Obamacare’s Upheaval of the Insurance Market

Some years ago, driving through an end of town where pawn shops and boarded up homes are common, I saw a small placard sign nailed on a telephone pole. “Buy Health Insurance,” it touted with premiums as low as $25 a month. I was tempted. 2013-11-16-images1.jpegHealth insurance, for me and for most Americans, is a necessary part of life, similar to home rent or mortgage, grocery bills and gasoline. Insurance is essential because a hospitalization for a few days costs $10,000 and medical bills for a major illness can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments. So it is no wonder that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare,alligator shear has created anxiety among many Americans.And, without doubt, the ACA has caused the health insurance market to go into upheaval, with a nonfunctional healthcare.gov website, with unexpected insurance cancellation notices, and now with a proposed “fix” by President Obama.

So let me try to put things in perspective.The ACA is really a “Health Insurance Reform Act” — its greatest impact is to increase the number of insured individuals, to guarantee essential benefits, and to regulate health insurance companies. Perhaps most importantly, it promises health insurance no matter what your preexisting conditions are.Today, 49 percent of Americans get their insurance from their employer and 28 percent are on government insurance such as Medicare or Medicaid. Combined,alligator shear this represents nearly 80 percent of the population and they are largely unaffected directly by ACA. Another 15 percent are uninsured and they are being required to buy insurance; many of them will be helped with subsidies.

Then there are 5 percent of Americans who have individual plans, and half of them are receiving letters from their insurance companies cancelling their policies.These individual health plans vary. Some are Cadillac plans and they likely are not being cancelled because they meet the new benefits requirements. But many are “junk” or skin analyzer substandard health insurance, and they are being axed. Often, you only realize you have a substandard plan when you get ill.I have patients who stop coming to the clinic after the few initial visits and then become so ill they have to be admitted to the hospital. When I ask them why they stopped taking their lifesaving medicine and making clinic visits, their response is simple: “My insurance ran out.”

This is my favorite article:The easy way to cleaner’s hose

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford loses radio show, calls mount for his exit

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on Friday lost the radio show he has used to ignite a conservative following and came under mounting pressure from family, colleagues and critics to resign or go on leave.Fellow city officials in Canada’s biggest municipality called on Ford to put the city’s interests first,alligator shear and some threatened to join in an appeal to the provincial government to take action to force him out of office if he doesn’t go voluntarily.Ford admitted Tuesday to having smoked crack cocaine “in one of my drunken stupors,” but only after denying it for six months. Reporters for the Toronto Star and the gossip website Gawker reported in May seeing a video on which the clearly identifiable mayor was puffing on a glass crack pipe.Though he apologized profusely after the admission, he declared that he had nothing more to hide. Then another video surfaced Thursday showing Ford ranting and wildly gesticulating as he threatened to kill someone.

The target of Ford’s profanity-laden rage wasn’t clear from the 77-second recording, nor were the circumstances that set him off.On Friday, Ford’s brother, City Councillor Doug Ford, told a Toronto radio station that the mayor needed to take a vacation and work on losing weight.”I’ve mentioned to Rob,alligator shear maybe go away for a week, a couple of weeks, and get your mind together,” Doug Ford said in an interview on Radio AM 640.The Ford brothers were informed Friday that their weekly Sunday talk show on Newstalk 1010 had been cancelled as of the last broadcast. The announcement sent under the station and the Fords’ names described the decision as “mutual” but appeared to come as an unwelcome surprise to the brothers, who have used their show as a beacon to their conservative suburban followers, the Torontoist website reported.

Ford’s mother, Diane, also said he needed to deal with his “huge weight problem,” watch the company he keeps and limit his drinking. But she was quoted by the Associated Press as denying her son needs substance abuse treatment.The mayor attributed his profane rant on the second video, thought to have been made in August, to having been “extremely, extremely inebriated.”Ford’s lawyer, Dennis Morris,skin analyzer told CBC News that rehab was an option the mayor was considering. The broadcast also quoted Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly as saying that Ford was prepared “to take some down time.”City Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong wrote in a Globe and Mail commentary that he planned to appeal to Ontario provincial authorities to consider ways of curbing the powers of a mayor who he said has become an obstacle to effective governance.

This is my favorite article:In New Book, Cheney Recalls 5 Heart Attacks and His Brush With Death

Powerful typhoon rips through Philippines

Marcy Olvina, a co-owner of Macro International Cargo, a travel agency that specializes in the Philippines, said that here, Hurricane Sandy “is like a big thing, because in New York we don’t have that. Because we Filipinos are used to it alligator shear, we’re calmer.” Others were resigned to helplessness. “Why worry?” said Neil D. Metal, 44, a caretaker for the elderly. “Pray instead.”At a table in Krystal’s Cafe, three young women seeking updates on the typhoon refreshed their smartphone browsers and watched videos on social media of ripped-off roofs whipping down city streets and people wading through floodwaters. Looking up from their phones, they vowed not to complain about how much homework they had.

At least three people have been killed and another seven injured as typhoon Haiyan – thought to be the strongest recorded storm ever to hit land – barrelled through the Philippines with winds up to 195mph (315km/h) and waves as high as 5 metres.The category 5 storm, which made landfall early yesterday in Eastern Samar province, has blown towards Boracay island after pummelling the central islands of Samar and Leyte where it toppled power lines, knocked out communications,alligator shear caused landslides and left streets flooded.Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated and thousands more have fled their homes as Haiyan has torn apart buildings and left whole provinces in the dark and without any telecommunications.

Experts are predicting “catastrophic damage” as a result of the super-typhoon. With gusts of up to 235mph, Haiyan – the Philippines’ 25th typhoon so far this year – is believed to be stronger than the world’s last strongest tropical cyclone, hurricane Camille, which was recorded in the US at 190mph in 1969.Initial reports indicate that two people were killed after being struck by power lines, another by lightning and possibly one more from a falling tree. The final toll is expected to climb much higher as many of the areas so far damaged are inaccessible to aid or communication,skin analyzer said Mathias Eick of the European Commission’s humanitarian aid department.”It could take a few hours for the authorities to get to villages and communities in the more rural and isolated areas, and there could be such damage that we fear heavy losses,” Mr Eick added.

This is my favorite article:Indian Chinese families ask Manmohan to end visa ‘discrimination’

Payrolls grow, exceeding forecasts after shutdown

Among those finding work was Blair Landen, 22, who was hired in October after her one-month internship at rehabilitation-product maker Saebo Inc.She had been looking for positions since the spring, before her graduation from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When applying and interviewing for jobs yielded little, she started networking,alligator shear creating a spreadsheet with about 70 contacts that eventually helped her find her current position.”It was a very frustrating process,” said Landen, who now lives in Charlotte. “When you talk to 10 people, you might have one person who has a lead on a company that’s hiring right now – maybe. It’s kind of like a never-ending cycle.”

Retailers boosting hiring ahead of the holiday shopping season include Amazon. The world’s largest online retailer is creating more than 70,000 full-time seasonal jobs and expects to convert “thousands” of those positions to permanent roles after the season ends as it did in 2012, the company said.United Parcel Service,alligator shear the world’s biggest package shipping company, is hiring 55,000 seasonal employees to handle an 8 percent increase in peak season daily volume. The employees will work as drivers, helpers, package sorters, loaders or unloaders to help with demand during the most compressed holiday season since 2002, UPS said.

Fed policymakers said last week they needed to see more evidence the economy will continue to improve before they trim $85 billion in monthly purchases of Treasury and mortgage debt. Fiscal policy “is restraining economic growth,” the Federal Open Market Committee said Oct. 30 at the end of a two-day meeting in Washington.Economists surveyed before that meeting said they didn’t see the Fed starting to reduce purchases until March. The next gathering of the market committee is in December.”We know that the Federal Reserve is interested in scaling back the quantitative easing program,” said Kevin Logan,skin analyzer chief U.S. economist at HSBC Securities. “The data we received Friday doesn’t compel them to do that, but it certainly doesn’t prevent them. The door is open for a decision to scale back the program in December.”

This is my favorite article:Around the U.S., and kitchen, with Cooking Channel\’s Eden Grinshpan

RBS to create new internal bad bank to house problem loans

The reading should be positive for market sentiment, though good news from the activity side might make investors worried about policy tightening… We believe the government,alligator shear including the People’s Bank of China, will tone done its pro-growth rhetoric and gradually taper its mini-stimulus started in July, but we don’t expect a significant tightening… The new leaders still need a stable economic and financial environment to consolidate their power base. – Ting Lu, Xiaojia Zhi and Robbie Li, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

It seems that the recovery is still mainly related to large and medium-sized enterprises, while small enterprises are still facing a challenging business environment. This in part explains the better performance of the official PMI over the Markit PMI… The benign economic conditions in the near term provide a favorable backdrop for structural reforms. It is well anticipated that the Third Plenary Session of the Coomunist Party Central Committee, which will be held from Nov. 9 to Nov. 12, will lay out economic policies of new leaders in the next five to ten years. The main theme of the meeting, if without surprise,alligator shear is to deepen economic reform and openness. – Haibin Zhu, J.P. Morgan

The PMI data is in line with our relatively benign growth outlook. With global demand momentum likely to gradually pick up as the economic upturn in the U.S. and Europe continues and, importantly, domestic demand momentum remaining solid, we expect GDP growth to exceed the government’s “bottom line” in the coming quarters, thus alleviating pressures to stimulate the economy. Specifically, we expect GDP growth of 7.7% year-over-year in the fourth quarter and 8.2% in the first half of 2014. – Louis Kuijs and Tiffany Qiu, RBS

We believe economic activity indicators in October will likely improve on September. Exports in particular may see a rebound as data released earlier today show Korea’s export growth improved to 7.3% in October,skin analyzer from 2.3% in September. Nonetheless, we maintain our view that the recovery is unsustainable, as monetary policy tightening will likely continue given the strong PMI, and with new orders falling.

This is my favorite article:Macaw, the Web design tool for programmers, hits Kickstarter