TASK DEFINITION: Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: In May 2020, as demonstrators in various parts of the U.S. continued to advocate for the lessening of social-distancing measures and forced business closures enacted to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, social media users circulated the following photograph, said to have been taken at an “end the lockdown” protest:  Many viewers found the protester’s sign equating the mandatory wearing of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as face masks to muzzles worn by dogs or slaves to be insulting, and they questioned whether this image was authentic or whether the wording of the sign had been digitally altered. Claim: "A photograph shows a protester against pandemic stay-at-home orders holding a sign declaring that ""muzzles are for dogs and slaves."

SOLUTION: But the photograph is indeed real, and was taken at a protest on May 15, 2020, against California’s stay-at-home order staged at the Humboldt County courthouse in Eureka, California. Kym Kemp’s Redheaded Blackbelt blog features the original photograph, along with a snapshot of another demonstrator holding the same sign.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: That’s among the findings of the America’s Health Rankings Senior Report released in May by the United Health Foundation. The report ranks the 50 states by assessing data covering individual behavior, the environment and communities where seniors live, local health policy and clinical care. Minnesota took top honors for the second year in a row, ranking high for everything from the rate of annual dental visits, volunteerism, high percentage of quality nursing-home beds and low percentage of food insecurity. This year’s runners-up are Hawaii, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. The researchers base their rankings on 34 measures of health. But here’s one you won’t find in the report: state compliance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). While the health reform law isn’t mainly about seniors, it has one important feature that can boost the health of lower-income older people: the expansion of Medicaid. The ACA aims to expand health insurance coverage for low-income Americans through broadened Medicaid eligibility, with the federal government picking up 100 percent of the tab for the first three years (2014-2016) and no less than 90 percent after that. But when the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the ACA’s legality in 2012, it made the Medicaid expansion optional, and 21 states have rejected the expansion for ideological or fiscal reasons. And guess what: Most of the states with the worst senior health report cards also rejected the Medicaid expansion. Nearly all Americans over age 65 are covered by Medicare. But the Medicaid expansion also is a key lever for improving senior health because it extends coverage to older people who haven’t yet become eligible for Medicare. That means otherwise uninsured low-income seniors are able to get medical care in the years leading up to age 65 - and they are healthier when they arrive at Medicare’s doorstep. Two studies from non-partisan reports verify this. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported late last year that seniors who had continuous health insurance coverage in the six years before enrolling in Medicare used fewer and less costly medical services during their first six years in the program; in their first year of Medicare enrollment, they had 35 percent lower average total spending. The GAO study confirmed the findings of a 2009 study report by two researchers at the Harvard Medical School. That study looked at individuals who were continuously or intermittently uninsured between age 51 and 64; these patients cost Medicare an additional $1,000 per person due mainly to complications from cardiovascular disease, diabetes and delayed surgeries for arthritis. Fifty-two percent of Medicaid-rejecting states ranked in the study’s bottom third for senior health, including two very large states, Texas and Florida. Many of these states also can be found in a list of states with the highest rates of poverty among people over 65. What emerges is a north-south divide on senior health. “Many states that haven’t expanded Medicaid are in the South, and there’s a clear link between socioeconomic status and health status,” says Tricia Neuman, senior vice-president at the Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation and director of the foundation’s Medicare policy program. “Insurance may not be the only answer, but it certainly is helpful.”  The United Health Foundation - a non-profit funded by the insurer UnitedHealth Group - didn’t consider insurance coverage in its study, but it did consider poverty. Minnesota’s rate was 5.4 percent - well below the 9.3 percent national rate. Mississippi ranked dead last, with a 13.5 percent poverty rate. In states that rejected the Medicaid expansion, we are witnessing a victory of politics over compassion and morality. Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a key architect of health reform in Massachusetts and under the ACA, summed it up in an interview with HealthInsurance.org earlier this year, saying that these states “are willing to sacrifice billions of dollars of injections into their economy in order to punish poor people. It really is just almost awesome in its evilness.” Claim: The state of senior health: It depends on your state.

SOLUTION: What are the best and worst places to stay healthy as you age? For answers, take out a map and follow the Mississippi River from north to south. The healthiest people over 65 are in Minnesota, the sickest in Mississippi.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: At issue before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was a September 2018 ruling by a federal judge who threw out National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s rules for fish farms in the Gulf of Mexico, saying Congress never gave the agency authority to make them. An attorney for groups representing commercial and recreational fishing interests, food safety advocates and conservationists urged the three-judge appellate panel to uphold the 2018 ruling. Those groups cite numerous worries about the effect of fish farming on market prices for wild-caught fish and the effects on fishing communities, the environmental consequences of the use of antibiotics to control disease, the unpredictable genetic effects on wild, native fish stocks if farmed fish escape from farm pens and other concerns. NOAA maintains that fish farming, including that on the open sea, is vital to future seafood production and can help provide year-round jobs while rebuilding protected species and habitats. A three-judge appellate panel closely questioned NOAA attorney Frederick Turner on whether current fisheries law enables the agency to develop regulations — and about past failures by Congress to pass legislation addressing the issue. “Why would we step in and say you get what Congress hasn’t given you?” Judge Stephen Higginson asked Turner at one point. Turner argued that the existing law is broad and gives NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service the authority to permit and regulate fish farming, not just the taking of wild-caught fish. The appellate panel is expected to rule later this year. Attorney George Kimbrell, speaking for a variety of groups who say Congress must act first, said after the hearing that NOAA may indeed be the right agency to permit and regulate federal water aquaculture, but not until Congress addresses the issue and passes a law. “Don’t shoehorn it into a law that was never intended for that purpose and whose metrics just don’t match,” Kimbrell said. Claim: Future of fish farming in federal waters at issue in court.

SOLUTION:
The potential environmental and economic consequences posed by proposals for fish farming in federal waters dictate that Congress — not a federal agency — must decide how to regulate the industry, an attorney told a federal appeals court Monday.

