A four-year slowdown in health spending growth could be coming to an end.
Americans used more medical care in 2013 as the economy recovered, new reports show. Federal data suggests that health care spending is now growing just as quickly as it was prior to the recession.
And that's not good. The ACA was never set up in a way to contain out-of-control costs which are due to numerous problems in the US healthcare system.
Ok, this is the biggest story of the year so far for the US, as far as I'm concerned. The Congress is way too dependent on campaign contributions from way too few people. What's the over/under on them voting to be more competitive or open? I'm all for activist courts sometime. And ruling the other way wouldn't even necessarily be activist! Linking a follow-up article that gets to the heart of the matter, and if that interpretation is correct, it's the *conservative* *originalists* who are being activist. Ye gods, I'm livid.
But even if this were not true, even if -- for example -- Google were willing to forgo data mining your e-mail and video conversations in exchange for the marketing advantage it would give it over Microsoft, it still won't offer you real security. It can't.
The biggest Internet companies don't offer real security because the U.S. government won't permit it.
The law needs to catch up to a reality that is moving ever-more-quickly towards no such thing as privacy.
Good summary. I love the confidence qualifiers, e.g.:
In many regions, changing precipitation or melting snow and ice are altering hydrological systems, affecting water resources in terms of quantity and quality (medium confidence).
It looks like the IPCC is here to stay, and that they've addressed a lot of the professional/scientific issues with what's a highly politicized process.
Felix Salmon, Bitcoin Tax Ruling:
The IRS has spoken: Bitcoins are property, not currency...
For a payments geek, the real lesson from the IRS Bitcoin ruling is that for a currency--or any payment system--to work, its units must be completely fungible. One reason dollars work really well as a currency is that one $20 bill is entirely fungible with another $20 bill. This means that when I pay, I don't have to make a decision about which $20 bill to use (unless I have some idiosyncratic attachment to the crisp ones or the like). It means that when I accept a payment, I don't care which $20 bill I am given, in part because I know that my ability to spend that $20 bill will not depend on which $20 bill it is...
The IRS ruled that Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are property, not currency. This means that they are subject to capital gains taxation. And that means that Bitcoins are not fungible.
Japan will announce Monday that it will turn over to Washington more than 700 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium and a large quantity of highly enriched uranium, a decades-old research stockpile that is large enough to build dozens of nuclear weapons, according to American and Japanese officials.
The announcement is the biggest single success in President Obama’s five-year-long push to secure the world’s most dangerous materials, and will come as world leaders gather here on Monday for a nuclear security summit meeting.
... This is the angst that fills those in the news business, and society broadly. The reality of the Internet is that there is no more bell curve; power laws dominate, and the challenge of our time is figuring out what to do with a population distribution that is fundamentally misaligned with Internet economics.
Great post. Shows a little of the nuance in the debate. Climate scientists are quite aware that the issue isn't just "is/is NOT climate change", even if the media tend to make it seem that way by preferring soundbites.