 stocks trade at 23 times their expected earnings growth for the next five years!
Why should you care?
Because this figure is higher than any other such reading taken since the dot-com bubble. You know, that time in the market when just having a “dot-com” after your company name got you a multibillion-dollar valuation? No business plan required.
“In uncertain times like these, higher earnings expectations or lower valuations may be needed to keep equity markets supported. We err towards the latter,” ING noted.
Translation: Companies will either earn up or burn up.
The Takeaway:
“Turn bearish? In our moment of triumph? I think you underestimate the economy’s changes!” — Grand Moff Tarkin, if he were an investor … probably.
For those who don’t know, Tarkin was an Imperial admiral in charge of the Death Star in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It didn’t turn out well for him…
Right now, Wall Street has that same kind of overconfidence. On average, analysts expect a 20% drop in earnings for S&P 500 companies this year, followed by a 25% rebound in 2021. This is clearly a best-case scenario.
For example, everyone knows that corporate P/E ratios will skyrocket next quarter if stocks continue to rally. That’s because the “E” for earnings dropped right off the face of the earth, while stock valuations continue higher.
Investors expect a significant economic rebound from what they see as an artificial suppression of economic growth.
An arti-what now?
Wall Street thinks all we have to do to fix this problem is flip a switch and turn the economy back on. End the stay-at-home orders, and we end up right back where we started. Easy peasy.
It doesn’t really work like that, and you and I both know it.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine put it best this weekend in an interview on Fox News: “The economy’s not going to open no matter what we do, whatever we order, unless people have confidence.”
Investors have confidence because the Federal Reserve props up the market with unlimited stimulus.
But who props up the U.S. consumer? Who gives us confidence?
Sure, some people have (or had) $1,200 stimulus checks, but the virus is still here. It’s still spreading, and there’s still no cure, treatment or adequate testing.
Hit those three marks, and you’ll give consumers confidence once more. Until then, you can flip all the “economic restart” switches you want. The lights may come on, but nobody’s leaving home.
I mean, the last market collapse brought an 18-month bear market … from December 2007 to June 2009. The recession that followed lasted even longer … and we just saw all the jobs created since wiped out in a month.
We’ll find normalcy again sooner or later … but Wall Street has tunnel vision on the sooner, when you need to prepare for the later. You need to protect your wealth now … to even stand a chance at roaring back with the market.
Click here to find out how you can protect yourself — while not missing out on potential post-crash profits.
The Good: Amazonian Theatrics
What do you do when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tells you that your streaming movies aren’t eligible for an Oscar because they’re not in theaters?
Why, you buy your own theater chain, of course!
Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) has reportedly expressed interest in buying AMC Entertainment Holding Inc. (NYSE: AMC) — the U.S.’s largest silver screen operator.
According to sources at the Daily Mail, AMC and Amazon held talks about a potential buyout, but it’s unclear if those talks are still ongoing.
Such a buyout would be a major coup for Amazon — especially against the snooty Academy and its archaic rules for Oscar qualifications. Meanwhile, nearly bankrupt AMC could clearly use any lifeline it can get.
AMC investors certainly like the idea, sending the stock nearly 30% higher today. That said, if you don’t already hold AMC stock, don’t chase this rally on the rumor.
The Bad: Down Under Armour
I don’t know what all those new Peloton owners wear for their workouts, but it clearly isn’t new gear from Under Armour Inc. (NYSE: UA).
The sporting apparel maker reported worse-than-expected first-quarter results and pulled its 2020 outlook.
For the quarter, Under Armour earnings plummeted to a $0.34-per-share loss, as revenue fell 22.5% to $930.24 million. Analysts expected a loss of $0.19 per share on $954.6 million in sales.
What’s more, Under Armour is restructuring to cut costs — a move it started even before the COVID-19 lockdowns. The company estimates $475 million to $525 million in restructuring costs this year.
And if that wasn’t enough, Under Armour still deals with accounting probes from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.
The company clearly needs a protein bar or a Snickers … or something. UA shares are down more than 67% since their June 2019 highs, and they don’t appear ready to rebound any time soon.
The Ugly: Tesla Gets Musky
What makes Elon Musk guard his musk? Courage?
Nay … profits!
Tesla Inc.’s (Nasdaq: TSLA) CEO ramped up his anti-lockdown rhetoric last week.
Musk threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas in response to the former’s orders to prevent the automaker from reopening its Freemont factory. Tesla also filed suit against Alameda County in a move to invalidate those orders.
Musk believes the shutdown hurts Tesla’s business, and he’s probably right to a degree. However, if the latest sales data out of China is any indication, Tesla orders won’t flood in anytime soon.
According to the China Passenger Car Association, Model 3 sales plunged 64% last month. Tesla sold only 3,635 Model 3s in April in China, compared to 10,160 in March.
“That’s understandable,” you might think. “China’s still recovering, and no one is buying cars right now … especially electric cars. You’re overreacting!”
Well … that’s not quite true. Overall, electric vehicle (EV) sales rose 9.8% month over month in China for April. So, the Chinese are buying EVs, just not Teslas.
Great Stuff has long been bullish on TSLA … but only when Elon gets out of the way. Per our former point about flipping the U.S.’s economic switch, Tesla could reopen production now, but it might not mean very much at all if considerably fewer people are buying.
In short, Elon Musk is once again damaging public sentiment surrounding Tesla’s brand, with very little gained to show for it.
If you’ve followed along with Great Stuff’s romp through this hectic earnings season, our latest Chart of the Week shouldn’t surprise you much.
Posting an earnings calendar during earnings week? It’s a bold move, Hargett, let’s see if it pays off.
Courtesy of Earnings Whispers on Twitter, here’s what excitement is in store this week:
Now, you may not see as many familiar names at first in this earnings roundup as in past weeks. (Why so many boring blue logos, by the way? It’s time we jazz things up with the “ULTRA RAD X-TREME” styles everything had in the late ‘80s.)
Nonetheless, what we’re looking for here in this week’s earnings are the lesser-known hints toward the global economy’s health — the findings that won’t show up in payroll numbers or manufacturing reports.
We want the story behind the story here. Hey, that’s why you read Great Stuff to begin with no? Here are four quick takes to look out for from the earnings confessional:
We’ll see how the cannibas sector stacks up in the stay-at-home haze with Tilray Inc. (Nasdaq: TLRY) and the “reverse split refreshed” Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NYSE: ACB).
Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) can give us a slight glimpse at electronics spending, while JD.com Inc.’s (Nasdaq: JD) report will show the nitty-gritty in China’s consumer spending. Heck, I’m even looking forward to hearing how Jumia Technologies AG (NYSE: JMIA), the “Amazon of Africa,” has navigated the pandemic market.
If business is moving … people are shipping. With much of the world’s ship-based storage now backed up, Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE: DSX) should give us a better grasp on the world’s economy at sea. And while we’re out sailing (or not), we’ll see how Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) is holding up (or not).
The Oz behind the networking curtain, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) might become our remote-working economy’s bellwether with its vital role in communications.
So begone, boring earnings! There’s great stuff in every bag of Cracker Jack earnings … even if it’s just a stick-on tattoo.
That’s a wrap for today, but you can always catch us on social media: Facebook and Twitter. We hope you’re staying safe out there!
Until next time, stay Great!
Regards,
Joseph Hargett
Editor, Great Stuff
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Rural Ambulance Services Are in Jeopardy as Volunteers Age and Expenses Mount
DUTTON, Mont. — Vern Greyn was standing in the raised bucket of a tractor, trimming dead branches off a tree, when he lost his balance. He fell 12 feet and struck his head on the concrete patio outside his house in this small farming town on the central Montana plains.
Greyn, then 58, couldn’t move. His wife called 911. A volunteer emergency medical technician showed up: his own daughter-in-law, Leigh. But there was a problem. Greyn was too large for her to move by herself, so she had to call in help from the ambulance crew in Power, the next town over.
“I laid here for a half-hour or better,” Greyn said, recounting what happened two years ago from the same patio. When help finally arrived, they loaded him into the ambulance and rushed him to the nearest hospital, where they found he had a concussion.
In rural America, it’s increasingly difficult for ambulance services to respond to emergencies like Greyn’s. One factor is that emergency medical services are struggling to find young volunteers to replace retiring EMTs. Another is a growing financial crisis among rural volunteer EMS agencies: A third of them are at risk because they can’t cover their operating costs.
“More and more volunteer services are finding this to be untenable,” said Brock Slabach, chief operations officer of the National Rural Health Association.
Rural ambulance services rely heavily on volunteers. About 53% of rural EMS agencies are staffed by volunteers, compared with 14% in urban areas, according to an NRHA report. More than 70% of those rural agencies report difficulty finding volunteers.
In Montana, a state Department of Public Health and Human Services report says, about 20% of EMS agencies frequently have trouble responding to 911 calls for lack of available volunteers, and 34% occasionally can’t respond to a call.
When that happens, other EMS agencies must respond, sometimes having to drive long distances when a delay of minutes can be the difference between life and death. Sometimes an emergency call will go unanswered, leaving people to drive themselves or ask neighbors to drive them to the nearest hospital.
According to state data, 60% of Montana’s volunteer EMTs are 40 or older, and fewer young people are stepping in to replace the older people who volunteer to save the lives of their relatives, friends and neighbors.
Finding enough volunteers to fill out a rural ambulance crew is not a new problem. In Dutton, where Greyn fell out of the tractor bucket, EMS Crew Chief Colleen Campbell says getting people to volunteer and keeping them on the roster has been an issue for most of the 17 years she’s volunteered with the Dutton ambulance crew.
Currently the Dutton crew has four volunteers, including Campbell. In its early days, the Dutton ambulance service was locally run and survived off limited health insurance reimbursements and donations. At its lowest point, she said, her crew consisted of two people: her and her best friend.
That made responding to calls, doing the administrative work and organizing the training needed to maintain certifications more than they could handle. In 2011, the Dutton ambulance service was absorbed by Teton County.
That eased some of Campbell’s problems, but her biggest challenge remains finding people willing to go through the roughly 155 hours of training and take the written and practical tests in this town of fewer than 300 people.
“It’s just a big responsibility that people aren’t willing to jump into, I guess,” Campbell said.
In addition to personnel shortages, about a third of rural EMS agencies in the U.S. are in immediate operational jeopardy because they can’t cover their costs, according to the NRHA.
Slabach said that largely stems from insufficient Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements. Those reimbursements cover, on average, about a third of the actual costs to maintain equipment, stock medications and pay for insurance and other fixed expenses.
Many rural ambulance services rely on patients’ private insurance to fill the gap. Private insurance pays considerably more than Medicaid, but because of low call volumes, rural EMS agencies can’t always cover their bills, Slabach said.
“So, it’s not possible in many cases without significant subsidies to operate an emergency service in a large area with small populations,” he said.
Slabach and others say sagging reimbursement and volunteerism means rural parts of the U.S. can no longer rely solely on volunteers but must find ways to convert to a paid staff.
Jim DeTienne, who recently retired as the Montana health department’s EMS and Trauma Systems chief, acknowledged that sparsely populated counties would still need volunteers, but he said having at least one paid EMT on the roster could be a huge benefit.
DeTienne said he believes EMS needs to be declared an essential service like police or fire departments. Then counties could tax their residents to pay for ambulance services and provide a dedicated revenue stream.
Only 11 states have deemed EMS an essential service, Slabach said.
The Montana health department report on EMS services suggested other ways to move away from full-volunteer services, such as having EMS agencies merge with taxpayer-funded fire departments or having hospitals take over the programs.
In the southwestern Montana town of Ennis, Madison Valley Medical Center absorbed the dwindling volunteer EMS service earlier this year.
EMS Manager Nick Efta, a former volunteer, said the transition stabilized the service, which had been struggling to answer every 911 call. He said the service recently had nine calls in 24 hours. That included three transfers of patients to larger hospitals miles away.
“Given that day and how the calls played out, I think under a volunteer model it would be difficult to make all those calls,” Efta said.
Rich Rasmussen, president and CEO of the Montana Hospital Association, said an Ennis-style takeover might not be financially viable for many of the smaller critical access hospitals that serve rural areas. Many small hospitals that take over emergency services do so at a loss, he said.
“Really, what we need is a federal policy change, which would allow critical access hospitals to be reimbursed for the cost of delivering that EMS service,” he said.
Under current Medicare policy, federally designated critical access hospitals can get fully reimbursed for EMS only if there’s no other ambulance service within 35 miles, Rasmussen said. Eliminating that mileage requirement would give the hospitals an incentive to take on EMS, Rasmussen said.
“It’s a long haul to do this, but it would dramatically improve EMS access all across this country,” he said.
A Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pilot program is testing the elimination of mileage minimums for emergency services with select critical access hospitals.
The rural EMS crunch puts a greater burden on the closest urban ambulance services. Don Whalen, who manages a private EMS service in Missoula, the state’s second-largest city, said his crews regularly respond to outlying communities 70 miles away and sometimes across the Idaho line because local volunteer agencies often can’t answer emergency calls.
“We know if we’re not going, nobody is coming for the patient, because a lot of times we’re the last resort,” he said.
Missoula EMS is responsible for calls in the city and Missoula County. Whalen said Missoula EMS has agreements with a couple of volunteer EMS agencies in smaller communities to provide an ambulance when volunteers have difficulty leaving work to respond to calls.
Those agreements, on top of responding to other towns where 911 calls are going unanswered, are taking resources from Missoula, he said.
Communities need to find ways to stabilize or convert their volunteer programs, or private services like his will need financial support to keep responding in other communities, Whalen said.
But lawmakers’ appetite for finding ways to fund EMS is limited. During Montana’s legislative session earlier this year, DeTienne pushed for a bill that would have studied the benefit of declaring EMS an essential service, among other possible improvements. The bill quickly died.
Back in Dutton, the EMS crew chief is thinking about her future after 17 years as a volunteer. Campbell said she wants to spend more time with her grandchildren, who live out of town. If she retires, there’s no guarantee somebody will replace her. She’s torn about what to do.
“My license is good until March of 2022, and we’ll just see,” Campbell said.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
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Rural Ambulance Services Are in Jeopardy as Volunteers Age and Expenses Mount
DUTTON, Mont. — Vern Greyn was standing in the raised bucket of a tractor, trimming dead branches off a tree, when he lost his balance. He fell 12 feet and struck his head on the concrete patio outside his house in this small farming town on the central Montana plains.
Greyn, then 58, couldn’t move. His wife called 911. A volunteer emergency medical technician showed up: his own daughter-in-law, Leigh. But there was a problem. Greyn was too large for her to move by herself, so she had to call in help from the ambulance crew in Power, the next town over.
“I laid here for a half-hour or better,” Greyn said, recounting what happened two years ago from the same patio. When help finally arrived, they loaded him into the ambulance and rushed him to the nearest hospital, where they found he had a concussion.
In rural America, it’s increasingly difficult for ambulance services to respond to emergencies like Greyn’s. One factor is that emergency medical services are struggling to find young volunteers to replace retiring EMTs. Another is a growing financial crisis among rural volunteer EMS agencies: A third of them are at risk because they can’t cover their operating costs.
“More and more volunteer services are finding this to be untenable,” said Brock Slabach, chief operations officer of the National Rural Health Association.
Rural ambulance services rely heavily on volunteers. About 53% of rural EMS agencies are staffed by volunteers, compared with 14% in urban areas, according to an NRHA report. More than 70% of those rural agencies report difficulty finding volunteers.
In Montana, a state Department of Public Health and Human Services report says, about 20% of EMS agencies frequently have trouble responding to 911 calls for lack of available volunteers, and 34% occasionally can’t respond to a call.
When that happens, other EMS agencies must respond, sometimes having to drive long distances when a delay of minutes can be the difference between life and death. Sometimes an emergency call will go unanswered, leaving people to drive themselves or ask neighbors to drive them to the nearest hospital.
According to state data, 60% of Montana’s volunteer EMTs are 40 or older, and fewer young people are stepping in to replace the older people who volunteer to save the lives of their relatives, friends and neighbors.
Finding enough volunteers to fill out a rural ambulance crew is not a new problem. In Dutton, where Greyn fell out of the tractor bucket, EMS Crew Chief Colleen Campbell says getting people to volunteer and keeping them on the roster has been an issue for most of the 17 years she’s volunteered with the Dutton ambulance crew.
Currently the Dutton crew has four volunteers, including Campbell. In its early days, the Dutton ambulance service was locally run and survived off limited health insurance reimbursements and donations. At its lowest point, she said, her crew consisted of two people: her and her best friend.
That made responding to calls, doing the administrative work and organizing the training needed to maintain certifications more than they could handle. In 2011, the Dutton ambulance service was absorbed by Teton County.
That eased some of Campbell’s problems, but her biggest challenge remains finding people willing to go through the roughly 155 hours of training and take the written and practical tests in this town of fewer than 300 people.
“It’s just a big responsibility that people aren’t willing to jump into, I guess,” Campbell said.
In addition to personnel shortages, about a third of rural EMS agencies in the U.S. are in immediate operational jeopardy because they can’t cover their costs, according to the NRHA.
Slabach said that largely stems from insufficient Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements. Those reimbursements cover, on average, about a third of the actual costs to maintain equipment, stock medications and pay for insurance and other fixed expenses.
Many rural ambulance services rely on patients’ private insurance to fill the gap. Private insurance pays considerably more than Medicaid, but because of low call volumes, rural EMS agencies can’t always cover their bills, Slabach said.
“So, it’s not possible in many cases without significant subsidies to operate an emergency service in a large area with small populations,” he said.
Slabach and others say sagging reimbursement and volunteerism means rural parts of the U.S. can no longer rely solely on volunteers but must find ways to convert to a paid staff.
Jim DeTienne, who recently retired as the Montana health department’s EMS and Trauma Systems chief, acknowledged that sparsely populated counties would still need volunteers, but he said having at least one paid EMT on the roster could be a huge benefit.
DeTienne said he believes EMS needs to be declared an essential service like police or fire departments. Then counties could tax their residents to pay for ambulance services and provide a dedicated revenue stream.
Only 11 states have deemed EMS an essential service, Slabach said.
The Montana health department report on EMS services suggested other ways to move away from full-volunteer services, such as having EMS agencies merge with taxpayer-funded fire departments or having hospitals take over the programs.
In the southwestern Montana town of Ennis, Madison Valley Medical Center absorbed the dwindling volunteer EMS service earlier this year.
EMS Manager Nick Efta, a former volunteer, said the transition stabilized the service, which had been struggling to answer every 911 call. He said the service recently had nine calls in 24 hours. That included three transfers of patients to larger hospitals miles away.
“Given that day and how the calls played out, I think under a volunteer model it would be difficult to make all those calls,” Efta said.
Rich Rasmussen, president and CEO of the Montana Hospital Association, said an Ennis-style takeover might not be financially viable for many of the smaller critical access hospitals that serve rural areas. Many small hospitals that take over emergency services do so at a loss, he said.
“Really, what we need is a federal policy change, which would allow critical access hospitals to be reimbursed for the cost of delivering that EMS service,” he said.
Under current Medicare policy, federally designated critical access hospitals can get fully reimbursed for EMS only if there’s no other ambulance service within 35 miles, Rasmussen said. Eliminating that mileage requirement would give the hospitals an incentive to take on EMS, Rasmussen said.
“It’s a long haul to do this, but it would dramatically improve EMS access all across this country,” he said.
A Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pilot program is testing the elimination of mileage minimums for emergency services with select critical access hospitals.
The rural EMS crunch puts a greater burden on the closest urban ambulance services. Don Whalen, who manages a private EMS service in Missoula, the state’s second-largest city, said his crews regularly respond to outlying communities 70 miles away and sometimes across the Idaho line because local volunteer agencies often can’t answer emergency calls.
“We know if we’re not going, nobody is coming for the patient, because a lot of times we’re the last resort,” he said.
Missoula EMS is responsible for calls in the city and Missoula County. Whalen said Missoula EMS has agreements with a couple of volunteer EMS agencies in smaller communities to provide an ambulance when volunteers have difficulty leaving work to respond to calls.
Those agreements, on top of responding to other towns where 911 calls are going unanswered, are taking resources from Missoula, he said.
Communities need to find ways to stabilize or convert their volunteer programs, or private services like his will need financial support to keep responding in other communities, Whalen said.
But lawmakers’ appetite for finding ways to fund EMS is limited. During Montana’s legislative session earlier this year, DeTienne pushed for a bill that would have studied the benefit of declaring EMS an essential service, among other possible improvements. The bill quickly died.
Back in Dutton, the EMS crew chief is thinking about her future after 17 years as a volunteer. Campbell said she wants to spend more time with her grandchildren, who live out of town. If she retires, there’s no guarantee somebody will replace her. She’s torn about what to do.
“My license is good until March of 2022, and we’ll just see,” Campbell said.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
USE OUR CONTENT
This story can be republished for free (details).
Rural Ambulance Services Are in Jeopardy as Volunteers Age and Expenses Mount published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/
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Confidently Overconfident
It’s one thing to be confident, dear reader. It’s another thing entirely to be blindly overconfident.
Today, we saw Wall Street give a pause to last week’s massive rally, following one of the most devastating monthly U.S. jobs reports ever. It seems that more than a few analysts are starting to realize just how dire the U.S.’s economic situation is.
For instance, ING Chief International Economist James Knightly does not buy into all the “quick recovery” hype. This morning, ING projected a 7% decline in U.S. gross domestic product. According to Knightly, 2020 will see a drop in corporate profits that will “dwarf” the 2009 financial crisis.
“Equally, the poor transparency for corporate profits — where even Amazon and Apple are struggling for guidance — suggests investors will need some strong compensation for holding equities,” ING said.
The problem, as ING notes, is that price to earnings (P/E) ratios are skyrocketing. That’s because stocks surged 35% off their March lows, while earnings fell off a cliff. The composite forward P/E ratio for S&P 500 companies currently rests near 23.
In other words, S&P 500 stocks trade at 23 times their expected earnings growth for the next five years!
Why should you care?
Because this figure is higher than any other such reading taken since the dot-com bubble. You know, that time in the market when just having a “dot-com” after your company name got you a multibillion-dollar valuation? No business plan required.
“In uncertain times like these, higher earnings expectations or lower valuations may be needed to keep equity markets supported. We err towards the latter,” ING noted.
Translation: Companies will either earn up or burn up.
The Takeaway:
“Turn bearish? In our moment of triumph? I think you underestimate the economy’s changes!” — Grand Moff Tarkin, if he were an investor … probably.
For those who don’t know, Tarkin was an Imperial admiral in charge of the Death Star in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It didn’t turn out well for him…
Right now, Wall Street has that same kind of overconfidence. On average, analysts expect a 20% drop in earnings for S&P 500 companies this year, followed by a 25% rebound in 2021. This is clearly a best-case scenario.
For example, everyone knows that corporate P/E ratios will skyrocket next quarter if stocks continue to rally. That’s because the “E” for earnings dropped right off the face of the earth, while stock valuations continue higher.
Investors expect a significant economic rebound from what they see as an artificial suppression of economic growth.
An arti-what now?
Wall Street thinks all we have to do to fix this problem is flip a switch and turn the economy back on. End the stay-at-home orders, and we end up right back where we started. Easy peasy.
It doesn’t really work like that, and you and I both know it.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine put it best this weekend in an interview on Fox News: “The economy’s not going to open no matter what we do, whatever we order, unless people have confidence.”
Investors have confidence because the Federal Reserve props up the market with unlimited stimulus.
But who props up the U.S. consumer? Who gives us confidence?
Sure, some people have (or had) $1,200 stimulus checks, but the virus is still here. It’s still spreading, and there’s still no cure, treatment or adequate testing.
Hit those three marks, and you’ll give consumers confidence once more. Until then, you can flip all the “economic restart” switches you want. The lights may come on, but nobody’s leaving home.
I mean, the last market collapse brought an 18-month bear market … from December 2007 to June 2009. The recession that followed lasted even longer … and we just saw all the jobs created since wiped out in a month.
We’ll find normalcy again sooner or later … but Wall Street has tunnel vision on the sooner, when you need to prepare for the later. You need to protect your wealth now … to even stand a chance at roaring back with the market.
Click here to find out how you can protect yourself — while not missing out on potential post-crash profits.
The Good: Amazonian Theatrics
What do you do when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tells you that your streaming movies aren’t eligible for an Oscar because they’re not in theaters?
Why, you buy your own theater chain, of course!
Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) has reportedly expressed interest in buying AMC Entertainment Holding Inc. (NYSE: AMC) — the U.S.’s largest silver screen operator.
According to sources at the Daily Mail, AMC and Amazon held talks about a potential buyout, but it’s unclear if those talks are still ongoing.
Such a buyout would be a major coup for Amazon — especially against the snooty Academy and its archaic rules for Oscar qualifications. Meanwhile, nearly bankrupt AMC could clearly use any lifeline it can get.
AMC investors certainly like the idea, sending the stock nearly 30% higher today. That said, if you don’t already hold AMC stock, don’t chase this rally on the rumor.
The Bad: Down Under Armour
I don’t know what all those new Peloton owners wear for their workouts, but it clearly isn’t new gear from Under Armour Inc. (NYSE: UA).
The sporting apparel maker reported worse-than-expected first-quarter results and pulled its 2020 outlook.
For the quarter, Under Armour earnings plummeted to a $0.34-per-share loss, as revenue fell 22.5% to $930.24 million. Analysts expected a loss of $0.19 per share on $954.6 million in sales.
What’s more, Under Armour is restructuring to cut costs — a move it started even before the COVID-19 lockdowns. The company estimates $475 million to $525 million in restructuring costs this year.
And if that wasn’t enough, Under Armour still deals with accounting probes from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.
The company clearly needs a protein bar or a Snickers … or something. UA shares are down more than 67% since their June 2019 highs, and they don’t appear ready to rebound any time soon.
The Ugly: Tesla Gets Musky
What makes Elon Musk guard his musk? Courage?
Nay … profits!
Tesla Inc.’s (Nasdaq: TSLA) CEO ramped up his anti-lockdown rhetoric last week.
Musk threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas in response to the former’s orders to prevent the automaker from reopening its Freemont factory. Tesla also filed suit against Alameda County in a move to invalidate those orders.
Musk believes the shutdown hurts Tesla’s business, and he’s probably right to a degree. However, if the latest sales data out of China is any indication, Tesla orders won’t flood in anytime soon.
According to the China Passenger Car Association, Model 3 sales plunged 64% last month. Tesla sold only 3,635 Model 3s in April in China, compared to 10,160 in March.
“That’s understandable,” you might think. “China’s still recovering, and no one is buying cars right now … especially electric cars. You’re overreacting!”
Well … that’s not quite true. Overall, electric vehicle (EV) sales rose 9.8% month over month in China for April. So, the Chinese are buying EVs, just not Teslas.
Great Stuff has long been bullish on TSLA … but only when Elon gets out of the way. Per our former point about flipping the U.S.’s economic switch, Tesla could reopen production now, but it might not mean very much at all if considerably fewer people are buying.
In short, Elon Musk is once again damaging public sentiment surrounding Tesla’s brand, with very little gained to show for it.
If you’ve followed along with Great Stuff’s romp through this hectic earnings season, our latest Chart of the Week shouldn’t surprise you much.
Posting an earnings calendar during earnings week? It’s a bold move, Hargett, let’s see if it pays off.
Courtesy of Earnings Whispers on Twitter, here’s what excitement is in store this week:
Now, you may not see as many familiar names at first in this earnings roundup as in past weeks. (Why so many boring blue logos, by the way? It’s time we jazz things up with the “ULTRA RAD X-TREME” styles everything had in the late ‘80s.)
Nonetheless, what we’re looking for here in this week’s earnings are the lesser-known hints toward the global economy’s health — the findings that won’t show up in payroll numbers or manufacturing reports.
We want the story behind the story here. Hey, that’s why you read Great Stuff to begin with no? Here are four quick takes to look out for from the earnings confessional:
We’ll see how the cannibas sector stacks up in the stay-at-home haze with Tilray Inc. (Nasdaq: TLRY) and the “reverse split refreshed” Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NYSE: ACB).
Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) can give us a slight glimpse at electronics spending, while JD.com Inc.’s (Nasdaq: JD) report will show the nitty-gritty in China’s consumer spending. Heck, I’m even looking forward to hearing how Jumia Technologies AG (NYSE: JMIA), the “Amazon of Africa,” has navigated the pandemic market.
If business is moving … people are shipping. With much of the world’s ship-based storage now backed up, Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE: DSX) should give us a better grasp on the world’s economy at sea. And while we’re out sailing (or not), we’ll see how Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) is holding up (or not).
The Oz behind the networking curtain, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) might become our remote-working economy’s bellwether with its vital role in communications.
So begone, boring earnings! There’s great stuff in every bag of Cracker Jack earnings … even if it’s just a stick-on tattoo.
That’s a wrap for today, but you can always catch us on social media: Facebook and Twitter. We hope you’re staying safe out there!
Until next time, stay Great!
Regards,
Joseph Hargett
Editor, Great Stuff
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There’s Been a Spike in People Dying at Home in Several Cities. That Suggests Coronavirus Deaths Are Higher Than Reported.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. In recent weeks, residents outside Boston have died at home much more often than usual. In Detroit, authorities are responding to nearly four times the number of reports of dead bodies. And in New York, city officials are recording more than 200 home deaths per day — a nearly sixfold increase from recent years. As of Tuesday afternoon, the United States had logged more than 592,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 24,000 deaths, the most in the world, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. But the official COVID-19 death count may, at least for now, be missing fatalities that are occurring outside of hospitals, data and interviews show. Cities are increasingly showing signs of Americans succumbing to the coronavirus in their own beds. ProPublica requested death data from several major metropolitan areas. Its review provides an early look at the pandemic’s hidden toll. Experts say it’s possible that some of the jump in at-home death stems from people infected by the virus who either didn’t seek treatment or did but were instructed to shelter in place, and that the undercount is exacerbated by lack of comprehensive testing. It’s also possible that the increase in at-home deaths reflects people dying from other ailments like heart attacks because they couldn’t get to a hospital or refused to go, fearful they’d contract COVID-19. Mark Hayward, a sociology professor at the University of Texas-Austin who’s an expert on mortality statistics, said all of those deaths are part of the “overall burden of the pandemic.” He said an uptick in deaths, specifically in ProPublica’s findings for Massachusetts and Detroit, indicates an undercount is occurring. You should think about the official coronavirus death counts, he said, “as just the tip of the iceberg.” The quality of the deaths data will improve as testing expands and fewer people die without getting tested, he added. The reason having accurate death statistics is important is because they help signal the location of hot spots and prompt officials to deploy resources. Knowing someone died of COVID-19 also enables health officials to alert their contacts so they can quarantine themselves. New York City was among the first to provide data on at-home deaths. Officials said last week that roughly 200 residents were dying each day outside of hospitals and nursing homes. That’s compared with about 35 per day on average between 2013 and 2017, according to city records. ProPublica found similar patterns beyond America’s largest and most hard-hit city. Our review examined parts of states like Massachusetts, Michigan and Washington state, drawing upon information from vital-records departments, health agencies, 911 call centers and police departments. ProPublica then compared those findings with historical deaths provided by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Middlesex, Massachusetts’s most populous county and home to Cambridge, Somerville and Lowell, officials reported 317 at-home deaths in March. That’s about a 20% increase from the same time period for the past three years, in which deaths ranged from 249 to 265. In late February, a Cambridge-based biotech firm hosted a conference in nearby Boston that was later reportedly linked to more than 100 infections; it’s unclear if anyone died. Older people are particularly vulnerable to dying from COVID-19. In all of Massachusetts, deaths for people 65 and older increased by 3.6% in March from the same month, on average, during the previous three years. The comparison to 2019 was particularly dramatic, an additional 250 deaths across Massachusetts. At the same time, the data shows that increase can’t be accounted for by the official coronavirus tally alone: only 89 deaths statewide were attributed to the virus in March, according to state Health Department data. The rise in deaths of the elderly is “a pretty dramatic change,” Hayward said, that’s “very consistent with COVID-related deaths.” (As of Monday, Massachusetts’ official COVID-related death count was more than 840.) The Massachusetts Health Department said that the data is preliminary and that there are year-to-year fluctuations. In Detroit, authorities responded to more than 150 “dead person observed” calls in the first 10 days of April. It was around 40 during the same period for the past three years, according to city 911 call data. Almost all of the incidents in this year’s period occurred in areas where the median household income was less than $45,000, census data shows. Lower-income areas have been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus. While specifics of each death weren’t available, a review of Detroit radio transmissions revealed instances of individuals found “dead on scene,” such as a March 31 call to a low-income apartment complex northwest of downtown. “Use your precautions here,” said the dispatcher after broadcasting a medical code but few other details. Detroit-area officials couldn’t immediately provide totals on at-home deaths. In other parts of the U.S., 911 calls for medical assistance have dropped. In Seattle, an early epicenter of the pandemic, data shows that EMT and paramedic calls dropped by more than 25% in the first 10 days of April compared with the same time frame last year. It’s unclear how much, if any, of that drop is due to people being fearful of interacting with the health care system. Guidance from the CDC says that coroners and medical professionals can list “probable” or “presumed” COVID-19 on death certificates in cases where the symptoms match, even if the person wasn’t tested. For the most part, official death tallies from the disease haven’t included people who died before they were confirmed positive. Bureaucratic delays and restrictive laws are also contributing to an incomplete picture. Some state officials told ProPublica it would take weeks to provide complete death numbers because of thin staffing or antiquated computer systems. In California, a Health Department spokesman said a request for detailed figures on statewide deaths would take a month to process and would cost $325. (ProPublica plans to pay for it.) Hawaii has suspended the processing of public records. When a city’s health care system is overwhelmed, the true scope of deaths due to the pandemic is easily missed “in the fog of war,” said Lorna Thorpe, director of the epidemiology division at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. The official numbers provided by health departments are imperfect, she said, and mostly used for “situational awareness” to show which areas are hardest hit. “One of the reasons we count deaths is to allocate resources to where they need to go,” said Robert Anderson, the chief of the CDC’s mortality statistics branch. “It becomes a little more time sensitive when you’re dealing with something like a pandemic.” He said it’s particularly important to catch potential hotspots before they explode. If officials can direct adequate resources to places early, “maybe we can keep things from going crazy.” Given that the U.S. doesn’t have enough tests in the first place, the majority of the screenings are “probably marked for people who are alive,” and the shortage is particularly acute in rural areas with few confirmed cases, said Hayward, the University of Texas professor. The CDC is logging COVID deaths by collecting death certificates from every state, territory and the District of Columbia, a meticulous process that involves time lags and is vulnerable to errors. Hayward, who is part of a CDC advisory council on vital statistics, said the quality and speed of the data coming in varies so much that it can feel like wrangling reports from more than 50 countries. Even for routine illnesses like the flu, the national count based on death certificates is always an underestimate. The CDC uses a model that adjusts for the real toll of flu deaths every year, Anderson said, and his staff will create a new model for the coronavirus by comparing the total deaths recorded in the past few months against historic death rates. At the beginning of the pandemic, “the undercount is going to be really high,” Hayward said. “I couldn’t give you a number. There is no good news on that front.” Claire Perlman contributed reporting. Help us report on coronavirus. Are you a public health worker, medical provider, elected official, patient or other COVID-19 expert? Help make sure our journalism is responsible and focused on the right issues. If you develop emergency warning signs for COVID-19, such as difficulty breathing or bluish lips, get medical attention immediately. The CDC has more information on what to do if you are sick. Here’s how to send tips and documents to ProPublica securely. For more coverage, read ProPublica’s previous reporting on the coronavirus pandemic. 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A Forecast for a Warming World: Learn to Live With Fire
SAN FRANCISCO — Facing down 600 wildfires in the past three days alone, emergency workers rushed to evacuate tens of thousands of people in Southern California on Thursday as a state utility said one of its major transmission lines broke near the source of the out-of-control Kincade blaze in Northern California.
The Kincade fire, the largest this week, tore through steep canyons in the wine country of northern Sonoma County, racing across 16,000 acres within hours of igniting. Wind gusts pushed the fire through forests like blow torches, leaving firefighters with little opportunity to stop or slow down the walls of flames tromping across wild lands and across highways overnight.
And north of Los Angeles, 50,000 people were evacuated as strong winds swept fires into the canyons of Santa Clarita, threatening many homes.
Aerial footage of the Kincade fire showed homes engulfed in flames propelled by high winds that could become even stronger in the coming days. But beyond the destruction, which appeared limited on Thursday to several dozen buildings, hundreds of thousands of people were affected, both by the fires and a deliberate blackout meant to prevent them. Schools and businesses closed and thousands of people evacuated their homes.
All this is happening after three straight years of record-breaking fires that researchers say are likely to continue in a warming world and which raise an important question: How to live in an ecosystem that is primed to burn?
“I think the perception is that we’re supposed to control them. But in a lot of cases we cannot,” said John Abatzoglou, an associate professor at the University of Idaho. “And that may allow us to think a little bit differently about how we live with fire. We call it wildfire for reason — it’s not domesticated fire.”
According to the National Climate Assessment, the government report that summarizes present and future effects of a warming climate on the United States, fire is a growing problem. Climate change will lead to more wildfires nationwide as hotter temperatures dry out plants, making them easier to ignite.
The total area burned in a single year by wildfires in the United States has only exceeded 13,900 square miles — an area larger than the country of Belgium — four times since the middle of last century. All four times have happened this decade, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.
“There is anger in the community,” said Michael Gossman, the deputy county administrator of Sonoma County’s office of recovery and resilience, in an interview this year. In 2017 his California county was devastated by the Sonoma Complex fires, which killed 24 and burned more than 170 square miles. Gov. Gavin Newsom said the conditions this week were analogous to those of 2017.
Many residents in Northern California faced a twin threat on Thursday: fires, but also the deliberate power outages meant to mitigate the blazes. Both the Kincade fire and a small fire that ignited Thursday morning, the Spring fire, occurred in or near areas where the state utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, had turned off the power.
The fires “brought out some longer standing institutional issues around equity,” Mr. Gossman said. Critics say electricity cutoffs disproportionately harm low-income people who cannot afford solar and battery backup systems or gas-based generators, as well as sick and disabled people who rely on electricity to run life-saving medical equipment.
Although winds in California were forecast to subside later on Thursday, officials warned that the extreme winds and dry conditions that create high risk for fires could return on Sunday. This is why government agencies are preparing themselves to deal with fires that are increasingly seen as inevitable.
Prescribed burns, or planned fires, like one set last spring on Brawley Mountain in Georgia in Southern Appalachia roughly 100 miles north of Atlanta, are often seen as part of the solution.
The idea that fire could itself be used to help fight fire and restore ecosystems first gained institutional acceptance in the South. In 1958 a policy change was made to allow for the first prescribed burn in a national park, at Everglades National Park in Florida.
For some time, the practice remained anomalous outside of the South. But within the south, according to Nathan Klaus, a senior wildlife biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, even private landowners would occasionally set smaller, controlled fires on their property.
Before the era of fire suppression, north Georgia around Brawley Mountain used to burn roughly every three to five years, according to Dr. Klaus. Those blazes allowed species that could withstand some fire, like the longleaf pine, to proliferate and flourish, shaping local ecosystems.
Some of those fires were caused by natural events like lightning; others were caused by human activity. The Forest Service notes that Native Americans used prescribed burns to help with food production. These smaller fires act as a kind of incendiary rake, clearing out grasses, shrubs and other plant matter before they can overgrow to become fuel for bigger, more extreme fires.
Dave Martin, who oversees fire and aviation management in the Forest Service’s southern region, said that a prescribed burn costs about $30 to $35 an acre — versus spending about $1,000 dollars an acre for putting out a fire. “The cost of suppressing a fire is more than a prescribed burn,” he said.
It was a combination of forest overgrowth and drought conditions that helped fuel Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains Fires in 2016, which killed at least 14 people. Several fires burned across eight southeastern states that year, the same year Kansas experienced the largest wildfire in its history to date. That blaze, the Anderson Creek prairie fire, which also affected Oklahoma, blackened some 625 square miles.
The 2016 wildfires also allowed researchers to compare fire intensity between areas that had undergone a prescribed burn and those that had not. The fires in areas that had undergone prescribed were less intense. “It went from a 20- to 30-foot breaking front,” said Dr. Klaus in reference to the height of the leading edge of the blaze on wild lands that had not burned, “to two to three feet.”
Reintroducing fire to the land is more complex than lighting a match. You cannot burn where people live, for example. But nationwide, housing near wild lands is the fastest growing land-use type in the United States. More people are moving into areas that are more likely to burn, and in some cases they may oppose prescribed burning.
“Part of doing this work means educating local communities,” said Mike Brod, the fire and natural resources staff officer of the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests.
And there are limits to prescribed burning. If conditions are too wet, a fire won’t ignite, but if it’s too dry, the fire is hard to contain. Like Goldilocks, for wild land managers the conditions have to be just right. This includes not just the wind’s speed, which can affect the spread of a fire, but also its direction.
And once the burn starts, its smoke can travel great distances. Smoke from last year’s California’s wildfires not only threw a haze over much of the state, but transformed sunsets as far away as Washington, D.C. On Thursday, NOAA warned residents of the Bay Area that “shifting winds tomorrow will likely cause the smoke to be directly over much of the region,” as a result of the Kincade fire.
So during planned burns great pains have to be taken to make sure that the smoke is directed away from population centers. “If the smoke isn’t doing what we want it to do, we’ll shut it down,” said Nick Peters, the acting district fire management officer for the Chattooga River ranger district in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests.
The particulates in wildfire smoke are similar to the kind of pollution that gets released from burning gasoline or coal. Called PM 2.5, the tiny particles are associated with negative health effects. Out west, the rise of giant wildfires has worsened air pollution enough to erode some of the air-quality gains from the Clean Air Act.
Earlier this year NOAA and NASA launched a mission to learn more about wildfire smoke. The program flew planes into western wildfires and Midwestern agricultural fires throughout the summer and into the fall.
A lot of wildfire and climate research is divided into two camps: observational modelers (who run large computer simulations) and researchers (who gather observational data using sophisticated monitors) said Rajan Chakrabarty, an assistant professor at the Washington University in St. Louis. The goal of the mission was to bridge that gap.
But flying into a fire is not for the weak bellied. As the plane flies through a blaze, the cabin fills with the smell of smoke evocative of a barbecue or a campfire. And sampling a fire plume often involves the kind of rollicking, stomach churning turbulence that commercial flights go out of their way to avoid.
By taking samples during an active fire, scientists hope to understand what’s in the smoke, and how the chemical makeup changes over time.
“This air is getting blown downwind, so it’s going to impact areas outside of just where the fire was burning,” said Hannah Halliday, a researcher at NASA Langley, who also participated in the mission. “And we have models for how emissions change, but we want to make sure that we have that chemistry right, and the physics right.”
The hope is that, over the long term, the smoke models will be as sophisticated as weather models, and can let people know well in advance when they’ll need to prepare for smoke, even if they are relatively far from the site of a fire.
For more news on climate and the environment, follow @NYTClimate on Twitter.
Thomas Fuller reported from San Francisco. Kendra Pierre-Louis reported from Brawley Mountain, Ga., and Idaho.
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Paying to Stay in Jail: Hidden Fees Turn Inmates into Debtors
A year and a half into his roughly two-year stay in the Brown County Jail in northeastern Wisconsin, Sean Pugh realized he owed around $17,000 — the result of a $20 daily “pay-to-stay” fee plus fees from previous jail stints.
His story wasn’t unusual.
Brown County is one of at least 23 Wisconsin counties that assess “pay-to-stay” fees, which charge inmates for room and board for the time they are incarcerated, according to a Wisconsin Watch survey of county jails.
Pugh believes the system is counterproductive.
“While most inmates have exploited society in some way, financial exploitation of the incarcerated creates a vicious cycle that contributes to the pitfalls of getting back on one’s feet after release,” said Pugh, who was arrested in 2011 for allegedly violating terms of his release from priso.
Sean Pugh. Photo courtesy Wisconsin Department of Corrections
“The entire incarceration experience leaves one in a worse financial state then when they went they went to jail/prison.”
Brown County ultimately agreed to forgive the debt owed by Pugh, who is now incarcerated at the state’s Stanley Correctional Institution in Chippewa County. They accepted his argument that it was the Department of Corrections’ decision to keep him jailed so long while it investigated the alleged violation of his release terms.
Wisconsin is among at least 40 states where some inmates are required to pay daily room and board fees.
But this practice varies across states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based public policy and law institute that focuses on democracy and justice. Some states charge jail inmates, prison inmates or both. Some states charge only inmates who are working, while other states charge all inmates.
Pugh filed a small claims action seeking repayment of the money he had already paid, alleging the county was trying to “double dip” by billing both him and the state for his stay. Pugh said he was offered a settlement of $1,000, which he accepted.
“Had I not needed the money, I could have held out on principle to expose this, but I was not in a position to pass on the settlement,” Pugh said in an email.
Brown County’s imposition of pay-to-stay fees was upheld in a 2013 federal decision, in response to a lawsuit filed by former inmate Lamon Barnes, who alleged the county’s pay-to-stay fee when applied to pretrial detainees is unconstitutional.
Judge Lynn Adelman for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin found that fee did not violate the prohibition against subjecting a detainee to punishment before conviction.
“There is no evidence that Brown County was motivated by a desire to punish pretrial detainees when it collected lock-up fees from them,” Adelman wrote. “The policy appeared to be rationally related to the county’s legitimate interest in ‘effective management of the detention facility.’ ”
Under Wisconsin law, pay-to-stay can apply to the entire period of time the person is in jail, including pretrial detention. It is then up to the counties whether they want to charge only sentenced inmates or also charge those who are not sentenced.
The jail systems in Wisconsin’s two largest counties — Dane and Milwaukee — do not levy pay-to-stay fees. But in other Wisconsin counties, jails are taking in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, the Wisconsin Watch survey found.
Such fees have escalated in recent decades. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in a 9-0 decision that financial penalties levied by states may be so high as to violate the federal Eighth Amendment constitutional protection against excessive fines.
Noting that excessive fines for “vagrancy” were used after the Civil War to re-enslave freed men, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurrence:
The right against excessive fines traces its lineage back in English law nearly a millennium, and … has been consistently recognized as a core right worthy of constitutional protection.
In Wisconsin, each county decides whether or not to charge non-working jail inmates a daily room and board fee. Many Wisconsin counties charge inmates with Huber privileges, which allow the inmate to leave jail for work, school or other reasons.
Inmates on work release in Wisconsin state prisons are also charged room and board.
The heaviest burden of jail fees is often borne by low-income individuals. The average income for someone arrested is a little more than $19,000, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a think tank that works against what it describes as over-criminalization.
Many people could have a hard time paying such fees.
Wisconsin counties that charge a pay-to-stay fee average $13 a day, Wisconsin Watch found—or about $390 a month. According to the Federal Reserve, about 40 percent of people in the United States could not afford a surprise $400 payment.
“If I could create a perfect system to maintain inequality, create inequality and sustain it over time, this is the system,” University of Washington sociology professor Alexes Harris said.
“The process perfectly labels, stigmatizes, financially burdens and imposes further legal consequences to poor people. … Somebody who is poor has that debt for life, and it tracks them for life. It’s a long-term duration of punishment for poor people.”
‘Traumatizing’ Fines and Fees
In addition to pay-to-stay, there are other fees inmates must pay, depending on the county they are in. Some may have to pay for work release, medical visits, electronic monitoring, phone calls and DNA collection.
Wisconsin resident Mishelle O’Shasky discovered how costly it can be.
After serving two months of a nine-month jail sentence in 2004 for drunken driving, she served the rest of her sentence from home on electronic monitoring, allowing her to work as a waitress to support her four children. But she had to pay around $500 a month for electronic monitoring — almost as much as her apartment rent.
Mishelle O’Shasky . Photo by Coburn Dukehart/Wisconsin Watch
It was difficult to pay for both electronic monitoring and her regular bills, recalled O’Shasky, who was in and out of jail and prison for more than two decades because of substance use and mental health challenges.
“Even when you think you’re done paying for things, you’re not,” said O’Shasky, who lives in Rudolph, WI. “It’s traumatizing. You have people constantly running for their lives. I hate to be extreme, but that’s just the reality.”
Financial penalties are embedded within the criminal justice system, said Harris, author of the 2016 book, A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as a Punishment for the Poor.
Even though monetary punishment has long existed, there has been a dramatic increase since the 1990s and early 2000s, Harris wrote.
Wisconsin’s pay-to-stay law was enacted in 1996. While some county jails in Wisconsin clearly spell out their jail fees, most do not, Wisconsin Watch found.
By the numbers: Jail incarceration fees in Wisconsin
Wisconsin Watch got pay-to-stay and booking information for 60 of 72 Wisconsin counties. Of those, 36 county jails charge a booking fee, and 17 counties charge for both booking and pay-to-stay. Eighteen charge neither a booking fee or a pay-to-stay fee.
The highest booking fee reported was $50 in La Crosse County and the lowest reported was $5 in Crawford County. On average, a booking fee was $27. The highest reported pay-to-stay rate was $26 per day in Winnebago County, and the lowest was $5 per day in Iron, Dunn and Wood counties.
County jails also can charge for medical visits by a doctor or a nurse. On average, inmates are charged $6 for a nurse’s visit and around $12 for a doctor’s visit. Grant County charges $47.50 for a doctor’s visit and Iowa County charges $50, which were the highest amounts reported to Wisconsin Watch.
The cost of electronic monitoring for inmates on some form of release also varies by county—between $15 and $35 per day — or up to $1,050 a month.
The annual revenue from these fees also varies. Some counties receive less than $20,000 and one, Winnebago County, receives as much as $950,000. Typically, this revenue either goes back to the jail or to the county’s general fund.
Marathon County jail administrator Sandra La Du said the jail is “far from making money” on these fees. La Du reported that the Marathon County jail receives $700,000 in fees annually. The revenue goes back into the jail budget to run a “constitutionally sound” jail and pay for necessities like lights, water and heat, she said.
“Complicated to Unravel”
One of the difficulties of pay-to-stay is how much it varies across states, which makes it “complicated to unravel,” said Joanna Weiss, co-director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center. The New York-based center works to eliminate fees in the justice system.
*“The justice system is meant to serve everyone — it does serve everyone — and it needs to be funded equitably, not on the backs of people going through it,” Weiss said.
Michigan counties can charge inmates for their stay as long as it is no more than $60 per day. Ohio counties charge an average of $35 per day, with the highest rate being close to $67, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio found.
In mid-June, an Indiana county passed an ordinance that was proposed by the sheriff that allows Clinton County to charge inmates up to $30 per day.
In Wisconsin, counties cannot charge more than their actual per-day cost of keeping an inmate in jail.
La Du does not think there should be the same pay-to-stay fee across the state because different counties have different costs. Marathon County has a pay-to-stay fee of $30 for the first day and $18 for each day after. The county only charges sentenced inmates.
The average expected stay in jail was 25 days in 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. That means someone incarcerated in Winnebago County — where the daily fee is $26 — could leave with an average $650 pay-to-stay bill, in addition to other fees.
Wisconsin Watch found an average pay-to-stay fee is $13 per day, so inmates incarcerated in a pay-to-stay county for a typical stay could find themselves leaving with a $325 bill.
In addition to pay-to-stay, inmates on work release in Wisconsin prisons also are responsible for paying income taxes, transportation, child support, restitution and other responsibilities under state law.
The exact amount withheld from prison inmates’ work release check depends on their obligations, Wisconsin Department of Corrections spokeswoman Clare Hendricks said in an email.
Each category has a maximum amount that can be withheld, Hendricks said.
From each check, 37 percent is applied to room, 8 percent is applied to board and 21 percent goes to transportation. The maximum amounts taken per month for room, board and transportation are $365, $110 and $265, respectively. For these three categories, an inmate could be responsible for paying $740 per month for inmates who work outside the institution.
‘Stuck Forever’ with Fees
The first time O’Shasky went to prison was in 2000 for failing to pay child support. She owed a couple of thousand dollars. After she got out of prison, O’Shasky still owed the money plus interest.
“I ended up paying like $40,000 in child support when the court ordered $10 a week back in 1992,” said O’Shasky, who was in prison three different times, and founded the Peer Association Inc., a La Crosse, WI., nonprofit that provides reentry services for people like herself.
“You’re just stuck forever … I just finished paying that, and my child is 27 years old.”
A common argument made by those who support pay-to-stay is these individuals are committing crimes and creating a need for jails, so they should be the ones paying the fees, said John Cooper, the executive director of Safe & Just Michigan. The Lansing group focuses on reducing Michigan’s use of incarceration.
Joanna Weiss. Photo by David Greenwald
Another argument in favor of pay-to-stay is that it can act as a deterrent and encourage people to behave differently, just as cash bail is seen as an incentive to come back to court, Cooper said.
“There is a value in creating responsibility,” agreed La Du, adding that she sees the argument for both sides when it comes to pay-to-stay and other jail fees.
Cooper said these arguments might have superficial appeal, but they are counterproductive in practice. Overwhelmingly, the people who get involved with the justice system are there because of lack of opportunity and poverty, Cooper said.
“Because pay-to-stay exacerbates the underlying causes of involvement in the justice system, there is a good argument that it undermines public safety,” Cooper said.
In fact, a 2018 report by the nonpartisan, nonprofit group Alabama Appleseed found 38 percent of respondents had committed another crime in order to pay off the fines and fees they already had. In order to pay their court debt, 83 percent of respondents said they gave up paying for necessities like rent, food and medical bills, according to the social-justice group.
“If you get sent to jail … probably you are going to lose your job. When you’re coming out of jail, you’re going to need to get a car,” Cooper said. “If you can’t get a car loan because your credit is bad because you’ve got all this criminal justice debt, it’ll be hard to get a job.
“How are you going to pay it all back? What are you going to do to provide for yourself and your family?”
Nationwide Movement Gains Traction
Harris said the Timbs v. Indiana case — where it was ruled the excessive fines clause of the Bill of Rights applies to the states and not just to the federal government — was a major step forward. The issue now, according to Harris, is how “excessive” is defined.
“We don’t have our state supreme courts or the U.S. Supreme Court really setting criteria or standards for how sentencing judges are supposed to establish what is excessive, what is a fair fine or fee, what is ability to pay,” Harris said.
“We don’t have these clear standards, which is so problematic on the ground because you get a huge variation.”
California state Sen. Holly Mitchell introduced legislation in January to eliminate criminal administrative fees in California. San Francisco is thought to be the first county in the United States to get rid of fees associated with incarceration, such as booking, probation and electronic monitoring fees.
In March, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled courts do not have the authority to jail people when they cannot pay incarceration fees. In early June, Nevada passed a law eliminating juvenile fines and fees.
New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed a measure in July repealing the state’s pay-to-stay law.
“While it feels overwhelming, there is a great deal of momentum, and people need to realize there are alternatives,” Harris said.
“Yes, we still want to hold people accountable for their offending, but we need to make sure we do it in a way where they can show accountability, make amends and then move forward to have productive lives.”
Izabela Zaluska, a staff writer for the nonprofit Wisconsin Watch, is a 2019 John Jay/Arnold Ventures Reporting Fellow. This a condensed and slightly edited version of her Fellowship reporting project, part of Wisconsin Watch’s “Cruel and Unusual?” series which examines Wisconsin’s prison system, including legislation affecting prisoners and their families. The full story can be accessed here.
Paying to Stay in Jail: Hidden Fees Turn Inmates into Debtors syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/
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