#and has only gotten timelier with every passing year

[marypsue]

There's a thing in Grady Hendrix' We Sold Our Souls, especially in conversation with what he has to say about splatterpunk in Paperbacks From Hell, that I've been thinking about ever since I read it.

So the protagonist of We Sold Our Souls is the guitarist of a long-dissolved heavy metal band, and the premise is that she finds out her former bandmate sold her (and their other bandmates') soul in exchange for success. And she wants it back.

This could very easily have turned into a one-note diatribe against the soulless corporate commercialism and trend-chasing sameiness of mainstream music - and that's definitely a thread that runs through the entire book. Our Heroes do very much insult the creative bankruptcy and shameless plagiarism that the soul-selling bandmate engages in to get to the top of the heap. It's shown as both a moral and an aesthetic wrong. There's a lot about the ~grittiness and ~rawness of ~real music, a lot of lauding the artists that never get anywhere because they don't have wide, mainstream, commercial appeal, because they stick to making the art that they love and that they believe in. There is, to be perfectly frank, a lot of the kind of alternative music snobbery that's inherent in any underground scene.

But then. Then there's Melanie. And there's her love of this manufactured, commercial, creatively bankrupt, overproduced hacky nu-metal act that the soul-selling bandmate became, and what that love has helped her through, and what that love inspires her to do with her life. And, most importantly for the story's purposes, how that love puts her in the very place she needs to be to help Kris when Kris needs it the most.

And then there's the girl with the guitar, busking on the street. She's not very good, and she hasn't gotten much better by the end of the novel. But she's still making music.

And then there's the fact that Grady Hendrix makes a point, during the climactic scene, to note that the opening riff on the first track of Troglodyte is one that Kris...borrowed, albeit unintentionally, from a much more famous song. That this paragon of music and art and creativity and soul that she hopes can save them all...isn't wholly original.

We Sold Our Souls raises a question that, on the surface, it seems to never conclusively answer: is the album Troglodyte actually any good? It's never entirely clear (because this is a book, and part of the reason why I think it's unfilmable) whether the music itself actually sounds good. Kris certainly thinks so. The people at Hellstock seem to think so. The people on the radio say that the album is mediocre at best - but then, the radio's been a puppet of Black Iron Mountain all along (except for the AM weirdos, which sort of undermines that argument, which goes to my point). What is clear, though, is that whether or not Troglodyte is technically, musically, aesthetically, artistically good or not...doesn't matter. Because just by virtue of being what it is - the first serious artistic efforts of a lonely, sad, angry teenage girl and her friends, kicking defiantly back at a world that seems built just to grind them down - it has immeasurable power.

What We Sold Our Souls seems to me to be saying, with all of this, is that it doesn't matter much in the end what the art that you love actually is. It doesn't matter whether it's good, or original, or makes you money. What matters is that you love it. All art is made out of other art, and what matters is the art that you make out of it next.

And that any art that gets made, no matter how commercial or shallow or derivative or technically imperfect or ugly or strange or whatever it might be, is always better than the art that doesn't.

#grady hendrix #we sold our souls #it's a good book #and has only gotten timelier with every passing year #eta pretend I know the difference between AM and FM radio

[starkerscoop]

Obsessive

@starkerfestivals

Prompt: Babysitter AU

Featuring stalker!Quentin Beck and past Spiderio

-

Peter hadn’t always lived with the Starks.

He’d started out as a college student with little money but plenty of time outside of classes. That was what led him to search for babysitting gigs he could take up in his free time. In a city as busy as the one he lived in, there were bound to be countless parents in desperate need of someone trustworthy to hand off their kids to. With a spotless criminal record, impressive grades, and a CPR certification, Peter easily got hired.

He’d worked with many families over the years, but his favorites were undeniably the Starks.

The family consisted of the famous Tony Stark, who Peter admired more than ever after meeting, ten year old Harley Stark, and five year old Morgan Stark. Peter never asked about the second parent’s absence. Tony’s divorce from Pepper Potts was very public news several years ago.

Tony paid him well — to the point where Peter worked solely for him, and needed no other source of income. After a year and a half of coming in every day of the week to care for the Stark children, Tony invited him to work as a live-in nanny rather than a babysitter.

Peter didn’t hesitate to say yes. He packed his belongings, moved out of his cramped apartment, and into his new room at Tony’s penthouse. Harley and Morgan didn’t mind the development. They already saw him every day. They just saw him at night now, too. There was hardly a difference in their routine.

Living with a man he had a tremendous crush on, and his sweet, but rambunctious children was not the direction Peter had thought his life would head in when he was younger.

Furthermore, he had never thought that the day would come where he’d get with said man.

Though he couldn’t really call what they’d done ‘getting together’. They weren’t established or exclusive, Peter reminded himself. They held hands once in a while, pressed soft kisses against each other’s cheeks when the kids weren’t around, but there were no declarations of love or indisputably romantic gestures. Peter didn’t know what was going on. Maybe Tony just wasn’t afraid to be affectionate now that Peter lived with him, and it was all platonic on his end.

Either way, Peter wasn’t going to let this turn of events get to his head. Tony was still his employer, and Peter was there to watch his children. He couldn’t afford to get caught up in his fantasies and wishful thinking.

“Peter!” two young voices called for him in unison.

Peter set down the plate he was rinsing and followed the sound to the living room, where Harley and Morgan were sifting through a stack of letters.

“This one has your name on it,” Harley held up a porcelain white envelope, and Morgan snatched it from his hand, passing it to Peter before Harley could.

Peter studied the envelope with curious eyes before peeling it open, ignoring Harley and Morgan as they started their usual bickering. They didn’t typically get violent. They would be alright while he opened his mail.

The envelope contained a single sheet of paper, and it read:

Peter,

Didn’t take you long to move on, did it? I don’t know why I expected anything else. You’ve always been too promiscuous for your own good. But that doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve found you. I’m coming for you.

Be ready,

Your one true love

Peter sucked in a harsh breath, hardly registering it when it rattled his lungs. He sank slowly onto the couch, chest rising and falling in rapid movements, and felt his fingers curl into the paper, compressing it as he tried to regain control over his breathing.

He’d assumed that that fateful Christmas two years ago would be the last he saw of Quentin Beck. He’d assumed wrong, and the evidence was crumpled in his hand.

He was reminded of the children he was meant to be paying attention to when Harley cleared his throat, apprehension in his eyes as he asked, “Are you okay?”

Peter stared at him and Morgan, at their fear-stricken faces and tense shoulders, and suddenly it came to him, what he was meant to be doing next. If Quentin knew where he lived, he also knew where they lived, and he’d be putting them in danger by continuing to live with them.

“I need to call Tony,” Peter announced, reaching for the phone in his pocket with trembling fingers. “I’m okay. Thanks.”

With that, he stood from the couch and hurried away from them, ducking into the room he’d only gotten to keep for four months. He dialled Tony’s number and clutched the phone to his ear, regret and sadness caving his chest in as he waited for Tony to answer his call.

He didn’t want to leave. He was upset at having to move states again, but that was for the best. It would have to be done if he wanted to escape Quentin’s clutches. The move would be hard, but he’d done it before, and he could do it again. What tormented him most was having to leave Tony, Harley, and Morgan. He’d grown extraordinarily close to the three of them, and never seeing them again would be soul-crushing.

Finally, Tony accepted the call, and his voice, warm and fond, soothed Peter’s frayed nerves as he said, “Hey, Pete. How’s it going? Are the kids behaving?”

Without a preamble, Peter declared, “I quit.”

“What?” Tony asked after a solid thirty seconds of shocked silence. “Are they really being that bad? You don’t have to quit, Peter, I’ll talk to them.”

His words were frantic, and Peter hated that he couldn’t calm them.

“It’s not them, Tony, they’re great,” Peter sighed. “I can’t explain over the phone. I’m sorry. I’ll stay with them until you come home from work, but after that I have to leave.”

There was a brief pause, and then, a somber decision. “I’m coming home early.”

Peter didn’t waste any time after hanging up the phone. He hauled his suitcase out of the storage closet and proceeded to stuff his clothes inside, not bothering to fold them in his haste. Cleanliness didn’t matter at the moment. Timeliness did. He was aware of Harley and Morgan taking turns peeking into his room to see what he was doing, but he didn’t falter in his packing, too cowardly to observe the devastation his hurried departure was painting onto their small faces.

It felt like hours and seconds had passed by all at once by the time Tony came home. Peter’s room was barren now, a simple guest room void of human life and personality. He didn’t venture into the living room, where he could hear the children stumbling over their words as they cried out to their father the news of Peter’s packing.

A solid knock sounded on the door before it was pushed open. Peter stayed by the window, shoulders stiffening further and further with each step Tony took into the room. A hand, rough and calloused, landed on Peter’s shoulder.

“What’s going on, Peter?” Tony’s voice came out hurt and worried and angry, a cocktail of emotions too complicated for Peter to discern accurately.

That got Peter to meet his eyes, and he was startled to see that Tony’s were red-rimmed and swollen, as if he’d been crying on the drive home. A sharp pang of guilt struck Peter’s chest, and he swallowed thickly, choking back tears of his own as his frightened mind reminded him of what had gotten him into this situation in the first place.

“It’s not safe for me to keep working for you or staying here. I’d be putting you and your kids at risk.”

Tony’s wrinkles deepened in worry. “What are you not telling me?”

“It’s a lot to get into,” Peter’s teeth sank into his bottom lip.

Tony crossed his arms. “I have time.”

“But I don’t,” Peter said mournfully. “I have to run before he gets here. If he sees that I’ve left, he won’t bother you. He’ll just keep looking for me.”

“Who is ‘he’, Peter?” Tony pressed. “Let me help you. Please.”

Peter didn’t want to drag Tony into his mess. But hadn’t he already done that, albeit inadvertently? By staying with the Starks, he’d shown Quentin that this was a family he cared about. They were on his radar, whether he liked it or not.

“His name is Quentin Beck. He’s my ex, and he’s been trying to find me since we broke up.”

#starker #ironspider #starkerscoopwrites #starkerfestivalsevents #SFSummerBingo21 #obsessive fic

[kedilerkabilesi]

10 Keys to Composing a Bad Dissertation

Does any individual layout to compose a poor dissertation? It rarely appears possible. Most of us possibly start our doctoral programs encouraged that the suggestions we presented in our dissertations will alter the face of our disciplines for life! After years invested reading hundreds of doctoral dissertations-- initially as a grad student, then as a teacher, and currently as a specialist dissertation editor and also train-- I can't assist however observe: There are a lot of poor dissertations out there!

I thought I could share with you some of what I've found out by reviewing poor doctoral dissertations. That method, if you would certainly such as to create a negative dissertation of your very own, you'd recognize how to go regarding doing it. Or much better yet, if you would certainly such as to create a good dissertation of your own, you would certainly have some idea of typical challenges.

Below are ten usual errors you ought to avoid if you want your dissertation to be rewarding. Before continue reading check out dissertation statistics consulting

1. Surround yourself with similar people.

The good information is that, if you handle to surround on your own with people that believe simply as you do, you'll encounter little resistance as you write. The negative information is that, when you have completed composing, your research will certainly be much less likely to stand up to the significant challenge since you've not had to grapple with opposing factors of sight along with the method. Do yourself a favor: Seek out an atmosphere that will certainly offer an obstacle while you're composing, as well as you'll find that your dissertation is much better prepared for the obstacles it will certainly face when UMI makes it offered to the whole world that exists beyond your college.

2. Select a topic that is only of passion to you.

It's a typical joke that "No person referred to as high as a freshman." To put it simply, part of the process of knowing is learning just how much we still require to learn! When we laid out to create our dissertations, we're like freshers beginning in school-- we do not yet know how much we do not know, because we've not yet had the opportunity to check out completely what others have done. At this beginning of the dissertation job, it's possible to encourage ourselves that a topic is remarkable when, in fact, that topic has come to be passed due to the treatment it has currently gotten; it's also possible to get inhabited with inquiries that are divorced from the actual issues in the field currently. 2 of the very best resources for making certain that your dissertation subject is relevant and also worthwhile are recent dissertations and also present periodicals. Involve yourself in these resources at the beginning of your job. Even if you simply read the titles, you'll be most likely to locate your operate in the context of what various other scholars are doing today.

3. Maintain the extent of your research abroad as well as the terms obscure.

An important secret to composing a great dissertation is to have a clear and precise emphasis on your job. When you've completed your dissertation, you can return to those various other ideas for the posts as well as books you'll create in the next phase of your career.

4. Do not constrain your creative thinking with an overview.

For several years, teachers have been telling you to describe your papers before you create them. As well as for years you have most likely been disregarding them. Below you are, starting your doctorate-- certainly, it was suggestions you did not require! Dissertation writing is various. You're mosting likely to create numerous pages over a duration that might take years; it will certainly be very easy to get lost along the road, particularly as your ideas develop. Planning is the only means to ensure that your dissertation will be focused, well-structured, as well as argued; it's likewise the only method to ensure that it will ever end! A mindful, detailed outline is important. You may amend it as you advance with your study, but don't omit it or desert it. As a dissertation writer, the rundown is your yellow brick road!

5. Restrict your bibliography to resources that sustain your viewpoint.

In contrast to the preferred opinion, the purpose of a dissertation is not to prove a pre-determined point; it is to research a beneficial question. In the end, a dissertation that negates your first hypothesis is simply as useful to the scholastic neighborhood as one that confirms you. What is not useful at all is a dissertation that's half-baked because it has just thought about some of the available proof, arguments, and also factors of sight.

6. Assume that if it's not in English or online, it must not be important.

Believe it or otherwise, there's a factor for those language requirements that doctoral programs trouble us. It's not simply that clever people talk greater than one language! The point is to unlock to useful literary works that are offered-- yet not in English. Counting on English alone indicates that some literature (and suggestions) will certainly be inaccessible to you, and also other literary works will certainly be offered just via the interpretation of a translator. It is worth the initiative to learn to check out the languages in which your crucial sources are written. Without them, your research is incomplete.

As well as check out publications ... and also posts! As fortunate as we are to have access to a lot of resources readily available on the web, we can't neglect that there's something print sources have that entirely Online resources do not: gatekeepers. For a book or a short article to appear in print, a person (commonly a team of scholars in the field) has established that it was worthwhile. They might not necessarily have agreed with its point of view, but they discovered that it fulfilled the requirements of the audio approach, sensible argumentation, and also timeliness. Online, any individual may release anything at any moment-- making the quality of Web resources alarmingly irregular. Web research is below to stay, and that's a good idea. But there's no replacement for books and also posts created by reliable scholars in your field. Be sure that Online resources do not constitute the bulk of your bibliography, or you might find that you have actually left the mainstream without even recognizing it and also tipped away from several of one of the most vital resources offered to you.

7. Let your assertions wait for pressure, not by evidence.

Spend enough hrs paying attention to cable news and also you may start to get the impression that the objective of the discussion is to win, and the way to win is to outshout the opposite! Being a nerd by nature, I in some cases like to play little scholastic video games when I enjoy T.V., and also one of them is "count the fallacies" in the arguments that T.V. pundits make: ad hominem debates, red herrings, non-sequiturs-- they often make for entertaining T.V., however, they never result in a strong debate. If your dissertation is going to endure major critique and make a contribution to your area, every assertion has to be justified as well as every debate must be fallacy-free.

8. Turn in your initial draft.

The modification procedure has to do with polishing your job. Weak disagreements obtain enhanced, blurry concepts get made clear, redundancies get eliminated, the language gets tightened. If you're like a most doctor as well as, you're always rushing toward the next deadline. When running out of time, the easiest point to remove is the modification process. Resist that lure.

9. Don't bother with input from others.

You've possibly had only a program or two in statistics; why not allow a professional statistician to help you with the statistical sections of your work? You might not be confident of your APA format (or whatever style sheet you're using); why not let a specialist editor evidence your message? What around simply having a person in your division give you responses on the cogency of your disagreements? There's nothing like a fresh collection of eyes to capture the things that you're also close to seeing any longer. Remaining well within the bounds of scholastic integrity, do not be afraid to connect for help with the facets of your work in which you're not a specialist, to ensure that the proficiency you do have is presented as successfully as it can be.

10. Verify your point at all costs.

Any effort to get around the truths will certainly show prejudice-- the solitary biggest threat to a beneficial dissertation. By comparison, there's nothing yet failure when factors are "verified" by doctored outcomes, disregarded proof, forged techniques supplied after the research has been done, as well as compelled disagreements developed to cover up the truth and get here at a favored conclusion. You can begin your job with this self-confidence: If you carry out your study with stability, follow a strong technique, think about all appropriate points of view, and record truthfully what you locate, then whatever verdict you get to will be worthwhile.

[junker-town]

Chandler Jones’ case for NFL Defensive Player of the Year is too strong to be ignored

Chandler Jones has a career-high 19 sacks so far in 2019.

The Cardinals pass rusher is within sniffing distance of the single-season sack record. That’s just one reason retired defensive end Stephen White would like you to pay attention to Jones already.

Do I believe Chandler Jones has a legit shot to win NFL Defensive Player of the Year this season?

No, not really.

I’m pretty sure Patriots cornerback Stephon Gilmore already has the vote locked up by now. And to be clear, if I had a vote I’m not so sure I wouldn’t vote for Gilmore, too. He has had a fantastic year, and a lot of what the Patriots do on defense is predicated on Gilmore being able to erase the opposite team’s top wide receiver from the game every single week. So hey, I get it.

But, should a late push from Jones, who now leads the league with 19 sacks, at least put his name front and center in the conversation?

Truth is, his name should’ve already been in those conversations.

Chandler Jones’ four-sack game against the Seahawks forced everybody to pay attention

As soon as I saw the news that Seahawks left tackle Duane Brown was out last week, I immediately assumed that his absence was going to give Chandler Jones the opportunity to go tf awf. However, even I didn’t expect him to go off quite like that.

Not only did he rack up four sacks on the day, but Jones also ended up with five pressures and two forced fumbles. While some of those sacks and pressures were probably directly tied to Brown being out, the truth is that several times Jones was able to get to Russell Wilson almost off outstanding effort alone. Wilson kept trying to pull his patented “wizard” act, weaving his way around and through traffic in the backfield to give his wide receivers a chance to uncover down the field, but Jones was having none of it.

It was that constant pressure that gave Jones a huge game statistically, and with the timeliness of the plays he made, he also had a massive hand in helping Cardinals pull off the 27-13 upset win in Week 16. With so much on the line for Seattle as far as playoff implications, it felt like everybody just assumed the team would “find a way” to win. Everybody but Jones and the rest of the Cardinals, that is.

In particular, Jones was an absolute monster on third downs. The Seahawks were only 1 for 12 on third-down conversions, and Jones’ pressure was a key part of stopping them on seven out of the 11 occasions where they failed. The Seahawks were well aware of Jones’ ability to wreck a game before kickoff, and yet even though they had to know with Brown out that Jones was going to be a huge threat, they still couldn’t find a way to slow him down.

Jamarco Jones, a 2018 fifth-round pick, was the guy who drew the short straw to fill in for Brown last week. Unfortunately, the third start of his career turned out to be memorable for all the wrong reasons. He was certainly overmatched, but to their credit, the Seahawks tried to send him help just about as often as they could without hamstringing the offense.

However, this was just one of those games where it just didn’t matter. Chandler was simply able to outwork everybody and make sure that Wilson was uncomfortable all afternoon. Bruh had that glow like Bruce Leeroy in The Last Dragon, and I’m sure Jamarco had to be feeling a lot like Sho’nuff did at the end of that movie.

In the battle of the Joneses, Chandler gave Jamarco that work on Sunday in just about every way imaginable. He beat him with bull rushes, long arms, cross chips, and arm overs. When it was finished and the damage was all done, you might’ve mistaken Jamarco for a Burger King, because he definitely let Chandler have it his way.

With 19 sacks so far, Chandler Jones has joined elite company

Yes, I am going to be a little petty now and remind everybody that I already told y’all Jones had this kind of season in him earlier this year. I also pleaded with everyone to start paying attention because this man is criminally underrated at this point. Now, I won’t rehash all of what I said since I already said it so eloquently once, but I’m just saying that y’all should’ve listened.

While it is impressive to me that Jones doesn’t seem affected by the relative lack of notoriety his accomplishments on the field have garnered him so far, I’m starting to get downright offended. He deserves a hell of a lot better considering he just keeps showing up every week and making plays, regardless of the circumstance. Fortunately for him, his incredible day against the Seahawks is basically forcing everyone to talk about him now.

Just so you know, only 17 other players have ever even gotten to 19 sacks in a season.

Think about that. It seems like sometimes fans and maybe even some media have an unrealistic idea about how easy it is to get double-digit sacks these days, even now that the NFL has turned into a passing league for the most part. Some of your favorite pass rushers never did. Von Miller hasn’t reached 19 sacks in a season. Dwight Freeney and Julius Peppers never did, either.

Even if Jones doesn’t touch Rams quarterback Jared Goff this Sunday, he has already turned in one of the best seasons an edge rusher has ever had when it comes to sacking the quarterback.

As I said before, Gilmore has balled out too, and I don’t want to knock him, but let me play devil’s advocate. I could point out that there are currently two other players tied with him for the league lead in interceptions with six this year, while Jones has a healthy lead in the sacks category.

Of course, you could try to point to Arizona’s dismal 5-9-1 record as a reason why Gilmore deserves the award more, but ask yourself this: If J.J. Watt, for instance, had 19 sacks and eight forced fumbles this year and the Texans’ record mirrored the Cardinals’, do you really think that would’ve hindered him from being a top DPOY candidate?

Y’all probably would’ve crowned him already!

That might seem like a random question, but it actually isn’t. See, once I saw that Jones was credited with four sacks on Sunday, I went to see where that pushed Jones up the list for career sack numbers. It turns out he has now jumped up to a tie for 41st place in NFL history with a total of 96. The guy Jones is tied at 41 with?

The aforementioned J.J. Watt.

Watt is in his ninth season, while Jones is in his eighth, by the way.

In Week 17, Chandler Jones has a chance to make NFL history

Those four sacks not only vaulted Chandler Jones into the league league, it also put him within sniffing distance of the single-season record of 22.5 held by Michael Strahan. Considering that Sunday marked Jones’ fourth multi-sack game of this season, it definitely isn’t out of the realm of possibilities that he could get close to tying the record in the last week of the season. Hell, that wasn’t even his first four-sack game this year.

Furthermore, out of the first 15 games of the season so far, Jones has only had three games where he didn’t record at least a 0.5 sack. One of those three teams that held him sackless? The Seahawks in Week 4. And we all saw how that worked out for them the second time around the season.

For the record, Jones had a half-sack in the Cardinals’ first meeting against the Rams this season, their opponent for the final weekend of the 2019 regular season. With LA being eliminated from the playoffs, there is no telling what kind of effort we will get out them this week, anyway. Arizona has been eliminated for a while now, but as Seattle found out, that hasn’t affected Jones’ motivation at all.

So just remember as you look over your options of the NFL games to watch this weekend, you might want to keep your eye on that Cardinals-Rams game while you’re at it. You may well get to see history being made if things go Jones’ way, but even they don’t, you will have one last opportunity to see one of the greatest edge rushers of this era, and maybe ever, do his thing this season. That is more than enough reason to tune in, if you ask me.

Yeah, it’s more than likely Chandler Jones will not win Defensive Player of the Year no matter what kind of smackdown he puts on the Rams this weekend, but at the very least, I bet he’ll show you why he should’ve been on your short list all along.

Then hopefully, we won’t have to have this conversation about him flying under the radar again next year.

[gta-5-cheats]

Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ Review

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Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ Review

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Samsung’s flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series, play a pivotal role in the company’s ability to dominate global markets. Last year’s Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+ and Galaxy Note 8 (Review) helped Samsung capture a big chunk of the global market in 2017, passing Apple along the way, and the company hopes to achieve even better results with its 2018 updates. The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ have been launched in India very shortly after being announced globally at MWC 2018, for the same starting prices as last year’s models. This is good news for all those who were planning on picking either one up on launch day.

The company has also made a bold move by increasing the disparity between the two models, so for buyers, it isn’t just a case of choosing the display size and battery capacity that suit you better. The big question for us is how much better are the new Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ than their predecessors? If you’re wondering whether you should bother upgrading, read on.

We begin with the design, which has gotten some minor improvements, but is still very similar to last year’s models for the most part. This is not a bad thing, considering that we loved the design of the Galaxy S8 series. You get the same premium blend of glass and metal. The Galaxy S9 is definitely easier to handle and live with due to its smaller footprint and lower weight, but both phones have the same thickness of 8.5mm. The exposed aluminium sides offer enough surface area to grip the Galaxy S9 when lifting it or when you’re on a call, but its front and back can be slippery. The Galaxy S9+ is definitely a handful in the literal sense, and is a little tough to manage with just one hand. Also, due to the near bezel-less design, we often had many accidental screen touches with the bigger model.

The glass back lets you charge the phone wirelessly and also perform contactless payments through Samsung Pay. However, it’s a major fingerprint magnet. It doesn’t take much to get a lot of smudges on the back. The display is a bit more resilient. Both phones have the same display sizes and resolutions as their predecessors. You get a 5.8-inch display on the Galaxy S9, and a 6.2-inch display on the Galaxy S9+. Both are Super AMOLED panels with an 18.5:9 aspect ratio and a native resolution of 1440×2960 (Quad HD+).

For some reason, Samsung continues to ship its flagships with the screen resolution set lower resolution by default, but this can be changed in the Settings app. We found the default colour saturation level too jarring, but dropping this down to the ‘Basic’ colour profile felt much better. Both displays also support HDR, which we’ll talk about later on.

The physical buttons have good feedback and are easy to reach on the Galaxy S9, but predictably, less so on the Galaxy S9+. We often fond ourselves shuffling the larger model around in our palm in order to get to the volume and power buttons on the side. The dedicated Bixby button is still present, and cannot be re-mapped to perform any other function. A single press takes you to Bixby’s home screen, which offers card-based information about places around you (powered by Foursquare), news (powered by Flipboard), and even updates from installed apps such as Twitter, Uber, etc.

Holding down the Bixby button lets you use voice commands. For instance, you can ask it to send a message to someone through WhatsApp, followed by the actual message. In practice, we found that Bixby worked decently well, as long as we phrased our commands correctly. Samsung provides a list of suggested voice commands for some popular apps. Bixby has even more functions, which we’ll get into soon.

We’re happy to see Samsung still hanging on to the 3.5mm headphones socket, and there’s also a USB Type-C port and a speaker on the bottom of each phone. Both Galaxy S9 phones vibrate slightly for haptic feedback when you press their on-screen Home buttons. There’s a dual Nano-SIM tray on the top, with the provision for a microSD card for storage expansion (up to 400GB). The Galaxy S9 unit that we received for review wasn’t an Indian retail unit, which is why it only had a single SIM slot. Both phones also have RGB notification LEDs.

Samsung has changed the backs of these phones compared to the Galaxy S8 series, and it’s for the better. The fingerprint sensors are now a lot more accessible and are actually useful, as compared to their awkward placement on the Galaxy S8 models. It’s also easy to distinguish them from the camera modules by touch, thanks to the prominent ridges around them. The heart rate sensors are still present, and take their place below the LED flashes on each phone. With the Galaxy S9+, you get a second camera with a telephoto lens, which sits just below the primary camera. The camera bumps on both phones are negligible in thickness, and the phones don’t rock when placed on a flat surface.

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ have very good build quality and look every bit as premium as you’d expect from a flagship smartphone in 2018. Samsung sent us the Lilac Purple and Midnight Black versions, and there’s also a Coral Blue option to choose from, though surprisingly the Titanium Grey version hasn’t come to India (yet). In each phone’s box, you get an AKG-tuned headset, a power adapter with fast charging support, a Type-C cable, a SIM eject tool, a silicone case, and a USB Type-C to Type-A adapter for migrating data from your old phone.

Each new wave of flagships brings refreshed specifications, and for 2018, Samsung is using either the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 mobile platform or its own Exynos 9810 SoC, in different countries. As always, India gets the Exynos variants of both phones. This chip features a cluster of four custom CPU cores and a lower clocked cluster of four Cortex-A55 cores. It features the new Mali-G72 GPU, which promises up to 20 percent better performance than that of its predecessor. Now, you’re probably thinking, is this better than the Qualcomm chip? It’s hard to say without actually testing both versions side-by-side, but on paper, they both promise similar features and capabiltiies. Both are built on Samsung’s second-gen 10nm FinFET process, both have eight cores, and both support 4K displays. You get Gigabit LTE modems and improved efficiency in augmented reality applications with either chip.

Samsung has also made a bold decision when it comes to the amount of RAM it has used for these two devices. The Galaxy S9 gets only 4GB of RAM while the Galaxy S9+ gets 6GB of RAM. Looking the benchmark scores, at least, there doesn’t seem to be much of a performance tradeoff. The performance of both phones are nearly on par. In fact, we got slightly higher scores in some tests on the Galaxy S9 than the S9+. The amount of onboard storage is the same for both models, starting at 64GB though you can choose 256GB variants of each, at higher prices. 

Other specifications that are common to both phones include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac with MU-MIMO antennas, Bluetooth 5, NFC, USB-OTG, GPS, 4G VoLTE, and a suite of sensors which include a barometer, a Hall sensor, and a pressure sensor in addition to the usual suspects. Both phones are IP68 dust- and water-resistant, which allows them to survive being submerged in up to 1.5m of fresh water for up to 30 minutes.

Both phones come with the Samsung Experience 9, which is based on Android Oreo 8.0. Both also show that they have received recent security patches. Our Galaxy S9 unit got the March 2018 security update during our review period, though it’s yet to be rolled out to the Indian version of this phone. Our Galaxy S9+ was running the January update. This is not the latest version of Android (8.1), but it’s still a good sign, because one thing that Samsung needs to improve on is the timeliness of its Android updates.

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ only recently began receiving the Oreo update, only to be halted due to a software glitch, which was thankfully sorted out a week later. The Galaxy Note 8, which was Samsung’s top-tier offering till just now, is yet to receive Oreo, which is a huge surprise. In contrast, Sony began issuing Oreo updates for its premium offerings back in October last year, while HTC did the same for the U11 a month later. Thankfully, both new phones are said to have support for Project Treble (Google’s solution to break the update bottleneck created by OEMs). Android P is right around the corner and, Samsung simply does not have an excuse to lag behind Google’s update cycle anymore. 

There’s a lot going on in terms of features, gestures and shortcuts, and most of them will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s used Samsung’s previous generation flagship smartphones. The number of customisation options can be overwhelming for first-time users but for those that love tweaking their phones and setting up shortcuts for every little thing, the Samsung Experience has you covered.

You can customise the phone with wallpapers, icons, and themes from a dedicated online store; create pop-up windows for certain apps which can be resized or minimised into floating balloons for easy access; use gestures to trigger one-handed mode or capture a screenshot; set up a custom message and contact for SOS mode; and use the fingerprint sensor to pull down the notifications shade. The Always On display also has a tonne of customisation options, such as different clock styles. Like with previous models, there are interactive widgets for music controls, today’s schedule, and the next alarm.

For the new Galaxy S9 series, Samsung has added a security feature called Intelligent Scan, which essentially combines iris recognition and face scanning when you’re unlocking either phone. However, this mode doesn’t quite live up to its name, and can be annoying. For starters, the phone won’t unlock if you have sunglasses on, and unfortunately, there’s no raise-to-wake gesture which means you have to press either the power button or the virtual home button in order to wake the screen.

There were moments during our review period when it worked quickly, but more often than not, we found it to be slow and very inconsistent. Even though Samsung says that both iris and face biometrics are used in this mode, it doesn’t need data from both scans to work. In some cases, the phone unlocked itself even when our eyes were closed, which suggests that it falls back to just face recognition when the user’s irises aren’t scanned. That leaves us with some doubts about its usefulness compared to just using face recognition on its own.

On the other hand, the iris scanner was usually quicker and worked even in complete darkness. If you’re in a moving vehicle or walking, however, it’s tricky to get this to work as your eyes need to be aligned with the sensor. Face unlocking is easier to use but is potentially less secure and doesn’t work in low light at all. In the end, we simply wound up using the fingerprint sensor more often than any of the other biometric modes, as it’s the most reliable, and the scanner is now easier to reach at the back.

Samsung has its own cloud service and gives you 15GB of storage for backing up your photos and videos, Samsung Notes, contacts, calendar entries, reminders, and keyboard settings. Samsung Pass lets you use your biometrics to log in to websites, but this only works in Samsung’s own browser. Samsung Pay is supported and works well. The Device Maintenance app lets you check your battery usage and switch between Game, Entertainment and High Performance modes, each of which lets you customise the screen’s brightness and resolution. Game Launcher gets a slick new interface and helps group all your installed games in one place. Within a game, you can use it to suppress alerts, prevent accidental touches to the edges of the display, take screenshots, and trigger screen captures.

When you first set up the phone, Samsung lets you choose which of its own apps you’d like to install, and you can skip most of them if you’re happy using Google’s version of, say, the music player or Web browser. Microsoft’s apps are preinstalled anyway, and you can disable them if you want but you can’t uninstall them. You can always get more Samsung apps from the Galaxy App store. Last but not least, Edge Panels let you quickly access your favourite contacts, apps, reminders, etc, and more panels can be downloaded too. You can pull them up with a quick swipe inward from the left edge of the screen, by default.

Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ performance, cameras, and battery life

We used both the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+ as our primary phone for a few days and it should come as no surprise that the smaller Galaxy S9 is definitely more comfortable to live with. It’s lighter, takes up less space in your pocket, and is much more convenient for one-handed use. Plus, you get the same high resolution display as with its bigger sibling so you’re not really missing out on much. The Galaxy S9+ obviously has a lot more free RAM at any given point, compared to the Galaxy S9, but having said that, we didn’t really notice much of a difference in real-world performance between the two.

They both handle multitasking and heavy games equally well. Perhaps as you accumulate more apps and data, the extra RAM in the Galaxy S9+ might give it an edge, but this is something we’ll only know with time. Games run just fine, and you’ll be happy to know that they don’t heat the phone up too much. On the other hand, we did notice both phones running fairly warm at some points during our review period. We’re not sure if this is a trait of the new Exynos SoCs, but we found that the back, sides and the upper part of the display would get quite warm sometimes. This happened when using GPS in apps such as Uber or Google Maps, when downloading anything from the Play Store, and when we used the biometric authentication features multiple times in a row for testing. 

The Samsung keyboard has gotten better but, in our opinion, it’s still no replacement for Gboard, which is also preinstalled on Indian units. Typing is slightly better on the Galaxy S9+ due to the bigger screen, and even though a bit of the display curves around the edges of the phone, we didn’t find this affecting typing too much.

If you’re using two SIM cards, you can enable a feature called Smart Dual SIM, which lets you use both actively at the same time. This means that if you’re on a call, an incoming call on the other SIM card is automatically forwarded to the currently active SIM, after which you can merge both into a conference call or alternate between the two callers. We tested this and it worked pretty well. Call quality is very good and the earpiece gets quite loud, so conversing even in areas with lots of ambient noise isn’t an issue.

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Samsung’s flagships have often been very good with media playback, and with the new Galaxy S9 series, things get a bit better because both phones have stereo speakers tuned by AKG. The main speaker is at the bottom and fires outwards, whereas the second one is actually the earpiece, which is also used when playing media files. It isn’t as loud, and the bottom-firing speaker is clearly more powerful. However, it’s still better than having mono audio from just one side of the phone. There’s a Dolby Atmos toggle switch in the Settings app, which boosts the treble and mid range frequencies slightly so vocals sound crisper. Samsung claims a 3D surround sound experience with the Galaxy S9 duo, but in our testing, we didn’t find the surround effect to be very noticeable. The bundled headphones are also tuned by AKG, just like with the previous generation, and they offer a balanced sound with good passive noise cancellation.

The display supports HDR, and compatible content looks good. HDR YouTube videos automatically boost the brightness level of the display all the way up. If you have HDR video clips, Samsung’s Video app handles them well.

Besides Bixby’s voice commands, there’s the visual search function called Bixby Vision. This works decently well for some tasks. You can access it through the Gallery app, and it can give you information about the photo you’re looking at. For instance, for a picture of a pizza, you can scroll over to the ‘Food’ button and Bixby will try and recognise the type of food, estimate the number of calories per serving, and let you look up similar recipes on Pinterest or videos on YouTube. You can also sent the nutrition information to the Samsung Heath app to help you track your diet. This obviously cannot detect the exact number of calories on your plate based on just an image, so take this information as a rough guideline. Image recognition works well, and we had a good success rate when we tested it. Bixby Vision can also recognise text in images, which can be exported to a text file or translated to another language using Google Translate.

You can use Bixby within the camera app as well, where it gives you real-time information about objects or scenes in the viewfinder. Real-time text translation works pretty well, and the app superimposes translated text over the actual text seen through the viewfinder. Sometimes, it takes a few tries to get the translation right.

While this is a neat trick, the main feature of the primary camera on each phone is its new sensor and the physically variable aperture, which is a first for any smartphone. Samsung is going to town talking about this, so let’s see if it lives up to the hype. The main camera on both phones has a 1/2.55-inch, 12-megapixel sensor with a pixel size of 1.4 microns, Dual Pixel autofocus system, and 77-degree field of view. You now have the ability to change the aperture from f/2.4 to f/1.5. This is not simulated in software, and you can actually see the aperture opening and closing. You can’t select values between f/1.5 and f/2.4 as we haven’t reached that level of engineering yet, but we have to say, it’s pretty cool by itself.

Tap to see full-sized Samsung Galaxy S9+ camera samples 

So why would you need a variable aperture, and where would it be useful? The first and most obvious advantage of having a wider aperture (f/1.5) is to let more light hit the sensor, which lets you capture brighter images with less noise, since the shutter speed and ISO don’t have to compensate as much. When we tested both phones, landscapes taken in low light had little to no noise, and in some shots, we were able to capture good detail in objects even at great distances. Dynamic range is also preserved well, and optical image stabilisation helps in getting blur-free shots. Shutter lag is minimal and the burst mode can help you getting a usable photos even when shooting from a moving vehicle in low light.

The second advantage of having a variable aperture is that you can control the depth of field or background blur in close-up shots. This is particularly useful during the day. In Auto mode, the sensor mostly picks the narrower (f/2.4) aperture when shooting outdoors during the day, as the sensor gets adequate light. The main sensors in both phones can work wonders under good lighting. The colour tone is a bit on the warm side, which has typically been the case with all of Samsung’s flagships in the recent past. Saturation levels can also be a bit aggressive at times, especially when shooting flowers or anything with bright colours. Landscapes exhibit good detail, and the Auto HDR does a good job in getting the exposure right, even under harsh sunlight.

In Pro mode, you can manually switch between the two apertures and also tweak settings such as the shutter speed (10-1/24,000), light metering, autofocus area, white balance, colour tone, and exposure. You can enable RAW mode, which saves JPEG and RAW files. While it’s great that we have the option to switch apertures, we often found ourselves leaving that up to the camera software to decide. You can play with it if you want more artistic freedom, but we think that most users will be happy with the results that the phone delivers.

Tap to see full-sized Samsung Galaxy S9 camera samples

240fps slow-motion video can now recorded at 1080p rather than 720p, which is a welcome bump in quality. However, the main attraction is a brand new super slow-mo mode which can shoot short bursts of video at 960fps. This is similar to what Sony did last year with the Xperia XZ Premium (Review), which used a stacked image sensor to capture 0.2 seconds of footage and stretched that to six seconds, thus giving you a super-slow-motion effect. The resolution for 960fps videos is only 720p, and you can choose to have either a single slow motion shot, or take multiple bursts (up to 20 in a single file) when recording.

Now being able to get the perfect 0.2 seconds of footage is no easy feat, which is why Samsung has thoughtfully implemented an Auto mode. Here, you get a little square marker on the screen, which you can resize and move about within the frame to where the action will take place. After hitting record, any motion that’s detected within the marker automatically triggers the burst. It takes a few seconds for the camera app to process and save this data before it’s ready to shoot again. The motion detection works well and is definitely a lot better than struggling to achieve that level of precision.

The camera app is a lot easier to use than before. You can now rearrange the order of mode icons and switch between them simply by swiping across the viewfinder. We found that you can’t use voice commands to take a picture if you’ve trained Bixby to wake up using your voice. The shortcut to launch the camera by double-pressing the power button has been removed from the Indian firmware (our S9+ unit), most likely because of the SOS function that is now compulsory here, but this shortcut is present in the European firmware that we were able to evaluate.

One big feature that Samsung has introduced with the Galaxy S9 series is AR Emojis. If you’re thinking this sounds awfully similar to Apple’s Animojis, then you’re spot on. Available for both the rear and front cameras, AR Emojis are animated avatars that are created and personalised using photos of your face. These can be sent to people as video files. You can also create a sticker pack (animated GIFs) out of your avatar, which can be accessed directly from within the Samsung Keyboard in messaging apps.

There’s no easy way to put this, but after using the AR Emoji feature for about a week, it felt like a half-baked attempt at aping Apple’s Animojis. First off, it uses the regular front camera instead of something more advanced like Apple’s dot projector, so it cannot map the contours of your face in detail. Due to this, the animated avatars aren’t able to replicate subtle expressions, and even when you keep a straight face, the mouths and eyes of the avatars tend to twitch and wiggle. At launch time, you can swap out your face for a bunny, a bright pink cat, or a weird blue animal. We also found that the phones get warm quickly when using AR Emojis.

Coming to the telephoto lens on the Galaxy S9+, this is the same unit that is used on the Galaxy Note 8. It’s a 12-megapixel sensor with an f/2.4 aperture, and there’s a 6mm focal length (versus 4.3mm on the main sensor). The field of view is narrower but you get 2x optical zoom, which is good. You can switch to the second sensor in some shooting modes for both stills and video, and you can also use it for taking portraits. Live Focus uses the main sensor to calculate depth, while capturing images with the second one. You can vary the depth of field before and after you’ve taken a shot, and also save the wide and zoomed frames, just like on the Note 8. The effect is good and the software does a good job with edge detection too. If light isn’t adequate enough to get a decent shot with the secondary camera, live focus refuses to work. Also, hitting the 2x button in very low light simply triggers a digital zoom through the main camera’s lens instead of switching to the second camera’s telephoto lens.

The Galaxy S9 might lack a second camera but it can perform similar depth of field effects with its Selective Focus shooting mode. Unlike the Galaxy S9+, you can’t adjust the level of blur, but you can select whether you want the foreground or background in focus after taking shots. Edge detection isn’t handled very well most of the time, as compared to the Galaxy S9+ (which you can see from the sample above).

The front cameras on both phones are once again 8-megapixel sensors with f/1.7 apertures, just like their predecessors. Image quality is good under good lighting although we found that photos lacked the level of detail that the Google Pixel 2 achieves. In low light, the screen flash is quite effective, but resulting images are often soft. There’s a beauty mode which applies different styles of makeup to your face, and we found that it often did not end well.

Galaxy S9+ Live Focus (above) versus Selective Focus on Galaxy S9 (below)

The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ have the same battery capacities as their respective predecessors, and also support both wired and wireless fast charging. With the display resolutions set to Quad HD+ on both phones, we managed to just about squeeze in an entire day’s worth of usage with the Galaxy S9 but went comfortably beyond that with the Galaxy S9+. With heavier use, we found that even the Galaxy S9+ struggled to breach the 24-hour mark. In our HD video loop test, the Galaxy S9+ with its 3500mAh battery lasted two hours longer than the Galaxy S9 and its smaller 3000mAh battery. Running the phones at a lower resolution could give you a bit more mileage. Using the bundled adapters, we were able to charge both phones pretty quickly. We got up to roughly 75 percent from zero within an hour using the Galaxy S9+, and our experience with the Galaxy S9 was similar.

Verdict Samsung hasn’t made any drastic changes to the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ compared to their predecessors, and the company didn’t really need to do much. Last year’s design is still stunning, and now, it’s a little more polished. We’ve seen Apple do that with its iPhones for a couple of years at a stretch, so this is nothing new. If you really want to stand out, get either phone in the new Lilac Purple colour option.

Both new phones are solid, dependable workhorses with excellent displays, premium craftsmanship, and improved cameras. We didn’t notice any immediate benefit to the extra RAM that the Galaxy S9+ has over the Galaxy S9, and it didn’t reflect in benchmarks either. Whether that will hold up after a few months of usage is something we’ll know in time.

Current owners of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ needn’t rush out to upgrade to the new models, as we don’t think there’s a whole lot to be gained. Sure, they are better in some respects, but not enough to warrant the cost of the upgrade. On the other hand, if you have a phone that’s several years old and have been waiting for a new crop of Android flagships, the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ are definitely worth considering. Just like the Galaxy S8 models, we have no doubt that these will be very popular. The fact that they have been launched at the same prices as last year’s models in India will definitely earn Samsung some brownie points.

The Galaxy S9 starts at Rs. 57,900, while the Galaxy S9+ is priced at Rs. 64,900. With other smartphone manufactures asking absurd premiums for a smartphone (yes, we’re looking at you Apple), it’s refreshing to see Samsung holding steady. The fact that all Samsung phones are now made in India could contribute to keeping the prices constant.

We’re only just getting started with 2018’s flagships, and there are plenty more to come from other manufacturers. By launching its phones so quickly in India, Samsung has put itself ahead in the race. Right now, these are among the best Android smartphones you can get for your money.

Is Samsung Galaxy S9 the most value-for-money flagship phone in India? We discussed that on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.

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ACA Round-Up: Iowa, Massachusetts Waivers Stymied; States In CSR Case Face Tough Questioning

On October 23, 2017, Governor Kim Reynolds and Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen announced that Iowa has withdrawn its 1332 state innovation waiver proposal. In a late afternoon press conference, Governor Reynolds and Commissioner Omen announced that the federal government had informed them that it would be several weeks yet before it could tell Iowa how much pass-through funding the state would receive to pay for its waiver program. With open enrollment just days away they could not proceed in the face of that uncertainty. Iowa therefore withdrew its request.

Iowa had applied for a stopgap waiver in June under section 1332 when the insurers that had been covering Iowa’s individual market stated that they would not be returning for 2018, leaving it potentially with a statewide bare market. In the face of this, Iowa worked an arrangement with Wellmark, Iowa’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plan. Wellmark would provide coverage at premium rates negotiated with the state. Iowa would withdraw from the federally facilitated exchange and make its own eligibility determinations for premium credits. It would offer credits to all enrollees, including higher-income enrollees.

Iowa insurers would offer only a single standard silver plan, which would have a high deductible but reasonably generous cost sharing for some services before the deductible attached. Iowa proposed to terminate cost-sharing reductions (CSRs) for low-income enrollees. It would use the pass-through payments of money the federal government did not spend on CSRs or on federal premium tax credits to fund its own generous premium credits. Iowa would tighten up on the special enrollment periods (SEPs) currently offered through the FFE and impose a 12-month continuous coverage requirement for some SEPs.

By the time Iowa finally submitted its final waiver application in late August, another insurer, Medica, had committed to covering all Iowa counties. Iowa, however, contended that its stopgap plan was still needed because Medica intended to increase its premiums 56 percent.

Iowa submitted its final proposal only two months before open enrollment period. CMS solicited comments on the proposal and raised questions about the proposal’s compliance with section 1332. Iowa submitted two supplemental proposals with which it would have restored most of the CSRs, but problems with its proposals remained.

In the end, Iowa’s hope that the federal government would cover the full cost of its premium credits and reinsurance proposal proved unrealistic, sinking the proposal. The federal government is in fact only able under 1332 to pass through the funds it would have saved by reduced federal premium tax credits and CSR payments, less any revenues the federal government would have lost because of the proposal. Iowa was not willing to help cover the cost of its proposal, so the proposal proved nonviable.

Governor Reynolds and Commissioner Ommen were bitterly critical of the Affordable Care Act at their press conference. The complained that the ACA had ruined Iowa’s insurance market and that section 1332 was far too inflexible to allow them to fix it. But, as an article by Politico’s Paul Demko describes, there is plenty of blame to go around.

Like a number of other states, Iowa has allowed individuals who were covered by ACA noncompliant plan to remain in those plans. While nationally about ten percent of individual market participants remain in non-compliant plans, in Iowa half do, undoubtedly seriously undermining the ACA-compliant market risk pool. Wellmark, the Iowa Blue Plan with which the state negotiated the stopgap plan, was the only Blue plan in the country to sit out the first two years of the ACA marketplace and then withdrew again two years later, choosing to negotiate its own deal with the state rather than help preserve the ACA market. Iowa complained at the press conference that the ACA was creating insurer monopolies across the country, but the state was pushing a proposal negotiated specifically with one insurance company (although presumably others could have gotten a similar deal).

Finally, the Trump administration’s threats to the CSR payments, and ultimate withdrawal of the CSR payments at the last minute, drove up the cost of ACA plans. The administration also withdrew 80 percent of navigator funding from two of three Iowa navigator programs (causing one to withdraw) and 90 percent of advertising funding nationally, further dampening projected exchange enrollment and driving up insurer premiums.

Iowa could have simply applied for a reinsurance proposal, as did Alaska, Minnesota, and Oregon, all of which now have approved 1332 waivers. The governor and insurance commissioner contended that this would simply have prolonged the collapse of their market, but a Rand analysis of the Iowa waiver concluded that a reinsurance program could have reduced premiums as much as the stopgap proposal at far less cost.

Massachusetts Waiver Effectively Denied

Also on October 23, 2017, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services effectively rejected Massachusetts’s application for a 1332 waiver. Massachusetts had asked that the money that would have been spent on CSR reimbursement instead be passed through to the state to fund a premium stabilization fund that would allow its insurers to avoid raising premiums in the face of CSR funding uncertainty.

Without specifically addressing the question of whether states could claim pass through of CSR payments now that they are no longer being made, CMS concluded that the Massachusetts waiver application was submitted too late for it to obtain public comment on the proposal before the beginning of open enrollment, and therefore did not meet section 1332’s timeliness requirement. CMS, therefore, rejected the proposal as “incomplete.”

Judge Appears Skeptical Of States’ Position In California CSR Case

Judge Vince Chhabria spent over an hour and a quarter of the afternoon of October 23, 2017 hearing arguments on the motion for a preliminary injunction requested by attorneys general from eighteen states and the District of Columbia in California v. Trump, the case challenging the administration’s termination of CSR payments. It was less, however, a hearing than a prolonged grilling of the attorney representing California, resembling every law student’s Socratic method interrogation nightmare.

To be awarded a preliminary injunction a plaintiff must show that it will be irreparably harmed if immediate relief is not granted. Judge Chhabria seemed convinced that not only were consumers who purchased coverage through the exchanges not worse off without CSRs; they were in fact better off without them—and would be worse off were he to grant relief. He noted that California has required insurers to load the increased cost of the loss of CSRs onto on-exchange silver plans, thus increasing premium tax credits for consumers who qualify for them, in turn making gold and bronze plans more affordable while not increasing the cost of silver plans. Premiums for plans off the exchange are not being increased, so consumers who do not qualify for premium tax credits are no worse off because of the change. Restoring the CSR payments at this point, Judge Chhabria argued, would simply create confusion and make gold and bronze plans less affordable.

There is some truth to Judge Chhabria’s argument with respect to California, which reacted early and intelligently to President Trump’s anticipated order. In many states, however, premiums are increasing to the same extent for consumers both on and off the exchange (as will be true in Iowa). This will drive nonsubsidized consumers from the market, with the healthiest likely exiting first (as was noted by Governor Reynolds and Commissioner Ommen). Moreover, as the Families/NHELP amicus brief observed, insurers now face an incentive to avoid low-income enrollees, for whom they will incur increased CSR costs without increased premiums.

Moreover, a number of states did not even load the full cost of the CSR loss onto silver plans, increasing premiums for all plans. Finally, the CSR funding cut is going to induce confusion and cause consumers to make bad choices across the market.

Judge Chhabria also appeared skeptical of the states’ argument on the merits. He seemed to believe that in fact Congress did not appropriate funding for the ACA, probably through an oversight, and has not done so since. He asked a couple of technical questions of the federal government’s attorney but did not press the government on its argument that the CSR funding had in fact not been appropriated.

White House Lays Out Its Objectives In ACA Fix

Finally, on the evening of October 23, 2017, the White House reportedly released a series of “Short Term Obamacare Relief Principles,” which it would like to see included in a bipartisan short-term ACA fix. These include:

A moratorium in individual mandate penalties for 2017 and employer mandate penalties for 2015, 2016 and 2017;

Increasing contribution limits for health savings accounts and allowing them to be used for insurance premiums, direct primary care and health care sharing ministries;

Expanding access to short-term limited duration insurance and association health plans, and exempting enrollees from the individual mandate penalty; and

Giving states additional flexibility through 1332.

It is hard to believe that Democrats would agree to these conditions, a number of which were part of Republican ACA repeal bills that failed to make it through the Senate this summer. It is interesting, however, that the administration is asking for legislation to make changes with respect to association plans and short-term coverage that it had proposed to achieve through executive order. This suggests that the administration does not believe that it in fact has the authority to make the changes it would like to make on its own.

Judge Chhabria painted an overly rosy picture of the overall state of ACA markets in the wake of President Trump’s decision to end CSR payments. However, in states like California whose insurance departments took steps to mitigate the damage, the primary beneficiaries of the ACA are not in fact worse off because of the funding termination; indeed, some are better off. In fact, the Democrats arguably have less to lose from the CSR termination than do Republicans, who are likely to take the blame for the premium increases higher-income consumers, like those in Iowa, are experiencing. The Democrats have little incentive, therefore, to make major concessions to the Trump administration in these negotiations.

Article source:Health Affairs