Cheer

Striking a long-awaited blow for sanity, some malls and big box retail outlets are announcing that they will — gasp — close up shop on Thanksgiving Day this year.

We can all thank the largest mall in the nation, The Mall of America outside Minneapolis, Minn., for starting the trend last week. The mall announced that it would be closed, but allow stores to decide whether to open for business. That set off a slew of similar announcements from national retailers including Home Depot, Staples, Barnes & Noble, Marshalls and nearly 50 others which said they wanted to give employees a chance to be with their families over the holiday.

It’s long past time for this to emerge as common practice among American retailers, but late with partial participation among stores is better than never and no one.

And don’t fear, hard-core shoppers. There’s still going to be plenty of Black Friday craziness to take part in on the day following Thanksgiving. This is just a reminder that some retailers, at least, realize they can still cash in on the holiday shopping season without their employees working away a national holiday.

Jeer

This weekend represents the wrap-up of Fire Safety Week 2016, so maybe it’s serendipitous that on Thursday, Samsung announced that it was formally killing off all models of its flagship smart phone, the Galaxy Note 7, due to continued reports that the phones are exploding.

“Only you can prevent unexpected conflagrations in your car, airplane or fast-food restaurant,” the updated Fire Safety Week commercial might proclaim.

There have been 96 reports of batteries overheating, 13 reports of people being burned and 47 reports of property being damaged as a result of the phones catching on fire or exploding.

The company will take a hit to the tune of $5.33 billion as it stops production of the phones and deals with a worldwide recall effort to get people to give back more than 2.5 million of the devices — 1.9 million Note 7 phones were sold in the United States alone.

It’s alarming that one of the most expensive smartphones on the market — The Note 7 sold for between $850 and $890 — will be better-known for its ability to burn users than to unlock itself by scanning their iris (one of the selling points highlighted in Samsung commercials).

If you have one of these devices, don’t take a chance. Power it down, take a trip to your phone provider’s local retail outlet, and get yourself a full refund and a new smart phone. After all, it is still Fire Safety Week 2016.

Cheer

News broke last week that — surprise, surprise — an expansion of the Medicaid program in Pennsylvania under the federal government’s Affordable Care Act has resulted in a reduction in the uninsured rate among adults and children in the state.

The change has been dramatic. In 2014, when Gov. Tom Wolf took office and enacted a full Medicaid expansion, 11.7 percent of adults and 4.9 percent of children did not have insurance. The statewide uninsured rate overall was 8.5 percent.

After Wolf scrapped an ill-conceived alternative system put in place by former Gov. Tom Corbett, that rate dropped to to 6.4 percent last year as more than 670,000 Pennsylvanians gained health coverage through the Medicaid expansion. The expanded program covers Pennsylvania residents from ages 19 to 64 with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

Some people remain uninsured because their income disqualifies them from receiving coverage through Medicaid, but falls into a coverage gap — they make too much money to receive government subsidies to help defray the cost of health coverage, but too little to afford high premium or deductible costs on their own.

There is clearly more work to be done, but the bottom line is more adults and children in Pennsylvania have health insurance now than they did when Gov. Wolf took office. That’s a good thing.