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The president was barely a year into his administration when a health care debate began to consume Washington. On Capitol Hill, partisan divides formed as many Democrats pressed for guaranteed insurance coverage for a broader swath of Americans while Republicans, buttressed by medical industry lobbying, warned about cost and a slide into communism. The year was 1945 and the new Democratic president, Harry Truman, tried and failed to persuade Congress to enact a comprehensive national health care program, a defeat Truman described as the disappointment of his presidency that troubled me the most. Since then, 13 presidents have struggled with the same basic questions about the governments role in health care, where spending now makes up nearly 18% of the U.S. economy. The fraught politics of health care are on display again this month as millions of people face a steep rise in costs after the Republican-controlled Congress allowed Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire. While the subsidies are a narrow, if costly, slice of the issue, they have reopened long-festering grievances in Washington over the way health care is managed and the legacy of the ACA, the signature legislative achievement of President Barack Obama that was passed in 2010 without a single Republican vote. That’s the key thing that I’ve got to convince my colleagues to understand who hate Obamacare, said Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, who is leading a bipartisan group of lawmakers discussing ways to extend some of the subsidies. Let’s take two years to actually deliver for the American people truly affordable health care. Democrats have heard that refrain before, and argue Republicans have had 15 years to offer an alternative. They believe the options being discussed now, which largely focus on allowing Americans to funnel money to health savings accounts, do little to address the cost of health care. They’ve had a lot of time, said Rep. Steny Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who was House majority leader during the ACA debate. And with that, welcome back to the health care debate that never seems to end. The challenge of reaching consensus The often-tortured dynamics surrounding health care have remained remarkably consistent. Obamacare dramatically expanded coverage but remains even in the minds of those who crafted the law imperfect and more expensive than many would prefer. And Washington seems more entrenched in stalemate rather than marching toward a solution. People hate the status quo but theyre not too thrilled with change, Rahm Emanuel said as he reflected on the arc of the health care debate that he has watched as a top aide to President Bill Clinton, chief of staff to Obama, and Chicago mayor. Thats the riddle to the politics of health care. Major reforms inevitably run into a health industry a broad group of interests ranging from pharmaceutical and health services companies to hospitals and nursing homes that spent more than $653 million on lobbying in 2025, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political spending. Any time you try to figure out how to bring costs down, somebody thinks uh oh, Im about to get less, said Hoyer, who announced last week he will not seek reelection after serving since 1981. When Obamacare was passed, opinion on the law was mixed, although views tended to be more positive than negative, according to KFF polling. But the law has steadily grown in popularity. A KFF poll conducted in September 2025 found that about two-thirds of Americans have a favorable view of the ACA. That’s put Trump and Republicans in a bind. Trump’s concepts of a plan Since the ACA’s passage, Republicans largely dedicated themselves to the law’s destruction. Trump issued social media posts calling for a repeal as early as 2011 and spoke in generalities during each of his presidential campaigns about delivering better coverage at lower cost. During his 2024 debate against Democratic rival Kamala Harris, he referred to concepts of a plan. One thing he hasn’t done offer his own formal proposal. During a speech to the Detroit Economic Club on Tuesday, Trump said he would soon announce a health care affordability framework. Throughout his second term, Trump has criticized Obamacare as unfairly subsidizing insurers, a point that could have been addressed had the legislation created a so-called public option that would have competed alongside the private sector. Republicans and a sizable number of Democrats objected to that approach, arguing it would give the government an outsize role in health care. But in a reminder that the past is never really over, a small group of Democrats is aiming to revive the debate over the public option, even if the prospects in a Republican-controlled Congress are dim. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, along with Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, introduced legislation last week that would create a public health insurance option on the ACA exchanges. Last year, a record 24 million people were enrolled in ACA, though fewer appear to be signing up this year as the expired subsidies make coverage more expensive. The Supreme Court has upheld the law and Republicans have failed to repeal, replace, or alter it dozens of times. In the most famous example, Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, cast the deciding vote in 2018 to keep the legislation in place, underscoring the lack of an alternative by noting there was no replacement to actually reform our health care system and deliver affordable, quality health care to our citizens. Democrats successfully turned the repeal efforts into a rallying cry in the 2018 midterms and see an opportunity to do so again this year with the expired subsidies. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who isn’t seeking reelection, has warned this moment could be even more perilous for Republicans because, unlike the subsidies, voters didnt lose anything during the 2018 debate. Us failing to put something else in place did not create this cliff, Tillis said. Thats the fundamental difference in an election year. ACA veterans acknowledge challenges Even those who crafted the ACA concede that the health care system created in its wake has problems. Former Se. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat who was one of the bill’s architects as chair of the Finance committee, acknowledged that nothing is perfect, pointing to high health care costs. Bending the cost curve, that has not bent as much as we’d like, he said. That’s in part why some Republicans have expressed openness to a deal on the subsidies. They see it less as an endorsement of ACA than a bridge that would give lawmakers time to address more complex issues. We need to get to a long-term solution, said Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. Veterans of past health care negotiations, however, are skeptical that lawmakers can produce anything meaningful without the type of in-depth negotiations that led up to the ACA. It takes a long time to figure all this out, Baucus said. Asked whether he’s studied that history as he dives into the next chapter of health care talks, Moreno noted that he’s only been in Congress for a year. I don’t know s-, he said. What that means is I don’t have scars. By Steven Sloan, Associated Press Associated Press writer Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed to this report.
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In recent years, theres been a wave of studies reporting that humans are basically full of microplastics: Theyve been found in our brains, arteries, and even in placentas. But some scientists, quoted and cited in an article published by The Guardian this week, have critiqued some of those findings, saying that microplastics research has been muddied by issues like contamination and false positives. One chemist even told the outlet that these criticisms are forcing us to reevaluate everything we think we know about microplastics in the body. However, other scientists who study microplastics and human health say that this framing is overblown. While they concede that the field of studying microplastics in our bodies is newand that some concerns over study methodologies are validreaders should not conclude that the entire area of study is filled with errors. And, they add, it’s an irrefutable fact that microplastics are present in human bodies. What are the critiques of microplastic studies? When plastics break down, they form these tiny fragments we call microplastics, defined as pieces less than 5 millimeters in length. There are also nanoplastics, which are even smaller particles, usually considered smaller than 1,000 nanometersabout 100 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Research has found them in the air, the soil, and our bodies. But in comments to scientific journals and a recent Guardian article, some scientists have challenged the way that researchers have identified these microplastics, particularly in human organs. One study, which said that the levels of microplastics in human brains are rapidly rising, was critiqued for having limited controls around contamination, and for not validating potential false-positives. Fat is known to make false-positives for polyethylene. The brain has [approximately] 60% fat, Dušan Materić, an environmental chemist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany, told the Guardian. Other studies, which found microplastics in arteries, were criticized for not testing blank samples taken in the operating room, basically a way to measure if theres any background contamination to start with. Researchers who wrote comments to scientific journal editors also generally highlighted that the the analytical approach used in some microplastic studies is not robust enough to support [their] claims. What do these critiques really mean? Microplastics researchers do understand that there are methodological challenges to studying microplastics in human organs. Thats because the field itself is still new. The tools are in their infancy, Kara Meister, a pediatric ear, nose, and throat doctor with Stanford Medicine who also studies how our environment (including the presence of microplastics) affects our immune system, told Fast Company. None of these tools [to detect microplastics] were developed specifically to look at this problem, so we’re borrowing from other science and then trying to apply that to a brand-new field, she adds. The critiques, then, do have truth to them. Yes, microplastics can be confused with fats, Meister says. Thats because microplastics are often made from polymers (something with repeated bonds or a predictable structure), which is also how several human tissues, like fats, are made. Scientific tools cant always parse the two. And yes, limiting contamination is a challenge. Thats because microplastics are everywhere. When we take human tissuewhether that’s a blood sample or a tissue sample from the bodywere doing it in an operating room that is full of plastic, Meister says. In her lab, she uses metal instruments and wraps samples in sterile foil, but there are still ambient microplastics that might lead to some element of contamination. And yes, there are issues around having a positive or negative control in a studybasically, a control to compare a sample to show this is what it looks like with or without microplastics. In a perfect study, we would know, if I took this tonsil and I spiked it with known polyethylene, are we picking that up right in the tools? Meister asks. The problem is that the plastics that you can buy in a laboratory setting to be able to test these, theyre not actually what were encountering in real life. In real life, microplastics are not one specific thing; they have multiple characteristics. Take microplastics from a plastic bottleif those contaminate your body, your body isnt only seeing the polyethylene. Your body also sees things like BPA, heavy metals, dyes, inkall the things that come with it, Meister says. Microplastics are also known to carry bacteria and other proteins, like a little raft they attach to. This means when scientists look for microplastics in our bodies, theyre not just looking for one thing. It’s really hard to measure, because it’s a category of a whole bunch of diverse, different things,” she says. And we also know that there are over 350,000 different proprietary chemicals in the world. Along with all these challenges, its also difficult for researchers to compare their findings across labs or research techniques. There arent standards for how to measure microplastics or tools researchers should use. Scientists know about these caveats So there are challenges to measuring microplastics, but scientists working to study this already know that. Ideally, Meister says, researchers would measure microplastics in three ways: identify (what is the polymer; is it polyethylene, for example, or maybe PVC?); quantify (how many particles, and how big are they?); and localize (where are they within human tissue?). The problem is, there isnt yet one measurement technique that can answer all three of those questions. That leaves triangulating different types of measurements and some gaps in the science, she says. We will get there, but its going to take trial and error to get better standards and accelerate the data. Megan Wolff, executive director of the Physician and Scientist Network for Advocacy on Plastics and Health, put it this way on LinkedIn: Methodological uncertainty is a normal feature of science, especially in a newly evolving discipline. In some cases, the critiques raised in The Guardian article were also acknowledged by the original study authors. These caveats, though, may not always be clear in media stories or to the general public. Concerns over framing Critiquing studies itself isnt controversial, Wolff added; thats part of how science evolves. But she took issue with the way the critiques were framed. In both The Guardians headline and lede, the article highlights a quote calling the critiques of the brain study a bombshell. That phrase is attributed to Roger Kuhlman, a chemist formerly at the Dow Chemical Co., and the same source who said that the critiques are forcing us to reevaluate everything we think we know about microplastics in the body. The fact that this chemist formerly worked at Dow, a major plastics manufacturer, was a controversial choice to Wolff. Dow has a vested interest in casting doubt on the science of plastics, microplastics, and human health, she wrote. Kulhman’s “bombshell” comment was in response to a study assessing a specific analysis method for quantifying plastics in human blood, and which found those tools are “not a suitable analysis method” for two types of plastic, polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride, in uhman tissue. In a statement to Fast Company, Kuhlman stood by this framing, and his concerns about the way that “questionable results” in scientific studies have been “trumped to popular media outlets as solid scientific facts.” “Scientists have traditionally been conservative with public descriptions of early-stage results for good reason,” he added. “I hope the article in The Guardian and related reports help level-set public expectations to the true state of current scientific understanding, which is that we know almost nothing about concentrations of micro- and nanoplastics in human bodies.” Kuhlman also disputed the idea that his experience at Dow would color his comments. “I am not, nor have I ever been, a corporate spokesmanI was a lab rat,” he said. “Both throughout and after my employment, environmental issues (especially climate change) have been critical to me and guided my priorities and thinking.” Should concerns diminish the whole field? Even with some problematic studies, cross contamination, and difficulties quantifying microplastics in human tissue, Wolff emphasized that there are a few irrefutable facts about microplastics and our bodies, regardless of measurement techniques, Wolff adds. Those facts are: Microplastics are present in human bodies, from blood to brains to bones; microplastics are made of fossil carbon and chemical additives, many of which are known to be toxic; and hazardous chemicals are always leaching out of plasticsincluding when we eat off plastic, drink out of plastic, or wear plasticmeaning that plastic degrades throughout its environment. So maybe scientists dont know how many microplastics are in our bodies, or what exactly they’re doing to us. But theyre trying to figure that out. And as Leonardo Trasande, director of NYU Langone Health’s Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards, put it in his own LinkedIn post: “As a new field, there are of course going to be bumps in the road and a need to recalibrate our understanding.” But the Guardian article, he added, risks damaging all researchers who study this. “It implies that the entire field is lacking in rigor,” he wrote. “Thats just not the case.” In a statement to Fast Company, the Guardian said it would not be providing additional comments “as the story speaks for itself.” When it comes to studying microplastics in our bodies, the question of exactly how many there are in our brains or blood might not even be the most important one, scientifically, to ask. It’s probably there, yeah, Meister says. Is it actually harming us? Thats the question were trying to answer. Even if we dont know specifically how theyre impacting human health, we know that microplastics are hurting the environment,” Meister says. Wolff, in her post on LinkedIn, was even more blunt: The science, for its own part, is clear, she wrote. Exposure to plastic is harmful, be it through large items or tiny particles.
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Rejection stings. If youre on the job hunt right now, its likely something youve grown accustomed to, if not entirely numb to. Considering more than one in four workers without jobs has been unemployed for at least half a year, chances are that comes with a tidal wave of rejection emails. The entry-level job market is also the toughest its been in years, with only 30% of 2025 graduates finding jobs in their fields. One TikTok creator, however, has made it her personal mission to collect rejections like gold stars, documenting her challenge to receive 1,000 instances of being told no in one year. Just 71 nos into her journey, shes already seen how embracing rejection has opened doors to a whole host of unexpected opportunities. For Gabriella Carr, among the rejections were some unexpected yeses. She tried to be rejected for a national pageant title, but they accepted me. So now Im a national pageant title holder. She auditioned for a play, thinking she would be rejected, but instead landed the part. I actually went and performed in 11 shows, she says. Let this be your sign, she concluded. Chase rejection. Her original video introducing the challenge has already reached hundreds of thousands of views, encouraging others to, if not chase their dreams, at least put themselves out there and see what happens. Because of your video, I was able to get my own apartment for the first time, got a federal job, applied to volunteer for a hospice home and learned chess, one user commented. Because of your ideaI launched a business, applied for a scholarship abroad and decided to try remote work, another wrote. One simply put: Im clearly not using my free will to its fullest potential. Carrs format is simple and highly replicable. Pick a number of nos to chase this year. (If youre sensitive, no need to start with 1,000. Why not aim for 10?). Or maybe you want to make your goals more effort based and say, Okay, Im going to try 100 times, she also suggests. From there, she encourages actively seeking opportunities where rejection is a possibility. Track those outcomes in a journal or spreadsheet, logging both nos and yeses. If youre feeling brave, share your progress publicly or with a friend to hold yourself accountable and help normalize rejection as simply part of the process. The challenge is most effective when the rejections are in service of a bigger goal, whether thats finding a romantic partner or applying for grants, colleges, or a dream job. The math is simple: every no gets you one step closer to a yes. While the scale of Carrs personal challenge might be petrifying to some, the core principles are nothing new. Exposure therapy is a commonly used technique in cognitive behavioral therapy, developed to help people confront their fears head-on. Meanwhile, entrepreneur Jia Jiangs 2015 TED Talk about his 100 days of rejection, has been viewed more than 11 million times. Rejection is also nothing new to a generation once described as the most rejected in history by Business Insider. When it comes to Gen Zs experience with rejection, the articles author, Delia Cai, points to the fact that applications to the country’s 67 most selective colleges have tripled in the past two decades, to nearly 2 million a year. The current job market isnt much gentler. In early 2025, the average knowledge worker job opening received 244 applications, up from 93 in February 2019, according to data cited in the article. Reddit and TikTok are also full of stories of those who have applied to thousands of jobs and been rejected by all of them. Of course, all this rejection is sure to have an impact on anyone’s psyche, if not their ego. But with Carrs challenge, the logic goes, aiming for 1,000 nos, a far more attainable goal than 1000 yeses, should take some of the pain out of the process. And remember, as entrepreneur Chris Dixon once said: “If you aren’t getting rejected on a daily basis, your goals aren’t ambitious enough.”
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