The Week of January 29th, 2018

Care

1. Couch doctors

Three prominent American executives team up to tackle health care

On January 30, corporate giants JPMorgan Chase, Amazon, and Berkshire Hathaway announced they would collaborate on a health care company for their combined employees, who number over a million. Additionally, the new company will be “free from profit-making incentives and will focus on innovating technology to simplify health care.

The consortium has revealed few details on the plan. The past successes of the bosses of the three firms (Jamie Dimon, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett), however, have encouraged experts to speculate on the innovations and cost-saving techniques that the joint venture could offer. Healthcare industry insiders say that the new company could use direct negotiations with doctors, hospitals, and other providers to undercut inefficiencies caused by middlemen such as health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and pharmacies.

Despite attempts by the Obama administration to improve the industry, the total cost of health insurance has increased by more than 50% from 2005-15 and, as of 2016, the average annual insurance costs per person were over $10,000, making the United States by far the most expensive health insurance market in the world. Messrs Dimon, Bezos, and Buffett view health care as both a growing industry with gains from entrance and as a problem to be solved for overpaying Americans. As this experiment unfolds, the world’s eyes will be watching to see whether American capitalism can save healthcare without state intervention.

2. Tug of war

Further developments in Yemen’s brutal civil war

In what marks a major development in Yemen’s brutal civil war, separatists backed by the United Arab Emirates have seized the strategic port city of Aden. This move comes after years of simmering tensions between pro-independence elements in southern Yemen and the central government in Sanaa. The southern region was its own country prior to 1990; political reunification has only inflamed the resolve of the separatists, who demand a return to autonomy. The Southern Transitional Council (STC), the political arm of the secessionist movement, has blamed Prime Minister Ahmed bin Daghr for violence in the region and demanded his resignation early last week. Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the Yemeni president, rejected these demands, instead launching a crackdown on protests that triggered widespread fighting.

The government in Sanaa finds itself in a difficult position, forced to rely on Saudi Arabia for military aid and support. The conflict in Yemen has become a proxy war for other regional powers. The STC has historically been sympathetic to Salafism, making it a natural ally for conservative elements within the UAE. In northern Yemen, the government is facing off against the Houthis, a Shia insurgency backed by Iran. The capture of Aden represents the opening salvo in what has become a messy and protracted struggle to determine the balance of power in the Middle East.

3. Oppositional attack

Russia’s leading dissenter is arrested, again

Authorities detained Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure, Sunday during a mass demonstration protesting this year’s planned presidential elections. He was released without charge later that day. The arrest followed a police raid on his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) headquarters, which they conducted under the pretense of a bomb threat. A week earlier, a Moscow court had ordered Mr Navalny to cease his presidential campaign in a case filed by the Justice Ministry. The concurrence of these events, and the baselessness of his arrest, testify to the political motivation behind the move to jail the president’s harshest critic. Mr Navalny called upon the protesters to boycott the March 18 presidential election, which he denounced as fixed in favor the country’s current leader, Vladimir Putin. The protesters, typically younger, represent the generation’s discontent with the entrenched oligarch.

According to a Facebook post by Mr Navalny, the police cut through the main doors of the FBK office and sawed through the studio entrance to interrupt a YouTube broadcast. The show’s host, accused of planting a bomb, and several employees were detained, while computers and cameras were also seized. Moscow police officials denied information of the incident. Mr Putin was surredly going to win March’s election handily with or without Navalny on the ballot--the jailing is only the most recent crime in a long lineup of the Russian president’s assault on democracy.

4. Heard through the grapevine

Facebook markets to new generation

Last year, American social media giant Facebook announced the launch of a children’s version of its chat application, Messenger Kids. To alleviate parental concerns that the application might harm children development, Facebook engineered several safeguards allowing parents to restrict the quantity and nature of content their children can access. This week, experts came forth with scathing reviews: over a dozen health organizations and a hundred children’s health specialists signed a letter calling for the app to be shut down. The experts claim children cannot tell the content of their applications from reality, and are unable to discern what content would not be appropriate for sharing online. More concerning was the application’s fundamental design, aimed at addictive usage that could be particularly harmful for underage children.

Tech companies receiving criticism for the health impact of their applications is far from new. Just this month, tech giant Apple was scolded by investors for designing cell phones in ways that are addictive and harmful for children. Rates of depression, Attention Deficit Disorder, and other mental illnesses have skyrocketed for this new generation, and many experts are increasingly pointing the finger at smartphones and other devices. Phones are what is known in psychology as a Skinner Box, in which taking a simple action (such as pressing a button) results in pleasure, which makes the behavior compulsive and addictive. Teenagers who spend more than five hours a day on their smartphones have a much higher rate of suicide. As Facebook sets its mark on an even younger generation, a public conversation on the effects of these devices seems ever more important.

5. Flight plan

Bombardier wins a victory over Boeing

Canada-based planemaker Bombardier won a major case against US-based Boeing after the latter levied accusations of unfair trade against its northern counterpart. The conflict centers on an order of 75 Bombardier C series aircraft placed by Delta. The C Series is a narrow-body, twin-engine jet medium distance jet that comes in two versions. Roughly $1 billion of the $6 billion Bombardier spent bringing the aircraft to market came from Canadian taxpayer handouts, payments Boeing alleged illegal. While the US Commerce Department initially agreed with Boeing’s claim, sticking Bombardier with a 300% duty on planes exported to the US, the paradoxically named United States International Trade Commission disagreed and removed the tariffs. The USITC has not released details of the decisions so far, and Boeing is not ruling out launching a future petition.

Bombardier and Airbus, the European planemaking giant with a major stake in the CSeries, agreed to a deal opening an assembly line in Mobile, Alabama. Part of Boeing’s argument in favor of the duty hinged on the potential loss of America jobs, so the decision to open a plant in Alabama appears to directly address this qualm. Wilbur Ross, commerce secretary, hailed the initial import tax as an affirmation of President Donald Trump’s America first policy. Since the reversal, Mr Ross changed course and lauded the decision as an example of the country’s robust system of checks and balances.

Don’t care

0. Political Theater of the Absurd

#releasethememo

Another day, another breathlessly reported story about the Trump White House. Such is life as we’ve become habituated to it under the 45th President. This time, the media is collectively on tenterhooks awaiting the release of a memo which is said to allege wrongdoing by the FBI during the 2016 presidential election. Sources familiar with the classified document say that it charges FBI officials with abusing a secret surveillance program to investigate Carter Page, a Trump campaign aide, during their inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The memo was assembled by the staff of Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who was thrust into the national spotlight last March when he gave an outré press conference flacking for claims by Mr Trump that President Obama had “wiretapped” Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign. The press conference ultimately resulted in Mr Nunes being subjected to an ethics investigation and recusing himself from the Intelligence Committee’s probe on potential Russian interference.

The prospect of the memo’s release has made unlikely bedfellows out of congressional Democrats and FBI officials; both have reacted with paroxysmal shock and fury that Mr Nunes has the gall to actually publish the document. Trump-appointed FBI Director Christopher Wray has threatened to step down if the memo is made public, citing “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

Mr Trump, for his part, appears to be unencumbered by Mr Wray’s beseeching, and congressional Republicans are beginning to (hesitantly) toe his line. With any luck, the release of the memo will serve as the coup de grâce for this ridiculous Trump storyline.

Jason Frankel, Avi Dravid, Sean Conway, Jose Trejos, Philip Straus, and Max Rowe contributed to this report.