Come 2017, there's a chance UnitedHealth Group will no longer be a part of ObamaCare. The nation's largest health insurer announced Thursday that, after taking into account losses of $275 million on plans sold through the Affordable Care Act exchanges, it would be slashing its 2016 earning projections and re-evaluating whether it would participate in the program in 2017. An estimated 550,000 people are currently enrolled in the insurer's exchange plans.
UnitedHealth's announcement marks a big change of heart for the company, which said just a month ago that it was optimistic about seeing "strikingly better performances on the insurance exchange business" in 2016.
Compare that to what UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley said Thursday: "In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual exchange participation have tempered industrywide, co-operatives have failed and market data has signaled higher risks and more difficulties while our own claims experience has deteriorated, so we are taking this proactive step."
The insurer has reduced its outlook for fourth-quarter earnings by $425 million. If UnitedHealth decides to bail come 2017, it would strike a major blow to ObamaCare. Becca Stanek
San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday for an ordinance it hopes will tackle the "growing health epidemic of youth vaping."
The supervisors voted to amend the health code to ban the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes, and the final vote is expected next week. "This is about thinking about the next generation of users and thinking about protecting the overall health and sending a message to the rest of the state and the country: Follow our lead," Supervisor Ahsha Safai said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2018, 4.9 million middle and high school students were vaping, up from 3.6 million in 2017. The e-cigarette company Juul is based in San Francisco, and says vaping is a safer alternative to smoking tobacco. "The prohibition of vapor products for all adults in San Francisco will not effectively address underage use and will leave cigarettes on shelves as the only choice for adult smokers, even though they kill 40,000 Californians every year," Juul spokesman Ted Kwong told NBC News. Catherine Garcia
Federal authorities seized 33,000 pounds of cocaine Tuesday from a ship at Packer Marine Terminal in Philadelphia, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said.
This was one of the biggest drug busts in U.S. history, with the cocaine having a street value of more than $1 billion. The U.S. attorney's office said several crew members were arrested and will face federal charges. There have been several major cocaine busts on the East Coast this year, with authorities finding 3,200 pounds at the Port of New York and New Jersey in February and drug dogs sniffing out 1,185 pounds just a month later in Philadelphia.
The drugs were found on a vessel called the MSC Gayane, The Associated Press reports, which made stops in the Bahamas, Panama, Peru, and Colombia. The ship's owner, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co., said in a statement it "takes this matter very seriously and is grateful to the authorities for identifying any suspected abuse of its services." Catherine Garcia
Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) teamed up from across the aisle on Tuesday to raise concerns over President Trump's decision on Monday to deploy 1,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East.
The two senators wrote a letter to the president, asking him to clarify several aspects of the decision, including where, specifically, the troops will be deployed, what their mission is, and if they'll be used to apply pressure on Iran. They also asked Trump to relay to them what the "new, specific imminent threat from Iran is."
The senators were joined by a bipartisan group of fellow senators, including Jeff Merkley (D-Or.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Murphy (D-Ct.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in signing the letter. Together, they emphasized that Congress has not authorized war with Iran and "no current statutory authority allows the U.S. to conduct hostilities against the government of Iran." The letter concludes with a request for a joint Defense, State, and Intelligence community briefing by the end of June to address the situation. Read the full letter here. Tim O'Donnell
Katharine Gorka may not be as well-known as her husband Sebastian Gorka, a former adviser to President Trump. But that might be about to change.
On Tuesday, Acting CBP Commissioner John Sanders told CNN that Katharine Gorka is slated to become the next Customs and Border Protection press secretary. The job will come after Gorka's time at the Department of Homeland Security, during which critics called her out for quietly cutting funding to anti-hate groups that combated anti-Muslim bias.
Gorka wrote for the far-right outlet Brietbart before securing a job under Trump, implying in several articles that Islam is inherently violent and terroristic, CNN documents. She's since brought that stance to a role as an adviser to the secretary of homeland security and tried "to instill her anti-Islamist philosophy throughout the department," BuzzFeed News reported in August 2017. "She played a significant role in denying CVE grant funding to groups that work to de-radicalize neo-Nazis and other far right extremists and Muslim-American groups," former State Department official Eric Rosland told BuzzFeed News, saying that made her "much more dangerous than Sebastian."
CBP hasn't had a press secretary since March, and Gorka's expected appointment comes as the situation on the southern border grows direr by the day.
Sebastian Gorka, meanwhile, also spent some time writing for Breitbart, and served as a White House national security aide before his ouster in mid-2017. He's since moved on to criticizing gay rat weddings on Twitter. Kathryn Krawczyk
A judge is sanctioning Alex Jones after he ranted against the attorneys in his case and suggested one tried to frame him with child pornography, CNN reports.
Jones is currently being sued by families of Sandy Hook shooting victims over his false claims that the massacre was a hoax, which he later backed down from. On Monday, attorneys representing the families said they found child pornography in files Jones' team turned over to them. Plaintiffs said the pornography had "apparently been sent to Infowars email addresses," and Jones' attorney said that federal prosecutors determined there is "no indication anyone at Infowars knowingly possessed child pornography."
In a Friday broadcast, though, Jones suggested he was being framed and that the Sandy Hook families' attorneys were involved. He also pounded on a photo of one of lawyers in the case.
"You're trying to set me up with child porn," Jones said on the show as he offered a $1 million reward to "put your head on a pike," BuzzFeed News reports. Jones later said he is not accusing the attorneys of trying to frame him. The attorneys gave Bridgeport Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis footage of this broadcast, asking her to review it.
Bellis is now sanctioning Jones, CNN reports, blasting the Infowars host for his "indefensible," "unconscionable," and "possibly criminal behavior," also saying she wasn't "able to see an apology" from him in a followup Saturday broadcast and that she has "no doubt" that he was accusing the attorney of planting the child pornography. The judge has reportedly denied the defense the ability to pursue special motions to dismiss the case, and she awarded the families lawyers attorneys fees and filing fees. One of Jones' attorneys had previously argued his comments were not threatening while admitting they were "certainly inappropriate." Brendan Morrow