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Bill will move ball forward
ANOTHER VIEW | VIRGINIAN-PILOT
The top tier of college foot-ball, known now as the Football Bowl Subdivision, resembles the professional game more with each passing year, prompting calls to implement rules to better manage the sport.
The Protect College Sports Act, which passed the Senate, is Congress' answer, and while it's far from perfect, it does erect some valuable guardrails that would help athletes and schools while preserving those aspects of the sport which ignite the public's passion.
Sponsored by Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the bill provides a limited antitrust exemption to the NCAA, imposes a cap on athlete pay, limits players to one transfer without penalty and requires schools to maintain Olympic sports so they don't shift that revenue to football.
It's a flawed bill. It would mean some athletes aren't paid their fair market value, it doesn't allow for players to seek collective bargaining rights and it doesn't impose limits on compensation for coaches. Its rules about transfers and conference membership seem arbitrary and deferential to the Southeastern and Big Ten conferences.
But it does move the ball forward. The bill must pass the House before Congress adjourns in January. It's a worthwhile effort that warrants lawmakers' support.
Column
ANOTHER VIEW | BLOOMBERG NEWS
The flawed logic of Medicare for All | Bloomberg News
Updated
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, has a simple pitch to voters. Imagine, he says, a health-insurance plan with “no premium, no copay, no deductible — just healthcare when you need it.” El-Sayed and other proponents call the idea Medicare for All.
Free, on-demand care for everyone sure sounds good. Legislation to establish Medicare for All nationwide has more than 100 cosponsors in the House, with many progressives campaigning on the idea this fall.
There’s just one wrinkle: The proposal bears little resemblance to how Medicare actually works. Even under generous assumptions, it would shift trillions of dollars in healthcare spending onto the federal budget while potentially slashing quality and restricting access to care.
No doubt, the current system — beset by soaring costs, corporate misconduct, opaque pricing and perverse incentives — needs fixing. Yet a more pragmatic reform agenda would serve Democrats better in the midterms and serve Americans better over the long term. ...
It isn’t hard to see why Medicare for All has appeal. Traditional Medicare covers nearly all Americans 65 and over, along with millions of people with disabilities. Most services are offered without restriction, and more than 95% of physicians participate. The program’s immense popularity should come as little surprise.
And yet, even when limited to this relatively targeted population, Medicare is fiendishly complex and costly. By one estimate, it will comprise more than half of government borrowing in a decade. The program also can leave seniors with hefty bills, with average out-of-pocket costs, including premiums and services, exceeding $6,000 annually. As things stand, more revenue will be needed to care for an older, sicker population; extending Medicare to all 343 million Americans will hugely increase those demands. Doing so without premiums, copays or deductibles implies an unprecedented surge in spending.
It also bears emphasizing that hospital visits are often cross-subsidized by generous commercial plans. A system that eliminates such payers either will need to spend vastly more to maintain current standards or significantly reduce benefits. And while a government-run system might reduce rent-seeking, it would also remove incentives for the very innovations proponents want — from the latest cancer treatments to weight-loss drugs.
In practice, then, El-Sayed’s proposal is likely to look more like Medicaid. The health program for the poor, with its low reimbursement rates, is notoriously unpopular among doctors. “Healthcare when you need it” might thus more accurately be described as rationing and longer wait times. Good luck selling that to voters, most of whom want to keep their employer coverage.
Clearer goals would be salutary. In the past, champions of Medicare for All emphasized universal coverage. Proponents now appear to be seeking a universal sense of financial security — that is, protection against shock medical bills or abrupt changes to coverage and networks among the insured. These are much narrower problems, and they can be addressed with more direct and practical solutions.
The No Surprises Act, for one, largely ended unexpected bills from out-of-network doctors during medical emergencies. It nonetheless falls short of addressing the opacity of private coverage. Giving employees more flexibility to choose a plan with narrower but steadier networks — which often better reflect patients’ demand for services — would make sense. (Most workers are bound by their employers’ choices.) Already, such plans are gaining traction.
Another approach involves a universal guarantee against catastrophic financial losses after an income-based deductible. Such coverage would protect consumers from financial ruin while scaling back insurance for routine care — with the goal of creating a genuine market to lower costs. In some versions of the idea, preventative care and other services are funded by pretax accounts.
Neither idea is free of opposition, but both seek to give consumers peace of mind while realistically balancing trade-offs. That’s a less extravagant ambition than Medicare for All. It’s also far more likely to help.
According to organizers, this year's event raised more than $970,000 to support Alzheimer's research, care and support services.
The 'intangible economy' is making everyone miserable
ALLISON SCHRAGER
Gen Z is the richest generation for its age but investing less
in tangible wealth such as homes.
NICHOLAS J KLEIN, SHUTTERSTOCK
These are the best of times for Americans — at least economically and on paper (in the metaphorical sense of course, since no one uses paper anymore). We've never been richer or more prosperous as a nation. Living standards and life expectancy are at all-time highs. Yet it feels like the economy is broken.
What explains this anomaly?
Consider how few of the things we own are physical anymore. Our economy is increasingly built on intangibles, and it may be hard to feel satisfied when so much of what we have is no longer in the physical realm.
Take our wealth. More young people are investing in the stock market instead of housing. It's been a wise choice: The stock market has offered a higher return and less risk for the past decade. Stock investing doesn't require a down payment or tie the buyer to a single place in their prime skill-building years. Rising stock values are a big reason why Gen Z is the richest generation for their age.
But owning stocks is an intangible form of wealth. You own a share of the American economy, but it is hard to look at Amazon.com Inc. and feel as though part of it is yours. More of the American stock market, too, is made up of companies whose value is their intellectual property, another intangible.
Compare this to owning a home. You physically own property. You can put money or even your own labor into renovating your kitchen. You know your neighbors, feel part of a community and have an interest in investing in both. I don't look at fellow S&P 500 Index owners and feel a common sense of purpose, though theoretically I should.
The sense of community and belonging has been replaced with social lives that are less tangible as well. More socialization takes place in the virtual world. We spend less time with other people in person or even on the phone. We buy more online. This may leave us feeling more disconnected and lonely, even if we have more connections and can communicate with people all over the world.
Our human capital also has become more intangible. More of us work in the services sector and build skills relevant to it, rather than making things. The premium placed on knowledge work has contributed to income and wealth inequality (though artificial intelligence may shrink that).
These shifts may help explain the backlash to data centers. Building factories tends to be popular and seen as a political triumph. Data centers also create construction jobs and are associated with growth. Yet they have been met with suspicion.
Some of the distrust springs from the belief that they will cause pollution and drive up electricity bills, though there is not much evidence that's true. Another point of friction is their newness and the difficulty of understanding what they produce and to whose benefit. It's not like making a toaster, even if data centers are a sign of a much more advanced and wealthy economy.
Before we go full Luddite, quit our jobs and live off the land in Alaska, remember that the intangible economy is why we are richer and live longer lives. Today's technological innovations reward knowledge and expertise much more than the tangible world ever valued physical labor. We also do much less physical labor, which is one reason we live longer and healthier lives.
So why are the benefits harder to feel good about? We are social creatures who evolved to compete for finite resources. This new world is less zero sum, since knowledge is infinite. But it leaves us completing for status and attention instead, which can be less satisfying and more ephemeral than a big house or a chunk of gold. It creates new status games, for example on social media, that we can't ever really win.
We also just like stuff. A large, beautiful house may bring more satisfaction than a one-bedroom rental apartment and a $2 million brokerage account balance.
Yet I am optimistic we aren't doomed to a life of misery that's devoid of meaning. It just takes time for norms to change. Growing your own food once felt like the most honest work compared to having a boss and working in a factory. We may still have a romantic attachment to the idea of farming, but few people want to be subsistence farmers.
What we consider valuable and meaningful is always evolving and sometimes the transition takes time because the economy moves faster than our norms and culture do. This process can be destabilizing and isolating. But eventually we find ways to connect and rebuild community. Perhaps we will get to the point where owning nothing tangible will be enough, if we own a lot on paper. (You know what I mean.)
Schrager is a Bloomberg columnist, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of "Worth the Risk: The Seven Myths That Keep Us From Taking the Chances We Need to Take."
Confessions of a political handicapper before election
NATHAN L. GONZALES
What if we got it all wrong? That's the question that usually goes through my mind at this point in every election cycle. Because 25 years of experience in analyzing elections has made me more humble than cocky.
Political handicapping has a way of knocking people down a couple of down a couple of notches. Do it long enough, and you'll have a "miss" or two or three, whether it's an individual race or an overall projection.
I convinced myself that Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson of Louisiana would lose reelection in 2006 after the FBI found cash in his freezer. I believed Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was an underdog in 2020. And I was wrong both times.
I thought Hillary Clinton had an advantage over Donald Trump in 2016, and, like most Republicans, I thought the GOP would lose House seats in 2020. Wrong again.
There have been some highlights, including projecting the red wave in the 2010 midterms or being the first outlet to push the late Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat into the GOP column in that year's special election. But none of that guarantees accuracy in 2026.
So what will happen this year? With just a few weeks to go, I wish there was more clarity.
A preponderance of evidence suggests a good November for Democrats. Trump's negative job rating, high gas prices, a significant Democratic advantage in the generic ballot, an unpopular war, two years of special election results and a pessimistic electorate about the direction of the country all point to a traditional midterm in which the president's party loses ground in Congress.
Yet the current projections by Inside Elections look modest: Democratic gains of two to four seats in the Senate and two to 10 seats in the House. That's because the micro-level, contest-specific data is lagging behind the macro-level national data. Republican and Democratic candidates are within a few percentage points of each other in dozens of House and Senate races.
It's likely that the race-byrace polling will catch up with national trends in the final weeks, demonstrating that the Republican spending advantage isn't changing the trajectory of enough elections. And as Democratic candidates start to put some distance between themselves and their GOP opponents, our ratings will follow suit.
2026 is starting to feel like 2006, when the bottom fell out from under the Republican majority in the final two months, and Democrats rode a wave of voter frustration into House and Senate control. I also remember how GOP strategists admitted after the election that their fundraising advantage didn't really matter because frustrated voters weren't interested in listening to their attacks on Democratic candidates.
So why the uncertainty this time around? Because some of the states and places where Democrats have a chance to win are places the party hasn't won in years, or even decades. And because polls have underestimated Republican support in the past.
But it's also possible that surveys are underestimating Democratic support. If pollsters are trying to fight the last war and are overcompensating for previous "misses," then the polls could be missing the widespread voter frustration with the economy and direction of the country. Or pollsters could be assuming a level of GOP turnout that never materializes.
The 2016 presidential election outcome still casts a shadow over the political handicapping world and feeds the narrative that Trump is immune from electoral trends. But that ignores that most political rules continue to apply.
While each election has unique circumstances that are worth considering, it's probably best not to overcomplicate things. Unless there's a dramatic fundamental change in the dynamic, Democrats are on pace to capture the Senate and House majorities in November.
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Walk to End Alzheimer's draws more than 1,000 participants and raises nearly $1 million
