Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Dianrong, FinEX claim Asian first with asset management fintech
 HONG KONG, Aug. 29, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dianrong and FinEX Asia today announced the launch of Asia's first financial technology (fintech) asset management platform. FinEX Asia was established in 2017 to connect Asian investors with US consumer lending assets, such as credit card loans.

FinEX Asia combines its risk management expertise with Dianrong's advanced fintech capabilities to give Asian investors access to a diverse and attractive portfolio of U.S. consumer lending assets. FinEX Asia's fintech solutions offer advanced risk modeling capabilities, blockchain data security, performance monitoring, and secondary marketplace liquidity.

Soul Htite, Founder and CEO of Dianrong, said, "When Maggie approached Dianrong as a technology partner only a few months ago, we knew that her business vision and our proven fintech solutions were the perfect match.

"From start to finish, Dianrong engineers designed, refined and delivered a dynamic fintech platform in a matter of months. Our work with FinEX Asia further demonstrates the flexibility, scalability and speed-to-market of Dianrong's robust fintech capabilities," said Mr. Htite.

Maggie Ng, Founder and CEO of FinEX Asia said, "In collaboration with Dianrong, we have developed a versatile platform that gives investors seamless access to the U.S. consumer lending asset class and facilitates their investments with real-time monitoring and scenario-planning tools.

"Our fintech solution saw unparalleled speed-to-market thanks to our strong partnership with Dianrong. Now, investors who use FinEX Asia will benefit from our deep risk management expertise, which leverages artificial intelligence capabilities," Ms. Ng added.

Qualified investors may access the FinEX Asia platform through the company's new website, http://www.finexasia.com. The new investment platform provides easy access to product information, investment options and market analysis.

About Dianrong:

Dianrong, a leader in online marketplace lending in China, originates US$500 million in monthly assets for 4 million retail lenders. Founded in 2012, Dianrong offers individuals and small and medium-sized enterprises a comprehensive, one-stop financial platform supported by industry-leading technology, compliance and transparency. The company's sophisticated and flexible infrastructure enables it to design and customize lending and borrowing products and services, based on industry-specific data and insights, all supported by online risk-management and operation tools. Dianrong's specific offerings include loan originations, investment products and marketplace lending solutions. Dianrong was also named in 2016 to the executive directorship of the National Internet Finance Association of China, led by the People's Bank of China. Based in Shanghai, Dianrong has 28 offices across China and employs approximately 3,500 professionals, including 600 full-time fintech engineers. For more information, please visit www.dianrong.com/en.

About FinEX Asia:

FinEX Asia is the first global fintech platform that connects Asian investors with high-quality, low-volatility asset classes, including U.S. consumer credit. FinEX Asia unlocks the potentials of these quality asset classes for qualified investors and provides them with access to a diverse portfolio of verified overseas assets in a streamlined, one-stop onboarding process. Powered by advanced fintech infrastructure, FinEX Asia's platform offers risk modelling capabilities, blockchain data security, real-time performance monitoring and marketplace liquidity, which investors can leverage to make better investment decisions. FinEX Asia is a strategic technology partner of Dianrong, a leader in online marketplace lending in China. For more information, please visit www.finexasia.com.

SOURCE Dianrong.com

Related Links

http://www.dianrong.com/en

Output: Online marketplace lender Dianrong and fintech investment firm FinEX Asia are launching a fintech asset management platform, which they claim will be the first of its kind in Asia. The platform will blend FinEX Asia’s risk management and risk modelling offering with the fintech capability of Dianrong, providing access to US consumer lending assets with tools for real-time monitoring and AI-based scenario planning.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
JBL harnesses Google Assistant to rival Google Home
 Harman audio brand JBL has taken the wraps off a series of new voice-activated speakers during its exclusive press event at the IFA consumer technology tradeshow in Berlin.

The JBL LINK 10, LINK 20 and LINK 300 all ship with the Google Assistant.

Just like the Google Home, JBL LINK owners will be able to play music and podcasts, organise their calendar and control smart home devices with a few voice commands.

The smart speakers can also answer general knowledge queries, search for directions, check the latest news and traffic, and translate phrases.

But unlike the Google Home, the JBL LINK 10 and LINK 20 can be unplugged and taken out the house with you.

The LINK 10 and LINK 20 boast five and ten hours of battery life respectively.

Output: Harman audio firm JBL is launching a series of voice-activated speakers, the JBL LINK 10, LINK 20 and LINK 300, all of which are Google Assistant-compatible. The smart speakers will have all the functionality of Google Home, but the devices are portable, equipped with up to ten hours of battery life and waterproofing of up to IPX7. The devices will be available from autumn 2017.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
SK Innovation battery extends EV driving range to 500 km
 SK Innovation will start the world’s first commercial production of mid- and large-sized pouch-type NCM 811 batteries that would allow a driving range of up to 500 kilometers for electric vehicles, the company said Thursday.

NCM 811’s letters and number stand for the chemicals and proportions of the chemicals that make up the battery. The chemicals are nickel, cobalt and manganese.

Starting in December this year, the new batteries will be supplied for the production of energy storage systems. For EVs, the company will begin supplying the batteries from the third quarter of 2018, it said.

A picture of a battery cell being produced (SK Innovation)

Output: Electric vehicle battery manufacturer SK Innovation will begin the first commercial production of medium and large pouch-type NCM 811 batteries in the world, enabling driving ranges of up to 500 km for EVs. The batteries, named after the metals (nickel, cobalt and manganese) used in the battery and their proportions, will be produced for energy storage systems from December 2017, with supply for EVs starting from Q3 2018. SK Innovation will build the batteries at its Seosan facilities, which have 3.9 GW/h of battery manufacture capacity.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
S&P cautious on profit outlooks for Lemonade, Root, Metromile
 S&P Global Market Intelligence is out with a report questioning three emerging Insurtech platforms. The report states that profitability is elusive for these startups. Mentioning specifically Lemonade, Metromile, and Root Insurance, S&P says that each reported overall net losses in the second quarter, as incurred losses from claims outweighed premium revenues and investment income was not enough to cover the deficit.

Ok, so no one would expect startups to be generating any profit as early stage companies typically target market growth for many years. Have you ever heard of Amazon? It took that company six years for its first profitable quarter and even after that point in time, profits remained elusive. But S&P adds the overall picture for U.S. property and casualty insurance industry as a whole is pretty bad. Per S&P Global Market Intelligence’s August 21 calculations, the industry produced a net underwriting loss of $3.68 billion during the quarter, based on data from nearly 2,500 individual P&C entities. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. played a large part in these results, with its P&C group generating a $1.94 billion net underwriting loss.

Lemonade is offering Homeowners / renters insurance only (for now). Metromile and Root are gunning for the auto insurance sector. San Francisco-based Metromile offers insurance rates based on the amount of miles driven, without taking into account the driver’s behavior. Ohio-based Root takes driving habits into account, considering not only mileage, but factors like hard braking, dangerous routes, driving regularity and time of day. Metromile adds hardware to a car to gauge driver characteristics. Root uses a mobile App.

S&P says that while Lemonade, Metromile and Root did not turn a profit in the second quarter, the trio continued to grow premiums. Root had the biggest percentage increase in direct premiums written at 245%, though the amount it wrote was the lowest of the three in aggregate terms. Lemonade and Root expanded geographically in the second quarter and have continued to add states since that time. Lemonade launched in New Jersey in August and Root launched in Indiana in July.

The report added that Lemonade’s and Root’s investment portfolios (excluding cash) consist entirely of U.S. Treasury securities. Lemonade added some more Treasurys in the second quarter, purchasing roughly $840,000 worth, while Root did not make any purchases. Metromile’s portfolio is also mostly composed of Treasurys, though it holds some agency securities as well. It did not report any new purchases during the second quarter.

So what is the message here? Well, it is really way too early to measure any type of expected financial success. But many (if not most) insurance industry observers believe that this sector of finance is overdue for a digital transformation. And these three companies may be leading the pack.

Output: Lemonade, Root Insurance and Metromile are mentioned in a report from S&P Global Market Intelligence that cites net losses in Q2 as reason to be cautious on their profitability outlooks. Loss-related claims outweighed premium revenues and investment income – mostly from US Treasury holdings – at the three firms, the report said. However, it also noted continued growth in premiums, and geographical expansion at Root and Lemonade. While start-ups aren’t expected to be instantly profitable, S&P suggests the negative backdrop in the US property and casualty sector, which posted a Q2 net underwriting loss of $3.68bn, could create headwinds for the insuretechs.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
China to create 'high-speed flying train' for Silk Road project
 China's aerospace agency is researching a "high-speed flying train" which will be able to reach top speeds of 2,485 mph (4,000 kmph) - more than three times the speed of sound.

The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) is developing a transportation system similar to that of Elon Musk's futuristic Hyperloop system.

The Chinese agency says it owns over 200 patents for the project and plans in the future to export its hyperloop to countries along its touted modern-day Silk Road.

China's President Xi Jinping has said the country's multibillion dollar plan to build a modern-day Silk Road will be the "project of the century".

The country's existing high-speed rail network has received billions in investment in recent years, but CASIC's futuristic system will require even more.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 0:40 CASIC's planned 'supersonic flying train'

Most hyperloop systems use pods and magnetic levitation to transport passengers through a near-vaccuum tube at potentially supersonic speeds.

Passengers would be transported in a similar way to how discs move over air hockey tables; with exceptionally low friction.

As the pods near their destination, electromagnets would slow them down and the kinetic energy of the travelling pod would be absorbed back into the system.

CASIC said that its own version of the system will be the first in the world to hit supersonic speed, although no system has yet managed to breach the 767 mph (1,234 kmph) speed of sound.

Output: The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) is said to be developing the world's first supersonic transport system, in what China's President Xi Jinping dubbed the "project of the century". The system, similar to Elon Musk's Hyperloop, would be constructed along the modern-day Silk Road, and CASIC said it already has more than 200 patents for the project.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Ireland's first narrowband IoT network launched by Vodafone
 Vodafone launches first narrow-band IoT network Pro

Vodafone has launched Ireland’s first Narrow-band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) network which will facilitate the connections of a wide variety of devices, underpinning the country’s development as a ‘smart nation’.

Launched by Minister for Communications, Climate Action & Environment, Denis Naughten, NB-IoT is a low power wide area network (LPWA) technology. It is designed to wirelessly connect millions of devices that have low bandwidth requirements, such as municipal bins, parking bay meters, air quality sensors, and more, that will, Vodafone says, enable society to become smarter and more efficient, massively benefiting citizens as well as businesses. The company predicts that Irish consumers will see a huge variety of products, services and applications enabled by NB-IoT.

Network upgrades

Vodafone said that in preparing for this rollout, it had upgraded its existing 4G base stations to provide nationwide NB-IoT coverage, which will have the ability to run alongside existing 2G, 3G and 4G networks.

NB-IoT has broad support within the mobile industry, Vodafone reports, from 40 global mobile operators, 27 technology vendors and over 550 mobile IoT innovators.

The company has been a supporter of these technologies here, with involvement in an industrial IoT project with EMC and others from 2015.

Technology milestone

“Today’s announcement by Vodafone Ireland is warmly welcomed and I’m delighted to support such innovation,” said Minister Naughten. “This is a significant technology milestone that holds the potential to connect millions of devices and change the way we use and interact with technology. Ireland continues to be at the forefront of such innovation, with this latest rollout by Vodafone being a true testament to the limitless possibility NB-IoT can offer.”

“My department is committed to working closely with industry to ensure that digital advancements such as NB-IoT meet the needs of our society, as well as ensuring Ireland punches above its weight when it comes to innovation,” said the minister.

Urgent need

“The evolution of the Internet of Things,” said Anne O’Leary, CEO, Vodafone Ireland, “ means that there is an urgent need for a low-power way to connect thousands of devices. NB-IoT fits the bill perfectly. We are therefore delighted to be the first Irish operator to provide a fully commercial, nationwide NB-IoT network to our customers. Our latest innovation will provide a head start to Irish businesses and consumers in their race to become truly smart and efficient, radically saving time and money”

“The NB-IoT network is a standards based technology and is deployed in the licenced spectrum which is important from a security perspective. Our service offers specialist security consultancy to provide advisory support and security assessments to ensure that the security and data protection of our customers is protected,” said O’Leary.

TechCentral Reporters

Output: Ireland's first narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT) network has been launched by Vodafone and the country's Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Denis Naughten. Vodafone said it upgraded its existing 4G base stations to provide nationwide coverage. The low-power, NB-IoT network would help wirelessly connect smart city systems, such as municipal bins, parking bay meters and air quality sensors. "This is a significant technology milestone that holds the potential to connect millions of devices and change the way we use and interact with technology," said Naughten.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Event38 fixed-wing drone can fly 10 times longer than quadcopters
 While the use of drones for security purposes is becoming more and more popular, customers are yet to reach a consensus on the best UAV solutions out there.

Jeff Taylor, President,

Event 38 Unmanned Systems

"It is sized to gain the most performance possible without needing a launcher to get it off the ground, making it portable and easy to store."

While the use of drones for security purposes is becoming more and more popular, customers are yet to reach a consensus on the best UAV solutions out there. This is because, while several companies produce drones, the requirements of the security industry are unique and, often, difficult to implement. For instance, security drones should be able to carry high-quality cameras, analytic solutions, cover large areas and reach locations that are difficult for humans to access.Among these requirements, covering large areas while flying for extended periods is crucial to the effectiveness of a security drone. Multirotor drones, while offering remarkable maneuverability and control, fails at this mostly due to battery consumption issues. So here’s a company that can offer drones that fly longer. Event 38 Unmanned Systems , an Akron, Ohio-based company, specializes in medium-long endurance, single operator drones that don’t require any launch or recovery equipment. The company’s E384 base model can be flown for up to two hours and can carry high-resolution RGB as well as multispectral and thermal payloads. While it’s primarily built for taking still images, Event 38 is currently making a configuration with streaming video and thermal imagery for security purposes.“The E384 can fly as much as 10x longer than multirotor drones, enough to cover dozens of kilometers linearly or over 1000 acres of mapping,” said Jeff Taylor, President of the company. “It is sized to gain the most performance possible without needing a launcher to get it off the ground, making it portable and easy to store.”The model uses a Pixhawk autopilot with the company’s own version of flight and mission planning software. According to Taylor, this combination has been proven through thousands of hours of flight on the E384 in a variety of environments ranging from deserts to jungles and as high as 14,000 feet above MSL (Mean Sea Level).The E384 was designed in response to the demand for a high-endurance airborne platform that is priced for the commercial sector as opposed to military applications. The initial prototypes were made for mapping larger areas that couldn’t effectively be mapped with a multirotor. Over the last five years, Event 38 has built on and improved its product to the point where it has been used in dozens of countries for projects as diverse as glacier monitoring, mapping monkey nests and delivering antivenom in the Amazon.“In the near term, large scale mapping projects and high endurance applications like security, cargo delivery and research applications will drive our growth,” Taylor said. “In the long term, regulations allowing flight beyond the line of sight will allow operators to rent their drones to local clients who may have no need or ability to obtain their own drone.”He added that with developments in artificial intelligence, there are countless potential applications in data analysis aside from improvements to flight efficiency, route planning and obstacle avoidance for the flight software. Some popular applications that are on the cusp of feasibility include counting crops for farmers, identifying people, animals and vehicles in thermal imagery and automatically detecting changes in an area.

Output: Ohio drone firm Event 38 Unmanned Systems has created a fixed-wing drone that can fly for 10 times as long as the average quadcopter. The E384 base model can fly for two hours and hosts high-resolution RGB imaging alongside multispectral and thermal capabilities. The drone offers increased manoeuvrability over its multirotor counterparts, and does not require a launcher. The device has been tested in challenging environments such as deserts and jungles, and can fly to 14,000 feet above sea level. The drone has been used to monitor glaciers, map monkey nesting sites and to deliver antivenom medication in the Amazon.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
EY launches shared vehicle ownership platform using blockchain tech
 EY announced the launch of Tesseract, an integrated mobility platform underpinned by blockchain technology. The Tesseract platform aims to facilitate:

fractional vehicle ownership

shared use

seamless multi-modal transport.

If it succeeds it will help lay the groundwork for how autonomous vehicle fleets can be owned in the future and provide access to a variety of on-demand mobility options.

Randy Miller, EY Global Automotive & Transportation Leader, says: “The future of the automotive and transportation industry will be integrated, on-demand, personalized and autonomous. Tesseract is a groundbreaking, innovative platform that benefits every stakeholder across the mobility ecosystem. We want Tesseract to break down barriers to entry for all stakeholders, provide the means for mobility as a service and facilitate a truly integrated ecosystem that puts consumers first in the future mobility marketplace.”

Tesseract and mobility

Tesseract addresses core mobility issues. These include how to share vehicle ownership with widespread shared-use and how one can integrate a multitude of mobility options. Participants on the platform will necessarily include multiple types of stakeholders – such as:

OEMs

mobility and transport companies

cities

infrastructure providers

All will be participating in the hope of realising opportunities to create new value and revenue streams. Shared ownership combined with consumer demands for expanded mobility services represent an unfulfilled demand. Providing access to the right type of vehicle for their preferred journey, at the right time and place and on demand is the objective..

Miller continued: “Tesseract will allow operators to innovate, commercialize and scale new mobility businesses and revenue models. Vehicle utilization will increase, reducing wastage and ultimately creating a greener, more sustainable transport world.”

Tesseract and the blockchain

With Tesseract, single vehicles, fleets and other transport services will be available on the platform. Vehicles and trips will have digital logging provided on the blockchain. Transactions will settle between owners, operators and third-party service providers.This will happen via a single-source, usage-based payment system.

The Tesseract design means ownership of assets is flexible. Each can be on a full or fractional share ownership basis.

What does it mean

The ‘new mobility’, where personal ownership of vehicles diminishes in favour of on-demand usage, is just over the horizon – where it has been for a long time. Yet the horizon does seem to come closer, especially as advanced electronics (computers) become a fundamental part (rather than afterthought) of new vehicles. Tesla may have led the way but others are rushing to follow, most notable with EVs (electric vehicles).

With new business models, new income streams become possible. Equally, funding of expensive assets – such as batteries and charging infrastructure – needs to become easier.

Attracting investors, crowd-funders and everyday users will determine success. Individuals or enterprises will now be able to own a share of a vehicle or fleet of vehicles. But, to ‘earn money’ from such investments, some mechanism based on usage of vehicles becomes critical.

With Tesseract, EY addresses an interesting opportunity. The need is clear. Success will depend on the uptake of fractional vehicle usage for one, and EV purchasing in particular.

Output: EY has laid out a blueprint for the future of autonomous vehicle fleets and fractional vehicle ownership with the launch of Tesseract, an integrated mobility platform based on blockchain technology. The platform would offer single vehicles, fleets and other transport services, with vehicles and trips logged on blockchain, and a single-source, usage-based system for payments. "Tesseract will allow operators to innovate, commercialise and scale new mobility businesses and revenue models," said Randy Miller, EY Global Automotive & Transportation Leader.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Google releases preview of ARCore AR development kit
 Posted by Dave Burke, VP, Android Engineering

With more than two billion active devices, Android is the largest mobile platform in the world. And for the past nine years, we've worked to create a rich set of tools, frameworks and APIs that deliver developers' creations to people everywhere. Today, we're releasing a preview of a new software development kit (SDK) called ARCore. It brings augmented reality capabilities to existing and future Android phones. Developers can start experimenting with it right now.

We've been developing the fundamental technologies that power mobile AR over the last three years with Tango, and ARCore is built on that work. But, it works without any additional hardware, which means it can scale across the Android ecosystem. ARCore will run on millions of devices, starting today with the Pixel and Samsung's S8, running 7.0 Nougat and above. We're targeting 100 million devices at the end of the preview. We're working with manufacturers like Samsung, Huawei, LG, ASUS and others to make this possible with a consistent bar for quality and high performance.

ARCore works with Java/OpenGL, Unity and Unreal and focuses on three things:

Motion tracking : Using the phone's camera to observe feature points in the room and IMU sensor data, ARCore determines both the position and orientation (pose) of the phone as it moves. Virtual objects remain accurately placed.

: Using the phone's camera to observe feature points in the room and IMU sensor data, ARCore determines both the position and orientation (pose) of the phone as it moves. Virtual objects remain accurately placed. Environmental understanding : It's common for AR objects to be placed on a floor or a table. ARCore can detect horizontal surfaces using the same feature points it uses for motion tracking.

: It's common for AR objects to be placed on a floor or a table. ARCore can detect horizontal surfaces using the same feature points it uses for motion tracking. Light estimation : ARCore observes the ambient light in the environment and makes it possible for developers to light virtual objects in ways that match their surroundings, making their appearance even more realistic.

Alongside ARCore, we've been investing in apps and services which will further support developers in creating great AR experiences. We built Blocks and Tilt Brush to make it easy for anyone to quickly create great 3D content for use in AR apps. As we mentioned at I/O, we're also working on Visual Positioning Service (VPS), a service which will enable world scale AR experiences well beyond a tabletop. And we think the Web will be a critical component of the future of AR, so we're also releasing prototype browsers for web developers so they can start experimenting with AR, too. These custom browsers allow developers to create AR-enhanced websites and run them on both Android/ARCore and iOS/ARKit.

ARCore is our next step in bringing AR to everyone, and we'll have more to share later this year. Let us know what you think through GitHub, and check out our new AR Experiments showcase where you can find some fun examples of what's possible. Show us what you build on social media with #ARCore; we'll be resharing some of our favorites.

Output: Google has released a preview of ARCore, its new augmented reality (AR) software development kit (SDK) for Android. The package allows developers to build AR experiences that will work on any phone running Android 7.0 Nougat and above, which include the Google Pixel and Samsung S8. ARCore works with Java/OpenGL, Unity and Unreal, and includes motion tracking of feature points in the real environment and horizontal surface detection, so that virtual objects remain correctly placed, and ambient light detection, so that the lighting of virtual objects matches that of the real environment.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Renewable energy costs could drop by 50%
 Solar and wind energy have been underestimated by analysts and politicians again and again and again. They have gotten cheaper and scaled up faster than even the most optimistic forecasts of a decade ago, or even a few years ago.

And there’s good evidence we’re still underestimating them. In fact, two new reports — one on solar, one on wind — make the point vividly. They argue that the radical trends of the last decade are going to continue, which is all that needs to happen for the energy system to tip over from disruption into revolution.

Solar is going to play a much bigger role than most models predict

So far, official predictions have fallen woefully short of the rise of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy:

That red line is installed PV capacity. The black lines are forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA), blue from the German Advisory Council on Global Change, and green from Greenpeace. Only Greenpeace’s projections have come close, and only recently.

The graph is from a new commentary in the journal Nature Energy, by researchers from Germany’s Mercator Research Institute. In it, they review the reasons why models have traditionally underestimated PV and then try running a popular model updated with better information. The results are instructive, to say the least — if they are right, PV could potentially provide fully half of global electricity by 2050.

In most models that show the world reducing emissions enough to hit the 2°C climate target, “solar energy emerges only as a minor mitigation option” — around 5 to 17 percent of global electricity supply in one representative study used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Models tend to be much more bullish on energy from biomass, despite its much lower total potential.

Why are models still so tepid on PV, despite its record? What are they missing? The researchers hone in on three phenomena that most models fail to properly account for:

Policy support: For the most part, models can’t or don’t take into account the kinds of tech-specific, country- or state-level policies that have been crucial to PV’s growth — especially feed-in tariffs (which guarantee homeowners a fixed 20-year return on PV investments) implemented early on in Germany, Spain, Italy, and China. The US used the investment tax credits and net metering. Other countries have other tools, but almost every country has some kind of support for PV. That support has dramatically accelerated its growth and innovation. Rapid learning: The costs for solar PV modules “have decreased by 22.5% with each doubling of installed capacity,” which is a considerably more rapid learning rate than your average tech. (It’s a “steep learning curve,” in the jargon.) Faster capacity growth than expected + faster technological learning than expected = lower prices than expected. Cost increases of competing clean energy sources: Models tend to be wildly optimistic on nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), despite the fact that, unlike PV, those technologies fall short of model projections again and again. The more decarbonization work that models assign to them, the less is left over for PV. Put more bluntly: Models stubbornly keep favoring nuclear and CCS over PV; the real world stubbornly keeps favoring PV over nuclear and CCS.

There is every reason to think all three of these phenomena will continue to be true in coming years. (The report contains a short but fascinating discussion of all the many technological developments on PV’s horizon — still tons of room to improve.)

The researchers see two key challenges ahead, if PV is to continue its rapid expansion. The first is the cost of financing, especially in the developing world. The second is integrating high levels of wind and solar into the grid. (Because wind and solar are variable, they require sophisticated balancing from other sources and grid technologies; I wrote about that challenge in some detail here.)

Say PV can address those challenges and maintain its current rate of learning, improvement, and expansion. What would a more realistic model projection look like?

To find out, the researchers plugged better cost information and more aggressive cost-curve assumptions into REMIND, a “global inter-temporally optimizing energy–economy model that has been extensively used for analyses of climate policies.”

Long story short, here are the results:

The gray shaded areas show the potential growth of PV, bounded by the lowest and highest historical growth rates. As you can see, this updated model run shows PV wildly outperforming most other model runs (the areas in other colors), eventually providing 30 to 50 percent of global electricity.

Now, there’s no guarantee that PV will continue growing at historical rates. In fact, there are reasons to think wind and solar will run into serious problems as they expand (see this post from Jesse Jenkins and Alex Trembath).

But even the bottom end of this new forecast (30 percent of global electricity) is a hell of a lot higher than the high end (e.g., 17 percent) on the forecasts the IPCC and the IEA are using. If PV can maintain anything even close to its recent explosive growth, it is going to outperform what analysts expect. Again.

Wind costs could drop another 50% and beat natural gas without subsidies, say nerds

The second bit of happy news comes from researchers at Atmosphere to Electrons, an R&D program for wind power at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Their new paper is primarily about the scientific and technical challenges their team is researching — high-tech ways to further improve wind turbines and farms. But as part of the exercise, they project just how much wind costs could fall if all those high-tech solutions are implemented. It’s pretty mind-blowing.

The researchers are pursuing what they call “System Management of Atmospheric Resource through Technology” (SMART) strategies — a cluster of technologies and practices that will allow next-generation wind farms to produce more energy, more reliably, for more hours of the day. Here are the four areas of innovation they are going after, translated into English:

Better predicting performance through high-fidelity physics modeling (HFM) of local conditions. Better design and control at the plant level by using sensors and real-time monitoring of wind flows as they move through the turbines. Better design and control at the turbine level through “innovative rotor and drivetrain technology” and scale (i.e., taller towers and bigger blades). Smarter grid integration by giving each turbine the ability to communicate directly with the grid, play a role in its “stability and operational planning,” and offer it various extra services like voltage regulation (don’t ask).

Just how much of a difference would these changes make? To find out, the researchers ran a simulation of a 2030 wind-power plant using all the SMART innovations, operating at a site with roughly average wind resources.

The result: unsubsidized energy costs ranging from $19 to $32 per megawatt-hour, with an average of around $23/MWh. That is roughly 50 percent lower than today’s wind power costs.

So after dropping 65 percent between 2009 and today, wind-power costs could drop another 50 percent by 2030. That’s pretty amazing. Energy costs of $23/MWh would make wind competitive with natural gas almost everywhere in America, without subsidies.

Of course, this rosy forecast is somewhat predicated on the DOE continuing to fund this kind of research, which is by no means a sure thing these days.

But as John Hensley of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) writes, plenty of other analysts are similarly bullish. A survey of wind energy experts last year by Lawrence Berkeley Lab found that they too expected substantial cost drops (though 40 percent by 2030 was their high end). Like solar, wind still has tons of room to improve.

Today’s status quo leads to revolution

It’s a little odd. Both of these reports offer forecasts that are wildly optimistic relative to the mainstream modeling community, but it’s not because they predict wind and solar are going to have some unprecedented explosion.

They simply predict that wind and solar are going to keep doing what they’re doing — keep scaling up, keep improving, keep getting cheaper — at roughly the same rate they have been. If that happens, solar PV could provide 30 to 50 percent of global power. If that happens, wind power could be 50 percent cheaper by 2030.

If those things happen, if the status quo continues, it will amount to a renewable energy revolution.

As I said, there are reasons to think wind and solar will start running into technical and financial challenges as their share of grid power rises. How much those challenges will slow them down is difficult to predict, but they’ll probably slow them down some. Getting to 50 percent wind and solar on a grid would be heroic; getting beyond that will require radical technological, political, and legal changes that go far beyond just wind and solar power plants themselves.

My own sense of things is somewhat gloomier than these reports suggest. But wind and solar have been defying gloomy predictions for well over a decade now, so maybe they’ll keep doing so.

As stockbrokers like to say, past performance is no guarantee of future results. There’s no guarantee wind and solar will stay on their current path. But at the very least, it seems like modelers should take continuation of status quo trends as their baseline, their reference case, instead of assuming, over and over, and that wind and solar growth will slow (and being proven wrong, over and over).

It may seem crazy to say in this day and age, but sometimes a little optimism is warranted.

Output: Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have found that renewable energy costs could drop by 50% if proposed high-tech solutions are implemented. If advanced wind turbine technology is installed, further energy could be produced more reliably for longer periods throughout the day. The technology includes better physics modelling for performance prediction, better sensor monitoring, improved rotor and drivetrain technology, and smarter grid integration. The researchers’ study of the technology’s implementation found that energy costs dropped to around 50% of current pricing.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Scripps to shutter its hospice service
 Scripps Health in San Diego has stopped accepting new hospice patients and is working to transfer existing patients to other area hospice operators.

Less than five years after it started offering hospice care, Scripps Health is poised to shutter the service, notifying patients that they will need to find new providers by mid-September.

It’s a significant change of course for an organization that has been committed to providing end-of-life care since it stepped in when San Diego Hospice went bankrupt in 2013.

Today, 114 county residents — most who receive care in their homes — must choose a new hospice company by Sept. 4. Scripps is working with Escondido-based Elizabeth Hospice, which has expanded its service area to San Diego in recent years and has agreed to hire its employees. However, patients and their families are free to select whichever service they want.

Advertisement

Scripps Chief Executive Chris Van Gorder said Wednesday that his organization is following the law, which requires patients to be presented with a range of local hospice companies that can take over their care.

“We will work with whoever the patient selects to make sure there is as smooth a transition as possible,” Van Gorder said.

There is no transfer of cash from one organization to the other, Van Gorder added. Elizabeth, he said, pays nothing for Scripps’ recommendation. The company has agreed to hire all of Scripps Hospice’s 111 workers, including the doctors who oversee day-to-day care, he added. Jan Jones, Elizabeth’s president, confirmed that arrangement. Patients who choose Elizabeth, Van Gorder said, should be able to keep their current caregivers.

While 111 workers might seem like a lot for 114 patients, Scripps daily census ran between 150 and 180 before it stopped admitting new patients on Aug. 23. Staff-to-patient ratios are also high because hospice services run 24 hours a day, seven days per week.

“We’ve made offers to each of their employees and most of our offers have been accepted,” Jones said, adding that her operation currently has about 500 hospice patients receiving services throughout San Diego County and in southeast Riverside County.

Scripps, which operates five hospitals and a slew of outpatient offices across San Diego County, is exiting the hospice business for financial reasons. Van Gorder said that the service has never reached a break-even point, let alone even minor profitability, since the company purchased a small Poway-based hospice in 2013 and began accepting transfers from San Diego Hospice while the organization was under bankruptcy protection.

“We’ve lost between $2 million and $3 million per year,” Van Gorder said.

That amount, he added, has totaled nearly $14 million including a projected $3 million loss this year. While that amount might seem like a rounding error for an organization that lists $2.1 billion in investments on its balance sheet and $2.7 billion in expenses last year, Van Gorder said changes to the way health providers are reimbursed have recently put a crimp on operating revenue. The organization is still profitable, but margins are not as wide as they once were.

He said he must consider the big picture for his entire organization, and a set of interlocking needs in the future, in deciding which services to continue and which to drop. In some cases, he noted, he has no choice. Every hospital is required, for example, to treat every patient that walks into its emergency room regardless of whether or not they have the ability to pay. In terms of hospice, he said, he was not sure that Scripps could provide the service any better than Elizabeth Hospice does at a lower cost.

“We don’t enter any business like this with an intent to make a profit, but we also can’t afford to be running services at a loss when somebody else in the community can run it well,” Van Gorder said.

Elizabeth Hospice, though it is much larger than the Scripps operation, also faced losses from 2012 through 2015 but Jones said the operation broke even in 2016 and generated a slight profit in 2017. Jones said that nearly 40 years running a hospice service has taught the organization to watch its expenses very carefully.

“We operate lean but we also operate very much with mission,” Jones said. “This is our total focus.”

In general, hospices tend to operate with single-digit margins, said Jonathan Keyserling, senior vice president for communication and policy at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

He added that there is a nationwide consolidation trend underway.

“We are seeing smaller hospices form alliances, join up together or merge to achieve some economies of scale in order to purchase equipment and other supplies such as prescription drugs,” Keyserling said.

Today, he said, Medicare pays between $140 and $180 per day for hospice care when a doctor certifies that they have six or fewer months of life left.

“People don’t realize it, but when a hospice accepts a patient under Medicare or Medicaid, they’re responsible for all of the goods and services, any equipment supplies and all of the drugs related to their care,” Keyserling said. “Just like the rest of health care, hospice programs are feeling the effects of cost increases whether it’s labor, supplies or gasoline.”

Scripps’ exit does not appreciably diminish the supply of hospices operating in the region. Hospice Compare, and online database maintained by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, lists 143 organizations serving the San Diego region, though most are based outside the area.

The database also rates hospice performance nationwide and both Scripps and Elizabeth Hospice bested national averages in all categories in the most recent survey period. Those categories range from whether patients were checked for pain at the beginning of their care to whether they got timely treatment for shortness of breath.

Today, the local hospice landscape is much different than it was prior to 2013 when San Diego Hospice was still operating and had about 1,000 people on service at any given time. The nonprofit had an international reputation for training physicians in hospice practice, drawing fellows to its Hillcrest facility perched near the edge of the bluffs that overlook Mission Valley.

The 24-bed facility opened in 1992 with the help of a $18.5 million grant from the late Joan Kroc, the philanthropist and wife of McDonald’s chief, Ray Kroc, and former owner of the San Diego Padres.

Scripps purchased the facility during the San Diego Hospice bankruptcy auction for $16.55 million and recently sold it to a Texas real estate development company for $20 million. The company plans to build apartments on the 8-acre property which has sweeping views across Mission Valley and Mission Bay all the way to the Pacific.

The property is home to tributes to hundreds of San Diegans who died at the hospice. Anyone who wants to remove their loved-one’s memorial from the property before construction begins can contact Scripps coordinator Jamie Nelson at nelson-jamie@scrippshealth.org or (858) 678-6340.

Some are not taking the sale too kindly.

Peter Jensen, whose wife, Janeen, died seven years ago at the hospice, said he does not think Scripps should profit from selling a property that has a philanthropic focus over the years from Kroc’s large bequest to smaller gifts memorialized in tributes placed throughout the grounds.

“If they’re going to sell it at a profit, I hope they donate it to the next hospice facility that gets built,” he said.

Van Gorder said proceeds from the property sale are being put toward rebuilding Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest, which does not meet state seismic safety requirements and must be replaced or repaired by 2030.

“We have been providing community benefit through the hospice that we have been running at a loss for the last four years. I respect that opinion, but the money is going to go back into health services for the community,” Van Gorder said.

To use the building for inpatient care, millions in additional upgrades would have been required. San Diego Hospice, he said, did not have to make similar upgrades because it had obtained a special grandfathered status that did not transfer with the sale in 2013.

Of course, the parcel never would have been sold at auction if not for San Diego Hospice’s run-in with the federal government, which was investigating allegations of Medicare overbilling. Eventually, the federal government filed a claim for $112 million that made it impossible for the nonprofit to survive.

Health Playlist × On Now Video: Leaders urge public to help extinguish hepatitis outbreak On Now San Diego starts cleansing sidewalks, streets to combat hepatitis A On Now Video: Scripps to shutter its hospice service On Now Video: Scripps La Jolla hospitals nab top local spot in annual hospital rankings On Now Video: Does a parent's Alzheimer's doom their children? On Now EpiPen recall expands On Now Kids can add years to your life

paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1850

Twitter: @paulsisson

Output: Less than five years after it started offering hospice care, Scripps Health is poised to shutter the service, notifying patients that they will need to find new providers by mid-September.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
How A Kid’s Summer Job In San Diego Brought Joy To Alzheimer’s Patients
 Kids heading back to school this week are probably telling their friends about what they did over their summer break. Many probably took vacations or camping trips. But one San Diego boy will have a unique story to tell — his summer volunteering with seniors.

How A Kid's Summer Job In San Diego Brought Joy To Alzheimer's Patients

Every Tuesday and Thursday throughout the summer, 9-year-old Tate Phillips, who lives in La Jolla, spent time singing, dancing and making music with seniors at Jewish Family Service’s Balboa Avenue Older Adult Center.

“Someone plays music, and people dance, and we have entertainers," said Phillips. "It’s really fun, and I just feel like I’m making a difference. I think it helps them interact with people, and get active.”

Katie Schoolov Tate Phillips at the Jewish Family Service Balboa Avenue Older Adult Center, Thursday August 24, 2017.

The center's special program offers exercise, games, live entertainment and a hot kosher lunch to area seniors Monday through Thursday for four hours. About 80 percent of the participants have Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

The program costs $27 and is open to all seniors, regardless of age, religion, or health conditions.

74-year-old Anita Berger has Alzheimer's, and has been coming to the center since January 2016.

“He makes everybody feel loved and wanted. He gets up and dances with everybody, and calls everybody by name,” she said. "It just makes me feel young again. I love the music, I love the comradery, and kids like Tate. For us old folks, is just such a refreshing thing. He has is just a real loving little boy. He loves everybody, and everybody loves him.

Phillips' mother, Lara Diamond Phillips, says these are the only friends her son wanted to see all summer.

“In fact, I don’t think the child has had one play date. His friends have been here at the senior center,” she said.

Phillips’ grandfather, Ronnie Diamond, founded the Older Adult Center 17 years ago. He brought his grandson for a visit one day, and the boy was hooked.

His mom said she had planned tennis and reading camps for the summer until her son set her straight.

“And I could see, it was like fire in his eyes. Like, ‘You don’t understand. This is what I want to do. This is all I want to do,’” she said. "I think he brought so much sunshine here, but I think it’s been a gift for our family as well, to watch how much joy it’s brought him, as a parent, it’s been mind-blowing for me."

Katie Schoolov Tate Phillips sits with his grandfather Ronnie Diamond in this undated photo.

Saying goodbye to Tate Phillips at the end of summer was bittersweet for Aviva Saad, who is the program coordinator at the center.

“I have hopes that this world is going to be a super better place because of you. Because of you. And we love you.”

But Phillips said he will be coming back — on days that his school lets out early.

“I like to do it because it makes me feel happy inside. It makes me feel like I’m doing something good,” he said.

Output: Kids heading back to school this week are probably telling their friends about what they did over their summer break. Many probably took vacations or camping trips. But one San Diego boy will have a unique story to tell — his summer volunteering with seniors.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Knocking on doors, climbing through fences: How L.A. County's health investigators are out trying to stop syphilis
 Roberto Rocha has been yelled at and called names. Men have threatened to shoot him. He’s visited jails, knocked on doors and approached strangers across L.A. County — all in search of syphilis. (August 30, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newslett

Roberto Rocha has been yelled at and called names. Men have threatened to shoot him. He’s visited jails, knocked on doors and approached strangers across L.A. County — all in search of syphilis.

The centuries-old disease referenced in Shakespeare plays is making a comeback, and Rocha is trying to stop it, one infected Angeleno at a time. Though its initial symptoms are mild, syphilis can lead to paralysis, blindness and miscarriages if left untreated.

Every day, Rocha and dozens of other L.A. County public health workers get in their cars to search for people who might have been exposed to sexually transmitted diseases . They believe the only way to end an outbreak is to cure the infected and then find their sexual partners so they can also be treated.

But the leads Rocha gets on partners can be vague at best: He hangs out at a doughnut shop in the afternoon. He lives somewhere in a three-story apartment building across from a liquor store.

Rocha once parked near a freeway bridge where he’d been told he would find a patient’s former partner, armed only with his nickname and a description of his tattoos. Rocha climbed through a hole in a chain-link fence.

“There were six people living under the bridge in a crevice, and I went in there asking for the person,” he said. “He happened to be laying there in the corner and I talked to him…. You see a little bit of everything with this job.”

For years, work such as Rocha’s has prevented infections and even saved lives. Even though their main focus is STDs, public health workers may refer patients to rehab, help them get out of abusive relationships or find them doctors for other ailments.

But with syphilis rates in the United States the highest they’ve been in decades, experts are taking a second look at what’s causing the new cases and also whether work like such as Rocha’s can actually halt the rapid spread of the disease.

(Angelica Quintero / @latimesgraphics)

‘They call you the worst of things’

Rocha, 42, wanted to work in public health when he graduated from UC Irvine in 2000. He started out in a lab but didn’t like being cooped up. He took a job with the L.A. County Department of Public Health the following year.

Rocha calls patients recently diagnosed with syphilis or HIV , but younger ones usually don’t pick up their phones. So he shows up at their homes or workplaces.

Many don’t want to talk to him. They shout.

Rocha leaves a letter with his contact information in their frontyards, or slips it under the doorway. He returns later. Rocha, who was recently promoted to a supervisor role, teaches his underlings this persistence.

“They slam doors on you, they yell at you, they call you the worst of things,” he said. “They’ll call you later on.”

When Rocha does hear from them, he has to quickly get personal. He needs to know the symptoms of the infection — where was the sore and when did the patient notice it — so he can determine if they transmitted it to anyone else. Then he asks them who else they’ve recently had sex with.

Syphilis rates are soaring

When Rocha started working at the department, syphilis seemed to be on its way out. Case numbers were so low that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a nationwide campaign in 1999 to eradicate the disease.

Yet syphilis rates have risen almost every year since the new millennium, picking up steam in the last few years. The number of infectious syphilis cases nationwide quadrupled in 15 years to 23,872 in 2015, according to data from the CDC.

The majority of new infections for years have been in men, particularly gay and bisexual men. This summer, the L.A.-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation erected billboards in the city as well as in Oakland, Dallas and Chicago warning of a “Syphilis Tsunami.”

(Angelica Quintero / @latimesgraphics)

Doctors say people might not notice when they first contract syphilis, because the first symptom is a painless sore that goes away on its own. A rash might come later. Left untreated for years, syphilis can damage internal organs and spread to the brain.

Syphilis can be cured with a shot of penicillin, but it’s causing problems before it’s being caught. In recent years there’s been an uptick in California of ocular syphilis, a rare symptom of the disease that can cause blindness.

Syphilis can also spread from pregnant mothers to their babies and cause miscarriages, stillbirths and deafness.

In 2015, 142 babies in California were born with congenital syphilis, including 23 in L.A. County. Just three years earlier, there were only 33 babies with congenital syphilis in California and seven in the county.

“I think what’s alarming is that there’s been such a jump,” said Amy Moy of the California-based advocacy group Essential Access Health.

Many blame the rise on underfunding for STD prevention programs. In 2012, more than half of state and local STD programs faced budget cuts, leading to fewer clinic hours and resources, according to the CDC.

Public health officials also say that gay men are using condoms less as fear of HIV has fallen. Some also speculate that hook-up apps have led to people having sex with more people because it’s easier to find new partners.

“It’s all of those things coming together and creating this perfect storm,” Moy said.

Can anything be done?

Years ago, Rocha visited a 14-year-old girl who’d been diagnosed with syphilis. She had run away from home and was dating a 25-year-old man.

Rocha also learned that she was addicted to methamphetamine and that her boyfriend was supplying her. He had tattooed his name on her. Rocha reported the man, who ended up in prison.

When he meets with a patient, Rocha doesn’t just ask about sexual habits.

He inquires about housing and mental health. He might even set up transportation to a drug rehab center. If he’s talking to a patient who’s in jail, he’ll ask how they’re being treated and whether they have access to their medications.

He wants to get at the root of what’s causing them to engage in high-risk behaviors, he said.

“We’re trying to help them in different ways,” he said. “We want to make sure they’re OK.”

Another time, Rocha showed up at the home of an 18-year-old who’d just been diagnosed with HIV but hadn’t come out to his parents as gay. He asked Rocha to sit with him while he revealed both pieces of news.

Dr. Sonali Kulkarni, medical director for L.A. County’s division of HIV and STD programs, said the work of these disease intervention specialists — there are about two dozen in the county — can have a tremendous effect on people’s lives.

But amid the growth in syphilis cases, health officials are reevaluating this one-on-one approach to STD prevention. It gets patients into treatment, but there’s little evidence that it reduces transmission and syphilis rates overall in the community, she said.

Part of the problem is that people won’t name their partners.

Rocha recalled one man who emailed an investigator a list of 100 names and phone numbers of people he’d slept with in the past year. But more often they’re hesitant or don’t know the names of people they’ve had sex with at bathhouses or met online.

“We’re happy if we just get one person,” Rocha said.

Kulkarni said they’re thinking about other ways to tackle the disease. Concentrating on patients with HIV is important, because more than half of new syphilis cases are in people who have HIV.

She also said they might focus their outreach on certain neighborhoods where lots of people have been infected. Additionally, there’s early evidence showing that syphilis patients aren’t connected to each other through a sexual network, but through drug use, she said.

“There’s more room to better understand what we could do to decrease the spread of syphilis,” she said.

For Rocha, his work has become about much more than STD prevention.

He recalled visiting the home of a 19-year-old who’d recently been diagnosed with syphilis and HIV. The boy’s grandmother opened the door.

“She let me into his room. He was skin and bones…. He had stopped eating, stopped doing anything,” he said. “He thought his world was over.”

The patient thought HIV was a death sentence. Rocha explained to him that people diagnosed decades ago are living happily today, he said. He told him he could get assistance to pay for the medicines.

Rocha headed out of the home and was approached by the boy’s grandmother, who was crying. She thanked him.

To read the article in Spanish click here

soumya.karlamangla@latimes.com

Twitter: @skarlamangla

ALSO

She watched her ex-husband end his life under California's new right-to-die law. 'I felt proud'

An LAPD officer needs a bone marrow transplant. His ethnicity limits his chances of getting one

What the Senate healthcare bill could mean for Californians

Output: Roberto Rocha has been yelled at and called names. Men have threatened to shoot him. He’s visited jails, knocked on doors and approached strangers across L.A. County — all in search of syphilis.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
For Low-Income Drug Users, Medi-Cal Offers A Fresh Start
 About Capitol Desk Capitol Desk delivers the latest in health care policy and politics from Sacramento and around the state. Have an idea? Let us know.

Breann Johnson stopped using heroin on Mother’s Day this year, determined to end her 13-year addiction. Days later, she began three months of residential treatment in Riverside, Calif. — all paid for by California’s Medicaid program.

Johnson, who has two young sons, said other inpatient drug rehab programs had refused to accept Medicaid, and she knew outpatient care would not be enough to break her habit.

“I couldn’t stop,” said Johnson, 28. “With my drug, you are either sick all day or you have to do it to make yourself feel better.”

As the opioid epidemic burns a path of devastation through communities across the nation, California is leading the way in revamping treatment for low-income residents like Johnson. Before this year, the state’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, covered only limited and episodic care. Now, it pays for a much broader range of treatment including expanded access to medications, inpatient beds, individual therapy and case managers.

The five-year pilot project, which gives the state flexibility in its use of federal money, was approved in 2015 by the agency that oversees Medicaid. The California project officially started earlier this year. Virginia, Massachusetts and Maryland also have federal permission to expand drug treatment for Medicaid members. Other states, including West Virginia and Michigan, are seeking it.

California’s drug rehab overhaul makes it easier for Medi-Cal members to get care and improves their chances of long-term recovery, state health officials said. It also aims to reduce costs by decreasing use of emergency rooms and hospitals and keeping drug-addicted enrollees out of jail and out of the child welfare system.

“It is such a dramatic change to our substance abuse field,” said Marlies Perez, chief of the substance use disorder compliance division at the state Department of Health Care Services. “We turned off one system one day and turned on a whole new system the next.”

Health officials and service providers say that with the federal waiver they are finally able to address addiction as a chronic disease. Instead of simply getting short-term outpatient care, Medi-Cal beneficiaries can receive ongoing treatment from detoxification through recovery, tailored to their specific needs.

“The old traditional way was a rather canned approach to recovery,” said Bruce Copley, director of the Department of Alcohol and Drug Services in Santa Clara County.

The state does not yet know how much the changes will cost, because the program is open-ended: Anyone eligible for the services in the participating counties can receive them. In previous years, the state has spent about $180 million annually on drug rehabilitation for Medi-Cal beneficiaries. Perez said the state is only beginning to receive bills and is hoping to prove to the federal government that the changes will actually reduce overall costs related to substance abuse.

Drug rehab providers still fear for the future of Medicaid given the ongoing debate over health care in Washington, said Tom Eby, clinical director of Whiteside Manor, a nonprofit residential treatment center in Riverside. If his clients lost their Medicaid coverage — or the federal government ended California’s drug rehab program — it could imperil the progress being made, Eby said.

Email Sign-Up Subscribe to California Healthline's free Daily Edition. Your Email Address Sign Up

“It would go back to what it was, with these folks dying on the street,” he said.

Thirty-eight of the state’s 58 counties have joined California’s Medi-Cal pilot. Riverside and San Mateo started in February. Other counties, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, have come on board since.

The big increase in the availability of residential care is a significant aspect of the program, since it could reduce the chance of relapse or overdose for those with severe addictions. Previously, Medicaid did not cover treatment in inpatient rehab facilities with more than 16 beds. That resulted in long waiting lists. Inpatient stays typically were paid for by the county, a private insurer or the person being treated.

In Riverside County, Medi-Cal recipients used to wait more than two months for a bed. Now, many of them get one in a day or two, according to Rhyan Miller, the county’s substance abuse services program administrator.

At MFI Recovery’s women’s center in Riverside, known as A Woman’s Place, residents now have access to a licensed vocational nurse, a driver to take them to appointments and a discharge planner. They can stay 90 days (with a possible 30-day extension) and longer if they are pregnant.

Johnson said she was grateful to get in without a long wait. If she hadn’t, the Riverside woman said, “I would either be on the streets or dead.”

Brittany Stearns, another resident, said her parents had paid $48,000 for an earlier stay at a private residential treatment center to treat opioid addiction. When she relapsed three years later, the 32-year-old Palm Springs resident knew her parents wouldn’t pay for it again.

“I needed help,” said Stearns, whose 2-year-old daughter, Molly, lives with her at the center. “If Medi-Cal didn’t pay for this, I am afraid to think about where I would be.”

Johnson and Stearns both completed their residential treatment and are now getting follow-up outpatient care.

Perez, of the health care department, said that although the project is scheduled to run five years, the state does not intend to return to the old way of doing business. It hopes to persuade the federal government to continue allowing spending flexibility. “This is already impacting not only Medi-Cal but other individuals who are receiving substance abuse disorder services,” she said.

That’s because clinics have made sweeping changes to meet the new Medi-Cal requirements for participation, including the recruitment and training of new employees. Counties are also now using guidelines set by the American Society of Addiction Medicine — another condition of participation.

When the new program started, thousands of people called in to a substance abuse line for screening and referral, said Miller of Riverside County. That was up from fewer than 200 calls the previous month.

“We didn’t expect this,” he said. “It has been absolutely crazy. The sheer numbers of calls completely overwhelmed and also excited us.”

At Whiteside Manor, director Ron Vervick said the additional reimbursement from Medi-Cal enabled him to hire more counselors, drivers, nurses and intake workers. Many of the residents at Whiteside are homeless and mentally ill. In the past, he said, they didn’t get the care they needed.

One resident of Whiteside Manor, Kendall Jenkins, sought treatment in early May after years of heavy drinking and drug use that included heroin, methamphetamines and pills — “anything I could get my hands on.” A former college golfer and hotel valet, Jenkins, 30, was homeless off and on, and spent stretches living in his car. He recently left the facility, found work at a hotel and is staying in a sober-living home nearby.

Jenkins said that when he learned Medi-Cal would cover his stay at Whiteside, he felt relieved. He was able to participate in individual counseling and group therapy and said the center “saved my life.”

Though he still thinks a lot about using heroin, he knows where he would end up if he did.

“It’s not worth it,” he said. “I know I can do this.”

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Output: Breann Johnson stopped using heroin on Mother’s Day this year, determined to end her 13-year addiction. Days later, she began three months of residential treatment in Riverside, Calif. — all paid for by California’s Medicaid program.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Reinsurer Compre buys Gjensidige Forsikring legacy portfolio
 Compre, the London-based insurance and reinsurance legacy specialist, announced it has acquired a further legacy portfolio from Norwegian insurer Gjensidige Forsikring ASA for an undisclosed sum.

The portfolio comprises U.S. asbestos, pollution and health hazard (APH) risks underwritten between 1983 and 1985. The deal marks Compre’s 25th individual portfolio acquisition and its second from Gjensidige, after acquiring its marine and energy portfolio in February 2016.

Compre structured the transaction as a loss portfolio transfer followed by a business transfer, which provides finality to the vendor in all respects. The arrangement also provides continuity as Compre currently manages all claims relating to the portfolio.

“It gives me great pleasure to announce our fifth acquisition of the year and our second from leading Norwegian insurer Gjensidige Forsikring,” said Nick Steer, CEO of Compre.

“Compre has a long track record of successfully managing U.S. APH and this transaction is a further demonstration of our ability to provide large insurance groups with exit solutions for discontinued business.”

About Gjensidige

Listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange, Gjensidige employs 4,000 people in six countries, offers non-life insurance in the Nordic and Baltic region, and banking, pensions and savings products in Norway.

Source: Compre

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions

Output: London-based insurance and reinsurance firm Compre has made its second legacy acquisition from Norwegian insurer Gjensidige Forsikring for an undisclosed amount. The deal, Compre's fifth this year, comprises a portfolio of US asbestos, pollution and health hazard risks underwritten between 1983 and 1985, and was structured as a loss portfolio transfer followed by a business transfer. Nick Steer, the CEO of Compre, said the transaction was "a further demonstration of our ability to provide large insurance groups with exit solutions for discontinued business". Compre had acquired Gjensidige's marine and energy portfolio last year.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Trump Administration Wants to Stabilize Health Markets but Won’t Say How
 WASHINGTON — A Trump administration official said Wednesday that the administration wanted to stabilize health insurance markets, but refused to say if the government would promote enrollment this fall under the Affordable Care Act or pay for the activities of counselors who help people sign up for coverage.

The official also declined to say whether the administration would continue paying subsidies to insurance companies to compensate them for reducing deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs for low-income people. Without the subsidies, insurers say, they would sharply increase premiums.

The administration, the official suggested, will do the minimum necessary to comply with the law, which Mr. Trump has called “an absolute disaster” and threatened to let collapse.

“I don’t think we can force people to sign up for the program,” the official said.

The official said the Trump administration had not set any numerical goals for sign-ups under the health care law, and the official did not know if the administration would do so. President Barack Obama used such goals to motivate a small army of counselors, “navigators” and assistants who helped millions of people sign up for insurance in the last four years.

Output: A Trump administration official said Wednesday that the administration wanted to stabilize health insurance markets, but refused to say if the government would promote enrollment this fall under the Affordable Care Act or pay for the activities of counselors who help people sign up for coverage.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Health care watchdog sends urgent alert on potential nursing home abuse
 Editor’s Note: Journalist Philip Moeller is here to provide the answers you need on aging and retirement. His weekly column, “Ask Phil,” aims to help older Americans and their families by answering their health care and financial questions. Phil is the author of the new book, “Get What’s Yours for Medicare,” and co-author of “Get What’s Yours: The Revised Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security.” Send your questions to Phil.

The government’s health care watchdog office has issued an early alert in advance of its upcoming formal report on egregious abuses of patients at skilled nursing facilities (SNFs). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) says it found 134 cases of potential abuse and neglect in 33 states, including cases of rape and sexual abuse; more than a quarter of the cases had never been reported to law enforcement authorities.

“Due to the importance and urgency of the preliminary findings,” the office said, “OIG is alerting citizens of potential cases of patient neglect and abuse in these facilities, many of which are temporary residences for our nation’s most vulnerable people.” The alert included a video depicting images of abused patients.

In an earlier letter to Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the OIG said it had concluded that CMS was not providing needed oversight of the homes, and had not even begun to enforce a six-year-old law designed to protect nursing home residents.

“OIG’s study of adverse events in SNFs found that an estimated 22 percent of Medicare beneficiaries experienced adverse events during their SNF stays,” the letter said. “These adverse events included infections, pressure ulcers, and medication-induced bleeding. Medical record review determined that 69 percent of these patient-harm events could have been prevented had the SNF provided better care. Over half of the residents harmed during their SNF stays required hospital care to treat the adverse event.”

The office’s alert announcement urged family members of nursing home residents to be vigilant. “Visit your loved ones often who are in these facilities, ask them if they are being treated properly, and report potential cases of abuse or neglect to your local police and your state’s Medicaid fraud control unit,” the alert said.

Planning for future health care expenses

Fidelity Investments says a typical 65-year-old couple will need to spend $275,000 on health care during the rest of their lives. The big retirement investment firm says in its annual estimate that this total is 6 percent higher than in 2016, and that it includes the couple’s spending on Medicare and other health items, but excludes the cost of long-term care.

There’s no question that rising health costs are and will be a serious challenge for most of us. However, if you don’t have an extra $275,000 lying around, all is not lost.

It is doubtful that more than a few percent of Medicare enrollees have that much money bankrolled for their future health needs, and there’s no question that rising health costs are and will be a serious challenge for most of us. However, if you don’t have an extra $275,000 lying around, all is not lost.

People don’t spend their health dollars all at once, so totaling up the lifetime tab is not the way such items are handled in the real world. For that view, I’d turn to the consumer spending work done by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Its look at consumer spending in 2015 found that the for the year ended in June of last year, households where the survey respondent was 65 or older spent about $5,750 on health care in 2015.

This is a very rough approximation of what your expenses may be. First, it’s a household figure. Second, it includes all older Americans. Odds are that single seniors will spend less than this, while couples will spend more. There also will be major differences depending on household income and retirement savers. Folks on Medicaid will pay much smaller amounts, while those at the higher end of the income ladder easily can – and mostly will – pay several times the average.

Approximation or not, rising health costs are the major challenge to financial sufficiency in retirement. I doubt you need an “expert” to tell you how to respond, but here are a few thoughts:

Look at your retirement assets and evaluate how large a chunk may go for health care. How will you live on what’s left? Develop a clear-eyed understanding of how a healthier you could lower your future health care spending. Build a plan with your doctor. Enlist friends to help you keep it. Recognize that Medicare and Medicaid spending is already on track to absorb worrisome and growing shares of the federal budget. Expecting Washington to spend more on such programs, by shifting funds from other uses or raising taxes, is unrealistic. Further, it would be unlikely to produce major changes in the trajectory of government health care spending. Pay a lot more attention to health care costs. New health care cost “transparency” tools are coming online. Use them. Push back on doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers so you and consumers can help bring price competition to health care. Take full advantage of Medicare’s open enrollment season, which begins Oct. 15 and extends through Dec. 7. It may be possible to save money and improve your health coverage at the same time.

This week’s reader Q&A

Jan: I’m looking for advice on when my husband and I should file for Social Security. He is 66 and retired; I am 64, still work, and make about $150,000 a year in commission income. I will qualify for a $48,000 annual pension when I turn 66. We have $1.7 million in savings, a $600,000 home (our mortgage will be paid off in four years), and no other debt.

Phil Moeller: It doesn’t appear that you need additional current income. If that’s the case, and neither of you have health issues that would shorten your expected life spans, I strongly favor delaying benefits until they reach their maximum amounts at age 70. Given expectations that both of you will live well into your 80s, and that at least one of you likely will live well into their 90s, maximizing Social Security makes sense.

I am assuming neither of you has worked for public employers, that your wages have been subject to Social Security payroll taxes, and that your pension is from a private employer. Otherwise, Social Security’s Windfall Elimination Provision and/or Government Pension Offset might come into play, and could alter your optimal strategy.

If you do want to generate some Social Security income prior to age 70, there is another approach. It won’t optimize your lifetime benefits, but it may nonetheless be attractive. When you reach 66, your husband would file for his own Social Security retirement benefit. This would make you eligible to file for a spousal benefit based on his earnings record. Under a grandfathered provision of the 2015 revisions to Social Security laws, you would be able to file a restricted application for just your spousal benefit while deferring filing for your own retirement benefit until you turn 70.

If you haven’t already done so, open My Social Security accounts online and see your lifetime earnings record and benefit projections. This will permit you to estimate the effects of different filing strategies.

I also should note that filing for Social Security requires the claimant to begin receiving Part A of Medicare. If you have a high-deductible health plan with a health savings account (HSA), filing for Medicare makes it illegal to continue making pre-tax contributions to an HSA.

Tom – Ohio: My wife is on Medicare now as secondary coverage. Her employer’s insurance is primary, and it has announced plans to change to a high-deductible health plan with a health savings account. That will be the only plan offered.

We need to know quickly what she can and cannot do. Her employer thinks this is not an issue. We are concerned about what the effects will be if she does accept this new plan, and what the effects will be if she does not. For example, will Medicare not cover her as her new primary because she “voluntarily” turned down enrollment in the new employer plan?

Phil Moeller: Under IRS rules, Medicare enrollees may not contribute to a health savings account. This is true even if the person has only the premium-free Part A of Medicare, which everyone receiving Social Security benefits must have.

I am assuming that your wife has only Part A. If this is the case, and she is not receiving Social Security, she could withdraw from Part A and maintain full eligibility for the new HSA plan. She would lose the secondary protection of Part A, of course, but under the circumstances, I’d think this would be the way to go. Perhaps this is why her employer thinks this is not an issue.

However, if your wife has Part A because she is receiving Social Security benefits, the only way she could withdraw from Part A is to also withdraw from receiving Social Security benefits. I don’t see how this would make sense.

In that event, perhaps she could still be in the new health plan, but she would not be able to contribute to the HSA. She would thus be on the hook for all of the plan’s high deductibles. I suppose that’s a “solution” of sorts, but it seems like a bad one to me.

People eligible for Medicare who have employer insurance are free to leave the employer plan and sign up for Medicare as their primary insurer. If your wife elected to do this, she would have an eight-month special enrollment period once her employer plan ended. However, I’d urge her to arrange for Medicare coverage to take effect on or before the date her employer coverage ended. The cost of being uninsured, even for a day, can be ruinous.

I’d appreciate knowing how she fares. With more and more employers moving to high deductible health plans, your wife’s quandary will be shared by a growing number of employed seniors.

John – Fla.: Why is our doctor unwilling to certify my wife for a Medicare home health aide? She called her doctor’s office and asked for one. A secretary called back saying. “Go out and hire one and pay for it yourself.” Are doctor’s afraid to go out on a limb? Is it a black mark against the doctor? We cannot afford to pay for this help ourselves, but my wife’s physical condition certainly warrants physical, occupational, and speech therapy.

Phil Moeller: Medicare provides limited home health benefits but, as you’ve discovered, only if a physician prescribes them. I don’t know if her doctor is afraid to go out on a limb or simply does not feel her condition is serious enough to qualify for this benefit.

Here’s a fuller explanation I recently wrote concerning this benefit and the problems people are having in getting access to it. And here is Medicare’s own explanation of the coverage. I hope there is something in here of value to you.

Carla: I am a widow, and will reach my full retirement age of 66 in October. I am thinking of applying for my late husband’s social security, and understand that if I wait until then my benefits will not be reduced by my employment earnings. Also, I have an ex-husband that I was married to for more than 10 years. One of the Social Security representatives told me I could get either a survivor or ex-spousal benefit, whichever is more. Another one told me if my ex is alive I only get half. I am not sure who is right on this. My ex is alive and makes more than my late husband. If the ex-spousal benefit was half of what my ex made, that benefit would be smaller than my survivor benefit. Lastly, are any of these benefits retroactive?

Phil Moeller: Carla, you have asked the kind of complicated question that affects lots of people, and for whom we wrote a whole book about Social Security. On the slight chance that you do not want to read an entire book to find these answers, here is a shorter reply!

Both survivor and ex-spousal benefits reach their maximum level if you wait to file them until you reach full retirement age.

Social Security is correct in saying that the most you could ever collect from an ex-spousal benefit is half of what your ex-spouse was entitled to receive when he reached his own full retirement age. This is true whether or not he had actually filed for his benefits at that time.

Because you turned 62 on or before the beginning of 2016, you are grandfathered under a 2015 Social Security law. If you decided to file for the ex-spousal benefit (assuming your ex- had reached retirement age or you’d been divorced for two or more years), you would be allowed to file what’s called a restricted application for only this benefit. This will permit you to wait until 70 to file for your own retirement benefit, at which time you’d receive an additional payment equal to the amount by which your retirement benefit exceeded your ex-spousal benefit.

Survivor benefits also can be taken by themselves, thus permitting you to delay your own retirement filing. From what you wrote, it appears that your survivor benefit would be larger than your ex-spousal benefit. If so, that is the one you should take.

Also, if your ex-husband were to pass away, you could file for a survivor benefit based on his earnings record. If it was larger than your current survivor benefit, you should receive an additional benefit equal to the amount by which your new survivor benefit was larger than the old one. Then, at 70, you still could switch to your own benefit if it was larger.

If you file for a benefit at your full retirement age, there is no retroactive benefit, so this should not be part of your filing strategy. Lastly, you’re correct that filings made on or after full retirement age are not subject to Social Security’s earnings test reductions.

Output: The government’s health care watchdog office has issued an early alert in advance of its upcoming formal report on egregious abuses of patients at skilled nursing facilities (SNFs).


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
More TV & less physical activity ramps up risk of walking disability
 Older people who watched more than five hours of TV per day and reported three or fewer hours per week of total physical activity had more than a three-fold higher risk of being unable to walk or having difficulty walking at the end of a study that ran for nearly a decade.

The new study, which assessed all types of sedentary behavior, as well as light, moderate, and vigorous physical activity, observed that prolonged sitting and TV watching was particularly harmful-especially when combined with low levels of total physical activity.

"TV viewing is a very potent risk factor for disability in older age," says lead author of the study Loretta DiPietro, PhD, MPH, Chair of the Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences at the George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH). "Sitting and watching TV for long periods (especially in the evening) has got to be one of the most dangerous things that older people can do because they are much more susceptible to the damages of physical inactivity."

DiPietro and her colleagues analyzed data from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, which kept track of men and women age 50 to 71 from six states and two metropolitan areas. All of the participants were healthy at the study's start in 1995-1996. The researchers recorded how much the participants watched TV, exercised or did gardening, housework or other physical activity at the beginning of the investigation, and then followed participants for about 10 years.

At the end of the study, nearly 30 percent of the previously healthy participants reported a mobility disability-having difficulty walking or being unable to walk at all.

The researchers observed that:

Participants who watched 5 or more hours of TV per day had a 65 percent greater risk of reporting a mobility disability at the study's end, compared with those who watched the least amounts of TV (less than 2 hours per day), and this association was independent of their level of total physical activity, as well as a variety of risk factors know to affect mobility disability risk;

Increasing levels of total sitting and TV time in combination with low (3 hours per week or less) physical activity were especially harmful, resulting in an acceleration of risk;

Among those people in the most physically active group (greater than 7 hours per week), total sitting of 6 hours per day or less was not associated with excess mobility disability

On the other hand, within all levels of physical activity, increasing amounts of TV viewing time increased the likelihood of a walking disability in a dose-response manner.

Other studies have found that too much sitting is a health hazard even for older people who meet the moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity guidelines of at least 150 minutes per week. But unlike this study, previous research did not follow people prospectively over a long period of time and did not consider the combined impact of both sedentary time and physical activity.

Younger people might be able to get away with sitting for long periods because they are physiologically more robust, DiPietro says. But after age 50, this study suggests that prolonged sitting and especially prolonged television viewing becomes particularly hazardous. TV viewing in the evening may be especially detrimental to health because it is not broken up with short bouts of activity, compared with sitting during the day, DiPietro adds.

"We've engineered physical activity out of our modern life with commuting, elevators, the internet, mobile phones and a lifestyle (think Netflix streaming) that often includes 14 hours of sitting per day," says DiPietro. "Our findings suggest that older people who want to remain fit must ramp up their daily physical activity and reduce the amount of time they spend sitting."

To help reduce the risk, DiPietro suggests building more physical activity into daily life. For example, people who sit for long periods in front of a computer should get up every hour and/or switch to a standing desk. Commuters can park the car several blocks away from the office or decide to take the stairs. Older people should walk about as much as possible throughout the day, and everyone should consider binging less on television—or at least marching in place during commercials or in between episodes.

"To stay active and healthy as you age, move more and sit less—throughout the day—every day," DiPietro says.

More information: The Joint Associations of Sedentary Time and Physical Activity With Mobility Disability in Older People: The NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, glx122, DOI: 10.1093/gerona/glx122

Output: Older people who watched more than five hours of TV per day and reported three or fewer hours per week of total physical activity had more than a three-fold higher risk of being unable to walk or having difficulty walking at the end of a study that ran for nearly a decade.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Advocating for clinical wearables, the new normal in healthcare
 · Intention – People are often skeptical of new technology and their possible disruption to workflow, especially in a healthcare setting. Purveyors of these solutions must promote the fact that connected sensing technology was designed with a deep understanding of ourselves, our unmet needs, and the ever-changing healthcare continuum – it is not an accidental aside to consumer technology.

· Education – For clinical wearables to become a reality, both health systems and patients need to be on board. Once providers and payers fully understand and acknowledge the contribution clinical wearables could make to healthcare worldwide, they will be able to better educate their patients on how to use the technology for an easier, more comfortable experience.

· Collaboration – Deploying clinical wearables on a larger scale requires a collaborative relationship between vendors, providers, payers and patients, where vendors deliver the vision and capabilities while providers, payers, and patients share direct feedback to inform their continued innovation.

With the above considerations in mind, our next step as an industry should be to create and implement a plan taking into account all parties involved—from development to routine use—for an environment that maximizes the benefits of clinical wearables on a global scale. With 2017 already under way, we must remain persistent and keep moving our initiative forward through education that demonstrates how this technology can lower patient costs, ease physician workloads, and put chronic disease sufferers back in control. Their potential to streamline healthcare industry costs and operations worldwide cannot and should not be ignored.

With 2018 looming in the not-too-distant future, we must remain persistent and keep moving our initiative forward through education that demonstrates how this technology can lower patient costs, ease physician workloads, and put chronic disease sufferers back in control. Clinical wearables have the potential to streamline healthcare industry costs and operations worldwide cannot and should not be ignored.

Photo: exdez, Getty Images

Output: Wearables devices are poised to reshape the patient experience from hospital to home by creating a new normal that puts patients back in charge of their healthcare.