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Data Centers and Historic Heat Test Texas’ Business Strategy
Good Counsel columnist Carliss Chatman writes that recent heat waves and mushrooming data center plans in Texas are creating tension between the Lone Star state’s welcome mat to incorporate there, and it’s ability to support the infrastructure needed for business and taxpayers.
Sauer: Mass. must get ahead of health care fraud
If policymakers drag their feet, Medicare Advantage’s waste, fraud, and abuse problems could erode public trust, drive up taxpayer costs, and threaten the long-term viability of the program.
Big investors hunt for tomorrow's AI winners as capex angst fades
The rally in AI-linked stocks that marked the latest earnings season has shifted the focus of the AI investment story from whether Big Tech's spending spree will pay off to the kind of companies that will deliver returns over the longer term, investors say.
Medical center must pay $500,000 after radiologist, resident both miss hip fracture on X-ray
The case dates to April 11, 2021, when 41-year-old Ruchi Sharma, living in Iowa City at the time, visited the University of Iowa Health Care ER following a head-on car collision.
‘I Hate Losing’: Walter Rushes Makeover as DOJ Probes His Empire
The CEO of Guggenheim Partners and owner of the LA Dodgers flipped the Lakers within a year and has explored other steps to pay down loans from his insurers.
Senator Ron Wyden hears from rural Oregon, health care concerns - KOBI-TV NBC5 / KOTI-TV NBC2
MEDFORD, Ore.- Senator Ron Wyden is hosting a field hearing with Oregonians to talk about health care and what he can do to help. Senator Wyden was at the Rogue Valley Times, where he live-streamed on YouTube and took questions from rural Oregonians. Some gave their testimonials about having to pay anywhere from 900 to […]
Why Are Bose Headphones So Expensive?
Bose headphones command premium prices for more than the logo. Here's what you're actually paying for, from ANC and comfort to audio features.
Gov. Newsom reignites debate over how much electric companies should pay for causing a wildfire
Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing California lawmakers to limit how much private utility companies pay when their equipment causes catastrophic wildfires, as the state's wildfire liability fund nears depletion.
California Politics 360 full episode | Governor sparks debate on wildfire recovery
He is asking lawmakers to consider limiting who and how much utility companies pay using the state’s wildfire liability fund.
What this summer’s AI rulings mean for your business
A $1.5 billion settlement. A German court holding Google liable for AI’s mistakes. A high-stakes legal fight over whether OpenAI can be forced to pay for training its models on
Roob's Instant Observations after a near-disastrous Eagles preseason opener
If it wasn’t for some heroics by rookie 4th-string quarterback Cole Payton in the final minutes, this would have been a complete disaster.
Science or fiction? Shadowy ‘paper mills’ let you pay to be a published author
Paper mill activity has exploded in recent years, polluting the scientific ecosystem with falsified data and compromising medical research
PxlPerfect Designs Urges Home Service Businesses to Export Local Services Ads Data Before Google's Migration
Google began migrating Local Services Ads into Google Ads as a pay-per-lead Performance Max campaign type in August 2026. Historical performance...
The science behind the feeling that childhood summers never end
Curiosity, emotion and paying attention shape our perception of time. This is why time flies as we grow older
Jackson police host safety meeting for North Jackson business owners
Topics included vandalism, loitering, homeless individuals near commercial properties and poor area lighting.
Medicare approves new technology add-on payment for inpatient radiology AI solution
The federal insurance program for seniors will pay a maximum of $137.53 per case for Aidoc's CARE (Clinical AI Reasoning Engine) Multi-Triage CT Body tool.
Gender-affirming care, Russia sanctions, Kalshi: CT politics news
Plus: A ruling on HUD funding, Connecticut's CEO-worker pay gap, 'Sales-Tax-Free' Week and a storm forces a Ryan Fazio event to relocate.
Maryland’s new hospital payment model could drive up health insurance costs
Insurers warn the transition could shift more expenses to private payers and consumers while testing the stability of the state’s unique health care system.
World Humanitarian Day 2026: honouring fallen humanitarians and calling for greater protection of health care
As we mark World Humanitarian Day on 19 August, WHO pays tribute to humanitarian and health workers who put their duty of care above their own safety and, too often, their own lives as they serve communities affected by conflict and crises.World Humanitarian Day was designated by the UN General Assembly in 2008 to commemorate the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad and honour aid workers worldwide.
Small Businesses Despise Trump’s Tariffs
Mere hours after the Trump administration's latest tariff scheme launched on July 24, the government was sued again by the same small businesses that had already defeated prior White House tariff shenanigans, most notably at the Supreme Court. As Bloomberg Law reported, these companies are part of an “increasingly vocal cohort of business owners who emerged as the face of mom-and-pop tariff resistance.” What about Walmart Inc., Ford Motor Co. and the other titans of corporate America paying many
Broncos place offensive lineman on season-ending injured reserve
"I feel bad for him and where he was at," Broncos coach Sean Payton said after center Michael Deiter suffered a season-ending quad injury.
Forbes editor out; report says he took $6M from founder of firm that does business with magazine
The top editor of Forbes has left his job after reportedly being fired for accepting $6 million from the founder of a firm that works with the magazine. The New York Times reported this week that the payment came from RJ Shook, whose company, Shook Research, has collaborated with Forbes since 201...
Universal Health Coverage Could Save $1 Trillion and 114,000 Lives Every Year, Yale Study Projects
A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it
American Express Expands Virtual Cards for Corporate and Business Travel Spending
American Express is expanding the availability of virtual cards for businesses, as more companies use digital payments to manage expenses and reduce
AI needs science’s search history
“Actually, that’s where the gold is,” said Alasdair Russell, my graduate school friend who leads a pre-clinical genome editing group at Cambridge. He was talking about the winding road of science that is omitted from published papers. “When you’re discussing how to do the experiment, and why this way is better than another way, and what does the data really mean? I know what it shows, but what does it mean?” At RAAIS 2026, he described how his group has begun logging the twisting path of discovery as it happens, recording the verbal and written exchanges that normally disappear. Ideas become nodes in a living graph: they branch when a meeting produces two plausible experiments, merge when separate lines of evidence converge, and go dark when someone quietly stops pursuing them. In his implementation, one agent scores novelty, while another tries to learn “how scientists think and how they navigate through a complex world of data,” so that high-potential nodes can trigger deeper investigation. As frontier AI labs deploy agents toward scientific discovery, giving AI authentic scientific taste remains a trillion-dollar dilemma. The bottleneck is that the record we have kept for centuries of science might be insufficient to get us there. The experiments that never make the paper Peter Medawar, 1960 Nobel laureate and “father of transplantation,” asked in 1963 whether the scientific paper was a fraud, and answered yes: the form of the paper misrepresents the thinking that produced it. Sixty years on, the diagnosis is unchanged. A paper presents a clean progression from hypothesis to result to conclusion. Lost along the way are the unconventional theories, the abandoned or unaffordable methods, and the underwhelming and inconclusive data. It reads like a browser history with every dead end deleted: the ten open tabs, the four rephrased queries, the wrong turn down a subforum. All scrubbed, leaving one clean path from question to answer as the canonical path. What has changed since then is that the discarded material is now worth something. No high-impact journal wants these artifacts, but raw trial and error is the most likely source of the training data required to develop scientific intuition, or what researchers call taste. Earlier attempts to capture the discards were motivated by scientific integrity. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine launched in 2002 to publish rigorous studies that disputed established models or exposed ineffective treatments. Its archive preserved negative conclusions after they had become papers, rather than the live alternatives and arguments that produced them. BioMed Central closed it in 2017, saying the mission had been served now that other journals publish null results. A less generous reading is that in fifteen years it published around 200 papers because almost nobody wants to read a negative result, let alone write one up when it will not count toward academic tenure. AI models are different. Even an uninteresting negative result can be useful, provided it is labeled. Earlier this year, Anthropic put a version of this to the test. The company pulled 129 decision points from real Claude Code sessions between January and March 2026, showed models the work up to a human detour, and asked what should happen next. Claude Mythos Preview beat the human choice 64% of the time, while Opus 4.5 managed 51%. The comparison was tilted toward the models because Anthropic deliberately chose moments where the human decision had room for improvement. On 127 further scenarios where the human action was already strong, the models improved on it only about 20% of the time. The study was possible because Anthropic’s researchers work inside a tool that logs by default. The reasoning, detours and outcome are produced in the same working environment. Biology has no equivalent. Its reasoning happens in hallways, at benches, in Slack threads and on whiteboards, while the outcome arrives weeks later somewhere else. The record has to emerge from the work itself. Ask scientists to reconstruct it afterwards and we’ll create another polished account. Subscribe A log is not a label Before any of this becomes training data, a negative result has to say what failed. The first paper published in the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine examined 234 negative studies across five leading medical journals. Only 30% discussed statistical power, and half clearly defined a primary outcome. Tell a model an experiment failed, without telling it whether the assay was underpowered, a reagent had degraded, or the hypothesis was simply wrong, and it will learn noise with confidence. Decision histories have a second missing label too. When a lab considers five experiments and runs one, only the chosen branch returns an outcome. The other four are experimental counterfactuals. Researchers call this the selective labels problem: the data reveal results only for the actions someone chose to take. Such a record can teach a model to imitate a lab’s taste, but it cannot establish that the taste was good. It also smuggles local constraints into general lessons. A lab that never ran cryo-EM because it did not own a microscope teaches a model that cryo-EM is rarely the right call. Alasdair’s nodes preserve the candidate set, which is the necessary first step. To be useful, each decision record needs six fields: The evidence available at that moment, and nothing that arrived later. The candidates considered, including the ones dismissed in a sentence. For each candidate: the expected result, the confidence attached to it, and the cost in time and money. The route chosen, and the reason. What happened next. How the evidence changed the scientist’s view. These must be timestamped before the outcome, because hindsight turns uncertainty into inevitability. Disagreement also has to survive. Averaging three scientists into one clean rationale reproduces exactly the information loss we are trying to fix. But there is an obvious failure mode here. Once decisions are logged and scored, people log for the record post-facto. Anyone who has watched an electronic lab notebook fill up with retrospective tidying knows how quickly a research tool becomes a compliance exercise. A record that costs a scientist ten minutes of honest reflection per decision is worth far more than one that costs an hour of performance. A publication initiative called Registered Reports offers a useful starting point. Here, researchers submit their rationale, methods and analysis plan for peer review before the data exist, and the journal commits in principle to publish if they follow the approved plan. Nature has now expanded the format across every field it covers. This approach to paper writing timestamps intent before the outcome, but it freezes one plan. A useful search history must also preserve how the plan changed, which alternatives were rejected, when, and on what evidence. Subscribe Run the runner-up Autonomous labs show what happens when decisions and outcomes are connected in a loop. Liverpool’s mobile robotic chemist ran 688 experiments over eight days in a ten-variable formulation space. A batched Bayesian search used each result to choose the next experiments and found photocatalyst mixtures six times more active than the starting formulations. Every completed experiment changed what the system did next. The robot optimized within a goal and search space that humans had already chosen. It did not decide which scientific question mattered. So what this work demonstrates is narrower, but still useful: a search history pays off when the options return standardized outcomes quickly. Open-ended biology is harder because branches can take weeks and the discarded alternatives may never be run. Some exploration therefore has to be bought. Where two branches are plausible and the stakes justify the cost, a lab should sometimes run the runner-up. Otherwise the record captures what today’s scientists usually chose and stays silent on what they systematically overlooked. A funder could ring-fence a small fraction of a grant for the branch not taken, provided that the decision record and the outcome are both deposited. That costs money, but so does having every lab rediscover the same abandoned path. Test whether taste transfers When it comes time to evaluate if our new AI system exhibits taste, the comparison should run across laboratories and fields. At selected decision points in a live research campaign, we should freeze the six fields: the evidence, the candidates, expected results, confidence, costs and the choice made. Experts then rank the options before the outcomes are known, and those outcomes are checked independently later. We could give models one of two diets - papers alone, or papers plus decision histories - and ask them to rank the next experiment on unfamiliar projects. Then, we score information gained per dollar and week, calibration, and how quickly weak branches are abandoned. If histories improve choices only inside the lab that produced them, they amount to useful organizational memory. If they improve choices on unfamiliar problems elsewhere, Alasdair’s group will have captured something science has never managed to write down: a transferable record of taste. Until that happens, a scientific search history is a promising record, not yet a training set.
Philadelphia Union Unveil Retro-Inspired “Philly Kit,” a Tribute to Philadelphia Sports
The club’s official third kit pays homage to Philadelphia’s unmatched sports culture
Group sues AMA seeking transparency over Medicare billing codes
PatientRightsAdvocate.org says it wants to republish the proprietary billing codes that guide billions of dollars in health care payments.
Apple in talks to pay publishers to provide Siri with current news: report
The tech giant has considered a nine-figure budget for the payments, according to the WSJ.
Underrated 49ers Signing Could Pay Huge Dividends in 2026
The San Francisco 49ers' wide receiver has seen some big changes this offseason. Mike Evans was brought in to be the No. 1 receiver, and old favorite Deebo Samuel was brought back into the fold. Fellow receiver Ricky Pearsall went down for the year, which was a big blow.
11 Tips from Business Leaders on How to Let Workers Lead the Way
Businesses on this year’s Best Workplaces list put employees in the driver's seat. Here’s how that strategy pays off.
Pixel 11 moves the NFC antenna to the top of the phone for easier payments, Tap to Share
In a nice quality-of-life change, Google says it has moved the NFC antenna on its Pixel 11 phones to the...
Appeals court strikes down formula used to calculate ‘qualifying payment amount’ under No Surprises Act
Radiologists and other provider groups praised the decision on Aug. 12, contending that "QPAs have been completely detached from reality."
BMI, obesity and the problem with how we talk about weight
Here’s what BMI is, when it’s useful, where it falls short and what else to pay attention to.
Legislative leaders indicate Dunleavy’s Alaska LNG bill is doomed as business groups pan it
The governor proposed a 2% corporate income tax on oil and gas companies that currently pay no state income tax, though the gas line project itself would be exempt.
Starbreeze Entertainment & VICE Studios Partners with Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and G-Unit Film & Television for PAYDAY
Starbreeze Entertainment together with VICE Studios (Gangs of London) have partnered with Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and his G-Unit Film & Television, to executive produce an adaptation of Starbreeze’s iconic, long-running video game franchise PAYDAY® for global audiences. , , , , “G-Unit Film & TV has built cinematic crime stories that connect with audiences around the world. Teaming up with Starbreeze and VICE Studios and bringing the world of PAYDAY to the screen gives us the chance to build...
Lawsuit seeks to ban Trump Media from charging for early access to posts
The lawsuit alleges the service to offer paying customers sneak peeks violates the Constitution
Ja'Marr Chase names two Bengals breakout candidates
If Ja'Marr Chase says these guys are on the rise for the Bengals...everyone needs to pay attention.
Shopify Inc. (SHOP) Soars as Jim Cramer Applauds AI-Driven Business Formation
Software platforms faced selling pressure due to concerns that generative AI tools would replace traditional software architectures. However, Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) broke away from sector headwinds after second-quarter financial results showed AI tools driving business formation rather than displacing its e-commerce infrastructure. Because Shopify serves small and medium-sized businesses requiring turnkey checkout, payment processing, and […]
7NEWS POLL | Should certain businesses, like liquor stores, pay fees to fund child care?
TELL US:Should certain businesses, like liquor or gun stores, pay annual fees to fund child care?
Pac-12 announces free streaming for fall Olympic sports
While many conferences keep lesser-watched Olympic sports behind a paywall, the Pac-12 is taking a different approach. The conference announced that fall Olympic sports, including women’s soccer, men’s soccer, and volleyball, will stream for free on the Pac-12 YouTube channel. These broadcasts should be fairly high quality. The conference says that the broadcasts will be…
Exclusive: Former Southern Poverty Law Center CFO arrested on fraud charges
A former chief financial officer at the Southern Poverty Law Center has been arrested in California and for her alleged role in overseeing secret payments to informants inside of White supremacist groups, one of whom she was allegedly living with and had a romantic relationship with at the time, according to a person familiar with the arrest.
‘Barbie 2’ in Crisis: Sequel Could Be Shelved Amid Pay Battle and Crumbling Deal Talks
“Do you guys ever think about dying?” Margot Robbie asks at the start of 2023’s “Barbie.” It’s one of many moments of existential dread that her character faces on the journey to becoming a real woman...
Rodri Chooses Barcelona as €60m City Deal Edges Closer
Barcelona are expected to pay around €60 million to Manchester City to sign Rodri, according to Diario AS, as reported by Barca Universal. The report also states that the Spain international is set ...
State Meditates Another Huge Pay Bump for Oregon Health Plan Operators
The proposal, which is preliminary, comes as alarm bells clang over runaway medical inflation.
An Overview of State-Directed Payments and Medicaid Provider Taxes: History and Potential Effects of the Working Families and Tax Cut Legislation on Health Care Costs
Health care provider taxes and state-directed payment policies in the Working Families and Tax Cut legislation are expected to reduce non-Medicaid prices by up to 3.5 percent in markets with provider taxes and reduce spending on Medicaid, commercial and Medicare coverage. Our spending estimates indicate that there will be an additional $29 billion in federal savings on Medicare and commercial coverage for each $100 billion that federal Medicaid spending is reduced.KEY POINTS
We asked Madison: How much money do you make?
Over a dozen states have pay transparency laws, including Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Washington. While no such laws exist in Wisconsin, money is still at the top of mind
Sean Payton, Dan Campbell reflect on Teddy Bridgewater's 5-0 run with the 2019 Saints
When Drew Brees got hurt, Bridgwater kept the Saints' season alive.
Hospitals push for upfront payments as patient deductibles and out-of-pocket costs rise
Oracle is planning another round of job cuts this month
The potential layoffs reduce Oracle's payroll as it racks up billions in debt to fund AI infrastructure.
NASA Completes Astronaut-Deployed Science Instrument for Lunar Surface
NASA has declared “wrenches down” on the first completed payload designed for Artemis astronauts to deploy on the Moon's surface. Engineers working on NASA’s
Opinion: Illinois can’t wait until families are in crisis to invest in them
A state that waits for families to collapse will keep paying a premium for preventable crises.
Curtain Call Cabaret & Lounge launches new pay model for entertainment, food
The Curtain Call Cabaret & Lounge in downtown Medford has introduced an innovative Pay-What-You-Want model that includes both admission and its food menu. For all Curtain Call-produced performances, guests may […]
iPhone Users Who Pay for Enough iCloud Storage Get New iOS 27 Perks
If you are subscribed to an iCloud+ plan with at least 2TB of storage, you will receive new perks in the Home app on iOS 27, according to Apple. Starting with iOS 27, Apple said iPhone users who are subscribed to an iCloud+ plan with at least 2TB of storage receive access to three new Apple Intelligence features in the Home app: generated video descriptions for HomeKit Secure Video cameras, the ability to search for camera clips, and automatic surfacing of noteworthy clips.
What’s In The $100 ‘GTA VI’ Ultimate Edition, Which Most Fans Are Buying
While most players are upset the price of gaming is going up, a majority of them are willing to pay $100 for the GTA VI Ultimate Edition. Here's what's inside.
LG Launches Back to School Sale With Major Discounts on OLED TVs and Monitors
LG is hosting a big Back to School sale on its website this week, with deals on monitors, TVs, home appliances, and more. LG's discounts have been automatically applied and do not require any discount codes or special memberships. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with LG. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
iOS 27 beta 5 adds option to upgrade iCloud+ subscription for more AI
iOS 27 beta 5 includes confirmation of something Apple has hinted before: paying for higher iCloud+ tiers unlocks more access to AI features.
Under 500 Employees, Over $500 billion: Small Business Payroll Taxes
Small businesses, those with fewer than 500 employees, are a pillar in the U.S. economy and account for a large share of federal payroll tax revenues. These taxes are paid by both the employer and employee and are primarily used to fund the Social Se
Entertainment Partners and NYU Tisch School of the Arts Launch Five-Year Collaboration Focused on Production Training and Industry Access
/PRNewswire/ -- Entertainment Partners, a global leader in entertainment payroll, production management and production finance solutions for over 50 years,...
The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering. It devastated mom-and-pop businesses instead
Small businesses pay hidden toll after money-transfer rule change to curb illicit activities near the US-Mexico border
The U.S. Healthcare System is Already Mostly Socialized
Now that Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat, the outcome of this crucial race will depend mainly on two things: Whether Republicans succeed in demonizing El-Sayed because he’s brown and a Muslim, and whether they succeed in demonizing him as a left-wing radical. I will defer for the now the question of whether bigotry will be effective this year, although I will address it another day. What I want to address instead is El-Sayed’s signature issue — healthcare. Yes, El-Sayed advocates Medicare for All, a position the usual suspects denounce as “socialism.” I will get to the politics of his stance soon. Today, however, I want to talk about the substance. We should be clear that El-Sayed doesn’t even call himself a socialist. On the contrary, he explicitly disavows the label, saying “I’m a capitalist who just knows about capitalism”. In fact, as I explained in a previous post, the policies that El-Sayed advocates qualify him as a social democrat, not a socialist. Still, El-Sayed advocates a system under which the government would pay almost all medical expenses. Isn’t that socialism? Well, if that is the criterion then much of U.S. healthcare is already socialist. In fact, the government’s role is so large that U.S. healthcare is better described as partially privatized socialism than as anything resembling a free market. Let’s start with the raw numbers on health insurance, which pays the bulk of Americans’ medical expenses. Americans receive health insurance either from private companies or from public programs, overwhelmingly Medicare and Medicaid. Here’s what the breakdown of coverage and spending between private and public looked like in 2024: While a majority of Americans with health insurance get it from private companies, well over 100 million of us are covered by government programs instead. And these government programs pay more total dollars for medical bills than the private insurers do. Why do government programs that cover a minority of the population account for a majority of health insurers’ outlays? Mainly because Medicare covers seniors, and we’re expensive. Also, while Medicaid covers many younger Americans, disabled and elderly beneficiaries account for most of its spending. Even by the raw numbers, then, U.S. health insurance looks as much public as private. But that understates the government’s role: Private health insurance in the U.S. is both highly regulated and heavily subsidized. This is obviously true for the insurance coverage purchased by tens of millions of Americans through the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. But employment-based health insurance, which covers 161 million Americans, is far more of a government creation than most people realize. For employment-based insurance exists largely because of huge implicit government subsidies that come with major strings attached. Here’s how that works. If your employer pays you $10,000, that’s taxable income. But if your employer pays $10,000 toward a company health insurance plan that meets certain criteria, it isn’t taxable. That’s a huge effective subsidy, running at more than $300 billion a year. Take that subsidy into account, along with the more than $100 billion per year spent subsidizing policies purchased under the ACA, as well as the outlays on Medicare and Medicaid, and net effect is that the government pays for more than two-thirds of Americans’ health insurance. Granted, there are strings attached. Roughly speaking, employment-based health plans can’t discriminate based on medical history — that is, they can’t deny coverage to employees with pre-existing conditions — and they also can’t offer the plans only to highly compensated employees — a health plan that is only for the C-suite is considered taxable income. So given the restrictions of the federal tax code, employer-based health insurance is a lot like Obamacare, which also prohibits discrimination based on medical history and provides subsidies to make insurance affordable to lower-paid workers. The fact is that virtually all of private healthcare insurance is already well under some form of government control through regulation and tax subsidies. How should we think about this system? First of all, is Medicare socialist? Don’t tell anyone, but the way Medicare operates — it covers every senior’s medical expenses, whatever they turn out to be, while being funded by taxes that depend on one’s income — could be summarized by the old Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And back in 1961, when Ronald Reagan was the face of a last-ditch effort by the American Medical Association to block the creation of Medicare, he denounced Medicare as “socialized medicine” and warned that it would destroy our freedom. In reality, American freedom survived until Jan. 20, 2025, while Medicare is immensely popular, with an 82 percent favorable rating in the most recent KFF survey. Medicaid, government health insurance for lower-income Americans, comes in at 73 percent. This is in sharp contrast to public views about private insurers, who are widely disliked if not hated and accused of denying essential care. Furthermore, if Medicare is socialism, then the whole U.S. health insurance system, with the government paying most of the bills and placing conditions on private insurers, is almost equally socialist. If you insist on calling any program the government pays for and regulates socialist, then U.S. healthcare would best be described as a partially privatized form of socialism. And one must ask, what is the point of the part that is privatized? Do private insurers add anything positive? Or are they simply parasites, skimming off money that could have been paying for care? The case for viewing insurers as parasites is strong. Many Medicare benefits are now delivered via Medicare Advantage, that is, plans paid for by the government but run through insurance companies. MedPAC, an independent advisory commission, estimates that last year Medicare Advantage plans were overpaid by $84 billion, thanks to practices such as “upcoding,” in which patients’ health problems are overstated to get larger sums from Medicare. Assessing the waste from employer-based insurance is harder, but most evidence suggests that private insurers have substantially higher administrative costs than Medicare does. Furthermore, the complexity of private insurance, with multiple payers all trying to deny care when they can, is a huge burden both on providers — doctors, nurses, and hospitals — and on patients. What do private insurers offer to compensate for these costs? One must go through intellectual contortions to avoid the conclusion that they are, in fact, parasites. Which brings me back to El-Sayed. In supporting Medicare for All, he’s basically calling for an end to the partial, parasitic privatization of a healthcare system that is already hugely dependent on public funding. When one looks at it that way, it’s not at all a radical proposal. Admittedly, the political lift requires overcoming the opposition to higher taxes to pay for Medicare for All. Political realism rather than economics was the reason I and many other progressives supported Obamacare, with all its complexities, rather than demanding an immediate move to Medicare for All. But the political calculus may very well have shifted since the 2000s, as Americans are fed up with a system of unaffordable premiums, rampant claim denials, and byzantine claim administration. Moreover, funding healthcare insurance through taxation would allow for a much more progressive distribution of the cost. That is, compared to the present system, middle-income households would pay less as high-income households would pay more. And the U.S. would stop wasting large sums on pointless administrative costs. So let’s be clear: El-Sayed’s healthcare platform is perfectly reasonable on the merits of cost, fairness and health efficacy. And with private insurers never more hated, while millions of Americans are losing their health insurance, 2026 may be its time. MUSICAL CODA
US small-business sentiment rises to 11-month high in July, labor shortages a worry
U.S. small-business sentiment increased to an 11-month high in July amid a surge in the share of owners reporting plans to boost hiring, suggesting that last month's slump in nonfarm payrolls was probably temporary.
US small-business sentiment rises to 11-month high in July, labor shortages a worry
WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. small-business sentiment increased to an 11-month high in July amid a surge in the share of owners reporting plans to boost hiring, suggesting that last month's slump in nonfarm payrolls was probably temporary. The ...
Arsenal agree deal with Crystal Palace youngster
Crystal Palace youngster Mylo Bernard has agreed to join Arsenal, with the Gunners reportedly only needing to pay a training compensation payment.Photo via Bernard on InstagramJames McNicholas reports...
Cardinal Health Board of Directors Approves Quarterly Dividend
Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH) announced today that its Board of Directors approved its quarterly dividend of $0.5158 per share, out of the Company's capital surplus. The dividend will be payable on...
iPhone 18 Pro BOM cost estimated to be up by 40%
Apple is reportedly paying three times more for RAM and storage than it did with the iPhone 17 Pro. We’ve already seen rumors that iPhone 18 Pro...
Judge orders ex-business manager to pay over $11,490 to school in Key West
A 60-year-old woman who was accused of stealing from a private school in Key West — as she allegedly abused her position as a business manager until 2014 — was behind bars on Monday in Monroe County, records show.
Saber's newest game trailer takes a shot at Gearbox's CEO, if you look closely
The first hint that something might be up with the recent debut trailer for Saber Interactive’s Rideshare Stimulator is an unusual choice of words—aside from that second one in the game’s title. “Don’t take your passengers too seriously,” the trailer’s narrator says, as he describes this upcoming game. It a car game about the gig work of driving eccentric people to their destinations, a riff on Crazy Taxi. And then, he says: “When I think I’ve met the randiest of passengers, someone even stranger gets in.” “Randiest”? That suggests “randy,” which usually means having strong sexual desire. Yet none of the oddball backseat occupants featured in the trailer seem particularly lustful. One is an old man who considers his grandson a failure, another shares the theory that birds might control traffic lights, another says he’s banned from an aquarium. A little later, there’s a license plate, shown 63 seconds into the trailer, on the front of an SUV: USB DRV It’s a Texas plate. The symbol between those letters is a cog wheel. If you know, you know. That’s a reference to Texas-based Borderlands game development studio Gearbox Software (their logo features a cog wheel). More specifically, it’s a reference to Gearbox’s CEO Randy Pitchford, who in 2018 found himself explaining the nature of video he’d saved on a USB drive that was found at a Medieval Times restaurant before being returned to the studio: “It was ‘barely legal’ porn. This girl’s handle was ‘Only 18.’” The “girl” in the video had committed a solo sex act that Pitchford, an avid practitioner of magic, found remarkable. “I realized, this is not a sex worker…This is a fucking magician.” Back then, the USB drive was central to competing lawsuits against Gearbox by the studio’s former lawyer and by Gearbox against him. A settlement in late 2019 “exonerated” Pitchford, per the Hollywood Reporter. The USB story has resurfaced at times, now in a trailer from a company that not long ago was corporate brethren with Gearbox. Saber vs. Gearbox The head of Saber told Game File that the reference is payback. “The dig is because Randy took shots at Embracer in Borderlands 4,” Saber CEO Matt Karch told me when I asked him about the license plate. “Without Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living.” Having interviewed Karch during a cross-country flight in late 2024, I can confirm that Karch was unimpressed with Pitchford during their time both working in the Embracer group. I’d approached him not out of surprise that there was animosity but that it was manifesting publicly now. Gearbox was founded in 1999, worked on a port of Halo early on, and developed hit series such as the loot-based sci-fi shooter Borderlands before it was purchased by The Embracer Group in early 2021 for $363 million (with a possible earn-out of over $1 billion, if certain targets were hit by 2027). Saber was founded in 2001, worked on a remaster of Halo early on, had a big hit with zombie shooter World War Z and was purchased by Embracer in early 2020 for $150 million, with a potential earn-out of up to $375 million. For a few years, the Embracer group was a voracious acquirer of game studios. Then, as investment dried up, it choked. In March 2024, Embracer sold Saber to an investment company controlled by Saber CEO Matt Karch, and it sold Gearbox in an all-stock deal to long-time Borderlands publisher Take Two Interactive. Other studios were shut down. Hundreds of developers were laid off. Gearbox didn’t say much about their Embracer experience, nothing too direct, at least. In the summer 2024, Pitchford told reporter and occasional Game File contributor Nicole Carpenter that Borderlands 4’s story was in some way thematically connected to Gearbox’s experience at Embracer: “There’s this cultural and emotional shift in me, personally, and at the studio. What does it mean to trade some autonomy for organization?” When Borderlands 4 came out, there was something stranger: the matter of “Embracer’s Bluff,” a location in the game featuring an AI-powered toilet and a large trash dump, according to a detailed Kotaku account of the place. Gearbox never commented on it; Take Two never got back to me about it when I asked them last year. By contrast, since Saber exited Embracer, Karch has been one of Embracer’s biggest defenders, casting their management as well-meaning and supportive despite the layoffs and studio closures that resulted from their excessive expansion. Like others, Saber’s Karch saw Embracer’s as a shot. With Rideshare Stimulator’s trailer, he’s returned fire. “It’s amazing to me how fast people forget those who went above and beyond for them,” Karch told Game File. A rep for Gearbox did not comment by press time. Game File is a reader-supported publication. Your backing makes my reporting—including any coverage of trailer-based beefs—possible. Good news! I’m currently running Game File’s first big sale of 2026. You can get a one-year subscription for 23% off. Click here to take advantage of the limited-time offer. And thank you for your support! Item 2: In brief… 🚫 Wal-Mart has laid off the staff of Restart, a games media outlet launched in 2024, Aftermath reports. 🟥 A GTA VI preview is on the way, at last, via an “extended look” that will premiere, unusually, on Netflix at 3pm ET on August 27, then officially go live elsewhere six hours later. Last week, Game File noted that Take Two label Rockstar Games is overdue for showing off GTA VI, based on the timing of the initial hands-off previews of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2. During a call with investors, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said pre-orders for GTA VI were “unprecedented and astonishing,” but added the company can’t predict how many of those pre-orders represent bonus sales vs. sales that otherwise would have been made at launch. During the same call, Zelnick was noticeably bullish on the future of playing games over streaming cloud connections (predicting wider adoption in three or so years). He sounded unbothered by Sony’s plans to stop making discs for new games (he said the business is 90% digital already and predicted that there could still be limited edition physical editions of games “in the same way there’s still vinyl in the recorded music business.”) 👀 Take Two wrote off $43 million in their spring quarter after deciding “not to proceed with further development of an unannounced title in its pipeline from a third-party developer.” 🤔 Some rare age-demographics from a big publisher: Capcom recently told investors that “users in their 20s account for approximately half of the users of both Pragamata and Resident Evil Requiem.” Item 3: The week ahead Tuesday, August 11 Game releases: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (Switch 2; already out for PC, PS5, Xbox) continues the Bethesda strategy of putting Elder Scrolls games on everything; Royalty Free-For-All is a Smash Bros.-style fighting game featuring public domain characters such as Mother Goose brawling with Oliver Twist in a stage based on the original Little Shop of Horrors movie. Wednesday, August 12 Game release: Pro Jank Footy (PC, console) is an arcade-style Australian Rules Football game with increasingly ridiculous rules, the more you play (I enjoyed the Steam demo) Thursday, August 13 Game release: Super Mario Sunshine (Switch 2, originally released in 2002 on the GameCube) is released for Switch 2’s Nintendo Switch Online service. This game is the black sheep of 3D Mario games. It’s the successor to the breakthrough Super Mario 64 and the rare Mario game built around a single (vacation resort) theme. Mario’s got a water-spraying backpack, a Yoshi pal and a lot of blue coins to collect.
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