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Pipes: How Obamacare tax credits spike premiums

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

For the health insurance industry, Obamacare open enrollment, which started last month, is the most wonderful time of the year. Millions of Americans are signing up for plans on the exchanges. Each click of the “submit” button adds a fistful more dollars to insurers’ bottom line.Open enrollment comes complete with tax credits for lower-income enrollees. They’re supposed to make monthly premiums more affordable. But their biggest effect is the risk-free enrichment of insurance companies.The pursuit of profit in a competitive market is the driver of economic growth and innovation. But when government dictates the specifications for the product that can be sold — in this case, the details of insurance coverage — and then effectively guarantees a profit for compliance, the result isn’t competition and better service but entrenched rent-seekers protecting their turf from competitors. The bigger the subsidies for “premiums,” the greate...

Editorial: New Year’s resolutions for the Boston City Council

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Michelle Wu’s administration announced Wednesday that there will be a “strong” police presence at this weekend’s annual First Night festivities.It’s what you do when you want to keep the city safe.Thank goodness that move didn’t need City Council approval.This year the council has honed dysfunction to a fine art. And while a new council will be sworn in within days, the slate isn’t totally fresh. There are new faces mixed among the incumbents, progressive councilors amid the moderate and more conservative. There is a chance for more division, as well as for unity. Time will tell.But to start things off on the right foot, we have a few resolutions that the council should heed for 2024.Remember who you work forThat would be the residents of Boston, not special interest groups, not an agenda. If this ideal had been adhered to, it’s unlikely the council would have whiffed on a $13M counter-terrorism grant.The vote was deadlocked, and the possibility of losi...

Dear Abby: Unhappy wife tempted by new man

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Dear Abby: I have been married to my husband for 12 years. We have had our ups and downs. I was unfaithful at one point, and he left for eight months, but we worked through it all.We are now coming out of another really rough patch involving a lot of arguing and talk of divorce. I’m having a hard time because around the time he left, I started falling out of love with him. I tried my best to be a good wife and do what I am supposed to, but this last bout of unpleasantness has left me feeling empty and no longer in love.There is now someone in my life I have developed strong feelings for. I imagine a life with him and the thought of being with him excites me. My husband is a good person, but he’s an alcohol and drug addict. He has done EVERYTHING he can and is willing to do things he can’t to ensure I love him as much as he loves me, and that our marriage doesn’t end. He has been sober now for seven years, but habits and tendencies still remain.The problems in...

FBI helping in hunt for Colorado Springs mother suspected of killing her 2 children, wounding third

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

COLORADO SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) — A Colorado Springs woman was being sought Thursday on suspicion of killing her two young children and wounding a third, authorities said.Kimberlee Singler, 35, of Colorado Springs is wanted on an arrest warrant alleging murder, attempted murder and child abuse, according to a statement from the city.Police answered a 911 call reporting a burglary at an apartment complex at around 12:30 a.m. on Dec. 19 and found the bodies of Singler’s 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, the statement said.Singler was found injured along with her 11-year-old daughter. They were taken to local hospitals for treatment, the statement said.“As the investigation into this case unfolded, it was determined the initial report of a burglary was unfounded,” the statement said.Singler was last seen on Dec. 24. An arrest warrant was issued Dec. 26.The FBI is assisting in the search for Singler, said Vikki Migoya of the agency’s Denver office. The Associated Press

The Air Force said its nuclear missile capsules were safe. But toxins lurked, documents show

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A large pool of dark liquid festering on the floor. No fresh air. Computer displays that would overheat and ooze out a fishy-smelling gel that nauseated the crew. Asbestos readings 50 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety standards. These are just some of the past toxic risks that were in the underground capsules and silos where Air Force nuclear missile crews have worked since the 1960s. Now many of those service members have cancer. The toxins were recorded in hundreds of pages of documents dating back to the 1980s that were obtained by The Associated Press through Freedom of Information Act requests. They tell a far different story from what Air Force leadership told the nuclear missile community decades ago, when the first reports of cancer among service members began to surface: “The workplace is free of health hazards,” a Dec. 30, 2001, Air Force investigation found.“Sometimes, illnesses tend to occur by chance alone,” a follow-up 200...

Ex-student found competent to stand trial for stabbing deaths near University of California, Davis

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

DAVIS, Calif. (AP) — A former college student accused of stabbing two people to death and wounding a third in Northern California was found competent to stand trial, a prosecutor said Thursday.Carlos Reales Dominguez will return to court on Jan. 5 and criminal proceedings will be reinstated if there isn’t any challenge to his mental state, according to Yolo County assistant chief deputy district attorney Melinda Aiello, the Sacramento Bee reported. Dominguez had been a third-year student at the University of California, Davis majoring in biological sciences until April 25, when he was expelled for academic reasons. Stabbings near campus began shortly after. He is charged in the deaths of a 50-year-old homeless man and a 20-year-old UC Davis student. A homeless woman who was attacked in her tent survived. The attacks terrified the community. Businesses closed early and some students were too scared to attend even daytime classes as their parents pleaded with them to return home...

For transgender youth in crisis, hospitals sometimes compound the trauma

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — Four days of waiting in UNC Hospitals’ psychiatric emergency room left Callum Bradford desperate for an answer to one key question.With knots in his stomach, the transgender teen asked: “Will I be placed in a girls’ unit?”Yes.The answer provoked one of the worst anxiety attacks Callum had ever experienced. Sobbing into the hospital phone, he informed his parents, who fought to reverse the decision they warned would cause their son greater harm.Although they succeeded in blocking the transfer, the family had few options when a second overdose landed Callum back in UNC’s emergency room a few months later. When the 17-year-old learned he was again scheduled to be sent to a girls’ inpatient ward, he told doctors the urge to hurt himself was becoming uncontrollable. The exchange is documented in hospital records given by the family to The Associated Press.“I had an immense amount of regret that I had even come to that hospital, because I knew that I wasn’t ...

Perspective: Children born poor have little margin for mistakes or bad decisions, regardless of race

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

ALEXANDRIA, Louisiana (AP) — Alfred King was lying in the parking lot of a small apartment building, mortally wounded when police in Alexandria, Louisiana got to the intersection of 12th and Magnolia streets shortly before 1:30 a.m., January 20.The 34-year-old was the first fatal shooting of the year in the small city where I grew up and a large portion of my family lives.Alfred’s death was similar to some I have covered since my first in 1985, a 38-year period when hundreds of thousands of people of all races and ethnicities have died violently in the U.S. I know the details of too many of those incidents, from school shootings to a drug hit in a phone booth. I’ve heard the scream of a mom coming home from work and seeing her son in the street, encircled by yellow police tape. I’ve watched more than one mother gently touch the face of her teen-age son then close the lid on the casket.Some stories are burned into memory, like the Washington, DC teenager who asked h...

Maui’s economy needs tourists. Can they visit without compounding wildfire trauma?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — The restaurant where Katie Austin was a server burned in the wildfire that devastated Hawaii’s historic town of Lahaina this summer.Two months later, as travelers began to trickle back to nearby beach resorts, she went to work at a different eatery. But she soon quit, worn down by constant questions from diners: Was she affected by the fire? Did she know anyone who died?“You’re at work for eight hours and every 15 minutes you have a new stranger ask you about the most traumatic day of your life,” Austin said. “It was soul-sucking.”Hawaii’s governor and mayor invited tourists back to the west side of Maui months after the Aug. 8 fire killed at least 100 people and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings. They wanted the economic boost tourists would bring, particularly heading into the year-end holidays.But some residents are struggling with the return of an industry requiring workers to be attentive and hospitable even though they are trying to c...

A tax increase, LGBTQ+ youth protections and more sick leave highlight California’s new laws in 2024

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Doctors in California who mail abortion pills to patients in other states will be protected from prosecution. Workers will receive more paid sick leave on the heels of a big year for labor. And companies can’t fire employees for using marijuana outside of work. These are among the hundreds of laws that take effect Jan. 1 in the nation’s most populous state.Each year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs hundreds of laws passed by the state Legislature. Most take effect Jan. 1 the following year. But sometimes lawmakers will delay a law’s effective date for a variety of reasons, including giving people more time to prepare for the new rules.Some of the highest-profile bills passed by the Legislature in 2023 will not take effect until later. Fast food workers will get a minimum wage increase to $20 per hour on April 1. Health care workers are scheduled to see the first increases in their minimum wage on June 1. Laws requiring businesses to rep...