Category: Company News

Americans say they want better health care. How that will happen is still up in the air.

Enter Medicare for All, a term that increasingly is being used by health care advocates, politicians and aspiring presidential candidates.

The concept is the latest iteration of a complex discussion about medicine that goes back decades. The current goal: To come up with something better than the Affordable Care Act when it comes to giving more individuals access to care and reducing what they pay, while putting less burdens on medical industry.

The debate comes as more Americans worry about health care issues. A recent poll from the Pew Research Center found that health care ranks as a top public concern, second only to the economy. Terrorism came in third.

The number of Americans who say reducing health-care costs should be a top priority for the President and Congress has increased steadily, according to Pew’s survey. Eight years ago, 61 percent cited those concerns, while today that has risen to 69 percent.

And a majority of Americans are in favor of expanding public health coverage, according to a separate survey from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Of the adults polled by Kaiser, 77 percent said they would support allowing people ages 50 to 64 to buy health insurance through Medicare.

Seventy-five percent said those who do not have health insurance through their employer should be able to purchase insurance through their state’s Medicaid program.

In addition, 74 percent of respondents said yes to a national government-administered health plan that would be open to anyone.

A smaller majority — 56 percent — said they support a national plan often known as Medicare for All, or a single government plan through which all Americans would get their insurance.

“The more gradual approaches have higher levels of support and, particularly among Republicans, those ideas are more palatable than a switch to a single government plan,” said Liz Hamel, director of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Foundation.

Americans generally like the fact that these plans would guarantee health insurance, eliminate premiums and reduce out-of-pocket costs, Hamel said.

What some don’t like, however, are the possibilities that a Medicare for All-type plan could eliminate private health insurance companies or the existing Medicare program and increase taxes, according to Hamel.

“People want to be able to keep what they have if they like it,” Hamel said.

Medicare for All offers a different idea at a time when many feel that the Affordable Care Act failed to provide universal health-care coverage, according to Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

As debate around the concept grows, more Medicare for All-type proposals are emerging with similar names: Medicare for America, Medicare Extra for All, Medicare Advantage for All, to name a few, according to Woolhandler.

“They sound a little like Medicare for All,” Woolhandler said. “But they don’t mean the same thing as the three English language words Medicare for All.”

Woolhandler cited a bill sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont as an example of Medicare for All. That legislation advocates a single-payer plan that will cover everyone in one non-profit public system. A separate Medicare for All type bill also has been introduced in the House of Representatives.

Woolhandler said she sees a new system as a way of eliminating the frustrations she encounters as a primary care physician practicing in the South Bronx in New York City. Often, the treatments or medications patients need are not available to them because of their insurance, she said.

Under a Medicare for All system, health care in America would look a lot like it does in Canada, where all patients can see a doctor and generally do not have to pay a bill. Canada also spends about half what the U.S. does on health care on a per-capita basis, Woolhandler said.

“The evidence is fairly strong that, over the long run, you save a lot of money with single payer,” Woolhandler said.

Some health-care experts are not sold on the Medicare for All idea.

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Katy Votava, president of Goodcare.com and a Medicare expert, cautions against using the word Medicare to describe a public single-payer system.

That is because most of the current Medicare system is actually private insurance, though it is regulated by the government, Votava said. And the coverage people get from Medicare typically comes after they have paid into that system for 40 or 50 years.

Once they are covered by Medicare, patients are often confronted by high costs and confusing rules, Votava said.

“We can provide more reasonable health insurance for all and health services for all,” Votava said. “I know we can.

“But it involves breaking down some old ways.”

The Campbell Soup Company has trademarked the word “chunky” after references to its “Chunky” branded soup made it into the lexicon of pop culture over the past couple of decades.

A trademark application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) noted that there had been “massive unsolicited media coverage of Chunky” such as parodies on “Saturday Night Live” (“SNL”), “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy,” as well as references to the soup by rappers and novelists.

Campbell also noted its $1 billion advertising spend since 1988, including its NFL sponsorship. Its “Mama’s Boy” commercials launched in 1997, featuring football player Reggie White and an actress playing his mother, who appears on the side-lines to make sure he has eaten his soup.

Those ads were followed by other NFL stars and in the early 2000s, Wilma McNabb, the real mother of player Donovan McNabb featured in advertising. Wilma McNabb then went on to become an SNL character, introduced by Tina Fey as “the star of the Chunky soup commercials.” The fact that the commercial was parodied on “SNL” is “the ultimate sign you’ve ‘made it’ in pop culture,” according to a Campbell spokesperson in an email to CNBC.

Brands have long been featured in pop culture, with hip hop artists such as Missy Elliott, Jay Z and 50 Cent name checking Mercedes in songs, while ads for Amazon Alexa and quit smoking brand Chantix have been parodied by “SNL,” as highlighted in an article by Ad Week.

Here are some of the ways Chunky soup has made it into pop culture:

• In “Murda Goons,” a song by rapper Ghostface Killah, he says: “Leave your brain all chunky like I’m advertising soup for Campbell’s.”
• In “You Know the Deal,” a track performed by Lloyd Banks featuring Rakim, Banks says: “My wrist chunky like Campbell’s Soup.”
• In “Sag Harbor,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead, the novelist writes: “We were Campbell’s men, had been for years, and nothing took the edge off like the talent in their boutique Chunky line. We adopted the slogan of Chunky’s Soup as our rallying cry and motto — it was indeed ‘The Soup That Eats Like a Meal.’”

In its filing, Campbell claims to have sold more than $13 billion worth of Chunky soup since 1988, and had run a survey showing that 75 percent of consumers associated the word “chunky” with soup.

A registration certificate, dated December 25, 2018, noted that the word had first been used by the Campbell Soup Company in 1969.

Campbell did not provide details of how much it had spent on the trademark when contacted by CNBC.

If a financial advisor is working with you to help you save for Junior’s education, be sure to ask if your college savings plan is appropriate for your child’s time horizon.

That’s because the fees that you’ll ultimately pay on your advisor-sold 529 college savings plan will depend on the types of underlying funds you choose — as well as how long you intend to hold it.

Families can use 529 plans as a way to save for higher education on a tax-preferred basis. Investment of your after-tax dollars will accumulate tax free.

Distributions from the account are tax-free as well as long as you’re using the money to pay for qualified higher education expenses, including tuition, fees and books.

Starting in 2018, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act began allowing savers to take tax-free distributions of up to $10,000 a year from their 529 accounts for private elementary and secondary school tuition.

As a result, families with shorter time horizons could end up facing higher expenses if they select the wrong share class.

“In terms of suitability, what’s the time period of the investment?” asked Paul Curley, director of college savings research at Strategic Insight. “You have to know the goal that the money is going toward: Is it for private K-12 or is for college?”

Here’s what you need to know.

There are two ways for families to invest in a 529 plan.

With a direct-sold 529 plan, you buy your plan on your own through the state you choose.

Though more than 30 states offer tax benefits for investing in a 529 plan, you have no obligation to pick the plan that corresponds with the state that you live in.

Families can also buy their plans through a financial advisor. These advisor-sold plans tend to come with higher costs.

On average, advisor-sold plans had a fee of 96 basis points, while direct-sold plans charged 44 basis points, according to fourth quarter 2018 data from Strategic Insight. A basis point is one-hundredth of one percent. That means 100 basis points equals 1 percent.

Among advisor-sold plans, investors can choose the share classes for the funds within the 529. Class A fund shares tend to come with high upfront commissions, which now average 4.4 percent, but lower annual fees, according to Morningstar.

Meanwhile, Class C shares have no upfront charges but impose higher annual fees compared to A shares.

In that sense, A-shares have an average annual asset based fee of 96 basis points, but C shares have an annual asset based fee of 163 basis points, as of the fourth quarter, according to Strategic Insight.

The markets have roared back from the December lows, with the S&P 500 up more than 13 percent. If you missed the rally, two experts say there’s still time to get in.

“I think you’re going to see incremental participation underneath the surface,” Ari Wald, head of technical analysis at Oppenheimer, said Monday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.” “I think more and more stocks are going to slowly participate as the markets rotate their way higher as conditions improve.”

Wald noted that for investors looking to take advantage of the market recovery, stocks in the energy space are beginning to look attractive.

“I’d call out the trend improvement that we’re seeing in a lot of the midstream oil and gas companies,” he said. “We’re seeing participation really start to grow out in names like Oneok and Kinder Morgan.”

Shares of Kinder Morgan are up more than 19 percent so far this year. Wald’s charting reveals that while the stock has yet to break through its key resistance around $18.50, the rotation higher in its 200-day moving average suggests it has “pre-breakout potential.”

“On top of it all the stock offers 4.3 percent dividend yield to boot so a pretty nice set up here for Kinder Morgan,” he said.

Gina Sanchez, CEO of Chantico Global, believes the defensive nature in the rally of late could be setting the stage for more gains in value stocks over growth.

“Valuation actually matters and so we would actually be looking at sort of the cheaper, less highly valued segments of the market,” she said Monday on “Trading Nation.”

Sanchez noted that infrastructure prioritization out of the Trump administration could be a potential boon for the Industrials space.

“I don’t think it’s going to come around a wall, but there are other elements of infrastructure that we could actually see Washington come down on which would be very beneficial to many of the names in the S&P industrials sector,” she said. Industrials are now the second best-performing sector this year, up more than 13 percent.

“So XLI is actually a pretty good way to play this and it’s not as highly valued as the high-flying technology area or other areas,” she said.

The industrials ETF (XLI) has bounced 22 percent from its Boxing Day, or Dec. 26, intraday lows. It trades at 15 times forward earnings, a cheaper valuation than the 16 times multiple on the S&P 500.