Archive | May, 2012

Stupak Declines Boehner’s Request To Join Health Reform Summit As Abortion Issues Draw Attention

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) on Wednesday said he would not attend Thursday’s bipartisan health care summit, despite House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) request to the White House that the antiabortion-rights lawmaker be included in the meeting, Roll Call reports (Dennis/Kucinich, Roll Call, 2/24)…

Two-Thirds Of State, Local Government Workers Get Health Insurance From Their Employers

About 66 percent of the nearly 20 million state and local government employees were enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans in 2008, compared with 54 percent of private-sector workers, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality…

Unmarried Older Women Twice As Likely To Lack Health Insurance, Study Shows

Older women who are divorced, separated or widowed or who have never married have twice the uninsured rate of their married peers, according to a new policy brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research…

New Business Horizons Special Issue On US Health Care

A recent Special Issue of Business Horizons (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor), the journal of the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, and published by Elsevier, addresses issues central to healthcare and life sciences. Healthcare reform, for example, has been at the center of U.S…

Republicans prove they aren’t putting America’s health first: At summit

(Health Insurance News) — The most important thing Republicans think is that if there are Americans who can’t afford the health insurance policies that private insurers are willing to offer, then that’s their problem — there’s nothing the government or the rest of us should do about it. …

Let free enterprise take over health care

The challenge with health care is that the fix doesn’t lend itself to a political solution. Medicare is a good example. Most people think it is a good program now, but when the baby boomers begin entering the system next year, Medicare goes broke. Long-term success depends upon protecting Medicare …

House votes to strip health insurance companies of antitrust exemption

The House voted Wednesday to strip health insurance companies of their exemption from federal antitrust laws, a Democratic measure that could resonate with public concerns about insurers but that has an uncertain future in the Senate.
The provision passed on a 406 to 19 vote, with most Republicans joining all …

Agents Provide Little Client Joy, Customer Survey Finds

A survey of U.S. consumers’ experience with a variety of professions finds they rate their interactions with independent insurance agents as less than enjoyable.
Forrester Research Inc. last week released the results of its “Customer Experience Index 2010: Insurance Providers” for a number of different industries throughout the United States.
In the …

Energy firms’ top concern is insurer stability

Energy companies value financial stability and capacity more than price when evaluating insurers, according to Aon Corp. research released Wednesday.
Energy companies rate financial stability as the top need they seek from insurers, followed by additional capacity, Chicago-based Aon said in the 2010 Energy Industry Report.
Value for money, which is the …

Federal Reserve comes in from Senate deep freeze

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve, once in danger of being stripped of its bank supervision powers by the Senate, is getting a second look from key lawmakers amid a new flurry of bipartisan negotiations over a massive overhaul of the rules that govern Wall Street.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, …