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: WellPoint, which released lower fourth-quarter results on Wednesday, said that based on age, insurance plan selection, income levels, gender and available pharmacy data, it believes it has set the right premium rates for these new customers. Insurance plans under President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law went on sale October 1 and into effect on January 1. Initial enrollment data nationwide has shown that the first wave of people who enrolled are older people who can be more expensive to insure because they often have more health problems than young people. Shares in WellPoint rose about 3 percent, or $2.75, to $87.05 in morning trading after the comments. Competitor Aetna Inc shares rose 39 cents to $69.32 while UnitedHealth Group Inc gained 33 cents to $72.03. “There was a concern that a lot of the firms that were involved in the exchanges would be underpriced for the demographic that would find the exchanges appealing, at least over the first year,” Morningstar analyst Vishnu Lekraj said. “What they said was that they priced everything appropriately given the data they have currently, in terms of medical cost utilization,” Lekraj said. WellPoint, one of the biggest players on the exchanges, said that it was still not certain about how enrollment, which is open until March 31, would finally end up, contributing to uncertainty about its 2014 earnings. The company forecast earnings of above $8 per share in 2014, representing a likely drop from the $8.52 it earned in 2013 before special items. Analysts on average were expecting 2014 earnings to fall to $8.39 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Chief Financial Officer Wayne DeVeydt said the 2014 outlook reflects about a $100 million negative effect of changes in government policy regarding the rollout of Obamacare. Late last year as political pressure mounted around technology problems on the exchanges and the higher premium rates on new plans, the Obama administration said that older individual plans could be renewed and it increased the number of people eligible for catastrophic coverage. DeVeydt said ACA insurer fees, which are not tax deductible for insurers, would cost earnings $1.10 per share and that it would spend about $30 million on first-year exchange costs. FOURTH-QUARTER PROFIT FALLS  WellPoint said fourth quarter profit fell as consumers increased their use of medical services ahead of the cancellation of some insurance plans at the end of 2013. The company also took a charge for the recently announced sale of its contact lens business, 1-800 Contacts, to private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, which caused a sharp decline in net profit. WellPoint, which sells Empire and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, also said its costs went up as it prepared for the rollout of Obamacare, and an expected increase of 1 million new members this year. So far, about 3 million people have enrolled in exchange plans, according to the government. The Congressional Budget Office had forecast that about 7 million people would sign up for 2014 coverage. Sign-ups are lagging targets because of technology problems in the first two months after the launch of the national website HealthCare.gov that sells insurance plans in 36 states. The other 14 states run their own sites. WellPoint said it had received 500,000 applications for new individual health plans that went into effect January 1, most of them for exchange-based plans but some for plans it sells off the exchange. Income-based subsidies from the government are only available for exchange plans. It said most of these customers were new to WellPoint. WellPoint said net profit for the fourth quarter fell to $148.2 million, or 49 cents per share, from $464 million, or $1.51 per share a year earlier. Excluding costs for the sale of 1-800 Contacts and investment gains, earnings fell to 87 cents per share from $1.03 per share, which also included investment gains and acquisition costs. The quarterly earnings were in line with analyst expectations, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company spent 87.8 percent of its premiums brought in on medical claims, up from 87.3 percent a year ago. It said that as old individual plans were being canceled ahead of the introduction of the new 2014 insurance, customers used more medical services. Spending on medical procedures, doctor visits and hospitalizations has been at a historical low for the past several years. This has helped insurers keep these medical cost ratios down while still complying with the Affordable Care Act, which requires them to spend at least 80 percent of plan premiums on care or refund customers the difference. WellPoint said it added 145,000 members during the quarter as it picked up small business customers and new enrollees in the California Medicaid program for the poor. It had 35.7 million members at the end of 2013. Claim: WellPoint says health exchange applicants hit expectations.

SOLUTION: U.S. health insurer WellPoint Inc said on Wednesday the applicants for the new Obamacare health plans are of the age and demographics it had expected, indicating that medical costs will not soar beyond the prices it charges.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: A small Swiss study released on Monday showed that walking up and down stairs for three months, without recourse to the lift, increased levels of fitness dramatically. In fact, the improvement in aerobic capacity was equivalent to a 15 percent fall in the risk of dying prematurely from any cause. Subjects also saw marked reduction in waist size, body fat, blood pressure and cholesterol — all of which are known risk factors for heart disease. Philippe Meyer of the University Hospital in Geneva studied 69 employees of the university with a sedentary lifestyle, defined as less than two hours of exercise a week and fewer than 10 flights of stairs climbed a day. After not using elevators for 12 weeks, they increased their use of stairs to an average of 23 stories ascended or descended a day from five before, with a resulting sharp increase in fitness levels. “This suggests that stair climbing at work may have major public health implications,” Meyer told the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology. “However, the results of the pilot study need to be confirmed in a larger randomized controlled trial.” Claim: Take the stairs for a healthy heart.

SOLUTION: Using the stairs at work instead of taking elevators could be a life saver.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: Not applicable. The cost of fiber in the diet is not in question. We’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt, although suggest a minor change in the future. The story only used relative risk reduction figures. It could have included just a line to explain why it may not be statistically appropriate to pool absolute risk reductions in such a meta-analysis. While there are hypothetically potential harms of too much fiber in the diet, this story in this context didn’t need to drill down on them. Strength of the piece. It repeatedly stressed: Perfect, easy to understand explanation of possible confounders. There is no disease-mongering of breast cancer in the story. In fact, it includes an important little line of context: “About one in eight American women get breast cancer at some point, with less than a quarter of them dying from it.” Two expert independent perspectives were included. The story did touch on other risk factors:  “alcohol drinking, weight, hormone replacement therapy and family history” The story explains that fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains are all high in fiber. The story wrapped the new analysis into the context of prior work: “While earlier research has yielded mixed conclusions on the link between cancer and fiber, it would make scientific sense: According to the Chinese researchers, people who eat high-fiber diets have lower levels of estrogen, which is a risk factor for breast tumors. So to get more clarity, the researchers combined 10 earlier studies that looked at women’s diets and followed them over seven to 18 years to see who developed cancer.”  The story clearly did not rely on a news release. Claim: Women who eat lots of fiber have less breast cancer

SOLUTION:
It’s not often you see a story that so simply explains possible confounders in research. This story hammered the point:  the findings don’t prove that fiber itself lowers cancer risk the results can identify associations but can’t tell what will happen if people change behavior it’s impossible to rule out that big fiber eaters had healthier habits overall that would cut their risk.