News of the Day

There’s one web address which many Americans will be typing in, starting next week – HealthCare.Gov – as open enrollment begins November 1st for people to sign up for coverage. It will run until December 15, as opposed to the end of January as in previous years.

With a shorter window of opportunity to sign up this year, those at the local level are stepping up to help out.

“If people do not enroll between November 1st and December 15th, that door closes,” Lieske Giese, director of the Eau Claire City-County Health Department. “Our strong encouragement is that people sign up for ACA that are needing health insurance.”

During open enrollment in 2016, more than 3,916 people in Eau Claire County selected a plan on the Affordable Care Act marketplace, but Giese says it’s not just for the poor or people not eligible through an employer.

“Often, people that are on ACA are using that resource, because they’re not eligible for an employer-sponsored health insurance or they’re not in a low enough income bracket to be eligible for, in Wisconsin, Medicaid or BadgerCare,” she said. “There is a middle group of people who may be self-employed, who may be farmers, who may be at an employment situation where they don’t offer health insurance that really need it.”

According to the UW Population Health Institute, more than 220,000 Wisconsinites last year put the Affordable Care Act to work for them. But, no matter how people in the state get their health coverage taken care of, getting it taken care of isn’t always easy.

Several state attorneys general have announced they will sue to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s rollback of President Barack Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan. Can they win? And should they? The answer to both questions is no, but not because of anything inherently wrong with the plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants. Although administrative decisions must be rational, they are permitted to reflect the president’s political priorities and beliefs.

The Clean Power Plan has been enmeshed in litigation from the start. After it was promulgated by Obama’s EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked it from going into operation. The order came on Feb. 9, 2016. The four liberal justices voted against it. The five conservatives voted in favor — less than a week before Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. The order blocking the plan was a big deal, legally speaking. Never before had the Supreme Court frozen a regulation before the courts of appeals had had the chance to weigh in on its legality. And the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which was going to review the regulation, had refused a similar stay.

The conservative justices were sending an unusually strong signal that they sided with the 29 states and industry groups that were challenging the plan as exceeding the EPA’s authority. As a consequence, the Clean Power Plan didn’t go into effect.

To attack the rollback, Democratic attorneys general will have to argue that the decision to reverse the earlier regulation was irrational — “arbitrary and capricious,” under the language of the Administrative Procedure Act.

As a matter of law, regulatory rollback is treated the same as the initial promulgation of a regulation. That means the government must articulate a rational reason for its decision-making. In the case of the Clean Power Plan rollback, the government’s main argument will apparently be that the original plan was itself unlawful because it exceeded the EPA’s authority to regulate emissions under Section 111(D) of the Clean Air Act.

Technically, the issue is whether the “best system of emission reduction” that the EPA is empowered to impose must relate only to the specific technology used to regulate emissions at a single power plant or “source.” The Clean Power Plan imposed broader limits on emissions that would likely have required not just improvements in emissions technology but also reduction of coal use to meet emissions targets.

But the Trump administration is entitled to offer its own interpretation of the statute that differs from Obama’s. And since Scott Pruitt as attorney general of Oklahoma was one of the leading critics of the plan, it’s not surprising that the EPA under his leadership has adopted his view of the law.

Agencies like the EPA are part of the executive branch. The election of a president is, in no small part, a referendum on the regulatory policies that the public would like to see enacted.

The top U.S. Senate Republican and the White House budget director said on Sunday they hoped for action on a Republican tax reform package by the end of the year, while keeping their options open on how to pay for sweeping tax cuts.

President Donald Trump’s plan promises up to $6 trillion in tax cuts, but would increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Democrats have criticized the package as a giveaway to the rich and corporations that would balloon the deficit.

Republicans, who control both the Senate and House of Representatives, have yet to produce a bill as their self-imposed deadline to overhaul the U.S. tax code by the end of 2017 approaches. The party’s lawmakers differ widely on what cuts to make and how to pay for them.

Trump participated in a conference call with House Republican lawmakers on Sunday where tax reform was discussed, a White House official said.

The president was also expected to travel to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to participate in Senate Republicans’ weekly policy lunch, with the tax package high on the agenda.

Governor Scott Walker announced that Fitch Ratings upgraded Wisconsin’s bond rating to “AA+” from “AA.” The announcement comes on the heels of news that Kroll Bond Rating Agency also upgraded the state’s bond rating to “AA+.”

“This is now the second agency in as many days to upgrade Wisconsin’s outlook, and it shows our reforms are working for Wisconsin,” Governor Walker said. “We proved you can budget responsibly and make strong investments in priorities like education and infrastructure while holding the line on taxes.”

The following is an excerpt from the Fitch Ratings report:

“The state’s fiscal performance was historically challenged by structural imbalances and a reliance on one-time resources to cover budgetary needs. The fiscal 2011-2013 budget marked a turning point, with extensive structural budget actions and the resolution of several lingering fiscal challenges.”

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services has released data on opioid death and injury.

The study shows drug overdose deaths in Wisconsin increased 300 percent during a 15-year period; there were 246 deaths in 2000 compared to 1,031 deaths in 2016.

“This information can be used by anyone seeking to better understand the scope of Wisconsin’s opioid epidemic and develop strategies for combating opioid misuse and deaths,” stated State Health Officer Karen McKeown in a news release.

Statewide during that time span, more than half of the drug overdose deaths involved prescription opioids. The total number of deaths due to prescription opioids increased 600 percent, from 81 cases in 2000 to 568 in 2016. While death from heroin overdose accounted for 36 percent of all drug overdose deaths, heroin overdose deaths increased 12 times, from 28 deaths in 2000 to 371 deaths in 2016.

Governor Scott Walker created the Task Force on Opioid Abuse in 2016 to address the state’s opioid overdose epidemic.

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) delayed a vote on a nearly $3 billion incentive package for Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn until November after an unspecified problem was discovered with the deal board members were set to vote on Tuesday.

Wisconsin’s budget finished the fiscal year that ended June 30 with a $579 million surplus, $126 million more than expected and the fourth-largest surplus of the past two decades. The amount was higher than expected mostly because agencies spent about $116 million less than they were authorized to spend.

Tax collections and departmental revenues came in almost level — $4.9 million more than projections that were made when the 2015-17 budget was approved two years ago, an indication that economic growth has held steady since then.

“Our pro-growth, pro-taxpayer reforms are working, and this is evidenced by the fact we have ended every year with a surplus since taking office,” Walker said in a statement.

Targeting small and midsize manufacturers, three Wisconsin business organizations have launched an initiative to boost productivity in factories across the state.

Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, Milwaukee 7 and Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership say the new program, called the Transformational Productivity Initiative, will identify factors that limit productivity growth and then work with companies to solve those problems.

The WEDC has awarded Milwaukee 7 a $190,000 matching grant to implement the program, and between five and 10 companies are being sought for a two-year trial period.

The Wisconsin business groups say they aim to develop a user-friendly set of diagnostic and assessment tools for productivity issues.

The tools will come from teams representing select manufacturers, Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership and University of Wisconsin programs in Milwaukee, Stout and Madison.

“It’s a different, comprehensive approach that we haven’t seen anywhere else,” said Kelly Armstrong, the project’s lead for the WEDC.

“TPI is a long-term strategy directed at moving the needle on productivity in the aggregate, working with small and midsize manufacturers in a way that will ultimately drive wage and job growth in Wisconsin,” Armstrong said.

The productivity initiative is aimed at companies with fewer than 500 employees. “This initiative is critical if Wisconsin and the Milwaukee region are to remain globally competitive,” said Pat O’Brien, executive director of Milwaukee 7, an economic strategy group for the seven counties in southeastern Wisconsin.

In the next 30 days, companies will be chosen for the two-year trial period. They will be from various industries but must be manufacturers.

Applications are being accepted through the WEDC.

“What we will do is pick between five and 10 private companies that have volunteered to go through this process, at no charge to them, to be the pilot program,” Armstrong said. “The idea is to develop the (diagnostics) tools that can be used for small and midsize manufacturers across the state,” she added.

President Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday morning aimed at taking action on health care after Congress’s failure to repeal ObamaCare. The order will:

• direct the Department of Labor to “modernize” rules to allow small employers to create association health plans, the source said. Small businesses will be able to band together if they are within the same state, in the same “line of business,” or are in the same trade association.