We’ve Been Thinking About Gun Violence All Wrong

It’s almost Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer, and the season when we see gun violence cases rise nationally, across the country. This is a predictable increase every year, leading to more media stories and government conversations about what can be done to reverse the trend.

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Gun violence is a uniquely American problem. According to data from the CDC, our murder rate today is about the same as in 1900. It leads many to ask: Why is this? And what can we do differently?

Unfortunately, the way we’ve thought about gun violence has made the politics of progress nearly impossible. The even bigger problem is we’ve been thinking about gun violence all wrong.

The most politically contentious part of the debate has been about gun control. Guns, on the one hand, make violent crime much more deadly, but at the same time, can also be used for self-defense against crime. I’ve spent most of my professional life looking at the economics of crime—especially gun violence—and how to prevent it. The best available data—full disclosure: I was one of the researchers who conducted this study—suggests that if there was a way to somehow get rid of the 400 million guns we have in the U.S. (a country of 330 million people), on balance, things would get substantially safer. That’s led to a lot of debate over gun control that has become unproductive, especially at the national level. (There’s no shortage of examples; a left-of-center think-tank’s article on the NRA’s political messaging entitled “Guns, Lies and Fear;” the NRA accusing President Biden of “coddling criminals”—the list goes on.) That, in turn, has led lots of people to conclude that, if gun control is stalled, we can’t solve gun violence.

But what that perspective misses is that the main effect guns have on gun violence is to make violence more deadly. Even if we can’t do all that much about guns, we can make real progress on gun violence by reducing interpersonal violence. In fact, a growing body of data and evidence shows that preventing shootings in the first place is not only possible, but enormously cost-effective compared to the traditional policies of U.S. partisan politics.

This, in fact, is the central problem: going back at least to the 1930s the Left and Right have bitterly disagreed about how to reduce violent behavior. The Right tends to think of violence as being caused by intrinsically bad people who are unafraid of the criminal justice system. The only response, under this perspective, is to try to disincentivize gun violence with the threat of ever-more-severe criminal justice punishments. The Left tends to think of violence as due to bad socio-economic conditions, which leads desperate people to resort to crime and violence in order to feed their families. The only response in this view is to disincentivize violence by improving the alternatives to crime and ending poverty.

Read More: Guns Are Not Just a Public Health Problem

But the root of gun violence is not what we think it is. Both the Left and Right, despite their heated disagreements, share an implicit assumption about gun violence: That before anyone pulls a trigger, they carefully weigh the pros and cons beforehand. That gun violence is a deliberate, rational act.

That’s not what most shootings in America are. Most shootings are not premeditated. Most shootings, instead, start with words—arguments that escalate and end in tragedy because someone has a gun.

Whatever people are doing in the middle of a heated argument, it’s most definitely not a careful, deliberate weighing of pros and cons. In those moments, most people are instead acting emotionally, almost automatically—not even really thinking about what we’re doing, in the usual sense of “thinking.”

This connects to one of the most important lessons from behavioral economics, as summarized in Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. All of us engage in two types of cognition, but we’re only aware of one. The “voice in our head” that we usually think of as “thinking” is indeed rational, deliberate and calculating. (Kahneman calls it “system 2.”) But that type of thinking is also slow and enormously mentally taxing. So our minds have all developed to also carry out a different type of thinking—“system 1”—that happens below the level of consciousness, a set of automatic responses that are designed to work well for routine, low-stakes things we encounter daily, but can get us into trouble when over-generalized into high-stakes situations—like when a gun is present.

What’s more, behavioral economics suggests that our deviations from rational, deliberate behavior has some predictable structure. That includes emotional, violent behavior—even the most serious forms of violence. For example, all of our minds have a tendency to “catastrophize,” or make negative events seem even worse than they are. The feeling that “nothing in the world is worse than letting this person in front of me get away with this” is something we’ve all had. But when a gun is present there is indeed something worse than the other person getting away with it; that “something” involves someone dead and someone in jail.

Read More: 6 Proven Ways to Reduce Gun Violence

There are social programs that help people better understand their own minds and how to prevent their emotions from taking over. My research center has partnered with a remarkable set of non-profits in Chicago including Youth Guidance, Brightpoint, and Youth Advocate Programs to study programs that help young people recognize when they’re about to engage in something like catastrophizing (or something else) that makes the risk of violence more likely, and how to avoid that. These sorts of programs, and even lower-cost versions that detention-center staff can deliver, have been shown to reduce crime and violence by 20 to 50%.

That also means policies that make our communities and neighborhoods more open—even something as small as encouraging more adults to spend more time outdoors—can help defuse conflicts. The impacts can be remarkably large: policies like ensuring every neighborhood has some commercial spaces interspersed with residential uses, cleaning up vacant lots or abandoned houses, or even improving street lighting have been found to generate 20%, 30%, and even up to 50% reductions in violence and shootings. It also keeps the costs typically low.

The great thing about prevention is that it sidesteps all the political fights over gun control and “root causes” and, for that matter, what the right prison penalties should be after a terrible crime has already been committed. Now there’s no victim or shooter in the first place.

For over 100 years, we’ve been arguing about whether our solutions should focus on carrots or sticks when gun violence largely doesn’t seem to respond much to incentives at all. Progress on this seemingly intractable problem is indeed possible, but we have to understand that what we have been doing in the past comes at the problem wrong. By using behavioral economics tools—many of which are proven, and low-cost—we can stop most of gun violence before it starts.

source https://time.com/7285626/gun-violence-prevention-essay/

The Unexpected Grief of Discarding Your Frozen Eggs

In 2014, freezing my eggs felt like a groundbreaking act of empowerment. Technology seemed to provide an insurance policy that preserved the possibility of future motherhood. Yet I did not anticipate the emotional landscape that I would face a decade later, as a scientific intervention became a personal meditation on time, money, and unfulfilled dreams.

I always assumed I would have children. I adored my young cousins, babysat from a young age, and earned money in college by working in a church nursery. Yet giving birth was never an all-consuming need. Unlike some high school friends, I never shoved a pillow under my shirt to see how I would look pregnant. Nor did I feel compelled by a ticking biological clock.

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By my mid-30s, I had achieved professional success and felt ready to start a family. An older colleague’s warnings about diminishing fertility prompted me to check my hormone levels. Despite looking young, the tests revealed that my body was indeed aging—my egg count already below average. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine had recently deemed egg freezing no longer experimental, leading a range of news outlets to extol its virtues and some companies to cover the costs. Apart from the steep price tag, freezing my eggs felt like an obvious choice.

My then-boyfriend was uncertain about marriage and fatherhood. If our relationship ended, I did not want to resent him for wasting my waning years of fertility. If it lasted, I figured the eggs could be used for a second child—or our first, if needed. By the time I started injecting hormones into my belly, we had broken up.The doctor retrieved a disappointing three eggs, far short of the eight to 15 range recommended for a future pregnancy attempt.  

When I did a second cycle, I was newly dating a man who was enthusiastic about marriage and kids. He even flew from Chicago to Washington DC to pick me up after the retrieval, though he wryly observed that he may be helping another man father my children someday. The result of my second cycle was a marginally better five eggs. 

In my early 40s, I remained hopeful about finding a life partner and thawing my aspirant offspring for an in vitro fertilization attempt. I ruled out having a baby alone with donor sperm, although I admire those who have chosen that path to motherhood. I filled my life with meaningful work, good friends, and travel adventures. I became the quintessential “cool aunt,” showering my niece and nephew with gifts from around the world, and enjoyed time with my friends’ kids. 

Now 49, I feel my window for having children has closed. It was not a deliberate decision; it just never happened and I have accepted that reality. When I recently met a friend’s newborn son, I relished baby snuggles and his intoxicating scent. But her kitchen filled with bottles and stories of sleepless nights affirmed my contentment with an independent lifestyle. 

And yet every spring, anxiety grips me when the annual letter arrives from the fertility clinic asking if I want to renew my egg storage. In recent years, a demanding job left no time for reflection, so I simply mailed a check to postpone the decision. When the letter arrived last year, I had just left my position and was embarking on a year of international travel. A friend encouraged me to pay the fee and use the time to contemplate my future. Now, as I begin a new job overseas, I am still agonizing over my eggs. Despite having accepted—even embraced—my child-free life, I resist telling the clinic to dispose of them. 

Last year, I cleaned out a storage unit containing childhood treasures that my parents had saved when they downsized over a decade ago. Being sentimental, I kept more cards, books, and photos than is probably warranted. Yet in a burst of pre-travel productivity, I purged significantly—including my fourth-grade Trapper Keeper. If my parents had thrown it away years ago, I never would have thought about it. And it serves no practical purpose in my current life. But I belatedly realized that I liked knowing it existed and now wish that I had kept it. 

It is a seemingly trivial comparison, but the experience gives me pause. Having saved my eggs for so long, will I regret letting them go? And is there a scenario, like meeting a new partner, in which I would still use them? I thought I had accepted years ago that I would not have a child. Yet the prospect of destroying my eggs has unexpectedly forced me to grieve or perhaps, finally accept, a future that looks different from what I imagined. My eggs represent both what could have been and what could still be. Rather than passively accept that I never got pregnant, as I have to date, I must now actively eliminate the last chance that I could.

Of course, I have not been paying for the certainty of a pregnancy but the possibility of one. There is no guarantee that my paltry egg collection would even thaw, form an embryo, implant, or result in a baby. Sometimes this makes me question the sizable financial investment as well as whether I should continue throwing good money after bad. Despite the initial hype, recent studies have found that only six to 11% of women use frozen eggs, often getting pregnant naturally or using fresh eggs for in vitro fertilization. And at a certain stage, biology still makes the final decision—even with frozen younger eggs, pregnancy in older women can carry additional risks.

Although the prospect of discarding these eggs feels unexpectedly profound, there is no ceremony for this moment—just a simple authorization form allowing lab technicians to “ethically discard” what once held my most intimate hope. Friends have suggested donating my eggs, but this does not resolve my dilemma. I froze my eggs with the expectation that I would raise my own child so I do not feel comfortable giving them to a stranger, assuming they were even viable. If I already had a baby, I would have realized that future and consequently feel less attached to these unused eggs. 

Here is the truth I wish someone had told me a decade ago: in addition to the financial cost, there is an emotional toll—in the form of lingering hope and unfulfilled potential—to maintaining frozen eggs. If I could go back to 2014, would I make the same choice? Probably. I appreciated the peace of mind and sense of control. However, I now realize that was based on the assumption that I would eventually have a baby. I wish I had also known the psychological weight of my unused eggs would become a source of grief. 

I will write another check this spring, not because I truly believe I will use my eggs but because the act of letting go feels more final than I am prepared to accept. Maybe when I turn 50, I will finally be ready. Maybe.

source https://time.com/7285337/grief-discarding-frozen-eggs/

Supreme Court to Weigh Birthright Citizenship Challenge—and Power of Lower Courts to Stop It

President Donald Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders aimed at reshaping immigration policy, only to see many of them tied up or halted by federal judges. Now, he’s looking to the Supreme Court to break that pattern.

On Thursday, the Justices will hear arguments in a high-stakes case that sits at the intersection of two fiercely contested areas of law: birthright citizenship and the power of federal courts to block presidential actions nationwide. While the case is ostensibly about Trump’s executive order ending automatic citizenship for the U.S.-born children of non-citizens, legal observers agree the real fight is over the judicial tool that has repeatedly thwarted Trump’s agenda: universal injunctions.

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The Trump Administration is not directly asking the court to review the constitutionality of its citizenship order, but is rather urging the Court to curtail or eliminate the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions, which have frozen Trump’s policy in place while litigation unfolds. Trump’s lawyers argue that universal injunctions exceed the constitutional authority of individual judges and prevent the government from implementing policy while cases wind through the courts. Broader relief, they say, should come only through mechanisms like class-action lawsuits—not sweeping injunctions issued by single district judges.

“These injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the Trump Administration,” the Justice Department wrote in a March filing, noting that more were issued in February 2025 alone than during the first three years of the Biden Administration.

If the Justices rule in Trump’s favor, his Administration could attempt to deny citizenship to thousands of children born in some states, while being barred from doing so in others.

Birthright citizenship

Trump’s executive order, issued on his first day back in office, would deny citizenship to babies born on American soil if both parents lack U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent residency—even if they are in the country legally on temporary visas. But legal experts say the order violates the doctrine of birthright citizenship guaranteed under the 14th Amendment and more than 120 years of court precedent set by the Supreme Court in the landmark 1898 ruling United States v. Wong Kim Ark. “This order is blatantly unconstitutional,” says Rachel Rosenbloom, a law professor at Northeastern University in Boston who is writing a book about the history of efforts to restrict constitutional birthright citizenship. “Many historians, legal scholars, and judges who have looked at this order have said there’s simply no way that this order is constitutional.”

Indeed, a lower court ruling by U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman of Maryland read that “No court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation…This court will not be the first.”

Rosenbloom adds that Trump “is trying to radically restrict birthright citizenship” but notes that it’s not the first time the government has attempted to do so. “The government tried before in Wong Kim Ark but it failed… no court has endorsed the Trump Administration’s interpretation of birthright citizenship in the time since that decision.”

The legal consensus is similarly skeptical. Lower courts have uniformly struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, citing the 14th Amendment’s text—“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States”—and decades of precedent recognizing that birthright citizenship applies regardless of parental immigration status.

But in its appeal, the Trump Administration has sidestepped that constitutional question, choosing instead to challenge the scope of the court orders that blocked the policy from taking effect.

What are universal injunctions?

Universal injunctions are orders that block a federal policy from taking effect across the country, even for people not directly involved in a lawsuit. Though relatively rare until the mid-2010s, their use exploded as Republican-led states challenged Obama-era immigration policies and Democratic-led states returned fire under Trump.

Trump, more than any other President, has felt their sting. He faced 64 nationwide injunctions during his first term and is on pace to surpass that in his second term as more than 200 lawsuits have been filed against his Administration. These court orders have frozen policies ranging from pandemic-era workplace rules to immigration enforcement and federal funding reallocations.

In response, Trump has railed against what he calls “unlawful Nationwide Injunctions by Radical Left Judges,” warning that unless the Supreme Court acts, “our Country is in very serious trouble!”

Critics of these injunctions—including several Supreme Court justices—argue that they grant too much power to individual district judges and encourage forum shopping, where plaintiffs seek out ideologically sympathetic courts. “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks,” Justice Elena Kagan said in 2022.

Justice Neil Gorsuch has called universal injunctions “patently unworkable,” and Justice Clarence Thomas has suggested the Court should consider ending the practice entirely.

Yet others, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, have urged caution. In a 2024 opinion, she described the issue as “contested and difficult,” warning against sweeping decisions that could undermine the judiciary’s ability to provide meaningful relief.

By selecting a case where the underlying policy is widely considered legally indefensible, the Court may be trying to isolate the injunction issue from the merits of Trump’s executive order. Even so, legal experts argue that this is precisely the kind of case where a broad injunction is not only justified but necessary. “Nationwide injunctions have been somewhat controversial,” Rosenbloom says, “but this case is the perfect example of why you do sometimes need a nationwide injunction. It would be complete chaos if this order were allowed to go into effect for certain people and not for others.” She warns that scaling back the injunctions would place a staggering burden on the courts and affected families.

The cases before the Court—Trump v. CASA, Trump v. Washington, and Trump v. New Jersey—stem from lawsuits brought by states, immigrants’ rights groups, and pregnant women who feared their children would be denied citizenship under Trump’s order. Judges in all three cases issued broad injunctions blocking the policy nationwide.

In Seattle, Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour called the order “blatantly unconstitutional.” In Boston, Judge Leo Sorokin said its enforcement could not proceed anywhere in the country. And in Maryland, Judge Boardman emphasized that “the government will not be harmed by a preliminary injunction that prevents it from enforcing an executive order likely to be found unconstitutional.”

Appeals courts declined to narrow those rulings—prompting the Administration to bypass the usual route of Supreme Court review and instead seek emergency relief. In an unusual move, the Justices granted argument, suggesting at least some saw urgency in resolving the dispute before the Court’s next term begins.

The Justices could affirm the injunctions as properly tailored to protect constitutional rights while litigation proceeds, or they could limit the orders to apply only to the plaintiffs who brought suit—or the states that joined the challenge. That middle ground could still unleash practical chaos, forcing local officials to create systems for determining which babies are entitled to citizenship and which are not.

The broader implications go well beyond immigration. A ruling that sharply limits or abolishes universal injunctions would weaken one of the judiciary’s most powerful tools for checking executive overreach—a shift that could benefit not only Trump but future presidents of either party.

The case arrives at a moment of deep internal division on the Court. Justices Samuel Alito and Thomas have expressed outrage at what they view as judicial overreach. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has sought to soften hardline rulings with concurring opinions aimed at compromise. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in a surprise move last month, joined the Court’s liberals in opposing Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act for his mass deportation efforts.

And on Thursday, the Supreme Court faces perhaps its most politically and constitutionally explosive case since Chief Justice John Roberts swore in Trump for a second term in January.

source https://time.com/7285345/birthright-citizenship-supreme-court-injunctions/

What’s Behind Your Persistent Cough?

No one wants to be the person who can’t stop coughing. Not only is it uncomfortable on your throat, but it also draws angry stares from others in elevators, subway cars, and restaurants—especially during respiratory virus season.

Why do some coughs seem to take forever to resolve? A pulmonologist and an otolaryngologist explain the causes of a chronic cough and what you can do about it.

Defining chronic cough

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In order to know what’s behind a constant cough, it helps to first keep track of how long you’ve had it. And there are specific timeframes that make a cough chronic or not. 

An acute or fleeting cough lasts for up to three weeks, explains Dr. Natalie Earl, an otolaryngologist at the Centers for Advanced ENT Care—Feldman ENT Division in Maryland and Washington, D.C. These short-lived coughs are usually related to a virus you caught and will resolve on their own, she says.

Read More: What to Eat When You’re Sick

On the other hand, a persistent or chronic cough lasts more than eight weeks, Earl says, sometimes even despite home remedies or over-the-counter cough medicine.

Somewhere in the middle are subacute coughs, which last between three and eight weeks, says Dr. Soo Jung Cho, a pulmonologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

Causes of chronic cough

If your cough has lasted eight weeks or more, you’re likely dealing with one of the following three causes. Around 90% of chronic coughs are due to one of these culprits, Cho says. (The other 10% are rare conditions like chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, or a side effect of certain medications.)

Asthma

If you can’t stop coughing, you may be dealing with cough-variant asthma, Cho says. Coughing is the main symptom of this breathing disease.

When you have asthma, you might cough more easily in reaction to irritants like pollen, fragrances, cold air, or even stress, according to the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. You may have also noticed that your symptoms don’t improve much with over-the counter cough meds.

A pulmonologist or allergist can assess you for potential asthma symptoms and take an X-ray or CT scan of your chest to look for underlying lung disease, Cho says. 

Postnasal drip

Otolaryngologists (also known as ENTs) are very familiar with this cause of a cough that won’t go away. It’s “the most common presenting reason for cough in an ENT office,” Earl says.

Postnasal drip occurs when secretions in the back of your nose drip down into your voice box, forcing you to cough, she explains. “Allergies, viruses, sinus infections, and non-allergic rhinitis are typical sources for postnasal drip.”

Read More: Why Do I Always Have a Runny Nose?

You might be tipped off that your cough is caused by postnasal drip if you feel like there’s liquid running down the back of your throat. You’ll likely also have an urge to clear your throat, but a dry cough when you do, she says.

Your doctor may want to use a laryngoscope, a camera on a thin tube placed down your throat, to examine your voice box and determine if postnasal drip or something else is causing your symptoms, Cho says. 

Acid reflux or GERD

Sometimes, heartburn presents itself as a cough rather than indigestion. “Instead, what is present is hoarseness, throat clearing, and a dry, nonproductive cough,” Earl says.

An ENT or pulmonologist might refer you to a gastroenterologist for imaging of your esophagus and stomach to assess the degree of your acid reflux, Cho says. If it’s chronic and severe, you may be diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease or GERD.

What to do about it

You don’t have to suffer through coughing bouts without support. Seek immediate medical attention if you have any major red flags along with your cough, such as shortness of breath, chest pain, unintentional weight loss, or if you’re coughing up blood, Cho says—especially if you smoke.

If you don’t have any major concerns about your coughing yet, you can test out a few at-home methods. Over-the-counter cough medicines and home remedies like tea with honey are worth trying, Cho says.

Read More: Are Allergy Shots Worth It?

If you suspect your cough is due to postnasal drip, try over-the-counter medications like guaifenesin (sold as Mucinex and other brands) that aim to dry up those secretions, Earl adds. If you think you have acid reflux, over-the-counter antacids or proton pump inhibitors may help, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.  

But after you’re tried some OTC meds, if your symptoms persist or get worse, it’s time to talk to a health care provider, Earl says. They may want to do imaging tests, refer you to another specialist, or start you on prescription treatment.

If you already have an underlying lung condition like asthma or COPD that affects your breathing, consider talking to your health care provider sooner than eight weeks if you’re coughing more than normal, Cho says. You’re at a higher risk for any acute cough to become a chronic cough, she says, but your doctor may be able to adjust medications you’re already taking to avoid that outcome.

source https://time.com/7284560/why-wont-my-cough-go-away/

When Fighting with Your Insurance Company Becomes a Full-Time Job

Erin Massey is busy in her day job as a scientist at a biotech company. But recently, she’s had another job, too: trying to convince her insurer, Cigna, to pay for a medication that she needs for her insomnia.

Premera, Massey’s previous insurer through another employer, covered the medication, and her doctor has deemed it medically necessary and has filled out numerous forms saying so. But Cigna repeatedly denied her requests for the insurance company to cover the medication, Quviviq, she says. 

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Massey estimates that she spends 8-10 hours a week working on getting the medication covered: talking to Cigna representatives, filling out forms, writing appeals, and otherwise researching how to convince Cigna that the medication is essential for her health. Her experience is not unusual: in total, Americans spend at least 12 million hours a week calling their health insurance company, according to a Gallup poll.  

They do this because of the complicated nature of the American health care system, which often requires pre-authorizations for procedures—essentially a green light from the insurer deeming the procedure medically necessary and covered by insurance—that frequently ends up in denials for care. About 45% of insured working-age adults received a medical bill or were charged a copayment for a service in the past year that they thought should have been free or covered by insurance, according to a 2024 Commonwealth Fund study. And 17% of adults were, like Massey, denied coverage for care recommended by a doctor.

Read More: Medicaid Expansions Saved Tens of Thousands of Lives, Study Finds

As a result, people have to pick up the phone and argue with their insurance companies, write letters of appeal, and otherwise spend countless hours tracking the status of their claim. This time suck, dubbed a “time tax” by Atlantic journalist Annie Lowredy, and bureaucratic “sludge” by Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, is bad for the economy overall and bad for our health. 

We may now be spending even more time on this sludge than in the past. News stories suggest that insurers are “becoming increasingly adept” at using technology to deny payment of claims, says Sara R. Collins, one of the authors of the Commonwealth study. “It’s really frustrating for people to pay their premiums and then not get the care they need when they need it,” she says. This undermines people’s trust in the health care system and makes them less likely to seek out medical care, she says. 

One study published in JAMA Network Open found that 22% of cancer patients didn’t get the care their doctors prescribed because of delays in prior authorization and other administrative issues.  

Cigna told TIME that it is not able to comment on any member’s case without a signed HIPAA waiver. But Massey said that after TIME contacted Cigna about her case, she got an email stating that the original decision denying her medicine was overturned and also that Cigna notified her doctor she would be covering the medication. Cigna said, in a statement, that “we don’t want anyone spending hours on the phone working to understand their benefits or to resolve issues” and that it recently launched an initiative designed to simplify its processes. 

Having an insurance company reverse a member’s denial after media or social-media attention is a documented phenomenon. Not everybody can rely on a reporter’s inquiries to overturn their insurance denials, though.

Read More: How Having a Baby Is Changing Under Trump

This health care time tax also costs a lot of money in lost productivity. Pfeffer, of Stanford, estimates that the cost of the time spent by employees dealing with their health insurance companies is around $21.57 billion each year. They often spend time they would otherwise be working dealing with their insurance companies—often because the only time they can talk to claims administrators is during normal business hours. 

Because health insurance is frequently a benefit administered by employers, employees sometimes become more frustrated with their company when their insurance doesn’t work as it should. Pfeffer says that people who spend more time on the phone with their health insurer are likely to be less satisfied with their current workplace, more likely to have missed a day or more of work, and more likely to feel burned out at work than people who aren’t having insurance issues. The cost of that reduced satisfaction on their productivity is around $95.6 billion, he says. 

Despite the high cost of the health insurance time tax, there are few solutions in the pipeline. The No Surprises Act, which went into effect on Jan 1, 2022, aimed to reduce time patients spent on the phone with their health insurers by protecting them from being billed for out-of-network costs in an emergency. And the Affordable Care Act has some guidelines about what insurers must cover. 

But there are few national rules governing insurers’ response times or even requiring them to show how often they deny claims or mis-process paperwork. 

Pfeffer says it’s time for employers to start being more proactive and holding insurers accountable for wasting their employees’ time. They hire the insurers, after all, to provide a benefit to their employees, but the benefit isn’t actually always very useful to the employee. Once employers start forcing insurers to show their claim-denial rates or how often their decisions are appealed, he says, insurers may start behaving better.

Read More: Food Safety Was Slipping in the U.S. Then Came Mass Layoffs

“Your employer hires your insurance company, and so your employer should say to the insurance company, ‘We’re going to hold you to a set of performance standards,’” he says. “‘And if you don’t meet our performance standards, we’re going to fire you.’” 

Erin Massey has gotten a crash course in how to deal with insurers; she’s learned  not to let representatives cut off a call until her questions have been answered, for example, and she demands everything in writing. 

She’d been looking for a cure for her insomnia for eight years, doing a lot of trial and error with doctors until she finally landed on the right medication, so it was especially frustrating that Cigna repeatedly denied it.

Until Cigna suddenly reversed course, her next step was to file an external appeal so outside doctors could review her case. At the time, she figured her insurer probably didn’t expect her to get that far. A few hundred hours ago, she wouldn’t have expected to get that far either.

“I have spent entire days just trying to figure out what the next step is,” she says. “It’s been a lot of work.”  

source https://time.com/7284610/fighting-health-insurance-company-denial/

What Pope Leo’s Augustinian Background Tells Us About his Papacy

On the evening of May 8, as a warm Roman sun began to lower itself over St. Peter’s Dome, the 133 voting cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church elected the Chicago-born Robert Prevost as Pope. Leo XIV is the first Pope from the Order of St. Augustine.

Three months ago, JD Vance achieved what most theologians fail to do in a lifetime: to make St. Augustine headline news. Speaking to U.S. media about the possible Christian basis for the Trumpian “America First” proposition, Vance claimed that such a notion was convincingly Augustinian. Vance argued that it was Christian to have a preferential love for one’s family or nation ahead of wider global obligations to strangers, neighbors, or non-citizens. His comments implied that love expands in concentric circles, diluted in intensity of obligation as it stretches further and further from one’s kin and kind. 

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In the sound and fury—whether of applause, outrage, or sheer perplexity—that followed, Pope Francis’ voice, weakened to near silence by illness, made itself heard. From his hospital bed, Pope Francis issued a correction, explaining that Vance was a poor reader of Augustine and failed to understand the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which we are taught by Jesus himself what neighbor love is. Asked by the questioner, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus uses the story to teach of a preferential love for the wounded, the weak, and those in need. This option is for all, irrespective of blood relation or nationality, it cannot be limited, and love is not a scarce commodity to be parceled out in rations. Pope Francis rejected a Trumpian “America First’” as a coherent political theology.

Pope Francis could have continued by pointing out that St. Augustine himself had preached on this very parable. Augustine uses the passage as an example less of what we should do immediately for others, but rather of what Christ does for us. We—all of us—are the wounded man lying beaten and bleeding on the road to Jericho. Our frail nature, damaged by our propensity to mess things up, stands in need of grace and salvation. Christ himself is the Good Samaritan. For St. Augustine, Christ makes a preferential option for humanity. Christians are to imitate Christ, the true Good Samaritan, called to view all as nothing less than kin in sin and in the promise of salvation. We are called to concrete acts of love for all of our neighbours.

This is an interpretation of that parable that the new occupant of the Chair of St. Peter will be very familiar with, for he himself is “a son of St. Augustine” as he reminded the expectant crowd at his announcement. Pope Leo XIV, the first Pope with dual nationality, himself a bridge across the strained Americas, joined the Augustinian order in his 20s and has dedicated his life to a combination of deep learning and missionary service of the poorest. In his first comments on Saturday afternoon, in which he explained the choice of his name and his priorities, he reaffirmed this priority for service to the “least and the rejected”.

In a moment where Catholicism has become newly politicised in America, we have, rather unexpectedly, an Augustinian Pope for what appears to be an Augustinian moment. This moment is less Augustinian because Vance re-politicised the ordo amoris and more because, as Augustine himself made clear in his magisterial City of God, written in the crucible of the political and ecclesial crises of the 5^th Century, empires and civilisations can decay, old worlds pass away, and new ones be born. Much of what Augustine wrote following the fall of Rome feels breathtakingly prescient to our moment. The City of God, written over the space of around 13 years, was written partly to rebut the allegation that Christianity was responsible for the collapse of an empire, that its adoption had led to a weakening of the virtues that had powered Rome to global dominance. Augustine’s work was one of ‘apologetics’ in the proper sense of the word – a defence of Christian virtue and a public confession of Christian faith as the basis for the true society: for the good, for justice, and true lasting peace. As institutions fractured, migratory movements pushed not from Africa to Europe, but from Europe to Africa, and a new order began to emerge, Augustine interpreted the signs of discordant times.

It is hard to avoid concluding that this has strange echoes of debates in our own more Nietzschean moment. Elon Musk, for example, believes that American society has been “weakened” by empathy and compassion in public life. He has described these as “civilisational weaknesses” to be overcome. In his address from the balcony of St. Peter’s, the new Augustinian Pope made clear that, on the contrary, he views these to be Christianity’s civilising and humanising strengths. 

And this is not the maverick view of one man. The clearest sign of the person that the cardinals would go on to choose lay in the short bulletin issued on the morning of May 6 by the Vatican’s press office. It summarised their goals as they stepped into conclave: in the next successor to St. Peter they sought, “a shepherd,” “a missionary,” “a teacher of humanity,” someone capable of leading a “Samaritan Church” close to the wounded, the suffering, and the impoverished, someone who would help overcome polarising forces in Church and society, and someone who would make peace building his goal. That was the man who walked out smiling, a little overwhelmed but entirely calm, into the late afternoon Roman sunshine, to the roars of a stunned and exhilarated crowd.

Leo emerged dressed like Benedict but sounding like Francis. In his comments made on Saturday afternoon, explaining the choice of his name “Leo XIV,” we saw further hints of the likely strong connecting threads between the papacies of Francis and Leo. In one sense, Francis prepared the way for Leo: he spoke often of the fact that we live not merely in an era of change but a change of era. Francis made the Church’s social teaching a central plank of his papacy, and Leo suggests that just as Leo XIII in 1891 made the change of industrial era, its migrations, poverties, displacements, and rapid changes his spiritual focus, so Leo XIV will seek to do so for the digital age of new uprootings and displacements, as well as opportunities.

It is understandable, then, that MAGA Catholics suggest that Leo might hold an American passport but that he is not “America First.” Steve Bannon went on to claim that he will face confrontational and challenging meetings with President Donald Trump. 

Yet it is hard not to think that Leo will approach such meetings in a disarmingly different mode. His nature as Cardinal Prevost, was not to shy away from conflict and to speak clearly and firmly, but his manner is almost exactly the opposite of the public persona of Trump. Leo smiles easily, is quiet, calm, gentle and not the master of a sound-bite. He took longer to appear on the balcony because he paused and took time to script each word. His sermon in the Sistine Chapel the following day was not off the cuff (he seems less likely to ad-lib than Francis), but was prepared, read out, considered, and carefully crafted. 

Pope Leo is said by those I know well who have worked closely with him to manage conflict by finding ways to bridge differences and build unity. And he is an American of a very different disposition and persona on the world stage to Trump: he represents a different America. In a moment when the joyously plural expressions of being American are funnelled down to a single dominant script, the careful, considered, globally-oriented, calm Leo XIV is unlikely to fulfil the aspirations of MAGA loyalists to a showdown, a culture war or an open conflict. As a son of St. Augustine, Pope Leo has deep resources to play this very differently, towards a dialogue and peace that resists the use of force—what Augustine calls the “lust to dominate”—and makes no surrender to false versions of the good.

Writing in the 1960s, Hannah Arendt, another American bridger of broken wartime worlds, wrote a short essay on the papacy of John XIII. No fan of the Catholic Church as an institution, yet an admirer of John XIII, a Pope of peace and Church renewal and reform, Arendt titled her essay “Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli: A Christian on the Chair of St. Peter.” The title referenced a conversation with a chambermaid on the day of his death, when Arendt happened to be in Rome—a city she loved. 

How did a true and humble Christian manage amidst all the politics of the papacy to sit on the Chair of Peter, they marvelled. How, I wonder, might she have described this Pope of the Americas, another dual national who spoke the words “peace” nine times in his first address, and who has made clear his desire for dialogue, closeness to his people, and an ethic of unconditional neighbour love, his desire to, in imitation of Christ the Good Samaritan, do all he can to help us out of cultural and spiritual ditch we seem to currently to lie in, and into a more human, more humane future?

Pope Leo is exactly the person to help Vance, Trump, and indeed the world, answer this question, not by bitter confrontation but by the lived example of being a “teacher of humanity” who raises us all to something worthy of the gift and calling of being human.

source https://time.com/7284812/pope-leos-augustinian-background/

What Is Habeas Corpus and How Is It Under Threat By the Trump Administration?

President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller told reporters on Friday, May 9, that the Trump Administration is “looking at” the option of suspending “habeas corpus” in order to aid the Trump Administration’s efforts to deport undocumented individuals.

“The Constitution is clear, and that of course is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller said outside the White House. “So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at. A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Miller’s comments come amid a fraught time for the Trump Administration, as many deportation cases make their way through the courts. Several of these pending cases are based on habeas corpus, including the deportation of Venezuelan migrants alleged by the Trump Administration to be a part of the Tren de Aragua gang.

Another high-profile immigration case centers on Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The Maryland man was deported to El Salvador by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March, in what was initially called an administrative error. Ábrego García entered the U.S. illegally years ago, but in 2019 a judge granted him “withholding of removal” status, after determining that his fears of persecution if he were returned to El Salvador were credible. The Supreme Court ordered the federal government to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s return to the United States, but it has yet to do so.

With habeas corpus proving to be a prominent argument and talking point amid the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown, here’s what to know about the legal term.

What is habeas corpus?

The literal meaning of habeas corpus is “you should have the body,” but as a legal principle, it gives a person the ability to challenge a detention in court.

“Federal habeas corpus is a procedure under which a federal court may review the legality of an individual’s incarceration,” per Congress. “It is most often the stage of the criminal appellate process that follows direct appeal and any available state collateral review.”

This right also extends to noncitizens held within the United States, and in the case of those migrants who have been detained by the federal government, pending removal from the country as a part of Trump’s mass deportation plans, habeas corpus can be used to challenge. 

In Article I of the Constitution, it is stated that habeas corpus can be suspended only “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion [when] the public Safety may require it.” This is described, though, under the powers of Congress, not the Executive Branch.

The history of habeas corpus dates back centuries to English law and is seen as a protection against arbitrary detentions by local and national governments.

“The reason that habeas corpus has been designed to protect everybody is because over the centuries, people have understood that the people in power can come for you next,” says Eric M. Freedman, a professor of law at Hofstra University. “You can be in power today, and you can be an out-group tomorrow. And so the whole concept is to protect whoever is temporarily unpopular with the ruling government.”

Read More: Trump Set to Ratchet Up His Immigration Crackdown During Next 100 Days

The current political climate

Trump and his Administration have repeatedly stated that the U.S. is under an “invasion” of illegal immigration, and that their efforts to mass deport individuals should be aided by the Alien Enemies Act. In a proclamation, Trump said: “As President of the United States and Commander in Chief, it is my solemn duty to protect the American people from the devastating effects of this invasion.” This act, which is a part of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, is a wartime measure that “authorizes the President, during a declared war or in the event of an ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion’ perpetrated or threatened by ‘any foreign nation or government,’ to issue regulations directing the conduct of or otherwise restraining citizens or nationals of the hostile nation or government.”

Several judges have ruled against the Trump Administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, including a Trump-appointed federal judge.

On May 6, a federal judge in New York blocked Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, arguing that the Trump administration had not shown evidence of a foreign invasion to justify using it for deportations.

In early April, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump Administration could continue using the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members to Venezuela, but with certain limitations. The Supreme Court later blocked the Trump Administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport a group of immigrants in Texas.

Can the Trump Administration suspend habeas corpus?

Miller has suggested that the Trump Administration is looking at whether they might suspend habeas corpus to aid their mass deportation efforts. But does the Administration have the legal jurisdiction to do so?

“The quick answer couldn’t be clearer. Only Congress can suspend the writ of habeas corpus,” says Brandon L. Garrett, a professor of law at Duke University.  

At a time when Trump’s second term has been defined by an expansion of executive power across the federal government, Garrett notes that habeas corpus is also “about separation of powers and oversight of executive power.”  

“It has played a crucial role in many emergencies and wars during our history. And courts have consistently emphasized that habeas provides its strongest protections when the executive seeks to detain people without a trial,” Garrett says.

Freedman highlights the importance of habeas corpus, stating: “This is a question of fundamental constraints on the tyrannical power of people to throw you in jail and throw away the keys.”

The subject of the Trump Administration considering a suspension of habeas corpus was put forth to Republican Sen. John Barrasso during his Sunday morning appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. Host Kristen Welker asked Barrasso: “Would you vote to suspend habeas corpus, since the power does ultimately lie with Congress?” To which the Republican Senator responded: “I don’t believe this is going to come to Congress. What I believe is that the President is going to follow the law. He has said it repeatedly.”

However, there are concerns when it comes to the Trump Administration upholding the Constitution. When Trump appeared on Meet the Press on May 4, he was asked if the President needs to uphold the U.S. Constitution, to which he replied: “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer.” Trump said when asked if he believes that every person in the U.S. deserves due process—regardless of their legal status. “I don’t know. It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.”

Read More: Trump Speaks Out on His Desire to Annex Canada, Recession Concerns, and If He Has to Uphold the Constitution

Has habeas corpus been suspended before?

Habeas corpus has been suspended four times in U.S. history—by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, in eleven South Carolina counties overrun by the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction of the South, in two provinces of the Philippines during a 1905 insurrection, and in Hawaii after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, according to the National Constitution Center.

“The occasions for suspension are vanishingly rare, and essentially only in cases where there is such pervasive violence that it’s, as a practical matter, impossible to get to a judge—in situations where the Japanese are in Hawaii or the Confederates are in Maryland—and there are no functioning civilian courts,” says Freedman. “This is why the framers [of the Constitution] put it in the hands of Congress.”

source https://time.com/7284743/what-is-habeas-corpus-under-threat-suspension-trump-administration/