MADISON, Wis.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CUNA Mutual Group's TruStage brand now protects more than 16 million credit union members with auto, home, life, accidental death and dismemberment and health insurance. Reported by Business Wire 2 days ago.

From left, Michael Cote, Alan Marcus, Craig Mundie, Shane Harris, and Cory Bennett. (Photo by Rebecca Greenfield)

By Kristina Shevory

As the Internet spreads its tentacles into every nook of society, attacks are rapidly increasing against individuals, companies, governments, and the very Net infrastructure upon which they all rely. The attackers range from cyber criminals to non-state actors like ISIS and nation-states. But law enforcement, government regulation, and an established military response are not even close to keeping up, said a group of experts at the Techonomy Policy conference in Washington on June 9.

Before the advent of the Internet, there were four accepted domains of warfare: land, water, air, and space. Cyber is the fifth, and newest, domain, and by the far the hardest one to patrol, the panelists on a session devoted to "The Militarization of the Internet" agreed. "Unfortunately, the Internet doesn't conveniently stop at our border," said Craig Mundie, a longtime top executive at Microsoft who has been deeply involved in Federal tech policy efforts. "We don't have a good way of defining what and when we will do something."

Mundie, who retired from Microsoft in December,, was joined onstage by Alan Marcus, head of technology sector industries for the World Economic Forum and co-author of "Beyond Cybersecurity: Protecting Your Digital Business," Michael Cote, who heads Dell SecureWorks, a major information security company, and Shane Harris, the senior national security and intelligence reporter at The Daily Beast and author of "@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex." The discussion was moderated by Cory Bennett, cybersecurity reporter at The Hill.

The discussion became even more urgent in the wake of the disastrous hacking of the Federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) a week earlier. A Chinese group is said to have stolen the records of millions of federal employees, apparently to compile a database of U.S. government workers. The same organization is thought by many experts to also be responsible for the hack of the health insurance company Anthem's site last year.

It's unclear how much information was stolen or the purpose the data will be used for in the future. It appears that all federal employees and retirees were affected by the breach, including military veterans and personnel--that's a total of more than 4 million people. The exact identity of the hacker group has not been established and thus it's hard to know how to responsd.

Attacking or going after malcontents on the Internet is not simple. It's difficult to discern the difference between a military, nation-state, or non-state attack, said Marcus from the World Economic Forum, and hence difficult to figure out an appropriate response.

"If you don't know where the missile came from, where do you send the army?" said Mundie.

Despite the uncertainties, as cyber attacks like the OPM one have grown beyond business-specific attacks, government and law enforcement now have no choice but to present a coordinated approach to them, panelists said.

The Internet, said Mundie, is something like the Wild West where "people feel rightly or wrongly that they can act with impunity," adding that this state of affairs will continue until law enforcement and government step in. All the panelists agreed that it was the role of law enforcement and the government to patrol the Internet's byways and not something businesses can address on their own. In any case, laws prohibit cyber vigilantism.

As the severity of attacks rises, the government will have to establish a set of threat levels and responses, said panelists. After Sony released "The Interview," which offended the North Korean government, its devastating attack on Sony's corporate infrastructure created a new environment, Harris said.

But the limits and expectations of what kind of response is called for remain undeclared and apparently undecided. "What are the levels of aggression that are necessary before the U.S. attacks a country for cyber attacks?" Harris asked. "If the U.S. banking system is taken down? When a few key sites are?"

"Does Congress have to declare war for the U.S. to attack a country, a rogue state, or individuals, as it must do now before U.S. troops can be involved?" Mundie said.

Because militarization of the Net is so new, no scale of threat levels have yet been created and it is up to each victim how they respond. How many bits and bytes would an attacker have to wipe out for someone to feel compelled to respond?

The response needs to differ depending on whether the attack is caused by a nation-state, rogue country, or a criminal syndicate. "When does the military get involved?" Marcus said. "Again, what threat level and how many bytes would have to be destroyed for troops to respond? If cyber is considered another trade route like the blue waters, do you expect your military to protect cyber?"

It's also not clear which government agency should be in charge of a response to an attack or which would formulate a policy on the matter. Four years ago, when the World Economic Forum gathered government officials to discuss U.S. cyber policy, it had to gather representatives from 19 separate agencies, Marcus said.

There are glimmerings of progress, nonetheless. Federal agencies are starting to work together on cyber responses to save money and resources. Companies, spooked by the attack against Sony as well as recent attacks against Target, Anthem Healthcare, and others, are also taking security much more seriously than a few years ago. A more sophisticated view of security is developing. Marcus summarized the necessary attitude: "Security isn't about patches after the fact. It's about building it into the system."

Original article published at Techonomy.com.

-- 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 2 days ago.

The HPV vaccine does not promote sexual activity in teenage girls, suggests a recent Harvard study in JAMA Internal Medicine. Because of such concerns, some parents have not allowed their children to get the vaccine, which protects against the two strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) that causes most cervical cancers and are sexually transmitted. Using a large U.S. health insurance database, the researchers found that vaccinated and unvaccinated girls (ages 12 to 18) had the same rates of sexually transmitted infections. Had the vaccine actually led to an increase in sexual activity, the vaccinated girls would have been expected to have a steeper rise in these infections. Reported by Newsday 2 days ago.

The United States has an epidemic brewing within our borders, and the problem is much more serious than most people realize.

Lyme disease is spreading fast, and it only takes the bite of a poppy-seed-size tick to contract. Even after treatment, symptoms can be difficult to shake.

Those infected can develop severe, rheumatoid arthritis-like joint and muscle pain. Fatigue and neurological disorders — such as numbness, tingling, weakness, and cognitive impairment — can set in too.

Left untreated, infections can lead to brain inflammation or heart problems. At least a handful of such cases have proven fatal.

A recent study goes beyond human suffering inflicted by Lyme disease to estimate the monetary cost of this "hidden epidemic," as some call it. Researchers sifted through the health insurance claims of 47 million people and discovered *a staggering financial burden incurred by tens of thousands treated for Lyme disease — possibly more than $1 billion a year in the US alone.*

What's more, the mountain of data chips away at some longstanding mysteries surrounding Lyme disease: what kinds of symptoms people seek treatment for after a standard course of antibiotics and how much diagnosis and treatment might predict these later symptoms.

"Our study doesn't tell us anything about what better treatments are — but it tells us there's a big problem," says Dr. John Aucott, an author of the study and director of Johns Hopkins University's new Lyme Disease Clinical Research Center. "We hope it changes the conversation. People, even 5 or 10 years ago, didn't think there was a problem."

*Portrait of a 'hidden epidemic'*

Looking only at the chart below, it's easy to think Lyme disease isn't a big deal.

After all, the CDC logs about 35,000 confirmed cases of Lyme disease per year out of more than 300 million Americans:

Thing is, those are just the reported cases. Actual infection rates are likely 5-10 times the reported cases. Some studies, which examine Lyme disease lab test orders, argue it's up to 12 times higher.

This translates to roughly 300,000 new Lyme disease cases annually, according to the CDC's latest data, from 2013. One study estimates as many as 440,000 new infections occurred in 2008.

So many cases go unreported, and there's such a drastic range in the numbers, because it's so easy to miss the signs of infection. Early symptoms are also often dismissed as something more benign.

"The longer you go without treatment, the more serious your symptoms can be," says Emily Adrion, a public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the new study.

Even then, she told Business Insider, there's "a lot of overlap" with other conditions — so doctors don't always think to order a test for Lyme disease. That's why Lyme disease is sometimes called the "great imitator" or "great masquerader."

Here's a chart adjusted to reflect unreported cases, extrapolated from the lab test orders for Lyme disease:

Meanwhile, Lyme disease infection rates in the US continue to rise. Cases in the US have more than tripled since 1995, according to CDC data.

Accounting for unreported cases, the numbers suggest as much as 1% or more of the population in some Eastern states is infected.

Here's an animation showing the recent spread of the problem:

Europe — especially eastern countries full of prime tick habitat — also faces a similar predicament with its own variants of Lyme disease:

Again, all of these statistics regard new cases.

Infections don't just go away on their own. And even though "the vast majority of cases are treatable and short-lived," says Dr. Paul Mead, chief of epidemiology and surveillance for the CDC's Lyme disease program, symptoms don't always vanish with treatment.

*Lyme disease is a magnet of controversy*

More and more doctors now acknowledge a link between infections and something called post-treatment Lyme disease symptoms, or PTLDS. It can be a painful, debilitating, and — some argue — chronic condition.

Here's science writer Brian Palmer in a piece he wrote for Slate about that dispute (emphasis added in *bold*):

A small subgroup of patients treated for the disease experiences aches, fatigue, and other nonspecific symptoms more than a year after the infection clears. *Whether these symptoms have anything to do with the initial infection or treatment is a subject of controversy among mainstream doctors, because we don't have enough data to make a judgment.*

Then there are patients with no proven history of actual infection, who represent the overwhelming majority of people claiming to suffer from chronic Lyme. This form of chronic Lyme is controversial in the same sense that rhinoceros horn therapy is controversial: There's no reliable data to support it.

This has led to an often toxic and sometimes litigious dynamic between researchers, doctors, and patients.

Researchers turn up seemingly conflicting results, hampering consensus and revision of the latest treatment guidelines, which the CDC adopted in 2006. Meanwhile, most doctors stick to these guidelines, which don't mandate follow-up care. (Lyme disease is supposed to be easy to treat.)

*So, patients who don't meet the stricter working definition of PTLDS (more on this later) yet deal with stubborn symptoms can get desperately lost in the shuffle.*

"Doctors want to help these patients, but they don’t know what to do," Adrion says. "As a result, patients are suffering. They can’t get the help they want." And even when someone does meet PTLDS criteria, she added, there's still confusion about how to treat the condition.

Some patients insist on long-term and expensive antibiotic injections, which are expensive, frequently harmful, sometimes deadly, and only rarely help someone feel better. Others turn away from licensed doctors altogether and pursue dubious alternative treatments.

*Pinning a number to a shadowy problem*

The new study — by Adrion, Dr. Aucott, and others at Johns Hopkins University and published in PLOS ONE — tries to suss out a better view of what happens after people are treated for Lyme disease.

Adrion and other researchers at Johns Hopkins University set out to tally the costs in the first year following treatment, i.e. the medications, doctor's appointments, emergency room visits, hospital stays, etc.

First, they rounded up the anonymized health insurance claim records of 47 million people under age 65 in the years 2006-2010 — one of the largest data sets ever thrown at questions about Lyme disease, Adrion says.

Then they started sorting the data.

In one group, they corralled people diagnosed with or tested for Lyme disease. They also needed to have received treatment for the illness. What's more, this group also had six months of Lyme disease-free records beforehand, plus 12 months of continuous health insurance enrollment afterward (to look for long-term consequences and costs).

This gave the researchers nearly 53,000 patients and their claim records to work with.

Next, they compared those records to those of a control group (about 264,000 people) with no signs or symptoms of Lyme disease over 18 months. The researchers also accounted for costs associated with unrelated, expensive-to-treat conditions.

*If you have Lyme disease and get treated, the study found, insurance providers are likely to pay about $8,205 in the first year. That's nearly double the annual healthcare costs of a typical patient.*

*And if you have something like PTLDS, the estimated annual costs are even higher.*

A big reason why is that Lyme disease is tough to diagnose and hard to treat. PTLDS is possibly even worse, since it's still so poorly understood. Patients may try many things and see many doctors without getting relief.

*How Lyme disease works*

The cause of Lyme disease is a corkscrew-shaped bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi, highlighted in green and red-orange in this image:

This microscopic parasite hitches a ride inside the guts of deer ticks, also called black-legged ticks. As adults, these arachnids are incredibly difficult to see, since they grow to only about 1/4 of an inch long (about the size of a sesame seed).

Young ticks called nymphs are even smaller, about the size of a poppyseed, and are the top transmitters of the disease.

When infected ticks feed, they can spew what's in their stomach — including any B. burgdorferi bacteria — into a victim.

It's generally accepted about 1% of all infected tick bites lead to Lyme disease, primarily by nymph ticks that aren't removed within 24-48 hours.

If an uninfected deer tick feeds on an infected host, e.g. a mouse, deer, squirrel, dog, cat, or even a human, the tick can become a vector and transmit the disease to new hosts. (Note: Lyme disease only seems transmissible by ticks; there's no credible evidence humans can transmit it to one another.)

*Early symptoms resemble those of a cold or flu: aches, chills, fever, and swollen glands. Even if you're attuned to the signs, who wouldn't shrug them off as something benign?*

About three in four people are "lucky" enough to develop a red bulls eye-like rash, called erythema chronicum migrans — a "smoking gun" sign of Lyme disease — days to a week afterward an infectious bite.

But it can take nearly a month to appear, and might go unnoticed if it's a small rash.

The best, first-line treatment is 2-4 weeks' worth of antibiotics, usually doxycycline or amoxicillin, within a few days of infection — before B. burgdorferi can get too cozy in joints, nerves, and other tissues.

Manufacturers of these drugs charge anywhere from twenty dollars to thousands of dollars per treatment, according to Wired.com.

The cost depends on classic market forces, i.e. supply and demand, and Lyme disease peaks like crazy in spring and summer months. That's when tick populations soar and people rush headlong into the great outdoors:

Still, it's often hard to know you have Lyme disease in the first place. It's equally easy to delay treatment.

Even a medical doctor who lived in a town where Lyme disease is endemic, for example, went undiagnosed and untreated for years. (Read his Q&A with New York Magazine; it's as harrowing as it is informative.)

In addition to the challenges of catching a tick and any signs of infection, taking a diagnostic blood test too early can give false-negative results.

The tests screen for specific antibodies, which your body creates to fight the bacteria. Thing is, it can take weeks for these to build up to detectable levels. In the aforementioned doctor's case, it took three tests to confirm it was Lyme disease.

"Borrelia is also very difficult to culture from blood," says James Meek, a public health researcher at Yale University who studies Lyme disease. "Evolutionarily, it's a great little creature, but for us it's a terrible thing."

*Long-lasting symptoms are a chronic mystery*

About 10-20% of Lyme disease cases lead to PTLDS, according to the CDC. But that's something the new study calls into question.

The CDC's working definition for PTLDS requires an unambiguous diagnosis, symptoms that persist for at least six months, and functional decline.

So, you could have a miserable symptom, e.g. fatigue, arthritic pain, or fuzzy memory. But if you're not functionally impaired, as measured by a special quality-of-life assessment test, or you feel better after treatment but symptoms return many months later, then you're not a clear-cut case of PTLDS.

Dr. Mead, of the CDC, says the agency's 10-20% figure "is a generous estimate," since it captures any sort of lingering symptom, not only severe impairment. "The rate of those truly impaired tends to be a lower percentage, closer to 5%, which is still an enormous number of people," he says.

Still, the new study suggests* 36% of people treated for Lyme disease struggle with at least one lingering symptom, compared to the control population. That's roughly double the CDC's upper estimate, and it could mean more people suffer from the fallout of an infection in the months, and possibly years, after treatment than is widely known or accepted.*

Ultimately, it's very difficult to know if PTLDS-like symptoms are or are not related to a Lyme disease infection.

Some researchers suspect residual tissue damage or immune systems gone awry after an infection.

"You can think of it as the immune system being hyperactive — basically, a post-infectious complication," says Dr. Mead.

Others implicate stubborn "persister" bacteria that evade antibiotics. Still others blame confusion with "the aches and pains of daily living" rather than anything related to Lyme disease at all.

There's also this: *Ticks can carry multiple diseases and transmit them at the same time, called co-infections*, as journalist Michael Specter described in a 2013 New Yorker article:

[A]t least four pathogens, in addition to the Lyme bacterium, can be transmitted by the black-legged tick: Anaplasma phagocytophilium, which causes anaplasmosis; Babesia microti, which causes babesiosis; Borrelia miyamotoi, a recently discovered genetic relative of the Lyme spirochete; and Powassan virus. Some of these infections are more dangerous than Lyme, and more than one can infect a person at the same time. Simultaneous infection, scientists suggest, may well enhance the strength of the assault on the immune system, while making the disease itself harder to treat or recognize.

Although the new study didn't address other pathogens, it did find a strong link between Lyme disease and symptoms related to PTLDS.

On almost every PTLDS-related symptom, ranging from fatigue and joint problems to arthritis and chronic pain, Lyme disease was a solid predictor.

Symptoms like arthritis and neurological problems, in fact, were several times more likely in the months after diagnosis.

Accounting for both the reported and estimated unreported cases, according to the study,* the financial toll of treating Lyme disease and PTLDS-related symptoms could range anywhere from $712 million to $1.3 billion per year*.

"If we can find a way to control Lyme disease, then perhaps we could reduce these excessive costs," Meek says. "Maybe we could really learn what's going on" with stubborn symptoms.

The increased use of medical care among the Lyme group "seems at odds with the community standard of care and the Infectious Disease Society [of America] Guidelines for the treatment of Lyme disease, which do not call for follow up visits to document response to treatment in early Lyme disease," the study authors wrote.

In other words: The high number of Lyme patients seeking additional treatment long after an initial course of antibiotics suggests that so-called best practices for Lyme are inadequate.

The CDC would not comment on the PLOS ONE study or its results, telling Business Insider it has a policy against doing so "on papers with which we weren't affiliated." But responding to a general question about Lyme disease, the CDC's Dr. Mead told Business Insider that, after treating other kinds of major infections, it's not unusual for people to take weeks or months to get back to feeling normal. That perspective suggests that, among serious infectious diseases, Lyme may actually be perfectly ordinary, and that perhaps at least some cases that seem like PTLDS proper are just an expected part of the recovery process.

Dr. Gary Wormser, a Lyme disease researcher at New York Medical College and a primary author of the CDC's treatment guidelines, formally declined to speak with us about this study or the results. Many other clinicians and epidemiologists cited in the study didn't return our repeated phone calls and emails.

Adrion told us she wasn't surprised by the silence.

*"It’s a very controversial subject and few researchers want to talk about it publicly," she says. "Which is unfortunate, because what we really need is to have an open and honest dialogue about PTLDS and Lyme disease generally."*

Meek wasn't involved in the study but described it as good, important, and necessary, since previous studies relied on much smaller data sets or only examined the cost of lab tests.

"Being able to put a price tag on Lyme disease is very helpful," Meek says. "But they didn't look at people aged 65 and older. There's lots of money being spent on caring for [seniors] with Lyme disease, or who might have Lyme disease."

Since most people 65 and older use Medicare, not private insurance, Adrion says "it would have been an enormous undertaking" to merge the two data sets — but hopes to analyze that and other data in the future "to get a more complete picture of what is happening."

*Can we prevent Lyme disease?*

There's an effective way to fight Lyme disease and its growing human and financial ledger — a vaccine.

The first one was called LYMErix. Made by SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline), it hit the market in 1998, cost about $50 per dose, and was 80% effective in adults after two boosters within one year.

*But you can't get it anymore.*

Several forces led the manufacturer to stop selling that first vaccine in 2002 — not the least of which were outspoken anti-vaccine groups and their lawyers. Plaintiffs in one case claimed the vaccine caused Lyme disease-like symptoms in some people. GlaxoSmithKline eventually settled out of court, but an official follow-up study found nothing abnormal about the vaccine.

The US government also withheld approval to administer the vaccine to kids, even though younger people are one of the biggest demographics for infection. As any parent knows, most kids love to play in leaves, fields, forests, and other habitats crawling with ticks.

There was also strange professional disregard for Lyme disease during its initial rise, especially for the vaccine itself.

At an important CDC meeting to establish guidelines for LYMErix, for example,* "a noted infectious diseases physician said 'this is a vaccine for yuppies,'"* wrote Dr. Stanley A. Plotkin, an emeritus pediatrics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, in a hindsight analysis of what went wrong with the vaccine.

Another manufacturer had developed a second promising vaccine at the time, but it never pursued licensing following the lawsuits. At least one new vaccine is in development, Dr. Plotkin told Business Insider, but it's not ready for a public debut.

Until then, vigilant prevention and quick treatment with antibiotics will have to do until what some researchers call a public health fiasco can be turned around.

"Primary prevention is something where we're clearly losing the battle on," Dr. Mead says. "A safe and effective vaccine could help us turn the tide."

*LIVE LONGER: The scariest health risks associated with summer and how to avoid them*

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Should we kill off one of the most dangerous creatures in the world? Reported by Business Insider 2 days ago.

National Debt Relief recently shared in an article some facts to help consumers know more about their medical debt in terms of their credit score. The article points out some of the important things to know about the two.

Miami, FL (PRWEB) July 10, 2015

National Debt Relief recently shared in an article published June 26, 2015, some facts to help consumers know more about their medical debt in terms of their credit score. The article titled “What You Need To Know About Medical Debt And Your Credit Score” points out some of the important things to know about the two.

The article starts off by pointing out that medical debt is one of the reasons why a lot of American consumers are having trouble with their credit scores. But what everyone needs to remember is that many unpaid medical bills may be due to reimbursement delays from health insurance companies and sometimes even medical billing errors and disputes that have yet to be resolved.

It is also possible that there will be confusion with the billing process because some consumers incur a lot of medical bills that can come from the hospital, treatment sessions, and even professional fees. These multiple providers can add up to a lot of confusion. On top of that, he cost of services can sometimes vary from one client to the next because of factors like insurance.

The article also shares that there seems to be no standard practice in overdue bill reporting. There are, many times, no clear indication of when unpaid medical bills will end up on a credit report. Other debt collection institutions will wait until after a pre-determined period has passed before they report the unpaid debt to a major credit bureau. For medical bills, it can vary from 30 to 180 days. It depends on the health care provider decides they will send the report.

To read the full article, click on this link: https://www.nationaldebtrelief.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-medical-debt-and-your-credit-score/ Reported by PRWeb 2 days ago.

Congratulations!

After applying, waiting, interviewing, waiting again, and then finally negotiating an offer, you have a brand new job.

It's easy to get so caught up in the excitement that you don't stop to think about what this will mean for your finances.

Here are five things experts suggest you do before, or right after starting, a new job. 

-1. Make sure you understand your new compensation package.-

Job seekers tend to focus just on salary, says Cameron Laker, CEO and cofounder of human resources and recruitment firm Mindfield. But before you start your new job, you should sit down and review all the ways in which your finances will be changing.

"It could be something as simple as traveling further to work. What will the gas costs add up to?" he says.

Similarly, your new insurance may come up with a higher deductible. Or perhaps your old company was paying for your cell phone, but your new employer won't.

All of these factors can potentially cancel out a new, higher salary, so it's important to know where you stand so that you have a realistic picture of what you can spend. 

-2. Adjust your budget. -

If you're taking a lower-paying job to join an exciting new startup or follow your passion, you'll need to carefully consider how you're going to scale back. If you're going to be making more money, you'll have to plan ahead in order to avoid lifestyle creep. *
*

"Most people just let their spending increase with their income, when they should be saving more," says Robert D. Oliver, a certified financial planner. He recommends setting automated transfers to savings or investment accounts, or towards paying off debt. *
*

-3. Decide what to do with your former workplace's 401(k). -

If your former employer offered a 401(k) plan to save for retirement, you'll have several options: keeping it as-is, rolling it over (industry jargon for moving it) into your new 401(k), or rolling it into an IRA.

Oliver doesn't recommend the first option. "I'm a big fan of keeping things as simple as possible. If you have multiple funds lingering, it just makes financial management more complicated." But he acknowledges that if you have an excellent plan with good low-cost investments, like the Thrift Savings Plan for government employees, it may make sense to hold on to it.

For most people, he says, rolling over retirement accounts into an IRA is "the path of least resistance." Usually, it will offer lower-cost investments than their new 401(k). However, he points out that it's possible to take out a loan from a 401(k), but not from an IRA. While he doesn't recommend taking out a loan from your retirement savings, this is the type of detail that you'll want to be aware of when making the switch. *
*

-4. Change over your insurance. -

In many cases, you won't be able to start using your new health insurance plan until you've worked at the company for thirty days. During the transition period, you'll want to enroll in COBRA to keep your old coverage going, Oliver says. That can be expensive, since you'll be taking over the costs that were once covered by your employer, but it's still worth the peace of mind that comes from knowing that you're prepared in case of emergency.

Once you've given your notice, your company has 14 days to give you the option to receive COBRA coverage. If you say yes, your coverage will begin on the day after your benefits would normally end. 

Likewise, in order to make sure that your family will also be covered in case something terrible happens, Oliver also recommends finding out if your new job offers life or disability insurance. If not, you may be able to convert your former employer's group policy into an individual one.

-5. Understand how vesting works.-

Does your new employer offer vesting that will allow you to earn equity over time? If so, you'll want to figure out exactly how that works. Generally, companies will grant you options from the start, but they only become yours as they vest over time. Likewise, you may be given stock, but the company will retain the right to repurchase it if you leave, unless it has fully vested.

Timelines tend to vary from company to company, so you'll want to make sure that you completely understand what you're getting into, Laker says. "How long does it vest for? This could heavily impact how long you choose to stay at the company." Once you get settled in, you may forget to ask these questions, so it's a good idea to understand how your employer will be supplementing your salary before you start.

*SEE ALSO: 7 Things You Should Do When Contributing To Your 401(k)*

Join the conversation about this story » Reported by Business Insider 2 days ago.

House Democrats introduced pro-abortion legislation on Wednesday that would guarantee abortion coverage for all Medicaid recipients and women who are covered under a federal government health insurance plan.

The Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act, or the EACH Woman Act, was authored by Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee of California, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Diana DeGette of Colorado, and Louise Slaughter of New York. It has over 60 House Democrats as co-sponsors.

If the legislation passed, it would repeal the Hyde Amendment, a policy rider that bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion, except in cases of incest or rape, and end the decades-long ban on abortion insurance coverage for U.S. federal employees, military servicewomen, Peace Corps volunteers, and those insured by the Indian Health Service, Huffington Post reports.

"Make no mistake-- these lawmakers really do want to ban abortions altogether," Lee said at a press conference on Wednesday. "Since they can't, they employ these very devious and underhanded tactics to push abortion care out of reach for women who are really just struggling to just make ends meet, and that's just wrong. Politicians have no business interfering with a woman's private reproductive health decisions."

At the time of the passing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, 86 percent of private insurance companies covered abortion, while Medicaid recipients and federal employees plans did not. Since then, over 20 GOP-led state legislators have passed laws banning private insurance companies from covering abortion.

“In several states, lawmakers are singling out abortion and prohibiting insurance companies from including abortion coverage in their policies. The trend is fast-moving and startling: since federal health care reform passed in 2010, 5 states passed bans on abortion coverage and another 23 banned coverage in their exchanges,” the ACLU writes on its website in conjunction with a United States map showing abortion insurance bans throughout the country.

The states that currently ban all private insurance comprehensive plans from covering abortions are Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky.

Planned Parenthood has come out in support of the EACH Woman Act, calling it “historic.”

"For 40 years, the majority of Americans have been saying that abortion should be safe and legal," said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. "And that means it should be safe and legal for everyone – not only for those who can afford it.”

Some of the other supporters of the EACH Woman Act include over 65 members of Congress, the American Civil Liberties Union, Catholics for Choice, Center for American Progress, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, National Council of Jewish Women, Inc., Physicians for Reproductive Health, and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. The full list of supporters may be found at the All Above All website.

Sources: Huffington Post, ACLU, All Above All

Photo Source: All Above All/Facebook Reported by Opposing Views 2 days ago.

Democratic presidential hopeful renews calls for expansion of benefits and warns that Republicans will try to undermine Medicare and pensions

Bernie Sanders cemented his appeal to older voters on Thursday with renewed calls for an expansion of social security and protection of Medicare from alleged assaults by Republicans.Bolstering the two welfare programmes – providing pensions, disability and health insurance to millions of Americans – has long been at the heart of his pitch for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.

This post is adapted from remarks given at the New America Foundation's "Connecting Talent with Opportunity in the Digital Age," Thursday, June 4, 2015._________
In many ways, recent McKinsey research confirms our instincts: The world of work is changing in fundamental ways.

Online career platforms like LinkedIn and others link the individual to a broader universe of opportunities. They provide employers with access to a broader array of talent. And these platforms can facilitate quicker and more productive job searches and career decisions, which strengthens the entire economy.

Everybody likes to claim a "win-win-win" -- but this might be the real deal.

This dynamic, online economy will continue spurring dramatic changes in how, when and where people work -- and that will open additional doors to opportunity and mobility for more people, if we do it right.

This is yet another example -- as if we needed it -- that the innovation cycle is getting shorter and shorter. Technology has eliminated yesterday's restrictions on place and time. And technology is replacing and restructuring the "middleman" across much of our nation's commerce.

We need to help both workers and employers adapt to these changes. The McKinsey research confirms that a networked approach has the potential to fast-track jobs and economic growth.

It is ironic that this research is being released in Washington D.C. -- ironic because, in many ways, Washington has remained on the sidelines as the American economy, its workforce and workplace, have undergone the most dramatic transformation in decades.

Perhaps I recognize these changes because, for at least a while yet, I can still claim to have spent more time in business than in politics. I have launched businesses, failed at a few of them, and was fortunate to have gotten-in on the early days of the cellphone industry.

Later, as an investor and venture capitalist, I sat through enough pitch meetings to fill five seasons of "Shark Tank."

Of course, my Millennial daughters often remind me those experiences were "eons ago" -- you know, waaay back, in the mid-80s and early 1990s.

There's nothing like having three college-aged daughters to help you keep it real, right?

My kids and yours can access more information, and conduct more business, on their smartphones in a single week than their grandfathers could imagine over a lifetime.

My father returned from military service in the Second World War, and was in many ways a poster child of his generation. For 40 years, he worked for the same company.

He earned steady advancement over his career, and our family was economically secure through a social contract with his employer: defined benefits like health care and other insurance, and the promise of a decent and dignified retirement that combined his company pension, Social Security, and his personal savings.

Next came my generation, the Baby Boomers. We welcomed a more diverse workforce, and experienced the first waves of automation and increased globalization.

When Gen XERS joined us Boomers in the workforce, we began to job hop, changing jobs three, four or even more times over the course of a career. Each of those jobs typically came with a menu of employer-sponsored benefits, including insurance, health care, and retirement plans.

But we also began to see more employers move away from defined benefits and toward defined contributions: think of us as the 401k Generation.

Employers shifted more of the financial responsibility for retirement onto the individual, and many employers have tried to get out of the benefits business altogether. It remains to be seen if this was a positive move for workers, because we read every day about the looming retirement crisis.

Today, the next big generational wave, the Millennials, have begun to push the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers off the stage. Millennials are the 80 million Americans born since 1980.

The Millennial generation is now the largest age cohort: they recently leapfrogged over the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers in terms of sheer size. And within the decade, Millennials will represent 75 percent of the American workforce.

And as they enter the American workforce, the whole nature of the social contract between employer and employee has fundamentally changed.

If my father's generation could be called "the belt and suspenders generation" -- and my generation could be called "the belt or suspenders generation" -- in many ways, this new economy requires members of the Millennial generation to hold their pants up all by themselves.
Let's stop and think for a moment about the 80 million Millennials who are completely changing the landscape of work and commerce.

There is good news about the Millennials: We know they are the best educated, the most diverse and tolerant, the most technologically adept, and the most comfortable with disruptive change of any generation America has ever seen.

Most Millennials have grown-up in the glow of a computer monitor. Since childhood, most of them have maintained an online identity, networked in real time with friends.

Members of this generation can, if they choose, graduate from a college or university without ever stepping foot on its campus.

Armed with a tablet or a smartphone, they can successfully work for an employer, or for themselves, without ever sitting at a desk from 9-to-5.

And the only thing we can be sure of is this: they will continue to embrace even more innovation and disruption in traditional business models. Look no further than the prospect of driverless cars -- 3-D printing -- and same-day delivery by drones.

Yet here in Washington, too few policymakers are thinking creatively about ways to provide more Americans with more footholds into this new world of work.

Now, I want to be crystal clear: I'm not talking about making the new economy look more like the old economy. I'm talking about making this economy work better, for more people.

We have to become a lot more creative in how we provide new pathways to economic stability and upward mobility.

When you meet someone these days, the first question is no longer, "Where do you work?" The more appropriate question is, "What are you working on?"

That's because the convergence of these demographic, technological, and economic changes I've described has created a growing American workforce of contingent workers -- free-lancers, contractors and the self-employed. That's the good news.

As American business have focused on greater productivity and, frankly, as too many of them remain preoccupied with quarterly earnings, more employers have come to rely on this post- recession, on-demand workforce.

Let's face it: temporary workers and consultants cost a lot less than full-time workers with full benefits.

Whether by economic necessity or by choice, a growing number of Americans -- by some estimates, as much as one-third of the American workforce -- now piece together two, three or more of these on-demand opportunities to make a living.

It's called The Gig Economy, or the On-Demand Economy, or the 1099 Workforce. It includes a lot of young, invincible Millennials.

But it also includes middle-aged professionals downsized at mid-career.

It includes 50-something Baby Boomers - some of them my college classmates - hit with a premature end to what they thought was a solid career and a stable retirement.

Many of these new Gig Economy workers have enthusiastically jumped into this brave new world of work as a supplement to their income from a full-time job.

For others, it allows flexibility to stay home with a child, or to boost retirement income.

Others are drawn to this on-demand workforce by its promises of freedom and flexibility - the desire for higher pay, and the flexibility of setting their own hours. But the jury's still out on whether many of these Gig Economy jobs deliver everything that's promised.

And let's be honest for a minute: The Gig and Sharing economies also encompasses a lot of folks who probably roll-their-eyes at our new-found interest in this contingent workforce.

For them, working two, three, or more jobs at the same time is not new: it's how they've always gotten by -- and for a lot of them, it hasn't gotten any easier.

All of this technological innovation has not only begun to redefine work. It's also created an online ecosystem that is redefining commerce.

Online platforms like Airbnb, Uber, TaskRabbit, and Etsy provide broad reach to match supply and demand for things that people never thought about monetizing before: A room. A ride. A specific skill. Free time.

Many of the business models in the on-demand and sharing economies are built on the premise that workers are independent contractors, not employees.

Using independent contractors to do everything from laundry to food delivery means these businesses do not have to pay costs like health insurance or retirement.

They also typically don't pay a share of unemployment or workers' compensation coverage.

This represents a significant change in what remains of the already-frayed social contract. Remember: many of these traditional programs were built by employees and employers contributing jointly, by mutual agreement.

So today's on-demand workers, even if they are doing very well, exist on a high wire with no safety net beneath them. That may work for many of them -- until the day that it doesn't.

If these contingent workers no longer have access to health and retirement benefits, and they don't qualify for workers' compensation or unemployment, taxpayers ultimately will get the bill when things go badly.

This is why I think it is time for Washington to catch up, and begin asking tough policy questions.

1. The biggest challenge for this labor force, and for federal policymakers, is the change in the traditional employer-employee relationship.

So what are some other options for providing more economic security for workers who are not connected to full-time work? Who should be responsible, and how? Should it be opt-in, or opt-out?

We might look to the healthcare exchanges as a model, now that they largely appear to be working -- a market-based exchange for benefits beyond health care, where both the employer and employee contribute toward unemployment, workers' comp and other safety net coverage.

We could borrow an interesting idea from the building trades - the concept of an "hour bank." It tracks the individual's work for multiple employers or contractors, with a trusted third-party collecting and administering the employer's contributions for training, insurance and retirement programs.

Some other countries, primarily in Europe, are experimenting with pools where free- lancers put in a certain amount of income based on what they would need if they got sick or injured. That's worth looking at.

Part of the solution may be consumer-driven. Millennials say they want to work for, and buy from, companies which treat their workers better. What if the bill for ride-sharing or an Airbnb reservation included an option for the customer to contribute to an independent fund providing some of these benefits? A voluntary, consumer-driven system might provide one piece of a broader solution.

We are beginning to see some entrepreneurs and existing technology players move into this space.

For instance, Intuit, the TurboTax people, has developed a product to help micro- entrepreneurs track and pay their 1099 taxes. And I just spoke with a young entrepreneur in Virginia who's started a business called Painless 1099. It helps Gig workers handle their tax withholdings automatically.

So it's not difficult to see how these types of platforms could one day be built-out to offer provide access to insurance and retirement solutions.

2. In many ways, our current tax and labor system basically classifies workers in one of three ways: employed, self-employed, or not employed. So it's clear the distinctions developed over the 20th Century simply are no longer effective in addressing how we view a 21st Century workforce.

Litigation is underway about whether on-demand workers are independent contractors or employees. As one federal judge involved in the cases put it, juries are being asked to put a square peg in one of two round holes.

This is too important to leave to litigation. As policymakers, we should prepare to tackle these issues.

3. This speaks to an even larger issue. In almost every way, the federal government needs to become much more nimble. We've moved at less-than-dial-up-speed in developing new rules of the road for the digital world.

For one thing, we don't even have a clear sense of how many people are part of the Gig and Sharing economies. The numbers are all over the place: I've seen estimates its five million people (which seems way too low), and I've seen numbers as high as 53 million (which seems too high).

You have to size the problem in order to size the solutions. So last week, I wrote to Senate appropriators, and I strongly urged them to find the resources so we can begin to drill-down on the data about this contingent workforce. We could use much better information.

As policymakers, we need to make sure this brave new world of on-demand work doesn't just work for people in the Bay area, or in New York. It also has to work for people in Washington's Anacostia community, and for people who live in former factory towns like Danville, Virginia. That's why broadband deployment is so important. You can't be LinkedIn without a link.

We know many Millennials someday hope to work for themselves, and crowdfunding would be a great new tool for them to raise capital on the Internet from smaller investors. But it took three years - three years! - for federal regulators to get the first crowdfunding proposals out the door - and they're still not done. That's unacceptable.

We know a lot of Millennials and others are interested in starting their own businesses, and federal policymakers could be a lot more supportive. We have grants and low-interest loan programs for innovators and entrepreneurs - but they're scattered across dozens of federal departments and agencies. They exist in budget cycles of feast or famine.

Frankly, we could use a little more disruption here in Washington. Here's a novel approach: let's find out what works, and do more of that - and see what doesn't work, and stop doing it.

4. Another factor impacting Milliennials and GenXers is student debt. We need to consider the opportunity costs of this generation's combined $1.2 trillion in debt. I've pushed commonsense ideas to lower the cost of college, and make student debt more manageable for more people.

For instance, the same technology that allows consumers to comparison shop online ought to be extended to higher education. We collect the information but don't make it accessible.

I have pushed to make income-based repayment the default option, giving young people more breathing room when they're just getting started.

And while we currently only allow employers to help cover the cost of ongoing training, I've proposed allowing employers to apply pre-tax wages to help employees, if they agree, with their existing student debt. What a great recruitment and retention tool.

5. Finally, for all the talk about the growth of the Gig and Sharing economies, most of our tax policies and incentives remain geared towards rewarding ownership.

The sharing or renting economy is growing faster than ever, powered by a younger generation which clearly prefers autonomy and access over outright ownership. Governments at every level, and businesses of every size, will have to grapple with the ramifications of an economy that is built less on ownership and more on renting, borrowing and sharing.

I was talking just yesterday with Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, and he had a great observation.

He said the symbols of middle-class success for his parents' generation were a house in the suburbs, two cars in the garage, and maybe -- just maybe -- a vacation home someday.

On the other hand, he said the symbols of success for this generation include individual autonomy, collecting experiences rather than things, and building and maintaining a cool online reputation.

I've been thinking a lot about these issues, and I've been speaking with a lot of smart people actively engaged in the startup, Gig and Sharing economies. I don't have all the answers yet - but I think I'm asking many of the right questions.

By my count, almost 25 people are running for President. And it is remarkable to me that not one of them is talking about these issues.

We don't know what the disruptive technologies of tomorrow will look like. Five years ago, no one had heard of Uber, or Airbnb and Etsy.

But what we do know is that some version of the Gig and Sharing economies are here to stay. As policymakers, we need to ask the right questions, discuss the appropriate rules of the road, and know when we need to get out of the way.

I, for one, look forward to continuing this discussion, today and in the weeks to come -- and I thank you very much.

-- 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 2 days ago.

It would seem that one of the most pervading topics these days is the art of buying and selling. From real estate and investment banking to political campaigns and global economics, the relationships between money and society range from the subtle to the obscene.

As we head into an election year though, all of these intertwined value systems begin to come into a focus that in other times seems to be happening more or less behind the scenes of the average person's life. I've had more conversations about working wages, trade deals, campaign finance, equality and financial philosophy in the past six months than I've had in years. While it's easy to compartmentalize many of these topics it becomes more and more apparent that in actuality they are all tied together in an endless knot, not too dissimilar to the ones I remember trying to untangle in the Christmas lights each year.

Capital is king and if you have capital you are already ahead of the game while with out it, or access to it, the average American finds themselves being subject to it instead. What concerns me most about this dynamic is not that it exists but that it exists in a way that it hasn't ever existed before. The amount of money it takes to pay rent is often higher than it would cost someone to pay a mortgage for a space of an equal size and so one would think that owning your living space is a no-brainer. The problem isn't that every person couldn't afford to carry the mortgage as easily as they pay rent, the problem is getting enough capitol in one place at one time to make the transition.

For someone who lives from paycheck to paycheck, building up capital isn't easy. Sure, you can afford a descent living space that you have to rent from someone else... but doing so prohibits your ability to generate enough capital in savings to make the leap into ownership. Imagine (and most don't have to) if you knew that the only thing standing between you and owning a home was saving up $20,000.00 for a down payment and closing costs but because you spend all your money trying to meet your basic needs there was no way to get that chunk of change in one place at one time. If you could, you would happily invest it in a home that you could own right? So once you had that capital you could go right back to living the same lifestyle, making "enough" money only now you would have a fantastic investment.

The reason that example is so poignant to me is because of the number of people in our country that are currently in that position compared to those who do have the capital to make major life investments is pretty dramatic. We have 80% of the people with out the capital to accomplish this simple life goal and 20% who could easily afford to fund it with out batting an eyelash. While there are a million opinions on the subject there is one thing that has become clear. There is plenty of capital to go around, it just isn't going around.

While you look at this chart of capital distribution... ponder this list of other things that capital has the ability to buy/do:

Health Insurance
Retirement
Education
Child/Children's Education
Travel
Legal Fees & Court Costs
Non-Profit Donations
Relationships with Influential Americans
Illegal Activities
Political Campaign Contributions

It is clear to me that capital really is king. So when we allow so many people to have so large a portion of our capital... why is the crown they wear any different than the one we fought to claim our independence from? Simple... we're buying what they're selling.

www.itsreallyreal.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 2 days ago.

OLDWICK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A.M. Best has affirmed the financial strength rating (FSR) of A+ (Superior) and the issuer credit ratings (ICR) of “aa-” of Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada (Sun Life) (Ontario, Canada) and Sun Life and Health Insurance Company (U.S.) (SLHIC) (Windsor, CT) – the core insurance subsidiaries of Sun Life Financial Inc. (SLF) (Ontario, Canada) [NYSE:SLF]. Concurrently, A.M. Best has affirmed the ICR of “a-” and existing debt ratings of SLF. Additionally, A.M. Bes Reported by Business Wire 2 days ago.

Not long after the U. S. Supreme Court handed down its recent decision to save Obamacare, for the second time in three years, more bad news about the law made headlines. For 2016, individual health insurance policyholders should expect the cost of their coverage to increase, perhaps substantially.

"Health insurance companies around the country," The New York Times reported on July 3, "are seeking rate increases of 20 to 40 percent or more, saying their new customers under the Affordable Care Act turned out to be sicker than expected.... Blue Cross Blue Shield plans -- market leaders in many states -- are seeking rate increases that average 23 percent in Illinois, 25 percent in North Carolina, 31 percent in Oklahoma, 36 percent in Tennessee, [51 percent in New Mexico], and 54 percent in Minnesota."

While older, sicker people have taken advantage of Obamacare, young healthy people -- the client base Obamacare required in order to succeed -- have balked at signing up. "As a result," Senator John Barrassco told The Times, "millions of people will face Obamacare sticker shock."

The sharp increases are necessary largely because funding for the law was never adequately addressed when the legislation was being developed in Congress in 2009. To carry out what was then called "the $940 billion health care overhaul" -- that number would later be revised up to $1.3 trillion -- the bill's framers, working with the Obama Administration, included new taxes that were supposed to generate fresh revenue to help pay for the bill.

Among the bill's 21 new taxes were a tax on manufacturing or importing medical devices; an individual mandate excise tax, for those who violated the law and refused to purchase health care insurance; and, in one of the more peculiar developments associated with the law, a 10 percent tax on services provided by indoor tanning salons. The tax did not cover spray tanning, and physical fitness centers that did not charge for tanning services were exempt. But if you used a tanning bed at your neighborhood salon -- an activity enjoyed by 30 million people nationwide each year -- you had to pay up. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) projected the tanning tax would generate $2.7 billion over 10 years.

The tax emerged after the failure of a proposed 5 percent tax on elective cosmetic surgery, specifically breast implants and Botox injections, a so-called Bo-Tax. That tax was killed thanks to the aggressive efforts of lobbyists representing the medical and drug industries. They argued the tax, to quote The Times, "discriminated against women, who receive the majority of cosmetic surgery and anti-aging injections."

If the proposed Bo-Tax was "anti-woman," then so is the tanning tax. Seventy percent of tanning businesses are owned by women, compared to a national average of 26 percent in other industries. Also, 95 percent of tanning salon employees are women, while 75 percent of the customers are women. "They are still discriminating against women," Kathy Ray, a moderator for a salon owners forum, said at the time. "It's just changed industries. It hasn't changed the end customer."

Hers was not the only spirited response to the law. Joseph Levy, an industry executive, told one publication: "This is going to close tanning salons. You can't just pass a tax like this to customers and not have it hurt your bottom line." Closing salons, however, seemed to be the point of some lawmakers. As Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois wrote to his constituents: "Our proposal will deter the use of tanning beds by young Americans, reduce the risk of exposure to cancer, and save lives." To which John Overstreet, a tanning industry executive, replied: "What is next? Are these same special interests going to force the government to tax us for going to the beach and then subsidize sunscreen?"

One congressman, Ted Yoho of Florida, even called the tax racist -- a comment that made national news. "I had a little fun with [Speaker of the House John] Boehner and told him about the sun tanning tax," Yoho said at a town-hall meeting in Gainesville. "He goes, 'I didn't know it was in there,' and I said, 'Yes, it's a ten percent tax.' He goes, 'Well, that's not that big of a deal.' I said, 'It's a racist tax.' He goes, 'You know what, it is.'"

Incendiary comments aside, enough time has now passed to evaluate the success of the tax. So far, it has not succeeded in generating its projected revenue. Of the $2.7 billion to be produced over 10 years, $200 million was supposed to be raised in fiscal year 2011, but according to the Office of Management and Budget the Internal Revenue Service collected less than half that, $86.3 million. The numbers for the next three years were not any better: $91.5 million for 2012; $92 million for 2013; $92 million for 2014. The JCT predicted the tanning tax would generate $1 billion during those four years. The OMB set the actual amount collected at $362 million.

But here is the problem. Instead of increasing in coming years, revenue will dwindle since the tax is literally killing the indoor tanning industry. In 2009, the year before the tax went into effect, there were 18,245 tanning facilities nationwide. By the end of 2014, that number had dropped by 52 percent to 8,587 facilities. "In fact," Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins of Kansas declared, "the excise tax has been a contributor in the closing of more than 8,000 small businesses across the country and the loss of nearly 65,000 jobs."

If Obamacare is here to stay, funding for it must be addressed. The Obama Administration can't use gimmicks like a tanning tax to distract from who is really going to pay for this law: policyholders who will see the cost of their insurance skyrocket.

-- 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 1 day ago.

NAKHABINO, Russia — For the five years that doctors have battled the cancerous tumor pressing on her son’s spine, Elena Knyazeva has faced an ever-harder struggle to help him weather the pain.Diagnosed with virulent neuroblastoma at 4 months, Artyom — now 5 — has had multiple surgeries and rounds of chemotherapy. As a Russian citizen whose family has state-mandated health insurance, he is, in theory, entitled to all the benefits of the Russian public health-care system. Reported by Washington Post 1 day ago.

LOS ANGELES, July 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Health insurance lies, mobile payments, stock dividends, e-cigs and vapor, marijuana, customer loyalty; this week on MoneyTV with Donald Baillargeon. MoneyTV is the internationally syndicated television program all about money and what makes it... Reported by PR Newswire 1 day ago.

America still has a long way to go when it comes to transgender inclusion in the workplace, but some companies are championing the way by instituting policies and practices that embrace diversity.

"There are literally hundreds of major businesses that have adopted gender identity protections, gender transition guidelines, and, increasingly, transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits," Deena Fidas, head of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation's Workplace Equality Program, and co-author of the Corporate Equality Index (CEI), tells Business Insider.

The CEI rates almost 4,500 American companies and organizations on their policies, benefits, and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees.

Of the more than 300 companies that earned a top CEI score of 100% in 2015, 72 stood out as the best companies for promoting workplace equality for transgender employees.

The following companies offer the most transgender-inclusive health insurance policies; cover gender identity in non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies; have LGBT employee resource groups, provide diversity training on sexual orientation and/or gender identity; have a diversity council; publicly support LGBT equality under the law; don't engage in corporate action that would undermine the goal of LGBT equal rights; and provide gender transition guidelines:

According to Fidas, some of the earliest adopters of transgender-inclusive health insurance policies or the inclusion of gender identity in non-discrimination policies include Aetna, American Airlines, Apple, JP Morgan Chase, and Nike.

More recently, she said, businesses like CIGNA have created innovative programming like its LGBT diversity organization to foster transgender inclusion in the everyday workplace environment.

These kinds of initiatives are especially important considering the many barriers transgender people face in the working world.

According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 90% of those surveyed reported experiencing harassment, mistreatment, or discrimination on the job or took actions like hiding who they are to avoid it; 47% percent said they had experienced an adverse job outcome like being fired, not hired, or denied a promotion because of being transgender or gender non-conforming; and twice as many transgender individuals experience unemployed compared to the rest of the population.

"Employers that take meaningful steps to facilitate greater transgender inclusion in their workplaces, from non-discrimination protections to inclusive benefits, are not just doing the right thing for workers, but they are strategically setting themselves apart from other companies competing for talent and innovation," Fidas says.

"Comprehensively addressing transgender inclusion is critical to remaining relevant as broader social attitudes, as well as legal mandates, continue to advance."

*SEE ALSO: The 25 Best Companies For LGBT Employees*

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Jeff Bezos Slams Silly Google Perks Like Massages Reported by Business Insider 23 hours ago.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., July 10, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than one million Coloradans and more than 71 million individuals nationwide are enrolled in Medicaid, which is the primary health insurance program for those with low incomes. Community Health Partnership (CHP),... Reported by PR Newswire 21 hours ago.

The Obama administration set final rules for contraception coverage in workers’ health insurance plans, putting in place a plan that is unlikely to satisfy some religious employers who object to birth control. Reported by Wall Street Journal 19 hours ago.

The Obama administration on Friday issued its final rules for employers who morally object to covering birth control in their health insurance plans. The accommodation ensures that all employed women, unless they work for a place of worship, will still have their birth control covered at no cost to them, even if their employers refuse to cover it.

Under the new rule, a closely held for-profit company that objects to covering contraception in its health plan can write a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services stating its objection. HHS will then notify a third-party insurer of the company's objection, and the insurer will provide birth control coverage to the company's female employees at no additional cost to the company.

“Women across the country should have access to preventive services, including contraception,” HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said in a statement. “At the same time, we recognize the deeply held views on these issues, and we are committed to securing women’s access to important preventive services at no additional cost under the Affordable Care Act, while respecting religious beliefs.”

The Affordable Care Act, as originally written, required all employers except for places of worship to cover the full range of contraception, including intrauterine devices and the morning-after pill, in their insurance plans at no out-of-pocket cost to women. Since the law went into effect in 2012, it has saved women $1.4 billion on birth control pills.

The contraception mandate carved out an accommodation for religious non-profits, such as Catholic schools and hospitals, but some for-profit companies run by religious people sued the administration because they felt the law violated their beliefs about contraception. The Evangelical Christian owners of the craft chain store Hobby Lobby, for instance, believe certain forms of contraception are akin to abortion because they can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting into the uterus.

The Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby last summer and said the administration must provide an accommodation for religious-owned "closely held" companies, or companies in which five or fewer people are majority owners. The compromise issued on Friday was the administration's response to the high court's decision.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) expressed frustration on Friday that the White House had to accommodate the religious objections of for-profit companies in the first place, adding that she is working on a legislative fix to override the Supreme Court's ruling.

“Only a year has passed since five male justices told American women their health care decisions and benefits are their boss’s business," Murray said. "Already, we’ve seen employers across the country deny women access to health insurance benefits they have earned, and threaten a worker’s right to make their own autonomous decisions about everything from vaccinations to HIV treatment.

"In the 21st century, women should be able to make their own decisions about their own bodies—and no one should have to ask their boss for permission to get the health care they need. I’m committing to continuing to fight, along with the Administration and all my colleagues, to fix this Supreme Court-issued license to discriminate and protect the rights of women and families across our country.”

-- 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 20 hours ago.

Insurance companies will now be required to provide women with free birth control under the Affordable Care Act if their employers opt out of providing them with this coverage on religious grounds, the Wall Steeet Journal reports.

The Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) passed the rule on Friday, ensuring that women will be able to get birth control for free regardless of their employers' religious exemptions. 

Under the Affordable Care Act, women are entitled to "preventive care and screenings provided ... including all Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved contraceptives, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for women with reproductive capacity, as prescribed by a health care provider." 

In other words, health insurance companies are required to cover the costs of anything falling under the category of "contraceptive services."

Employers providing their workers with health insurance were required to cover the costs of these contraceptive services, too, until the Supreme Court ruled last year in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. that an employer had the right to refuse its female employees coverage if it conflicted with their religious beliefs.

But, as Justice Alito wrote in the decision, the court did not hold " that an insurance coverage mandate must necessarily fall" if an employer claimed religious exemption.

Because the mandate itself was not outlawed, insurance companies will now take responsibility for the costs of all contraceptive services not covered by religiously exempt employers.

*SEE ALSO: The future of birth control*

*ALSO READ: Here’s what happened when Colorado offered free birth control*

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How much sex you should be having in a healthy relationship Reported by Business Insider 19 hours ago.

Two years ago, a Gallup survey estimated the percentage of adult Americans without health insurance at more than 17%. Even at the beginning of 2014, as the individual coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act kicked, nearly 16% of Americans over the age of 18 were uninsured. The latest results from the polling organization currently put that rate at 11.4%, … [More] Reported by The Consumerist 15 hours ago.