James' World 2

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For politics, global relations and the climate, 2017 was a year of turmoil. Partisan divisions in Washington, escalating threats from North Korea and historic natural disasters left many Americans hoping they’ll be dealt a better hand in the coming year.

But on Wall Street, everything came up aces.

Seemingly indifferent to the chaos and belying many experts’ predictions, stock markets had their best year since 2013, with the closely watched Dow Jones industrial average ending 2017 up a staggering 25 percent.

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U.S. stocks closed out their best year since 2013 on a down note, with losses in technology and financial stocks. (Reuters)

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Click link below for article and video:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/stock-markets-wrap-up-best-year-since-2013-as-investors-shrug-off-bad-newsthe-dow-jones-industrial-average-alone-surges-25-percent/2017/12/29/5bf67932-ecae-11e7-8a6a-80acf0774e64_story.html?utm_term=.5cc240c133d1

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People across the United States rushed this week to pay their 2018 property taxes early, hoping to take advantage one last time of a federal deduction that will be scaled back under the tax-code overhaul signed by President Trump.

On Wednesday, however, the ­Internal Revenue Service announced that those prepayments could be deducted only in limited circumstances, a decision that appeared to invalidate many taxpayers’ efforts and raised the prospect that local governments could come under pressure to refund millions of dollars.

The announcement stoked confusion surrounding one of the most controversial elements of the tax law — a $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes that will disproportionately affect higher-tax, Democratic-leaning states. It also offered a glimpse of the kind of hiccups that could arise in coming weeks as the IRS releases guidance on other facets of the bill, the largest overhaul of federal tax law in three decades.

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Roughly 60 people stood in line midday at Montgomery County’s Department of Finance in Rockville, Md., to prepay their 2018 property taxes. (Rachel Siegel/The Washington Post)

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Click link below for article and video:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/tax-bill-spawns-new-holiday-ritual-waiting-in-line-to-pay-taxes/2017/12/27/1e7ea59a-eb12-11e7-b698-91d4e35920a3_story.html?utm_term=.fa40f358d18c

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In the search for ways to bring down American health-care spending, there are certain ideas that are close to dogma. Chief among them: If you provide health insurance to people, they will stop overusing the emergency room.

“A lot of people just didn’t bother getting health insurance at all. And when they got sick, they’d have to go to the emergency room,” President Obama said in a 2016 speech. “But the emergency room is the most expensive place to get care. And because you weren’t insured, the hospital would have to give you the care free, and they would have to then make up for those costs by charging everybody else more money.”

The idea that uninsured people are clogging emergency rooms looks more and more like a myth, according to a recent study published in Health Affairs. Uninsured adults used the emergency room at very similar rates to people with insurance — and much less than people on Medicaid. Providing insurance to people can have many benefits, but driving down emergency room utilization doesn’t appear to be one of them.

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The emergency room entrance at a hospital in Santa Clarita, Calif. (AP Photo/Jason Redmond)

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Click link below for article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/27/the-uninsured-are-overusing-emergency-rooms-and-other-health-care-myths/?utm_term=.c87d0a5626b0

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