WASHINGTON (AP) — Peggy Young only has to look at her younger daughter to be reminded how long she has fought United Parcel Service over its treatment of pregnant employees, and why.

Young was pregnant with Triniti, who's now 7 years old, when UPS told Young that she could not have a temporary assignment to avoid lifting heavy packages, as her doctor had ordered.

"They told me basically to go home and come back when I was no longer pregnant," Young said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I couldn't believe it."

She sued the Atlanta-based package-delivery company for discriminating against pregnant women. She lost two rounds in lower courts, but the Supreme Court will hear her case Wednesday.

The 42-year-old Young, who lives in Lorton, Virginia, said her persistence is not only for herself. "I am fighting for my two daughters and I'm fighting for women who want to start a family and provide for the family at the same time," she said.

UPS spokeswoman Kara Gerhardt Ross said the law is on the company's side. "UPS did not intentionally discriminate," Ross said.

The outcome could have wide-ranging effects.

Three-quarters of women entering the workforce today will become pregnant at least once while employed, and many will work throughout their pregnancies, employment discrimination expert Katherine Kimpel wrote in a court brief. Some will experience complications or physical effects that cause them to ask their employers for a change of duties or other modifications, Kimpel said.

Young's case hinges on the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, a law that Congress passed in 1978 specifically to include discrimination against pregnant women as a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Congress acted after the Supreme Court, then composed entirely of men, said workplace rules that excluded pregnant workers from disability benefits and insurance coverage did not amount to sex discrimination under the landmark civil rights law.

The question in Young's case is whether UPS violated the law through its policy of providing temporary light-duty work only to employees who had on-the-job injuries, were disabled under federal law or lost their federal driver certification. "If you were painting your house and fell off a ladder, or if you had a ski accident, that wouldn't qualify for restricted light duty. That's where pregnancy fell at that time. It was not covered in any state law except California's," Ross said.

UPS also notes in its court filings that the Postal Service, an independent agency that receives no tax dollars but is subject to congressional control, maintains an identical policy when it comes to pregnant workers. The Postal Service declined comment.

The Obama administration and 120 congressional Democrats are supporting Young. The reason for the work limitation is less important than the company's decision to distinguish between pregnant and nonpregnant workers with similar restrictions on the work they can do, Young and the administration told the court.

An unusual array of liberal, conservative, labor and women's interest groups also has lined up behind Young. The pregnancy discrimination law "protects the unborn child as well as the working mother who faces economic and other difficulties in bearing and raising the child," lawyer Carrie Severino wrote on behalf of anti-abortion organizations.

UPS employed Young as a part-time driver whose main job was to deliver overnight letters by 8:30 a.m. UPS requires people in those jobs to be able to lift packages as heavy as 70 pounds. Young said she rarely handled anything over 20 pounds and dealt almost exclusively with letters that sat on the passenger seat of her van.

In 2006, Young, then in her mid-30s, took a leave of absence to undergo in vitro fertilization in her desire to have a third child. On the third try, she became pregnant.

Young wanted to return to work, and her doctor and a midwife wrote notes saying she should not lift packages heavier than 20 pounds.

But UPS told Young she could not continue in her job and did not qualify for a temporary assignment.

Unable to work, Young also lost her medical and pension benefits, although she was covered under husband's health insurance. "The benefits were good and benefits were hard to find with part-time jobs," she said.

Young eventually returned to UPS, but left in 2009, a year after she sued. She argued that because UPS made accommodations for nonpregnant employees with work restrictions, it should have done the same for her.

But lower courts dismissed the suit, agreeing that Young did not prove UPS discriminated against her because of her pregnancy.

The justices agreed in July to review the case. Since then, there have been two notable developments.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission updated guidance to employers to make clear that they should accommodate people in Young's situation.

UPS itself has changed its policy so that pregnant employees will be eligible for light-duty work. "UPS believed it was appropriate to update its workplace policies so that we can attract and retain the best workforce we can," Ross said.

The change does not affect Young, now a contractor for the federal Customs and Border Protection agency.

Looking back, Young said the situation was so upsetting because she felt she was able to work and considered herself pretty tough. Recalling the birth of her second child, Young said, "I was at work when I went into labor."

The case is Young v. UPS, 12-1226. Reported by Huffington Post 10 hours ago.

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Boston Heart, a cardiovascular diagnostics services company, announced today it has entered into a national agreement with a leading health insurance company that is dedicated to helping people improve their health, well-being and sense of security, to provide in-network advanced diagnostic testing. Effective January 1, 2015, this agreement will expand access of Boston Heart testing, personalized reporting, and health literacy tools to the insurer’s 13 millio Reported by Business Wire 9 hours ago.

It's that time of year again.

No, not the holiday season. I'm talking about Obamacare season.

In the second year of our new annual tradition, the exchanges are open for enrollment, which begs the question: What have we learned since last time? Were the naysayers proven right, or did Obamacare really make health insurance more affordable, as was intended?

With a new year of data to answer these questions, once more into the breach we go...

At this time last year, the inaugural enrollment period was not going well. The website was malfunctioning, people were losing plans they wanted to keep, and the media was running scare stories about "sticker shock." I argued, on the contrary, that the website would get fixed in a hurry, most people were getting better plans, and the exchanges were actually reducing the cost of health insurance.

The first prediction was clearly vindicated. The website got fixed, and 8 million Americans enrolled.

The second prediction was also a victory for Obamacare. Before the exchanges opened, 16.4 percent of Americans were uninsured. A year later, only 11.3 percent were uninsured.

And this isn't only due to the Medicaid expansion. In states that did not expand Medicaid, the uninsured rate fell from 18.2 percent to 13.8 percent. Clearly, the exchanges didn't just replace old plans. They created new ones for people who didn't have any.

They didn't reduce coverage. They expanded it.

And according to the latest Gallup poll, the people who got that coverage are just as happy with it as the people with non-exchange insurance -- and the people on the exchange are actually happier with their costs than everyone else.

Which brings us to the third prediction. This one was more controversial.

Earlier this year, I analyzed the many studies of pre- and post-Obamacare costs and came to the conclusion: "On average, Obamacare clearly lowered the cost of health insurance."

Two of the experts who wrote one of those studies, Paul Howard and Yevgeniy Feyman, disagreed with me. They argued that I misinterpreted their estimates by comparing Kaiser's estimate for all ages to their estimate for 27-year-olds. But they're the ones who made the mistake. Apparently, they misread the Kaiser estimate I cited, which referred to 18-to-34-year-olds, not all age groups. I chose this estimate specifically because it was comparable to theirs.

Then, they cited other studies that used the same faulty methodology that they used, and they claimed that I "ignored" those studies -- when in fact I explained exactly why those kinds of studies were inaccurate.

Finally, they suggested that I was conflating premiums before subsidies with the cost after subsidies, overlooking the price paid by taxpayers. At this point, I was wondering whether they even read my original article, where I made a clear distinction between the two. The evidence suggested, I wrote, that the average premium increase before subsidies was small -- maybe zero. And even if it did increase, that increase was due to people buying more generous plans because now they could afford them. And the point of the subsidies was to make health insurance costs go down for the people who needed it the most -- which is exactly what happened.

Whew. You can see what I meant when I said it was controversial.

The good news is, now we have a second year of data to settle the debate, and this data is better because we can compare the same level of plans with the same amount of coverage on the same exchanges, apples-to-apples, as opposed to the pre-Obamacare plans, which were all over the map. Literally.

The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation has examined the "benchmark" silver plans in major cities in all 50 states, and they've found that the monthly premiums have increased 2 percent, on average, since last year. That is slower than health insurance premiums have grown in any year since we've started recording the data. Only a couple years ago, health insurance costs were growing 5 percent per year. During the Bush administration, they were growing more than 10 percent per year. Two percent is unheard of.

And that's only the average. In nearly half of those cities, premiums are falling on the exchanges. That's unprecedented. Health insurance premiums almost never fall. And when you compare premiums after subsidies, 90 percent of cities are paying less than they did last year!

Now, maybe you still don't like Obamacare. Maybe you'd prefer a simpler, cheaper system. (Who wouldn't?) But there is one thing you simply cannot deny: Over the past year, health insurance has become more affordable for the non-group market, and the result will be better health care for millions of Americans who need it and wouldn't have it if Obamacare didn't exist. Reported by Huffington Post 9 hours ago.

Longtime friends Peter Staley, left, and Sean Strub pose for a portrait in Strub's home in Milford, Pennsylvania. Truvada, the HIV preventive drug, sits on the table before them. (Photo by Damon Dahlen)Downtown Milford, population 1,021, is a picturesque street surrounded by forested hills. In the fall, sheafs of dried autumn corn decorate the lampposts; pumpkins sit outside shops with wooden signs. Prominent AIDS activist Sean Strub first came to the Pennsylvania town in 1996, looking for a quiet place to recoup from his long and brutal illness. He'd begun a recently approved regimen of 16 pills a day -- the most effective treatment for HIV ever discovered to that point. He acclimated nicely to Milford, planning for a future he hadn’t always thought he’d live to see. He helped start a film festival, published a magazine, and eventually co-purchased the Hotel Fauchere, a dilapidated historic hotel and restaurant that he painstakingly revived over five years. Friends came to visit. Some stayed. Among them was his dear friend and fellow AIDS survivor Peter Staley, who arrived in 2004 and settled close by.

One recent afternoon, Staley and Strub sat down for lunch at Strub’s hotel to talk about PrEP, a new drug regimen that has fueled debate from Provincetown to San Francisco, entering the conversation even in this bucolic outpost an hour and a half outside New York City. The daily pill is the first drug ever that can prevent men and women from contracting HIV, and has been shown to reduce the risk of infection by as much as 92 percent. With condom use declining sharply among gay men over the last decade, public health officials have hailed PrEP as part of the the solution.

Despite its successes, PrEP has doubters. Some gay men worry it will further discourage condom use -- which remains the gold standard of prevention against most sexually transmitted diseases, with a 99 percent effectiveness rate when used properly. Others warn about unpredictable outcomes for both individuals and society at large. Strub and Staley have been in opposite camps for the past several years. This was the first time the pair had met face to face to discuss PrEP, and their conversation was intense, passionate and sometimes stinging. The men love each other dearly, and yet they, too, have been swept up in the controversy.
PrEP is the first drug ever that can prevent people from contracting HIV, and has been shown to reduce the risk of the infection by as much as 92 percent.
Staley and Strub met nearly 30 years ago, when they were in their 20s. They had just joined ACT UP, which would become the most influential AIDS activism group in the world. At the time, neither man thought he’d live to see 30. AIDS was destroying their immune systems and killing off their friends, and the sitting president, Ronald Reagan, had yet to mention the disease in public. Strub and Staley felt the political and medical establishment had failed them. Along with thousands of others, many of whom are not alive today, they stormed the Food and Drug Administration demanding better drugs, faster; they lay down in the aisles of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City to oppose the Catholic Church’s ban on condoms; they gathered at the Capitol Mall to witness the unveiling of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, gazing at the panels of the friends they’d lost. They’re fond of one memory in particular -- the day they balanced on the roof of former Sen. Jesse Helms's home in Arlington, Virginia, unfurling a theatrically massive prophylactic over the walls.

Amazingly, their tactics worked. The pharmaceutical companies slashed their prices and sped up trials; the government cleared away the regulatory hurdles. Perhaps most importantly, AIDS entered the national conversation, and the country was forced to reckon with the consequences of ignoring the disease. In 1996, a powerful new class of drugs emerged. By then, Strub was on the brink of death, and Staley, while stable, wasn’t getting any better. The “protease inhibitors,” as the new drugs were called, came along in time to save both of their lives.

Through it all, they became close friends, sharing a summer rental on Fire Island and sailing the Sea of Cortez in a 46-foot sloop Staley rented one winter. But in recent years, neither has seen the other as often as he would like. Their activism has taken them in different directions. Strub remains a fierce critic of the government and a leader in combating what he sees as the ongoing stigmatization of the disease. He helped start the Sero Project, a network of people with HIV dedicated to raising awareness of the injustices still faced by people with HIV -- for example, the case of the gay man in Iowa who received 25 years in prison for having sex without disclosing his HIV status, despite using a condom and posing no risk of transmission. (That conviction was reversed this year by the Iowa Supreme Court.)
Staley, meanwhile, has become a government adviser; he spends most of his time volunteering on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s AIDS task force, which is promoting PrEP as one of three key strategies to combat the disease in the state.68 percent of gay and bisexual men say they “rarely” or “never” discuss HIV with their friends.

2014 KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION STUDY
PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, is a term used to describe a preventive approach to medicine, the concept of taking a drug before illness strikes. When people take anti-malarial drugs before traveling to certain areas of Africa, they’re participating in a PrEP regimen. But the anti-malarial regimen ends soon after the trip is over. By contrast, when people apply PrEP to HIV, they’re signing up to take a pill every day for as long as they’re sexually active, perhaps the rest of their lives.

The pill used to prevent HIV is called Truvada. It’s been around for a decade as part of a treatment for people who have already contracted HIV, but the FDA first approved it for PrEP in 2012. Then, earlier this year, government officials threw their support behind it, recommending that hundreds of thousands of Americans at risk for HIV should consider the daily pill. Many in the AIDS community embraced PrEP as at least part of the answer to the ongoing epidemic: Despite the huge medical and social advances that ACT UP helped bring about in the ‘90s, the number of new infections each year has hovered around 50,000 for more than a decade, and in 2010, the most recent year for which numbers are available, more than 16,000 died in the United States alone. But some in the gay community disapproved of the government endorsement, warning that health officials may be overlooking certain dangers.Peter Staley, left, and Sean Strub, right. (Photo by Damon Dahlen)The debate has often been framed in black-and-white terms: You’re either pro-PrEP, or against it. Strub and Staley present a more complicated view -- that gay men may still disagree fiercely even if it is over subtle differences in how the pill should be used.

Staley, the Cuomo adviser, believes in the drug’s potential; Strub, the government critic, doesn’t doubt its efficacy for individual users, but is skeptical of the government’s blanket endorsement of it to all gay men. As we picked apart a sushi pizza, a local speciality, Strub, who is 56, expounded on his distrust. His advocacy work hinges on the conviction that every gay man should have have access to the education needed to be an authority on his own sexual health, and on the range of treatment and prevention choices available to him. Along with his fellow AIDS activists, he worked for decades to instill an appreciation of those values in the gay community. Now along comes a simpler solution, a little blue pill, that could replace all of that. Americans, he said, like “quick fixes. We like something that seems easy, something we can buy.”

Staley, who is 53, listened patiently, his handsome face betraying no sign of emotion. A long moment of silence followed. At last, he spoke, his stern expression relaxing into a warm grin. "Jane, you ignorant bitch," he said. An inside joke. The two men leaned forward across the table and laughed. But later, in an email, Staley confessed that the meeting had left him "flummoxed."
Thirty years after Strub and Staley helped launch the fight that saved untold lives, including their own, each is convinced that his old friend is making a terrible mistake.

This Oct. 11, 1988, photo shows Peter Staley in a scene from the documentary "How to Survive a Plague.” Staley triumphantly finishes hanging a banner over the entrance to the FDA main headquarters, during an HIV/AIDS civil disobedience demonstration, in Rockville, Maryland. (AP Photo/Sundance Selects, Rick Reinhard)I had met Staley earlier that day outside his apartment in Brooklyn, where he lives when he’s not in Milford, and we set off for the Poconos in his silver Lexus. He is still thin as a wisp, with the sculpted jawline and cheekbones that made him an activist heartthrob in his youth. He took advantage of the ride to fire off the opening salvo. Speeding out of the city, weaving through traffic, he said there’s no longer any real question about whether PrEP can prevent people from contracting the disease. “That story is done,” he said. “And the few out there who still think otherwise are really being anti-science at this point.”

Staley is aware of the arguments against embracing PrEP as a solution to the crisis, and he agrees with some of them. He knows that HIV is most prevalent today in communities of need and color, where, among other factors, gay men are less likely to be open about their sexuality and, therefore, less likely to ask their doctors for preventive drugs. Then there’s the concern that scientists haven’t done enough research on the preventive uses of Truvada. Staley isn’t moved. “What’s your cutoff? Is 20 years of data enough to say it’s not going to shorten your lifespan? Is 30?” he said. “You have to let the science guide your activism.”

Staley’s faith in science and industry has deep roots. His father, a “Rockefeller” Republican, worked as a plant manager for Procter & Gamble. After college at Oberlin, Staley followed his older brother to Wall Street. “All this stuff just gave me a real understanding of how corporate America worked,” Staley said. “I just had this complete lack of intimidation about those kinds of structures.”

It was his illness that turned him into an activist. At one point he led a protest at the New York Stock Exchange over the high price of AZT, the first drug approved to treat HIV. The protesters sneaked onto the trading floor and used foghorns to drown out the opening bell, shutting down the exchange. A few days later, the companies slashed the price for a year’s worth of the drug from $8,000 to $6,400. Staley described that protest, and others like it, as “the highlights of my life.”

But, he continued, “I also really admire a brilliant inside game.”*A History of AIDS Drugs, 1987-present*

From the beginning, Staley said, there was a divide within ACT UP between those who wanted to remain in the streets as classic social activists, and those who coveted a seat at the table of pharmaceutical companies, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Staley thought that avoiding the inside game amounted to “shooting yourself in the foot.” For decades now, he has spent time serving on government committees, including President Bill Clinton’s National Task Force on AIDS Drug Development. In the ‘90s, he advised drug companies on their strategies for dealing with AIDS, and in 2000, he created a website called Aidsmeds.com helping those with HIV navigate their treatment options.

Some fellow activists thought of Staley as a traitor. Strub never went that far, but he didn’t see eye to eye with Staley either. “I think Peter has more confidence in institutional systems and authority than I do,” he said. He traces his outlook in part to his middle-class childhood in Johnson County, Iowa, which at one point had the highest concentration of MDs of any county in the country. “I didn’t grow up seeing the doctor as the guy in the white coat who is God,” he said. “I grew up thinking the doctors were the most difficult to collect from on my paper route.”

Strub is handsome too, with salt-and-pepper hair and a wide, warm smile, and he doesn’t look any more the rabble-rouser than Staley. At the restaurant, he wore a crisp pale pink shirt, ordered oysters, and talked about his plans to go on an African safari with his husband. Strub and Staley nodded about their mutual distaste for slut-shaming, a major flashpoint in the PrEP debate. (Last month, actor Zachary Quinto voiced the sentiment in an interview with Out Magazine. “We need to be really vigilant and open about the fact that these drugs are not to be taken to increase our ability to have recreational sex,” he said.) Strub: “I defy anyone to accuse me of that.”Strub, center, at an ACT UP auction in 1989. (Photo courtesy of Sean Strub)By the time the food arrived, they had moved on to more divisive topics. “I don’t think we have a strategy right now to end the epidemic,” Strub said bluntly. He argued that the gay community’s obsession with PrEP was distracting activists and funders from serious problems affecting gay men with HIV, like the lack of good health care in low-income communities, and the ongoing stigmatization that still causes so many men to keep silent about the disease. “Those are massive problems, but I think they’re seen as so big, that we practically quiver in the face of them,” Strub said. “There’s no pill to treat stigma.”

Staley nodded, took a sip of tea and cleared his throat. Without a vaccine or cure for AIDS, “I don’t see how one completely ends the epidemic,” he responded delicately. “But I do think we have the tools to dramatically lower infections as long as we have the resources and the political will to apply them, and that’s worth fighting for.”

Strub wasn’t so sure. “Some people involved in AIDS work have, in the kindest and most generous definition of the term, a paternalistic view of many of those greatest at risk,” he said. When ACT UP started, its members were fighting for their own lives and the lives of their friends. Today, the most prominent AIDS activists barely know the people most likely to die of the disease. Strub questioned whether they should be pushing drugs on them. “There’s a role for PrEP,” he said. “But I think it should be left to individual clinicians and patients who are interested in it and able to adhere properly to it.”

The question of adherence is a big one. Doctors who prescribe PrEP require patients to come in for checkups and testing every three months. But those who are most at risk of getting HIV are so unlikely to apply such vigilance -- or, in some cases, even to have health insurance -- that the idea seems laughable to Strub. The cost doesn't help — without insurance, it's about $8,000 to $14,000 for a year's supply of Truvada. And according to studies, if people fail to take the drug consistently, its effectiveness drops considerably. Staley agrees this is a formidable challenge.
“I don’t think there’s any illusion that solving HIV infections among young gay men of color is going to be solved by throwing PrEP at them,” Staley said. But, he reiterated, public health officials and AIDS activist should use “all available tools to try to reach those communities.”African Americans account for an estimated 44 percent of all new HIV infections, despite representing only 12 percent of the U.S. population.

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION, 2010
Strub’s fears extend especially to one of the groups most at risk for HIV infection -- youth. He predicts PrEP messaging will override all other aspects of a conversation about safe sex, leaving another generation of gay men unversed in the risks that come with condomless sex with multiple partners: not just HIV, but syphilis, hepatitis B and any number of undiscovered germs and viruses waiting for a chance to explode through humanity.

“What I have a problem with,” Strub continued, “is when public health officials, and we collectively as a community, are sending a message to an 18-year-old coming out of the closet, ‘This is what you should be doing.’”

Staley argued that Strub’s scenario is farfetched, considering only some 26 percent of gay men have even heard of the drug.

It’s too early to say whether PrEP promotion and distribution will drain the budgets for other HIV prevention and treatment strategies. The San Francisco Department of Public Health, which has been a leader in PrEP distribution, declined to share its annual budget with The Huffington Post, but a spokeswoman said in an interview that PrEP will not replace other public health strategies. “We do think it is a very valuable public health intervention which we are actively promoting and seeking to ramp up use of in San Francisco, but the way we’re thinking about PrEP is that we’re incorporating PrEP into our total approach to intervention,” said Susan Philip, the director of disease prevention and control for the department.

PrEP isn’t the only therapy shown to prevent HIV transmission. PEP, or post-exposure prophylaxis, has a clear advantage over PrEP: A patient begins treatment only after being exposed to HIV, and then only takes it for a month, not a lifetime. At lunch, Strub said he found it suspicious PrEP has been getting all the attention. (Cuomo’s task force, for example, didn’t mention PEP in its press release announcing the group’s plan, but did include PrEP as one of three central points of focus.) Could financial motives have something to do with this trend? he asked. A pill a day, after all, equals a lot of money for the pharmaceutical industry.

“It’s a crime that PEP is not central to our prevention efforts,” Strub said.

(Staley said he wants to make both PrEP and PEP widely available.)

Strub and Staley credit their survival to drugs. Over the years, they’ve each taken more than a dozen medications in different combinations: AZT and Crixivan, Viread and Norvir. The onslaught of chemicals has taken a toll, but Strub is more concerned about the side effects than Staley, perhaps because of his inherent distrust of the pharmaceutical industry, perhaps because the drugs made him sicker. Four years ago, he stumbled on a curb and broke his ankle in three places. The doctor diagnosed him with profound osteoporosis. Strub blames the Viread -- which happens to be a component of Truvada. He worries that Truvada, taken daily, could have similar consequences.
A waitress came and took away the oyster shells and the last crumbs of sushi pizza. As we walked outside into the bright autumn day, Staley smiled at Strub. “You can have the last word on the way back,” he said.

The "poison dart" by artist Barton Benes. The piece is a hypodermic needle with Strub's blood splurging out of it. "[It] required me to get my doctor to let me leave his office with a vial of blood, which wasn't easy," Strub said. "I eventually talked the phlebotomist into drawing an extra vial and I snuck it out of the office." (Photo by Damon Dahlen)Strub lives a few houses down from the restaurant, in a home filled with artifacts from the movement's heyday. There’s the oil painting of his fellow ACT UP activist Stephen Gendin, who died in 2000 of AIDS-related lymphoma, and a piece by one of Strub’s closest friends, the artist Barton Benes, who died two years ago. On one wall hangs a clock by Nayland Blake. When Blake made the piece, in the early '90s, a person was dying of AIDS every 12 minutes. Blake marked the clock at the 12-minute intervals. “Back then we were outraged there were that many,” said Strub. “Now its like, ‘Eh, it’s stabilized.’” He shrugs. “The gay community has abandoned the epidemic.”

Strub and Staley both look back at their youth with some nostalgia. Even though they were dying and surrounded by death, they described a sense of excitement and solidarity that doesn’t exist in the world of AIDS activism today.

The Jesse Helms incident was a highlight. In September 1991, Staley, Strub and five other ACT UP members rolled up to the senator’s house in Arlington, Virginia, in a rented U-Haul. Inside the truck was a massive cloth balloon shaped like condom on which one of the activists had stenciled the phrase, "HELMS IS DEADLIER THAN A VIRUS." Staley and Strub were the roof guys, charged with transporting the unwieldy prop up a 28-foot ladder to the top of the house. Staley pulled; Strub pushed. Below, cops and neighbors gathered.
“The gay community has abandoned the epidemic.”
The owner of the house wasn’t home that day, but a week later on the Senate floor he complained about the stunt, blasting the activists as “radical homosexuals.” Helms was one of the movement’s most hated adversaries. From his office on Capitol Hill, he led the charge against gay rights and federal AIDS funding, once claiming in a debate, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy.” Of gay people, he said, "It's their deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct that is responsible for the disease."

It’s impossible to imagine a sitting congressman saying that today. Even Republicans are coming out in support of gay rights and marriage equality, and those who remain opposed to gay causes are careful to avoid the appearance of bigotry. Without an obvious common enemy, there is less to hold the community of AIDS activists together. Some activists, like Staley, support the establishment they once fought, and take some credit for pushing Big Pharma and the government to change. Others, like Strub, are skeptical that the system has changed in a truly meaningful way. Their personal experiences have shaped their views, and it seems unlikely they’ll ever see eye to eye.

A day after the meeting, Staley sent me an email, breaking his promise to give Strub the last word. “While I’ll always treasure Sean’s friendship,” he wrote, “I was painfully reminded during our PrEP discussion why I avoid talking with him about HIV prevention and treatment, much like I avoid talking to my FOX News-watching dad about politics.”

"My only comfort is knowing his views are not widely shared by the AIDS activists I meet around the world,” he said.

Strub, of course, could have said the same thing about Staley.

Enjoy reading this article? Read more selections from the best of HuffPost in Huffington Magazine. Reported by Huffington Post 8 hours ago.

Conditions for openly gay and lesbian Russians have become so dire that America is experiencing a surge in the number of LGBT Russians seeking asylum in America from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tyranny against them. Several asylum-seekers spoke with the Associated Press about what they faced back home.

Andrew Mironov, 25, left a lucrative job with an oil company. He also abandoned his dreams of a Ph.D. "In Russia, I would have gotten my Ph.D. this fall, had a job and health insurance," he told the Associated Press. "Now, here, I'm nobody."

He lives in New York City with an uncertain future, but he feels safe in America. Assailants beat him at a gay bar in Moscow.

"Which is more important, happiness or success?" he asked. "I would say happiness. I feel no fear here."

In Russia, homosexuality is not outlawed, but there are no laws that protect them from discrimination based on their sexuality. Russia derestricted homosexuality as a mental illness in 1999. In 2013, the State Duma passed a law that forbids anyone from equating “straight and gay relationships, as well as the distribution of material on gay rights.” People face a 100,000 rouble ($2,026.55) fine if they promote non-traditional relations. Attacks on gay gatherings increased after Putin passed the law. Authorities blocked a gay dating app and threatened users with arrest under the law. Newspaper editor Alexander Suturin was fined when he printed that “being gay is normal.”

"It [the law] helped homophobic people feel the government is on their side,” said Mirinov.

Immigration Equality, a New York-based group, said the number of Russian homosexuals living in America jumped “from 68 in 2012 to 127 in 2013 and 161 through October 30 of this year.” To receive asylum, the person must prove "he or she has a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ in their home country.” Immigration Equality believes the new law in Russia will strengthen anyone’s case. The majority of the cases are gay men in their 20s and 30s, while some are lesbians with children.

Unfortunately, laws in America forbid asylum-seekers from working. Larry Poltavtsev, founder of the Spectrum Human Rights Alliance, does not approve of the law, especially when Russians like Mirinov possess substantial talents that could contribute to American society.

"It makes no sense because most of our arrivals have advanced degrees and speak good English," said Poltavtsev. "They're capable of being productive, paying taxes, but we are not letting them do those things while they're waiting."

Andrew Nasonov was a journalist in Russia. His partner, Igor Bazilevsky, was a graphics designer. Neither may work, but did accomplish a huge step that is denied in Russia. Nasonov and Bazilevsky legalized their union in Washington, D.C.

"We were finally able to say that we are a real family,” said Nasonov. He added:

There are not enough words to describe how wonderful these feelings are. But of course, we are still faced with a lot of difficulties. It was hard to leave our relatives, friends, and parents behind in Russia. We have nothing here, and in many ways are completely dependent on the assistance of the people who surround us.

Though homosexuality is not illegal in Russia, it certainly is not welcome. In February 2014, Pink News, Europe’s gay news service, listed twenty-five anti-gay incidents in Russia. In one such incident, attackers gassed a gay club in Moscow; they are still at large. Three men stabbed and set alight a man "they believed was gay." Men killed and used beer bottles to rape a 23-year-old man. Russian TV station Channel 4 produced a documentary on the Russian gangs who hunt gay people. A group calling themselves Occupy Paedophilia, which has 37 chapters across Russia, abduct and torture homosexuals across the country. Reported by Breitbart 6 hours ago.

Confused about coverage for Highmark's health insurance plans? Lots of people are, including seniors who have until Dec. 7 to choose a Medicare Advantage plan. Let's refresh. Late afternoon Nov. 26, Highmark and UPMC reached an agreement. What happened while most people were distracted by thoughts of turkey, stuffing and football? Highmark and UPMC agreed to a reset in relations, with Highmark suspending the contract terminations for 700 UPMC doctors and UPMC agreeing to continue seeing Highmark… Reported by bizjournals 6 hours ago.

In Vermont, difficulties at putting into place a single-payer health insurance system by 2017 have put that type of plan under scrutiny - even as some contend that a similar program would be best nationwide, the National Review reports. Reported by Newsmax 5 hours ago.

The American people must make a fundamental decision. Do we continue the 40-year decline of our middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, or do we fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all? Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class, or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy? These are the most important questions of our time, and how we answer them will determine the future of our country.

The long-term deterioration of the middle class, accelerated by the Wall Street crash of 2008, has not been pretty. Today, we have more wealth and income inequality than any major country on earth. We have one of the highest childhood poverty rates and we are the only country in the industrialized world which does not guarantee health care for all. We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but we are now in 12th place. Our infrastructure, once the envy of the world, is collapsing.

Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent, it is 11.5 percent if we include those who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is 18.6 percent and African-American youth unemployment is 32.6 percent.

Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the median male worker earned $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago. The median woman worker made $1,337 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, the median middle-class family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after adjusting for inflation, now earning less than it did 25 years ago.

The American people must demand that Congress and the White House start protecting the interests of working families, not just wealthy campaign contributors. We need federal legislation to put the unemployed back to work, to raise wages and make certain that all Americans have the health care and education they need for healthy and productive lives.
As Vermont's senator, here are twelve initiatives that I will be fighting for which can restore America's middle class.

1. We need a major investment to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure: roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools. It has been estimated that the cost of the Bush-Cheney Iraq War, a war we should never have waged, will total $3 trillion by the time the last veteran receives needed care. A $1 trillion investment in infrastructure could create 13 million decent paying jobs and make this country more efficient and productive. We need to invest in infrastructure, not more war.

2. The United States must lead the world in reversing climate change and make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies. Millions of homes and buildings need to be weatherized, our transportation system needs to be energy efficient and we need to greatly accelerate the progress we are already seeing in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and other forms of sustainable energy. Transforming our energy system will not only protect the environment, it will create good paying jobs.

3. We need to develop new economic models to increase job creation and productivity. Instead of giving huge tax breaks to corporations which ship our jobs to China and other low-wage countries, we need to provide assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives. Study after study shows that when workers have an ownership stake in the businesses they work for, productivity goes up, absenteeism goes down and employees are much more satisfied with their jobs.

4. Union workers who are able to collectively bargain for higher wages and benefits earn substantially more than non-union workers. Today, corporate opposition to union organizing makes it extremely difficult for workers to join a union. We need legislation which makes it clear that when a majority of workers sign cards in support of a union, they can form a union.

5. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. No one in this country who works 40 hours a week should live in poverty.

6. Women workers today earn 78 percent of what their male counterparts make. We need pay equity in our country -- equal pay for equal work.

7. Since 2001 we have lost more than 60,000 factories in this country, and more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs. We must end our disastrous trade policies (NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China, etc.) which enable corporate America to shut down plants in this country and move to China and other low-wage countries. We need to end the race to the bottom and develop trade policies which demand that American corporations create jobs here, and not abroad.

8. In today's highly competitive global economy, millions of Americans are unable to afford the higher education they need in order to get good-paying jobs. Further, with both parents now often at work, most working-class families can't locate the high-quality and affordable child care they need for their kids. Quality education in America, from child care to higher education, must be affordable for all. Without a high-quality and affordable educational system, we will be unable to compete globally and our standard of living will continue to decline.

9. The function of banking is to facilitate the flow of capital into productive and job-creating activities. Financial institutions cannot be an island unto themselves, standing as huge profit centers outside of the real economy. Today, six huge Wall Street financial institutions have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product - over $9.8 trillion. These institutions underwrite more than half the mortgages in this country and more than two-thirds of the credit cards. The greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of major Wall Street firms plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. They are too powerful to be reformed. They must be broken up.

10. The United States must join the rest of the industrialized world and recognize that health care is a right of all, and not a privilege. Despite the fact that more than 40 million Americans have no health insurance, we spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation. We need to establish a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.

11. Millions of seniors live in poverty and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country. We must strengthen the social safety net, not weaken it. Instead of cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs, we should be expanding these programs.

12. At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we need a progressive tax system in this country which is based on ability to pay. It is not acceptable that major profitable corporations have paid nothing in federal income taxes, and that corporate CEOs in this country often enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than their secretaries. It is absurd that we lose over $100 billion a year in revenue because corporations and the wealthy stash their cash in offshore tax havens around the world. The time is long overdue for real tax reform. Reported by Huffington Post 6 hours ago.

The American people must make a fundamental decision. Do we continue the 40-year decline of our middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, or do we fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all? Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class, or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy? These are the most important questions of our time, and how we answer them will determine the future of our country.

The long-term deterioration of the middle class, accelerated by the Wall Street crash of 2008, has not been pretty. Today, we have more wealth and income inequality than any major country on earth. We have one of the highest childhood poverty rates and we are the only country in the industrialized world which does not guarantee health care for all. We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but we are now in 12th place. Our infrastructure, once the envy of the world, is collapsing.

Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent, it is 11.5 percent if we include those who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is 18.6 percent and African-American youth unemployment is 32.6 percent.

Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the median male worker earned $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago. The median woman worker made $1,337 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, the median middle-class family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after adjusting for inflation, now earning less than it did 25 years ago.

The American people must demand that Congress and the White House start protecting the interests of working families, not just wealthy campaign contributors. We need federal legislation to put the unemployed back to work, to raise wages and make certain that all Americans have the health care and education they need for healthy and productive lives.

As Vermont's senator, here are 12 initiatives that I will be fighting for which can restore America's middle class.

1. We need a major investment to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure: roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools. It has been estimated that the cost of the Bush-Cheney Iraq War, a war we should never have waged, will total $3 trillion by the time the last veteran receives needed care. A $1 trillion investment in infrastructure could create 13 million decent paying jobs and make this country more efficient and productive. We need to invest in infrastructure, not more war.

2. The United States must lead the world in reversing climate change and make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies. Millions of homes and buildings need to be weatherized, our transportation system needs to be energy efficient and we need to greatly accelerate the progress we are already seeing in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and other forms of sustainable energy. Transforming our energy system will not only protect the environment, it will create good paying jobs.

3. We need to develop new economic models to increase job creation and productivity. Instead of giving huge tax breaks to corporations which ship our jobs to China and other low-wage countries, we need to provide assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives. Study after study shows that when workers have an ownership stake in the businesses they work for, productivity goes up, absenteeism goes down and employees are much more satisfied with their jobs.

4. Union workers who are able to collectively bargain for higher wages and benefits earn substantially more than non-union workers. Today, corporate opposition to union organizing makes it extremely difficult for workers to join a union. We need legislation which makes it clear that when a majority of workers sign cards in support of a union, they can form a union.

5. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. No one in this country who works 40 hours a week should live in poverty.

6. Women workers today earn 78 percent of what their male counterparts make. We need pay equity in our country -- equal pay for equal work.

7. Since 2001 we have lost more than 60,000 factories in this country, and more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs. We must end our disastrous trade policies (NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China, etc.) which enable corporate America to shut down plants in this country and move to China and other low-wage countries. We need to end the race to the bottom and develop trade policies which demand that American corporations create jobs here, and not abroad.

8. In today's highly competitive global economy, millions of Americans are unable to afford the higher education they need in order to get good-paying jobs. Further, with both parents now often at work, most working-class families can't locate the high-quality and affordable child care they need for their kids. Quality education in America, from child care to higher education, must be affordable for all. Without a high-quality and affordable educational system, we will be unable to compete globally and our standard of living will continue to decline.

9. The function of banking is to facilitate the flow of capital into productive and job-creating activities. Financial institutions cannot be an island unto themselves, standing as huge profit centers outside of the real economy. Today, six huge Wall Street financial institutions have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product - over $9.8 trillion. These institutions underwrite more than half the mortgages in this country and more than two-thirds of the credit cards. The greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of major Wall Street firms plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. They are too powerful to be reformed. They must be broken up.

10. The United States must join the rest of the industrialized world and recognize that health care is a right of all, and not a privilege. Despite the fact that more than 40 million Americans have no health insurance, we spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation. We need to establish a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.

11. Millions of seniors live in poverty and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country. We must strengthen the social safety net, not weaken it. Instead of cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs, we should be expanding these programs.

12. At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we need a progressive tax system in this country which is based on ability to pay. It is not acceptable that major profitable corporations have paid nothing in federal income taxes, and that corporate CEOs in this country often enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than their secretaries. It is absurd that we lose over $100 billion a year in revenue because corporations and the wealthy stash their cash in offshore tax havens around the world. The time is long overdue for real tax reform. Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.

Persuading Hispanics to get health insurance is a key focus for 2nd year under health overhaul Reported by ABCNews.com 3 hours ago.

Senator Charles Schumer, in a recent speech, stated President Obama and Democratic majorities in Congress were elected in 2008 to get the economy working for middle class families. Consequently, assigning extraordinary priority to passing the Affordable Care Act was a mistake.

In 2008, most middle class families had private insurance they liked; their incomes had been falling for about a decade.

The ACA was really part of Democrats’ agenda to assist the working poor—raising the minimum wage, and expanding Medicaid, food stamps, the earned-income tax credit, and higher education grants—while cozying up to big business to finance Democratic campaigns.

Schumer wants Democrats to advocate big government programs to cure middle class woes, and portray Republicans as servants of big corporate interests. He still embraces the ACA as sound policy, even though it made health care more expensive for many middle class families and it enriches Democratic contributors among top executives and shareholders in the health care industries.  

That’s not surprising—Schumer championed the 2010 Dodd-Frank banking reforms.

Those made compliance with new mortgage and business lending regulations so cumbersome that many regional banks sold out to bigger banks—and lots of decently-paying jobs in smaller city banks were lost. In turn, with more deposits to invest, the Wall Street banks keep finding new scams—like rigging foreign currency markets and speculating in commodities—to keep funding multi-million dollar bonuses for New York executives and big campaign contributions to Democrats in the Senate and House.

Cozying up to big business—while championing the poor and offering lip service to the middle class—is what Democrats have done best lately.

President Obama’s favorite fund raising venue is the home of Comcast’s CEO, and his Administration has rewarded cable providers with little effort to curb abusive rates, which rise faster than inflation.

Now, the Treasury Department has decided telecom companies may count the wires to homes as real estate and qualify for lower corporate taxes—that’s the kind of special treatment Obama charges is the primary focus of Republicans lawmakers.

Schumer advocating big government will help Democrats win back the middle class and congress. Perhaps with all the staff and privilege a senator enjoys, he has not had to navigate the New York State health insurance exchange, not had his premiums lost and then coverage denied in the ether space of the federal bureaucracy, or waited tediously on the telephone to resolve medical claims.

What made Americans prosperous was measured government support to private business, fair play and competition—not monopolies for health insurance companies, banks and cable companies to abuse the public.

Somewhere along the way Washington—and in particular Democrats—forgot private businesses, not government, are the nation’s principal jobs creator, and monopolies stifle progress.

Bill Clinton—not a  Republican president—normalized trade relations with China, and permitted it to rig its currency, monopolize many manufacturing activities and steal millions of American jobs. Also, he repealed Glass-Steagall, which permitted Wall Street gambling houses to combine with ordinary banks and use middle class savings to create bogus securities and crash the global financial system.

Democrats have blocked petroleum exploration off the Atlantic, Pacific and Eastern Gulf Coasts, Keystone and other pipeline and infrastructure projects. These limit U.S. oil supplies, enrich big multinational oil companies, and keep OPEC and Russian oil producers in business. In turn, those deny Americans good paying jobs and finance terrorism.

The new GOP congress should try to reverse those abusive policies. But each step of the way, the Senator from Wall Street will appear on Sunday talk shows to paint Republicans as servants of big business.

Oh what a flimflam man—the Senator from Wall Street wants to now present himself as champion of the middle class.

Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist. He tweets @pmorici1. Reported by Breitbart 5 hours ago.

Between the avocado and grapefruit displays, Adolfo Briceno approaches customers in the bustling Hispanic supermarket to ask whether they have health insurance. Reported by Journal Gazette 3 hours ago.

With one week to go in Open Season for the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHB), Walt Francis, chief author of Checkbook’s annual “Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees & Annuitants,” participated in a Washington Post online chat Monday. He answered many questions from federal employees and retirees about their concerns and health insurance options. Reported by Washington Post 4 hours ago.

There's nothing Germans love quite like spending less. Incredibly wealthy billionaires like IKEA's founder, Ingvar Kamprad, or Theo Albrecht, founder of the grocery chain Aldi, have achieved renown in Germany merely for the fact that they have retained an eye for a discount or a good deal despite their wealth.

While Gordon Gekko was allowed in the U.S. to claim that “greed is good” in "Wallstreet 2," a local electronics chain in Germany successfully advertised with the slogan “miserliness is sexy.” That the slogan has found its way into everyday language is just as absurd as it is German.

No wonder, then, that Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has a lot of support from Germans when she declares the economical “Swabian housewife” to be the central motif of her fiscal ideas. Many Germans imagine the model -- to work, earn money and at some point be happy about one’s own thriftiness -- is a good fiscal policy for a state as well.

Greece is struggling to deal with a high unemployment rate. (Photo:Getty)Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble's political career, which started in the early 70s in Germany's Parliament, too, will be evaluated by how successful he is in not having to borrow any new money next year.

Or, to summarize in just one word: debt.

Unlike in English, there is no difference between the biblical word for sin and the word for bank debt in German. Germans take wasted money too much to heart. Debt, in the eyes of many Germans, is a sign of weakness of character.

This cultural climate has led to a terrible mistake. The fetish for “breaking even” has led to whole peoples being held responsible for the wasteful politics of their leaders. Current European “austerity politics” (meaning: “strict economizing”) is unmistakably a child of Germany.

Most Germans are probably not even mean-spirited when they wish for Southern European countries to become “healthy” again by saving money. This matches the mentality of many Germans, who believe in avoiding loans and not living over one’s own means. The mistake lies with the government: It was irresponsible of Angela Merkel to continuously compare the situation in Spain and Greece with the image of the idealized “Swabian housewife.”

Because when a state saves money, it does not only have personal, but also societal consequences. That may sound innocuous—but the European reality right now is frightening.
** *
Health Care Policy
* **
The austerity policy has had especially dramatic effects on the Greek healthcare system. Under pressure from the European Union, the government in Athens has had to cut co-payments on medication, medical checkups and surcharges on operations.

According to a study conducted by scientists from Cambridge and Oxford this spring, the cuts had a measurable impact on health statistics.- Especially dramatic is the rise of the infant mortality rate in Greece. Between 2008 and 2011, the number has risen by 21 percent. Experts believe that this is a direct consequence of cuts to maternal care. Beyond that, more and more newborns are underweight. The child mortality rate has risen by 43 percent between 2008 and 2011 – which is probably also a result of the cuts in maternal care.

- The number of cases of severe depression have more than doubled between 2008 and 2011. While before the crisis 3.3 percent of the population declared in representative psychological studies that they had symptoms of severe depression, 2011 that number had risen to 8.2 percent. The main reason for this rise was “worrying about the economy.” At the same time, government expenditure for psychological institutions was cut drastically: by 20 percent between 2010 and 2011, and by another 55 percent between 2011 and 2012.

- Only 25 Greeks were infected with HIV in 2010 by using contaminated needles. After the cuts came into effect, the number of new infections related to drug use jumped to 307 in 2011 and 484 in 2012. Scientists see a direct link to cuts in community programs and cuts in programs to distribute clean needles.

- The number of suicides in Greece has risen by 45 percent between 2007 and 2011.

- Due to cuts in insect control, malaria is spreading across Greece once again.

Municipal waste workers' strike in Madrid - Spain suffers under EU austerity policies. (Photo: Getty Getty)

** *
Social Affairs
* **
Due to the economic crisis, many people in Southern Europe have lost their jobs. But while unemployed people in Northern and Western European countries can rely on a working social safety net, the austerity policy in Southern Europe has had grave consequences for the poorest parts of society.

The governments in Portugal, Spain and Greece cannot even pay for basic medical care of their citizens.

- In Portugal the number of people above 75 who died during the winter has risen by 10 percent. It is entirely possible that this is linked to another number: 40 percent of Portuguese over 65 and living alone are unable to afford to heat their flats sufficiently during the winter.

- In Spain in 2010, 11.2 percent of children lived in families in which both parents were unemployed. The risk of poverty has risen dramatically for Spanish children.

- About one third of children in Greece live under the threat of poverty.

- These days, 800,000 people in Greece do not have any health insurance anymore -- about 7 percent of the population. This is also a direct consequence of the austerity politics: hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs between 2009 and 2010, yet unlike in Germany, health insurance is only paid for another two years after becoming unemployed. And unlike other countries like the U.S., where health insurance has not been taken for granted for centuries, the Greek health care system is not prepared for this situation.

- The international medical organization Doctors Without Borders started a relief effort in Greece two years ago. Most EU citizens only know the organization from news reports about famines and natural disasters in third world countries.

Greek protesters rally during Angela Merkel's visit to Athens in October 2012. (Photo: Getty)

** *
Emigration
* **
Rigid austerity politics do not only effect the present, but also hold consequences for the future. Hundreds of thousands of people from Southern Europe have already decided to find happiness somewhere else.

- In Spain and Greece half of all people under the age of 25 are still without work. Even though this number is slowly going down, the number of emigrants remains high.

- In 2013 alone, 140,000 people from Spain, Greece and Italy immigrated to Germany.

- Most people leave Spain due to a lack of job prospects. In a study by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociologicas of the Spanish government, 75 percent of potential emigrants stated that they are hoping for better job prospects in other countries.

- A large proportion of Spaniards working in Germany are working for wages lower than their qualifications would predict.

What Southern Europe needs is prospects for the future. Not a stranglehold, but help to help themselves. Because the misery of the people cannot be tolerated any longer. Because there is no space for developing new political concepts. And because all of the highly qualified emigrants are missing for the rebuilding of their countries’ economies.

In reality, Germans know that loans are not the devil's work. When they build a house they usually borrow money and slowly pay it back as a mortgage. Even many Swabians do so.

That is an example Merkel should follow.

Because nothing new has ever happened through saving money alone.

This post originally appeared in HuffPost Germany and was translated into English. Reported by Huffington Post 3 hours ago.

Another drafting quirk: if tax credits are not available to a state's residents, employers in that state are exempt from the health insurance mandate. Reported by Forbes.com 2 hours ago.

Submitted by Martin Armstrong via Armstrong Economics blog,

*We have a very serious problem with taxation.* Only the United States and Japan regards its citizens as state property. Taxes are normally owed based upon the concept that you are paying your *“fair share”* predicated on use. But the United States views it simply owns anyone born in the United States or overseas if they had even one American parent. This is in reality slavery that no state should own its citizens as property.

The *Washington Post* has reported the *plight of the Mayor of London Boris Johnson’s remains in a major dispute with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.* It would be very nice to see everyone come together and challenge this to the Supreme Court for those are the pro-government judges that ruled all Americans belong to the state and that paying your “fair share” has nothing to do with taxes – just hand over whatever you have.

The mayor’s dispute with the US tax-collectors was brought to light when he traveled to the United States and did a blitz of interviews with the American news media. He explained that* the U.S. government was forcing him to pay the capital gains tax on the sale of his Islington home.* “Can you believe it?” When asked by Rehm if he intended to pay the bill, he said that he would not. “I think it’s absolutely outrageous.”

*Boris Johnson was born in the USA but returned to England with his parents at the age of 5. He has never lived in America, but that means nothing to the IRS.* They are hunting everyone everywhere. They have been sending letters to people in Canada who they figured out had one American parent but have never lived in the USA. I previous wrote about a couple in Switzerland where the wife was American living there with her Swiss husband for 20 years. When their 14 year-old son was ready to open his first bank account, he was told no way because he was America. Even foreigners married to Americans are being compelled under FATCA to disclose they are married to an American and the risk of being denied the right to have a bank account. I use to have American Express cards in USA, Britain, and Japan. That way, I paid my local bills in the local currency. Today, no credit card can be issued to an American outside the USA.

*Americans are being prejudiced everywhere.* What is most revealing, Obamacare notes the distinction between living in America and overseas. Ex-pats are exempt from Obamacare for they are assumed to have healthcare where they are. Otherwise, they would have to buy health insurance in America that would never cover them outside the country.

 

Congress *NEVER* directed that Americans pay taxes worldwide simply because they were born in the USA or had one American parent. This whole scheme was crafted by the Supreme Court who merely ruled that Congress did not exclude foreign income, so it must be included. The way this is being applied is outrageous. Americans are unable to do business outside the USA with local accounts because no bank will deal with Americans thanks to *FATCA*. *These idiots cannot grasp that this is reversing the US economy into isolationism and is paving the road for China to take the lead. It is time to turn off the lights.* Reported by Zero Hedge 3 hours ago.

Retailers rolled out discounts and free shipping deals on Cyber Monday, with millions of Americans expected to log on and shop on their work computers, laptops and tablets after the busy holiday shopping weekend. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — After nearly a decade in legal wrangling, a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit over Apple's iPod music players heads to trial on Tuesday in a California federal court. Attorneys for consumers and electronics retailers claim Apple Inc. used software in its iTunes store that forced would-be song buyers to use iPods instead of cheaper music players made by rivals. Under federal antitrust law, the tech giant could be ordered to pay three times that amount if the jury agrees with the estimate and finds the damages resulted from anti-competitive behavior. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The FBI has confirmed it is investigating a recent hacking attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment, which reportedly caused major internal computer problems at the film studio last week. The FBI said in a statement that "the targeting of public and private sector computer networks remains a significant threat." The case puts into relief the unpredictable business environment in Russia, where thousands of people have ended up in jail as the result of business disputes or raids by business rivals. The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, said Monday that its manufacturing index slipped to 58.7 last month from 59 in October. Factories in China, the world's second-largest economy, are barely growing, according to a survey released Sunday by the bank HSBC Corp. And a European manufacturing index fell to 50.1 in November, the lowest in 17 months and just barely in expansion territory. WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Between the avocado and grapefruit displays, Adolfo Briceno approaches customers in the bustling Hispanic supermarket to ask whether they have health insurance. A local Mexican music radio station is doing a live remote broadcast from outside the grocery and periodically mentioning Blue Cross, backing up a line of people curious about coverage in front of the harried agent. [...] atypical approaches to selling health insurance policies are playing out across the country since the second round of enrollment under the federal Affordable Care Act opened in mid-November. Insurance companies and some states are focusing heavily on signing up eligible Hispanics, a group that accounts for a large share of the nation's uninsured but largely avoided applying for coverage during the first full year the health care reform law was in effect. Reported by SeattlePI.com 5 minutes ago.

*You can drop your expensive employer health plan*

*Q*. My employer provides health insurance, but it’s very expensive. Can I decline this insurance and purchase a health plan through my state Marketplace instead?

*A*. Yes ... but. Anyone is free to buy health insurance on their state's Health Insurance Marketplace except for undocumented residents or people who are enrolled in Medicare Part A. And anyone is also free to turn down an employee health plan.

But the fact that your job comes with health insurance will probably mean that you can't receive a tax credit to offset the cost of buying an individual Marketplace plan, even if you would otherwise be eligible based on your income.

One key is whether your workplace coverage is considered “affordable” under the terms of the health reform law. And it is considered affordable if the amount you would pay toward your coverage alone (not counting any family members) is less than 9.5 percent of your Modified Adjusted Gross Income. Note that this includes only your contribution toward the plan premium, not your out-of-pocket costs when you actually use the plan to get health care.

Here’s a worksheet we created to help you do the math.

Another key is whether your employer health plan is designed to cover at least 60 percent of the health costs of the average member. If it is, then the law considers that it meets the “minimum value” standard. Your employer plan’s standardized Summary of Benefits and Coverage should have this information at the bottom of page 6. Your human resources department or plan administrator can give you a copy of this form if you don’t already have it.

If your employer plan fails one or both of these tests—either it’s not affordable or it doesn’t meet the minimum value—then you can turn it down and claim your subsidy to buy a plan on your state Marketplace.

If the plan passes both tests, you can’t get the tax credits. But you still might want to check out your options on the Marketplace to see whether you can get a better deal there anyway.

--Nancy Metcalf

*Submit a question to Consumer Reports' health insurance expert. Be sure to include the state you live in so we can provide a more-detailed answer.*

*See our complete health insurance information. To find out how to apply for, select, and use health insurance, including Medicare, visit our main health insurance page.*

*Use our free app to explore your health insurance options*

Not sure where to begin with getting health insurance? Our free interactive tool, Health Law Helper, will point you in the right direction.

*Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright © 2006-2014 Consumers Union of U.S.*

*Subscribe now!*
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Update your feed preferences Reported by Consumer Reports 22 hours ago.

HARRISBURG - Toll-free phone lines were jammed, and low-income workers streamed into sign-up sites as enrollment opened Monday for expanded health insurance coverage under Medicaid. Reported by philly.com 15 hours ago.

The IRS will have to figure out who is fibbing about having health insurance. Reported by Politico 12 hours ago.