Climate Change Catastrophe

 

The late President Jimmy Carter had 32 solar panels installed on the White House roof in 1979 to draw attention to the need to stop burning fossil fuels. With his science background, Carter knew climate change was a serious global threat. His last State of the Union address called for 20 percent of U.S. energy to be from renewable sources by 2000, and he allocated research funds to support that goal. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, had the panels removed and the goal and research funds dropped.

We now know how right Carter was. He wasn’t ahead of his time—he was just in time. Twenty years after Carter, Vice President Al Gore understood that time was running out and took a strong stand for renewable energy but lost the presidency by barely 500 Florida votes. President Obama understood and joined the Paris Accords to reduce fossil fuel use. President Biden signed the most comprehensive climate-change legislation of any country in 2022 and early this month permanently banned offshore oil and gas drilling in most coastal waters. 

The last two years have seen a surge in U.S. clean-energy manufacturing with the most factory construction in fifty years and electric car and solar power sales breaking records. Still, the last ten years have had the hottest global temperatures in recorded history, each hotter than the year before. Last year saw a .8 percent increase in global CO2 emissions. While Europe has reduced emissions to 1960 levels, the U.S. to 1980’s, and China’s emissions have slowed, India and most other countries continue to increase. 

The fires in the Los Angeles area are the latest in an increasingly frequent series of disasters made more likely by climate change: two hurricanes in Florida two weeks apart last fall, one of which went on to cause severe damage in the mountains of North Carolina; fire destroying a city on Maui; a severe 2023 heat wave and fires in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada; extreme heat contributing to the deaths of 47,000 Europeans and many thousands more in Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, and East Africa; deadly floods in Brazil. All told, millions were displaced, many becoming climate refugees.

The science is simple: CO2 emissions from fossil fuels have created a greenhouse effect warming the air. Warmer air holds more water leading to more frequent and more severe storms. Conversely, dry warm air can lead to droughts. Porter Fox, author of Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them, says there is a direct correlation between temperature and wind speed, storm frequency, and storm severity.

What happened around Los Angeles began with record rains early last year causing vegetation to grow unusually fast. The rain shut off in early May followed by a record drought causing the lush vegetation to die and become fuel. Then cool air from the mountains—the Santa Ana winds—blew downhill at up to 100 mph to the populated coast and turned small fires into raging infernos. The loss of lives, homes, and businesses are human tragedies, and the economic costs will be billions of dollars for many years. 

Thanks go to the California firefighters and those from at least eight other states, Canada, and Mexico, who have risked their lives to save life and property. Heroes all. 

The last word goes to Patti Davis, who wrote to The New York Times (January 12), “I once thought that the land I loved so much would last forever. I couldn’t imagine an Earth that would groan and rage and turn chaotic because of human carelessness, human greed and the ignorant assumption that we could just keep pumping poisons into the atmosphere with no repercussions.”

                                   

                                          Murder Most Foul

 

The CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was shot in the back and killed while walking to a shareholder meeting on December 4. The alleged assassin was apparently enraged by the private health insurance industry—in a note, he called the executives “parasites” who “had it coming.” Insurers too often deny coverage for medical procedures (United denies 17%, the industry’s highest), policy provisions are complicated to navigate, and coverage is both expensive and remarkably profitable.

The murder was shocking and so has been the widespread sympathy for the alleged killer expressed on social media and in opinion surveys. Clearly, many people are so deeply unhappy with American healthcare, especially with private health insurance, that a cold-blooded killer seems to have become something of a folk hero. 

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranking of 2022 per capita healthcare costs (in U.S. dollars) has the U.S. first at $12,555 followed by Switzerland at $8,049, Germany $8,011, Norway $7,771, Austria $7,275, Netherlands $6,729, France $6,630, Belgium $6,600, Sweden $6,436, our neighbor Canada $6,319, and so on in descending order. The most popular healthcare among its citizens is Finland’s at $5,599. “We’re number 1” in spending is nothing to cheer about, certainly not when that spending buys something widely unpopular.

Health insurance is a profitable business. United, the nation’s largest insurer, made $16 billion in profits in 2023, a 33% increase from 2021, and CEO Thompson was paid $10.2 million in 2023. United’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, earned 25.9% per shareholder-dollar from 2019-2023, much more than the average 17.9% for all companies in the S&P 500. As one doctor put it, “Today, medicine is awash in the language of economics. Patients are consumers; doctors are providers; health care is a commodity.”

For seniors, United and others offer Medicare Advantage, which often include dental and vision coverages that regular Medicare lacks. Private insurers have learned to game Medicare, which pays a fixed amount according to how many caregiver visits a patient makes. United now encourages doctors to compete: those who diagnose the most conditions in Medicare Advantage patients are eligible for $10,000 bonuses. A nonpartisan Congressional advisory commission estimates private Medicare Advantage plans cost taxpayers $80 billion a year more than regular Medicare. 

Even so, insurance profits are only part of the reason U.S. healthcare is more costly than elsewhere. High prices charged by healthcare providers and high administrative costs are just as important, according to Peterson-KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation). Private equity firms have bought hundreds of hospitals nationwide and profited from skimping on patient care, staffing, and facility upgrades. 

And increasingly, insurers don’t just insure. UnitedHealth’s Optum is the nation’s biggest employer of physicians, and its OptumRx pharmacy negotiates prices with drug makers (and is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for anticompetitive practices that artificially raised insulin prices).

How can we fix our healthcare? Shooting executives is never the answer. The answer is to copy the best of what other countries do. There’s a job for Elon Musk’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Constitution says the “general Welfare” is one of government’s fundamental jobs, and what is more important to the general welfare than healthy citizens? For all his oddities, Musk has led the global shift to electric vehicles and to commercial reusable rockets. Perhaps he could envision a more efficient and less costly health system serving every American with no loss in quality of care.