Trump Tells Netanyahu Don’t Hinder Syria’s Stability In Rare Rebuke
President Trump has issued a rare criticism and brush back of Israel’s expansionist policy in Syria, where in the south of the country Israel’s military has launched recent deadly ground and aerial raids which go way beyond just the Golan Heights.
Trump has warned that the future of Syria’s stability is at stake. He wrote in a Monday post on Truth Social, “The United States is very satisfied with the results displayed, through hard work and determination, in the Country of Syria. We are doing everything within our power to make sure the Government of Syria continues to do what was intended, which is substantial, in order to build a true and prosperous Country.”
While touting that he has recently terminated long existing sanctions on Syria, Trump crucially warned “It is very important that Israel maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria, and that nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous State.”
He then once again praised the founder of al-Qaeda in Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who since Assad’s ouster a year ago declared himself ‘interim president’.
Trump’s message to Israel is that ‘interference’ in Syria’s affairs could hinder the potential for “peace in the Middle East” – which Washington wants to see, according to his message. Times of Israel is reporting that Trump’s Truth Social post was issued alongside an important phone call with PM Netanyahu on Monday:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump are speaking by phone, according to multiple Hebrew media reports.
The call comes after Trump warned Israel against destabilizing Syria and its new leadership, days after IDF soldiers battled gunmen in the country’s south.
Israel last Friday had launched another unprovoked major attack on Syria, which killed at least 13 people, including children – and additionally some 25 were reported injured.
The widely reported assault on the southern Syrian town of Beit Jinn constituted a rare ground raid by Israeli forces, accompanied by air and artillery support. Israel troops actually took on casualties – with at least six that were reported wounded, including two critically.
Israeli drones have also been active over the area. In post-Assad Syria, the IDF has encroached more and more on Syrian territory, expanding significantly beyond its Golan Heights occupation.
Trump issues a warning against Israel’s Netanyahu over its illogical incursions in the south;
“It is very important that Israel maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria, and that nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous State.” pic.twitter.com/TPVN7onQJT
The Israeli military has described that the high-risk operation was launched to detain suspects belonging to Jama’a Islamiya – a Lebanese Sunni Islamist group which is alleged to have fired rockets at Israel from Lebanon during the Gaza war. The statement further charged the group “terrorist plots”.
However, Trump’s Monday statement is a very mild criticism at best. It could be that Israel is actually getting these Syrian operations approved by US military commanders in the region.
After a flamboyant speaker went viral at the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Youth Congress, there are questions about Alexander Eichwald. Speculation is growing about whether he is an undercover agent, a left-wing satirist, or actually just a genuine AfD supporter. Regardless of the truth, the AfD is already preparing to expel him from the party.
Social media has been asking questions about Eichwald, who sported a blue dinner jacket, after his speech at the AfD Youth Congress in Giessen over the weekend.
Even within the party, there is no clear answer about who he is.
🇩🇪🔴Many on the right are accusing this man of being an undercover agent.
After Alexander Eichwald went viral for his “Hitler-like” speech at the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Youth Congress, speculation is growing about who he actually is.
The newly elected head of the AfD’s young group “Generation Germany,” Jean-Pascal Hohm, also had no answer to questions about Eichwald.
“No matter whether you’re a left-wing provocateur, an undercover agent or simply crazy – anyone who acts like that has no place in the AfD and its youth organization,” he told the dpa news agency.
“Alexander Eichwald’s appearance once again showed how important it is to look closely at admission interviews to see who you accept into the party and who you don’t,” he added.
Eichwald’s speech, in which he used to term “party comrades” and referred to dog breeds when selecting who is allowed into Germany, drew comparisons to Hitler and his propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
With his speech, Eichwald applied for a position on the board of the newly founded “Generation Germany.” Eichwald clearly lost to Alexander Claus, receiving only 12 percent of votes.
When asked by the dpa whether his appearance was serious, he only responded “yes” and then left the conference hall.
Already, there is speculation about whether the speaker was an undercover agent of the powerful spy agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The BfV is known to place informants inside the parties it targets, with the AfD one of its main concerns. However, others speculated the man is a satirist, potentially from the left. Still, there is no confirmation as of yet who the man actually is.
AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla announced an audit of the data and membership rights of Eichwald, who has only been part of the NRW-AfD in Herford since October.
As a result, Eichwald was removed from the AfD council by circular resolution on Sunday.
“Accordingly, the measure was also taken to aim yesterday by circular resolution to exclude Mr. Eichwald from the party through a party expulsion procedure.“
Additionally, measures are being pursued to have him removed from the party entirely.
AfD parliamentary group leader in Herford, Michael Schneidermann spoke to Welt about Eichwad.
“He touted himself here as a political scientist and student and said he would like to take part in local politics. He did, too.“
The Herford AfD parliamentary group leader, commenting on Eichwald’s speech, said the 30-year-old man had “absolutely unmasked“ himself with his appearance.
“At the weekend in Giessen, that was behavior that I was absolutely not aware of,” said Schneidermann.
Schneidermann also speculated that Eichwald may be an undercover agent “sent from a satirical background.” Schneidermann also said that Eichwald “damaged the party and also reputation of the youth wing of the AfD, which had just been founded.”
All he needs is discarded electronics—of which the United States has mountains. And from these scraps, the Rice University chemist and nanotechnologist has pioneered a way to quickly extract rare earth metals.
“We can pull out one metal and then the next,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s really that simple.”
Tour’s solution is flash Joule heating: rapidly heating up the materials to thousands of degrees to vaporize the metals. Mixed with chlorine gas, the vapors turn into chlorides that emerge at different temperatures.
Just like in an incandescent light bulb, the technique works by passing an electric current through the raw material, Tour said. But whereas the former channels a steady electric current to create a perpetual glow, in treating metals, the energy arrives in short bursts, dialing up heat in milliseconds.
“Metals are infinitely recyclable,” he said.
And whereas the traditional way of distilling metals is rather “messy,” Tour said, what he proposes is all about simplicity—“you flash and you’re done.”
Speed is now more critical than ever. The United States is racing against time to reshore rare earth production, spurred in part by China’s October threat to dramatically curtail access.
With a one-year truce in hand, Washington now has a short window to close the gap. Getting a mine up and running can take 15 years.
Tour said his technology would put the United States on a faster track.
“It would give us a map to get independent,” he said.
“You can get these things going for a few tens of millions of dollars. That’s not very much when it comes to this type of manufacturing.”
Rare earths, a subgroup of 17 critical minerals, are essential components in electric vehicles, wind turbines, smartphones, and missiles.
China currently sits at the center of this vital global production chain. It makes more than 90 percent of the world’s rare earth magnets, according to International Energy Agency data. China is also the sole supplier for certain elements, such as samarium, used in fighter jets and nuclear reactors for its high heat resistance.
This dominance comes from decades of strategic investment, lavish state subsidies, and aggressive market manipulation that stifled foreign competition.
Decisions made in the United States also played a part.
Until 1991, the country was a leading producer of rare earth minerals; the Mountain Pass mine in California supplied most of the world. Environmental troubles then shuttered the mine for years at the same time China began to gain a foothold.
Against the Pentagon’s objections, the U.S. government greenlit the 1995 sale of Magnequench, then the industry leader in rare earth magnets, to a Chinese front group, effectively handing over critical defense technology and manufacturing to China.
In 2004, Magnequench closed its Indiana plant and moved operations to China. Beijing started taxing exports of rare earth minerals the following year.
Twenty years later, the United States is beholden to Chinese minerals.
“We didn’t realize that we were selling something that turned out to be very important to our country,” Tour said.
As early as 1976, the United States had a law regulating electronic waste disposal.
In the years that followed, the ballooning electronic waste created a whole recycling industry that still struggles to catch up. It’s now the fastest-growing type of waste, rising five times faster than recycling, according to the United Nations.
The United States produced 7.2 million tons of electronic waste in 2022—about one-eighth of the world’s total, the latest U.N. data show. That’s about 46 pounds for every American.
“We have these mountains of tailings that we can access, and we have these constant mountains of printed circuit boards,” Tour said.
Tour said that their method could clean up this spiraling nightmare of waste sites and turn it into a “treasure.”
Lucas Eddy, technology development manager for Metallium’s Texas subsidiary Flash Metals USA, said he is now seeing the idea being put into practice.
“The real reason a waste product is a waste product isn’t because it’s bad, it’s because it can’t be used,” he told The Epoch Times.
Here’s where flash Joule heating shines, according to Eddy, whose Texas factory has licensed the method for metal recovery.
Old Tech Reimagined
Joule heating—passing an electric current through a conductor to produce heat—has been around since the 1840s. It’s now an integral feature of every household, in toasters, electric heaters, ovens, and hair dryers.
Until now, no one had thought to use it for electronic waste.
The spark for Tour’s team began with reading a scientific paper describing using the flash Joule heating technique to make metallic nanoparticles.
The researchers tested the technique on carbon and found that it was a quick way to make high-quality graphene at low cost. They next began exploring its potential in extracting the much-needed rare earth metals.
Eddy, a 2025 Tour lab graduate, joined the project in early 2021 just as this shift began.
“It’s really live chemistry in action,” he said. “You see a rainbow of colors coming off.”
Each change of color represents one metal element that has separated out. Rare earths, usually with some of the highest boiling points, tend to come out last—often as a white powder, he said.
The project drew interest from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which asked them to make it more industrially applicable, Tour said. Under a federal contract, the team worked on lowering boiling points, experimenting with fluorides and chlorine in various forms, and eventually settled on chlorine gas.
Herzog Admits A Netanyahu Pardon Would Spark Outrage, Destabilize Israeli Society
Israeli President Isaac Herzog acknowledged this week that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for a pardon in his corruption trial is generating significant debate and division within Israeli society. Herzog said that Netanyahu’s formal petition for the charges and case to be dismissed “will be addressed with full care and precision,” and pledged his decision will be guided solely by “the good of the state and Israeli society.”
He in the Monday comments admitted that Netanyahu’s move “unsettles many people across different sectors of the public and has sparked considerable debate.”
But Herzog tried to calm rising public anger, dismissing aggressive or heated public discourse as having “no impact” on his judgment.
PM Netanyahu formally submitted the pardon request to Herzog on Sunday, sparking opposition backlash demanding that the president quickly shoot it down. Local media says that Netanyahu’s request immediately unleashed a firestorm of controversy, as it was accompanied with another denial that’s he’s guilty:
As if the country were not already laboring under enough legal and constitutional crises, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took Israel into a new minefield on Sunday when he filed a request to President Isaac Herzog asking for a pardon for the criminal charges against him in the three cases for which he is currently standing trial.
In a brief, personal letter to Herzog, Netanyahu made the case that bringing the trial to a close would benefit the public by ending national divisions over his prosecution.
He then published a message pledging to heal the nation’s divides should his trial be halted, but in the same breath enflamed the rift by arguing that not only is he innocent but that the he’d been framed and the indictment against him was concocted by hostile elements in law enforcement agencies.
Indeed he took the denial further by saying he’d been ‘framed’ by his political enemies. Thus if Herzog were to suddenly go along with dismissing the case, outrage among the opposition as well as long-running anti-Netanyahu protests in the streets related to handling the hostage crisis in Gaza would explode.
Times of Israelconcludes of the dilemma, “Rather, experts say, it is Netanyahu’s glaring omission of an admission of guilt or wrongdoing that puts his request on legally shaky ground, making it highly unlikely that president will grant him an outright pass, and inviting the possibility of court intervention if he does.”
Back in January, Netanyahu began interrogation sessions connected to a series of cases – all of which he’s asserted his innocence in. For a review:
Case 1000 concerns allegations that Netanyahu and his wife accepted luxury gifts, such as cigars and champagne, from wealthy businessmen in exchange for political favors.
Case 2000 involves claims that Netanyahu negotiated with Arnon Mozes, publisher of Yedioth Ahronoth, to secure more favorable press coverage.
Case 4000 — viewed as the most serious — centers on accusations that Netanyahu provided regulatory and financial benefits to Shaul Elovitch, the former owner of the Walla news site and Bezeq telecommunications, in return for positive media treatment.
Netanyahu has also long faced accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity – but pressure over this has mainly been on the international and European front, related to international criminal court probes. President Trump has still firmly had his back, and has weighed in vocally in the case, asking Israel to dismiss all charges.
Republican Matt Van Epps Wins Tennessee Special Election
Republicans will hold onto Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District despite a push by Democrats to flip the deep-red seat, the Associated Press projected Tuesday, as Republican candidate Matt Van Epps was set to defeat Democrat Aftyn Behn.
The former state commissioner and Army helicopter pilot defeated the Democratic nominee, Aftyn Behn, with 53.9 percent of the vote in the highly publicized race, according to The Associated Press as of 9:45 p.m. ET. Behn had 45.1 percent, with nearly all votes counted.
The high-stakes election was neck and neck ahead of election day, as an Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey released on Nov. 26 showed Epps slightly ahead with 48 percent of voter support in the district and Behn with 46 percent. As always, the highly biased, vote suppressing poll came out largely in favor of the Democrat who is set to lose by almost 10 points.
Tuesday’s special election, held after the resignation of Republican Rep. Mark Green, drew nationwide attention and was widely viewed as a referendum on President Trump. The president endorsed Van Epps during the primaries, participated in a phone rally for the GOP candidate on the eve of the election and congratulated him on Tuesday evening.
More than 43,000 ballots were submitted during the early voting period, according to the Tennessee Division of Elections.
The congressman-elect, originally from Ohio, will represent 14 counties in Middle Tennessee—including downtown Nashville—after the seat was left vacant by Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who retired over the summer to take a job in the private sector.
Tuesday night’s win in the Deep South, which President Donald Trump won by more than 20 points in 2024, helps the Republicans maintain hold of their slim majority in the U.S. House, which is expected to shrink once again on Jan. 5, 2026, when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) resigns. Before the Trump-endorsed candidate was elected, the 119th Congress had 219 Republicans, 213 Democrats, and three vacancies.
The result is a boon for Trump and his party, which had worried that its narrow House majority would grow even slimmer. But the relatively tight margin in such a deep-red district nonetheless represents a warning shot about the party’s vulnerabilities heading into the 2026 midterm elections.
Trump carried the seat by 22 percentage points a little over a year ago. The Seventh Congressional District, which stretches from Kentucky to Alabama and includes part of downtown Nashville, had been drawn by G.O.P. state lawmakers specifically to elect a Republican.
As the Epoch Times reports, Epps’s win comes after the GOP flooded Tennessee with a multi-county, boots-on-the-ground effort to gain as much support as possible in the 24 hours ahead of the election.
On Monday, Epps headlined a morning rally in Franklin and an evening rally in Clarksville, which featured appearances by party powerhouses such as Speaker of the U.S. House Mike Johnson (R-La.), Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.).
Epps’s win comes after the GOP flooded Tennessee with a multi-county, boots-on-the-ground effort to gain as much support as possible in the 24 hours ahead of the election.
On Monday, Epps headlined a morning rally in Franklin and an evening rally in Clarksville, which featured appearances by party powerhouses such as Speaker of the U.S. House Mike Johnson (R-La.), Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.).
Epps promised to advance Trump’s MAGA agenda, fix the economy, bring manufacturing back to America, secure borders, keep transgender athletes out of women’s sports, and protect farmers.
Energy Secretary: Backup Generators At Commercial Sites Could Unlock 35 Nuclear Plants
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has floated an unusual but very creative plan to quickly expand U.S. grid capacity: tapping the industrial diesel generators already sitting at data centers, big-box retailers, and other commercial sites. The proposal comes as multiple regional grids strain under the explosive power demand driven by the data-center boom. Leveraging these idled generators could serve as a short-term bridge until new generation comes online.
Bloomberg quoted Wright on Tuesday morning at the North American Gas Forum in Washington, where he said that tapping the nation’s idled fleet of industrial diesel generators could add the equivalent of about 35 nuclear power plants’ worth of electricity and help bridge the country until new natural-gas and nuclear generation comes online in the coming years.
Wright emphasized the scale of the opportunity, saying, “We’re going to unleash that 35 gigawatts of capacity that sits there today,” though he noted that pollution rules have historically limited generator use.
He argued that the massive data-center buildout over the next few years could be primarily supported by these existing generators, avoiding the need for dozens of new power plants.
These generators, he said, are already deployed at data centers and commercial sites nationwide. “They’re all around the country. It’s going to start with communicating to everyone that these assets exist.”
Wright and the Trump administration understand that power grids are stretched thin in the era of data centers. The push for dispatchable backup generation is a short-term solution for all the missing power needed for the AI boom…
Wow:
“In 2025-28, we project ~57 gigawatts (GW) of US data center power demand, and we quantify available power capacity to serve this demand as: near-term grid access of ~12-15 GW, plus ~6 GW of data centers under construction, resulting in a ~36 GW shortfall of US power… pic.twitter.com/4PArdYY9qO
Perhaps by the time the 2030s arrive, new natural-gas generators and other reliable sources will finally add enough capacity to meet booming demand. Nuclear remains more of a next-decade story. And now, Wright may truly be onto something.
The US Department of War insisted on Tuesday that it’s not waging a “forever war” in Somalia despite the fact that the Trump administration has shattered the record for annual airstrikes in the country.
Liam Cosgrove, a reporter for ZeroHedge, noted during a Pentagon press briefing on Tuesday that the US has launched 101 airstrikes (now 102) in Somalia and that US troops reportedly conducted a recent ground raid, and asked why the US military is still in the country.
“I can assure you this is an America First Department of War and president, so we aren’t conducting forever wars in Somalia, we aren’t seeking regime change, and we’re not nation building,” Pentagon spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson said in reply.
The Trump administration has dramatically escalated the US war in Somalia, launching more than 10 times the number of airstrikes that the US conducted in 2024, and more than the combined total of airstrikes launched during the 12 years that Presidents Obama and Biden were in office. Despite the unprecedented scale of US strikes, Kingsley described the campaign as “narrowly scoped.”
She told Cosgrove, “I will say that this Department’s narrowly scoped, intelligence-driven, counterintelligence operations in places like Somalia, alongside our partners, allow us to protect the American homeland from terrorist threats and to protect our interests.”
US airstrikes this year have targeted a small ISIS affiliate based in caves in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region and al-Shabaab in southern and central Somalia.
The US has been fighting al-Shabaab since it backed an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006, which ousted the Islamic Courts Union, a coalition of Muslim groups that briefly held power in Mogadishu after taking the capital from CIA-backed warlords.
Pentagon asked why the US military is still in Somalia
‘I can assure you this is an America First Department of War and president, so we aren’t conducting forever wars in Somalia, we’re not seeking regime change or nation building’ pic.twitter.com/yrnXb7riSe
Al-Shabaab was the radical offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union and claimed its first attack in 2007, which targeted Ethiopian troops occupying Mogadishu.
In 2012, al-Shabaab declared loyalty to al-Qaeda, after years of fighting the US and its proxies. The ISIS affiliate in Somalia first emerged in 2015 as an offshoot of al-Shabaab, and is believed to have only a few hundred members.
“Power Up America” Needs 500,000 Highly Skilled Workers
We’ve already pointed out that money isn’t the problem in America’s unprecedented data center construction buildout. Big Tech’s AI capex splurge is effectively endless thanks to “circle-jerk” vendor-financing schemes, and land is plentiful.
The real bottleneck? First, it was power – or rather, the lack of it – as the grid struggles to hook up hyperscalers sprinting toward ever larger and more power-hungry AI server racks.
True.
That is why Bitcoin is based on energy: you can issue fake fiat currency, and every government in history has done so, but it is impossible to fake energy.
Beyond a power grid already stretched thin due to limited capacity, the Trump administration is now scrambling to fix this with an accelerated nuclear push before the 2030s. We’ve identified another problem that central bankers can’t print their way out of: skilled labor. And no, we’re not talking about the need for cheap, unskilled migrant labor. We’re talking about a highly skilled workforce required to build, run, and maintain data centers, as well as expand the power grid and operate nuclear power plants.
Wow:
“In 2025-28, we project ~57 gigawatts (GW) of US data center power demand, and we quantify available power capacity to serve this demand as: near-term grid access of ~12-15 GW, plus ~6 GW of data centers under construction, resulting in a ~36 GW shortfall of US power… pic.twitter.com/4PArdYY9qO
In early October, Goldman noted that data center buildouts will require an additional 300,000 workers across manufacturing, construction, and operations to meet power demand by the end of the decade.
Now, Goldman analysts led by Carly Davenport are telling clients that the power industry will need over 500,000 new workers by 2030 to meet the surging electricity demand from data centers and the broader economy-wide electrification push.
Davenport explained:
“The US power industry is poised to require >500,000 new workers by 2030 or a significant acceleration in labor productivity. This growth enters a labor force already facing strain from aging and a limited pipeline of skilled labor. Labor-demand challenges to meet levels of US power-demand growth not seen since the 1990s are rising amid the Demographic Dilemma — a shrinking productive labor pool tasked to support an aging population — which raises the risk of G7 labor-force strains. This is elevating investor/corporate debates on industry execution and whether/when rising power, equipment, and labor costs could constrain growth.”
Generational growth to achieve 2.6% CAGR in electricity demand through 2030 could require ~510,000 US power and grid jobs (a 28% increase versus the 2023 US energy workforce).
“We estimate the need for ~300,000 incremental jobs across manufacturing, construction, and operations/maintenance (Exhibit 10)…
…plus an additional 207,000 across US transmission and distribution (Exhibit 11).“
What’s critical to understand is that the trillions in investment flooding into the economy through the 2030s will require far more than steel, concrete, silicon chips, and copper wire. They will demand a massive expansion of highly skilled workers.
Our advice for young people struggling to find a real job: ditch the useless gender-studies degree and learn a trade that’s becoming increasingly valuable to “Powering America.” For college students who haven’t been brainwashed by Marxism and wokism, aim for fields that will actually matter, such as engineering, energy systems, and nuclear science – all of which will be in red-hot demand in the 2030s.
The labor market is shifting fast. It’s time to move with it and choose a career that won’t be automated into oblivion anytime soon.
If each of these is not a part of any ‘reform,’ than all that is being done is pouring money into a monopolizing cartel, just in a slightly different way.
Unbeknownst to those of us with little inside knowledge of the complex financial plumbing of the US healthcare system, healthcare is in a death spiral that will surprise everyone but insiders who grasp the system’s unsustainability.
To help us outsiders understand the death spiral, I asked a senior MD to guide us through “follow the money.”
Since this is the issue of the day and it falls within my expertise, here are some thoughts.
Executive Summary
Multiple conditions are aligning for a broad re-alignment of medical care delivery in the US, resulting in the development of a two-tiered delivery model: high-quality, efficient, innovating cash-pay for those who can pay and low-quality, wait-rationed care delivery for those who can’t.
If you can’t afford it, don’t get sick.
Health systems make their money through inflated commercial real estate (CRE), sale of patient health information (PHI), consolidation of supply chains, and kickbacks in exchange for redirecting federal dollars. Absent a tiny sliver of procedures, the delivery of healthcare itself is a loss leader. It is a requirement for entry, not a source of value. As such, care delivery managed to prevent loss, not promote innovation.
Most health system CEOs are financial engineers, not care delivery specialists, and compare the size of their real estate management infrastructure with their care delivery management infrastructure; the former is always much more robust than the latter.
Insurers have become utilities, administering government payment programs. Their ability to bear risk as a business model was discarded with the ACA; they no longer have the infrastructure or talent to do so. You might as well ask them to make shoes.
This monoculture, the corruption of monopoly and finally the response to the pandemic has crippled both.
Health systems faced a profound interruption in throughput which they dealt with by tapping reserves, inflating CRE further, pushing the boundaries of PHI sales, increasing their kickback programs, and, most importantly, becoming fully dependent on the now ending government bailouts.
Further consolidation and partnering with private money is their only path forward. Recent experience teaches that the private money will cut the delivery of healthcare to the bare minimum needed to maximize the other sources of value. A whole lot of administrators and c-suiters are also going to lose their jobs.
After the ACA, the Insurer’s only cash cow was the immensely overfunded and fraud-filled Value-Based Care (VBC) Medicare and Medicaid programs such as Medicare Advantage. The fraud is now being criminally prosecuted, the overpayments are gone, and the cost of care delayed during the pandemic and which the insurers now bear are being realized manifold.
Insurers simply have no path forward other than as payment administrators. Look for massive consolidation, starting with the individual Blues. The government has been resistant, but now it’s a choice of merger or bankruptcy. In 2028 probably only Coventry, United, and Centene will be left standing, no more blues.
The ACA itself is in a death spiral. Envisioned as a universal mandatory risk pool, so many exceptions have been made that only the sickest and those who have no choice get their care there, the former being subsidized by the latter, the government, and ever dwindling coverage. The pandemic subsidies masked it and without them the coverage is non-sensical. Non-participation will be its end.
In addition, government medical care programs have long been subsidized by suppressing payment for the resources used to obtain care delivery; clinicians, labor, administration, and even bedpans. Real wages for even the highest paying doctors working within the system haven’t increased since 2010, nursing wages have gone up only because so many have become free-lancing agency workers. I got offered a locums position for $145/hour, the same as I was offered 8 years ago.
All those resources are now worth more outside the system than inside. Thus, those resources are migrating to the cash-pay market. Used to be the huge government market and dependable payments was enough to overcome the difference in value between the two markets, cash vs third party. No longer.
The legacy costs, management/leadership expertise and business models of current Fee For Service (FFS) health systems preclude all but the most highly branded health systems from competing in the cash-pay model.
Access to the cash-pay market will vary based on jurisdiction: it’s illegal in some states, hamstrung by others, free in still more.
Look for policy to evolve into a high-dollar, deductible, roll-over Health Savings Account (HSA) with income-based subsidies paired with a government subsidized catastrophic care program. At least until the young and disaffected elect a socialist.
A $2,000 direct payment to beneficiaries such as being currently contemplated is completely ineffectual, especially since it has to be borrowed and will just increase inflation that much further.
True reform must include:
1.Invalidation of state and federal laws which restrict cash-pay.
2. Prohibition of not-for-profit (NFP) / Religious organizations from third-party payment programs. The competitive advantage of the tax-free business model and the inherent corruption it has engendered render their participation not in the public interest.
3. Removal of restrictions on clinician ownership in healthcare delivery.
4. Renewed criminal anti-trust enforcement in medical care delivery.
Others can be added, but if each of these is not a part of any ‘reform,’ than all that is being done is pouring money into a monopolizing cartel, just in a slightly different way.
No improvement will occur.
It’s not payments which need reform, it’s delivery.
And a lot of folks’ paychecks depend on obfuscating that fact.
Thank you, senior MD for the guided tour of healthcare’s financial death spiral. I have long stated that healthcare in its current extractive-cartel form will bankrupt the nation all by itself:
1. Is any of this financial plumbing actually private insurance, or is it all just sluicing government funding through a profitable skimming operation?
2. How can a ‘healthcare’ system that refuses to connect digital derangement, ultra-processed diet and poor fitness to ‘health’ possibly generate ‘health’ as an output?
These questions are taboo because the answers would implode the entire system.
U.S. Navy’s “Doomsday” Aircraft Vanishes Over Atlantic On Mysterious Mission
A Boeing E-6B Mercury operated by the U.S. Navy, one of the service’s airborne nuclear command posts commonly known as the “Doomsday plane,”disappeared from civilian flight-tracking platforms Friday morning while operating over the Atlantic Ocean, according to tracking data, the Daily Mail reports.
The aircraft, using callsign AFD FE2, was last observed on ADS-B Exchange and similar services around 8:30 a.m. EST approximately 60 miles east of Virginia Beach, Virginia. The plane had departed Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, on a standard southeast track over Chesapeake Bay before its transponder was deactivated.
During TACAMO (Take Charge and Move Out) missions, the E-6B typically enters restricted warning areas, deploys a miles-long trailing-wire antenna, and flies extended racetrack patterns to relay secure communications to U.S. ballistic-missile submarines and other strategic assets, Key Aero reports.
The E-6B fleet also performs the Airborne National Command Post “Looking Glass” mission, equipped with the Airborne Launch Control System (ALCS) capable of transmitting launch orders to silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles if ground command centers are destroyed. An E-6B conducted an ALCS simulated ICBM launch exercise as recently as April.
The Navy and U.S. Strategic Command have not commented on Friday’s flight.
In August, another E-6B was recently forward-deployed to Pituffik Space Base in northern Greenland for what the service claimed was routine operations, including exercises with nuclear submarines in both the Atlantic and Pacific. However, aviation analysts, including Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, described the E-6B aircraft’s flight near Greenland as unusual. Historical E-6B forward operating locations have included Guam, Norway, Germany, Spain, and the U.K., according to Newsweek.
“Naval Strategic Forces conduct global operations in coordination with combatant commands, services, and allies and partner nations, even in the High North,” Commander Jason Fischer, a spokesman for U.S. Submarine Forces, told Newsweek.
