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Other voices: Here’s how Medicare should negotiate drug prices

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:06:50 GMT

The Inflation Reduction Act, passed last year, gave Medicare the authority to negotiate drug prices for the first time. The government will start with 10 medications, which were announced in August. Now it just needs to figure out how much they should cost.When Congress created Medicare’s prescription-drug benefit in 2003, it prevented the government from haggling with drugmakers — a coup for the industry. Medicare’s new powers are forecast to reduce out-of-pocket costs for seniors and save nearly $100 billion over a decade. For consumers accustomed to paying the highest drug prices in the world, that’s unequivocally good news.Yet the government needs to strike a careful balance. The goal should be to push prices down while preserving incentives to develop new and better treatments. With this in mind, the law directs Medicare to find the “lowest maximum fair price” while “appropriately rewarding innovation.”Officials have spent months ...

Readers and writers: Sandford’s latest, plus fiction and nonfiction with eyes on the water

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:06:50 GMT

Davenport and Flowers are back in John Sandford’s 33rd Prey novel today, and we have fiction and nonfiction about canoes, ships, big water and rivers.(Courtesy of Penguin Random House)“Judgment Prey”: by John Sandford (Putnam, $29.95)“You’re a little testy, and not in a particularly fun way,” Virgil said.“I know,” Lucas said. “I can’t help it, because Lundgren told me something important about who killed Sand, but I don’t know what she told me.”“What? I didn’t pick up a single thing from her,” Virgil said. “We should go back and ask her.”“That’s the problem,” Lucas said. “I had it, but I don’t know what it is, and I don’t think she’d know, either.”“Something about cheese? About goats?”“No. Goats had nothing to do with it. I don’t think.” — from “Judgment Prey”John Sandford (Courtesy of Pe...

Word Game: Oct. 1, 2023

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:06:50 GMT

TODAY’S WORD — INCREMENT (INCREMENT: IN-krih-ment: An amount of positive or negative change.)Average mark 55 wordsTime limit 60 minutesCan you find 68 or more words in INCREMENT?TODAY’S WORD — INCREMENT icemen inert inner inter intern item nene nice nicer niece nine niter cement cent center centime cite crime recent recite rein remit rennet rent retie rice rime rite emetic eminent emir emit enter entice entire erect ermine erne meet mere merit mete meter metier metric mice mien mince mine miner mint mire mite miter teem teen term tern tier time timer tine tinner tire tree trice trim trineTo purchase the Word Game book, visit WordGameBooks.com. Order it now for just $5 while supplies last!RULES OF THE GAME:1. Words must be of four or more letters.2. Words that acquire four letters by the addition of “s,” such as “bats” or “dies,” are not allowed.3. Additional words made by adding a “d” or an “s” may not be used. For example, if “bake” is used, “baked” or “bake...

Horoscopes Oct. 1, 2023: Zach Galifianakis, prepare to move on

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:06:50 GMT

CELEBRITIES BORN ON THIS DAY: Brie Larson, 34; Zach Galifianakis, 54; Esai Morales, 61; Julie Andrews, 88.Happy Birthday: Keep your circle small and your personal information a secret. Protect against injury, illness and temptation. Look inward and address issues that will encourage personal growth. Prioritize warding off drama, chaos and nonproductive situations with individuals who don’t fit certain criteria. Discard, reboot and prepare to move on with less baggage. Your numbers are 8, 14, 23, 25, 37, 46, 48.ARIES (March 21-April 19): Tread carefully, look before you leap and stick to what you know and trust. Change may tempt you, but you aren’t likely to get an accurate picture without a thorough investigation. Put more time and effort into self-improvement. 3 starsTAURUS (April 20-May 20): Believe in yourself and what you can do to achieve contentment and happiness. Use intelligence and change what you don’t like. Disconnect from manipulative individuals who tr...

Bridge: Oct. 1, 2023

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:06:50 GMT

My friend the English professor picks his words carefully — as if he were wielding a pair of tweezers.“People are so careless with word usage,” he complained to me in the club lounge. “Today, one of my students insisted that it didn’t matter whether someone `played bad’ or `played badly.'”“How did you respond to that?”“I asked him, when a pretty girl walked by, whether it mattered if he looked at her stern or sternly.”I don’t suppose today’s declarer played bad or badly, but he didn’t make his contract. After South boldly accepted North’s invitational raise to 2NT, West led the five of spades, and South put up dummy’s jack as his only chance to win the first trick. When East’s queen covered, South played low, ducked the spade return and won the third spade.South then needed to set up four club tricks without letting West get in to cash his two good spades; South needed to find East ...

Ask Amy: I want to date a woman who understands ‘The Wizard of Oz’

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:06:50 GMT

Dear Amy: I am a 73-year-old man who was widowed four years ago. I’ve been dating “Maria” for over a year. She is 71 and was raised in Spain.Maria is a genuinely good person, and she is madly in love with me, to the point of smothering. (Her late husband was not very kind to her.)Maria has been professing her love for me since we began texting before our first date. (She is a neighbor of some friends of mine and apparently had her eye on me for a while.)She says I am the man of her dreams and that she wants to spend the rest of her life with me. And she says this with total earnestness and wide-eyed schoolgirl innocence.I do feel love for her, though not as intensely as she does for me. I’ve just never felt that special “click” with her.My dilemma is this: I want to date other women. I want to find one that I really click with and without having to always explain basic Americana (like baseball, “The Wizard of Oz”, the Emmy Awards, etc.). Maria never really im...

New Group Attacking iPhone Encryption Backed by U.S. Political Dark-Money Network

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:06:50 GMT

The Heat Initiative, a nonprofit child safety advocacy group, was formed earlier this year to campaign against some of the strong privacy protections Apple provides customers. The group says these protections help enable child exploitation, objecting to the fact that pedophiles can encrypt their personal data just like everyone else.When Apple launched its new iPhone this September, the Heat Initiative seized on the occasion, taking out a full-page New York Times ad, using digital billboard trucks, and even hiring a plane to fly over Apple headquarters with a banner message. The message on the banner appeared simple: “Dear Apple, Detect Child Sexual Abuse in iCloud” — Apple’s cloud storage system, which today employs a range of powerful encryption technologies aimed at preventing hackers, spies, and Tim Cook from knowing anything about your private files.Something the Heat Initiative has not placed on giant airborne banners is who’s behind it: a controversial billionaire philanthrop...

Europe takes climate fight global as carbon border tax goes live

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:06:50 GMT

The EU’s effort to become climate neutral is kicking into high gear — as of Sunday the bloc’s carbon border tax enters a trial period, which is likely to raise tensions with key trading partners. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism — or CBAM — was adopted last year with the aim of ensuring that goods manufactured in Europe, and subject to the EU’s Emissions Trading System, which sets a price on carbon emitted, will be able to withstand competition from products made in countries where polluting doesn’t come with the same price attached.Starting October 1, the EU’s trading partners will have to report the greenhouse gas emissions tied to their exports of iron, steel, cement, aluminum, fertilizer, hydrogen and electricity.Initially, the requirement is just to report the emissions — although companies failing to do so face fines — the actual payments go into effect in 2026.The point of the exercise is to both shield EU companies from unfair completion and to ...

With US shutdown averted, White House prepares to fight for Ukraine aid

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:06:50 GMT

With minutes to spare, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a stopgap funding bill Saturday to avert a shutdown and keep the government open for 45 days.In doing so, he capped a chaotic 24 hours that riveted much of Washington but left one of the White House’s top priorities, aid for Ukraine, in serious jeopardy.Like others in the nation’s capital, the Biden White House had been caught off guard Saturday morning when Speaker Kevin McCarthy abruptly reversed course and announced that he would bring a clean, stop gap bill to fund the government through November 17, 2023.But aides weren’t terribly surprised. They had assumed the government shutdown showdown would end this way at some point — with the main question being whether McCarthy would take his lumps before or after the funding deadline.They weren’t displeased with the outcome either. The bill didn’t just fund the government, it also included $16 billion in disaster relief and, as one White House official noted, avoids “any version o...

‘Yeah, this guy is different’: When the Orioles knew Gunnar Henderson was special

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:06:50 GMT

This season has shown the baseball world how special Gunnar Henderson is. The Orioles have known it a lot longer.Saturday, Henderson was named the Most Valuable Oriole, only the fourth rookie to win the award in the club’s 70 years in Baltimore. In November, the 22-year-old is expected to be deemed the American League Rookie of the Year, Baltimore’s first such honoree since 1989. Between, he’ll get the chance to shine on the national stage of the MLB playoffs, having played a key role for the AL East champions.What makes Henderson stand out goes beyond his .257 batting average, .817 OPS, 28 homers or 82 RBIs. The Baltimore Sun asked Henderson’s teammates, coaches and even his signing scout when they knew he was a special player. Here’s what they said.2018 high school showcaseScout Dave Jennings:“Yeah, the first time was at an East Coast Pro high school showcase type deal we have down south. I was one of the coaches on that club and just bein...