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: With global warming widely expected to slash snowfall, especially at lower levels, the Swiss tourism industry is looking for ways to preserve a lucrative business brutally exposed to the weather. Enter Napa, Serbia’s last circus bear. The Arosa ski resort in eastern Switzerland has created a $6.5 million refuge hosting Napa and two other bears rescued from cages at restaurants in Albania to help draw summer visitors and reduce its reliance on skiers and snowboarders. School classes, families and a group of army veterans celebrating an 80th birthday were visiting one recent summer day, helping the park toward what Arosa tourism director Pascal Jenny said was a target of 50,000 visitors this year. Arosa has reinvented itself before - moving to winter tourism in the 1930s after decades as a health resort for tuberculosis patients. But with nearly 620,000 overnight stays in winter last year, more than three times the summer total — it will not be easy. Jenny, who fears a sharp decline in snowfall over the next 20 or 30 years, is hedging his bets. “What gives us some hope is that artificial snow is making strong technical advances. I can make snow now at 5 degrees above freezing,” he said, standing on an observation platform beside the Weisshorn cable car which gives a sweeping view of the snow-capped Alpine valley. His two-pronged approach highlights the dilemma faced by mountain resorts — how to retain profits as they embark on what the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) says needs to be a global rethink of tourism. “The consequences of climate change will be felt across the travel and tourism sector over the coming decades,” the OECD, whose member countries represent 80% of the world’s trade and investment, said in a 2018 study of megatrends in tourism. Storms, flooding and tidal surges will threaten coastal regions, southern destinations face extreme heatwaves and northern ones will see shorter periods of snowfall, it said. Mountain resorts tend to be higher in Switzerland than in Austria or France, giving them better chances as snow becomes scarcer. But even at 3,000 meters, pistes could see snow depths more than halved by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed, a report in The Cryosphere, a peer-reviewed geosciences journal named after the frozen water parts of the Earth, said. Resorts below 1,200 meters - as about a quarter of Alpine ones are - might get almost no snow, said the 2017 report, whose title starts “How much can we save?”. Snow levels will gradually stabilize if global temperature rises are contained, it says. Arosa is 1,775 meters up but Jenny worries that a loss of snow in the lowlands will cost it visitors because people will lose their emotional connection with snow. “That is almost more dangerous for the sector,” he said. Hence his interest in an industrial estate in Denmark, where Arosa is cooperating on a project to make artificial snow so that urban dwellers can learn to ski and then, he hopes, go on to hone their skills in the Alps. The economics are clear: a daily lift pass for skiers in Arosa costs 79 Swiss francs ($80.27), while a summer hiker or mountain biker typically pays 18 francs for a pass that lets them use a rope park, a swimming area and paddle boats on the town’s lake. Hotels and restaurants charge more in winter too, but the strong Swiss franc has priced many people out. Switzerland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and the Swiss government says the long-term outlook for tourism is healthy. “Mountain summers can position themselves as an alternative to the Mediterranean regions,” a 2017 report said. Summer tourism already accounts for 60% of overnight stays across Switzerland, but the season brings in only 18% of revenue, said Therese Lehmann, an economist at the University of Bern’s Centre for Regional Development. Government data already shows a 24% drop in skiers in the decade to 2016, with other factors as well as climate change. “The decline of ski tourism — a powerful economic engine — will have more of an impact than the additional revenue in summer,” said Dominik Siegrist, director of the Institute for Landscape and Open Space at Switzerland’s University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil. Europe’s population is aging and younger people are less interested in skiing. Snowshoeing, winter hiking, sledding and ski touring — in which people hike up mountains, are on the increase, industry lobby Swiss Tourism says. Consolidation of winter tourism is on the horizon, with overnight stays in bigger Swiss resorts up 1 percent in the decade to 2015, but down 17 percent in smaller ones. “Lots of smaller ones are grasping at straws, trying to survive as long as they can because the valleys depend on this tourism,” Siegrist said. Large resorts in the Swiss cantons of the Grisons and Valais, Austria’s Tyrol province and France’s Savoie region have the marketing pull to survive, Siegrist said, listing high- altitude Andermatt, Zermatt and St Moritz in Switzerland. The Andermatt Swiss Alps resort, in central Switzerland, is targeting cyclists in summer, and has also built new lifts to lure winter sports fans. It covers a nearby glacier with strips of artificial fleece in spring to help reduce melting and creates piles of snow higher than houses to deploy on ski pistes as early as November to avoid having to use expensive artificial snow. The strong Swiss franc has hit ski lifts focused on winter business from European visitors hard in the past 10 years, the government says, but the minority of lifts with strong summer business are booming thanks to visitors from overseas. Many smaller lift firms get cheap loans and, increasingly, state subsidies to help balance the books, said Lehmann. Roughly a third are debt-free, but depend on long-haul tourism, which she said was not ideal from an environmental point of view, because flights are a major contributor to holiday carbon emissions. “Maybe we have to get away from focusing solely on growth, and promote Alpine areas as good habitats for living, not just for tourism,” she said. Listed cable car companies Bergbahnen Engelberg Truebsee Titlis Bet AG (TIBN.S) and Jungfraubahn Holding AG (JFN.S), cite year-round visitors from Asia - especially China and India - as important sources of income. Asked about sustainability, Titlis marketing director Peter Reinle said the firm’s prospects were good for the next 50 years. “We as a single entity can not solve the whole climate problem. Politicians have to provide framework conditions.”  Jungfraubahn’s Corporate Secretary Christoph Schlaeppi said it employed 800 local people, helping to make life in the mountains economically sustainable for a new generation. The government says it is up to individual resorts to decide how much they want to attract Asian groups, but focuses its own promotion efforts on individual travelers and sustainability, noting Japanese tourists now come independently and stay longer. “We have to see that guests from Asia making the long flight to Europe or Switzerland stay as long as possible,” Richard Kaempf, head of tourism policy at the State Secretariat of Economic Affairs, told Reuters. While the government encourages year-round use of mountain infrastructure, he said it is not giving up on winter sports, a deep cultural touchstone for the Swiss. But he acknowledged the growing challenge of lowlanders losing the “winter feeling”. Claim: High and dry: Alpine resorts grapple with climate change.

SOLUTION: The prospect of searing heatwaves driving holidaymakers to cool mountains and children asking grandparents about their memories of snow is focusing minds in Alpine ski resorts on the implications of climate change.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: The biosimilar, Ontruzant, is sold by Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp, a unit of Merck & Co Inc, and is developed by Samsung Bioepis Co Ltd, which is a joint venture between Samsung BioLogics and Biogen Inc. The approval here comes just a few weeks after the health regulator gave Celltrion Inc's Herzuma - another biosimilar to Herceptin - its nod to market it commercially. Herceptin, which generated sales of 7.01 billion Swiss francs in 2017, is one of the world’s most successful antibody drugs and has been a mainstay of Roche profits for many years. Herceptin and other complex medicines called biologics are made from living cells, making them difficult to copy with precision. Their similar versions are called biosimilars, instead of generics. The FDA had declined to approve Pfizer’s biosimilar of Herceptin in April. (This story corrects paragraph 2 to say Ontruzant is “sold” by Merck Sharp & Dohme and Corp not “co-developed”. Also removes reference to Merck from headline) Claim: Samsung Bioepis biosimilar to Roche's Herceptin wins FDA nod.

SOLUTION:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday it had approved a biosimilar to Roche Holding AG’s blockbuster breast cancer treatment, Herceptin.