With just a couple of weeks left in the Affordable Care Act's special enrollment period for health insurance in 2015, the federal government has released more details on those who signed up during the primary open enrollment, which ended Feb. 15.
Reported by dailypress.com 13 hours ago.
Thousands on Peninsula signed up for Affordable Care Act health insurance
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Truth - The Cure For Cognitive Dissonance
Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” *? George Orwell*
*Every time the BLS puts out their monthly propaganda report on the wonderful state of the U.S. jobs market and states with a straight face the unemployment rate is a measly 5.5%, their corporate mouthpieces in the mainstream cheerleader media regurgitate the fake numbers and urge you to buy stocks. *The millionaire talking heads on CNBC and the corrupt bought off politicians in D.C. make broad sweeping declarations about economic recovery, strong job growth, GDP advancement, record highs in the stock market, and soaring consumer confidence.
*The people living in the real world know otherwise, but they want to believe the “experts” and “leaders”. *This dichotomy between reality and what they are being told is causing a tremendous amount of mental stress. This cognitive dissonance of attempting to reconcile what they are experiencing in their every day existence and the propaganda being peddled at them on a daily basis from big media, big bankers, corporate titans, and captured politicians pulling the strings and running the show, is causing psychological discomfort. Most people want their lives to get better, so to reduce their cognitive dissonance they choose to believe the government and media reports about economic improvement.
*It is only a small minority who want to know the unvarnished truth.* They are drawn to alternative media websites, which the the captured corporate media refers to as doom sites. These critical thinking individuals understand the facts. The Deep State propaganda has no impact on these people because they have no cognitive dissonance. They know things are far worse than what is reported by the government and their media whores. Knowing the truth and seeing how the majority remain willfully ignorant results in rising anger among truth seekers. *Huxley was right.*
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.” *? Aldous Huxley*
When the BLS reports their monthly unemployment BS showing a 5.5% unemployment rate and Obama holds a press conference to pat himself on the back for the 10 million jobs he has created since 2009, the critical thinking truth seekers focus on the big lies in the numbers. The 10 million jobs added has been surpassed by the 13 million people who supposedly willingly left the workforce. The 148 million employed Americans is only 2 million more than were employed in 2008, but the government wants you to believe the unemployment rate is the same as it was in 2008 despite the fact the working age population has grown by 16 million people.
The truth is the labor participation rate has fallen dramatically since 2008 and now sits at a 38 year low of 62.7%. The rate consistently remained between 66% and 67% from 1988 through 2008. There are 250 million working age Americans and only 148 million Americans working and the powers that be expect you to believe only 8.5 million of the 102 million non-working Americans are actually unemployed. When the critical thinking doom websites point out the record low participation rate, the immediate response from the Wall Street propaganda machine is Baby Boomers retiring. Their co-conspirators in misdirection and misinformation in the media unquestioningly perpetuate this lie without an iota of journalistic credibility.
*The Boomer retirement meme is obliterated by the data in the chart below*. The labor force participation rate of those over 65 is at an all-time high and has grown by over 50% since 2000. Those in their prime working years between 25 and 64 have seen their labor force participation rate decline since 2000. The labor force participation rate decline has absolutely nothing to do with Boomers retiring. It is solely driven by younger workers unable or unwilling to work. The truthful labor participation rate should be 66%. That would force the BLS to admit at least another 9 million Americans are unemployed, pushing the unemployment rate to at least 10.7%.
*The blatant perpetuation of the big lie began in earnest after the 2008 Wall Street created financial crisis. *The number of jobs for those 54 years old and younger is still 1.2 million below 2007, while the number of jobs for those 55 and older is up by 6 million. Those over 55 working today stands at 33.1 million, an all-time high. This figure has doubled since 2000. The Boomer dream of a long luxurious retirement, living off their interest income, lying on a beach and drinking pina coladas has devolved into being forced to work as Wal-Mart greeters and McDonalds counter help until they die. Retirement isn’t an option after two Federal Reserve created bubbles burst, six years of zero interest rates, and three simultaneous bubbles on the verge of bursting.
The falsity of the jobs recovery meme is unequivocally proven by the fact real median household income is still 4.5% lower than it was at the 2001 and 2008 peaks. And this is using the ridiculously understated CPI figure. Using a true inflation rate would show real median household income to be 20% below 2000 levels.* The last time I checked, workers live in households. How could the unemployment rate plunge from 10% in 2009 to 5.5% today with real median household income falling? Maybe the 21% decrease in manufacturing jobs since 2000 and the proliferation of low paying part-time service jobs, along with Federal Reserve created inflation, have resulted in the death of the middle class. *Real people living in the real world have seen their standard of living steadily decline for the last 25 years. And they know it, deep inside, despite the propaganda echoing from their boob tubes.
*There is a reason retail sales continue to stagnate. There is a reason credit card debt continues to decline. There is a reason you don’t hear your friends, family or neighbors talk about the improving economy. *If you don’t hob nob with the ruling elite at Manhattan cocktail parties or summer at the Hamptons, you know the truth. Your real wages are lower than they were in 1989. The expenses you incur to live your everyday life like food, rent, transportation, health insurance, and tuition are rising at 5% to 10%, not the 1.7% reported by your government keepers. You own little or no financial stocks, so the record stock market highs have no impact on your financial well being. You may have money in a savings account, money market or CDs. Eight years ago you could earn 5%. Today you earn .15%, thanks to Bernanke, Yellen and their Federal Reserve cohorts. But at least you still get to pay the Wall Street banks 15% on your credit card balance.
*The only way to relieve the tremendous mental stress caused by the conflict between what you know you are experiencing in your everyday life and what you are being told by bankers, politicians, government apparatchiks, and the corporate media, is to accept the truth and free yourself from the tyranny of the Deep State.* Propaganda is a powerful tool in the hands of rich powerful psychopathic men bent on accumulating wealth, power and control over the bourgeois. Secrecy, censorship, data manipulation, and media messaging to mislead have worked for decades. Very little in the way of coercive techniques have been required, as the *Bernays* method of conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses has worked wonderfully to hoodwink and bamboozle the average person.
*The mood of society in general continues to darken. *War drums are beating around the globe. The imperial American Empire is fraying at the edges and using military force, intrigue, surveillance, and secrecy in an attempt to retain its power domestically and internationally. The truth is being suppressed, but the internet and proliferation of websites revealing the lies of those in power is slowly opening the eyes of more and more people whose cognitive dissonance has caused them too much discomfort. The Deep State is worried. Their wealth, power and control are in danger. The attempts to control the internet, the un-Constitutional surveillance of citizens, and the militarization of police forces across the land are a futile attempt to control us. *But the truth will set us free. *As Robert Heinlein describes, no amount of force can control a man who mind is free.
“Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.” – *Robert A. Heinlein*
*It won’t take a majority to prevail. If we continue to set brush fires of truth, freedom and reason among the increasingly disillusioned masses, a tipping point will be reached and a revolution of truth will sweep across the land. *So, if you have the opportunity to speak the truth to someone today…. Reported by Zero Hedge 11 hours ago.
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Many small firms may face health insurance rate changes under Obamacare
In recent years, as millions of individual consumers coped with new and different kinds of health insurance, small businesses got some breathing room.
Reported by L.A. Times 8 hours ago.
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Uninsured Rate Gets Lower And Lower, Thanks To Obamacare
WASHINGTON-- The Affordable Care Act was designed to slash the percentage of Americans who lack health insurance, and it's working.
The uninsured rate fell to 11.9 percent during the first quarter of this year, 1 percentage point below the rate at the close of 2014, according to the findings of a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index poll published Monday. The decline coincides with the start of benefits for new Obamacare enrollees at the beginning of 2015.
The latest uninsured figure from the Gallup survey is the lowest since the polling firm began tracking the number in 2008, and contributes to a remarkable decline of 5.2 percentage points in the share of people without health coverage since the end of 2013, just before the first wave of Obamacare health insurance enrollees joined the ranks of the insured.
Source: Gallup
African-Americans, Hispanics and people with low incomes saw the greatest gains in insurance coverage, Gallup found.
Some of the increase in the proportion of Americans with health coverage likely is related to the improving job market, and the health benefits provided by employers, Gallup notes. But the pollsters conclude that Obamacare is mostly responsible for the current trend because the uninsured rate is lower than it was in early 2008, when the economy was in recession.
About 12 million people are covered by private health insurance obtained via the exchanges, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. A separate analysis published by the department last month estimates that 16 million fewer Americans are uninsured because of the Obamacare coverage expansion, including the exchanges and Medicaid.
Were more states to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, the uninsured rate would fall more sharply, as it did in Indiana earlier this year. Previous surveys showing state-by-state numbers illustrate that Obamacare's effect on the uninsured is diminished by states' refusal to expand Medicaid.
Although Montana appears poised to adopt the Medicaid expansion this month, efforts in states such as Alaska, Missouri, Tennessee and Utah this year have been stymied by Republican opposition. Almost 5.5 million people had enrolled into Medicaid because they qualified under the expansion in 28 states and the District of Columbia, the Department of Health and Human Services reported Friday.
The sharp reduction in the uninsured rate since Obamacare benefits began to take effect last year could soon be undone, however. The Supreme Court is slated to rule in June ona lawsuit, King v. Burwell, that claims the Affordable Care Act's subsidies can only be provided in 13 states and the District of Columbia, which operate their own health insurance exchange marketplaces, not in the federally run exchanges in the rest of the country.
A high court ruling for the plaintiffs would invalidate the subsidies received by more than 85 percent of exchange enrollees and destabilize the insurance markets in states with federal exchanges. The Rand Corp. estimates this would result in 9.6 million people becoming uninsured.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.
The uninsured rate fell to 11.9 percent during the first quarter of this year, 1 percentage point below the rate at the close of 2014, according to the findings of a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index poll published Monday. The decline coincides with the start of benefits for new Obamacare enrollees at the beginning of 2015.
The latest uninsured figure from the Gallup survey is the lowest since the polling firm began tracking the number in 2008, and contributes to a remarkable decline of 5.2 percentage points in the share of people without health coverage since the end of 2013, just before the first wave of Obamacare health insurance enrollees joined the ranks of the insured.
Source: Gallup
African-Americans, Hispanics and people with low incomes saw the greatest gains in insurance coverage, Gallup found.
Some of the increase in the proportion of Americans with health coverage likely is related to the improving job market, and the health benefits provided by employers, Gallup notes. But the pollsters conclude that Obamacare is mostly responsible for the current trend because the uninsured rate is lower than it was in early 2008, when the economy was in recession.
About 12 million people are covered by private health insurance obtained via the exchanges, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. A separate analysis published by the department last month estimates that 16 million fewer Americans are uninsured because of the Obamacare coverage expansion, including the exchanges and Medicaid.
Were more states to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, the uninsured rate would fall more sharply, as it did in Indiana earlier this year. Previous surveys showing state-by-state numbers illustrate that Obamacare's effect on the uninsured is diminished by states' refusal to expand Medicaid.
Although Montana appears poised to adopt the Medicaid expansion this month, efforts in states such as Alaska, Missouri, Tennessee and Utah this year have been stymied by Republican opposition. Almost 5.5 million people had enrolled into Medicaid because they qualified under the expansion in 28 states and the District of Columbia, the Department of Health and Human Services reported Friday.
The sharp reduction in the uninsured rate since Obamacare benefits began to take effect last year could soon be undone, however. The Supreme Court is slated to rule in June ona lawsuit, King v. Burwell, that claims the Affordable Care Act's subsidies can only be provided in 13 states and the District of Columbia, which operate their own health insurance exchange marketplaces, not in the federally run exchanges in the rest of the country.
A high court ruling for the plaintiffs would invalidate the subsidies received by more than 85 percent of exchange enrollees and destabilize the insurance markets in states with federal exchanges. The Rand Corp. estimates this would result in 9.6 million people becoming uninsured.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.
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Survey: Nearly 9 in 10 US Adults Now Have Health Insurance
Survey: Coverage gains continued during 2nd sign-up season for Obama's health care law
Reported by ABCNews.com 5 hours ago.
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Survey: Nearly 9 in 10 US adults now have health insurance
Whether the new number from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index turns out to be a high-water mark for President Barack Obama's health care law, or a milestone on the path toward his goal of getting virtually all U.S. residents covered, remains to be seen. The law's future is still up in the air, and will turn on factors ranging from an upcoming Supreme Court decision on consumer subsidies to actions by Republican leaders in states opposed to Medicaid expansion. "The Affordable Care Act had three major objectives: increase coverage, slow the rate of increase in costs, and improve health," said Dan Witters, research director for the poll. The health care law offers subsidized private insurance for people who don't have access to job-based coverage, combined with an expansion of Medicaid aimed at low-income adults in states that accept it. "At a time when Republicans are very keenly trying to court the Hispanic vote, a large chunk of Hispanics are gaining insurance via the Affordable Care Act," Witters said. Opponents of the law argue that its literal language only allows the government to subsidize premiums in states that set up their own online insurance markets. Supporters say that while some provisions may be confusing when read in isolation, the intent of Congress was to help consumers in every state pay their premiums. The survey results were based on landline and cellphone interviews conducted from Jan. 2 to March 31 with a random sample of 43,575 adults ages 18 and older.
Reported by SeattlePI.com 4 hours ago.
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Nearly 90 percent of Americans have health coverage
Nearly nine out of 10 Americans now have health insurance, a sharp improvement from two years ago before Obamacare was put in place.
Reported by CNNMoney 1 hour ago.
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Nearly 90% of Americans now have health insurance
Read full story for latest details.
Reported by CNN.com 2 minutes ago.
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Gallup: 5 Years Into Obamacare, 11.9% of Americans Still Without Health Insurance
By:
Brittany M. Hughes
(AP Photo/Don Ryan)
read more Reported by CNSNews.com 20 hours ago.
Brittany M. Hughes
(AP Photo/Don Ryan)
read more Reported by CNSNews.com 20 hours ago.
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Uninsured Rate Drops Under Obamacare
Uninsured Rate Drops Under ObamacareUninsured Rate Drops Under Obamacare
Politics
insurance, obamacare, healthcare, affordable care act, obama, president
Has Been Optimized
A new Gallup-Healthways survey showed that just 11.9 percent of Americans lacked health insurance in the first quarter of 2015 – a 5.2 percent decrease since Obamacare took effect.
Since the end of 2014, the number of people without health insurance fell one percentage point from 12.9 percent. Since Obamacare was implemented in early 2014, the uninsured rate has continually fallen from 17.1 percent.
“The evidence shows that the Affordable Care Act is working, and families, businesses and taxpayers are better off as a result, HHS Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell said in March. While the improving economy is believed to be a factor in the decreasing uninsured rate, officials said the Affordable Care Act is mostly responsible.
Though the rate has dropped since the end of last year, the decrease was shown to be gradually slowing. In the first enrollment period of 2014, the rate fell 1.5 percent as opposed to the 1 percent decrease in this year’s enrollment period.
Sources: The Hill, Huffington Post / Photo Credit: thehill.com, huffingtonpost.com
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OV in Depth: Reported by Opposing Views 21 hours ago.
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Uninsured at lowest in U.S. since 2008, poll shows, but Louisiana still lags
The rate of people living in the United States without health insurance dropped to 11.9 percent in the first part of 2015, according to the latest results of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey. Numbers from Louisiana show 17.2 percent of respondents...
Reported by nola.com 21 hours ago.
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Low Wages Cost U.S. Taxpayers $153 Billion A Year
When thousands of low-wage workers across the country protest low pay on Wednesday, they won't only be fighting for the millions of workers who flip our burgers, stock our grocery shelves and take care of our kids. They'll be fighting for a monumental shift in the American economy that could save taxpayers billions of dollars.
Poverty wages cost U.S. taxpayers about $153 billion each year, according to a recent report from the University of California, Berkeley. That's because, when families depend on low-wage jobs to survive, they're forced to rely on government programs like Medicaid and food stamps to make ends meet.
The Berkeley report looks at how much states and the federal government are spending on programs like Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Temporary Aid to Needy Families program, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. The report found that the federal government spends about $127.8 billion per year, and states collectively spend about $25 billion per year, on public assistance programs for working families.
Currently, the federal minimum wage is stalled at a paltry $7.25 an hour. A parent working full-time at that rate over the course of the year won't bring in enough money to live above the poverty line for a family of two, which means leaning on government assistance.
So when a company like McDonald's, for instance, pays a worker the minimum wage, you, the taypayer, end up subsidizing her pay. A 2013 analysis from the National Employment Law Project found that the 10 largest fast food companies cost taxpayers about $3.8 billion per year.
Infographic by Alissa Scheller for the Huffington Post
More than half of fast-food workers rely on public assistance, in fact. But that's not the only sector desperate for a raise. The Berkeley report also found that child-care and home-care workers also rely on public assistance to get by.
On April 15, workers across the U.S. are planning to protest for better pay and union representation for low-wage workers. The protests are being organized by Fight for 15, a national labor movement fighting to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Here's a look at what percentage of low-wage workers across the following fields rely on public assistance:
Many low-wage employers, from Walmart to McDonald's, have announced pay raises in recent months, but workers say it isn't enough. For example, McDonald's plan to raise wages by 10 percent will only affect a small percentage of the company's workers. Most McDonald's workers are employed by franchisees, and the company has said it can't control how those workers are paid.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 19 hours ago.
Poverty wages cost U.S. taxpayers about $153 billion each year, according to a recent report from the University of California, Berkeley. That's because, when families depend on low-wage jobs to survive, they're forced to rely on government programs like Medicaid and food stamps to make ends meet.
The Berkeley report looks at how much states and the federal government are spending on programs like Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Temporary Aid to Needy Families program, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. The report found that the federal government spends about $127.8 billion per year, and states collectively spend about $25 billion per year, on public assistance programs for working families.
Currently, the federal minimum wage is stalled at a paltry $7.25 an hour. A parent working full-time at that rate over the course of the year won't bring in enough money to live above the poverty line for a family of two, which means leaning on government assistance.
So when a company like McDonald's, for instance, pays a worker the minimum wage, you, the taypayer, end up subsidizing her pay. A 2013 analysis from the National Employment Law Project found that the 10 largest fast food companies cost taxpayers about $3.8 billion per year.
Infographic by Alissa Scheller for the Huffington Post
More than half of fast-food workers rely on public assistance, in fact. But that's not the only sector desperate for a raise. The Berkeley report also found that child-care and home-care workers also rely on public assistance to get by.
On April 15, workers across the U.S. are planning to protest for better pay and union representation for low-wage workers. The protests are being organized by Fight for 15, a national labor movement fighting to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Here's a look at what percentage of low-wage workers across the following fields rely on public assistance:
Many low-wage employers, from Walmart to McDonald's, have announced pay raises in recent months, but workers say it isn't enough. For example, McDonald's plan to raise wages by 10 percent will only affect a small percentage of the company's workers. Most McDonald's workers are employed by franchisees, and the company has said it can't control how those workers are paid.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 19 hours ago.
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Paul Zane Pilzer and Rick Lindquist's Book Wins Small Business Book Award
“The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance” wins small business book award.
Salt Lake City, Utah (PRWEB) April 13, 2015
“The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance”, written by Paul Zane Pilzer and Rick Lindquist wins Small Business Trends’ 7th Annual Small Business Book Awards for 2015 in Economics.
The Awards celebrates the best business books that entrepreneurs, small business owners, CEOs, managers, and their staffs are reading. According to Small Business Trends, the winners are chosen based on merit and a Community Choice group of winners chosen by popular vote.
In his book, Rick Lindquist, President and CEO of Zane Benefits, predicts that 100 million Americans will move from employer-provided to individually-purchased health insurance over the next 10 years. “The purpose of the book”, says Lindquist, “is to show you how to profit from this paradigm shift while helping you and your employees get better and safer health insurance at lower cost.”
According to the Amazon.com listing, the facts outlined in the book will help consumers and employers save money on health insurance by migrating from employer-provided coverage to employer-funded individual plans at a total cost that is 20 to 60 percent lower for the same coverage.
For more information visit: ZaneBenefits.com.
EDITORS NOTE: Rick Lindquist is available for questions from the media through Zane Benefits. Contact Jessica Welker at 801-203-0764 or media(at)zanebenefits(dot)com
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About Zane Benefits:
Zane Benefits is the leader in individual health insurance reimbursement for small businesses. Since 2006, Zane Benefits has been on a mission to bring the benefits of individual health insurance to business owners and their employees.
Zane Benefits' software helps businesses reimburse employees for individual health insurance plans for annual savings of 20 to 60 percent compared with traditional employer-provided health insurance. Today, over 20,000 customers use Zane Benefits' software, services, and support to reimburse individual health insurance plans purchased independent of employment. For more information visit ZaneBenefits.com.
About the Authors:
Paul Zane Pilzer is The New York Times best-selling author of 11 books, a former professor at NYU, and has served as an economist in two White House administrations. He is also the founder of six companies including the two largest U.S. suppliers of personalized employee health benefits, Extend Health (1999) and Zane Benefits (2006).
Rick Lindquist is CEO and President of Zane Benefits, Inc., the U.S. leader in individual health insurance reimbursement for small businesses. Zane Benefits’ software has been featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The New York Times. He is a regular contributor to leading health benefits publications, including ClarifyingHealth.com.
About the Book:
The #1 Amazon best-selling The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance is a comprehensive guide to utilizing new individual health plans to save 20 to 60 percent on health insurance. Over the next 10 years, 100 million Americans will move from employer-provided to individually purchased health insurance. Written by a world-renowned economist and New York Times best-selling author, this insightful guide explains how individual health insurance offers more to employees than employer-provided plans.
The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance: Why It’s Good for You, Your Family, and Your Company (Wiley, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-119-01211-5, $25.00) is available at bookstores nationwide, from major online booksellers, and direct from the publisher by calling 800-225-5945. In Canada, call 800-567-4797. For more information, please visit the book’s page on http://www.wiley.com. Reported by PRWeb 19 hours ago.
Salt Lake City, Utah (PRWEB) April 13, 2015
“The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance”, written by Paul Zane Pilzer and Rick Lindquist wins Small Business Trends’ 7th Annual Small Business Book Awards for 2015 in Economics.
The Awards celebrates the best business books that entrepreneurs, small business owners, CEOs, managers, and their staffs are reading. According to Small Business Trends, the winners are chosen based on merit and a Community Choice group of winners chosen by popular vote.
In his book, Rick Lindquist, President and CEO of Zane Benefits, predicts that 100 million Americans will move from employer-provided to individually-purchased health insurance over the next 10 years. “The purpose of the book”, says Lindquist, “is to show you how to profit from this paradigm shift while helping you and your employees get better and safer health insurance at lower cost.”
According to the Amazon.com listing, the facts outlined in the book will help consumers and employers save money on health insurance by migrating from employer-provided coverage to employer-funded individual plans at a total cost that is 20 to 60 percent lower for the same coverage.
For more information visit: ZaneBenefits.com.
EDITORS NOTE: Rick Lindquist is available for questions from the media through Zane Benefits. Contact Jessica Welker at 801-203-0764 or media(at)zanebenefits(dot)com
###
About Zane Benefits:
Zane Benefits is the leader in individual health insurance reimbursement for small businesses. Since 2006, Zane Benefits has been on a mission to bring the benefits of individual health insurance to business owners and their employees.
Zane Benefits' software helps businesses reimburse employees for individual health insurance plans for annual savings of 20 to 60 percent compared with traditional employer-provided health insurance. Today, over 20,000 customers use Zane Benefits' software, services, and support to reimburse individual health insurance plans purchased independent of employment. For more information visit ZaneBenefits.com.
About the Authors:
Paul Zane Pilzer is The New York Times best-selling author of 11 books, a former professor at NYU, and has served as an economist in two White House administrations. He is also the founder of six companies including the two largest U.S. suppliers of personalized employee health benefits, Extend Health (1999) and Zane Benefits (2006).
Rick Lindquist is CEO and President of Zane Benefits, Inc., the U.S. leader in individual health insurance reimbursement for small businesses. Zane Benefits’ software has been featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The New York Times. He is a regular contributor to leading health benefits publications, including ClarifyingHealth.com.
About the Book:
The #1 Amazon best-selling The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance is a comprehensive guide to utilizing new individual health plans to save 20 to 60 percent on health insurance. Over the next 10 years, 100 million Americans will move from employer-provided to individually purchased health insurance. Written by a world-renowned economist and New York Times best-selling author, this insightful guide explains how individual health insurance offers more to employees than employer-provided plans.
The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance: Why It’s Good for You, Your Family, and Your Company (Wiley, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-119-01211-5, $25.00) is available at bookstores nationwide, from major online booksellers, and direct from the publisher by calling 800-225-5945. In Canada, call 800-567-4797. For more information, please visit the book’s page on http://www.wiley.com. Reported by PRWeb 19 hours ago.
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Foodstamp Financiers: Wells Fargo Workers Protest Re-Emergence Of Predatory Practices
One of America’s biggest banks is going to be protested by an unlikely group today: its employees. As The Guardian reports, *Wells Fargo bankers are protesting the bank’s alleged predatory practices* – mainly the sales quotas imposed on some of its workers (which have led to at least 30 employees opening duplicate accounts, sometimes without customers’ knowledge, in order to inflate their sales numbers). One worker warns, *“it is not in Wells Fargo’s best interest for customers to purchase products and services they don’t use or need.”* Now where have we seen this kind of activity before? Wells Fargo bank workers are not the only ones struggling to make ends meet without breaking ethical standards as *bank tellers have collected as much as $105m in food stamps*.“Basically, what I do all day is look at people’s bank statements,” said Michael Lewis, 46, who works as a financial crime specialist at Wells Fargo in Chandler, Arizona... *“I have kind of an unique experience knowing how America spends its money and knowing how broke everyone is.”*
As The Guardian reports,* **the quotas, first exposed in a lawsuit filed by a long-term Wells Fargo customer, David Douglas, have led to at least 30 employees opening duplicate accounts, sometimes without customers’ knowledge, in order to inflate their sales numbers.* The 30 employees have been fired, according to the Los Angeles Times. *The quotas, however, persist.*
While Lewis has no quotas to fill himself, he said he is affected by those imposed on the personal bankers.
“It does affect me in the sense that [the customers] will call and dispute an internal charge – like a travel insurance charge – that they never signed up for, and then we will have to address that,” he said.* “People claim that they have been signed up for bank services that they never agreed to, like overdraft protection.”*
Lewis has “no concrete proof” that bankers are signing up customers for these services without their knowledge in order to meet the quotas, but “that is the assumption”, he said.
A number of Lewis’s coworkers at the call center have previously worked at the banks and were subject to the quotas. *“What I see a lot is a sense of relief that they have made it out of the bank,” *said Lewis.
Back in 2013, when the reports of quotas and their effect on the behavior of tellers first came to lights, Wells Fargo created an ethics program office to “look at existing programs across the company to ensure consistency and a holistic approach”. The bank, the *fourth largest in the US by assets, would not say what the creation of this office had accomplished*, whether the quotas are still an issue nor whether the quotas had changed.
*“We place a high priority on ethical business practices and a culture of doing what is best for our customers.* It is in Wells Fargo’s best interest for customers to purchase only the products they need and benefit from – that’s what keeps them coming back for more for a lifelong relationship,” Richele Messick, the bank’s spokeswoman, told The Guardian.
Today, *workers plan on holding a rally in front of the bank’s corporate office and demand a meeting with the bank’s executives *to share their concerns around predatory practices and sales quotas.
Since December 2013, the *workers have been collecting signatures on a petition calling for an end to sales goals*. The workers plan to deliver the petition, which has a little over 10,000 signatures so far, on Monday. Among their *other demands are better pay and full-time work*.
These demands are highlighted by the following...
Prior to working at Wells Fargo, Lewis worked – in a similar capacity – at American Express for almost 10 years. *By the end, he was earning almost $75,000 a year.*
*“One day, I was asked to go to India and train people there to do my job,” he said. Three months later, he came back and about half of his team – 15 people – got laid off, he said. Frustrated, Lewis quit and was soon hired by Wells Fargo.*
*“And now I am making half the money that I was at American Express,”* he said. Working full time and earning $17.10 an hour, he makes about $35,000 a year. “I live paycheck to paycheck.”
The bank says that its workers’ wages are market-competitive and combine base pay with “a broad array of benefits and career-development opportunities”.
*“All of our team members’ compensation levels significantly exceed federal minimums – in fact, all salaries are at least 50% above the federal minimum,”* said Messick.
Wells Fargo bank workers are not the only ones struggling to make ends meet. *In 2012, average pay for a bank teller was $11.59 an hour.* Their median annual income was $24,940, according to US Department of Labor.
Thiago Marques, 26, lives in Newark, New Jersey, and works as a bank teller at Hudson Valley Bank, earning $9.50 an hour.
*“The pay is not enough to survive on,” *Marques, who lives with his parents, told the Guardian. “At least I am single and have no huge expenses. Imagine being my co-worker, who has two children and has to care for her house.”
*To supplement their income, annually bank tellers have collected as much as $105m in food stamps, $250m in earned income tax credits and $534m in Medicaid and children’s health insurance,* according to researchers at the labor center at the University of California at Berkeley.
* * *
We leave it to Khalid Taha, 27, who works as a personal banker in San Diego, to conclude:
*“People see us wearing suits and sitting behind our desk and think we are bankers who make millions,”*
“You don’t see our debt from these suits, from dry cleaning and from these shiny shoes that we are required to purchase from our pockets. *We are not making enough to even rent our own house or apartment.”*
Reported by Zero Hedge 19 hours ago.
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Women's Lives (Should) Matter!
The campaign to eliminate the right to safe, legal abortions is intentional, relentless and political. The consequences are real, personal and frightening. Attacks on abortion rights further entrench discrimination against women, and erode our national commitment to social and economic justice.
We must demand accountability from the politicians who claim to represent us and the pundits who influence the public debate. Our failure to speak out will encourage increasingly aggressive attacks.
Last week, still reeling from a campaign of national revulsion that forced Indiana to retreat from *an anti-LGBT law*, the state shifted its sites to a more vulnerable target: pregnant women. The state imposed a 20-year jail sentence on *Purvi Patel*, claiming that what she claimed was a miscarriage constituted "feticide."
We must challenge the Senate to exert leadership in the coming weeks as it prepares for debate on *H.R. 2*, and on the *Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act* *(JVTA)*, a bill intended to protect the victims of sex-trade trafficking.
H.R. 2 passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the House late in March. It offers a compromise on a long unpopular but seemingly intractable Medicare formula for paying doctors. The bill would also extend funding for children's health insurance and community health centers. There is pressure to move quickly in the Senate, to avoid triggering a 20 percent pay cut for the MDs. (Sound familiar?)
But H.R. 2 includes a ban on federal funds for abortion. Including at community health centers. Congress has rubber-stamped similar funding bans in the past, referred to as the Hyde amendment, via annual appropriations bills. This is no longer acceptable. The immediate victims are low-income women and their families, and people of color, *who are five times more likely to experience unintended pregnancies and childbirths*, and are increasingly caught in the vise of state and federal laws constraining access to safe, legal abortions, as well as reduced social and financial support for families. The stigma against abortion blights all women, and society as a whole.
The abortion funding restriction is also included in the proposed Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA), intended to protect the victims of sex-trade trafficking. Faced with demands to drop this provision, anti-abortion Senators are underscoring their priorities by holding hostage passage of this bill, as well as confirmation of the President's nominee for Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, unless this restriction is included.
Leaders and advocates for vulnerable communities can no longer tolerate or minimize this dangerous divide and conquer strategy. Our strength must rely on our shared, united interests in children's health insurance, community health centers, fair Medicare reimbursement policies, and abortion rights and reproductive justice.
As *Sen. Dianne Feinstein* (D-Calif.) has said, this is "one battle that we can win... I see it as standing up for principle. And you know principle doesn't know minority and majority; principle is deeply held."
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 18 hours ago.
We must demand accountability from the politicians who claim to represent us and the pundits who influence the public debate. Our failure to speak out will encourage increasingly aggressive attacks.
Last week, still reeling from a campaign of national revulsion that forced Indiana to retreat from *an anti-LGBT law*, the state shifted its sites to a more vulnerable target: pregnant women. The state imposed a 20-year jail sentence on *Purvi Patel*, claiming that what she claimed was a miscarriage constituted "feticide."
We must challenge the Senate to exert leadership in the coming weeks as it prepares for debate on *H.R. 2*, and on the *Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act* *(JVTA)*, a bill intended to protect the victims of sex-trade trafficking.
H.R. 2 passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the House late in March. It offers a compromise on a long unpopular but seemingly intractable Medicare formula for paying doctors. The bill would also extend funding for children's health insurance and community health centers. There is pressure to move quickly in the Senate, to avoid triggering a 20 percent pay cut for the MDs. (Sound familiar?)
But H.R. 2 includes a ban on federal funds for abortion. Including at community health centers. Congress has rubber-stamped similar funding bans in the past, referred to as the Hyde amendment, via annual appropriations bills. This is no longer acceptable. The immediate victims are low-income women and their families, and people of color, *who are five times more likely to experience unintended pregnancies and childbirths*, and are increasingly caught in the vise of state and federal laws constraining access to safe, legal abortions, as well as reduced social and financial support for families. The stigma against abortion blights all women, and society as a whole.
The abortion funding restriction is also included in the proposed Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA), intended to protect the victims of sex-trade trafficking. Faced with demands to drop this provision, anti-abortion Senators are underscoring their priorities by holding hostage passage of this bill, as well as confirmation of the President's nominee for Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, unless this restriction is included.
Leaders and advocates for vulnerable communities can no longer tolerate or minimize this dangerous divide and conquer strategy. Our strength must rely on our shared, united interests in children's health insurance, community health centers, fair Medicare reimbursement policies, and abortion rights and reproductive justice.
As *Sen. Dianne Feinstein* (D-Calif.) has said, this is "one battle that we can win... I see it as standing up for principle. And you know principle doesn't know minority and majority; principle is deeply held."
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 18 hours ago.
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For Mothers-To-Be, No Special Open Enrollment For Health Insurance
Becoming pregnant does not qualify women to sign up for Obamacare outside of the standard enrollment period, says HHS.
Reported by IBTimes 15 hours ago.
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Energy Firms, Health Insurers Deftly Use Others to Spread Propaganda
I usually don't pay a lot of attention to the songs on a restaurant's playlist, but when "The Old Rugged Cross" came on at the Manassas, Virginia, Cracker Barrel as I was traveling to Tennessee recently, I put my fork down and listened.
Hearing the hymn took me back nearly half a century to my childhood in Kingsport, Tennessee. Every Sunday morning, we listened to the "hymn program" on WMCH, a Christian radio station, as we got ready for church.
I couldn't resist Googling WMCH to see if it was still around. I was happy to find that not only is it still on the air, but it now has much broader reach, thanks to the Internet.
But when I streamed it, instead of a gospel quartet, I heard a radio talk show host mock environmentalists who want more laws and regulations to address climate change. I was told that the Earth hasn't really been getting warmer and that, even if there is a little more CO^2 in the atmosphere, it's God's way of helping restore the rainforests.
The hymns on WMCH are, unfortunately, now few and far between. Filling the big gaps between them is propaganda -- or "messaging," if you prefer the corporate PR term -- designed to get people to think, act and vote in certain ways.
Just days earlier I had participated in a discussion at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism on this very issue. We had just watched Merchants of Doubt, the new Robert Kenner documentary about how oil and gas industries, among many others, finance propaganda campaigns to influence public policy by creating doubt in the minds of American citizens and the people they elect to public office.
Almost all of us are completely oblivious to these campaigns. The special interests behind them go to great lengths to hide their involvement. During the healthcare reform debate, for example, America's Health Insurance Plans, a large Washington-based trade group I used to work with -- I was a member of its strategic communications committee -- funneled more than $100 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fund the Chamber's anti-reform advertising campaign. Insurers knew that the TV ads would be more credible if people believed the Chamber of Commerce had paid for them.
Neither AHIP nor the Chamber was required to report this transfer of money or how it was spent -- even though the intent was to influence the outcome of the reform debate, and even though the $100 million was more than insurers spent in campaign contributions and to pay lobbyists. We probably would never have known about it at all had investigative reporters not been able to connect the dots after reviewing the groups' tax filings.
Just as health insurers spend far more money on covert activities than on expenditures they have to disclose, so too do a variety of other companies and special interests.
While we know how much insurers and oil and gas companies dole out to political campaigns and lobbyists, we don't have a clue how much of their cash is used to establish front groups or how much of it winds up in the pockets of either pundits for hire, like those depicted in Merchants of Doubt, or tax-exempt organizations that do their bidding.
One such tax-exempt group is the Lincoln Institute, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that "promotes the ideals of free market economics, individual liberty, and limited government." WMCH has become one of the vehicles it uses to promote those ideals.
Ron Gordon, one of WMCH's owners, told me his station plays less music than it did when I was a kid because he now has to pay much more in royalties for the songs he plays. Enter the Lincoln Institute, which has two broadcasting arms, American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal.
The Lincoln Institute helps hundreds of stations across the country fill airtime and save money by replacing music with talk. Gordon said Lincoln doesn't charge him a dime. It doesn't have to, thanks to its donors, which the organization doesn't name. Being a so-called 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the institute isn't required to tell us who its donors are.
While we don't know for sure that oil and gas companies provide funding for Lincoln, we do know they benefit whenever a radio listener starts believing that more regulation not only is unnecessary but also might lead to job losses and higher prices at the pump.
Special interests of all kinds with big pots of money are able to influence elections and shape public policy not only by funding disinformation campaigns but also by hiding their role in the deception. And the cash they spend to do it now far exceeds what they spend in ways that have to be disclosed. Does this make any sense? Not to me.
This was published initially by the Center for Public Integrity at www.publicintegrity.org.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 13 hours ago.
Hearing the hymn took me back nearly half a century to my childhood in Kingsport, Tennessee. Every Sunday morning, we listened to the "hymn program" on WMCH, a Christian radio station, as we got ready for church.
I couldn't resist Googling WMCH to see if it was still around. I was happy to find that not only is it still on the air, but it now has much broader reach, thanks to the Internet.
But when I streamed it, instead of a gospel quartet, I heard a radio talk show host mock environmentalists who want more laws and regulations to address climate change. I was told that the Earth hasn't really been getting warmer and that, even if there is a little more CO^2 in the atmosphere, it's God's way of helping restore the rainforests.
The hymns on WMCH are, unfortunately, now few and far between. Filling the big gaps between them is propaganda -- or "messaging," if you prefer the corporate PR term -- designed to get people to think, act and vote in certain ways.
Just days earlier I had participated in a discussion at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism on this very issue. We had just watched Merchants of Doubt, the new Robert Kenner documentary about how oil and gas industries, among many others, finance propaganda campaigns to influence public policy by creating doubt in the minds of American citizens and the people they elect to public office.
Almost all of us are completely oblivious to these campaigns. The special interests behind them go to great lengths to hide their involvement. During the healthcare reform debate, for example, America's Health Insurance Plans, a large Washington-based trade group I used to work with -- I was a member of its strategic communications committee -- funneled more than $100 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fund the Chamber's anti-reform advertising campaign. Insurers knew that the TV ads would be more credible if people believed the Chamber of Commerce had paid for them.
Neither AHIP nor the Chamber was required to report this transfer of money or how it was spent -- even though the intent was to influence the outcome of the reform debate, and even though the $100 million was more than insurers spent in campaign contributions and to pay lobbyists. We probably would never have known about it at all had investigative reporters not been able to connect the dots after reviewing the groups' tax filings.
Just as health insurers spend far more money on covert activities than on expenditures they have to disclose, so too do a variety of other companies and special interests.
While we know how much insurers and oil and gas companies dole out to political campaigns and lobbyists, we don't have a clue how much of their cash is used to establish front groups or how much of it winds up in the pockets of either pundits for hire, like those depicted in Merchants of Doubt, or tax-exempt organizations that do their bidding.
One such tax-exempt group is the Lincoln Institute, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that "promotes the ideals of free market economics, individual liberty, and limited government." WMCH has become one of the vehicles it uses to promote those ideals.
Ron Gordon, one of WMCH's owners, told me his station plays less music than it did when I was a kid because he now has to pay much more in royalties for the songs he plays. Enter the Lincoln Institute, which has two broadcasting arms, American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal.
The Lincoln Institute helps hundreds of stations across the country fill airtime and save money by replacing music with talk. Gordon said Lincoln doesn't charge him a dime. It doesn't have to, thanks to its donors, which the organization doesn't name. Being a so-called 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the institute isn't required to tell us who its donors are.
While we don't know for sure that oil and gas companies provide funding for Lincoln, we do know they benefit whenever a radio listener starts believing that more regulation not only is unnecessary but also might lead to job losses and higher prices at the pump.
Special interests of all kinds with big pots of money are able to influence elections and shape public policy not only by funding disinformation campaigns but also by hiding their role in the deception. And the cash they spend to do it now far exceeds what they spend in ways that have to be disclosed. Does this make any sense? Not to me.
This was published initially by the Center for Public Integrity at www.publicintegrity.org.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 13 hours ago.
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Colorado health exchange approves $5M for tech fixes, mulls fee hikes
The board of the state health insurance exchange, Connect for Health Colorado, voted unanimously Monday to spend up to $5.
Reported by Denver Post 13 hours ago.
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Health Insurance Shoppers Look to Limited Networks to Save Money
Consumers seem increasingly comfortable with narrow lists of hospitals or doctors, if it gets them a cheaper plan.
Reported by NYTimes.com 13 hours ago.
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Hawaii Health Connector's future is in the governor’s hands
Jurisdiction over the Hawaii Health Connector’s operations may change dramatically this year, depending on state executive and legislative actions. Ultimately, the future of the health insurance exchange will be dictated by the results of negotiations between the governor and the federal government. Gov. David Ige’s administration told PBN last week that the governor is in discussions with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Hawaii Health Connector and key legislators, and is…
Reported by bizjournals 12 hours ago.
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