Are there any states where Medicaid funds "emergency situations" for people who are not otherwise eligible for Medicaid? I've never heard of that. EMTALA requires hospitals to treat anyone in emergency situations, but doesn't to my knowledge provide a mechanism to pay for those treatments. The patient still gets billed and hospital likely just doesn't get paid.
I don't think the funds get used. My understanding is that medicaid is administered by the states and can be expanded (at state expense). So the people covered by the expansion are still in the system.
Homes in greater Boston are definitely not all or even mostly up to code now. My old ~1900 greater Boston apartment still had live knob-and-tube wiring. Fortunately the 1880 home I own now was thoroughly rewired and now more or less in line with the electric code, although it’s still far from modern building code in other domains (plumbing, rafter spacing, insulation, stair rise/run, list goes on).
In some important ways quality was due to the availability of materials, but cheap labor played a big role too. Many building practices before WWII were extremely labor-intensive compared to today. Lathe and plaster walls, knob and tube, board sheathing, fieldstone/rubble foundations, mortise door hardware, etc.
My 1850 triple-decker has code compliant electrical and plumbing, egresses, common area lighting and dual exits. Definitely not accessible and the stairs are typical for the era— the last big brick building I lived in that was built around 1900 was super solid but the stairs were murder— like 7" treads and it was a 4th floor walkup.
Immobilizers had an order-of-magnitude larger impact on car theft than LoJack. It used to be relatively trivial to start a car without the keys once inside. Now (disregarding certain Hyundai/Kia models) it’s essentially impossible to start without the key.
How can a consumer actually try this to send money? This says Wells Fargo is live now but after logging into Wells Fargo I don't see any obvious new feature.
Think of it more as an alternative method to fulfill the kinds of things that ACH and Wire Transfers are used for. You'll probably never see 'this is a fednow function' on any consumer facing documentation, but billpay, payroll etc will use it.
I'm assuming that banks and payment services will add it to their services. Everything that goes over ACH will gradually switch to FedNow. There will be no noticeable difference to users except that transfer will be instantaneous instead of taking days.
It is live on star one credit Unions mobile app. On their interface, it still requires you to specify the target’s routing and ac number like an ACH transaction. So not the most usable now.
I've been following this series. It seems like the journalists are trying to make a scandal where there really isn't one. I don't see how buried cables if left undisturbed are really an issue at all. The ones in the water maybe, but even there how much lead can a single cable really leach into water such that it rises to an unhealthy level? Maybe the ones strung on poles are an issue, but even then--how much is lead really going to flake off an intact cable? Remember that in many parts of the country we still have lead water pipes and tons of lead-painted surfaces. What's the relative risk of these cables compared to, say, houses that kids live in that have accessible lead paint surfaces?
It does seem reasonable to ask that if a lead cable is overhead on poles and not in use anymore it should be pulled down. In general we shouldn't leave a ton of abandoned infrastructure up in the air on poles.
I can believe there are health issues for telco workers who historically worked with lead cables, and the telcos absolutely need to protect their current workforce from lead if they are regularly working around and disturbing this old infrastructure.
On the topic of relative risk, millions of Americans spend time at firing ranges breathing in aerosolized lead and covering themselves in lead dust. They of course wash their clothing in the same washing machine that launders their family's clothing.
Hunted meat contains a detectable level of lead, and pigs fed lead-hunted venison have a detectable rise in blood-lead levels within days. [1]
So a sub-group of the population regularly and deliberately exposes itself to quite a bit of lead. It's the largest risk factor for high blood levels in children. [2]
Seems like a potential problem. Might be worth switching to lead-free ammunition and considering what effect these decades of selective lead exposure may have had on our communities.
It's not mentioned in those two sources, but almost all firearm propellant primers contain lead as an additive. And to make matters worse, it's these exhaust gases that end up all over your hands and face.
I didn't know this until I took my kids to a shooting range in Reno. Before going I had read warnings to make sure to wash their hands afterward, but it was nuts how much residue ended up on our hands after shooting only a single box of rounds; and given the feel of it, likely heavily laced with lead or other metals. I don't think I'd ever take my kids to a gun range again unless I brought my own gun (with well-maintained parts) and used lead-free ammunition--most importantly lead-free primers.
AFAIU it's much easier to find non-leaded bullets than non-leaded primers, though neither is very popular. Until very recently all the discourse on lead exposure and contamination seems to have been focused on the bullet itself.
“ Until very recently all the discourse on lead exposure and contamination seems to have been focused on the bullet itself.”
Not without reason. Animals hunted with lead bullets often leave lead fragments in the natural environment via gut piles (if recovered) or the carcass itself (if not recovered).
Lead poisoning is one of the leading causes for death for carrion birds (who eat the carcasses/gut piles) - such as the California Condor. Because of this, wildlife preservation groups - like the Peregrine Fund - have been vocal proponents of eliminating lead bullets.
You should probably wear a P100 elastomeric respirator when firing guns and have a Nomex flight suit or something you wear only at the range and wash separately. I don't think a lot of people do it though.
In what sense did the iMac G4 fail to live up to the hype? That was my first Mac, I still have it. Thought it was an incredible computer for the time--the iMac + OS X 10.1 Puma was absolutely magical coming from Windows 98 on a beige Dell.
The design still looks incredible too, 20+ years later.
I will grant that the Newton failed. In the Apple hardware category, I'd also add the iPod Hi-Fi, the butterfly keyboard, and the touch bar.
That said, Apple's failures are rare and their multi-decade track record of delivering on hype is unsurpassed.
The sales of iMac G4 failed so badly that there was a three-month period in 2004 when it was simply unavailable. It was discontinued without a successor on store shelves.
It was too expensive to manufacture and Apple wasn't sure they could sell it, so they just didn't make any. Hard to believe that could happen to a Mac model today.
Energy efficiency is going to be better with induction in that scenario since it only heats the food, not the pan, stovetop, etc. On top of that, the pollution is dramatically reduced. A modern natural gas turbine at a power plant is dramatically cleaner burning than an open flame in a kitchen stove.
> On top of that, the pollution is dramatically reduced. A modern natural gas turbine at a power plant is dramatically cleaner burning than an open flame in a kitchen stove.
Not to mention the pollution from the power plant is not going directly into your home (or face).
This is not a small or hypothetical impact. From the article:
> The air district estimated that the new rules for homes would cut nitrogen oxides enough to prevent 89 deaths per year in the Bay Area.
This is very true. I’ve been in a bunch of “luxury” apartments in the Boston area…the finishes are modern maybe but rarely luxury. Vinyl flooring, cheap (albeit stainless steel) appliances, small bathrooms, etc.
But, why is universal wired broadband in very rural areas of the US an unreasonable expectation? We did the same thing 100 years ago with universal service requirements for telephone. As I understand it, the build out was subsidized by the government along with a universal service fee for all phone lines.
Is the infrastructure for low-broadband in low density areas inherently more expensive than POTS infrastructure was 75-100 years ago?
Things are of course a lot different than they were 100 years ago. Bringing electricity and phone service to farms and ranches probably seemed pretty important. I'm not sure how a lot of modern coastal urbanites would feel about a very expensive project to bring wired broadband to everyone living on the side of a mountain somewhere today. (Especially given that wireless technologies are an option for a lot of people, if not everyone.)
POTS bills also at least used to have a universal service charge line item, in part to subsidize rural service.
As one of those coastal urbanites, fucking great. Didnt we already pay a bunch of money for that anyway? Even aside from that the internet is great, I'm not going to feel bad about helping to pay to bring it to everyone.
I don't even really disagree. I just see a lot of hostility on here about providing infrastructure for people who aren't in metros. I'm not convinced that in this day and age it all has to be wired. But it's not unreasonable to consider that at least reasonable Internet should be a basic utility service even for very rural locations.
Some of that is starting to change in the rural South. Georgia changed laws to allow electrical coops and cities to run their own loops. Alabama is also pushing money into local rural fiber builds.
An example, in Carroll County, GA I live outside of Carrollton, GA and have 2 fiber options 1) Charter/Spectrum which I use 2) CarrollEMC/Crossbeam which looks like they just dropped fiber on our power pole within the last month. If you look at the FCC map of Highway 5 it correctly shows ATT DSL availability, incorrectly shows Comcast coax availability, and does not show either Charter/Spectrum or CarrollEMC/Crossbeam. There is only a process to challenge availability on the FCC map, like Comcast...that incorrectly shows availability, and no option to add new providers to the map. It is left up to the provider to claim availability.
Arkansas has also removed some of the barriers for electric coops and municipal broadband, but change has been slow.
There are now plenty of rural areas with symmetrical gigabit broadband available, while most cities are stuck with whatever pitiful options Cox or ATT decides to bestow.
75-100 years ago coincided with the tail end of a massive boom of dirt poor immigrants from Europe. Labor was extremely cheap relative to other things in the economy. It’s vastly more expensive now. It’s the same story as almost all our infrastructure. We couldn’t build the New York subway today either.
