Some researchers had hoped that expanding access to care would reduce per-person health spending by providing preventive care for previously uninsured patients to help them avoid more expensive illness. Those hopes have not come to fruition, said Katherine Baicker, the dean of the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, who studies the economics of health care. And as a result, costs have remained high for taxpayers.

“Policies that are designed to solve one problem,” like expanding health coverage, she said, “have to be realistic about the financing that goes along with it.”

Mr. Biden and Democrats made another attempt this month to rein in health costs, imposing limits on prescription drug spending through Medicare in a sweeping bill called the Inflation Reduction Act. That bill also includes the most ambitious effort by the federal government to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change: nearly $400 billion in spending and tax incentives meant to encourage the growth of wind and solar electricity, electric vehicles and other emissions-limiting technologies.

Those measures join a growing list of administration efforts to regulate emissions across the economy. But for several reasons, most notably the political difficulties of taxing consumers, the bill did not impose a tax on fossil fuels.

Many environmental economists have moved away from their long-held view that such taxes are the best way to reduce emissions. But most of them still say raising the price of fossil fuels, in hopes of discouraging their use, is an important complement to government subsidies of low-carbon fuels — part of a balanced diet, so to speak, that yields a faster, more efficient transition away from planet-warming oil, gas and coal.

The political perils of high gasoline prices all but assured Mr. Biden would not pursue a tax on fossil fuels. But White House officials have also grown increasingly bullish on the idea that regulations and subsidies are enough to meet his goal of cutting emissions 50 percent from 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/us/politics/biden-student-loans.html

Mr. Powell did not say what pace lies ahead, suggesting that Fed officials will watch incoming data as they decide whether to make a third straight “unusually” large three-quarter-point rate increase at their Sept. 20-21 meeting. He reiterated that the Fed was likely to slow its increases “at some point,” but he also said central bankers had more work to do when it came to constraining the economy and bringing inflation back under control.

The current level of interest rates is “not a place to stop or pause,” the Fed chair said, adding that rates will probably need to stay high enough to meaningfully weigh on the economy for “some time,” and that the “historical record cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy.”

The upshot was clear: The Fed is nowhere near declaring victory. While Mr. Powell greeted a slowdown in inflation in July as good news, he said it was not enough to determine that the Fed’s mission was on its way to being accomplished.

“Lower inflation readings for July are welcome, a single month’s improvement falls far short of what the committee will need to see before we are confident that inflation is moving down,” he said, referring to the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee.

The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, climbed 6.3 percent over the year through July, a slowdown from the prior month but still far above the 2 percent average that the Fed shoots for. Price increases are showing hopeful signs of waning for some types of goods, but much of the recent slowdown has been driven by a pullback in fuel prices, which are volatile.

“It’s really premature to even think that inflation has peaked,” Loretta Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, said during an interview on Yahoo Finance on Friday. “The July inflation report had some positives, it was welcome news, but it was based on, basically, a downturn in energy prices, and we know they’re volatile.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/business/economy/jerome-powell-inflation.html

Core inflation slowed to a 4.6 percent annual increase, compared with 4.8 percent in June. On a monthly basis, the core index slowed to a 0.1 percent gain, down sharply from the prior month and less than the 0.2 percent economists in a Bloomberg survey had expected.

The decrease on overall inflation came as some durable goods, like household appliances, televisions and luggage, became cheaper, and as prices for financial services and insurance eased.

Fed officials are looking for decisive and sustained evidence before they deviate from their plans to restrain the economy to slow down lending and spending, and bring price increases under control. Friday’s report was likely an early, but not a conclusive, step in the right direction.

The central bank has sharply raised interest rates, which were near zero in March, to a range of 2.25 to 2.5 percent. Investors are keenly focused on the Fed’s Sept. 20-21 meeting, when, officials have signaled, they could lift interest rates by an unusually large three-quarters of a point — matching their last two moves — or a more modest but still meaningful half point.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/business/economy/pce-inflation-federal-reserve.html

His marriage to Annie Lunel ended in divorce. His second wife, Margherita (Spanpinato) Rosenthal, died before him. In addition to his son Jean-Laurent, from his first marriage, he is survived by a daughter from that marriage, Illia Rosenthal; a son, Gil, from his second marriage; a sister, Susan Thorpe; and four granddaughters.

Predicting votes by members of Congress on the basis of statistical models built on previous votes was initially considered controversial. But one byproduct of those predictions, applied to election voters, went a long way toward establishing the model’s credibility.

“Challenged by a detractor to predict the 1994 midterm elections,” John B. Londregan, a political scientist at Princeton and a partner in one project, said in a statement, “we predicted a Republican majority in the U.S. House for the first time in almost 40 years, something that met with incredulity on the part of many colleagues.” They were, of course, right.

Professor Rosenthal was awarded the Duncan Black Prize from the Public Choice Society in 1980, the C.Q. Press Award from the American Political Science Association in 1985 and the William H. Riker Prize for Political Science from the University of Rochester in 2010.

In 1997, he and Professor Poole published “Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting.” With Professor McCarty, they wrote “Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches” (2006).

In 2007, after analyzing 2.8 million roll-call votes in the Senate and 11.5 million in the House, Professors Rosenthal and Poole produced an updated version of their 1997 book, which had predicted “a polarized unidimensional Congress with roll-call voting falling almost exclusively along liberal-conservative ideological lines.”

“We were right,” the authors concluded. “This makes us feel good as scientists, but lousy as citizens.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/us/politics/howard-rosenthal-dead.html

The next month, the company announced a series of new benefits — including additional career development opportunities, better tipping options and more sick time — but only for stores that hadn’t unionized or weren’t in the process of unionizing. The benefits were to begin in the coming months.

The company unveiled wage increases as well, some of which had already been announced and which the company said would apply to all workers. But other increases were new and would apply only to nonunion workers.

For example, according to Reggie Borges, a Starbucks spokesman, all employees stood to benefit from a companywide $15-an-hour minimum wage, but nonunion workers hired by May 2 would get a 3 percent raise if that proved higher than $15.

The wage policy appears to have sown confusion, with some employees briefly receiving a pay increase that was then withdrawn. Colin Cochran, a worker at a store near Buffalo that initially voted to unionize and then voted against the union in a rerun election decided this month, provided pay stubs showing that his $16.28 hourly wage had increased to $16.77 the first week of August, when Starbucks began the pay increases nationwide. But Mr. Cochran’s pay stub for the second week of August showed his hourly pay dropping back to $16.28. (The union is challenging the election loss at this store.)

Mr. Borges said that the reversion to the previous wage had resulted from an inadvertent error and that unionized stores would get wage increases in September.

Workers involved in union campaigns at other Starbucks locations said the denial of pay and benefit increases to unionized stores had slowed their organizing efforts.

Kylah Clay, a Starbucks worker in Boston who helped organize several stores in the area, said inquiries from employees at other stores who were interested in unionizing had dropped off substantially not long after the company’s pay and benefits announcement in May. But they picked up recently after the pay and many benefit changes took effect, she said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/business/economy/starbucks-union-howard-schultz-nlrb.html

Could you remind me how income-driven repayment, or I.D.R., works?

There’s a confusing assortment of plans available, and now there’s a new one coming. President Biden is proposing a rule to create a new plan that will substantially reduce future monthly payments for lower- and middle-income borrowers.

For now, the alphabet soup includes PAYE, REPAYE, I.C.R., and I.B.R. (which comes in two versions; the latest has slightly better terms for newer borrowers).

The rules are complicated, but the gist is simple: Payments are calculated based on your earnings and readjusted each year.

After monthly payments are made for a set number of years — usually 20 — any remaining balance is forgiven. (The balance is taxable as income, though a temporary tax rule exempts balances forgiven through 2025 from federal income taxes.)

Monthly payments are often calculated as 10 or 15 percent of discretionary income, but one plan is 20 percent. Discretionary income is usually defined as the amount earned above 150 percent of the poverty level, which is adjusted for household size. PAYE usually has the lowest payment, followed by either I.B.R. or REPAYE, depending on the specific circumstances of the borrower, said Mark Kantrowitz, a student aid expert. The new plan will change that calculus (more on that below).

There’s a dizzying variety of rules, and the existing plans aren’t a cure-all. Even though some borrowers may be eligible for a $0 payment, the plans aren’t always affordable for everyone. The formulas aren’t adjusted for local cost of living, private student loans or medical bills, among other things.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/business/biden-student-loan-forgiveness.html