Obamacare's individual insurance market is fairly stable, LA County adds military helicopters to firefighting fleet, the Automated Vehicles Symposium is underway.
Trump administration data shows ACA marketplaces are actually OK
A new iteration of the Senate health care bill designed to replace the Affordable Care Act is expected Thursday.
It's Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's attempt to address concerns by Republican members on the right and in the center. It's still not clear if McConnell can round up the votes he needs.
The GOP and the White House both say they must act now because the private insurance markets set up by Obamacare are collapsing — but are they really?
Data released by the Trump administration shows that — in fact — those markets are pretty stable.
For more, Take Two spoke to KPCC health care reporter Michelle Faust.
Michelle, please figure it out for us. What's this new information from the Trump administration?
I'm going to get to that in just a moment, but first we have to do a little bit of a health insurance 101.
The individual health insurance market covers about 9 percent of people insured in California. About 45 percent of Californians receive health coverage from their employers. Covered California is California's marketplace for private insurance.
The key to success in markets like Covered California is stability, which comes down to managing risk for insurance companies. Health insurance prices are based on future predictions of what it will cost an insurer to pay for health care.
The Affordable Care Act prevents insurers from charging customers with pre-existing conditions more for insurance. Because of this, it's harder for insurers in the Covered California marketplace to set prices.
To tackle this challenge, the federal government created two programs to help companies determine risk. In an ideal world, these programs can prevent insurance premiums from spiking.
Those programs are:
Reinsurance: Insurance for insurance companies. Under this program, insurance companies would get money back if covering people cost more than expected. This program shelled out about 573 million dollars last year. It also ended in 2016.
Risk adjustment: The government has less-expensive customers pay into the pot. Companies that have more high-cost customers get money back. This program is still active.
Data released recently by the Trump administration reveals that those two programs are performing relatively well, especially in California, where patients were 20 percent less costly to insure than in other health exchanges. Covered California says this is because more people were able to sign up through the marketplace.
Michelle, I'm still scratching my head a little bit because I'm wondering what the disconnect is here. The White House insists that the Obamacare exchanges are collapsing. What gives?
That depends on what part of the picture you're looking at. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that — in the first quarter of this year — plans were the most profitable that they've been since the beginning of the ACA. In terms of healthcare providers, it's getting better.
In some parts of the country — mostly rural areas where there is less competition — insurers are pulling out. When that happens, it makes headlines when they've got no insurers or only one insurer. As we've established, insurance is all about risk, and companies are likely to charge more when they can't predict what's about to happen.
With drastic changes on the horizon for Obamacare, many insurance companies are preparing to raise their rates.
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
(Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.)
The latest helicopters added to LA County's aerial firefighting fleet
Summer has kicked off with quite the sizzle.
As of now, there are more than a dozen active fires burning throughout California. Two of them, on either side of Santa Barbara County, have forced some 3,500 people from their homes and new blazes have sprung up from San Diego to San Jose.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, L.A. County leaders approved a deal to add custom-modified military helicopters to our region's aerial firefighting fleet. The price tag? Almost $30 million dollars.
Thomas Ewald is the L.A. County Assistant Fire Chief. He spoke to A Martinez about the new choppers joining the aerial firefighting fleet.
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
Seniors increasingly rely on payday loans, fall into cycles of debt
You may have come across an ad saying, "borrow the money you need now and pay it back on your next pay day."
For some people in a pinch, payday loans can be helpful but the challenge is that the consequences of taking out one of these loans could extend way past that next pay day.
A report from the California Department of Business Oversight reveals that the average annual rate for these loans is 372 percent.
In California, seniors, many of whom are on fixed incomes, make up the largest group of pay day loan borrowers.
To help us understand why so many older Californians are turning to high interest, short term lenders, Take Two's A Martinez spoke with Liana Molina, Director of Community Engagement at the California Reinvestment Coalition. And with Blanca Castro, Advocacy Director for AARP California.
To listen to the full interview, click on the media player above.
#SoCalSoCurious: Who are the cash buyers in SoCal real estate?
SoCal. So Curious. When we answer your questions about how things work in Southern California – and why
Lauren Martinez lives in Pasadena, and has been looking for a home to buy with her husband.
"There was one town home that we found here in Pasadena that we just loved," she says.
It had a fireplace, an outdoor space for a dog.
"The upstairs bedroom was just amazing," she says. "It had this huge window that was really, really big and just had this gorgeous view of all these trees."
So she and her husband put in an offer. The seller seemed to like it.
"But then we ended up losing out to an all cash buyer," says Martinez, "and we’re just like, 'How can we compete with that?'"
She asked SoCal. So Curious: Who are all the cash buyers in SoCal real estate? And where do they get their money from?
Her friends and family suggested it might be foreign investors, which might have been true a while back.
"Those days really passed 4, 5 years ago," says Geoff McIntosh, president of the California Association of Realtors.
Back then many of those people came from China, but they're just about 5 percent of the cash buyers right now according to the association's research.
Deep pocketed American investors used to buy in all cash, too. But that was mostly right after the housing collapse in 2008 when they lapped up whatever cheap homes they could hoping to turn a profit once the market picked up.
Cash buys are still a thing, though.
Last month, he says 20 percent of all real estate transactions in Southern California were paid for in cash.
So who's outbidding Lauren with cash?
People with rich parents.
"They're going to mom and dad and saying, 'We really want to buy something and would love it if you give us the money,'" says McIntosh.
Other experts agree.
"Some parents are very very very well off and are capable of making a gift of a house to a kid," says Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
Green adds that his research shows another group that makes up cash buyers: people in the tech industry.
"People who work at Google, people who work at Facebook, people who work at LinkedIn," he says.
Some of these people aren't just paid well, but they're also paid with stock options.
When their hot tech company goes public, that means they can cash out. Big time.
"In California, people sell stock to buy houses in a big way," says Green, noting that it's a phenomenon unique to just our state and New York.
That doesn't mean Martinez should lose hope.
Realtor Geoff McIntosh says if you don't have cash, try to make up for it with tons of personality.
"We’re still in a people business," he says. "Absolutely you have to sell yourself. Write a compelling story about why purchasing that particular home is important."
Have a question you want KPCC journalists to investigate? Ask below or visit our SoCal. So Curious. page.
California is changing its roads for self-driving cars
Self-driving cars are a lot closer to reality than most people think. Auto makers are promising cars that won't need a human driver behind the wheel within the next four years. But a whole lot needs to happen between now and then. We caught up with California Department of Transportation Director Malcolm Dougherty during this week's Automated Vehicles Symposium in San Francisco to talk about how the state is preparing.
Take Two: What will California need to change about its infrastructure to accommodate self-driving cars?
Dougherty: There’s 36 different companies that have permits to test autonomous vehicles on public roads today, so those companies are learning as they’re going, but some of the issues that are coming up is that those vehicles are looking at the environment that they’re driving in — the condition of the infrastructure, the condition of our signs, the condition of the delineation is a factor in how effectively they operate within that environment.
How much money does the state need to make the roads ready for them to operate?
We just passed SB1, the new transportation revenue package. In my eyes, that’s a sufficient amount of resources for cities, counties and the state to properly maintain our existing infrastructure whether it’s roads, bridges, drainage systems like culverts, but it also identified intelligent transportation systems as one of the important items we need to maintain. That would be signals, cameras, changeable message signs, ramp meters and those things, so I think that there is adequate funding.
What about for vehicle-to-infrastructure technology?
As you start to put out components in the field that are talking to cars or signals that are sending out information for cars to receive, that’s a whole other contemplation for us. All of our signals already have technological cabinets that are controlling the timing and those types of things, but it would add a little bit of a cost to add that to all of our signals. I may not need to put up changeable message signs in the future. I may be putting up boxes that are sending out a signal to the car that tells the automobile what the downstream information is as opposed to me trying to relay it to them in three lines of text.
Do you consider yourself an advocate for self-driving cars?
I am and for a couple of very important reasons. I think the safety implications are significant. If my car is talking to your car, you and I are much less likely to run into each other when we approach an intersection. If any of our cars are looking out for pedestrians and bicyclists, I think that will be a very big safety benefit from the vulnerable user on the transportation system. I think if my car is talking to the signal, I’m also less likely to run a red light by accident. We’re having a lot of accidents with human-driven cars and we’re having a lot of fatalities, so I think the opportunity for the technology to improve safety is significant.
How long has California been testing self-driving cars?
The first real field test we did was 20 years ago in 1997 on Interstate 15 in San Diego on HOV lanes. Those cars were using human drivers, and steering, but they were using radars to pace off the vehicles in front of them and also following magnets in the pavement. Back then, that was very innovative. Today, we know we can’t put magnets in the pavement everywhere for cars to follow so now the modern car that has equipment like this is following the lane lines, using cameras, so that puts the onus back on us to make sure that delineation is very clear and discernible.
How do you delineate clearly?
One area this comes into with California is we’ve been using those Botts' Dots. The automated vehicles [AVs] can follow lane lines. They can’t follow the Botts' Dots, so we’re actually changing our delineation standards to go away from the Botts' Dots which we’ve been using for decades because AVs have a difficult time following those.
What other parts of the road need to be changed?
All of our lane lines are going to get thicker. Today our lane lines are only four inches thick. Now every lane line we lie down going forward is going to be six inches thick. I’ve already started to see some of this transition. That’s good for the AVs, but it’s also good because it will be much more clear delineation for the human driver as well.
How many miles of road need to be changed?
We have 50,000 lane miles in California. We’ll do it systematically as we have construction projects and we are constantly re-striping our highways all the time anyway, so it will take us a couple years to transition over. But that material only lasted a few years anyway, so we were constantly refreshing it. I would say we would at least prioritize the interstates and freeways and have that done in the next two or three years.
What about HOV lanes?
I could see a conversation getting struck up at a certain point in the future where we’re not just talking about HOV lanes. We’re talking about autonomous car lanes. I anticipate it’s coming because I only have so many lanes out there. There's a limited opportunity to build new lanes. That may not be the most strategic way to add capacity to the transportation system anyway. But it would be a very controversial question to take one of our existing lanes and make it an AV lane. So that, I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but I’m anticipating that the conversation is likely to come up. Folks will talk about AVs maximizing throughput. You’ll be able to put more cars faster and closer together when they’re autonomous. Well, they all have to be autonomous to have that contemplation. They have to be connected. So you can’t have a human car in that scenario. You would have to have separate lanes to be able to drive multiple vehicles, close together, at fast speeds, which we’ve tested with truck platooning with the same technology.
How would that impact EV access to the HOV lanes?
There’s an anticipation that a lot of the AVs will end up being EVs also. I’m worried about through put. I can’t give up the HOV lanes and put in autonomous single-occupant-vehicle lanes. I’ve lost volume, so it may be that there’s a combination of both. Maybe it’s autonomous HOV lanes. It’s got to be something, but I’ve also got to think about congestion, and I’ve got to think about through put, but I can see that conversation coming up.
How will self-driving cars affect traffic?
The interesting thing and an outstanding question on AVs is, "Is it going to increase or decrease vehicle miles traveled?" and that’s an open question. We don’t know the answer. But as an owner/operator of a transportation system, I have a concern about it increasing Vehicle Miles Traveled because I don’t have the capacity to handle that. We already don’t have enough capacity for the number of miles that are being driven today. If people are driving more because it’s autonomous or if you have empty cars taking dead load trips to go back and forth, you may actually be increasing the amount of VMT. You also have shared mobility that may not have a driver in the future, so at the onset of AVs and shared mobility, is VMT going to go through the roof? That doesn’t meet some of our other objectives and it actually may cause problems, but it does provide access and it provides mobility, so it’s going to be a balance. There’s a lot of outstanding policy questions.