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The nuclear tragedy currently unfolding in Japan started decades ago on a piece of paper. Before any infrastructure project that size is approved, a risk assessment needs to be done. Hazards are identified and a cost/benefit analysis is made about how to approach those risks.
If constructing in a seismic zone that hasn’t seen an earthquake above a magnitude of M6.5 in 100 years, do you build to withstand a magnitude of 7? Or put in extra the millions upfront to protect against a magnitude of 8 that may never come? Or do you simply choose not to build a nuclear power station in an earthquake zone at all?
Every critical energy installation (and much of all infrastructure) is built on the basis of such risk

GOPers, gather ’round. For your consideration, a travesty of bureaucracy: Eighty-eight different agencies make a slew of complex and often conflicting rules that mire thousands of small and mid-sized American businesses in snarls of paperwork that run up man-hours, reduce their company output, profit and hamstring their ability to do business.
It’s exactly the kind of thing that Republicans say is wrong with the system. In this case, I have to agree with you.
These bureaucrats create an immense amount of uncertainty for the businesses under their jurisdiction. Their paperwork consumes nearly one-third (31%) of every dollar that they take

There will come a time when nature metes out such sustained and brutal punishment that even the most cynical deniers will have to acknowledge climate disruption is upon us. There’s no question that time will arrive. The only question is when.
I’ve written this before. I’m writing it again because the universal ah-ha moment seems to be approaching as fast as a Texas

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
With millions of Americans out of work, House Republicans are focusing in on real priorities: decimating private abortion coverage and crippling public funding for abortion, as Jessica Arons reports in RH Reality Check. In AlterNet, Amanda Marcotte notes that the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, or H.R. 3, also redefines rape as “forcible rape” in order to determine whether a patient is eligible for a Medicaid-funded abortion. Under the Hyde Amendment, government-funded insurance programs can only cover abortions in cases of rape and incest, or to save the life of the

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
This week, House Republicans will hold a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The bill is expected to pass the House, where the GOP holds a majority, but stall in the Democratic-controlled Senate. In the meantime, the symbolic vote is giving both Republicans and Democrats a pretext to publicly rehash their views on the legislation. At AlterNet, Faiz Shakir and colleagues point out that repealing health care reform would cost the federal government an additional $320 billion over the next decade, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head at a constituent outreach event in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson on Saturday. In all, the gunman shot 18 people, killing 6, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. Jamelle Bouie of TAPPED urges President Obama to take up the issue of mental health care in his upcoming speech on the mass

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head at a constituent outreach event in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson on Saturday. In all, the gunman shot 18 people, killing 6, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. Jamelle Bouie of TAPPED urges President Obama to take up the issue of mental health care in his upcoming speech on the mass

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
House Republicans will hold a symbolic vote to overturn health care reform on January 12. The bill, which would repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and set the nation’s health care laws back to the way they were last March, has no chance of becoming law. The GOP controls the House, but Democrats control the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Senate Democrats will block the bill. Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones reports that the 2-page House bill carries no price tag. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the ACA would save $143 billion dollars over the next decade. The GOP repeal bill contains no alternative plan. So, repealing the ACA would be tantamount to adding $143 billion to the deficit. So much for fiscal responsibility. Why are the Republicans rushing to vote on a doomed bill without even bothering to hold hearings, or formulate a counter-proposal for the Congressional Budget Office to score? Kevin Drum of Mother Jones hazards a guess: An opportunity? Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly argues that all this political theater around repealing the Affordable Care Act is an opportunity for Democrats to remind the public about all the popular aspects of the bill that the GOP is trying to strip away. Last weekend several key provisions of the ACA took effect, including help for middle income seniors who are running up against the prescription drug “donut hole.” Until last Saturday, their drugs were covered up to a relatively low threshold, then they were on their own until they spent enough on prescriptions for the catastrophic coverage to kick in again. Those seniors will be reluctant to give up their brand new 50% discount on drugs in the donut hole. Another crack at turning eggs into persons A Colorado ballot initiative to bestow full human rights on fertilized ova was resoundingly defeated for the second time in the last midterm elections. Attempts to reclassify fertilized ova as people are an attempt to ban abortion, stem cell research, and some forms of birth control. Patrick Caldwell of the American Independent reports that new egg-as-person campaigns are stirring in other states where activists hope to take advantage of new Republican majorities. Personhood USA, the group behind the failed Colorado ballot initiatives, claims that there is “action” (of some description) on personhood legislation in 30 states. Caldwell says Florida may be the next battleground. Personhood USA needs 676,000 signatures to get their proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. Right now, they have zero, but they promise a “big push” in 2011. Ronald McDonald = Joe the Camel In AlterNet, Kelle Louaillier calls for more regulation of fast food industry advertising to children. New research shows that children are being exposed to significantly more fast food ads than they were just a few years ago. Other studies demonstrate that children give higher marks to food products when they are paired with a cartoon character. Louaillier writes of her organization’s campaign to prevent fast food companies from using cartoons to market fast food to kids: 2011 trendspotting: Baby food The hot new snack trend for 2011 is mush, as Bonnie Azab Powell reports in Grist. In an attempt to burnish its portfolio of “healthier” snack options for kids Tropicana (a PepsiCo company) is introducing a new line of pureed fruit and vegetable slurries. The products, sold under the brand name Tropolis, feature ground up fruits and veggies, vitamin C, and fiber in a portable plastic pouch. These “drinkified snacks” or “snackified drinks” will be priced at $2.49 to $3.49 for a four-pack, making them more expensive than fresh fruit. This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Follow The Media Consortium on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/tmcmedia

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
A proposed program to cover counseling sessions for seniors on end-of-life care has risen from the ashes of health care reform and found a new life in Medicare regulations, Jason Hancock of the American Independent reports. In August, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin started a rumor via her Facebook page that the the Obama administration was backing “death panels” that would vote on whether the elderly and infirm had a right to live. In reality, the goal was to have Medicare reimburse doctors for teaching patients how to set up their own advance directives that reflect their wishes on end-of-life care. Patients can use their advance directives to stipulate their wishes for treatment in the event that they are too sick to make decisions for themselves. They can also use those directives to demand the most aggressive lifesaving interventions. Waste not, want not Though end-of-life counseling was ultimately gutted from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the legislation will eventually ensure health coverage for 32 million more Americans. However, Joanne Kenen in The American Prospect argues it will do comparatively less to curb the high costs of health care. The architects of the ACA had an opportunity to include serious cost-containment measures like a robust public health insurance option to compete with private insurers, but they declined to do so. Kenen argues that the government should more aggressively target waste within the health care delivery system, especially Medicare and Medicaid. Unchecked and rising health care costs through Medicare and Medicaid are a significantly greater driver of the deficit than Social Security or discretionary spending: The new end-of-life counseling program will help reduce waste in the system, not by pressuring people to forgo treatments they want, but by giving them the tools to refuse treatments they don’t want. Teen births down, but why? The teen birth rate has dropped again, according to the latest CDC statistics. Births to women under the age of 20 declined by 6% in 2009 compared to 2008. One hypothesis is that the reduction is an unexpected consequence of the recession, an argument we pointed to in last week’s edition of the Pulse. John Tomasic of the Colorado Independent is skeptical of the recession hypothesis. He writes: Some states with weak economies actually saw a rise in teen birth rates, Tomasic notes. However, this year’s sharp downturn in teen births parallels a drop in fertility for U.S. women of all ages, which seems best explained by economic uncertainty. It’s true that prospective teen moms are less likely to have jobs in the first place, and so a bad job market might be less likely to sway their decisions. However, young women who aren’t working are unlikely to have significant resources of their own to draw on, which means that they are heavily dependent upon others for support. If their families and partners are already struggling to make ends meet, then the prospect of another mouth to feed may seem even less appealing than usual. Abortion is the elephant in the room in this discussion. The CDC numbers only count live births. Logically, fewer live births must be the result of fewer conceptions and/or more terminations. Some skeptics doubt that economic factors have much to do with teens’ decisions about contraception. However, it seems plausible that decisions about abortion would be heavily influenced by the economic health of the whole extended family. Last year’s decrease was notably sharp, but teen birth rates have been declining steadily for the last 20 years. The Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based non-profit that specializes in research on reproductive choice and health, suggests that successive generations of teens are simply getting savvier about contraception. Births to mothers between the ages of 15 and 17 are down 48% from 1991 levels, and births to mothers ages 18 to 19 are down 30%. Stupid drug dealer tricks Martha Rosenberg of AlterNet describes 15 classic dirty tricks deployed by Big Pharma to push drugs. These include phony grassroots patient groups organized by the drug companies to lobby for approval of dubious remedies. Another favorite money-making strategy is to overcharge Medicare and Medicaid. Pharmaceutical companies have paid nearly $15 billion in wrongdoing settlements related to Medicare and Medicaid chicanery over the last five years. This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Follow The Media Consortium on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/tmcmedia

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

If you’ve turned on the tube these last few weeks, you’ve probably been a collateral casualty of the biggest televisual war of attrition in recent memory. No, I’m not talking about the scripted skirmishes between cable channels, nor am I referring to the Battle of Zombie Talking Points that ate most of our brains during the election. I’m talking about the now never-ending throwdown between two of the most in-your-face salespeople our mediascape has ever manufactured: Geico’s unnamed gecko and Progressive Insurance’s chipper saleswoman, Flo.
No doubt, you know them both — the green lizard’s smile and cockney accent feign earnestness while the aproned Flo goes for the same effect through the saccharine enthusiasm of an “Office Space” character. It’s mildly cute, but don’t be fooled: As the best-known avatars of the insurance industry, these two are aggressively competing for our cash through re-education-camp levels of repetition, hoping to harass us into buying their product.
Certainly, there’s nothing new about hard sells from TV charlatans. But these two represent something different, something apocalyptic — and I say that not merely because their maddening ubiquity has driven me to the brink of insanity. I say it because they are peddling the kind of commodity that offers little tangible worth, waging a fight that promises no valuable innovation, and representing a larger insurance and finance sector that’s hollowing out our economy.
To find out what I’m talking about, read my whole syndicated newspaper column here.

This Blogger’s Books from
Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now–Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything
by David Sirota
The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington
by David Sirota

Follow David Sirota on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/davidsirota

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

When I first divorced, I, like most people, was overwhelmed with financial crises. With two houses to support (my ex’s and mine), our expenses had doubled without any increase in income. And I only had a few years of alimony to figure all this out – while still juggling school, family dinner, soccer, test scores, skinned knees, taxes, investments and a new (I hoped) dating life. Acckk!
I knew that if my assets (home, retirement plan, savings, etc.) could start earning money for me, everything would become easier. You can read how I squeezed out of almost losing my home to a dream come true lifestyle in my book, You Vs. Wall Street, but the springboard was actually quite simple.
If you earn $100,000 a year and you put 10% of your take-home in a 401K, IRA and/or health savings account, and that money earns 10% annually (what stocks and bonds have done over the last 30 years, on average), then you’ll have $50,000 in your nest egg within four years, over $100,000 in seven years and by year 25, your money will earn as much as you do in your annual salary. That alone will make you a millionaire before you’re 50 (if you start at 25). Investing yields four times the money you make if you were just saving it. (25 years of $10,000 annual deposits with zero interest is $250,000.)
Now, you might say, “I don’t earn $100,000 a year!” But the ratios work the same, even if you earn minimum wage. If you deposit 10% and that earns 10% returns, then your nest egg will equal your salary in just seven years, and by year 25, your nest egg will earn as much as you do. By comparison, if you are just saving, you only earn a fraction of that – missing out on all of the gains that compound year after year. And if you’re not saving at all, you’re overspending and trapped in the vicious cycle of debt and debt consciousness.
Over the last decade, stocks have been pretty rough sailing–for buy and hold investors. However, investors that diversify properly and use annual or quarterly rebalancing, are earning more than 10% annually over that same period. (That simple system is outlined in You Vs. Wall Street, too.)
Another beautiful benefit of the tax-protected retirement plan (IRAs, 401Ks, Health Savings Accounts, etc.) is that your investment gains are yours to keep, and are not subject to capital gains taxes. These accounts are also the best strategy to keep your money safe from debt collectors, lawsuits and other financial predators because in the worst-case scenario (legal judgment, bankruptcy or debt collection) they cannot be confiscated by lien.
The most important first steps to take are to open the account, put 10% of your income on auto-deposit and to switch your thinking about money. Which is why I’m encouraging you to toss out the phrase “retirement plan” and select a sexier name for your personalized “Buy My Own Island Plan” or “Send My Kid to College Fund” or “Trip Around the World Dream.” Why? Because you’ll want to grow the gains of the fund that is working toward a goal, whereas, odds are, you’re filing the “retirement plan” statements directly in some drawer without looking at them, hoping they’ll surprise you one day –pleasantly. That is, if you have even bothered to sign up for the 401 (k), Individual Retirement Account or Health Savings Account in the first place.
From changing diapers to easy street, on the beach! Get started now, and before you know it, you’ll arrive.
For more information on easy-as-a-pie chart investing, read You Vs. Wall Street. To learn these nest egg strategies firsthand in a boardroom setting, come to a Get Rich and Enrich Retreat. Get more information on the home page at NataliePace.com.
About Natalie Pace:
Natalie Pace is the author of You Vs. Wall Street and host of the Pace and Prosperity radio show on BlogTalkRadio.com/NataliePace. She is a repeat guest on Fox News, CNBC, ABC-TV and a contributor to HuffingtonPost.com, Forbes.com, Sohu.com and BestEverYou.com. As a philanthropist, she has helped to raise more than two million for Los Angeles public schools and financial literacy. Follow her on http://www.facebook.com/pages/NWPace, and on YouTube.com/NataliePaceDOTCOM. For more information please visit, http://www.nataliepace.com.
Please note: Tax laws change each year, so be sure to get the assistance of a qualified tax specialist when setting up your retirement and health savings accounts.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Buying insurance is all about personal financial “risk management.” There are also ways you can reduce your daily risks that you may not have even considered. We asked Fred Kilbourne, actuary with The Kilbourne Company in San Diego, to help us assess the risks we encounter every day. Here are the surprising results.
What’s more dangerous: Your spouse or a serial killer?
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Roughly 15,000 people are murdered in the United States annually. Of these, about 100 are believed to be the victims of serial killers, although some experts believe this category is underestimated and may be as large as 1,000. Compare this, however, with the number of victims killed by their spouse or intimate partner: 80 percent of the total murder victims are male, and about 10 percent of these were dispatched by their wives. Females comprise only 20 percent of the victims – but about half of them are done in by their husbands. Arithmetic leads to an annual estimate of 2,700 people killed by their spouses, which is nearly triple the high-end estimate for serial killers.
There's no conclusive evidence that you're at greater than average risk if your spouse happens to be a serial killer. One of the most notorious serial killers in U.S. history, Dennis Rader (the “BTK killer,” above) who killed 10 women over a 20-year period, was a church and Cub Scout leader and father of two, and was married to the same woman for 33 years. She did, however, receive an expedited divorce upon his 2005 conviction for his crimes.
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The original article can be found at Insure.com:
What’s more dangerous? A surprising look at everyday risks

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
The Virginia federal judge who ruled against a key component of health care reform on Monday has ties to a Republican consulting firm. Judge Henry Hudson is a co-owner of Campaign Solutions, as Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reports. Hudson, a President George W. Bush appointee, has earned as much as $108,000 in royalties from Campaign Solutions since 2003. A cached version of the firm’s client roster lists such vocal opponents of health reform as Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), the Republican National Committee and the American Medical Association. In November, Collins and Snowe joined McConnell in signing an amicus brief to challenge the constitutionality of health care reform in a separate suit in Florida. Campaign finance records show that Campaign Solutions has also worked for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who is spearheading the lawsuit. Tiahrt added an amicus brief to Cuccinelli’s lawsuit. Today, the mandate. Tomorrow, the regulatory state? Hudson ruled that the individual mandate of health care reform is unconstitutional. The mandate stipulates that, after 2014, everyone who doesn’t already have health insurance will have to buy some or pay a small fine. The judge argues that this requirement exceeds the federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce. The Commerce Clause gives the federal government the power to regulate commerce between the states and international trade. Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones explains that this clause underpins the power of the federal government to regulate the economy in any way: Is it constitutional? Chris Hayes of The Nation interviews Prof. Gillian Metzger, a constitutional law scholar at Columbia University, about the merits of challenges to the constitutionality of health care reform. According to Metzger, “the argument that [the mandate] is outside the commerce power is also pretty specious given the existing precedent.” Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly accuses Judge Hudson of committing an “inexplicable error” in legal reasoning. There is a longstanding precedent that the federal government can regulate economic activity under the Commerce Clause. Hudson acknowledges this, but he maintains that this power doesn’t cover regulations of “economic inactivity” (i.e. not buying health insurance). As Benen notes, people who don’t buy insurance aren’t opting out of the market, they’re opting to let society absorb their future medical costs. Everyone who does buy insurance pays more because freeloaders coast without insurance and hope for the best. Luckily for the Obama administration, the judge did not bar the implementation of health reform while the case works its way through the courts. The Supreme Court will ultimately hear this case. In the meantime, the federal government can continue building the infrastructure that will eventually support health care reform. This is the third time a federal judge has ruled on the constitutionality of health care reforms and the first victory for the anti-reform contingent. Mandatory mandate Paul Waldman reminds TAPPED readers why the mandate is critical to any health care reform based on private insurance. With a single-payer system, you don’t need a mandate because everyone is automatically covered. A mandate only comes into play when you have to force people to buy insurance. Without a mandate, healthy risk-takers who don’t buy insurance will starve the system of premiums while they are well and bleed the system for benefits when they get sick. Meanwhile, people who already know they’re sick will sign up in droves, and the Affordable Care Act will force insurers to accept them. Without a mandate, the private health insurance industry would collapse and take health care reform down with it. Is expanding Medicare the answer? Matthew Rothschild of the Progressive argues that the legal headaches over the individual mandate illustrate why it would have been legally and procedurally easier to achieve universal health care by simply expanding Medicare to cover everyone. At Truthout, Thom Hartmann argues universal health insurance in the form of “Medicare Part E” would spur economic growth and innovation because entrepreneurs could start businesses without worrying about how to provide health insurance for their employees. Meanwhile, Brie Cadman reports at Change.Org, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) is trying to defund health care reform by cutting funds for preventive health care. Coburn is urging his fellow Republicans to vote against a House-passed measure that would allocate $750 million for the 2011 Prevention and Public Health Fund. Cadman notes the irony of a medical doctor like Coburn, who also claims to be a fiscal conservative, trying to scuttle funds to control preventable diseases which would otherwise cost society billions of dollars a year. This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Follow The Media Consortium on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/tmcmedia

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Dear Natalie,
I recently divorced and without the extra income of my spouse, I’m drowning in credit card debt. My credit card company just increased my interest rates to 28%. I’m struggling to make mortgage payments because the loan reset. The only good news is that I’m rich in retirement assets. Should I drain my IRA to pay off my credit card debt and get caught up on the mortgage, so I don’t lose my home?
Yours truly,
Rob IRA to Pay Paul…
Dear IRA,
Even without knowing all of your circumstances, it’s easy to see a few things. Your income and overhead are completely out of whack, and until that gets fixed, anything you do, including draining your IRA, will only be a temporary fix. Trying to duck tape your roof is a poor strategy when every day is a rainy day.
One of the most important considerations is that your retirement account is yours to keep no matter what, so draining your retirement account should always be the last resort. In the worst-case scenario, if you have to declare personal bankruptcy or give your home back, your IRA, 401K and other qualified retirement accounts are note included and may be the only assets you walk away with. If those accounts have enough money in them, it’s possible that you’ll be able to borrow from yourself to buy a new home, in a neighborhood that is more affordable for your current lifestyle. You won’t be able to get a decent loan from a bank if your home forecloses or if you declare bankruptcy, so those accounts could be your lifeline!
What you need now more than ever is to rethink your entire game plan, especially with regard to expenses and income. If you have children, keeping the family home may be what you most desire. But, you have to ask yourself, is it worth it now to be cash poor and losing more each day to stay in this home? What is the best way to cut down the costs of your big-ticket items (housing, car, insurance, etc.) without sacrificing what matters most to you? Consider all options, including refinancing, loan modifications, relocating to a more affordable neighborhood or city, having a relative move in temporarily to help out, tapping low-cost equity to pay off high-cost debt, etc. FYI: Be careful of short sales because they come with phantom taxable income and the write-off is being resold to debt collectors, who will hound you to repay them.
Can you purchase a health savings account, instead of paying so much in premiums to the insurance company? That’s one of the easiest ways to cut down on health care costs, while also increasing your assets.
If the problem is income, is it time to relocate to a place where the job prospects are better? Do you need to learn a new skill or trade? Is your small business paying you less than your employees? Did you fall for a get rich quick scheme?
Call your creditors now and commit to a payment plan for the next three months that is doable for you, while you figure out how to increase your income and decrease your expenses to a more healthy ratio – where bills are taking up 50% or less of what you make. Always put your agreement with the debt collection agency in writing, and include a letter documenting the agreement with each payment you make.
Debt obsession leads to more debt. Healthy savings habits lead to more assets. Place yourself first, not the debt collectors and not the banksters. The only way you will ever get out of debt is through careful strategy, wise investments and increased assets — not draining all of your assets to buy yourself a few months. Being religious about paying 10% of your income to your tax-protected (and debt collection protected) retirement account (IRA, 401K, etc.) even now increases your net worth, which allows you to pay down your debt more quickly, on better terms.
Act honorably and quickly to achieve a sustainable, thriving lifestyle and to resolve the situation with those whom you owe money to.
About Natalie Pace:
Natalie Pace is the author of You Vs. Wall Street and host of the Pace and Prosperity radio show on BlogTalkRadio.com/NataliePace. She is a repeat guest on Fox News, CNBC, ABC-TV and a contributor to HuffingtonPost.com, Forbes.com, Sohu.com and BestEverYou.com. As a philanthropist, she has helped to raise more than two million for Los Angeles public schools and financial literacy. Follow her on http://www.facebook.com/pages/NWPace, and on YouTube.com/NataliePaceDOTCOM. For more information please visit, http://www.nataliepace.com.
Please note: do your research and consult an experienced, reputable financial professional before buying or selling any security, and consider your long-term goals and strategies. Consult a tax specialist or IRS.gov to learn more about Health Savings Accounts, IRAs, individual 401Ks and more.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Many Illinois consumers might be surprised to learn that health insurance rates are regulated (or not) on the state level. This was the case before the federal health reform law was passed earlier this year and, by and large, remains the case. Federal rate regulation was included in some early drafts of the law, but not in the final version.
Over the next few years, Illinois consumers will benefit from many reforms enacted in the federal law that will bring to an end to some of the unfairness and excessive cost of the until-now unregulated Illinois insurance market. Illinois is the national leader in the number of rescissions — or retroactive cancellations of an insurance policy. Illinois companies can and do charge identically situated women more than men — as much as 57% more. Illinois law allows for individuals and families to be denied health insurance for any reason other than “race, color, religion or national origin.” Case in point: a widow was denied health insurance for herself and her three children because she attended grief counseling to help cope with her young husband’s death. Apparently grief is a pre-existing condition. All of these practices have changed or will change soon under the reform law.
The unchecked state health insurance market in Illinois will not change with respect to rates, however. Insurance companies have been able to increase health insurance premiums with little oversight, transparency, or public accountability because current Illinois law does not restrict health insurance rate increases. In contrast, residents of over half the states and the District of Columbia are protected, because their states have the statutory authority to reject a proposed increase that is excessive, lacks justification, or exceeds certain standards.
This lack of authority has contributed to unfettered and unjustified premium increases. Health insurance premiums have doubled on average over the last decade, much faster than wages and inflation, putting coverage out of reach for millions of consumers and business owners. Next year, Chicago workers can expect to pay 12.4 percent more in health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs for their health insurance, according to a recent study. And for Chicago employers, the average cost per worker will rise 8.7 percent, including employee contributions to premiums — the highest increase since 2006 and about the same as the national average of 8.8 percent. And if a small employer in Illinois has even just one injured or sick employee, the business can experience rate increases of greater than 50 percent when it’s time to renew.
Further, a recent report from the Illinois Department of Insurance revealed that Illinois families and individuals have experienced striking base rate increases in their health insurance coverage, often greater than 30 percent since at least January 2005. How can these unchecked rate increases be stopped? Rate approval authority, through the Department of Insurance, has the potential to improve the performance, transparency and accountability of the health insurance market for employers and families. Illinois families trying to obtain financial security and peace of mind in their purchase of health insurance are entitled to have reasonable and fair premiums.
While federal regulation of health insurance rates was not part of the national health reform law, that law does provide a strong foundation for Illinois to start passing necessary insurance reforms at the state level for the almost seven out of ten Illinoisans (69%) who have private insurance policies. The Affordable Care Act provided Illinois a one million dollar grant to help Illinois set up a system of review and public information about rate increases, requiring the companies at least to publicly reveal their justifications for rate increases. Beyond improving public information, however, national reform did not give Illinois the power to deny or reduce rate increases (like it does for public utilities); only Illinois can do that.
The Illinois Department of Insurance intends to pursue rate review authority, and consumers can and should help in this effort to put the brakes on unfair health insurance premium increases. Illinois consumers of health insurance, be they individuals and families buying their own coverage, employers buying coverage for their employees, or people covered through their work policies, need to start speaking up about the need for rate review authority in Illinois. They should tell their representatives in the Illinois House and Senate to pass strong rate review legislation now. And they also should speak out to the other interests involved here — their insurance brokers and the insurance companies, too. The message to all is the same: the time for rate review is now.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Please bookmark this post and come back to it in a year or so. I say this because our collective memory, and especially that of mainstream news organizations, can be pretty short sometimes.
In case you haven’t noticed, your liability insurance rates have been fairly stable for a few years now. I’m not talking about health insurance, which is guided by a whole different set of rules. I’m talking about the property/casualty sector, like auto insurance, medical malpractice insurance for doctors, D&O (directors and officers) insurance for businesses, really any kind of liability policy.
Perhaps you recall that in the early part of this decade, doctors were picketing state capitols about their medical malpractice insurance rate increases, some as high as 100 or 200 percent. You may have received letters in the mail explaining that your homeowners insurance was suddenly going up astronomically. If you’re any kind of small business, you probably noticed that you were being unfairly price-gouged. And then, the huge increases just stopped.
The insurance industry’s explanation for the severe rate hikes came down to just one: lawsuits. This was all the fault of lawyers, jury verdicts and everyday Americans who sue wrongdoers, and whose claims are paid by insurance companies. It was a most convenient excuse for the industry, since convincing people that the legal system was to blame led only to one solution: changing the legal system. This specifically meant cutting off people’s legal rights so that insurers could hang onto more of their money. Sadly, lots of states have succumbed to insurer pressure over the years. As a result, the legal rights of just about ever reader of this post have been weakened, and in some cases, eliminated.
What insurers didn’t say is that insurance pricing is cyclical and that over the last 30 years, rates have spiked up and then stabilized three times. In fact, to buy the industry’s explanation, one would have to accept the notion that juries engineered large jury awards in the mid-1970s (the first time rates skyrocketed), then stopped for a decade, then started again in the mid-1980s (the second time this happened), stopped for 17 years, and the started again in 2002. And then they just stopped again. Of course, such an explanation is ludicrous – and untrue. At no time did claims or payouts spike during any of these periods and it is certainly not happening now.
Here’s what’s really behind this up and down cycle, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with lawsuits.
When insurance rates are stable as they are now, this is called the “soft market.” When rates shoot up, this is called the “hard market.” (The fact that the insurance industry is exempt from anti-trust laws allows them to raise rates collectively.) During soft market periods, insurance companies engage in fierce competition for premium dollars to invest. Due to this intense competition, insurers may actually underprice their policies (with premiums growing below inflation) in order to get these premium dollars. That’s exactly what is happening now, but don’t just take our word for it. Insurance execs around the country are complaining about this. They hate these soft market periods, because the intense free market competition keeps them from raising everyone’s insurance premiums. Check out some recent industry quotes on this:
Here’s one:
(In other words, there is way too much competition in the insurance market and we need a huge disastrous hurricane to turn this all around so we can start raising rates again.)
Here’s another:
That’s bad as in “low insurance rates for businesses.” He continued,
Phelan, who said much of IWIF’s business is tied to construction, doesn’t expect things to improve much until next year. “By the second or third quarter of 2011, things should start to go in the right direction,” he said.
That’s “right direction,” as in “the direction that will help us start raising rates again.”
Here’s another from BestWire (unfortunately, subscription only):
The head of W.R. Berkley Corp. said he sees an end in sight to the current soft market that’s affecting most of the industry. “I’ve always said to people my expectation is that prices will start to go up in the fourth quarter,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer William R. Berkley said in an earnings conference call in which the company announced a slight drop in third-quarter net income to $94 million from $98 million. … “There will be modest price increases beginning in the fourth quarter. We’re starting to see positive signs.”
(In other words, even though we’re making a ton of money right now, we just can’t stand it when we can’t raise rates on our customers!)
Anybody talking about lawsuits here? How about the impact of so-called “tort reform” laws on insurance rates? The only things these industry insiders seem to be hoping for are major catastrophes. (Natural disaster? Terrorist attack?) That will give them the excuse they need to start increasing premiums again.
What a business.
Here’s what I hope. When insurance rates start going up at some point in the future, remember what insurance executives were saying in 2010. No matter where you live, the flattening of rates has nothing to do with whether lawmakers weakened your civil justice system or kept injured people from suing malpracticing doctors or anyone else, but rather to modulations in the insurance cycle everywhere. Just as liability insurance “crises” (i.e., sudden rate hikes) are driven by this cycle and not by any lawsuit “explosion” as insurance lobbyists and others claim, the “tort reform” remedy that they push is a failed solution. It will fail again.

This Blogger’s Books from
Goliath, Lloyd’s of London in the United States
by Joanne Doroshow
The case for the civil jury: Safeguarding a pillar of democracy
by Joanne Doroshow

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

On August 3, 2010, voters in Missouri voted overwhelmingly — 71% — in favor of a ballot measure that empowers the state to reject one of the fundamental measures of the health care reform legislation recently passed by Congress: the individual mandate that requires otherwise uninsured people to buy private health insurance, or pay a fine.
This vote was predictably touted by right-wingers as resounding evidence that the American people don’t want to pay for their neighbors’ health care costs, and they don’t want health care reform “crammed down their throats. From Jill Lepore of the New Yorker:
What the vote really means is that the good people of Missouri want health care, but don’t want to pay for it, and don’t want to take any responsibility for their own health risks. Those who voted for the measure are in fact demanding that their neighbors pay for their — the rejectionist voters’ — health care. Furthermore, Congress’ health care measure isn’t doing anything that anyone didn’t ask for, although it does illustrate the painful fact that if you ask for something, you should be prepared to pay for it.
Let’s go back to 2008 and early 2009. Back then, everyone was rightly scandalized that health insurance companies were refusing to insure people with pre-existing conditions, denying medically necessary care on technicalities, or kicking people off coverage once they became ill. There was overwhelming public support for preventing the insurance companies from doing these things. Barack Obama campaigned on — and was in part elected on — promises of near-universal health care coverage.
So Congress got to work on a measure that would forbid private companies from refusing to insure anyone with pre-existing conditions, or terminating policies when an expensive claim is filed. Doing, that is, just what the people had asked — demanded!
There was just one problem with this. Forbidding insurance companies to deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions encourages young and healthy people to game the system: to not purchase health insurance unless they get sick, knowing that they cannot be refused. To freeload on the risk pool, which messes with the actuarial basis of benefits and premia and drives up the costs of insurance for all those who know they are likely to have immediate medical needs.
There are several ways that health care reform could have dealt with this problem. The simplest, most cost-effective, and most obvious one — with a proven record of success in most of the world’s democracies, which have better health care stats at far lower per-capita cost than we do — would be a system of public, social insurance. Everyone pays a premium out of his or her taxes; everyone is covered. Once you factor in the covert costs of employer-provided healthcare (as reflected, beyond employee contributions, in lower take-home pay) or the overt costs of buying health care as a freelancer, such a system would be much cheaper than any private insurance we have now, for obvious reasons: when everyone’s in the risk pool, the costs even out, and administrative overhead is low. What’s more, wages and employment would rise as the health care burden on employers was eliminated, and as an unfair aspect of competition with European companies (which do not have to pay for their employees’ insurance plans, since there is social insurance) was removed.
Universal coverage would mean that people would go for recommended checkups, which is very cost-effective since prevention is much cheaper than cure. There would also be no uninsured people who have to report to the emergency room for routine care, one of the most expensive venues for treatment.
Social insurance does not mean government-run health care. It only means government paid health care. Under a system with taxes high enough for decent universal care, and co-pays high enough to discourage unnecessary consumption, individuals would still be absolutely free to choose their own doctors within a free-market system, and choose an agreed treatment plan. I’ve written about what such a model might look like here, although this is not the only way it might be implemented.
Unfortunately it’s very easy to manipulate American public opinion, especially when backed by several billion dollars in contributions from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. All some ambitious legislator or proudly know-nothing Republican activist has to do is to stand up and say, “But that’s socialism!” and support for an approach like this will wither. That’s why universal social insurance was never even on the table.
So what was Congress left to work with, in trying to do what the American people had asked – getting rid of bans on coverage for pre-existing conditions, getting everyone covered? If social insurance was out, Congress had no choice but to go with the individual mandate that so inflames the right.
It is arguably redistributionist, under a system of social insurance, to insist that everyone pay health insurance taxes. Yes, under such a system the young and healthy effectively subsidize the old and sick. This would be terribly unfair — if the young and healthy were going to stay that way forever. Since they’re not, it’s not unreasonable to insist that they contribute their good health and their money to the risk pool, much as young people pay into Social Security so that they can collect later on down the line (yeah, we need to reform Social Security too; that’s another issue.)
I would have preferred universal social insurance to the terribly inefficient and inherently corrupt system of rewarding private insurance companies that Congress came up with. But the individual mandate is not about redistributionism. It merely insists that individuals take responsibility for their own risks, that they not become a burden on the public. It is the opposite of redistributionism.
The Tea Party people who have rejected both social insurance and the individual mandate are refusing to take responsibility not only for their fellow citizens, but for themselves. It’s the most puerile and ignorant form of selfishness.
If you reject both these things, can you be absolutely sure that you won’t come down with a brain tumor and require a million-dollar operation? And don’t tell the rest of us that you’d purchase insurance on your own, so we’re required to stand by and just let the irresponsible among us die. We want to be a civilized society, even if you do not.
The Tea Party people will defend to the death — perhaps literally — their right to be bankrupt and ill in an entirely privatized system of health care. This is lunacy. More distressingly, it is freeloading on the hopes and aspirations of the majority of Americans who do want universal coverage, even if we do not agree on exactly how we get there.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

“Corporate interests are buying the elections? Oh no”, Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, told the New York Times this week. “It’s much worse than that. We don’t know who’s buying the election.”
Sure enough, but we do have an inkling. The first since the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case, which lifted a ban on direct corporate spending — the 2010 elections are being bought by the highest bidder.
Looking at just August and spending on TV ads, while spending by the candidates themselves has been pretty even, in Senate races, Republican-leaning interest groups have outspent Democratic-leaning ones ten to one, and in the House, by roughly three to one.
And then there’s off-screen corporate pressure like this: the big health insurance profiteers, the ones who fought and misfigured health care reform, are raising premiums–and blaming reform — just ahead of the election.
“I would have real deep concerns that the kinds of rate increases that you’re quoting… are justified,” Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House’s top health official, told the Wall Street Journal.
Higher premiums will produce higher profits, and all the more cash for campaigning. And it’s true, federal disclosure laws make it next to impossible to know for sure where money for election ads comes from.
But as Molly Ivins used to say, “You dance with them that brung you” — and as long as politicians are bought and paid for by anyone other than the public, it’s not going to be our tune they’re jumping to.
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Support us by signing up for our podcast, and follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com