Medicare Advantage could have been partly fixed a while ago

And an awful lot of money could have been saved.

A decade ago, federal officials drafted a plan to discourage Medicare Advantage health insurers from overcharging the government by billions of dollars — only to abruptly back off amid an “uproar” from the industry, newly released court filings show.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published the draft regulation in January 2014. The rule would have required health plans, when examining patient’s medical records, to identify overpayments by CMS and refund them to the government.

But in May 2014, CMS dropped the idea without any public explanation. Newly released court depositions show that agency officials repeatedly cited concern about pressure from the industry. - Truthout

Over half of world's people don't have clean drinking water

And it's getting worse, fast.

More than half of people on Earth — approximately 4 billion— lack access to safe drinking water, which is double the number estimated in 2020, a new study by REACH global research program has found...

“[A]n estimated 4.4 billion people lack safe drinking water across 135 low- and middle- income countries, which is more than double the global estimate made in 2020,” the study, published in the journal Science, said. “According to the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation resolution declared by the United Nations, water services must ensure sufficient quantity, safety, reliability, physical proximity, affordability, and nondiscrimination. These goals are challenging in rural areas of Africa and Asia and in sparsely populated regions where safe drinking water services on premises are costly and complicated to maintain.” - EcoWatch

Plastics industry seeks approval for another con

Actually, a lot of people still don’t know about the realities of plastics recycling in general.

Is there anything more pathetic than a used plastic bag?

They rip and tear. They float away in the slightest breeze. Left in the wild, their mangled remains entangle birds and choke sea turtles that mistake them for edible jellyfish. It takes 1,000 years for the bags to disintegrate, shedding hormone-disrupting chemicals as they do. And that outcome is all but inevitable, because no system exists to routinely recycle them. It’s no wonder some states have banned them and stores give discounts to customers with reusable bags.

But the plastics industry is working to make the public feel OK about using them again.

Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators. - ProPublica

A new Biden effort at consumer protections

This looks great, but whether it can survive opposition, especially from right-wing federal "judges," is another matter. Well worth pushing hard for, in any case.

The Biden administration has launched a sweeping consumer protection campaign titled “Time Is Money,” targeting corporate practices that exploit consumers through deliberately poor customer service, hard-to-cancel services, and other manipulative tactics. This initiative is part of a broader effort by the administration to hold corporations accountable and protect consumers from unfair business practices.

The “Time Is Money” initiative is the latest in a series of consumer protection efforts under President Joe Biden’s administration. The White House has made it clear that improving customer experience and protecting consumers from corporate exploitation are key priorities. This campaign builds on previous initiatives, including a 2021 executive order aimed at streamlining federal services and recent efforts to crack down on junk fees.

Neera Tanden, the White House domestic policy adviser, emphasized the administration’s commitment to these issues, stating, “The administration is cracking down on all the ways that companies—through paperwork, hold times, and general aggravation—waste people’s money, waste people’s time.” - Nation of Change

Some realities about generative AI seem to be setting in

While the stock market "crash" turned out to be not much to worry about, this story contains a good deal of worthy, trenchant analysis.

This is it. Generative AI, as a commercial tech phenomenon, has reached its apex. The hype is evaporating. The tech is too unreliable, too often. The vibes are terrible. The air is escaping from the bubble. To me, the question is more about whether the air will rush out all at once, sending the tech sector careening downward like a balloon that someone blew up, failed to tie off properly, and let go—or more slowly, shrinking down to size in gradual sputters, while emitting embarrassing fart sounds, like a balloon being deliberately pinched around the opening by a smirking teenager.

But come on. The jig is up. The technology that was at this time last year being somberly touted as so powerful that it posed an existential threat to humanity is now worrying investors because it is apparently incapable of generating passable marketing emails reliably enough. We’ve had at least a year of companies shelling out for business-grade generative AI, and the results—painted as shinily as possible from a banking and investment sector that would love nothing more than a new technology that can automate office work and creative labor—are one big “meh.” - Blood in the Machine

Facts show how badly the red state South lags

This wouldn't have anything to do with generations of right-wing state governance, would it? And it's fundamentally up to the region's residents to change that.

- For over four decades, the typical worker in the South has been paid less than their counterparts in every other region of the country.

- The share of workers in the South who are paid less than $15 per hour—22% in 2021—is substantially higher than that of any other region.

- Workers across the South are the least likely to receive employer-provided health insurance or a pension compared with workers in other regions. They are also least likely to have paid sick leave.

- The South has by far the lowest rates of union coverage; the states with the lowest rates in 2023 are South Carolina (3%), North Carolina (3.3%), and Louisiana (5.1%)—compared with 11.2% nationally. - EPI

Big Filthy Fossil Fuels often gets paid no matter what

This is part of an in-depth sries.

Before the sun set on his inauguration day, Joe Biden reversed a raft of his predecessor’s deregulation policies with the stroke of a pen. Among them was an order revoking the permit for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Canceling the project was a campaign pledge to address the climate crisis. But looming over that decision was the risk that an obscure but powerful international legal system could force the United States to pay billions of dollars to Keystone XL’s Canadian developer, TC Energy.

That system—embedded in thousands of trade and investment treaties—allows corporations to drag governments before panels of arbitrators, usually behind closed doors. Governments have been ordered to pay billions of dollars in damages to oil and mining companies for violating those treaties. While the system was intended to protect foreign investors from unfair treatment or asset seizure, many environmental advocates, lawyers and politicians say it is now being used to win awards from governments that enact new environmental regulations or raise taxes on polluting industries.

Increasingly, these critics warn the system threatens climate action by punishing governments that phase out fossil fuels. - Inside Climate News