The full article is accessible free of charge @ SAGE Journals

Democratic presidential candidates paint insurers as the health-care bogeymen, letting providers off the hook.

By Olga Khazan @ TheAtlantic.com, July 31

[....] It’s true that high-deductible plans are one reason people get high medical bills in the first place. And it’s also fair to say that insurers don’t always negotiate for the lowest prices they can, and that they make healthy profits.

But in fact, the types of medical bills that lead to medical bankruptcy most commonly stem from out-of-network emergency-room visits and planned surgeries, not co-pays and premiums, experts told me earlier this year. Insurance companies do have networks, and services that are out of network are billed a higher rate. But doctors and hospitals decide whether to participate in certain insurers’ networks, and whether to bill patients for the balance of their bills (and, later, whether to sue patients for that balance).

The sentiment behind the anti-insurance talk is understandable. The most frustrating part of many Americans’ interactions with the health-care system is trying to get their insurance claims paid. No one enjoys hearing that something isn’t covered or will cost more than anticipated, and insurers are often the bearers of that news. And certainly, insurers also have money-saving tricks up their sleeves.

But the profits of health insurers are not that exorbitant compared with other parts of the health-care system. And in fact, many scholars suggest that American health care is so dysfunctional because it simply costs too much. That’s the fault of doctors, drugmakers, and hospitals, too, not just insurers.

Why are Democrats so focused on insurers, rather than providers and hospitals? Perhaps it’s because America’s Health Insurance Plans, the health insurers’ trade group, is not as big of a lobbying spender as the American Hospital Association. In a less cynical interpretation [....]

 By Bob Moser @ NewYorker.com, Aug. 2

[....] The Republicans now had a real fight on their hands, pitting two distinct brands of conservatism—the slash-and-burn absolutism of Reeves, who also championed this year’s fetal-heartbeat law, and the commonsensical problem-solving of Waller, who often sounds like a relic of pre-Tea Party Republicanism—against each other. The mild-mannered son of a nineteen-seventies governor, Waller isn’t cut out for old-fashioned mudslinging, though his original campaign slogan took a swipe at Reeves, whose approval rating is around thirty-seven per cent: “Shouldn’t you like your candidate for governor? Now you can.” He supports Medicaid expansion, wants to raise the state’s gas tax to pay for infrastructure repairs, pledges to raise teacher salaries by a thousand dollars each year until they match the average in the Southeast, and talks about little else as he trods the state, sometimes campaigning seventeen hours a day in the hope that shoe-leather effort can overcome Reeves’s ten-to-one edge in campaign funds. “The facts are mean things,” Waller said, on August 1st, at this year’s Neshoba Fair, ticking off the troubles faced by the state.

Though Reeves had sewn up the support of most leading Republicans before Waller leapt in, four former state Republican chairs are backing the former justice—mainly because they’ve decided that enough is enough. “Our infrastructure is crumbling,” Clarke Reed, one of the fathers of the modern Mississippi G.O.P., said. “We need a gas-tax increase. Everybody knows it.” Mike Retzer, a Delta businessman who led the party in both the late seventies and the nineties, said, “Tate had an opportunity, a great opportunity to do some good for our state. Republicans are against taxes, but our roads and bridges are in trouble. Now we’re totally locked in.”

The sharp contrast between Reeves and Waller has made for an unexpectedly entertaining summer of politicking in Mississippi [....]

By Nacha Cattan for Bloomberg via YahooNews.com, Aug. 2

[....] Mexico City had always been a haven from the beheadings and mass graves that beset the country. But as homicides have risen year after year, it began to look more like the rest of Mexico. Since leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took power in December, crime has become topic No. 1 in conversations in cafes and bars and offices.

Despite promises to lower violence by addressing poverty and youth disaffection, killings have soared 15% this year under the leadership of Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, a close ally to the president known as AMLO. After gunfights hit chic neighborhoods and two young men from middle-class families were kidnapped and murdered, Sheinbaum sent in the newly created National Guard, a measure meant for only the worst narco spots. Now, the perception that crime is spinning out of control in one of the world’s largest capitals is unnerving investors in an economy that is poised to grow this year the least in a decade.

“Our clients are far more concerned,” said Gonzalo Nadal, who runs Mexico City-based risk consultancy ON Partners, whose clients include the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico. “Some have expressed serious uncertainty” about whether to expand in the capital [....]

(Even with a Dem  trifecta) Could a President Biden or Bennet even hope to add a public option to Obamacare?.. is President Inslee going to convince Manchin to pass a good climate bill through his energy committee? How can any of the candidates proposing that we decriminalize illegal border crossings get that through Congress? How about creating a slavery reparations program? Is Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren going to be able to deliver a trillion dollar college loan forgiveness program? Will the DREAMERS get any relief? Will comprehensive immigration reform pass? Will Trump’s tax cuts get repealed? .. Congress is broken and nothing can fix it other than the Democrats winning 60 or maybe more Senate seats...

A judge condemned Ms. Harris’s indifference to the systemic violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights...600 cases handled by a corrupt technician were dismissed.
In 2015, she opposed a bill requiring her office to investigate shootings involving officers.
She refused to support statewide standards regulating the use of body-worn cameras by police officers.
When a federal judge in Orange County ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional in 2014, Ms. Harris appealed. In a public statement, she made the bizarre argument that the decision “undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants.”

She supported prosecution of parents of habitually truant children,  despite concerns that it would disproportionately affect low-income people of color.
She also defended Johnny Baca’s conviction for murder even though judges found a prosecutor presented false testimony at the trial. She relented only after a video of the oral argument received national attention and embarrassed her office.
Kevin Cooper a death row inmate whose trial was infected by racism and corruption. He sought advanced DNA testing to prove his innocence, but Ms. Harris opposed it. (After The New York Times’s exposé of the case went viral, she reversed her position.)

Op-ed/Analysis by Thomas B. Edsall @ NYTimes.com, July 31

The Midwest remains undecided, but conflicting trends point alternately toward victory for Trump or his eventual opponent.

By Amanda Petrusich @ NewYorker.com, July 31

[....] Corman​ stabbed the air with his finger and pounded on his lectern. “Go to the vote like you’re supposed to!” he screamed. The volume and pitch of his voice, now shredded with rage, was terrifying [....]

Online, the many horrified reactions to the clip only crystallized how younger Americans appear to feel about yelling in general—namely, that it’s no longer a signifier of dominance, power, or authority but, instead, a mortifying and old-fashioned display of toxic masculinity. What was once associated with a degree of toughness or vigor, and perhaps suggested some hard-earned power—a boss might yell, or a military general—is now considered aggressive and domineering, an odious side effect of hubris and privilege. People who lose control and start screaming are received only with consternation and embarrassment. It is simply not something a serious person should do.

Part of this change surely has to do with a broader shift away from behavior that reinforces abusive and overtly patriarchal structures: while there’s no empirical evidence to suggest that men actually yell any more than women, a man yelling is, almost without exception, a more physically and psychically threatening experience. And it feels reasonable to attribute another part of the change to a shift in generational temperament, facilitated, perhaps, by the rise of online culture—now there’s less need for anyone to raise his actual voice, because it is incredibly easy to be cruel, bullying, and disruptive via typing alone [...]

Full PDF here:

http://mellmangroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/18mem1016-f2-JEI.pdf

I wonder how many "anti-semitic" positions "The Squad" shares with the majority of US Jews.
Imagine much of this squealing is just GOP trying to make points off issues where it lags as usual,
certainly more worried about its evangelical base than the feelings of US Jews.