Insurance premiums for small businesses are being driven higher not just because of an increase in healthcare costs, but also because Wall Street wants higher returns:

The higher premiums at least partly reflect the inexorable rise of medical costs, which is forcing Medicare to raise premiums, too. Health insurance bills are also rising for big employers, but because they have more negotiating clout, their increases are generally not as steep.

Higher medical costs aside, some experts say they think the insurance industry, under pressure from Wall Street, is raising premiums to get ahead of any legislative changes that might reduce their profits.

Now, you might think with health insurance reform pending in Congress, the industry would be concerned about screwing its customers. But you'd be wrong because Washington doesn't run this country, Wall Street does:

“There’s no one out there who hasn’t had to do a mea culpa to Wall Street,” said Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst for Pali Capital who follows the companies. While the industry is particularly vulnerable now in Washington, she said, “it seems like they’re more afraid of Wall Street.”

Fox Fabricates 'Death Book' for Vets

So when do we start filing complaints with the FCC in a systematic effort to get Murdoch's FCC license pulled? And when do we start to contact his institutional investors and bond holders and suggest that investing in lies might not be consistent with their fiduciary responsibility? When do we start to exact a serious price for this sort of editorial subversion?

Claiming it's losing money on individual policies, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan was approved for a 22% rate hike on premiums a few days ago. In an example that shows how bizzare our health care system is in this nation, the rate hike was hailed as a victory by state officials since the company had originally requested hikes of 56 percent for nongroup rates and 41 percent for group-conversion rates.

Consumers who buy their own medical insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan will see their monthly premiums rise in October by an average 22 percent.

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Welcome tp Appropedia page.

Looking through it: good stuff here.

via Douglas Rushkoff's Mediasquat. (Playlist with comments.)

but I'm sure that's nothing to worry about. We've only had 69 failures so far this year and it's not like the rate of failure is increasing or anything.

Oh, wait.

Well, at least we have an administration that understands the problems and is looking to overhaul the system.

Oh, wait.

(chart link - Calculated Risk)

Here's the full text of the letter signed by 23 members of Congress who are veterans and who took umbrage at Lt. Col. Peters' remarks on Fox News broadcasts. Thanks to Ohio's 16th District Congressmember, John Boccieri:

Roger Ailes
Chief Executive, Fox News and Chairman, Fox Television Stations
Fox News Channel
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036

21 July 2009

Chairman Ailes,

As members of Congress and veterans of the United States Armed Forces, it was with incredulity and disgust that we watched Fox News Strategic Analyst Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters (Ret.) suggest on your airwaves that Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl, "abandoned his buddies, abandoned his post, and just walked off," and stated that, if this is true, "the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills."

Mr. Peters' comments are so far beyond the pale that they don't even approach the decorum and respect deserved by a member of the United States Armed Forces. Mr. Peters' indefensible comments call into question, without any supporting evidence whatsoever, PFC Bergdahl's patriotism and commitment to his country, and suggest in a non-subtle way that he deserved to be captured. The events surrounding the capture of PFC Bergdahl are irrelevant at this point. The only priority should be his safe and immediate release to U.S. forces.

Mr. Peters further complained that PFC Bergdahl was openly questioning U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and cooperating with the Taliban, showing that Mr. Peters' has conveniently forgotten that soldiers in captivity are often forced to make statements contrary to their beliefs simply to stay alive. Senator John McCain has often discussed his decision to do so while a captive of the Vietcong. Perhaps Mr. Peters would choose to question his patriotism as well. Regardless, we have every reason to believe that the comments made by PFC Bergdahl do not reflect his true feelings and are being forced by his captors. The truth is that Mr. Peters' words give more aid and comfort to the enemy than any forced statement by a captured soldier, and put PFC Bergdahl at additional risk of harm.

Finally, his implied suggestion that the Taliban should simply kill PFC Bergdahl to, "save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills," was repulsive and deserves to be repudiated by your news organization. We recognize and credit anchor Julie Banderas' efforts to make it clear that Mr. Peters' positions were not that of Fox News. However, that does not remove the responsibility your network has for the statements of one of its own analysts; especially those that suggest a member of the United States Army should be killed by his captors.

We demand an apology to PFC Bergdahl's family and to the thousands of soldiers who put their lives on the line for our country. As a member of the military family, Mr. Peters should measure his remarks and remember that the United States will never abandon one of its own.

We look forward to your response.

Respectfully,

John Boccieri (D-OH)
Duncan Hunter (R-CA)
Patrick Murphy (D-PA)

Thomas Rooney (R-FL)
Joe Baca (D-CA)
Brett Guthrie (R-KY)
John Shimkus (R-IL)
Christopher Carney (D-PA)
Ted Poe (R-TX)
Timothy Walz (D-MN)
Darrell Issa (R-CA)
Jim Marshall (D-GA)
Gene Taylor (D-MS)
John Spratt (D-SC)
Jose Serrano (D-NY)
Joe Sestak (D-PA)
Bill Delahunt (D-MA)
Don Young (R-AK)
John Conyers (D-MI)
Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
Eric Massa (D-NY)
David Roe (R-TN)
Joe Pitts (R-PA)

Again, I do apologise to Rep. Poe and his constitutents for my mistake earlier today in not recognizing his participation in signing this letter.

Boccieri's office released this statement today in conjunction

Insurers defend rescissions, take heat for lack of transparency

Rep. Joe Barton (R, Texas), followed that response: "Doesn't it bother you that people are going to die because you insist on reviewing a policy somebody took out in good faith and forgot to tell you they had been treated for acne?"

Don Hamm, president and chief executive officer of Assurant Health, gave the only reply: "Yes, it does. We regret the necessity it has to occur even a single time."

Of course Joe Barton could do something about that by co-sponsoring HR 676.

and today's consensus is that the inauguration made no difference to the country?
Spirits were raised so high on 20-Jan-09. Where are they now? What has been done?
So many broken promises, so many stalled results, so much disillusion. Is the Obama Presidency salvageable? Should it be?

Rest In Peace 1980s Icons:
Farrah Fawcett has died today, aged 62.

Michael Jackson died in Los Angeles today. He was 50.

Obama's Plan Would Cut Payments to Teaching Hospitals

Washington — Teaching hospitals’ fears were realized this past weekend, when President Obama said he would cut subsidies to hospitals that treat large numbers of the uninsured to help finance a sweeping expansion of the nation’s health-care system.

Natasha Chart

Insurance companies make a lousy product that kills people and leaves Americans with lower life expectancies than people in 49 other countries. Their interests should stop mattering more than those of the people whose lives they wreck and whose entrepreneurial spirit they stifle.

It's looking like Napolean Nicolas Sarkozy Bonaparte wants to get his nation back in on the empire game:

PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy opened France’s first military facilities in the Gulf on Tuesday, deepening the government’s alliance with the United Arab Emirates and highlighting its shifting foreign policy priorities.

Mr. Sarkozy attended a ceremony to open French naval, air and army facilities in Abu Dhabi. The bases are the first permanent French military installations to be built outside of French territory since the process of decolonization began more than half a century ago.

We have two sad stories about the environment today.

1) Congress and by extension the WH administration, water down climate change legislation. Coal, Electric Industries Big Winners in Climate Bill Deal.

I'm fed to the teeth with the "we can't afford government" shtick, y'all.

Tonight I heard one of my hometown's public opinion shapers -- again -- decrying the need to spend money to recruit, train, and retain professional public servants: our police force.

Don't get me started on what these nimrods want to pay public health nurses, disease investigators, and schoolteachers (except football coaches. Football coaches are worth several million dollars a year at the collegiate level, but the top researcher in that same university ought to be damn glad to make $45,000 a year).

Don't talk to me about their ideas on paying to keep libraries open (they don't see the harm in permanent closures, part-time hours and demanding a master's for an entry-level job for which they offer to pay $9 hourly -- it's all just government expense, so we should be able to get rid of it).

Our local NBC affiliate's general manager gets on every Tuesday night to opine under his "video column," "Consider This." Tonight his claim was that he supports the Lubbock Police Department.

He says he'd like to see them become one of the top three departments, pay-wise, in Texas. (Depending on whether you use the city's numbers or the police association's numbers, they're either or they're barely in the top 50 statewide in terms of pay.) But right now isn't the time, he says.

Though Lubbock's economy is better than many, jobs are being lost, people are skeptical about the immediate future. What we should be doing instead, he says, is recruiting for the 100 or so open positions in the PD -- recruiting from "the three states hardest hit" in this economy. He'd like to see us sell Lubbock to officers from Miami and Detroit, because, he said, we've got a great place to live, a low cost of living, and police jobs that pay more than $40,000 a year to start and have "incredible benefits."
But the numbers explain

I hate to go to CNN for anything these days because they're trying so hard to be Fox Lite. But in this case they have some factual information about the 21 horses murdered (no, it wasn't an accident: the only horses to receive the drugs belonged to the Venezuelan team, and all the horses "prepared" for the match with the "vitamin injections" died) by injections of a vitamin mixture that's illegal in the US.

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It appears the Obama administration is looking to rollback the rights of defendants. Why? Well, basically, because they can:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overrule longstanding law that stops police from initiating questions unless a defendant’s lawyer is present, another stark example of the White House seeking to limit rather than expand rights.

...

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It's Heeeere:

LONDON (AFP) – Israel's military is preparing so it could launch major aerial attacks on Iranian nuclear sites if ordered to by the new government, a British newspaper said on Saturday, quoting Israeli defence and intelligence sources.

"Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light, they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours," an unnamed senior defence official told The Times.

"They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words."

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Medicare Advantage Sellers Trick Elderly Into Giving Up Benefits
Read it and then send the link on to whoever you think would be interested.

Below is an hour-long segment on the US-fueled narco wars cannibalizing Mexico. Although nothing new is said, it is important for people, particularly Americans, to see the total devastation we are causing with our gun supply, drug demand and, most critically, heinous drug policies.

Another 15-year-old has died after being tasered by the Warren Police Department of Warren, Michigan. You'll remember that not even a fully month ago another 15-year-old boy died after a tasering in Bay City, Michigan.

Warren -- A Detroit teenager who police say fled a traffic stop Friday died after being subdued with a Taser. He is the second Michigan teen to die following a Taser stun in less than a month.

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*BOOP*

For a good two years, now, Time Magazine has been putting out meta puff pieces on Obama on a reliable, weekly basis. The one I'm going to discuss from last weeks edition by Michael Grunwald is not much different. But, this part caught my attention:

Michigan voters made it clear on November 4, 2008 that they wanted to allow the use of marijuana for patients with debilitating medical conditions. Quite a few local law enforcement authorities in the state haven't quite gotten the picture:

MADISON HEIGHTS -- Bob Redden thought he was doing the right thing when he went to a medical clinic in Southfield to get paperwork to qualify himself for medical marijuana.

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Thomas Donahue is the President of the US Chamber of Commerce and is coordinating a multimillion dollar campaign against health care reform. He is also is on the board of Sunrise Senior Living, a nursing home. Should single payer become law nursing homes would be hit by a double whammy of forced increase of quality, specifically they would have to hire more staff, and receive lower payments. No more funneling all the money to the top and cheat old people and workers.

But is that really in the interest of members of the US Chamber of Commerce? Most of them would benefit from a single payer system, their health costs would plummet and their employees would not longer have to worry about health care.

Texas has for so long been an example of how not to do just about anything you cared to name involving state government, that tonight's news out of the State Senate really depresses me. Some years back, in a fit of uncharacteristic freeheartedness, the Texas legislature enacted a rule saying any Texas high school student who finished in the top 10 per cent of his/her graduating class was guaranteed admission to any state university. Evidently that's giving too much leeway to kids based on their intellect: today the Texas Senate voted to cut that rule so that only 60% of any freshman class could be made up of those graduates.