What the GOP healthcare plan could mean for California, why pandas are black and white, new music with Tuesday Reviewsday

Medi-Cal, the Medicaid program here is massive. It covers 1/3 of all Californians. It covers half of all births in the state. It's a 100 billion dollar program when you put all the state and federal money together. And it has certainly grown under the Affordable Care Act with a big expansion. It's added about 5 million Californians since 2014. And nearly 4 million of those came under the expansion. The expansion was very attractive to states because the federal government was picking up most of the tab. About 95% of the expansion is paid for by the federal government. 



This Republican plan would freeze that starting in 2020 and then lower the funding. So, people who got Medi-Cal under the expansion could stay but no new people under the expansion after 2020. Starting in 2020, those people could stay on, but the funding drops. And then eventually, I think the Republican idea is that those people start to drop off the Medi-Cal program as people get jobs they cycle in and out of the program so over time, the overall cost of the program would drop. That's the real focus of the Republicans. They want to slow down the growth of Medicaid nationally and decrease monies that have to go into that program.  

The Affordable Care Act or Obamacare as many people call it, really puts most of the money on a sliding scale. So, people who are lowest income– say people who are $20,000 a year– they get the most help. And then as you go up from there, you get less subsidy.



This Republican plan is really a dramatic reduction in where that money is going– who gets the most help. They opt for a simply, across the board subsidy or tax credit based primarily on age.  And it ranges from $2,000 to $4,000 a year. So, if you're 20-years-old, you get about $2,000. If you're in your 40's, you get about $3,000. Up to 60-years-old, you would get  $4,000.



Under this new system, some people could lose up to $8,000 to $12,000 a year in premium subsidies... There are winners and losers here but in terms of lower income people and older consumers, they would lose money under the republican plan. 

You want as many people in the pool to spread the cost. Healthcare and health insurance is expensive. You want as many people paying into the system as possible so that we can pay for our neighbor who has cancer. OR when we get hit by a bus and land in the hospital. The idea is that no one wants to pay for health insurance so you need a requirement, particularly for those young and healthy people who think nothing's ever going to happen to them. You needed to require them to have health insurance and you needed to have a penalty. So when you filed taxes, you have to pay a penalty if you didn't have health insurance. 



A lot of people didn't like that– government telling me what to do. So, Republicans ripped that out. No individual mandate, no penalty. And they've come up with another way to come at it and it's called ‘continuous coverage’. If you don't have coverage for more than 63 days, if you try to come back in, you'll pay a penalty on your health insurance. Not to the IRS, but you would pay 30% more on your health insurance for one year. That would be the new penalty. 

I think that the issue is that there isn't any other mammal that looks like the giant panda, and so it's not easy to say, "Well, another species has this kind of coloration for such and such reason and therefore it's likely that the giant panda has that, too."



...The breakthrough in this study is that we decided to break up the body parts of the giant panda's external appearance into the face, the belly, the back, the shoulders and the legs. And then, taking each of those parts alone, we could then compare it to many other related species of carnivores."

What we did is, we looked to see where you find white backs or black legs in other carnivores. And so we looked at variables like temperature, and the giant panda is an interesting species because it moves between different habitats during the course of the year. So, some of the year it's found in snowier backgrounds and some of the year it's found in dark subtropical rain forests.



So, we think that the white and black coloration is a kind of compromise between these two different environments and the animals trying to stay camouflaged against large predators like wolves and tigers in both of these habitats, simultaneously..."

We were able to determine that the black and white coloration on the side of the body is concerned with camouflage, but that didn't work at all for the face. The black eyes and the black ears seem to be involved with communication between either pandas and other carnivores. Perhaps, the ears signal ferocity...



We certainly think the panda is paying a lot of attention to these large black eye markings on other pandas. These eye markings are very variable in shape and in size and, certainly, when you have an interaction between two pandas and there's possibly a fight going to happen ... if one of the animals wants to back off without getting into a fight, it will cover its eyes with its forepaws so that it hides the shape of its eyes from the dominant opponent.

I've been in the business of goat prevention for about 15 years. It's like a hobby, but being a Christian person, I use it as a ministry also. 



I started with one goat with my stepson. We were doing the fairs, doing trophy work and trying to get a trophy for good-looking animals. And I told my wife, "This is going to cost us $800 a month in alfalfa to keep these animals here." So I figured another way to pay for it was brush clearance. 



People think I was kinda crazy, but the thing is, I've been 15-20 years in this business, and it pays its own way. 

I told them exactly what I tell people now. You may replace this house you've burned down, but you may not replace the souvenirs: your marriage license, pictures of your family. You don't even have a toothbrush when you leave. So you should have fire prevention 200 feet from your house. 

Well, this brush before would be like 2 feet. Now it's about 5 feet tall. In some places, it's even taller than that. It's going to be a danger this year coming. You're gonna have 5 feet of brush around your home. You better get a goat man in there, because it's gonna be really dangerous this year. 

Yes. These goats are from South Africa. They're brush animals, and they weigh about 200 pounds, and they eat all day long. They have four tummies. They will stand the 110-degree heat in the summertime, and they stand on two feet like a deer and eat up into the tree about 5 feet.