Trump backs CEOs, proposes easing corporate reporting rules

U.S. President Donald Trump asked securities regulators to explore replacing quarterly reporting requirements with half-yearly filings at the urging of executives including PepsiCo Chief Executive Indra Nooyi, reigniting a debate about how often companies should give financial updates to investors.

Such a switch would mark a huge change in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s disclosure requirements and put them in line with European Union and United Kingdom rules.

Trump said on Twitter that meetings with business leaders had convinced him that the change would give companies more flexibility and reduce costs.

“I’d like to see twice, but we’re going to see,” Trump told reporters when asked about his tweet. He said Nooyi, who will step down in October after 24 years at PepsiCo Inc, had brought it up to him.

Nooyi said in an e-mailed statement, “Many market participants, as well as the Business Roundtable which we are a part of, have been discussing how to better orient corporations to have a more long-term view … My comments were made in that broader context, and included a suggestion to explore the harmonization of the European system and the U.S. system of financial reporting.”

Some investors and analysts said Trump’s argument made sense because it would cut costs of compiling and filing results and remove short-term distractions for those running companies.

Others said quarterly disclosures are essential for investment decisions and support richer U.S. stock valuations, and that a change could make shares more volatile.

The SEC is an independent agency, and the president cannot force it to implement rule changes. Any move to scrap quarterly filings would have to be voted on by the SEC’s sitting commissioners, who are political appointees.

In a statement on Friday afternoon, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said Trump has raised a “key consideration” for U.S. companies and that the agency’s “Division of Corporation Finance continues to study public company reporting requirements, including the frequency of reporting.”

Following Clayton’s statement, the agency also announced it had voted to adopt a rule change first proposed in 2016 to streamline some company accounting disclosures, in an unscheduled private commission vote.

While capital market rules are not traditionally a partisan issue, a major rule change would likely meet opposition from the agency’s two Democratic-leaning commissioners, Robert Jackson and Kara Stein, who generally advocate for strong corporate governance.

Even if the SEC concluded the change was a good idea, companies would likely stick with the current regime to avoid investor backlash, said Ed Yardeni, founder and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research.

“It’s cockamamie idea. For starters, what’s the difference between six and three months? … Either way we’re talking about a very short-term period,” Yardeni added.

Under Clayton, a Trump appointee, the SEC has taken steps to relax rules for issuers, including allowing firms going public to file information confidentially, and is currently discussing easing other compliance rules. But scrapping quarterly reporting is not on the SEC’s near-term agenda, according to public records.

Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk stunned investors last week with a plan to take the electric carmaker private, a move he says would benefit shareholders by removing short-term pressures.

“I do believe it will help upper management … We start preparing three weeks in advance every quarter, essentially taking almost a third of executives’ time each quarter,” said Bryan Sheffield, chief executive of shale oil producer Parsley Energy Inc.

But he said energy companies would probably still report some oil and gas well data every three months to please investors.

Trump recently hosted company leaders at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, including the heads of Apple Inc, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Boeing Co, FedEx Corp, and Honeywell International Inc.

OPENING CORPORATE BOOKS

The Trump administration has said it would like to reduce red tape it blames for a decline in public listings. In 1998, there were around 7,500 listed companies in the United States, compared with around 4,300 in 2017, according to the World Bank.

Last fall it laid out changes to capital market rules in a U.S. Treasury report, but did not advocate scrapping quarterly reporting.

Business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and exchange operator Nasdaq have been lobbying for lawmakers and the SEC to relax listing rules, warning that the decline in listings hurts jobs and pension funds.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon wrote in the Wall Street Journal in June that companies should move away from quarterly guidance, but did not call for an end to quarterly reporting.

The Council of Institutional Investors (CII) believes that public companies should continue to report quarterly.

“Investors and other stakeholders benefit when regulations ensure that important information is promptly and transparently provided to the marketplace,” said Amy Borrus, CII’s deputy director. “Investors need timely, accurate financial information to make informed investment decisions.”

https://bit.ly/2PjX4xd

Video game can change the brain, may improve empathy in middle schoolers

A space-exploring robot crashes on a distant planet. In order to gather the pieces of its damaged spaceship, it needs to build emotional rapport with the local alien inhabitants. The aliens speak a different language but their facial expressions are remarkably humanlike.

This fantastical scenario is the premise of a video game developed for middle schoolers by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers to study whether video games can boost kids’ empathy, and to understand how learning such skills can change neural connections in the brain.

Results published this week in npj Science of Learning (a Nature journal) reveal for the first time that, in as few as two weeks, kids who played a video game designed to train empathy showed greater connectivity in brain networks related to empathy and perspective taking. Some also showed altered neural networks commonly linked to emotion regulation, a crucial skill that this age group is beginning to develop, the study authors say.

“The realization that these skills are actually trainable with video games is important because they are predictors of emotional well-being and health throughout life, and can be practiced anytime — with or without video games,” says Tammi Kral, a UW-Madison graduate student in psychology who led the research at the Center for Healthy Minds.

Richard Davidson, director of the center and a professor of psychology and psychiatry at UW-Madison, explains that empathy is the first step in a sequence that can lead to prosocial behavior, such as helping others in need.

“If we can’t empathize with another’s difficulty or problem, the motivation for helping will not arise,” says Davidson, who headed the research team. “Our long-term aspiration for this work is that video games may be harnessed for good and if the gaming industry and consumers took this message to heart, they could potentially create video games that change the brain in ways that support virtuous qualities rather than destructive qualities.”

On average, youth between the ages of 8 and 18 rack up more than 70 minutes of video gameplay daily, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. This spike in gameplay during adolescence coincides with an explosion in brain growth as well as a time when kids are susceptible to first encounters with depression, anxiety and bullying. The team wanted to learn whether there were ways to use video games as a vehicle for positive emotional development during this critical period.

Researchers randomly assigned 150 middle schoolers to two groups. One played the experimental game, called “Crystals of Kaydor,” which was created for research purposes and intended to teach empathy. The second group played a commercially available and entertaining control game called “Bastion” that does not target empathy.

In Crystals of Kaydor, kids interacted with the aliens on the distant planet and learned to identify the intensity of emotions they witnessed on their humanlike faces, such as anger, fear, happiness, surprise, disgust and sadness. The researchers measured how accurate the players were in identifying the emotions of the characters in the game. The activity was also intended to help the kids practice and learn empathy.

Those who played Bastion partook in a storyline where they collected materials needed to build a machine to save their village, but tasks were not designed to teach or measure empathy. Researchers used the game because of its immersive graphics and third-person perspective.

The team obtained functional magnetic resonance imaging scans in the laboratory from both groups before and after two weeks of gameplay, looking at connections among areas of the brain, including those associated with empathy and emotion regulation. Participants in the study also completed tests during the brain scans that measured how accurately they empathized with others.

The researchers found stronger connectivity in empathy-related brain networks after the middle schoolers played Crystals of Kaydor compared to Bastion. Moreover, Crystals players who showed strengthened neural connectivity in key brain networks for emotion regulation also improved their score on the empathy test. Kids who did not show increased neural connectivity in the brain did not improve on the test of empathic accuracy.

“The fact that not all children showed changes in the brain and corresponding improvements in empathic accuracy underscores the well-known adage that one size does not fit all,” says Davidson. “One of the key challenges for future research is to determine which children benefit most from this type of training and why.”

Teaching empathy skills in such an accessible way may benefit populations who find these skills challenging, including individuals on the autism spectrum, Davidson adds.

The game — developed in partnership with Gear Learning at UW-Madison and researchers Constance Steinkuehler and Kurt Squire, who are now professors of informatics at the University of California, Irvine — is only being used for research purposes and is not available to the public but has helped inform other games being submitted to the FDA for clinical applications.

The research was funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Learn more from the Center for Healthy Minds about simple and tech-free ways to teach empathy in youth at https://centerhealthyminds.org/join-the-movement/5-tips-for-empathy-building-in-teens

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Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison. Original written by Marianne Spoon. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Tammi R. A. Kral, Diane E. Stodola, Rasmus M. Birn, Jeanette A. Mumford, Enrique Solis, Lisa Flook, Elena G. Patsenko, Craig G. Anderson, Constance Steinkuehler, Richard J. Davidson. Neural correlates of video game empathy training in adolescents: a randomized trial. npj Science of Learning, 2018; 3 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41539-018-0029-6

https://bit.ly/2vX7Gcn

Retinoic acid may improve immune response against melanoma

Immunotherapies use the immune system to fight cancer. But cancers like melanoma have found ways to turn off the immune system, allowing them to resist treatments and often leading to recurrence. Now University of Colorado Cancer Center clinical trial results published today in the journal International Immunopharmacology describe a promising strategy to remove one of melanoma’s most powerful defenses: By adding retinoic acid to standard-of-care treatment, researchers were able to turn off myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) that turn off the immune system, leading to more immune system activity directed at melanoma.

“The immune response and MDSCs are like yin and yang, balancing each other. For example, you want the immune system to fight an infection and then you want MDSCs to shut down the immune system when the infection is gone,” says Martin McCarter, MD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and surgical oncologist at the UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital.

“We started studying our melanoma patients and found a ton of these MDSCs in the circulation and in the tumor itself,” he says. “Melanoma induces these cells to be around the tumor microenvironment. After identifying that, yes, there are a lot of these cells around, we wanted to find ways to target those MDSCs. If we could render them dysfunctional then in theory a better immune response could go forward.”

Working in the McCarter lab with initial funding from a grateful patient, then-postdoctoral researcher Kim Jordan, PhD, studied ways to alter MDSC function and “identified a promising drug called all-trans retinoic acid or ATRA,” McCarter says.

Understanding how retinoic acid defuses MDSCs requires a little knowledge about each.

MDSCs are immature, undifferentiated cells that are produced in the bone marrow. When healthy, MDSCs quickly mature into cell types that aid immune function. But cancers like melanoma encourage MDSCs to remain immature, and this population of immature MDSCs turns off the immune system.

Retinoic acid is a well-known compound derived from the breakdown of Vitamin A. It encourages cells to differentiate, transitioning from stem-like cells into the mature cells the body needs for structure and function. Retinoic acid is a common ingredient in topical acne treatments and is also used to treat acute promyelocytic cancer. Work in the McCarter lab and elsewhere showed that the form of retinoic acid known as ATRA could force MDSCs to mature, switching their function from immune suppression to immune support.

“ATRA was available off the shelf. There was a lot of history and lot of knowledge about the drug itself,” McCarter says.

Based on promising laboratory work, Dr. Jordan wrote a proposal for an R21 grant, also known as an Exploratory/Development Grant, which is a program by the National Institutes of Health meant to encourage researcher-initiated trials.

“We wanted to take standard-of-care treatment and add ATRA,” McCarter says.

At the time, standard-of-care treatment included the drug ipilimumab, which is a checkpoint inhibitor targeting a protein called CTLA-4, which helps release the brakes on the immune system so that it can target cancer. The study enrolled 10 patients, with half receiving ipilimumab alone and half receiving ipilimumab plus ATRA.

“We were able to show several things,” McCarter says. “First is that we could reduce the number of circulating MDSCs in patients that got ATRA. We also showed that immunosuppressive MDSC genes were reduced in these patients. And we showed there was more activation of CD8 T cells. Basically, not only did immunosuppressive stuff go down, but the immune response went up. The other take-home is this was a safe combination — adding ATRA didn’t increase toxic side-effects.”

Then, partway through the trial, ipilimumab stopped being the standard of care. Instead of using ipilimumab to help the immune system target CTLA-4, doctors started using drugs like pembrolizumab and nivolumab to target PD-1.

“We didn’t have enough patients on the trial to show survival benefit but we were able to demonstrate the proof of principal to target MDSCs in humans,” McCarter says.

Meanwhile, McCarter’s postdoctoral researcher, Kim Jordan, took a position as an associate research professor in the CU School of Medicine Department of Immunology. Luckily, she was replaced by another postdoctoral researcher, Richard Tobin, PhD, who was able to shepherd the group’s promising preclinical work with ATRA and MDSCs from ipilimumab to pembrolizumab. A new trial of pembrolizumab with and without ATRA offered at the UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital to adult patients with stage III or IV melanoma has started enrollment and is recruiting patients (ClinicalTrials.gov #NCT03200847).

“This is a homegrown project, from the basic laboratory work, through the translational science, and now into investigator-initiated clinical trials,” McCarter says. “I couldn’t be more proud of Kim, Richard and the rest of my team. And we see the real potential that this strategy could be a useful and non-toxic addition to immunotherapies for patients with melanoma.”

The group expects results of the current trial of pembrolizumab plus ATRA in late 2019.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Original written by Garth Sundem. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Richard P. Tobin, Kimberly R. Jordan, William A. Robinson, Dana Davis, Virginia F. Borges, Rene Gonzalez, Karl D. Lewis, Martin D. McCarter. Targeting myeloid-derived suppressor cells using all-trans retinoic acid in melanoma patients treated with Ipilimumab. International Immunopharmacology, 2018; 63: 282 DOI: 10.1016/j.intimp.2018.08.007

https://bit.ly/2Bgy8DE

Robots as tools and partners in rehabilitation

In future decades the need for effective strategies for medical rehabilitation will increase significantly, because patients’ rate of survival after diseases with severe functional deficits, such as a stroke, will increase. Socially assistive robots (SARs) are already being used in rehabilitation for this reason. In the journal Science Robotics, a research team led by neuroscientist Dr. Philipp Kellmeyer of the Freiburg University Medical Center and Prof. Dr. Oliver Müller from the Department of Philosophy of the University of Freiburg, analyzes the improvements necessary to make SARs valuable and trustworthy assistants for medical therapies.

The researchers conclude that the development of SARs not only requires technical improvements, but primarily social, trust-building measures. Rehabilitation patients in particular are dependent on a reliable relationship with their therapists. So there must be trust in the safety of the robotic system, especially regarding the predictability of the machines’ behavior. Given the ever-growing intelligence of the robots and with it their independence, this is highly important.

In addition, robots and patients can only interact well, the scientists explain, when they have shared goals that they pursue through the therapy. To achieve this, aspects of philosophical and developmental psychology must also be taken into account in the development of SARs: the ability of robots to recognize the aims and motives of a patient is a critical requirement if cooperation is to be successful. So there must also be trust for the participants to adapt to one another. The frustration felt by patients, for instance as a result of physical or linguistic limitations, would be avoided if the robots were adapted to the specific needs and vulnerabilities of the patient in question.

Philipp Kellmeyer and Oliver Müller are members of the Cluster of Excellence BrainLinks-BrainTools of the University of Freiburg. The study also involved Prof. Dr. Shelly Levy-Tzedek and Ronit Feingold-Polak from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. In the 2018/19 academic year, the Freiburg researchers together with the legal academic Prof. Dr. Silja Vöneky and the IT specialist Prof. Dr. Wolfram Burgard, both from the University of Freiburg, are developing a Research Focus into normative aspects of interaction between people and autonomous intelligent systems at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS).

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Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Freiburg. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Philipp Kellmeyer, Oliver Mueller, Ronit Feingold-Polak, Shelly Levy-Tzedek. Social robots in rehabilitation: A question of trust. Science Robotics, 2018; 3 (21): eaat1587 DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aat1587

https://bit.ly/2L1ElDe

Matrix delivers healing stem cells to injured elderly muscles

A car accident leaves an aging patient with severe muscle injuries that won’t heal. Treatment with muscle stem cells from a donor might restore damaged tissue, but doctors are unable to deliver them effectively. A new method may help change this.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology engineered a molecular matrix, a hydrogel, to deliver muscle stem cells called muscle satellite cells (MuSCs) directly to injured muscle tissue in patients whose muscles don’t regenerate well. In lab experiments on mice, the hydrogel successfully delivered MuSCs to injured, aged muscle tissue and boosted the healing process while protecting the stem cells from harsh immune reactions.

The method was also successful in mice with a muscle tissue deficiency that emulated Duchene muscular dystrophy, and if research progresses, the new hydrogel therapy could one day save the lives of people suffering from the disease.

Inflammation war zone

Simply injecting additional muscle satellite cells into damaged, inflamed tissue has proven inefficient, in part because the stem cells encounter an immune system on the warpath.

“Any muscle injury is going to attract immune cells. Typically, this would help muscle stem cells repair damage. But in aged or dystrophic muscles, immune cells lead to the release a lot of toxic chemicals like cytokines and free radicals that kill the new stem cells,” said Young Jang, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Biological Sciences and one of the study’s principal investigators.

Only between 1 and 20 percent of injected MuSCs make it to damaged tissue, and those that do, arrive there weakened. Also, some tissue damage makes any injection unfeasible, thus the need for new delivery strategies.

“Our new hydrogel protects the stem cells, which multiply and thrive inside the matrix. The gel is applied to injured muscle, and the cells engraft onto the tissues and help them heal,” said Woojin Han, a postdoctoral researcher in Georgia Tech’s School of Mechanical Engineering and the paper’s first author.

Han, Jang and Andres Garcia, the study’s other principal investigator, published their results on August 15, 2018, in the journal Science Advances. The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of the National Institutes of Health funded the research.

Hydrogel: watery nets

Hydrogels often start out as water-based solutions of molecular components that resemble crosses, and other components that make the ends of the crosses attach to each other. When the components come together, they fuse into molecular nets suspended in water, resulting in a material with the consistency of a gel.

If stem cells or a drug are mixed into the solution, when the net, or matrix, forms, it ensnares the treatment for delivery and protects the payload from death or dissipation in the body. Researchers can easily and reliably synthesize hydrogels and also custom-engineer them by tweaking their components, as the Georgia Tech researchers did in this hydrogel.

“It physically traps the muscle satellite cells in a net, but the cells also grab onto chemical latches we engineered into the net,” Han said.

This hydrogel’s added latches, which bond with proteins protruding from stem cells’ membranes, not only increase the cells’ adhesion to the net but also hinder them from committing suicide. Stem cells tend to kill themselves when they’re detached and free-floating.

The chemical components and the cells are mixed in solution then applied to the injured muscle, where the mixture sets to a matrix-gel patch that glues the stem cells in place. The gel is biocompatible and biodegradable.

“The stem cells keep multiplying and thriving in the gel after it is applied,” Jang said. “Then the hydrogel degrades and leaves behind the cells engrafted onto muscle tissue the way natural stem cells usually would be.”

Stem cell breakdown

In younger, healthier patients, muscle satellite cells are part of the natural healing mechanism.

“Muscle satellite cells are resident stem cells in your skeletal muscles. They live on muscle strands like specks, and they’re key players in making new muscle tissue,” Han said.

“As we age, we lose muscle mass, and the number of satellite cells also decreases. The ones that are left get weaker. It’s a double whammy,” Jang said. “At a very advanced age, a patient stops regenerating muscle altogether.”

“With this system we engineered, we think we can introduce donor cells to enhance the repair mechanism in injured older patients,” Han said. “We also want to get this to work in patients with Duchene muscular dystrophy.”

“Duchene muscular dystrophy is surprisingly frequent,” Jang said. “About 1 in 3,500 boys get it. They eventually get respiratory defects that lead to death, so we hope to be able to use this to rebuild their diaphragm muscles.”

If the method goes to clinical trials, researchers will likely have to work around the potential for donor cell rejection in human patients.

The following researchers coauthored the paper: Shannon Anderson, Mahir Mohiuddin, Shadi Nakhai, and Eunjung Shin from Georgia Tech; Isabel Freitas Amaral, and Ana Paula Pêgo from the University of Porto in Portugal, and Daniela Barros from Georgia Tech and the University of Porto. The research was funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (awards # R21AR072287 and R01AR062368). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Georgia Institute of Technology. Original written by Ben Brumfield. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Woojin M. Han, Shannon E. Anderson, Mahir Mohiuddin, Daniela Barros, Shadi A. Nakhai, Eunjung Shin, Isabel Freitas Amaral, Ana Paula Pêgo, Andrés J. García, Young C. Jang. Synthetic matrix enhances transplanted satellite cell engraftment in dystrophic and aged skeletal muscle with comorbid trauma. Science Advances, 2018; 4 (8): eaar4008 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aar4008

https://bit.ly/2vO4GQu

Medical Marijuana Leaders on Industry’s Future At Cannabis Capital Conference

Industry leaders including Liberty Health Sciences, Tidal Royalty, Organigram and Mjardin discussed the future of medical marijuana Friday at the Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference.

Liberty Health Sciences

Liberty Health Sciences LHSIF 2.07% CEO George Scorsis said his company is one of the first and most prominent in the U.S. in its space. The company’s primary catalyst is geography, Scorsis said.

“We have remained so focused on dominating Florida,” the CEO said at the Toronto conference. “When we get in, we operate and build business. We will not walk into states and buy paper or licenses — we will buy bench strength.”

Scorsis named highlights of Liberty’s business:

• A focus on Florida, Massachusetts and Ohio. The company is actively looking at other states.
• An experienced and capable management team.
• Significant near- and mid-term opportunities for growth, such as the addition of a R&D facility.
• Aphria’s involvement in the business. “We are the white knight for them in the U.S,” Scorsis said.

Tidal Royalty

Tidal TDRYF 7.49% is one of the first cannabis royalty companies to be successful in the U.S. market, said CEO Paul Rosen.

“When I started in the cannabis industry in Canada, it was scary. It was by reputation hazardous,” Rosen said.

According to Rosen’s presentation, the company:

• Upholds non-dilutive capital.
• Possesses the ability to finance expansion products, which Rosen believes makes for an alluring investment opportunity.
• Remains one of the few companies listed on Canadian exchange that trades in U.S. dollars.

Potential Tidal investors should consider three questions to determine whether the stock is the right fit for them, Rosen said:

• Do you believe in commercial expansion in the U.S. cannabis industry?
• Do you think royalty financing is a good way to build on diversified exposure?
• Has Tidal built a team and product that grabs your attention?

Organigram

Organigram OGRMF 0.04% is one of 10 companies that possess a dealer’s license, a prerequisite for becoming a global player in the market, said CFO Paolo De Luca.

De Luca named the following reasons why he believes Organigram is a solid investment prospect:

• An indoor grow on three levels, with substantial time spent on design.
• A management team that focuses on the past, present and future.
• An increase of 10,000 patients since May 2017.
• Operation in low-cost locations in Canada.
• The availability of bilingual branding and services.

“We have really focused our efforts on the adult recreational market, with opportunities beyond the border,” De Luca said.

Mjardin Group

Mjardin Group President Joann Bailey detailed the company’s main operations in Colorado, as well as its expansion plans and future growth pillars:

• Operations in Canada, Australia and the U.S.
• Exclusive management with GrowForce.
• Plans for owner-operator agreements in multiple states.
• The development of data software to optimize commercial operations.

“We have painstakingly collected data on everything involved in our facilities. With this will be able to determine what we need to do with each asset, to ensure they are healthy and high-quality,” Bailey said. “Everything we do today is forward-looking and proactive, not reactive.”

https://bit.ly/2waDfzu

Americans Unsure Whether Their Health Insurance Extends Outside The US

An alarming number of Americans are unclear whether their health insurance works outside the US, according to a new survey from InsureMyTrip. Over fifty-six percent polled were not sure whether their domestic health insurance plan would cover any emergency doctor or hospital visits while traveling outside the country.

Twenty-two percent said their domestic health insurance would offer no coverage, while the rest believed their insurance plan would offer coverage.

Survey question: Does your domestic health insurance cover any doctor or hospital visits while traveling outside the US?

Survey results:
Yes: 21.5%
No: 22.1%
Not Sure: 56.4%

Understanding Coverage
Travelers unclear on whether they have coverage should contact their health insurance company on whether emergency medical coverage will extend outside the US. Depending on your specific plan and area of travel, medical coverage can vary widely.

Policyholders may discover they have either “in-network” coverage, limited coverage, or no coverage at all. Travelers should also be aware of the following:

Deductibles: the amount a patient must pay for covered services before insurance kicks in
Co-insurance: the amount a patient is responsible for a covered health care service
Co-payments: a set amount owed for a covered health care service

A Word About Medicare
Original Medicare does not cover emergency medical care for travelers outside the US. There are supplemental plans such as Medicare Advantage and Medigap that can provide limited additional coverage, for more details visit Medicare.gov.

Emergency Medical Evacuations
According to the US State Department, very few domestic health insurance companies will pay for a medical evacuation back to the United States, which can easily cost up to $100,000, or even more, depending on the condition and location of the patient.

More: Comprehensive travel insurance plans and medical evacuation coverage

Travel Insurance Options
Travelers should know about any limitations of domestic health insurance policies while out of the country. In most cases, there are gaps in coverage. Some gaps are significant. Travel insurance is recommended because it can act as supplemental or primary coverage.

Most travel insurance providers offer one or two different types of insurance plans that provide emergency medical coverage outside the US:

Comprehensive travel insurance — offers the most protection for travelers. It provides a variety of benefits including trip cancellation, trip interruption, emergency medical evacuation, emergency medical coverage, 24/7 emergency assistance, and baggage protection.

Example: For a $5,000 two week vacation to Aruba, a comprehensive travel insurance plan will cost a couple in their 50s around $200. This includes a $50,000 medical limit, $250,000 for medical evacuation in addition to trip cancellation coverage.

Travel medical insurance — provides emergency medical coverage, 24/7 emergency assistance, and emergency medical evacuation coverage. Trip cancellation is typically not included.

Example: For the same trip to Aruba, a travel medical insurance plan will cost a couple in their 50s around $80. This includes a $50,000 medical limit with a $250 deductible and $500,000 medical evacuation.

How it helps
Both comprehensive and travel medical insurance plans are a valued supplement while traveling overseas, offsetting possible coverage gaps evident in some domestic health insurance plans including:

Emergency medical care: when a traveler requires a doctor or hospital visit when traveling abroad.

Emergency evacuation: when the attending physician requests that the traveler be transported to a more adequate medical facility or back home for further care.

24/7 emergency assistance: when a traveler needs help with a medical-or-safety-related issue, needs to find a doctor or hospital or requires translation services.

Some travel insurance policies may also cover pre-existing medical conditions. To learn more about eligibility requirements, visit the learn section on InsureMyTrip.

Travel smart
In addition to seeking proper medical protection, travelers can also reduce health risks by learning about destination-specific medical concerns, including required vaccinations. The US State Department is a helpful resource.

Contact news@insuremytrip.com for more information.

InsureMyTrip
It’s simple. InsureMyTrip finds you the right travel insurance plan, every time.

InsureMyTrip is the authority on travel insurance. We are committed to empowering travelers to make the best possible insurance decisions by leveraging our technology, data intelligence, and expertise.

Methodology
The survey was sent to those identified as Americans, male or female (35+), who use websites in the Google Surveys Publisher Network. The survey was conducted from August 7, 2018 – August 10, 2018, and generated 498 completed responses.

https://bit.ly/2OH0cSC