January 6, 2017
— Just one in five Americans say they think Congress should repeal the Affordable Care Act before hashing out details of a replacement, as Republican leaders plan to do, according to a new poll by Kaiser Health.
A full 47 percent of the public think Congress shouldn’t repeal Obamacare at all. A near equal amount, 49 percent, think a repeal is in order. But of the latter group, roughly 60 percent say that lawmakers should wait to vote on whether to sweep away the old one until after they’ve announced the details of a new plan, a sign of the current Republican strategy’s unpopularity.
“For me, the really pertinent question, the big question, is: Is there a mandate for repealing the ACA without a replacement plan?” Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, told The Washington Post . “What we see in our poll and what we see in our focus groups is: If there is, it is a very weak one. It’s not obvious there’s a mandate for repealing the ACA without putting a replacement plan on the table.”
But the poll also seems to illuminate how unsure about the law much of the public remains, although there are clearer divides along partisan lines. And the malleability of opinion on the issue – after hearing messages for or against repeal, anywhere from 60 percent to 27 percent of respondents say they’d support it – might suggest that most Americans don’t see the law as unimpeachable.
Some of that might have to do with outcomes. As The Christian Science Monitor reported earlier this week , the individual insurance markets created under the law are shrinking in much of the country while premiums rise, leaving people with fewer and more costly choices.
Here’s what’s clear: Most Americans (62 percent) prefer giving the federal government a larger role in healthcare if it means guaranteeing coverage and financial help for seniors and the lower-income, while similar proportions say lowering the cost of healthcare for individuals and lowering the cost of prescription drugs should be a “top priority.” And 45 percent say dealing with the prescription opioid epidemic should be a top priority, too.
Republicans in the House have drafted a blueprint for a replacement, though their colleagues in the Senate haven’t coalesced around a plan, as the Monitor’s Francine Kiefer reported:
Doctors, hospital groups, insurers, and analysts have largely echoed that finding.
« People in this country need to understand what it is they’re being asked to substitute for what’s there now so they can have an informed opinion about whether it’s better or not,” American Medical Association president Andrew Gurman told the NPR .
Trump will enter office having made big promises about giving Americans better health care for less money. Much of the public is skeptical, the poll finds: About 51 percent said they were either “not at all confident” or “not too confident,” with 29 percent saying they were “somewhat confident” and 19 percent saying they were “very confident.”

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© Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2017/0106/Repeal-Obamacare-Better-to-have-a-replacement-first-say-Americans
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The U. S. jobs report on Friday was really a test of sentiment among employers and it has shown that the water is warm. Overall, the report was solid. Most of the emphasis was towards wage growth and the labor participation rate. The data showed that wage growth was positive while the participation rate held steady.
The Trump administration is going to have a very close look at that jobs growth number and they will advise the President-elect on how to boost hiring. He has promised to create 25 million jobs in the coming years. But looking at this from a mathematical perspective, the unemployment rate needs to be negative to achieve that. So the idea of creating 25 million jobs, with closed borders, is really an idea that is difficult to digest.
Moreover, Donald Trump is all about « producing in America.  » Corporations, to save on labor costs, will invest more heavily in technology to make the system less reliant on labor intensive jobs. At the same time, highly paid jobs are also frequently being replaced with new technology. This will have an impact on the employment rate in the years ahead.
The jobs data has taken some shine off gold. In response to this report, traders have started to ease off from their bullish positions. We expect this move to fade somewhat during the next week as investors do not feel immensely confident about the health of the U. S. economy, while the Fed is betting its interest rate hike case on Trump’s fiscal spending. The near term support for gold is at 1159 per ounce while the resistance is at 1200 per ounce.
Toyota also came under pressure after the President-elect opened fire on Twitter. It is about the border tax which is making a number of corporations shift gears and move their operations back to the U. S. However, our concern is that this is going to push inflation even higher and consumers may not have the equivalent purchasing power to keep up with it. This can bring some serious threats for the economy in the days ahead.

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North Korea has demonstrated a « qualitative » improvement in its nuclear and missile capabilities after an unprecedented level of tests last year, the United States said on Thursday, demonstrating the need to sustain pressure on Pyongyang to bring it back to disarmament negotiations.
« Even a so-called failure is progress because … they apply what they have learned to their technology and to the next test. And in our assessment, we have a qualitative improvement in their capabilities in the past year as a result of this unprecedented level of activity, » he said.
« With every passing day the threat does get more acute, » Blinken said, and referred to comments by North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, on Sunday that his country was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) of a kind that could someday hit the United States.
Blinken said it was vital for the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries to boost cooperation to defend against the threat.
« At the same time, it’s absolutely vitally important that we exercise sustained, comprehensive pressure on North Korea to get it to stop these programs, to come back to the negotiating table, and to engage in good faith on denuclearization, » Blinken said, referring to international sanctions.
U. S. President-elect Donald Trump responded on Monday to Kim’s comments on an ICBM test by declaring in a tweet that « It won’t happen!  »
Experts say preventing such a test is far easier said than done, and Trump gave no indication what new steps he might take to roll back North Korea’s weapons programs after he takes office on Jan. 20, something successive U. S. administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have failed to do.
Former U. S. officials and other experts say the United States essentially had two options when it came to trying to curb North Korea’s fast-expanding nuclear and missile programs – negotiate or take military action.
Neither path offers certain success and the military option is fraught with huge dangers, especially for Japan and South Korea, given their close proximity to North Korea.
Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama said Tokyo was watching closely to see what kind of Asia policy Trump would follow, but did not expect major changes.
« Will it be exactly the same as we have it now? I doubt it. But basically, I don’t see the direction as changing in a significant way,” he told the news conference, adding that the U. S. security treaties with Tokyo and Seoul were an important pillar of U. S. policy.
Blinken said an effective sanctions campaign required « determination » and « patience.  » « I believe that as long as we sustain it and build on it, it will have an effect, » he said.
In another tweet on Monday, Trump said North Korea’s neighbor and only ally, China, was not helping to contain Pyongyang – despite Beijing’s support for successive rounds of U. N. sanctions.
Blinken said Washington had seen positive signs from China in recent weeks in implementing new restrictions on coal imports from North Korea, but added: « That needs to be sustained … to be carried forward. « 

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HONOLULU (AP) – As traditional commercial fishing is threatening fish populations worldwide, U. S. officials are working on a plan to expand fish farming into federal waters around the Pacific Ocean.
The government sees the move toward aquaculture as a promising solution to overfishing and feeding a hungry planet. But some environmentalists say the industrial-scale farms could do more harm than good to overall fish stocks and ocean health.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is creating a plan to manage commercial fish farms in federal waters, the area of ocean from three to 200 miles offshore, around Hawaii and other Pacific islands.
The program is similar to one recently implemented by NOAA in the Gulf of Mexico. The farms in the Gulf and the Pacific would be the only aquaculture operations in U. S. federal waters, though there are smaller operations in state waters close to shore.
Fish farming has been practiced for centuries in Hawaii and around the world. But modern aquaculture, some environmentalists say, carries pollution risks and the potential for non-native farmed fish to escape and enter the natural ecosystem.
Most shellfish consumed in America comes from farms, and their methods are widely considered sustainable. However, some farms that grow carnivorous fish such as salmon have raised concerns about sustainability because they use wild-caught fish to feed the captive species.
There are three ways to farm fish: fully contained land-based systems that pump water in and out with little, if any, environmental impact; near-shore operations incorporating natural and man-made elements; and off-shore farms.
Former NOAA chief scientist and founder of ocean advocacy group Mission Blue Sylvia Earle said there are more environmentally sustainable and economically viable options than open-ocean aquaculture, which uses huge floating net-pens or submerged cages. “We have to make a choice with aquaculture,” she said. “Is our goal to feed a large number of people? Or is our goal to create or to serve a luxury market?”
Last year, NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography put an economic value of $17 billion a year on the ocean off the west coasts of North and South America. That includes $4.3 billion from commercial and sport fishing and $12.9 billion for the capture of carbon.
Earle said the ocean is worth more, and no dollar figure can be attached to keeping the ocean, and in turn humans, healthy. “We now have recognition of other values of the ocean beyond what we can extract either for food or for products,” she said.
New technologies are being developed for open-ocean aquaculture, and many U. S. companies are sending their crews overseas to farm, according to NOAA officials.
“The U. S.’s view is we’d rather have these U. S. companies pursuing these opportunities in a sustainable, environmentally sound way in the U. S.,” said Michael Tosatto, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service regional administrator.
The NOAA plan would create a regulatory and permitting scheme for the industry. “It’s reasonably common knowledge that the environmental laws are less where aquaculture occurs the most, (that) being China and other Southeast Asia countries,” Tosatto said.
Many foreign operations have U. S. companies supplying the breed stock, then the fish are grown and sold back to the U. S. as imported seafood. U. S.-farmed fish in 2014 was valued at $1.3 billion, Tosatto said, and constitutes 19 percent of the nation’s seafood production.
That amounts to only 1 percent of the global farmed product.
NOAA has been trying to establish an aquaculture industry in federal waters for many years. But attempts to get legislation to implement open-sea aquaculture have failed.
“And so ( NOAA ) moved into the fishery management process … as a means to move forward with ocean aquaculture under the radar of the public,” said Marianne Cufone, executive director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition. NOAA received input from thousands of people during a public comment period last year on its plans.
Cufone’s New Orleans-based organization has been developing land-based aquaculture systems that are fully contained. Cufone says these types of farms are more sustainable than ocean aquaculture, and Earle agrees.
“Controlled systems are the most promising,” Earle said. “I personally am wary of the open ocean approach to aquaculture.”
Meanwhile, NOAA says researchers off Hawaii’s Big Island are studying ways to make open ocean farming safe and efficient. They are studying different techniques and species to better understand probelms the industry could face.
Native Hawaiians have long practiced sustainable aquaculture. They build walls around shoreline areas, allowing fresh water from the mountains and salt water from the ocean to flow in and out. Fish enter through slotted gates, and can’t get back out. The ponds are monitored to make sure they are healthy, mimicking nature.
“Our ancestors, they could … sustainably feed themselves no problem,” said Luka Mossman, a Native Hawaiian who grew up working on a traditional fish pond and is now helping study and restore such ponds with the nonprofit environmental group Conservation International.
“You constantly watch how the natural system works, and you adapt to that. You don’t try and adapt the natural system to work for you,” he said.
___
Follow Honolulu correspondent Caleb Jones on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CalebAP Find more of his work here: https://apnews.com/search/Caleb%20Jones%20Hawaii
Copyright © 2017 The Washington Times, LLC.
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