A man in Austria was shocked to be handed a bill from a debt collection agency for €10,365 ($12,000) after misplacing his hotel key….
After all,
the key was a skeleton key for the entire building, and now the owner is claiming all of the hotel’s intricate locks must be replaced.
So—a hotel is careless of its security setup, and that makes its customers responsible for any potential breach.
Hmm….
With a Mexico-US trade agreement in nominally in hand (our two nations’ legislatures have ratify it, and our own Progressive-Democrats in the Senate are already saying #NO, #RESIST, and too many Republicans are acquiescing, though), Mexico wants Canada to join the agreement. Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, after speaking with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:
There is still time to achieve a trilateral agreement[.]
And
We hope they reach that understanding so that it will be a trilateral agreement.
Certainly, Canada’s joining an agreement would be good, but first the Canadians have to get serious in their negotiations. President Donald Trump already has offered a tariff-free régime, and Canada won’t even discuss it. Trudeau and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Christia Freeland, steadfastly are demanding their protectionist tariffs—dairy, for instance—remain in place.
Update: They’re in. Now it’s necessary to convince Progressive-Democrat and self-serving Republicans in the Senate to ratify the deal.
Here’s an illustration of why one is badly needed. The Wall Street Journal‘s article is centered on health coverage plans, but the underlying problem is in health care provision and the monopolistic nature of both provision and coverage.
Last year, Cigna Corp and the New York hospital system Northwell Health discussed developing an insurance plan that would offer low-cost coverage by excluding some other health-care providers, according to people with knowledge of the matter. It never happened.
The problem was a separate contract between Cigna and NewYork-Presbyterian, the powerful hospital operator that is a Northwell rival. Cigna couldn’t find a way to work around restrictive language that blocked it from selling any plans that didn’t include NewYork-Presbyterian, according to the people.
And
Dominant hospital systems use an array of secret contract terms to protect their turf and block efforts to curb health-care costs. As part of these deals, hospitals can demand insurers include them in every plan and discourage use of less-expensive rivals. Other terms allow hospitals to mask prices from consumers, limit audits of claims, add extra fees and block efforts to exclude health-care providers based on quality or cost.
We’re on track to commit 20% of our GDP to health care costs, and the industries of health care provision and health care coverage operating outside a free market environment is the major driver of that expense.
The WSJ piece goes on at length in this vein.
If patients and our doctors were able to shop around and force hospitals, clinics, and coverage providers to compete for our business, we’d very quickly see better health care, better (actual) health insurance, and lower costs. If our doctors had to compete for our business, we’d see just as quickly better care at lower cost. And our doctors would need have no fear of costs—their fees—going too low: there’s a lot to be said for patient loyalty to a good doctor, both from a quality of care and continuity of that care perspective.
Our economy had the awe-uninspiring growth rate of 2% per year during ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) time in office. Now, the Census Bureau has reported that
Obama didn’t build that. Those folks also think they’ve reached the point where they’ve made enough money.
On the other hand, Obama, his Progressive-Democrat cronies, and his regulators did create the very low economic baseline against which those per centages are being measured.
The US is cutting off funding for the PLO, and we’re closing the PLO’s delegation office in DC. Various apologists for the terrorist organization are up in arms over the Trump administration’s sterner stand.
…the administration that appear to be moving away from the 1993-95 Oslo accords before the administration has explained what it thinks should come next.
Walking away from the Oslo peace framework? That framework doesn’t exist; the PLO walked away from it long ago. See, for instance, PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s intifada after walking away from the historic and generous Israeli peace offer brokered by Bill Clinton in 2000.
Moreover, neither is the Trump administration required to lay out its strategy vis-à-vis the PLO in public—and thereby let the PLO develop its resistance to it—before it has presented its plan to Israel and the PLO nor is it required to negotiate with the PLO through the press.
Palestinians call move “reckless”
Reckless? What’s reckless is the PLO’s support for Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel. What’s reckless is the PLO’s paying bounties to surviving families of terrorists killed in PLO and PLO-supported terror attacks. What’s reckless is PLO’s support for Hezbollah.
Aaron David Miller of the Wilson Center:
They [the Trump administration] are dismantling the traditional American architecture to create a two-state solution
That traditional architecture has worked so well over all these years. No, it’s time to stop wasting time and resources on that obvious failure and try something else.
Beginning with encouraging the PLO to become interested in peace.