“The reduction of new cases in South Korea is a striking achievement for a country that earlier this year had the largest number of confirmed cases in Asia outside China. On February 20, confirmed infections skyrocketed exponentially after a parishioner of a megachurch in the southern city of Daegu infected other congregants during services, but the government’s aggressive testing and contact-tracing regime seems to have played a significant role in counteracting this rapid spike in cases quickly.”
…
“Experts say there are a number of measures it’s taken to achieve its results, including building a highly organized and massive testing capacity, and the government institution of tracing and isolation measures for people who have been in contact with the infected.
Notably, South Korea has generally avoided the wide-scale shutdowns that China and the US have pursued, according to Business Insider. It has shut down schools and imposed a curfew in some cities, but the government has sought primarily, in a highly targeted fashion, to isolate groups of people who are suspected to have been exposed.”
…
“the government organized mass production of coronavirus test kits earlier than many other hard-hit countries, which meant that in late March the country had a per-capita test rate “more than 40 times that of the United States.””
…
“South Koreans’ cellphones vibrate with emergency alerts whenever new cases are discovered in their districts. Websites and smartphone apps detail hour-by-hour, sometimes minute-by-minute, timelines of infected people’s travel — which buses they took, when and where they got on and off, even whether they were wearing masks.
People who believe they may have crossed paths with a patient are urged to report to testing centers.
South Koreans have broadly accepted the loss of privacy as a necessary trade-off. People ordered into self-quarantine must download another app, which alerts officials if a patient ventures out of isolation. Fines for violations can reach $2,500.”
…
“South Korea’s management of the spread of the virus does not mean that it’s out of the woods. Places like Hong Kong and Singapore have seen resurgences of cases, in part due to people entering the country from abroad. But South Korea does seem to have some tools — and a plan — in place to manage the spread for now.”
“It’s not like the brick-and-mortar retail business was booming before the coronavirus pandemic, either. For the past decade, Americans’ shopping habits have drastically shifted, thanks to the advent of online shopping, same-day delivery, and direct-to-consumer startups. While many stores have invested in turning their locations into “experiences,” corporate behemoths like Sears, Family Dollar, Toys R Us, Claire’s, Forever 21, and Payless have struggled to adapt to customers’ expectations.
What’s been called the “retail apocalypse” over the last 10 years is rapidly accelerating due to coronavirus. Analysis from retail industry tracker Coresight Research suggests that more than 15,000 stores in the US could permanently shutter, up from the 9,500 that closed their doors last year.
If the great American department store was already in decline, coronavirus may be what finishes the job. It’s almost certain that Neiman Marcus is just the beginning.”
“In a head-spinning political maneuver, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro joined demonstrations held in Brasilia on Sunday to protest coronavirus-related lockdowns and to call for a military coup.
Political observers say the protesters were right-wing Bolsonaro supporters who called for military intervention on behalf of the president because they view the country’s supreme court and legislature as obstacles to his campaign against pandemic lockdown measures, despite the fact that the country has more than 35,000 confirmed cases and over 2,300 deaths as of April 19.
“Now it is the people in power. It’s more than your right — it’s your obligation to fight for your country,” Bolsonaro said, standing on a pickup truck outside the Army headquarters. “We don’t want to negotiate anything. We want action for Brazil.”
Political commentators say it’s unlikely that Bolsonaro literally hoped to foment a coup with his incendiary remarks outside the Army headquarters, but rather saw the protest as an opportunity to mobilize his political base. The president has become increasingly isolated politically due to his resistance to approaching the pandemic in accordance with medical and scientific advice, and clashes with politicians issuing quarantine orders at the state level.”
…
“Bolsonaro has consistently downplayed the virus, calling it a “little flu” and arguing that Brazilians are well-suited for it because they can be dunked in sewage and “don’t catch a thing.” The president has also frequently defied social distancing guidelines from his own administration, and has opposed lockdowns initiated by governors of states, accusing them of exploiting the pandemic for political gain.”
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/19/21224305/world-health-organization-trump-reform-q-a
“More than a dozen United States experts were working at the World Health Organization and feeding the Trump administration information last December as the coronavirus spread through China, according to reporting by the Washington Post.”
…
“A top official from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was part of the committee that advised the WHO on whether to declare a global public health emergency in late January. Two US scientists were part of the WHO’s information gathering mission to China in mid-February. A CDC official has compiled daily reports of outbreaks in consultation with WHO counterparts and passed along information to higher-ups in the organization through daily briefing calls. And upcoming WHO plans and announcements were reportedly shared days in advance with top US officials like Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
The WHO has been criticized for its handling of the pandemic — including whether the organization waited too long to declare a global emergency and if it has been too liberal in its praise for China’s response — but the Post’s reporting indicates that lack of early communication of the threat to the US was likely not one of its missteps.
Trump claims otherwise, telling reporters last Tuesday, “The reality is that the WHO failed to adequately obtain … and share information in a timely and transparent fashion.””
…
“Trump’s threat to stop sending the millions of dollars the country sends annually to the WHO would be a devastating blow to the organization, which is helping to coordinate the global response to Covid-19. The US is the organization’s single largest funder, providing 22 percent of all member state assessed contributions and often hundreds of millions more in voluntary contributions.
It’s not clear whether he can stop the $116 million that’s been appropriated to the agency by Congress, but it seems he may be allowed to reroute the funding to other organizations or withhold it until next year.”
“There’s consensus in Congress that another relief bill is needed, and Democrats have been talking about either extending the extra $600 a week in federal aid or adding more weeks before an individual would be kicked off regular UI benefits (without the extra $600 per week), according to a senior Democratic aide.
But the problems that currently exist have led unemployment experts like Stettner and Evermore to say that Congress also needs to fund the system itself, by helping states add more employees and get better technology to help connect people to the benefits they so badly need.”
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/19/21225195/stay-at-home-protests-trump-tea-party-reelection
“The single largest tax expenditure in the United States is for employer-based health insurance. It’s even more than the mortgage interest deduction. In 2017, this exclusion cost the federal government about $260 billion in lost income and payroll taxes. This is significantly more than the cost of the Affordable Care Act each year.”
…
“Let’s take a hypothetical married pediatrician with a couple of children living in Indiana who makes $125,000 (which is below average). Let’s also assume his family insurance plan costs $15,000 (which is below average as well).
The tax break the family would get for insurance is worth over $6,200. That’s far more than a similar-earning family would get in terms of a subsidy on the exchanges. The tax break alone could fund about two people on Medicaid. Moreover, the more one makes, the more one saves at the expense of more spending by the government. The less one makes, the less of a benefit one receives.
The system also induces people to spend more money on health insurance than other things, most likely increasing overall health care spending. This includes less employer spending on wages, and as health insurance premiums have increased sharply in the last 15 years or so, wages have been rather flat. Many economists believe that employer-sponsored health insurance is hurting Americans’ paychecks.
There are other countries with private insurance systems, but none that rely so heavily on employer-sponsored insurance. There are almost no economists I can think of who wouldn’t favor decoupling insurance from employment.”
“The high proportion of people who get their health insurance through their jobs is one of the most distinctive features of the U.S. health care system. According to the Census Bureau, 56 percent of the population had employer-sponsored health insurance (ESHI) as of 2017. ESHI accounts for 83 percent of all of those with private insurance of any kind. People whose health insurance is tied to their jobs far outnumber the 38 percent of the population served by government insurance of all kinds.”
…
“most people on ESHI appear to be satisfied with the coverage they get. A survey by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), an insurance industry group, found that 71 percent of respondents were satisfied with their ESHI plans, compared with just 19 percent who were not satisfied. An independent survey by Gallup came up with similar results, finding 69 percent of people on employer-sponsored plans to be satisfied. A study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that 50 percent of workers were extremely or very satisfied with their own ESHI plans, with another 39 percent somewhat satisfied.”
…
“Despite its popularity, though, serious health economists tell us that ESHI is “broke,” after all. No comprehensive reform can succeed unless it is phased out. This commentary examines three of ESHI’s biggest problems: job lock, which reduces labor mobility for ESHI beneficiaries; the fundamental inequity of the way the benefits of ESHI largely accrue to the highest -paid workers; and the increased fragmentation of health care finance inherent in a system administered by thousands of separate employers.”
…
“The term job lock refers to the tendency of employer-sponsored health insurance to discourage people from changing jobs; from starting a business of their own; or from reducing their hours to care for family members or move gradually toward retirement. Job lock undermines labor market mobility, makes it harder to match workers to the most suitable jobs, and cuts labor productivity.”
…
“Eichenwald suffers from a severe form of epilepsy for which medication alone costs $50,000 a year. His op-ed vividly details 40 years of struggles to secure and keep health insurance: small employers who refused to hire him because he would send the company premium through the roof; frightening gaps in coverage when he had to appeal to his parents to cover costly ER visits; a humiliating incident in which he had to beg for an entry-level job far below his qualifications just to maintain coverage.
Eichenwald’s experience is by no means exceptional. In the AHIP survey cited above, 46 percent of respondents listed health benefits as an important factor in deciding to work for their current employer. That included 9 percent who said health coverage was the decisive factor in taking the job. An even greater number, 56 percent, reported that health insurance had an impact on their decision to stay in their current job.
There is a large academic literature on the extent of job lock, well summarized in a 2015 literature survey by Dean Baker, published by the AARP Public Policy Institute. Baker notes that there is wide agreement that people with ESHI are less likely to change jobs, become self-employed, retire early, or reduce hours of work. At the same time, there are many other factors that influence labor mobility. Still, Baker concludes that even when those complicating factors are accounted for, the preponderance of evidence shows that job lock is a reality.”
…
“Suppose you are a head of household earning $60,000 a year, putting you in a 25 percent federal tax bracket. In that case, having your employer pay $14,000 of your insurance premium, rather than getting that much extra in cash and paying the premium yourself, saves you $3,500 in taxes. If you are a top executive in a 40 percent tax bracket, the tax deductibility of the insurance is worth $5,600.
However, according to the Tax Policy Center, some 44 percent of Americans will pay no income tax at all in 2018. Sixty percent of the nonpayers work. Even if they get ESHI, it gives them no tax benefit at all. They would be no worse off if health benefits were not deductible and if employers added the cost of their insurance to their cash pay instead.
A second factor adding to the inequity of ESHI is that low-wage workers, by and large, are not even offered the option of health benefits. The following chart, provided by the Social Security Administration, shows that only about a third of workers in the lowest fifth of the wage distribution are offered health benefits and that fewer than 20 percent accept those offers. In contrast, more than 80 percent of those in the top fifth of the wage distribution are offered health benefits and accept them.”
…
“Robert Kaestner and Darren Lubotsky, economists at the University of Illinois, Chicago, provide an estimate of the overall inequality of ESHI based on the combined effects of differences in tax rates and differences in offer and acceptance rates. As shown in the next chart, taken from their study, workers in the bottom fifth of the family income distribution get annual benefits of less than $500 from ESHI, while those in the top fifth get benefits averaging $4,500. What is more, the value of health benefits to well-paid workers grew substantially over the period shown in the chart, while the value for the lowest paid workers decreased slightly.”
…
“Fragmentation is a problem for small employers, who have little bargaining power in purchasing group policies from insurers, but also for larger employers. Many larger employers try to save on health benefit costs by self-insuring. According to Collective Health, a company that advises employers on their ESHI programs, 79 percent of companies with 200 or more employees self-insured as of 2017, up from 60 percent in 1999.
The problem is, companies that self-insure don’t always do a good job of it.”
…
“When it comes down to hard bargaining, health care providers, including big insurers, hospitals, and drug companies, are less fragmented than employers. Furthermore, health care is what they know best. For employers, whose main expertise lies in manufacturing, customer service, finance or other areas, health care is only a sideline. Given the structure of the system, providers will always come out ahead, driving up costs for workers and their families, who are the ultimate health care consumers.”
…
“people who have tried to trace its origins, like Indiana University’s Aaron Carroll, portray ESHI as an accident of history. Job-linked health benefits first became widespread during World War II when American firms faced both a labor shortage and a wage freeze. Desperate to attract employees, the story goes, they started giving out benefits like health insurance instead of cash raises. The IRS boosted the popularity of ESHI by declaring such benefits to be nontaxable. When President Truman’s attempts to establish a national health care system failed after the war, ESHI became a central element of a complex health care system whose many disparate parts have never fit together well.
We can do better than that.”
“An investigation by the New York Times has revealed that experts and administration officials tried to warn Trump of the serious nature of the coronavirus pandemic early on. Alerts from high-ranking government experts began as far back as January, six weeks before his administration finally sprang into action on March 16, when he issued concrete guidelines for the public.
The report exhaustively outlines numerous ways in which Trump avoided listening to government authorities as they proposed strategies for dealing with the pandemic. It also details an administration mired in political bickering, which hamstrung officials at every phase of their response. The report prompted epidemiologist Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to respond that “obviously” lives could have been saved if the government had taken the warnings seriously.
The report paints a portrait of Trump as being swayed by things like petty politics, one-upmanship, advice from his uninformed business associates, and his annoyance at inconsequential conspiracy theories, rather than the strenuous and sustained advice of experts — most of which he ignored for weeks. The delay resulted in a lack of effective quarantining measures, a dearth of testing centers and equipment, a failure to reallocate existing resources, and widespread confusion about how seriously the public should be taking the disease.”