A licensed agent for life and health insurance. I have also worked behind the scenes in the claims department of a major health insurer. My sympathies are with the consumer, and I do all I can to empower insurance consumers with information and strategies.
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Articles Posted: 164; Links Seeded: 1112 Member Since: 5/2007
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Health savings accounts (HSAs) will likely prove even more popular than ever due to a sweetening of favorable tax treatments and more funding options. Readers may want to check with their financial advisor about the new IRS guidelines that allow a transfer of individual retirement account (IRA) funds to an HSA; this transfer is tax-free. Second, employees are no longer subject to the 10 percent additional tax if they use their IRA funds to pay for medical benefits -- referring to IRC Sec. 72... Read Full Story
The writer of the HealthBeat blog, Maggie Mahar, writes a very good and sometime provocative journal on healthcare in America. However, while I do see the merits of her recent column on pricing of healthcare services, questions have to be asked regarding how changing the pricing schedule would affect insurers’ behavior. I can well imagine insurers’ reluctance to fund open-ended smoking cessation treatment even tho it may ultimately cost them less than treating the complications of smoking... Read Full Story
Obama said he "worked with John McCain" on ethics legislation, when in fact their short-lived collaboration collapsed into bitter public wrangling long before any bill resulted. And the legislation that became law was backed by Democrats and only opposed by Republicans in the Senate, including McCain. Obama backed out of the effort, saying to McCain in a letter dated Feb. 2, 2006, that he and other Senate Democrats had decided against McCain's idea of a "task force" on ethics, preferring to... Read Full Story
For help, Medicare turned to William C. Hsiao, an economist at Harvard’s School of Public Health who had devised a system for calculating the “relative value” of various medical services. Hsiao had decided that, to be fair, the value of a doctor’s labor should be based, not just how much time the procedure cost the doctor but also on the mental effort and judgment involved, the technical skill and physical effort required, and the stress entailed. To calibrate the precise amount of mental... Read Full Story
The FDA today said it plans to strengthen warnings about life-threatening pancreas problems linked to the type 2 diabetes drug Byetta after getting two reports of deaths and four other hospitalizations in Byetta users. Those patients had hemorrhagic pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas with bleeding) or necrotizing pancreatitis (in which the inflamed pancreas destroys itself). Read Full Story
Microloans were invented to help the poorest of the poor help themselves. Now major banks and pension funds are getting into the business, as they discover that the interest paid by the poor can produce high returns. Is it aid or exploitation? Read Full Story
The brown and white beagle peers intently at her owner, watching as he swigs V-8 juice and dials his car radio to 1640 AM. On an ordinary Sunday morning in Marietta, Ga., Barry Hopkins would be getting ready for church. Today, dressed in shorts and an Atlanta Braves T-shirt, he’s already there – in his car. Read Full Story
One of the two suspects, named as Michael S., 52, had taken over the victim's undertaking business but had not been able to pay the six-digit price. That, police believe, was the source of the dispute.
A former employee of the victim told local newspaper TZ: "When I last saw him in April 2007 he told me he regretted the sale. He wanted to cancel everything. Then he suddenly disappeared." Read Full Story
Robbers of old hit up banks because, obviously, that's where the money was. Today's cyberthieves are no different, so financial institutions' Web sites have high security requirements.
Yet three engineers at the University of Michigan found plenty of flaws in banks' online security. One alarming result of their study concerns how banks present log-in pages to users.
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