Washington D.C., Jan 24, 2016 / 04:36 pm (CNA).- The youngest of James Lansberry’s nine children almost didn’t survive his birth. Born with no heartbeat, he was resuscitated and spent 11 days in the neo-natal intensive care unit. The medical bill was over $200,000.

Yet “every single dollar of those bills was paid,” Lansberry recalled, “and it was paid through gifts and notes and cards and bearing the burden from hundreds of different families across the country – people who I’ll never meet on earth, who took the time to not only bear the financial burden of my family, but I have cards and notes from 43 different states.”

Lansberry is the vice president of the Christian health-sharing group Samaritan Ministries, and has been a member since 1996. Instead of enrolling in private insurance or the public health exchanges, member families of health-sharing ministries pay a monthly premium that covers each other’s health care costs, and they can volunteer to pay even more for others’ needs.

When someone’s cost exceeds the limit of the sharable amount – $250,000 for Samaritan members – other members can volunteer to cover the additional costs.

“Health care sharing is specifically, as we practice it at Samaritan Ministries, is a lot like moving a piano,” Lansberry said at a Jan. 20 Heritage Foundation panel. “You can’t do it by yourself, and you need others to gather around you in a time of need when you can make that happen.”

Enrollment in health-sharing ministries is allowed under the Affordable Care Act, provided the ministries existed before the year 2000.

Membership in the three largest health-sharing ministries – Samaritan Ministries International, Christian Care Ministry or “Medi-Share,” and Christian Healthcare Ministries – has risen significantly since 2013, jumping from around 190,000 members nationwide to over 311,000 at the end of 2014, according to the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List.

The three ministries combined saw a total of $253 million in health care costs in 2015.

The author of the report on the ministries, Scott E. Daniels, credited their rising popularity in part to families’ desires to pay only for insurance coverage they need.

There’s also a demand for alternative health care providers spurred by the health care law’s individual mandate and its “values,” he added.

The “values” of the Affordable Care Act are not just abortion coverage and contraception mandates, Daniels insisted at the Heritage Foundation panel, but a much broader “secular ideal of communal solidarity” that coerces everyone into buying insurance so there are no “free riders” in society.

Health-sharing ministries are a response to these “values,” he added, because they do promote a community, but a “devoutly Christian” one of “bearing one another’s burdens” and “mutual aid,” without coverage that members would object to subsidizing like abortions and contraceptives.

In 2014, a government watchdog report found that in federally-subsidized health plans on the public exchanges, insurers were not billing abortion coverage separately, thus leaving open the possibility of federal dollars going to cover elective abortions.

“We need to go back to what we were as an early Christian community,” said Louis Brown, the director of CMF CURO, a Catholic health-sharing ministry that has partnered with Samaritan Ministries. This means “accompanying each other in all aspects of our life” and ensuring that the Lord is “Lord over everything” including health care.

CMF CURO was launched in October of 2014 as an alternative to the insurance exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act. It partnered with Samaritan Ministries to ensure compliance with the health care law, since only health-sharing ministries created before 2000 are accepted as legal substitutes for insurance.

Aside from the monthly premiums or “shares,” families pay a $300 out-of-pocket deductible for costs with a CMF CURO Visa debit card and 30 to 50 percent of costs up front, but they are reimbursed for any costs after that up to $250,000.

There is no reimbursement for morally-objectionable services like abortion, contraceptives, or in-vitro fertilization. Families cover one another’s medical needs along with personal notes and prayers.

Participants must live a healthy, Christian lifestyle: regular church attendance and no drug abuse and sexual immorality. They also must abstain from tobacco use – except for a special cigar or pipe smoke – and must submit a yearly recommendation from their pastor.

Most pre-existing conditions aren’t eligible for reimbursement unless “the condition appears to be cured” and a year has passed “without symptoms, treatment, or medication.” For more serious problems like Type 1 diabetes or a previous bout with cancer, the waiting period is longer.

Someone with these problems could conceivably enroll and rely upon the generosity of other members to cover their needs, however.

The ministry now has members in 48 states. 55,000 households have now enrolled with Samaritan Ministries.

For two families, the biggest factors in their decision to switch from the private insurance market and the exchanges to CMF CURO were the high cost and the Christian ethos – “conscience and cost,” as one member put it.

“The most immediate benefit has been cost-saving,” said Tim Mayer, a Catholic father of three from Manassas, Virginia.

The Charlotte Lozier report on health-sharing ministries found that member families paid anywhere from 45 to 60 percent less in monthly payments compared to market insurance, saving them hundreds of dollars a month and thousands per year.

The “deeper benefit,” Mayer added, was “the opportunity to take full responsibility for our own health and to take a more active role in managing it.” While normal private insurance is operated behind-the-scenes to the policyholder with insurers and providers negotiating costs, health-sharing involves considerably more personal oversight.

And it is important to have truly Christian health insurance, Mayer added, “giving the Lord more of our trust, in terms of providing for our physical needs.”

For Brooks Cross, a father of five from Hanover, Virginia, conscience played a key role in his decision to enroll his family in CMF CURO so that his premiums would not go to cover abortions, contraceptives, and sterilizations.

“Other people, if they want to live out Humanae Vitae, the Church’s teachings, they want to be fruitful and multiply and bring children into the world as a blessing, this is a way that other Christians just basically help you pay for that and make it happen,” Cross told CNA.

In the midst of a job change, Cross was searching for affordable health insurance for his family that would not subsidize abortion and contraception. However, “the rates were just so high,” he said of the private market plans.

After he and his wife prayed and searched, they found Samaritan Ministries and saw they would pay far less in monthly premiums. It was “kind of a leap [of faith],” Cross admitted, but added “it allows us to live out the Gospel.”

His family’s monthly cost for insurance dropped significantly. For instance, he ultimately paid only $300 out of pocket for his youngest child’s birth, on top of his monthly share payments.

Cross has been enrolled in CMF CURO for about a year now, Mayer for a few months. So far it was worked for both parties. Mayer said he would recommend it to any family shopping for insurance programs, provided that they don’t have a condition that might not be covered under the health-sharing plan.Photo credit: Syda Productions via www.shutterstock.com

  Reported by CNA 10 hours ago.

Few public intellectuals have a better grasp of the inherent injustices of our current economic order than the Noble Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. But when it comes to weighing the political reality of our current predicament Krugman's analysis, as put forth in a recent column, shows an astonishing lack of vision.

In an article titled, "How Change Happens," Krugman gives us political advice that one would not expect from the leading left-liberal voice on the New York Times' op-ed page. Krugman argues that we must dispense with the "persistent delusion that a hidden majority of American voters either supports or can be persuaded to support radical policies, if only the right person were to make the case with sufficient fervor."

"[O]n the left" Krugman continues, "there is always a contingent of idealistic voters eager to believe that a sufficiently high-minded leader can conjure up the better angels of America's nature and persuade the broad public to support a radical overhaul of our institutions."

Here Krugman grossly underestimates the power of a committed citizenry to make social change and fails to see that the United States is a different country today than when calls for a more "centrist" politics made any sense.

For example, the government's response to the 9-11 attacks of 2001 and the Wall Street crash of 2008, along with the political changes wrought by Citizens United and Republican gerrymandering have already "radically overhauled our institutions." Yet Krugman apparently has little faith in the idea that millions of energized citizens can have much of an effect on moving the country away from oligarchy.

Krugman points out that even though Barack Obama was an inspiring presidential candidate who talked about "hope and change," he still had to accept his limits.
[Obama's] achievements have depended at every stage on accepting half loaves as being better than none: health reform that leaves the system largely private, financial reform that seriously restricts Wall Street's abuses without fully breaking its power, higher taxes on the rich but no full-scale assault on inequality."\
Here Krugman misses a key point that animates the Bernie Sanders campaign: President Obama did not push hard enough for more radical reforms when he had the chance and missed his historic opportunity.

Let's recall that Obama decided before he had even begun with health care reform to refuse to give single-payer advocates a seat at the table while giving away far too much ground (such as the "public option") to the deep-pocketed campaign cash and lobbying prowess of Big Pharma and the health insurance industry.

Let's also recall that in 2008 Obama received large campaign contributions from Wall Street banks, and when he appointed a Wall Street insider, Tim Geithner, to be Secretary of the Treasury and brought in "Mr. Derivative" himself, Larry Summers, as his economic adviser, his efforts at reform were rigged from the start in favor of the banks.

Not one corrupt banker went to jail (not even Angelo Mozilo) when Americans across the political spectrum desperately wanted to see justice. Mortgage holders, public pensions, and state governments facing fiscal ruin after Wall Street ripped them off got little help from the Obama Administration. And the tiny tax increase on the rich merely reinstated taxes that George W. Bush never should have been allowed to lower in the first place.

Implicit in Krugman's argument is the bland acceptance of corporations and too-big-to-fail banks always running the show in Washington. The trick for progressives, he advises, is to let go of our "delusions," lower the scope of our demands, and appease those in power who have rigged the system to serve their narrow class interests.

Bernie Sanders wants to break the stranglehold giant corporations and Wall Street banks have on our political system by directly challenging their control over our "democratic" institutions. Sanders and his supporters are saying "Enough!" to this brand of corporate dominated politics and his ideas are resonating far more than they could have in 2008 or even 2012.

If the left, as Krugman claims, really is incapable of changing anything fundamental in Washington, then how is it that in 2004 George W. Bush could win re-election, in part, by capitalizing on GOP-backed anti-gay ballot initiatives in eleven swing states whereas today gay marriage is the law of the land? The center of gravity shifted very quickly on LGBT marriage rights indicating that it's possible that American politics could shift just as rapidly on busting up the Wall Street banks (which are totally unpopular), expanding the social safety net, and addressing the gross inequality of American society with massive new taxes on the billionaire class.

Opinion polls consistently show that the vast majority of Americans oppose Citizens United and believe that the wealthy and corporations have far too much power over our politics. And the demographic changes we're expected to see in this country could have a "transformational" effect that Krugman and other mainstream pundits cannot envision right now.

"I'm not saying that someone like Mr. Sanders is unelectable," Krugman writes, "although Republican operatives would evidently rather face him than Mrs. Clinton - they know that his current polling is meaningless, because he has never yet faced their attack machine. But even if he was to become president, he would end up facing the same harsh realities that constrained Mr. Obama."

Here Krugman says that Bernie Sanders' polling numbers right now are "meaningless," but the same thing could be said of Hillary Rodham Clinton's. With regard to the general election her polling numbers are equally meaningless.

Krugman also cedes too much power to the Republican "attack machine," as if Bernie Sanders is uniquely vulnerable. Yet the GOP's fearsome foot soldiers at Fox News, talk radio, and elsewhere failed to defeat Obama in 2008 and 2012 (even with the added advantage of being able to blow hard on racial dog whistles.) There's no evidence that Bernie Sanders is any more susceptible to the GOP assaults than Hillary Clinton.

After all, she also has never faced the GOP "attack machine" as the Democratic Party's nominee for president. It's fruitless to predict whether Sanders or Clinton would fare better against the Republican's army of Lee Atwater-Karl Rove inspired smear-Meisters. And if Trump wins the GOP Republican nomination in 2016 in my view whoever the Democrats nominate will have a HUGE advantage. (We will see the largest Latino voter registration effort in American history.)

Finally, Krugman cannot predict that a Sanders presidency would "end up facing the same harsh realities that constrained Obama" because unlike Obama, a President Bernie Sanders, with no SuperPAC or billionaire donors, won't be financially pressed to botch his historic opportunity, which will be only possible if he is backed up by an organized, energized, and mobilized citizenry ready for radical change.

Krugman concludes: "Sorry, but there's nothing noble about seeing your values defeated because you preferred happy dreams to hard thinking about means and ends. Don't let idealism veer into destructive self-indulgence."

Here Krugman leaves his readers with the idea that Republican-corporate domination of our politics is a fait accompli. Anybody not willing to accept this "reality" (i.e. Bernie Sanders supporters) prefers "happy dreams" over "hard thinking," which can only lead to "destructive self-indulgence."

For people on the left to accept Krugman's conclusion would only produce apathy and an acceptance of the idea that the American people can never muster the power to challenge the corporate oligarchy that has seized this country. I do not accept this defeatist view of social change in this country.

Let's review the recent history. The election of the nation's first African-American president was followed by a racially charged collective freak-out on the part of white "conservatives," not only in the Old Confederacy, but also in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, North Carolina and others. Quaking in their boots, white people elected some right-wing hacks for their governors -- Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, Paul LePage, Pat McCrory and others -- and sent to their state houses some of the nuttiest "Tea Party" politicians we've seen in modern history. In 2016, Donald Trump is the logical extension of this white freak-out that began the moment Obama was inaugurated.

Krugman knows how damaging the Great Recession was to the fabric of our society. He also understands that the vast gaps in income and wealth inequality that Bernie Sanders has made the centerpiece of his presidential campaign have corrupted our politics. He's aware of the recent Oxfam study showing that just 62 astronomically wealthy individuals control roughly one-half of planet Earth's wealth.

The U.S. presidential election of 2016, only the second since Citizens United, is already breaking all spending records and estimated to cost $5 billion (with a small number of unbelievably rich people, banks, and corporations the source of the lion's share). No other industrial democracy in the world would tolerate that level of corporate corruption in their countries' democratic processes.

And with the multiple catastrophes in American society right now directly associated with unchecked corporate power -- from the poisoned water supply of Flint, Michigan, to the raging gun violence everywhere else, from the grotesque injustices rampant in our prison-industrial complex and police shootings of innocent black citizens, to the social costs and economic insecurity that decades of stagnant wages have produced - Krugman should at least acknowledge that we could reach a state where "politics as usual" won't be able to withstand these retrograde social conditions indefinitely.

Unfortunately, Krugman's political views as presented in this op-ed fit perfectly into the corporate media maw that emphasizes horse-race political coverage and safe Beltway "analysis" that masks real shifts in our politics. The "political revolution" that Bernie Sanders is talking about doesn't fit into the corporate media frame that wastes precious airtime on Ted Cruz gaining a point or two in the latest Iowa Caucus poll.

"How Change Happens" is not by deflating and devaluing the idealism of left activism in favor of a "half loaf" or "quarter loaf" mentality.

When Obama was inaugurated and the Republican obstructionism started, rather than fight he blandly accepted the notion that winning 60 votes in the Senate was the "new normal." He therefore pandered to "moderates" like Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and Olympia Snowe of Maine, none of whom could ever win a national election and were all on their way to the ashbin of history.

No bankers went to jail; the Affordable Care Act got watered down without a "public option"; the economic recovery legislation was loaded down with tax cuts for big business; and Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan. And all of these things happened when the Democrats controlled the Congress and the presidency.

Krugman chalks this up to "getting half a loaf." But these stark compromises didn't help the Democratic Party politically when a dispirited base failed to show up for the 2010 midterms, thereby handing over the House of Representatives to the dead cold hand of John Boehner.

That's not "how change happens."

People power, infused with enthusiasm and knowing what a good fight looks like, is how change happens. Bernie Sanders is firing up the Democratic base, which is exactly the shot in the arm it needed after all the betrayals of the Obama years.

The fact is nobody really knows what are the limits of radical politics in this country right now. Without people like Bernie Sanders challenging us to test those limits the fight for social justice and progressive change won't stand a chance.

Workers fought for decades for elementary rights in the workplace; women fought for decades just to win the right to vote; African Americans and other minorities have fought hard since the start of the republic, and the civil rights struggle pushes on with Black Lives Matter, climate change activism has won recent concrete victories -- THAT's "how change happens."

Throwing a wet blanket on progressive activists in a primary election season saying they're "unrealistic" when they're fighting like hell to turn the Bernie Sanders campaign into a grassroots social movement -- the "political revolution" Sanders is calling for -- is not only unhelpful to moving the nation forward, but disparages those who make up the democratic wing of the Democratic Party by portraying them as naïve dreamers. Paul Krugman should rethink some of his ideas about "how change happens."

-- 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 8 hours ago.

TorFX triumphed at the 2016 Consumer Moneyfacts Awards, proudly winning the Best International Money Transfer Provider of the Year category as well as the overall award for Best Customer Service.

(PRWEB UK) 25 January 2016

TorFX triumphed at the 2016 Consumer Moneyfacts Awards, proudly winning the Best International Money Transfer Provider of the Year category as well as the overall award for Best Customer Service.

Ever since the company’s establishment more than a decade ago, TorFX has been fiercely committed to providing exceptional customer care and they were delighted with this recognition of their customer-first approach.

The awards, which this year were held on January 21st at the impressive Jumeirah Carlton Tower Hotel, London, are designed to showcase the very best providers from a range of financial services, including international money transfers, travel money, health insurance, car insurance, pet insurance and personal loans.

In the words of Moneyfacts, ‘the aim of the awards is to give the UK’s millions of customers a voice and a chance to reflect on how they feel about the range of products available to them. Combining honest customer feedback with the technically best products will reveal which provider is a true “all rounder”. The winners of these awards will then be able to prove that they combine technical merit with service excellence.’

After making the shortlist of ten finalists for the International Money Transfer Provider of the Year award as a result of independent product and service research conducted by Moneyfacts, the winner of the award was chosen by the consumer.

A survey compiled by Moneyfacts was sent to the customers of all nominated companies, with those receiving the best response coming top in their category. Results were independently verified by the University of East Anglia. According to Moneyfacts, feedback showed that ‘customers were impressed by TorFX’s competitive rates, professional approach and hassle-free transfer service.’

As well as securing the best consumer feedback for their own category of International Money Transfer Provider of the Year, the strength of the feedback for TorFX was enough to see them beat over 100 other companies across 24 categories – including Halifax, LV and John Lewis – to achieve the overall award for Best Customer Service.

Moneyfacts said of the result; ‘TorFX has been presented with the award for Best Customer Service at the 2016 Consumer Moneyfacts Awards. This category relies entirely on the opinion of consumers and TorFX customers are clearly very happy with the service they are receiving, making TorFX a deserved and outright winner of the customer service category.’

TorFX CEO Jon Beddell commented; 'We are thrilled to win these awards, and especially honoured to be voted by our clients as overall winner for providing excellent customer service. This is testament to the dedication of our employees.'

Previous accolades won by TorFX include being ranked highly in the Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 list of the UK’s fastest growing businesses on two occasions.

TorFX has offices in London, Cornwall and Australia and has grown considerably year-on-year since 2004 thanks to its investment in both people and technology. The company is part of a group which processes in excess of 3 billion Pounds in foreign exchange and international payments per annum, employing over 300 highly-skilled financial services employees.

As well as saving its customers up to 90% on the usual costs of international currency transfers by offering bank-beating exchange rates and a totally fee-free service, TorFX employs a large dedicated team of currency specialists to ensure its customers have immediate access to their own Account Manager.

The ability to build real relationships with its customers is what helps set TorFX apart from the competition and this latest achievement is one which underscores the company’s ethos of connecting currency while providing a uniquely personal service.    

Keep up to date with the latest from TorFX at:
facebook.com/torfx
Twitter.com/torfx
http://www.torfx.com

Contact Details
For further information about TorFX please contact CEO Jon Beddell Tel: +44 (0)7766056466

About TorFX
Tor Currency Exchange (TorFX) has spent over a decade expanding its range of foreign exchange services and building an international reputation for first-class customer care. The company holds the highest credit rating with Dun & Bradstreet, are licensed as a money transmitter by HM Revenue & Customs and authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. TorFX is also a member of the UK Money Transmitters Association and receives 5* reviews on Trustpilot for its first-class customer care and money saving services. Reported by PRWeb 3 hours ago.

Pleio's proven peer-to-peer approach to adherence integrates seamlessly with the health plan's own clinical resources to offer a unified support experience for members.

Boston, MA (PRWEB) January 25, 2016

Denver Health Medical Plan, Inc. (“DHMP”), the 2015 Pharmacy Quality Alliance Quality Improvement Award winner, has selected Pleio, Inc. to assist in their objective of continued growth of DHMP Star ratings by increasing the adherence of their Medicare members.

Michelle Beozzo, Pharm.D., Director of Pharmacy for DHMP stated, “We are excited to partner with Pleio; their non-clinical peer-to-peer behavioral change approach to improving member adherence, while integrating with our clinical pharmacists, is not only innovative, but a winning combination.”

The Pleio GoodStart® medication adherence solution integrates live outreach to members utilizing GoodStart Mentors™, data analytics, and a menu of digital adherence tactics to help members succeed on therapy and deliver dramatic improvements in adherence. Pleio has demonstrated increases of between 3% and 7% in Proportion of Days Covered (PDC) in broad, non-risk stratified populations of Star rated members.

Mark Connors, CEO commented that “since 2006, the Pleio GoodStart program has improved the health of millions of members through better adherence to medications. We are pleased to have the opportunity to work with such a progressive health plan, and amplify the effectiveness of their clinical pharmacists.”

About Denver Health Medical Plan, Inc. (DHMP)
Denver Health Medical Plan, Inc. is a nonprofit health plan created in 1997 to provide quality, accessible and affordable health care services in the Denver area. In partnership with the DHMP provider network, Denver Health Medical Plan, Inc. continually seeks to improve the health and wellbeing of its members by promoting wellness and disease prevention, providing access to culturally diverse comprehensive health services and enabling members to play an active role in their health care. Denver Health Medical Plan, Inc. provides health insurance for 20,000 members in the Denver area as well as administers benefits for a 65,000 member Medicaid Managed Care Organization (MCO). http://www.DenverHealthMedicalPlan.org

About Pleio, Inc.
Pleio is a leader in patient engagement and medication adherence. We instill lasting behavior change in patients though multi-channel engagement involving artfully-scripted, non-clinical conversations with GoodStart Mentors™, digital outreach, and seamless integration with retail pharmacy. Pleio’s proprietary adherence lifecycle management platform controls the timing and nature of all patient touch points in the GoodStart program, which delivers revenue, improves quality and reduces medical costs. http://www.pleio.com Reported by PRWeb 21 hours ago.

The idea of a property-owning democracy has long roots in American political thought. In their book, "The Citizen's Share," Joseph R. Blasi, Richard B. Freeman and Douglas Kruse argue that the Founding Fathers wanted everyone (well, everyone who was white and male) to own a small slice of property. Both Madison and Washington praised the relatively equal distribution of property in the United States (compared with Europe). Thomas Jefferson wrote, "It is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state." Indeed, the concept is still popular today, even on the right. James Poulos writes, "Without an ownership society, where citizens are prudent stewards of broadly distributed private property, freedom tends to become what it was in revolutionary France -- an abstract ideal that can easily arouse destructive political feelings that know no bounds." But new data suggests America may no longer be such a society, and that has worrying implications for democracy.The idea of a property-owning democracy is no longer the reality in the United States. Edward Wolff finds that the wealthiest 10 percent own 90.9 percent of all stocks and mutual funds, 94.3 percent of financial securities but only 26.5 percent of the debt. For the middle class, their home makes up 62.5 percent of their limited wealth. (The bottom 40 percent have negative wealth.) The Gini coefficient for net worth has increased from 0.803 in 1962 to 0.871 in 2013. (By way of comparison: A Gini coefficient of 1 means that 1 person owns all of the wealth.) As the chart below shows, financial instruments and wealth are far more unequally distributed than income.

The United States is no longer more equal than European nations, but actually deeply more unequal. The chart below shows that the United States has the most unequal distribution of the wealth of any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member country examined. Across the OECD, the bottom 60 percent own about 13.3 percent of the wealth. (The bottom 40 percent own only 3.3 percent.) In Canada, the bottom 60 percent own 12.5 percent of the wealth, and the bottom 40 percent own 2.2 percent. In France, the respective numbers are 11.6 percent and 1.8 percent. And in Britain, they are 16 percent and 4.7 percent.

In the United States, however, the bottom 60 percent own a mere 2.5 percent of the wealth and the bottom 40% own negative 0.4 percent of the wealth.

As wealth and stock ownership has become more concentrated, good jobs that lead to a middle class lifestyle are increasingly eroded. Unfortunately, not enough people seem to be noticing.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that "apps do your chores" -- but the unfortunate reality is that workers, not "apps," are doing those chores. The workers are called "contractors," instead of employees, meaning that they don't get the protections full-time employees do. And examples of exploitation are piling up.

A startup called CrowdFlower Inc. -- which, according to WSJ "breaks down digital jobs, such as data entry, into tiny tasks performed by millions of workers" -- was recently sued for paying some of those workers between $2 and $3 an hour. Industry leader Uber, meanwhile, has been criticized for exaggerating the wages of its contractors.  This practice is becoming widespread. A recent study finds that 53 million Americans are doing some sort of freelancing work. Of those, 40 percent are full-time independent contractors, meaning they have no other source of income.

The rich are driven by two main desires: First, to make sure they have more money; and, second, that someone else does the work. There is literally no job the rich are not lazy enough to outsource. Because they cannot figure out the location of their post office, they need "Shyp." With "Luxe," they can get a person to park their car for them. And with "Saucey," they can save themselves a trip to the liquor store. In a recent article for  The New Yorker, Patricia Marx describes some of the more absurd tasks that were included on TaskRabbit, including "Lego sorting," locating "a reptile handler who is in legal possession of a rattlesnake" and finding a fake wedding ring that looks just like a real one.

It is not of insignificant concern that the rich may cease to be capable of performing the basic tasks necessary in the modern economy. The result is something like the dystopia described in the recent science-fiction film "In Time," except that the rich elongate their lives by making the poor do their mundane tasks.

Robert Kuttner writes of TaskRabbit:To get an assignment, an aspiring Rabbit offers to do the chore for less money than he or she thinks other prospective Rabbits are bidding. That's what makes it a metaphor for the new economy, a dystopia where regular careers are vanishing, every worker is a freelancer, every labor transaction is a one-night stand, and we collude with one another to cut our wages.Together these trends should be worrying: The vast majority of Americans own no assets, but are instead laden with debt. The social safety net is being shredded by plutocrats and their political henchmen. Conservatives say workers should instead get benefits from their (preferably privately owned) employers. But those companies are supporting workers less and less: Defined benefit pensions are a thing of the past, and even basic retirement plans are in decline. And that's just for those who are lucky enough to have jobs with benefits. Many workers are misclassified, or are never employees to begin with, meaning they must manage for retirement and health insurance without all the benefits the government funnels through the employee-employer relationship.

As Matt Bruenig notes, in the United States,"employers often handle sickness (health insurance, subsidized by federal government), old-age insurance (401k and defined-benefit pensions, subsidized by federal government), survivor's insurance (life insurance, subsidized by federal government), family benefits (paid leave and health insurance for children), unemployment (severance, though more typically rely heavily on public unemployment insurance), on top of providing socially adequate levels of cash income."That is, government has funneled important social benefits through corporations. This not only makes a corporate job more cushy than otherwise, it also makes freelance work more precarious. Christopher Mims notes that, "Uber isn't the Uber for rides -- it's the Uber for low-wage jobs." A large portion of Americans now have two choices: Become servants to the rich for minimal wages, or starve to death. The idea that low-wage work is merely a short-term part of the rung towards a better life is also largely illusory: Upward mobility has been destroyed.

America has fallen into neo-feudalism: A wealthy capital-owning class exists behind a servile class with no assets, and only a life of drudgery ahead of them. The master-servant relationship will only further degrade social trust and civic values. Americans can't see themselves as equals in the political sphere when large portions are consigned to wait upon the whims of new aristocracy. Conservative politics relies on the middle class making a devil's bargain, believing they have more in common with the rich than the poor. It won't be long before that facade crumbles.

This piece originally appeared on Salon. 
-- 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 15 hours ago.

What the landscape of American politics has lacked since the summer of 1963 is a grassroots movement with enough momentum to force existing power structures to yield ground. To paraphrase the most iconic part of Lincoln's Gettysburg address: a movement of the marginalized, by the marginalized, for the marginalized. The need for such a movement is manifest to all but those who either benefit from the status quo, are blinded by unquestioning party loyalty or have been fettered by their pathological cynicism.

Why is such a movement required?

By the most conservative of estimates, the richest ten percent of Americans own almost 80% of the total wealth in the country. For the first time in four decades the middle class is no longer a majority. Perhaps the most disturbing and undermentioned statistic is this: the median wealth of the middle class dropped by 40% during the recession and is yet to regain any ground-while the median wealth of the richest one percent returned to it's pre-recession level by 2012 and has since risen steadily. The economic slowdown that wiped out the jobs and savings of millions of hardworking Americans left the affluent untouched-and in some cases wealthier. The ubiquitous slogan of job recovery is a sordid attempt at pacification that does not prestidigitate back the wealth of the middle class squandered by the unchastised sortilege of corporate America. While countless Americans postponed retirements after seeing their savings shrink, the overlords of the banks and mortgage firms that had triggered the economic slowdown retired with bonuses in the tens of millions of dollars.

There is no "trickle down" happening in this inverted pyramid of wealth, on the contrary wealth is consistently departing the lower and middle class and filling the already overflowing coffers of the rich. Let us also remind ourselves here that the trillions (literally) that should have been used to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, rejuvenate our failing school system and address the forty million people living below the poverty line have gone to bailing out the "too big to fail" corporate colossi that engineered their own implosions.

There is much that needs to change here. And that is not all.

The same corporations that have caused so much damage to the economy also exert their influence on government to the detriment of the American citizen. We have a lobby for everything under the sun. We cannot import affordable medications from Canada because it harms the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. We cannot have affordable, uncomplicated single-payer health insurance because private Health Insurance is a 900 billion dollar industry that donates generously to Presidential campaigns. Sensible gun laws cannot be legislated when 236 Republican and 75 Democratic congressmen receive donations from the NRA.

Worst of all, war itself seems to have become an industry. We have reached a point in the post-WMD, Halliburton and Blackwater world where there are competing narratives in the media about why and how wars are being fought. In 1961 President Eisenhower warned us that: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."

It seems that the warning was not quiet heeded; today half the political discourse is focused on fear-mongering and many on the Republican side advocate bombing cities and putting "boots on the ground" as if they were talking about a sport. Perhaps war is indeed a sport to them.
Thing is, this long awaited grassroots movement has arrived-in the form of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. Here is a chance to put in the Office of President an individual who is willing to fight for the subaltern and who has proven over and over in his political career his will and determination to do so. Many are yet to realize the significance of what this campaign constitutes. Here is a self-made politician who has built his career from scratch and who is not subservient either to lobbyists or to purblind party loyalties. Here is a candidate who has throughout his career as a congressman and Senator voted according to his conscience. Far more often than not, his vote has landed on the right side of history and the aspirations of the American people.

This is not an opportunity we can miss. Those who are still stuck on "socialism" need to start ignoring the unschooled canards floated by the GOP and Fox News and inform themselves about what the word actually means. Better still, listen to Bernie Sanders define what the "Democratic Socialism" he espouses entails.

There are those who insist that without the cooperation of Congress and Senate the presidency can achieve nothing, that one can only bring change by working "within the system". One could take this argument seriously were it not for the fact that the failure of Congress to pass sensible gun laws, the sabotage of the Affordable Healthcare Act and the immutability of the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich are staring us in the face. Unfortunately, what the Obama administration continued to do was to work "within the system" which allowed the GOP to block any legislation that ran contrary to the interest of corporate lobbies. The President of the United States is most certainly not a powerless puppet unless the office allows itself to be as such. In Bernie Sanders we have a candidate who will at least resist the influence of lobbies and use Presidential power to do what he constitutionally can to rid the country of the parasitic oligarchy that currently dictates terms.

Bernie Sanders is more than just a presidential candidate; he is the face of a wave of indignation from within every race, religion and ethnicity. He represents Americans who are tired of an establishment that is perpetually willing to sacrifice their futures at the altar of vested interests. Who reject a dispensation that cannot put aside party loyalty to legislate for the common good. Who are shocked and horrified by the war machine that one administration after another has kept feeding. Who believe that true liberalism does not merely raise slogans of liberty and equality but ensures that these rights are truly made inalienable.

Bernie Sanders will win Iowa, New Hampshire and everything after. The nation has awakened from its slumber and the oligarchic Bastille of the establishment should prepare to fall.

-- 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 15 hours ago.

Providence Insurance Group is releasing a new online platform called ‘PG 50’ to make Employee Group Benefits packages more technological and user-friendly.

Atlanta, Georgia (PRWEB) January 25, 2016

Group benefit plans are difficult to manage by the employer and even more difficult to comprehend for the average employee. Recognizing the obvious complexity of the employer-based insurance market, one Atlanta-based agency is reshaping how businesses think about group benefits. Set to release in January 2016, Providence Insurance Group will debut a new online platform called ‘PG 50’ to simplify the group benefits experience.

Founded in 1984, Providence Group has quickly climbed the ladder to become one of the nation’s top-rated insurance brokers, representing big-name clients in the Southeast and across the country. As the organization continued to carve out its role in group insurance policies, it found that the industry as a whole has been slow to adapt to modern technology.

According to Vice President Tyler Horton, “While group health policies have certainly changed tremendously in the past decade, one of the biggest changes we’ve seen is how individuals interact with this information.”

In an effort to transform group health insurance into a more technology-friendly process, the company created its ‘PG 50’ Platform, an intuitive online format for HR administrators and employees to review benefits strategies without all of the paperwork.

How The Program Works

The new end-to-end operating system, complete with an iOS and Android app, provides users with simple and intuitive options to review benefit enrollment plans, scroll through a carrier-agnostic insurance marketplace, and assess their personal benefits information. This user-friendly application streamlines the process for employer HR administrators who can review benefits packages for hundreds of members at once, while saving time, paperwork, and resources.

Group benefit packages can include any type of insurance policies related to medical, dental, vision, life, short-term and long-term disability, so keeping track of all of this information has traditionally been a major headache for clients. With the new ‘PG 50’ app, individuals can open a virtual member ID directly from their handheld device, making it easy to receive 24/7 updates and information about employee wellness programs. Clients can also review new enrollment options and financial benefit plans like HSA, HRA, and FSA without the hassle of contacting their company HR administrator.

Providence Insurance Group has clearly developed a major overhaul to how companies and individuals interact with group benefit programs. All in all, this new development is simply part of the broker’s larger goal to offer best-in-class services to its clients. While the health insurance marketplace is surely complicated, reviewing information about it should be effortless.

Group Benefits in Action

While ‘PG 50’ is still a few weeks away from public launch, the initial design has been met with overwhelming praise. The designers and advisors that have tested the app are calling it “convenient, easy-to-use and efficient.” Overall, the team is predicting a very positive result from the service’s launch as its clients are eagerly awaiting the system’s streamlined interface.

As Providence Insurance Group is committed to innovation in the insurance industry, it hopes that the new program will be the first of many steps in making group benefit packages more technology-driven. “We are continually searching out the most innovative, cost-effective, comprehensive benefit solutions for our clients,” affirms Tyler Horton. “We will continue to be a cutting-edge agency offering our clients the latest technology solutions for all of their business needs.”

About Providence Insurance Group

For more than 30 years, Providence Insurance Group has been one of the most trusted names in group benefits advising. The company is quickly becoming one of the most tech-oriented teams in the industry and is transforming how employers and individuals think about health insurance. To request a Quote or for more information about consultative benefit advising, the ‘PG 50’ app, or to enroll your organization in an employee wellness program, visit the company’s site at http://providenceinsurancegroup.com. Reported by PRWeb 14 hours ago.

Reported by syracuse.com 14 hours ago.

For decades, universal healthcare has been an important policy issue for Democrats. Party faithful argue that providing access to healthcare is a basic right that should be afforded to all American citizens. Data suggests that providing healthcare access benefits society both socially and economically. Furthermore, a provision for this program brings us on par with what other industrialized nations fund for their citizens.

However, many on the Right refute the notion that universal healthcare is a right because it is not explicitly spelled out as such in the Constitution. Others, regardless of party affiliation, oppose the idea based on an array of philosophical and economic reasons.

It's no secret that Americans disagree on their views about universal healthcare. Yet the divisiveness isn't about a lack of empathy for our fellow man. It's about a lack of clarity. There is no consensus about what services a universal healthcare program would cover, or how such a program would be funded.

By definition, universal means "including or covering all or a whole collectively or distributively without limit or exception; especially: available equitably to all members of a society." A universal healthcare plan, then, should be something that applies to everyone in pretty much the same way. There is a built-in expectation of equality and even simplicity in the concept. Unfortunately, there's nothing universal about any major healthcare reform that has been implemented or proposed over the last ten years.

Back in 2006, almost 70% of Americans believed it was the government's responsibility to ensure that Americans have health coverage. In other words, most Americans supported the concept of universal healthcare. And in 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama echoed this notion by saying, "I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country."

President Obama tried to deliver on this pledge by presiding over the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or "Obamacare") during the first term of his presidency. Obamacare was signed into legislation in 2010. But as the years passed, support for universal healthcare began to fall. By 2013, the first year of open enrollment in Obamacare, only 42% of Americans believed that it was the government's responsibility to mandate health coverage. It seems that Americans liked the idea of universal healthcare until they were presented with the myriad insurance plans, varying pricing options and high levels of complexity that went along with the Obamacare version of it.

By bringing many previously uninsured and under-insured Americans into a pool of covered members, the Affordable Care Act has forced insurance companies to take on considerable risk. Much of this risk has been passed on to consumers in the form of higher than expected co-pays, deductibles, and other rates of service that have made insurance, ironically, unaffordable for some. As a result, some individuals aren't buying health insurance at all. These folks are opting to pay the tax penalty for not having coverage because it's cheaper than buying insurance. Further, 19 states have chosen not to expand their Medicaid programs, leaving millions more without insurance. While Obamacare has expanded coverage for millions, about 10% of the American population is still uninsured. These are unfortunate and unintended consequences of a program that was supposed to provide universal healthcare coverage for Americans.

In an attempt to simplify the structure of America's health insurance system, Bernie Sanders has proposed his own "Medicare-for-all" plan. "Berniecare" would provide coverage for all Americans, for all services along the continuum of care. The program may sound simple, but the universality of Berniecare applies only to the fact that everyone in America would have healthcare coverage. Under Mr. Sanders' plan, the federal government would set guidelines that individual states would use to design their own programs. As a result, there could be at least 50 different approaches to implementing Berniecare across the country.

The Sanders campaign believes Berniecare will save the American people about $6 trillion over the next ten years. A separate estimate claims it will increase government spending by $28 trillion. It's hard to find agreement on the economic impact of the plan because it does not include many specifics, particularly with regard to how it will reduce America's unsustainably high cost of care delivery. It's an issue that worries Americans. A poll released this January indicated that 59% of likely U.S. voters consider reducing the cost of healthcare to be more important than making sure everyone has health insurance.

Our cost structure is too high to allow Americans to have access to all the care they want, when they want it. How can we afford to spend almost $100,000 on a course of medication for every hepatitis C patient? How can we financially justify providing 24-hour in-home care to every patient that wants to stay out of a nursing home and live independently? We cannot.

Until our cost structure is brought under control, we will not have a universal healthcare program in America. Therefore, the term "universal healthcare" should be eliminated from the political vernacular. Invoking the phrase will only cause confusion and frustration, as little consensus exists with regard to what it really means.

Instead, we need to advocate for ideas that improve the health of our citizenry, reduce bureaucracy and increase engagement in our healthcare experience. Patient-centric healthcare can be provided to every American. We just have to be prescriptive about what it means, how it's implemented and the terms of coverage for each of our unique constituencies.

-- 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 14 hours ago.

Fewer people than expected are purchasing health insurance under President Barack Obama's health care law, a report confirmed on Monday. Reported by WTHR 13 hours ago.

Reflecting slower than anticipated enrollment growth in health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has lowered its estimate of how many people will get coverage through the law in 2016.

In any given month this year, about 13 million people... Reported by L.A. Times 13 hours ago.

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

*Are Nixon’s and the Reagan administration’s crimes noticable on the scale of Clinton’s, George W. Bush’s, and Obama’s?*

Not much remains of the once vibrant American left-wing. *Among the brainwashed remnants there is such a hatred of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan that the commitment of these two presidents to ending dangerous military rivalries is unrecognized. *Whenever I write about the illegal invasions of other countries launched by Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, leftists point to Chile, Nicaragua and Grenada and say that nothing has changed. But a great deal has changed. In the 1970s and 1980s Nixon and Reagan focused on reducing Cold War tensions. Courageously, Nixon negotiated nuclear arms limitation agreements with the Soviet Union and opened to China, and Reagan negotiated with Gorbachev the end of the dangerous Cold War.

*Beginning with the Clinton regime, the neoconservative doctrine of the US as the Uni-power exercising hegemony over the world has resurrected tensions between nuclear-armed powers.* Clinton trashed the word of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and expanded NATO throughout Eastern Europe and brought the military alliance to Russia’s border. The George W. Bush regime withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty, revised US war doctrine to permit pre-emptive nuclear attack, and negotiated with Washington’s East European vassals to put anti-ballistic missiles on Russia’s borders in an effort to neutralize Russia’s nuclear deterrent, thus bringing major security problems to Russia. The Obama regime staged a coup against a government allied with Russia in Ukraine, traditionally a part of Russia, and imposed a Russophobia government as Washington’s vassal. Turning to China, Washington announced the “pivot to Asia” with the purpose of controlling shipping in the South China Sea. Additionally, the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes fomented wars across a wide swath of the planet from Yugoslavia and Serbia through the Middle East and Africa to South Ossetia and now in Ukraine.

*The neoconservative ideology rose from the post-Reagan collapse of the Soviet Union. *The doctrine met the need of the US military/security complex for a new enemy in order to avoid downsizing. Washington’s pursuit of empire is a principal danger to life itself for everyone on the planet.

Unlike Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, Nixon and Reagan went against the military/security complex. Nixon opened to China and made arms reduction agreements with the Soviets. Reagan negotiated with Gorbachev the end of the Cold War. The military/security complex was displeased with these presidential initiatives. Both left and right accused Nixon and Reagan of nefarious machinations. Right-wing Republicans said that Nixon and Kissinger were selling America out to the communists and that the scheming Soviets would take advantage of Reagan, the old movie actor. “Communists,” we were assured, “only understand force.”

*Nixon and Reagan focused on eliminating dangerous rivalries, and the three stooges—Clinton, Bush, and Obama—have resurrected the rivalries. Those who cannot see the astonishing difference are blinded by prejudices and their brainwashing.*

In this article, I describe unappreciated aspects of the Nixon and Reagan presidencies. What I provide is neither a justification nor a denunciation, but an explanation. Here is what Patrick Buchanan, who was in the White House with both presidents, wrote to me in response to my explanation:



“Craig, you are dead on in what you write about both Nixon and Reagan and what they sought in their presidencies. Reagan often talked of those ‘godawful weapons,’ meaning nukes. I was at Reykjavik with him, and was stunned at Hofde House to learn that Ronald Reagan pretty much wanted to trade them all away. And when, years later, Tom Wicker wrote favorably about the Nixon presidency, he accurately titled his book One of Us. All his life Nixon sought the approbation of the [pre-neocon] Establishment. Am deep into a new book, based on my experiences and my White House files, and all through it I am urging him [Nixon] to be and to become the kind of conservative president I wanted, but he never was. My thanks for bringing in The Greatest Comeback, which covered the period when I was closest to Nixon. All the best, Pat.”



Writing for Americans is not always an enjoyable experience. Many readers want to have their prejudices confirmed, not challenged. Emotions rule their reason, and they are capable of a determined resistance to facts and are not inhibited from displays of rudeness and ignorance. Indeed, some are so proud of their shortcomings that they can’t wait to show them to others. Some simply cannot read and confuse explanations with justifications as if the act of explaining something justifies the person or event explained. Thankfully, all readers are not handicapped in these ways or there would be no point in trying to inform the American people.

In a recent column I used some examples of Clinton-era scandals to make a point about the media, pointing out that the media and the American people were more interested in Clinton’s sexual escapades and in his choice of underwear than in the many anomalies associated with such serious events as the Oklahoma City bombing, Waco, the mysterious death of a White House legal counsel, US sanctions on Iraq that took the lives of 500,000 children, and illegal war against Serbia.

Reaganphobes responded in an infantile way, remonstrating that the same standards should be applied to “your dear beloved Ray-Gun” as to Clinton. Those readers were unable to understand that the article was not about Clinton, but about how the media sensationalizes unimportant events in order to distract attention from serious ones. Examples from the Clinton era were used, because no question better epitomizes the level of the American public’s interest in political life than the young woman’s question to President Clinton: “boxers or briefs?”

It is doubtful that journalists and historians are capable of providing accurate understandings of any presidential term. Even those personally involved often do not know why some things happened. I have been in White House meetings from which every participant departed with a different understanding of what the president’s policy was. This was not the result of lack of clarity on the president’s part, but from the various interests present shaping the policy to their agendas.

Many Americans regard the White House as the lair of a powerful being who can snap his fingers and make things happen. The fact of the matter is that presidents have little idea of what is transpiring in the vast cabinet departments and federal agencies that constitute “their” administration. Many parts of government are empires unto themselves. *The “Deep State,” about which Mike Lofgren, formerly a senior member of the Congressional staff has written, is unaccountable to anyone. *But even the accountable part of the government isn’t. For example, the information flows from the cabinet departments, such as defense, state, and treasury, are reported to Assistant Secretaries, who control the flow of information to the Secretaries, who inform the President. The civil service professionals can massage the information one way, the Assistant Secretaries another, and the Secretaries yet another. If the Secretaries report the information to the White House Chief of Staff, the information can be massaged yet again. In my day before George W. Bush and Dick Cheney gave us the Gestapo-sounding Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service reported to an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, but the Assistant Secretary had no way of evaluating the reliability of the information. The Secret Service reported whatever it suited the Secret Service to report.

*Those who think that “the President knows” can test their conviction by trying to keep up with the daily announcements from all departments and agencies of the government.* It is a known fact that CEOs of large corporations, the relative size of which are tiny compared to the US government, cannot know all that is happening within their organizations.

*Nixon: Villain or Centrist Reformer? *

I am not particularly knowledgeable about the terms of our various presidents. Nevertheless, I suspect that the Nixon and Reagan terms are among the least understood. Both presidents had more ideological opponents among journalists and historians than they had defenders. Consequently, their stories are distorted by how their ideological opponents want them to be seen and remembered. For example, compare your view of Richard Nixon with the portrait Patrick Buchanan provides in his latest book, The Greatest Comeback. A person doesn’t have to agree with Buchanan’s view of the issues of those years, or with how Buchanan positioned, or tried to position, Nixon on various issues, to learn a great deal about Nixon. Buchanan can be wrong on issues, but he is not dishonest.

For a politician, Richard Nixon was a very knowledgeable person. He travelled widely, visiting foreign leaders. Nixon was the most knowledgeable president about foreign policy we have ever had. He knew more than Obama, Bush I and II, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, and Johnson combined.

The liberal-left created an image of Nixon as paranoid and secretive with a long enemies list, but Buchanan shows that Nixon was inclusive, a “big tent” politician with a wide range of advisors. There is no doubt that Nixon had enemies. Many of them continue to operate against him long after his death.

Indeed, it was Nixon’s inclusiveness that made conservatives suspicious of him. To keep conservatives in his camp, Nixon used their rhetoric, and Nixon’s rhetoric fueled Nixon-hatred among the liberal-left. The inclination to focus on words rather than deeds is another indication of the insubstantiality of American political comprehension.

Probably the US has never had a more liberal president than Nixon. Nixon went against conservatives and established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by executive order. He supported the Clean Air Act of 1970. Nixon federalized Medicaid for poor families with dependent children and proposed a mandate that private employers provide health insurance to employees. He desegregated public schools and implemented the first federal affirmative action program.

Declaring that “there is no place on this planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation,” Nixon engineered the opening to Communist China. He ended the Vietnam War and replaced the draft with the volunteer army. He established economic trade with the Soviet Union and negotiated with Soviet leader Brezhnev landmark arms control treaties—SALT I and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972, which lasted for 30 years until the neoconized George W. Bush regime violated and terminated the treaty in 2002.

These are astonishing achievements for any president, especially a Republican one. But if you ask Americans what they know about Nixon, the response is Watergate and President Nixon’s forced resignation.

In other words, here is more proof that all the American media does is to lie to us. The US media is no longer independent. It is a servile captive creature that turns lies into truths via endless repetitions.

I am convinced that Nixon’s opening to China and Nixon’s arms control treaties and de-escalation of tensions with the Soviet Union threatened the power and profit of the military/security complex. Watergate was an orchestration used to remove the threat that Nixon presented. If you read the Watergate reporting by Woodward and Bernstein in the Washington Post, there is no real information in it. In place of information, words are used to create an ominous presence and sinister atmosphere that is transferred to Nixon.

There was nothing in the Watergate scandal that justified Nixon’s impeachment, but his liberal policies had alienated conservative Republicans. Conservatives never forgave Nixon for agreeing with Zhou Enlai that Taiwan was part of China. When the Washington Post, John Dean, and a missing segment of a tape got Nixon in trouble, conservatives did not come to his defense. The liberal-left was overjoyed that Nixon got his comeuppance for supporting the exposure and prosecution of Soviet spy Alger Hiss two decades previously.

I do not contend that the left-wing has no legitimate reasons for hostility against Nixon. Nixon wanted out of Vietnam, but “with honor” so that conservatives would not abandon him. Nixon did not want to become known as the President who forced the US military to accept defeat. He wanted to end the war, but if not with victory then with a stalemate like Korea. He or Kissinger gave the US military carte blanche to produce a situation that the US could exit “with honor.” This resulted in the secret bombing in Laos and Cambodia. The shame of the bombings cancelled any exit with real honor.

The Reagan era is also misunderstood. Just as President Jimmy Carter was regarded as an outsider by the Democratic Washington Establishment, Ronald Reagan was an outsider to the Republican Establishment whose candidate was George H. W. Bush. Just as Carter’s presidency was neutered by the Washington Establishment with the frame-up of Carter’s Budget Director and Chief of Staff, Reagan was partially neutered before he assumed office, and the Establishment removed in succession two national security advisors who were loyal to Reagan.

*Reagan’s Priorities and the Establishment’s Agenda*

When Reagan won the Republican presidential nomination, he was told that although he had defeated the Establishment in the primaries, the voters would not be able to come to his defense in Washington. He must not make Goldwater’s mistake and shun the Republican Establishment, but pick its presidential candidate for his vice president. Otherwise, the Republican Establishment would work to defeat him in the presidential election just as Rockefeller had undermined Goldwater.

As a former movie star, Nancy Reagan put great store on personal appearance. Reagan’s California crew was a motley one. Lynn Nofziger, for example, sported a beard and a loosely knotted tie if a tie at all. He moved around his office in sock feet without shoes. When Nancy saw Bush’s man, Jim Baker, she concluded that the properly attired Baker was the person that she wanted standing next to her husband when photos were made. Consequently, Reagan’s first term had Bush’s most capable operative as Chief of Staff of the White House.

To get Reagan’s program implemented with the Republican Establishment occupying the chief of staff position was a hard fight.

I don’t mean that Jim Baker was malevolent and wished to damage Reagan. For a member of the Republican Establishment, Jim Baker was very intelligent, and he is a hard person to dislike. The problem with Baker was two-fold. He was not part of the Reagan team and did not understand what we were about or why Reagan was elected. Americans wanted the stagflation that had destroyed Jimmy Carter’s presidency ended, and they were tired of the ongoing Cold War with the Soviet Union and its ever present threat of nuclear Armageddon.

It is not that Baker (or VP Bush) were personally opposed to these goals. The problem was that the Establishment, whether Republican or Democratic, is responsive not to solving issues but to accommodating the special interest groups that comprise the Establishment. For the Establishment, preserving power is the primary issue. As The Saker makes clear, in both parties the Anglos of my time, of which George H. W. Bush was the last, have been replaced by the neocons. The neocons represent an ideology in addition to special interest groups, such as the Israel Lobby.

The Republican Establishment and the Federal Reserve did not understand Reagan’s Supply-Side economic policy. In the entire post World War II period, reductions in tax rates were associated with the Keynesian demand management macroeconomic policy of increasing aggregate demand. The Reagan administration had inherited high inflation, and economists, Wall Street, and the Republican Establishment, along with Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, misunderstood Reagan’s supply-side policy as a stimulus to consumer demand that would cause inflation, already high, to explode. On top of this, conservatives in Congress were disturbed that Reagan’s policy would worsen the deficit—in their opinion the worst evil of all.

Reagan’s supply-side economic policy was designed not to increase aggregate demand, but to increase aggregate supply. Instead of prices rising, output and employment would rise. This was a radically new way of using fiscal policy to raise incentives to produce rather than to manage aggregate demand, but instead of helping people to understand the new policy, the media ridiculed and mischaracterized the policy as “voodoo economics,” “trickle- down economics,” and “tax cuts for the rich.” These mischaracterizations are still with us three decades later. Nevertheless, the supply-side policy was partially implemented. It was enough to end stagflation and the policy provided the basis for Clinton’s economic success. It also provided the economic basis that made credible Reagan’s strategy of forcing the Soviets to choose between a new arms race or negotiating the end of the Cold War.

*Ending the Cold War and Bad CIA Advice *

President Reagan’s goal of ending the Cold War was upsetting to both conservatives and the military/security complex. Conservatives warned that wily Soviets would deceive Reagan and gain from the negotiations. The military/security complex regarded Reagan’s goal of ending the Cold War as a threat comparable to Nixon’s opening to China and arms limitations treaties with the Soviet Union. President John F. Kennedy had threatened the same powerful interests when he realized from the Cuban Missile Crisis that the US must put an end to the risk of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.

With the success of his economic policy in putting the US economy back on its feet, Reagan intended to force a negotiated end to the Cold War by threatening the Soviets with an arms race that their suffering economy could not endure. However, the CIA advised Reagan that if he renewed the arms race, he would lose it, because the Soviet economy, being centrally planned, was in the hands of Soviet leaders, who, unlike Reagan, could allocate as much of the economy as necessary to win the arms race. Reagan did not believe the CIA. He created a secret presidential committee with authority to investigate the CIA’s evidence for its claim, and he appointed me to the committee. The committee concluded that the CIA was wrong.

Reagan always told us that his purpose was to end, not win, the Cold War. He said that the only victory he wanted was to remove the threat of nuclear annihilation. He made it clear that he did not want a Soviet scalp. Like Nixon, to keep conservatives on board, he used their rhetoric.

Curing stagflation and ending the Cold War were the main interests of President Reagan. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I do not think he paid much attention to anything else.

Grenada and the Contras in Nicaragua were explained to Reagan as necessary interventions to make the Soviets aware that there would be no further Soviet advances and, thus, help to bring the Soviets to the negotiating table to end the nuclear threat. Unlike the George W. Bush and Obama regimes, the Reagan administration had no goal of a universal American Empire exercising hegemony over the world. Grenada and Nicaragua were not part of an empire-building policy. Reagan understood them as a message to the Soviets that “you are not going any further, so let’s negotiate.”

Conservatives regarded the reformist movements in Grenada and Nicaragua as communist subversion, and were concerned that these movements would ally with the Soviet Union, thus creating more Cuba-like situations. Even President Carter opposed the rise of a left-wing government in Nicaragua. Grenada and Nicaragua were reformist movements rather than communist-inspired, and the Reagan administration should have supported them, but could not because of the hysteria of American conservatives. Reagan knew that if his constituency saw him as “soft on communism,” he would lack the domestic support that he needed in order to negotiate with the Kremlin the end of the Cold War.

*America Playing the Foreign Policy Game *

Today Western governments support and participate in Washington’s invasions, but not then. The invasion of Grenada was criticized by both the British and Canadian governments. The US had to use its UN Security Council veto to save itself from being condemned for “a fragrant violation of international law.”

The Sandinistas in Nicaragua were reformers opposed to the corruption of the Somoza regime that catered to American corporate and financial interests. The Sandinistas aroused the same opposition from Washington as every reformist government in Latin America always has. Washington has traditionally regarded Latin American reformers as Marxist revolutionary movements and has consistently overthrown reformist governments in behalf of the United Fruit Company and other private interests that have large holdings in countries ruled by unrepresentative governments.

Washington’s policy was, and still is, short-sighted and hypocritical. The United States should have allied with representative governments, not against them. However, no American president, no matter how wise and well- intentioned, would have been a match for the combination of the interests of politically-connected US corporations and the fear of more Cubas. Remember Marine General Smedley Butler’s confession that he and his US Marines served to make Latin America safe for the United Fruit Company and “some lousy investment of the bankers.”

*Information is Power*

*Americans, even well informed ones, dramatically over-estimate the knowledge of presidents and the neutrality of the information that is fed to them by the various agencies and advisors. *Information is power, and presidents get the information that Washington wants them to receive. In Washington private agendas abound, and no president is immune from these agendas. A cabinet secretary, budget director, or White House chief of staff who knows how Washington works and has media allies is capable, if so inclined, of shaping the agenda independently of the president’s preferences.

*The Establishment prefers a nonentity as president, a person without experience and a cadre of knowledgeable supporters to serve him. *Harry Truman was, and Obama is, putty in the hands of the Establishment. If you read Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the US, you will see that the Democratic Establishment, realizing that FDR would not survive his fourth term, forced his popular Vice President Henry Wallace off the ticket and put in his place the inconsequential Truman. With Truman in place, the military/security complex was able to create the Cold War.

*From Bad to Worse*

*The transgressions of law that occurred during the Nixon and Reagan years are small when compared to the crimes of Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama, and the crimes were punished.* Nixon was driven from office and numerous Reagan administration officials were prosecuted and convicted. Neither Nixon nor Reagan could have run roughshod over both Constitution and statutory law, setting aside habeas corpus and due process and detaining US citizens
indefinitely without charges and convictions, authorizing and justifying torture, spying without warrants, and executing US citizens without due process of law.

Moreover, unlike the Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes, the Reagan administration prosecuted those who broke the law. Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams was convicted, National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane was convicted, Chief of CIA Central American Task Force Alan Fiers was convicted, Clair George, Chief of the CIA’s Division of Covert Operations was convicted. Richard Secord was convicted. National Security Advisor John Poindexter was convicted. Oliver North was convicted. North’s conviction was later overturned, and President George H.W. Bush pardoned others. But the Reagan Administration held its operatives accountable to law. No American President since Reagan has held the government accountable.

Clair George was convicted of lying to congressional committees. Richard Secord was convicted of lying to Congress. John Poindexter was convicted of lying to Congress. Alan Fiers was convicted of withholding information from Congress. Compare these convictions then with James R. Clapper now. President Obama appointed Clapper Director of National Intelligence on June 5, 2010, declaring that Clapper “possesses a quality that I value in all my advisers: a willingness to tell leaders what we need to know even if it’s not what we want to hear.” With this endorsement, Clapper proceeded to lie to Congress under oath, a felony. Clapper was not indicted and prosecuted. He was not even fired or forced to resign. For executive branch officials, perjury is now a dead letter law.

*The destruction of the rule of law and accountable government has extended to state and local levels. *Police officers no longer “serve and protect” the public. The most dangerous encounter most Americans will ever experience is with police, who brutalize citizens without cause and even shoot them down in their homes and on their streets. A police badge has become a license to kill, and police use it to the hilt. During the Iraq War, more Americans were murdered by police than the military lost troops in combat. And nothing is done about it. *The country is again facing elections, and the abuse of US citizens by “their” police is not an issue.* Neither are the many illegal interventions by Washington into the internal affairs of other sovereign countries or the unconstitutional spying that violates citizens’ privacy.

The fact that Washington is gearing up for yet another war in the Middle East is not an important issue in the election.

*In the US the rule of law, and with it liberty, have been lost. With few exceptions, Americans are too ignorant and unconcerned to do anything about it. The longer the rule of law is set aside, the more difficult it is to reestablish it. Sooner or later the rule of law ceases even as a memory.* No candidate in the upcoming election has made the rule of law an issue.

*Americans have become a small-minded divided people, ruled by petty hatreds, who are easily set against one another and against other peoples by their rulers. * Reported by Zero Hedge 7 hours ago.

Sunday is the last day to buy health insurance on the federal marketplace to avoid paying a penalty. Reported by WEAR ABC 3 2 hours ago.

By collecting alumni data from the onset of opening for operation, MAP Recovery Network member, Mending Fences, will have science-backed results to demonstrate its rates of long-term success.

Morriston, FL (PRWEB) January 26, 2016

MAP Health Management, LLC, facilitator of the MAP Recovery Network, announced today that the recently opened Mending Fences has joined the Premier Outcomes-Driven Provider Network, to help improve its clients’ long-term recovery from addiction. By joining the MAP Recovery Network, Mending Fences will effectively navigate the changes to the evolving reimbursement model in the field of behavioral health.

The MAP Network is the preeminent standardized, outcomes-driven alliance comprised of addiction treatment providers who are dedicated to demonstrating their rates of treatment success. MAP Network members deliver quality addiction treatment, utilize resources to track and apply outcomes data, improve services and demonstrate the efficacy of addiction treatment. Along with more than 60 addiction treatment facilities who comprise the MAP Network, Mending Fences will differentiate itself to behavioral healthcare consumers by using data collected from its alumni and demonstrating its rates of overall treatment success.

“Mending Fences is a residential dual diagnosis program with a strong Equine Facilitated Therapy component as well as vocational assessment, skills training and job placement. We offer a comprehensive treatment program that I developed along with our Director of Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy, Dr. Marilyn Sokolof. Located on a 400-plus acre horse farm we provide a tranquil place for healing with the knowledge that extended recovery support following treatment will greatly enhance our client’s potential to overcome addiction”, commented Wendy Lader, Ph.D., M.Ed. and CEO of Mending Fences. “The vision of the MAP Recovery Network aligns with our mission to provide the most effective and comprehensive addiction treatment available.”

MAP strives to improve treatment outcomes for individuals struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. The company offers a variety of behavioral healthcare services including its renowned long-term Recovery Support Services program in order to help patients successfully transition from treatment to a life of sustainable, long-term recovery. With the advent of telehealth, MAP Recovery Network members are able to offer professional, extended recovery support to their alumni which has shown to enhance the likelihood of sustained recovery. Future plans include expanding the MAP Network beyond the field of behavioral health.

According to Jacob Levenson, CEO of MAP Health Management, “We understand the field of chemical dependency has evolved and addiction treatment providers are being required to validate their treatment success rates. Members of the MAP Recovery Network are armed with resources to collect data from their clientele and effectively demonstrate their outcomes. As health insurance payers and healthcare consumers continue to witness these enhancements the result will be improved addiction treatment.”

By treating clients suffering from addiction as well as co-occurring disorders, Mending Fences embraces the entire continuum of care. Membership in the MAP Recovery Network gives Mending Fences an additional opportunity to help its patients sustain long-term recovery through data-driven, innovative practices.

About Mending Fences
Mending Fences celebrated the opening of its operational doors in January 2016. Its comprehensive program provides the structure and sense of community required to build emotional skill sets necessary to effectively live a healthy and productive life free from the brain disease of addiction. The treatment program has been carefully and thoughtfully designed to individually provide the tools needed to understand the biological and psychological perspectives of the disease. By offering an extensive Equine Facilitate Psychotherapy (EFP) program, clients at Mending Fences learn how they relate to themselves and to others as they battle their addictions. Additional information about Mending Fences can be found at http://www.mendingfences.us.

Megan Atwater, MSW
Mending Fences
15530 Country Road 326
Morriston, FL 32668
Admissions: 352-566-2308

About The MAP Recovery Network
The MAP Recovery Network, The Premier Outcomes-Driven Provider Network, is comprised of quality addiction treatment providers committed to measuring outcomes data. MAP Network members differentiate themselves to behavior healthcare consumers and health insurance payers by demonstrating treatment success rates. MAP’s dedicated teams of research analysts, clinical directors, recovery advocates, technology professionals and billing experts work to improve patient outcomes, empower treatment providers with data, reduce costs and drive facility revenue. For more information see http://www.MAPNetwork.com and http://www.ThisisMAP.com. Reported by PRWeb 53 minutes ago.

Amityville will terminate health insurance for five long-serving former officials after a 3-2 Village Board vote Monday night, a move the board majority says will save the village more than $1 million in the coming decade. Reported by Newsday 1 day ago.

It has been another volatile, illiquid, whipsawed session, driven by the only two things that have mattered so far in 2016, *China and oil....* and stop-hunting algos of course.

A quick look at the former first reveals that after sliding gradually all session, Chinese stocks puked in the last hour of trading with the China's Shanghai Composite Index plunging 6.4% to 2,750, the most since the first week of January, and falling to the lowest level since December 2014. The composite has now plunged 22% in 2016 alone and is the world's worst-performing primary equity index this year.

Among the reasons for the crash was concern about a possible cash squeeze before next month’s Chinese new year holiday as well as further capital outflows amid signs of a slowing economy, Huang Cendong, Shanghai-based analyst at Sinolink Securities, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying. We find that hard to believe, as neither are news.

What is far more accurate is what Wu Kan, a fund manager at JK Life Insurance Co. in Shanghai, said namely that "*we are less than two weeks from the spring festival and it seems that most investors have no mood for trading any more." *Indeed, it appears that even the Chinese banana stand traders are tired of participating in a rigged casino and would much rather lose their money on other wholesome activities.

Furthermore, judging by the variety of predictions about what happens to Chinese stocks, such as these:

· China Fund That Beat 98% of Peers Says Time to ‘Buy in Bulk’ -BBG
· The Trader Who Made 6,200% on China Stocks Says Sell Now - BBG

... it is quite clear that nobody has any idea what is going on in China, or what is coming.

One thing that is certain, however, is that the Chinese government will continue intervening if not in stocks then in FX which it did earlier today in the offshore Yuan which had dropped 0.2% against the USD only to see the entire loss recovered after the PBOC intervened via "large-sized Chinese banks."

The latest Chinese crash, and continued oversupply fears initially sent crude falling below $30 a barrel. The two-day drop in West Texas Intermediate topped 8% after a 21 percent rally on Thursday and Friday, the biggest in over seven years demonstrating just what a volatile pennystock oil has become. Data on Wednesday may show U.S. supplies rose by four million barrels last week, keeping inventories more than 120 million barrels above the 5-year seasonal average. As a reminder, the sliding price of oil hasn't deterred Saudi Arabia. It won't reduce its spending on energy projects, the catalyst for yesterday's bounce.

And then, as if on cue, WTI and Brent both surged back over $30 after a few flashing read headlines carried the latest statement from the Iraq oil minister Adel Abdul Mahdi who told reporters in Kuwait City that Saudi Arabia and Russia are more flexible now on making cuts and cooperating, and that Iraq is ready to cut if others do so. The only problem is that Saudi Arabia has made it very clear *it won't cut *until either the marginal producers cut first, or it puts the marginal shale producers out of business.

Furthermore, it will only take algos a few hours to realize that such statements are merely an opportunity for the oil ministers to sell into especially after Angola nnounced it would boost crude exports to 55.8MM B/D in March, and will ship 58 cargoes, equating to 1.8m b/d, according to final loading program obtained by Bloomberg. This is up from 1.69m b/d in Feb., and 1.77m b/d in preliminary plan for March. In other words, the supply glut is not only not improving, but getting worse by the day.

And then this:

· *ARAMCO CEO NASSER SAYS OIL MARKET OVERSUPPLIED BY 3M B/D.*

For now however that is irrelevant, as algos saw the Iraqi headlines and ran with them, sending oil rebounding sharply from the lows and back into the green for the day, in the process pushing both US equities, which had tumbled more than 1% earlier, back to unchanged, while the US 10 Year which had tumbled as much as 1.94% overnight is back to just under 2.00%.

At last check, this is where we stood:

· S&P 500 futures up 0.2% to 1874
· Stoxx 600 down 0.8% to 334
· MSCI Asia Pacific down 1.6% to 118
· US 10-yr yield unch at 2.00%
· Dollar Index up 0.02% to 99.38
· WTI Crude futures up 0.9% to $30.55
· Brent up 1.4% to 30.98
· Gold spot up 0.6% to $1,115
· Silver spot up 1.1% to $14.39

Going quickly through the regional markets, Asian stocks traded in firm negative territory following the lacklustre close on Wall St., with sentiment dampened after crude pulled back from its largest 2-day gain in 7 years. Nikkei 225 (-2.4%) was pressured by the oil slump, while telecoms led declines amid losses from index heavyweight Softbank, which continued to suffer from Sprint woes. Elsewhere, the Shanghai Comp (-6.4%) weakened despite the largest liquidity injection conducted in 3 years, as oil weakness dictated sentiment, while outflow concerns also added to the downbeat tone. As a reminder, the ASX 200 was closed today due to Australia Day holiday. Finally, 10yr JGBs traded relatively flat, failing to sustain most its early advances despite weakness in stocks, as participants remain tentative ahead of Friday's BoJ policy decision.

Top Asian News

· PBOC’s Flood of Cash Keeps Money Rates in Check Before Holiday: China’s central bank conducts most reverse repos in 3 yrs
· China’s Stocks Fall to 13-Month Low Amid Capital Outflow Concern: Shanghai Composite Index plunged 6.4% to lowest close since Dec. 2014
· Hyundai Posts Lowest Profit in Five Years on China Slowdown: Slump in China deliveries overshadowed gains in the U.S., Europe, South Korea; 4Q oper. profit 1.52t won; est. 1.68t won
· Sumitomo Mitsui Profit Unexpectedly Rises 17% on Stock Gains: 3Q net 238.1b yen, est. 192.4b yen
· SK Hynix Profit Misses Estimates on Lower Memory Chip Prices: 4Q oper. profit 988.9b won; est. 1.04t won
· Some BOJ Officials Are Said to See More Easing as Close Call: Kuroda gave no hint of his appetite for more stimulus at Davos
· Hong Kong Feels Squeeze of Slowing China and Rising Rates: Stock selloff and Hong Kong dollar pressure unnerve investors
· Singapore’s 80-Cent Loans Not Cheap Enough for Distressed Funds: Asian secondary loan trading thinnest in decade, says SC Lowy
· Malaysia Brings Najib Probe to Close With No Graft Found: Najib has faced pressure to step down over funding scandal

In Europe, oil has turned around in recent trade, abating the risk off sentiment after both Brent and WTI re-took the USD 30.00 handle aided by comments from the Iraqi oil minister regarding production. European equities have been boosted by a turnaround in the energy sector, which was the laggard by a substantial margin throughout most of European trade today. It has recently turned around however, and lifted European indices off their worst levels.

In spite of a turnaround in risk sentiment, Bunds still trade higher (25 ticks), while the Dax (-0.7%) is lower even though one of its largest companies Siemens (6.4%) upgraded its EPS forecast. As participants await the release of Apple earnings after market today, it's worth noting that its German

Top European News:

· Lundbeck Said to Explore Options for Alcohol-Dependence Drug: Review may lead to a partnership agreement for Selincro
· Draghi Says ECB Credibility Hinges on Meeting Its Inflation Goal: ECB President says critics ignore risks of doing nothing
· Philips Earnings Beat Estimates on Jump in Medical Orders: 4Q Ebita ex-items EU842m, est. EU798m; confirms it sees modest comparable sales growth in 2016, expects improvements in the year to be back-end loaded; Philips’s Lumileds Draws Interest, May Get Lower Price, CEO Says
· EasyJet to Intensify Cost Cuts as 2015 Terrorism Hurts Fares: iscal 1Q rev. fell 0.1% on pricing, currencies
· Swiss Watch Exports Decline Amid Smartwatch Encroachment: Dec. exports declined 3.8%, pushing shipments down 3.3% on the yr to CHF21.5b, Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry said
· Dixons Carphone to Accelerate Closings as Sales Beat Estimates: Will reduce outlet numbers by 134 over the next yr as it combines its PC World and Currys stores, while inserting a Carphone Warehouse outlet into each
· Tesco Rapped by Grocery Regulator Over Treatment of Suppliers: Serious Fraud Office criminal probe still hangs over grocer
· U.K. Flirts With Failed Debt Auction as Analysts Wince at Depth: Analysts study chance as Jan. 20 offer barely oversubscribed
· Deutsche Post to Expand Parcel Service to Confront Amazon: Bild

In commodities, WTI crude fluctuated after Monday’s 5.8 percent retreat. Government data due out Wednesday is expected to show U.S. inventories rose by 4 million barrels last week, according to energy analysts. That would be a third week of gains. Oil is down almost 20 percent this year amid concern over brimming U.S. stockpiles, steady output from Saudi Arabia and Russia and the prospect of increasing Iranian shipments after the end of sanctions. Bets that WTI will retreat below $25 a barrel have reached a record high.

Iraq's oil ministers says Russia and Saudi Arabia are more flexible on cutting oil output and would agree to have an emergency OPEC meeting but says it would be pointless without an upfront agreement on production.

Gold for immediate delivery gained 0.5 percent to $1,112.94 an ounce. It climbed 0.8 percent last week as the turmoil in global stock markets renewed interest in the metal as a store of value.

In FX, haven currencies erased earlier gains. The euro weakened 0.2 percent to $1.0833, while the yen was at 118.29 per dollar. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, a gauge of the greenback against 10 major peers, increased 0.1 percent. The won fell for the first time in four days after South Korea reported economic growth of 3 percent for the fourth quarter on a year-on-year basis, retreating from a five-year high. Foreign funds have pulled $2.5 billion from Korean shares so far this year. Russia’s ruble strengthened 0.6 percent, erasing an intraday decline and clawing back some of Monday’s 2.5 percent drop.

EUR/USD drivers are similar balanced, risk off rally against fresh ECB stimulus keeping the pair on the 1.0800's for the foreseeable future. Oil was back on a USD 29.0 handle to send CAD, RUB, MXN et al all lower again, but recovering well in line with both WTI and Brent reclaiming USD 30.0 on fresh comments (from SA, Russian and Iraq) on production levels.

On the US calendar today we have the November FHFA house price index and S&P/Case-Shiller home price index. Following this will be the flash January services and composite PMI’s, before we get the January consumer confidence reading where current expectations are for no change relative to last month. The Richmond Fed manufacturing index print for January is also due out this afternoon. In terms of central bank speakers, comments from the BoE’s Carney (at 10.45pm GMT) this morning related to the December Financial Stability Report will be worth keeping an eye on. Meanwhile, earnings season rumbles on with 23 S&P 500 companies due to report. The highlight will no doubt be the Apple results which are expected post the closing bell, while Johnson & Johnson (pre-market), AT&T (after-market) and Proctor & Gamble (pre-market) are also due to report.

*Bulletin Headline Summary from Bloomberg and RanSquawk*

· Treasuries slightly higher overnight as world equity markets selloff, oil mostly steady; week’s U.S. auctions begin today with $26b 2Y notes, WI yield 0.86%, compares with 1.056% awarded in Dec., fifth straight 2Y auction to stop through.
· China’s stocks tumbled to the lowest levels in 13 months amid concern capital outflows will accelerate as the economy slows and support for the yuan eats into the nation’s foreign reserves
· The mismatch between trade data reported by Hong Kong and China widened to the second-highest on record in December, renewing speculation of faked invoices
· According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, China will steer clear of a hard landing and the government will contain the risks arising from its financial market turbulence
· While stocks are having a chaotic start to the year, investors are pulling money from securities that profit from higher volatility at the same time as short sellers are piling into bets that tranquility will return
· Mario Draghi hit back at critics of his policies, saying the European Central Bank must fulfill its inflation mandate in order to maintain its credibility
· Greece’s next bite of bailout money may turn into a movable feast if PM Alexis Tsipras can’t convince euro-area authorities he’s making good on his promises to fix Greece’s pension system, update its labor markets and close fiscal gaps
· U.K. government bonds have investors bracing for a failed sale. An offering Jan. 20 that attracted the lowest demand in nearly seven years might be a warning sign for buyers who haven’t balked at acquiring all the targeted debt since a March 2009 auction
· Across the U.S., the story is much the same. The world’s economic woes -- from China to Russia to South America -- are damping sales in the high-end real estate market
· Sovereign 10Y bond yields mostly lower except for Greece which widens 15bp. Asian, European stocks mostly lower; U.S. equity-index futures drop. Crude oil steady, copper and gold rise

*US Eveonomic Calendar*

· 9:00am: FHFA House Price Index m/m, Nov., est. 0.5% (prior 0.5%)
· 9:00am: S&P/Case-Shiller US HPI m/m, Nov. (prior 0.88%)

· S&P/CS 20-City Index NSA, Nov., est. 183.09 (prior 182.83)
· S&P/CS 20 City m/m SA, Nov., est. 0.8% (prior 0.84%)
· S&P/CS Composite-20 y/y, Nov., est. 5.67% (prior 5.54%)
· S&P/CS US HPI NSA, Nov. (prior 175.65)
· S&P/CS US HPI y/y, Nov. (prior 5.17%)

· 9:45am: Markit US Services PMI, Jan. P, est. 54 (prior 54.3)
· Markit US Composite PMI, Jan. P (prior 54)
· 10:00am: Consumer Confidence Index, Jan., est. 96.5 (prior 96.5)
· 10:00am: Richmond Fed Mfg Index, Jan., est. 2 (prior 6)

*Top Headline News:*

· Oil has turned around in recent trade, abating the risk off sentiment after both Brent and WTI re¬took the USD 30.00 handle
· FX markets continue to trade in familiar ranges, but clearly to the downside as sentiment is mostly sour
· Today's highlights include: US S&P/CaseShiller 20-City Index NSA, API Crude Oil Inventories, BoE's Carney and earnings from the likes of Apple and Johnson & Johnson
· Huntington Bancshares to Acquire FirstMerit for $3.4b: FirstMerit shareholders will receive 1.72 shares of Huntington common stock and $5 in cash for each share that they own
· Staples Shakes Up Management, May Go Without Office Depot: Demos Parneros, Staples’ president of North American stores and its online business, will step down by March 31
· Siemens Raises Outlook as Lower Tax Offsets China, Oil Slump: FY EPS will be between EU6-EU6.40, higher than a previous forecast of EU5.90-EU6.20
· Crane Co. 2016 EPS Forecast Range Below Ests; 4Q Adj. EPS Beats: Sees yr EPS $3.85-$4.15, est. $4.27.
· Obama Seeks to Expand 401(k) Use by Letting Employers Pool Plans: President wants $100m to test more portable accounts
· JPMorgan Reaches $1.42 Billion Deal in Lehman Clearing Case: Lehman said the settlement resolves 2 of the 3 major pieces of litigation with JPMorgan left over from its 2008 bankruptcy
· Paulson Pledges Personal Holdings to Back Firm After Assets Fall: Puts up his hedge-fund interests for credit line
· Traders Are Withdrawing Money From VIX Funds Like Never Before: VIX index of market stress jumps 33 percent in Jan.
· Flexible Workers, AI Keys to Future Success, Accenture Predicts: Companies must invest in AI, training, platforms, says firm
· Einhorn’s Greenlight May Seek SunEdison Sale, Filing Shows: Greenlight says it may propose changes including asset sale
· Retirement Giant Fidelity Now Wants Workers’ Health Insurance: To offer private health exchange for midsized firms
· Nexstar Said to Be Close to $2.3b Deal for Media General: NYP: Agreement is expected to be put on hold when announced, because Media General has already pledged itself to Meredith Corp.: NYP cites one unidentified person familiar
· Tesla’s Musk Says Held High-Level Talks With Chinese Government: Tesla is looking for a Chinese production partner but still “trying to figure that out,” billionaire co. co-founder Elon Musk tells a business conference in Hong Kong
· Verso Files for Chapter 11 Protection in Delaware Today

*DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap*

Global markets spat their dummy out again on Monday as oil tumbled yet again (over -7.5%) after the largest 2-day rally for 7 years. News out of Saudi Arabia proved to be a big driver in the European session, as the world’s largest crude exporter noted that it did not plan to reduce its investment spending on energy projects despite lower oil prices (Bloomberg). The risk-off sentiment once again dragged on equities, as European markets wiped out early gains and closed in marginally negative territory (STOXX -0.62%; FTSE -0.39%; DAX -0.29%) while US equities sold off in line until a weak final hour of trading saw the S&P 500 lose nearly an extra percentage point to close -1.56%.

Asia is following on from the US close with the Nikkei and Hang Seng down -2.4% and -1.8% as we go to print. The Shanghai Comp is around -3% lower and trading at 13 month lows. Oil has continued its slide from yesterday, declining around -2.5%. Just after we went to print yesterday the futures contract hit $32.73. 24 hours later it’s at $29.57 - nearly 10% lower from the highs. With high impact news-flow from China easing for now, Oil has taken over as the main global markets driver at the moment and when you get swings like we've seen since last Wednesday evening, sentiment is going to be messy.

Obvious one of the asset classes most in focus over the last few months and one closely tied to the price of Oil has been US credit. Yesterday our US credit strategist Oleg Melentyev published an update which included looking at how the market has rarely been as dislocated (less than 15% of HY trading within 100bps of the overall index - close to the lowest ever) but at least showing signs of fair value re-emerging. As Oleg discusses, HY ex-energy has widened 80bps so far in 2016, and 115bp since early December; currently standing at 667bp. IG ex-energy spreads at 168bp are +17 and +21bps respectively over those time horizons. Both markets have now modestly overshot his targets of 650bp and 155bp respectively. Oleg worries that if credit widens much more it could reach the point of no return and become even more self fulfilling. In the note he also looks at their lead indicators for the default cycle with many of them recently reaching critical levels. So overall value re-emerging but with risk that we could be near a tipping point in some of the market drivers.

Back to markets, data releases out yesterday were largely disappointing and did little to help the risk off sentiment across markets. The German IFO survey data for January missed estimates as the business expectations index fell to 102.4 (vs. 104.2 expected; 104.6 previous) and the business climate index fell  to 107.3 (vs. 108.4 expected; 108.6 previous). Data out of Italy was also soft, as retail sales numbers for November posted only +0.3% mom (vs. +0.5% expected) and increased concerns that the country’s economic recovery may already be losing momentum. The UK saw factory orders data for the three months to January dip more than expected as indicated by the CBI order book balance (-15 vs. -10 expected; -7 previous). On a somewhat positive note, optimism about the general business environment increased to -4 (vs. -12 prior) over the same period.

Data out of the US was also negative, as the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey reported a sharp drop in broader business conditions, as the general business activity index for January came in at -34.6 (vs. -14.5 expected; -21.6 previous) – the lowest levels since April 2009. Texas manufacturing activity also fell sharply to near recession levels with the production index dropping to -10.2 (vs. 12.7 previous), while the general Company outlook index came in at -19.5 (vs. - 10.5 previous).

Looking at today’s calendar, with no data due in Europe this morning it’s all eyes on the US session where there are a number of releases due. Kicking things off will be the latest housing market data where we’ve got the November FHFA house price index and S&P/Case-Shiller home price index prints both expected. Following this will be the flash January services and composite PMI’s, before we get the January consumer confidence reading where current expectations are for no change relative to last month. The Richmond Fed manufacturing index print for January is also due out this afternoon. In terms of central bank speakers, comments from the BoE’s Carney (at 10.45pm GMT) this morning related to the December Financial Stability Report will be worth keeping an eye on. Meanwhile, earnings season rumbles on with 23 S&P 500 companies due to report. The highlight will no doubt be the Apple results which are expected post the closing bell, while Johnson & Johnson (pre-market), AT&T (after-market) and Proctor & Gamble (pre-market) are also due to report. Reported by Zero Hedge 23 hours ago.

Sunday is the last day to purchase health insurance on the federal marketplace to avoid paying a penalty. Reported by cbs4.com 21 hours ago.

Update: You've probably noticed that Wright on Health posts have been few and far between lately. The simple explanation is that academic life pre-tenure is time consuming--especially when you try to be attentive to other even more important things like being a husband and father--and writing a blog, as important and personally fulfilling as it is, doesn't "count" towards my success in those areas. And I'm not paid to write this blog, so it necessarily takes a back seat to everything else. In fact, several times, I've considered hanging up the blog altogether. But I maintain hope that I will one day find the time to blog more regularly once again. At any rate, if you're reading this, I thought you deserved an explanation for my absence, and I couldn't just write you this update without an accompanying post, so here you go.....

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released new projections on the number of Americans expected to sign up for health insurance through the ACA/Obamacare Marketplace in 2016. If you're the kind of person who likes to see things for yourself, take a look at page 69 of this report. You have to go digging around in the footnotes, but there you'll find that CBO originally projected 21 million Americans to purchase coverage through the Marketplace in 2016, a number they've now revised downward to just 13 million. As is being widely reported this morning from outlets like The Hill, that's a 40% reduction. There are two ways you're likely to respond to that information, assuming you pay it any mind at all.

The first is to think: "Wow. The government really got it wrong. They missed the mark on that one." And that's absolutely right. Now, how you spin that is a matter of your pre-existing political beliefs. If you're more progressive, you're probably inclined to discount that failure. "No one has a crystal ball," you might say. "Of course their numbers are going to be off sometimes," your buddy will chime in. Conversely, if you're more conservative, you'll jump to the obvious conclusion that this is simply more evidence of government ineptitude. "They can't ever get anything right," you might say. "Yeah, tell me about it. Thanks, Obama!" your buddy will reply sarcastically. While it might seem, given their diametrical opposition, that one of these perspectives must be true and the other false, let me suggest that other from the obvious fact that the CBO's projection was off target, they're both wrong in their interpretation of that.

The second, and I would submit more accurate, way to think about this is to dig a little deeper and ask what it truly means. Although they can be interpreted at will, the numbers don't lie. The CBO estimate was off target. This mistaken projection should neither be written off by the progressive, nor given undo importance as evidence of government's incompetence by the conservative. The truth is that, to the extent that Obamacare's major goal was to reduce the number of uninsured Americans, it has been a success. The rate of uninsured Americans is the lowest it has ever been since we started tracking that data more than 50 years ago. At the same time, the country still has a long way to go if the goal is to ensure that every American has some form of health insurance coverage. In that respect, Obamacare has underperformed. The CBO projections have proven to be overly optimistic. The reduction in the number of uninsured seems to be leveling off. In short, we're approaching a floor. Now, on the other side of that floor, there are people who qualify for benefits under the ACA as originally enacted. The question we face now is how to improve implementation and outreach efforts. First off, there are the 20 states that have still refused to expand their Medicaid programs, denying insurance coverage to their most vulnerable residents. Unfortunately, there's not much the Obama administration can do about that. But then there are the Marketplaces and it's imperative that we do more to make sure that people are knowledgeable about how they work, how to find out if they are eligible for subsidies, and how to get and keep coverage. An alarming number of people signed up for coverage and then never sent in their first premium payment, so their policies were never in force. There are certified application counselors and the like out there, but we also need to better understand the barriers people face in navigating our complex healthcare system. This is public policy and community outreach. This is health services research and implementation science. The point is, it's going to take a real concerted and ongoing push from many fronts to break through the floor. Millions of Americans would benefit. It is up to us to help them.

-- 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.

The healthcare industry isn't known for its consumer friendliness.

That's starting to change. It's possible to unlock the secrets of your DNA by spitting into a tube and mailing it to a lab, and keeping track of every step we take is as seamless as carrying around our phones.

Still, we've got a long way to go before we'll be able to diagnose and treat ourselves without the help of a doctor. For example, most of us know very little about the cost of our medications, and the vast majority of us have no idea what separates one health insurance plan from another.

What can't be denied, however, is that a health revolution is beginning to taking shape. Pharmaceutical villains like Martin Shkreli are increasing public awareness of issues with drug pricing. Companies like Fitbit and Apple are vying for the attention of increasingly data-savvy millennial buyers.

With that in mind, Business Insider sat down with industry leaders at JPMorgan's annual healthcare conference this month to get a sharper picture of what the real consumer revolution might look like. Here's what they had to say:

*The first step: Changing how we see our health*

There were a fair amount of skeptics, who said that the only way a consumer revolution would happen is if consumer behaviors around healthcare change. People haven't seemed interested in learning more about their genetic information or other health metrics when they're healthy. 

“I thought that everyone would jump at having their DNA sequenced and stored in a cloud," said Andre Choulika, the CEO of Cellectis, a company that is using gene editing to treat cancer. "But it’s going to be either a government initiative to force people to have their DNA sequenced, or by personal initiative it's not going to happen. Even if it costs $100, people will not do it.”

Early in the week, Takeda's chief digital officer, Bruno Villetelle brought up the concept of becoming the "CEO" of your health, or more simply, the one in charge of what goes on in your body, both when feeling fine and feeling sick.

“It's a double edged sword,” Christian Schetter, the CEO of Rigontec, a German company that is developing a new way to approach cancer treatment using RNA said of a consumer revolution. “Be aware that if you're really the CEO of your health you have enough safety networks to not fail with that.”

*Will we ever be able to diagnose ourselves?*

As consumers get more involved with their health, the question of whether it might be feasible to remove doctors from the equation has been tested out in everything from genetic sequencing to "revolutionary" finger-prick blood tests. But those who try to go directly to the consumer, face some serious resistance from regulators.

“The worst thing you can do in facing with the FDA is offer a test directly to the consumer,” Genalyte CEO Cary Gunn said. His company is developing a way to rapidly test for diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis using a single drop of blood, a test Gunn expects to use only with a physician involved.

When it comes to genetic testing, there's some information that's just plain fun, while other information has the potential to be acted upon in a way that could change your health. Piraye Beim, the founder and CEO of Celmatix, a company that is working to bring personalized medicine to women's health using genetics, made the analogy of a drug store, with both prescription and over-the-counter drugs as a way to differentiate what kinds of genetic information should be allowed to be shared and when.

“Just like there are drugs you have to order behind the counter and there are drugs that you can just pick up and walk to the front of the drugstore and check out with, I think genetic information's like that too,” Beim said. Because as fascinating as it may be to learn you have a gene that predisposes you to a certain kind of disease on your commute home, it might be more comforting to learn that information at a doctor's appointment, with the support of a physician who can talk you through it. 

*Patients who advocate for themselves*

Gone are the days of doctors telling patients what to do and patients following that decision without question. And that might be a good thing.

“I think it's always good for patients to know what's going on and to advocate for themselves,”Braeburn Pharmaceuticals CEO Behshad Sheldon said.

That's going to happen in everything from diabetes to cancer. Steve Kafka, the president of Foundation Medicine, which uses gene sequencing and data analysis to help treat cancer, said that for the latter, it will have everything to do with having access to information. 

“Ultimately it will be about the patient having the direct access to really what is going on with my own cancer, and what are my options for what I can do about that.”

But with this increased information — and the hope of new drugs that want to shake up how we treat disease — there will also be a need for more education about new products. And that includes communicating how much new medications might cost. 

“We just need to do a better job of highlighting those [innovative] things," said Bob Radie the CEO of Egalet, a company that makes abuse-deterrent opioid painkillers. "I don't think the industry has a good rap right now.”

*NEXT: We asked industry experts what the 'Uber of healthcare' would be — here's how they responded*

*NEXT: Biotech investor: 'None of us were as smart as we thought we were'*

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