December 15, 2015

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House Plans Vote On Year-End, Must-Pass Tax And Spending Deal

House Speaker Paul Ryan announced late Tuesday that negotiators had reached a deal on two sweeping pieces of legislation: a $1 trillion spending bill and more than $600 billion bundle in tax breaks.

Republicans are unhappy with the spending bill, and Democrats don’t like the tax bill — but combined, there is enough in this deal for both parties to claim a win.

In the more than $1 trillion spending bill, Democrats successfully brushed back Republican efforts to stop Syrian refugees from entering the U.S., roll back Wall Street regulations, defund Planned Parenthood and repeal campaign finance regulations.

In the tax bill, Republicans scored concessions on making many tax breaks permanent and delaying new taxes under the Affordable Care Act.

The House will vote separately on the two measures, which will be combined into one package in the Senate. Those votes are expected on Thursday. The White House has indicated that the president will sign the bill when it reaches his desk.

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Hepatitis Drug Among The Most Costly For Medicaid

Sovaldi can cure hepatitis C, but the medicine carries a list price of $1,000 a pill. The typical 12-week course of treatment would cost $84,000.

Sovaldi can cure hepatitis C, but the medicine carries a list price of $1,000 a pill. The typical 12-week course of treatment would cost $84,000. Bob Ecker/MCT/Landov hide caption

toggle caption Bob Ecker/MCT/Landov

A drug that can cure hepatitis C was one of the top pharmaceutical costs in most states’ Medicaid budgets in 2014.

All told, 33 states spent more than $1 billion to treat the disease with Gilead Sciences’ Sovaldi, according to data released Tuesday by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore. Still, the money spent was enough to treat only 2.4 percent of Medicaid patients infected with the virus.

New York spent the most by far. That state’s Medicaid program shelled out more than $360 million for Sovaldi to treat about 4,000 of its nearly 60,000 Medicaid recipients who have hepatitis C.

Pennsylvania was next, spending $98 million last year to treat 1,059 Medicaid recipients with hepatitis C. Another 30,000 Pennsylvanians are infected, the data show.

In a letter to the senators, Pennsylvania’s secretary of human services said the state was suffering from “sticker shock” and said the price affected the state’s decision about whether to treat patients with the hepatitis drug.

“Treatment guidelines recommended prioritizing treatment for the ‘sickest’ patients due to potential costs and access issues,” said Secretary Theodore Dallas in the letter.

Many states also spent smaller amounts on Harvoni, Gilead’s other hepatitis drug, which was approved near the end of 2014.

When Sovaldi was approved in December 2013, it was the first drug that could effectively cure hepatitis C, a virus that attacks the liver and can lead to cirrhosis, cancer and the need for a transplant.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 2.7 million people in the U.S. had chronic hepatitis C infections in 2013.

Sovaldi became the center of controversy when Gilead set the price at $1,000 a pill, or $84,000 for a course of treatment. Harvoni is even pricier.

In early December, Grassley and Wyden released a report from an 18-month investigation showing that Gilead was fully aware its pricing strategy would be controversial, but decided to stick with it to maximize revenue.

That report said sales of the two drugs since they were launched reached $20.6 billion as of September.

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The Sports (And Teams) Whose Fans Made The Fewest Grammatical Mistakes In 2015

Fans of the Memphis Grizzlies, seen here celebrating with Jeff Green, made only 2.47 grammar mistakes for every 100 words according to a new study.

Fans of the Memphis Grizzlies, seen here celebrating with Jeff Green, made only 2.47 grammar mistakes for every 100 words according to a new study. Frederick Breedon/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Frederick Breedon/Getty Images

Fans of the Memphis Grizzlies can exult, after ranking first in a new national study. And there’s a good chance they’ll spell “exult” correctly: The team’s fans were found to make the fewest grammatical mistakes in a review of comments about three of America’s major sports.

NBA fans made the fewest mistakes, with NFL fans making the most. And while MLB fans were in the middle, a poor showing by the Philadelphia Phillies’ followers was blamed for the city’s fall from fifth to 24th place in the rankings of 42 cities with major sports teams.

The 2015 Grammar Power Rankings come from Grammarly, the auto-correcting app, which collected and reviewed 100 comments from the teams’ official websites, as well as sports sites such as SBNation. The survey does not include the NHL or MLS.

Among cities, the rankings give No. 1 Memphis a particular reason to brag over No. 42 Nashville, whose fans were judged to be the least reliable users of the English language. While Memphis fans made only an average of 2.47 mistakes for every 100 words they wrote, their Nashvillian peers committed more than 11 errors.

Among individual teams, the most errors came from fans of the Washington Redskins, whose rate of 16.5 mistakes per 100 words was unrivaled. No other team surpassed 14 mistakes per 100 words in Grammarly’s review.

But perhaps that proclivity for errors is catching: Instead of calling Washington’s baseball team by its correct name, the Nationals, Grammarly wrote the name as “Nations” in an early news release about the study.

A news release from Grammarly's rankings of cities' sports fans included a misspelling of its own.

A news release from Grammarly’s rankings of cities’ sports fans included a misspelling of its own. Grammarly hide caption

toggle caption Grammarly

We don’t mention that to be snarky. Rather, it reminds us that grammar, and the mechanics of typing, humble us all (including your correspondent).

When we asked Grammarly where fans could improve their grammar game, analyst Michael Mager responded, “The most common errors tended to be punctuation. In particular, the comma tends to be misused the most.”

Other takeaways from the rankings:

  • Archrivals Boston and New York tied at No. 31.
  • Sacramento, San Antonio, and Orlando — like Memphis, cities that have an NBA team but no NFL or MLB franchise — rounded out the top four.
  • In Milwaukee, Bucks fans had the fewest errors, with 2.43 per 100 words. But Brewers fans had more than twice that many, so the city ranked fifth nationally.

The full results are at the bottom of this post.

If you’re wondering about the criteria, it seems that conscientious users of the serial comma can, as usual, simmer in their own rage.

Here’s how Grammarly explains its methodology:

“For the purposes of this study, we counted only black-and-white mistakes such as misspellings, wrong and missing punctuation, misused or missing words, and subject-verb disagreement. We ignored stylistic variations such as the use of common slang words, team and player nicknames, serial comma usage, and the use of numerals instead of spelled-out numbers.

“Finally, we calculated the average number of mistakes per one hundred words by dividing the total word count of the comments by the total number of mistakes for each team.”

Here’s the full list:

Sports Fan Cities Grammar Ranking Infographic

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Today in Movie Culture: 'Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace' Edition

Here are a bunch of little bites to satisfy your hunger for Star Wars movie culture:

We’re counting down the days to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens by devoting a week’s worth of movie culture roundups to the seven live-action installments of the Star Wars Saga, continuing today with the fourth installment (first episode), The Phantom Menace, and further in release order through next Thursday.

See More Star Wars Movie Culture:

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi

Classic Trailer of the Day:

We got our first look at the first new Star Wars movie in 16 years on November 18, 1998. That’s when the original trailer for The Phantom Menace arrived in theaters attached to Meet Joe Black and other releases. Watch that trailer below.

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Honest Trailer of the Day:

More than a decade later, The Phantom Menace was re-released in 3D, and Screen Junkies used the opportunity to give the prequel an Honest Trailer. This was before they had the epic trailer voice guy so, appropriately, it’s not as good as later episode, either.

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Alternative Poster of the Day:

Artist Travis English has done a lot of stylish yet minimalist poster designs for The Phantom Menace, including the one below. See others, including character posters here.

Movie Defense of the Day:

Not everyone hates The Phantom Menace, not entirely. Here is a fair list of everything good in the first prequel:

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Cosplay of the Day:

If you want to see a lot more people who don’t hate The Phantom Menace, just go to any fan convention and you’ll find a good amount of Darth Maul cosplay. Here’s one example with another guy dressed as Qui-Gon Jinn:

Fan Theory of the Day:

One of the craziest fan theories of all time is a recent one arguing that Jar Jar Binks was a Sith Lord. This is one video explaining the idea in depth:

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Vintage Image of the Day:

Ahmed Best doing stand-in performance for his character, Jar-Jar Binks, meeting Jake Lloyd as young Anakin Skywalker in front of a blue screen with actual set to be filled in later.

Music Video of the Day:

The lyrics of “Weird Al” Yankovic‘s “The Saga Begins” serves as both a parody and recap of The Phantom Menace, set to the tune of Don McLean’s “American Pie.” Watch the video, in which Yankovic sports some Jedi cosplay, below.

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Movie Adaptation of the Day:

The best way to appreciate and become a fan of The Phantom Menace is to pretend it was written by William Shakespeare. Below is the cover to the ingeniuous mashup/adaptation. Watch author Ian Doescher discuss the series at New York Comic-Con here.

Alternate Endings of the Day:

Those of you who dislike The Phantom Menace might have preferred the prequel if it was much shorter. Here are a few ways it could have ended earlier:

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