Submitted by lambert on Mon, 05/20/2013 - 11:28pm
WSJ:
Employers Eye Bare-Bones Health Plans Under New Law
Employers are increasingly recognizing they may be able to avoid certain penalties under the federal health law by offering very limited plans that can lack key benefits such as hospital coverage.
Benefits advisers and insurance brokers—bucking a commonly held expectation that the law would broadly enrich benefits—are pitching these low-benefit plans around the country.
The idea that such plans would be allowable under the law has emerged only recently. ... Many employers and benefits experts have understood the rules to require robust insurance, covering a list of "essential" benefits such as mental-health services and a high percentage of workers' overall costs. ... The idea that such plans would be allowable under the law has emerged only recently. Some benefits advisers still feel they could face regulatory uncertainty. The law requires employers with 50 or more workers to offer coverage to their workers or pay a penalty.
Many employers and benefits experts have understood the rules to require robust insurance, covering a list of "essential" benefits such as mental-health services and a high percentage of workers' overall costs. Many employers, particularly in low-wage industries, worry about whether they—or their workers—can afford it.
But a close reading of the rules makes it clear that those mandates affect only plans sponsored by insurers that are sold to small businesses and individuals, federal officials confirm. That affects only about 30 million of the more than 160 million people with private insurance, including 19 million people covered by employers, according to a Citigroup Inc. C +0.29% report. Larger employers, generally with more than 50 workers, need cover only preventive services, without a lifetime or annual dollar-value limit, in order to avoid the across-the-workforce penalty.
Hilarity ensues! Read below the fold...
Submitted by DCblogger on Mon, 05/20/2013 - 6:39pm
Submitted by lambert on Mon, 05/20/2013 - 2:58pm
Submitted by lambert on Mon, 05/20/2013 - 2:18pm
Submitted by transcriber on Mon, 05/20/2013 - 12:54am
Do I have that right?
- In which an 83-year-old nun and two others are convicted of crime of violence under terrorism statute [search terrorism]
- their weapons are white roses, Bibles and crime scene tape [search white rose]
- and the jury is not allowed to hear a former Attorney General testify in their defense about Nuremberg and Antiproliferation Treaty legal obligations [search Ramsey Clark]
And they were only trying to save us all. Read below the fold...
Submitted by danps on Sun, 05/19/2013 - 6:22am
Submitted by libbyliberal on Sat, 05/18/2013 - 4:38pm
Ralph Nader believes it is time to put U.S. global corporations on the DEFENSIVE! He declares that would be “the first step for the resurgence of the people so that corporations become our servants and do not remain our masters.”
In “Patriotic Yardsticks for Unpatriotic Giant Corporations” he calls out US Global Corporations for BETRAYING America -- betraying the American citizen taxpayers that have enabled them to become so incredibly successful. Nader spells it out: Read below the fold...
Submitted by danps on Sat, 05/18/2013 - 4:22pm
Submitted by danps on Sat, 05/18/2013 - 4:21pm
We've had three big stories this week, each showing how the right plays the scandal game better than the left. Of the three, one is a non-scandal (Benghazi), one is a minor scandal with the potential to turn into more (IRS),1 and one is an honest-to-God scandal right now (AP). Republicans don't bother with such fine distinctions though, and that's why they are better at playing it than Democrats: when they get something they can run with, they do. Read below the fold...
Submitted by DCblogger on Sat, 05/18/2013 - 3:15pm
I guess image of Marine holding umbrella for CofC just too much for cons. Black guy w/ power to make white guy do that hits racist bullseye. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Sat, 05/18/2013 - 1:58pm
Submitted by lambert on Fri, 05/17/2013 - 9:53pm
No image! Still on the borage, or squash, or whatever the heck they are, I was happy to see some sudden little pale green tendrils in the same general area from, I hope, some self-seeded plants from the wildflower mix l planted last year, and very successfully, too. Actually, let me add a picture, since that will show how this bed should be in a month or two, if what was growing there last year comes back:
Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Fri, 05/17/2013 - 8:22pm
Submitted by DCblogger on Fri, 05/17/2013 - 4:57pm
Submitted by lambert on Fri, 05/17/2013 - 2:10pm
From (I love the source) Art in America:
Cooper Occupation Exceeds One-Week Mark
In the latest development in an ongoing conflict, students at New York's Cooper Union have occupied the office of school president Jamshed Bharucha for a full week. They have vowed to continue their protest until Bharucha steps down. "It's very evident that he does not believe in the mission of the school," second-year art student Angus Buchanan-Smith told A.i.A. during a visit this week to the East Village college.
So they have a demand. Read below the fold...
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