James Wimberley

As you all know, December was an excellent month for the ACA exchanges, federal and state. The official HHS totals at 28 December were 2.15 million for market policies, 1.58 million for Medicaid/SCHIP. Charles Gaba’s running total for all new ACA coverage – including the mass Medicaid baptisms by transfers from state schemes, private policies […]

On November 28 I welcomed the first million enrollees under ACA, whether to marketplace policies or Medicaid/SCHIP. The post was based on the fragmentary data available at the time, brought together in Charles “brainwrap” Gaba’s invaluable running spreadsheet, with some extra tweaks and guesswork by me. HHS has just released its ACA enrolment report to […]

I dare say Mark will want to comment on this, but I’ll beat him to the punch with the news. Uruguay’s Senate has passed the marijuana legalization law by a party-line vote. Text in Spanish of the version passed by the lower house of parliament. Infographic in English on the new policy. It’s not clear […]

There’s one group of Americans who have a special reason to celebrate Thanksgiving: the million who now have medical insurance for the first time, thanks to Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act. I’ll justify the number after the jump. For now: welcome to civilization. Cheers. I know, I know: ACA doesn’t create a fully […]

The HHS has released its first detailed statistical report on ACA online applications processed in the first month (October 1 – November 2). Their summary below the jump: The split of the 846,184 completed applications between states running their own marketplaces and those relying on healthgov.com is 326,623 (39%) to 519,561 (61%). Some of the […]

This post isn’t about solar per se. Instead, it’s about imagery and power. Check out thisphoto below the jump: At first sight, the only surprising thing about this image from China is the standard of the middle-class houses. Here’s the accompanying story, from the English website of Xinhua, published on 9 April: Photo taken on […]

Cambridge physics professor David Mackay is scientific adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change. In his online best-nonseller Sustainable Energy – without the hot air, page 39, he thinks we are already at the practical limit of PV efficiency: Typical solar panels have an efficiency of about 10%; expensive ones perform at […]

Harry Reid’s political interests are loosely aligned with President Obama’s but they are not identical. (For one thing, Reid cares a lot more about the 2016 election.) It’s striking that in the current showdown with John Boehner’s House Republicans, they are both standing firm. No surrender, no negotiation. Boehner is, willingly or not, leading an […]

Where was the party of Lincoln at the commemoration of the March on Washington and MLK’s great speech? Former President George H.W. Bush: too poorly to attend (he’s 89) Former President George W. Bush: recovering from surgery Former Governor Jeb Bush (invited to stand in for other Bushes): other engagements Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: […]

It turns out that hard-right Republican Senator and Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is a Canadian citizen as well as an American one. TPM: The birth certificate [released by Cruz] confirmed that the Texas Republican was born Dec. 22, 1970 in Calgary, Alberta. Because he was born to an American mother, Cruz instantly became an American […]