Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The contradictory signs from initial and continuing jobless claims: what do they mean?

– by New Deal democrat As I wrote earlier this week, the positive trend in initial jobless claims is one of the most important data points indicating there is no imminent threat of recession. That continues, but what is increasingly disconcerting is the completely contrary signal from continuing claims. Let’s deal with the weekly numbers first. […]

Insurer Financial Performance in 2023

You will read more on the profitability of healthcare plans as detailed by KFF. A brief introduction to this issue in an article by KFF. In 2023, per enrollee gross margins were highest in the Medicare Advantage market, and medical loss ratios were lowest in the individual insurance market. While both gross margins and medical […]

2026 Healthcare Insurance Rate Changes – North Carolina

Charles Gaba at ACA Signups is reviewing Affordable(?) Care rate changes for 2026. We have been reading quite a bit about the new rate forthcoming for 2026. From the looks of it, I suspect many people will be going without healthcare insurance in North Carolina, etc. I will grab certain states I know some people […]

The private sector solution to health insurance

The “health” that drives private sector health insurance is the health of the corporate bottom line. As understand it, the “advantage” of Medicare Advantage was supposed to be lower costs for better benefits that only the free market could promise. How’s that working out? “UnitedHealthcare said in its second quarter earnings call that it plans […]

Some good news

In the past six months, the Trump Administration, acting through Elon Musk’s DOGE, cut more than 10% of the staff at the National Weather Service. But it looks like TACO doesn’t just apply to tariffs: “The National Weather Service has received permission to hire 450 meteorologists, hydrologists and radar technicians just months after being hit […]

Dismal scenes from the July employment report

 – by New Deal democrat We’ve settled back in to our typical post-employment week lack of new data, so today is a good day to update the leading indicators from the employment report, especially in view of their important contribution to why I went on “recession watch” yesterday. As you probably already know, because I harp […]

Sixteen Million Without Healthcare Insurance

Pinning down the numbers making up the 16 million people without healthcare insurance by 2034. From where did the number come? Government Medicaid Healthcare Insurance covered nearly 85 million people as of June 2024. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the changes to Medicaid and health insurance outlined in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act could lead […]

Why Plastics Recycling May Not Work

One reason recycling may not work for plastics is much of plastic molding uses virgin resin. Reusing plastics may not flow or work as well. We really need to look closely at our recycling effort to determine whether plastics can be reused. It may make better sense to destroy the material after one use if […]