Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Trump tries health care: Can the party of no get a yes?
Area’s recovery process proving slow, expensive
WASHINGTON — This should be the moment President Donald Trump cleans up Obamacare with a broad smile on his happy face.
He won the electoral college — and as his predecessor Barack Obama liked to say, “elections have consequences.” Trump’s Republican party controls the House and the Senate, which should mean there are no sand traps or water hazards on his golf course.
Problem is, Trump finds himself in the land where it’s often easier to vote no than to vote yes.
Members of his own political party and conservative think tanks became prominent because of their opposition to Obamacare. Now their party wants them to support a plan championed by House Speaker Paul Ryan that doesn’t live up to their pre-2017 rhetoric.
The House plan keeps two popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act — adult children can stay on their parents’ health plans up to age 26 and insurers can not deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions.
Ryan reconfigures other provisions. His House plan would end the individual mandate that requires most adults to get coverage or pay a fine. Instead, it would require insurers to add a 30 percent surcharge for individuals who allowed their coverage to lapse. Some conservatives complain that the surcharge is a mandate by another name.
The House plan also would end premium subsidies, but replace them with tax credits for middle-income earners who buy their own coverage. That’s a different form of entitlement spending, critics say.
Probably the hardest change politically is a switch to a formula that tells insurers they can’t charge older consumers more than three times what they charge young adults. The House plan would allow health care providers to charge seniors up to five times what they charge 20-somethings — a change offset by higher tax credits for Americans aged 60 to 65. The new
TOKYO — Six years ago, more than 18,000 people died or went missing as a tsunami triggered by a massive quake engulfed coastal areas of northeastern Japan.
Tens of thousands more people’s lives were unraveled when they lost family members, friends, homes and livelihoods.
The displacement widened as entire communities fled after meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.
Japan is marking the anniversary of the disaster Saturday with somber ceremonies in Tokyo and in cities and towns in the northeast. Most of the towns devastated in the March 11, 2011, disasters have only partially rebuilt, and local authorities are struggling to finance construction. Meanwhile, despite an abundance of jobs thanks to the rebuilding, the population in most of the region is falling.
Here are some measures of progress in Japan’s recovery: RECONSTRUCTION
The government spent 26 trillion yen ($220 billion) in recovery and rebuilding from 2011-2015, but is due to slash that to only 6.5 trillion yen in 2016-2020. Reconstruction has been hampered by a shortage of workers, and while much of the public housing planned to replace destroyed homes has been finished, about a fifth of the units stand empty.
DISPLACED FAMILIES
As many as 150,000 people fled radiation-affected areas near the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. As of February, 123,000 were still displaced. Housing subsidies for so-called “voluntary evacuees” — those who left areas not designated as evacuation zones — are due to run out by the end of March. Japanese media say some of those families have struggled to find new housing.
NUCLEAR PLANT
Tokyo Electric Power Co. is struggling to decommission the wrecked plant and the estimated total cost exceeds 21 trillion yen ($182 billion).
Cleanup of nearby areas has lagged and radiation levels remain high. The cost of that cleanup has reportedly almost doubled to 4 trillion yen ($35 billion). TEPCO officials say radiation is not leaking outside of the reactors.
FISHERIES
Many of the seaside towns in the disaster zone relied heavily on fishing and aquaculture. Data from Iwate prefecture, one of the hardest-hit areas, shows harvests of salmon and oysters still only at 40 percent of the level when the tsunami hit. Other industries, such as sea urchin and abalone, have recovered to about 80 percent of normal. The region’s fisheries still employ about 14,000 people, but that’s down from about 18,000 in 2010.
MISSING PEOPLE
As of Friday, 2,553 people are still missing, and occasionally teams still search the coastline for signs of their remains. What’s also missing are the many closeknit fishing hamlets and waterfronts in areas that were scoured bare by the tsunami, where only foundations remain.