In The News

To be sure, the scope of Trump's executive order remains to be seen, and there are some who hold that concerns over insurance market bifurcation are overblown. "It's an overstated risk," said Merrill Matthews, resident scholar and health policy expert at the Institute for Policy Innovation. Most Americans get insurance through their employers, Medicare and Medicaid, and Obamacare enrollees who get generous subsidies may decide to stay there. "You're really only talking about the individual market," he said.

Students from Howard Payne University's Guy D. Newman Honors Academy recently attended a public policy lecture through the Institute for Policy Innovation. Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, spoke on the topic "Preserving a Free, Open and Innovative Internet."

Merrill Matthews, an analyst with the independent Institute for Policy Innovation, said while Harvey "was certainly a disruption event, the remarkable thing it wasn’t more disruptive," to energy markets.

The Chevy Bolt, touted by electric car advocates as the plug-in electric vehicle for the masses, has yet to make significant inroads into overall car and truck sales.

The hurricanes have undoubtedly been devastating, but they proved that the energy sector is strong — and getting stronger.

A so-called Medicare-For-All plan continues to add left-wing supporters on Capitol Hill but a right-wing critic suspects they wouldn't be part of it.

Having destroyed the private health insurance market, Democrats have a new target in their sights: Medicare. Just don’t expect any of them to be part of the system they would force everyone else to be in.

"They did achieve a decline in the uninsured, but they did it in the worst possible way," said Merrill Matthews. Matthews said he also thinks merely reporting uninsured rates does not tell the whole story as many who gained insurance have been unable to use it because of high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs they cannot afford.

With the EU set to lift caps on sugar production, African producers could be squeezed out of a market that has propped up places like Swaziland for years.

More than 100 countries, from Cuba to India to Russia, produce sugar from sugarcane and sugar beet. Many of them are able to undercut the prices demanded by Swazi farmers, who receive no subsidies from their government, in markets such as West Africa and the Middle East.