Joe Lieberman... Deal or No Deal?! (SLYT) A campaign ad for Ned Lamont has suddenly become very relevant, considering Sen. Joe Lieberman's recent statement threatening to block any health care legislation with a public option. "I accused him of, after 20 years, dithering on that topic," said Ned Lamont yesterday. "As far as I can tell, a filibuster is one more dither."
posted by markkraft on Oct 28, 2009 - 123 comments

something terrible is happening
posted by philip-random on Sep 23, 2009 - 24 comments

The healthcare debate explained on the back of 4 napkins. Napkin 1: The health care equation. Napkin 2: It's not about health care. Napkin 3: The plans on the table. Napkin 4: What's it mean to me?
posted by lunit on Aug 26, 2009 - 95 comments

fxgillis at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen tells "the stupid history of how the stupid Supreme Court and a stupid Congress wound up saddling us with such a stupid system for regulating the insurance market." [more inside]
posted by cimbrog on Aug 22, 2009 - 9 comments

What’s so special about the super cars that make people spend cosmic sums on a single car to buy it? Here are the Most Expensive Supercars: Exotic Showcase. Looking for cheap wheels? Here they are — the ten least-expensive 2009 cars on sale in America. But sticker price insn't everything; here are the 10 most and least expensive cars to insure.
posted by netbros on Aug 22, 2009 - 57 comments

How American Health Care Killed My Father After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem. (via mr) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Aug 18, 2009 - 144 comments

A simple question shows how complex the issue is. Chris at "Cynical C" asks his fellow citizens where they get thier health care (insurance) from and the incredible diversity of the current options and situations is immediately apparent. Quite spontaneously (but surely not unexpectedly), the question of "How much does it cost you?" becomes an essential part of the answers. Outsiders opine and tell stories and commiserate. [more inside]
posted by sid abotu on Aug 4, 2009 - 117 comments

How Safeway Is Cutting Health-Care Costs - "At Safeway we believe that well-designed health-care reform, utilizing market-based solutions, can ultimately reduce our nation's health-care bill by 40%. The key to achieving these savings is health-care plans that reward healthy behavior... 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior... 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable." [1,2] cf. Wyden's Third Way & Healthcare CEOs Shoot Themselves in the Foot [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Jun 21, 2009 - 130 comments

Single-payer health care advocates arrested at Senate hearing. On May 5, 2009 advocates of a U.S. national health care program disrupted a Senate Finance Committee event to call for single-payer healthcare to be part of the discussion. The eight protesters were subsequently arrested. The protesters included representatives of Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors the The United States National Health Care Act, H.R. 676. Committee Chair Max Baucus (D - Montana), who has received more money in contributions from health insurance companies than any other member of Congress, favors requiring Americans to purchase private health insurance from those companies. Baucus, who has previously said that single-payer is "off the table," responded to the doctors and their fellow activists with, “I want you to know I care deeply about your views," and then, "we need more police [to eject protesters]."
posted by univac on May 6, 2009 - 146 comments

The diagnosis was only the first shock. The second came a few weeks later, in an Aug. 5 letter from Pat's health-insurance company. For six years — since losing the last job he had that provided medical coverage — Pat had been faithfully paying premiums to Assurant Health, buying a series of six-month medical policies, one after the other, always hoping he would soon find a job that would include health coverage. Until that happened, "unexpected illnesses and accidents happen every day, and the resulting medical bills can be disastrous," Assurant's website warned. "Safeguard your financial future with Short Term Medical temporary insurance. It provides the peace of mind and health care access you need at a price you can afford." [But] diagnosing and treating an illness may not fall neatly into six-month increments. While Pat had been continuously covered since 2002 by the same company, Assurant Health, each successive policy treated him as a brand-new customer. In looking back over Pat's medical records, the company noticed test results from December, eight months earlier. Though Pat's doctors didn't determine the precise cause of the problem until the following July, his kidney disease was nonetheless judged a "pre-existing condition" — meaning his insurance wouldn't cover it, since he was now under a different six-month policy from the one he had when he got those first tests..... I tried to talk to Assurant for this story. Its only response was a written statement from Scott Krienke, senior vice president for product lines: "Due to privacy regulations, we cannot discuss the specifics of any of our customers' coverage."

posted by orthogonality on Mar 6, 2009 - 243 comments

A car insurer admitted it refuses to cover musicians despite featuring Iggy Pop in its advertisements. (via The Morning News)
posted by Stephen Elliott on Feb 23, 2009 - 47 comments

Be a hero on your own time (VIDEO) When McDonald's employee Nigel Haskett interceded to stop a man who was beating a woman in the restaurant, the assailant went outside, retrieved a gun from his car and shot Haskett – “multiple times,” as the employee stood at the door to keep the assailant from re-entering the restaurant. $300,000 in medical bills later, McDonald's insurance says no dice: "we have denied this claim in its entirety as it is our opinion that Mr. Haskett's injuries did not arise out of or within the course and scope of his employment."
posted by thisisdrew on Feb 19, 2009 - 104 comments

The invisible hand of the Free Market guides insurance payments to hospitals "Call it the best-kept secret in Massachusetts medicine: Health insurance companies pay a handful of hospitals far more for the same work even when there is no evidence that the higher-priced care produces healthier patients. In fact, sometimes the opposite is true: Massachusetts General Hospital, for example, earns 15 percent more than Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for treating heart-failure patients even though government figures show that Beth Israel has for years reported lower patient death rates."
posted by Kirth Gerson on Nov 19, 2008 - 29 comments

£35,000-a-year kidney cancer drugs too costly for NHS: Sutent offers to extend a kidney or GIST cancer patient's life by about 26 months, but the British NHS refuses to fund it, citing "marginal benefit at quite often an extreme cost."
posted by anotherpanacea on Nov 17, 2008 - 47 comments

You may remember Stan Brock from as the British anaconda wrangler from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (top right video). These days he runs Remote Area Medical, a volunteer airborne relief corps that brings medical, dental, and educational assistance to remote areas of the world. Every year, they go to remote Appalachian Virginia, a one day drive from Washington DC, for a 3 day event at the fairgrounds.
posted by oneirodynia on Nov 9, 2008 - 10 comments

Two years since Massachusetts instituted major statewide healthcare reform, the statistics are coming in. 340,000 residents, roughly half the state's previously uninsured, are now insured. The state says that 95% of its population is now covered, based on Department of Revenue estimates. However, a large portion of them are enrolled through state-subsidized insurance programs, and those program's rate of enrollment have far outpaced estimates. This has led lawmakers to forsee a budget shortfall. Premiums and co-pays are going up, cigarette taxes have increased, and a cost control proposal is making its way through the legislature. Assessments have been all over the map.
posted by Weebot on Jul 2, 2008 - 79 comments

Life Lock CEO's Identify Stolen Remember all those commercials recently tell us to steal Life Lock's CEO Todd Davis' Identity? Well seems as though someone did.
posted by DJWeezy on May 28, 2008 - 42 comments

The Unofficial Guide to the DMV ― This web site was created to provide easy-to-access information and resources for all your Department of Motor Vehicles needs for all 50 states. Details about driver’s licenses, driving records and ID cards, as well as vehicle registrations, title transfers, bills of sale and smog checks are available here. [more inside]
posted by netbros on May 11, 2008 - 12 comments

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Wednesday that employers could reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare without violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act [more inside]
posted by brevator on Dec 26, 2007 - 80 comments

"In 2003, Americans spent an estimated US$5,635 per capita on health care, while Canadians spent US$3,003... Canada’s single-payer system, which relies on not-for-profit delivery, achieves health outcomes that are at least equal to those in the United States at two-thirds the cost." What do wealthy, educated Americans living in Canada think?
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jul 3, 2007 - 137 comments

Millions of uninsured children in this country. Even with public assistance, they teeter on the brink of a catastrophic illness. What's the answer? Elect Susie!
posted by Mur on May 17, 2007 - 33 comments

Thailand has some sad insurance commercials. [via]
posted by Sticherbeast on Mar 30, 2007 - 31 comments

Steel Belted Romeos is based on a true story. (NSFW)
posted by airguitar on Jan 16, 2007 - 33 comments

California's Governor Seeks Universal Care: Under a plan by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California would become the largest state to attempt to provide near universal health coverage.
posted by kliuless on Jan 8, 2007 - 53 comments

Going head-to head in the cinemas, Borat and James Bond have generated a lot of press and publicity. Recently, one insurer calculated that James Bond's car insurance would come to about £7,000. Not to be outdome, another insurance company proclaims that Bond can shove it, and that they'd much rather insure Borat, despite the Bear he's transporting around.
posted by SharQ on Nov 29, 2006 - 3 comments

1. Everyone thinks insurance is impenetrable and boring.
2. Everyone is wrong.

The Insurance Transparency Project blog is written by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Dean Starkman, who is currently a Katrina Media Fellow sponsored by the Open Society Institute, funded and chaired by George Soros.
posted by ba on Nov 3, 2006 - 14 comments

Coverage with Evidence Development. Never heard of it? Me neither, until today. It's what they call this idea: if you want to be covered by Medicare, you're forced to participate in medical research. The AMA approves (article abstract only). So much for informed consent.
posted by ikkyu2 on Sep 4, 2006 - 26 comments

The Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act (S. 1955) has passed out of committee and is now slated for a floor vote. The bill is ostensibly designed to save small employers money and extend health insurance options to employees who hadn’t had them. What it is actually likely to do is end basic health insurance coverage for women (and diabetics); birth control, regularly taken prescriptions, cancer screenings, maternity care, and more. Women in every state will lose benefits. S. 1955 would allow insurance plans to ignore important state laws that protect patients, directly affecting more than 90 million Americans. [more inside]
posted by dejah420 on May 2, 2006 - 42 comments

Massachusetts is about to pass a "nearly" universal health care plan. It's an ambitious and innovative piece of public policy that mixes tax incentives to insure yourself if you can afford it to direct government subsidies to health care insurers to help cover the poor. Businesses will be fined if they are not going to cover their workers. It still does not cover escalating costs or malpractice wildness. And, it still will leave 5% uncovered. Nor, is it the plan specifically endorsed by Physicians for a National Health Plan (who favor a single payer system) or the AMA (who favor much greater reform of insurance providers). Still, it's a start from making us "the only industrialized nation in the world" to not, well you know.....
posted by narebuc on Apr 5, 2006 - 71 comments

It Only Takes A Second is the name of this 1996 industrial film from Federated Mutual Insurance. Essentially 3 straight minutes of chaotic on the job accidents geared towards terrifying the customers into being more careful (and thus more profitable), it may be my favorite industrial film ever. link goes to embedded QT video
posted by jonson on Feb 21, 2006 - 64 comments

Company bets on woman to die quickly. Woman lives, company sues. "It's ghoulish, but all insurance is a bit ghoulish," says Goldfein, who oversaw "tons" of deals like Smith's in the early 1990s. "AIDS was a sure thing."
posted by NorthernSky on Jan 22, 2006 - 56 comments

Vern Fonk wants to sell you insurance. Seattlites have been enjoying his quirky late night TV advertisements for years. This latest one had me spitting chardonnay out my nose [embedded video].
posted by Slarty Bartfast on Jan 18, 2006 - 36 comments

£45 GBP lost to "compo" in Liverpool - Insurance fraud rife in UK A man who tried to sue a local council after he soiled his trousers tops a list of spurious public liability claims which cost UK local government and insurance companies an estimated £250m each year, reports the UK Guardian. Publishers of said report, Zurich Municipal are tackling the growing issue of fraudulent insurance claims. They found that "Only 16% of adults questioned said that they would contact the police if they knew someone had submitted a fraudulent claim against a council." Knowsley [Liverpool] Metropolitan Council "saw its claims from slips and trips soar ... to £5m annually." - for a borough of 111,000 adults that's an impressive £45 GBP per person per year. Among other factors, Zurich blames the "claims farmers" decried here by our Citizens Advice Bureau but also intriguingly says they are "continuing our campaign to combat school arson through initiatives such as our school theatre programme, ACT...."
posted by magpie68 on Jan 4, 2006 - 25 comments

The New England Journal of Medicine published several articles this week on remaining, statistically significant gender and racial disparities in the quantity and quality of various medical procedures and care management resources made available to black and white Americans. These disparities may possibly help our understanding of the cause of some of the unexplained differences in mortality rates between populations. "Although the reasons for these differences are unknown, their persistence emphasizes the need for a continued search for explanations so that inequities in clinical care may be eliminated..." (registration req'd)
posted by Rothko on Aug 19, 2005 - 23 comments

Caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice suits have become very popular policy in America. Proponents of caps claim that huge settlements are to blame for skyrocketing med mal premiums, forcing doctors out of business. You may remember Bush's oft-mocked statement that "our OB-GYNs are unable to practice their love" because of these opportunistic suits brought by ambulance-chasing trial lawyers. After insurance companies poured millions into referenda across the nation to convince voters that a cap on damages would effectively lower med mal premiums and protect health care availability for the end user, now the second-largest med mal insurer in America, GE Medical Protective, is trying to convince the Texas Department of Insurance that they are unable to reduce their premiums because tort reform only saves them 3% of their total losses.
posted by pikachulolita on Nov 24, 2004 - 34 comments

Having half of your skull missing isn't a disability. Here, take this hockey helmet, and have a nice day.
posted by mr_crash_davis on May 14, 2004 - 24 comments

Warren Buffett's annual letter to his shareholders is worth a read.
posted by BlueTrain on Mar 8, 2004 - 27 comments

Insurance companies abandon brokerage firms. A brokerage firm would have to have a catastrophic meltdown before insurance would pay the "last" dime to protect investors' accounts, after all other means had been exhausted. In fact, they haven't had to pay a single claim in over 30 years. So why are three major insurers suddenly getting out of the business? (NYT subscription req.)
posted by kablam on Aug 9, 2003 - 5 comments

Isn't this what insurance is for? DC/Baltimore got pounded with snow a few weeks ago and it's caused some issues throughout the region. It seems that folks are reluctant to file claims because their home owners insurance carriers are liable to drop them. I know that life isn't fair, but isn't this why you pay for insurance?
posted by cpfeifer on Mar 10, 2003 - 20 comments

Reality check from Swiss Re and UNEP "The increasing frequency of severe climatic events...has the potential to stress insurers, reinsurers and banks to the point of impaired viability or even insolvency." "Climate Change and the Financial Services Industry", a UNEP report supported by 295 banks and insurance and investment companies around the world. The report concludes that, worldwide, loses from Climate related disasters are doubling every decade . NOAA generally concurs. Dr. Bob Gagosian, Director of Woods Hole, has even worse news. Should we take the scientific mainstream seriously? Or is it all "Junk Science"according to the industry funded Steve Milloy or the CEI, or even a New Age Pagan Conspiracy? Play on little humans......play on.....
posted by troutfishing on Oct 9, 2002 - 15 comments

Be discriminated against for looking too good. In Western Australia, a widow whose husband died accidentally is losing compensation money because she's considered attractive enough to remarry. What stupid laws do you have where you live?
posted by Jubey on Apr 13, 2002 - 26 comments

Convicted murderer wants taxpayer-financed sex change. "Hill & Barlow, the law firm appointed by the court to represent Kosilek, said in a statement: 'The case raises important constitutional issues about medical treatment for prisoners.'" When fourteen percent of the population doesn't have health insurance at all, is there any legitimate reason to expect the government to pay for this?
posted by mr_crash_davis on Feb 3, 2002 - 24 comments

The healthiest states in America "Louisiana finished last, preceded by Mississippi (49), South Carolina (48), West Virginia (47), and Florida (46)... Minnesota captured first place by scoring highest overall in categories measuring access to health care, disability, disease, mortality, and occupational safety." full report here.
posted by kliuless on Dec 2, 2001 - 9 comments

Tonga's Court Jester Loses US$20M of King's Trust Fund in Viaticals Scandal
Jesse Bogdonoff, the manager of Tonga's ever-shrinking trust fund and official court jester to the King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV (the reports of whose death have been exaggerated), has admitted to losing $20M in investing in viaticals, an often fraudulent form of speculation on life insurance policies of cash-strapped terminally-ill people. Court jesters? Viaticals? It's like a Ziggy cartoon run amok.
posted by rschram on Oct 23, 2001 - 9 comments

As the insurance industry is hit with its biggest losses ever, here in NYC they are now running stern advertising (at least on the radio) warning people not to commit insurance fraud - or else!
posted by Counselco on Oct 18, 2001 - 7 comments

Insurance companies - what are they good for? Absolutely nothing. Now that a war might be on its way "underwriters had given notice they would cancel cover for war liabilities from midnight Monday". Tell me again why airlines were paying for cover for losses due to war during peace time?
posted by krisjohn on Sep 21, 2001 - 6 comments

Fake Hate Crime This doesn't help things. What was he thinking? (from fark)
posted by curiousg on Sep 18, 2001 - 25 comments

Wondering why those in power are so earnestly characterizing an act of terrorism as an act of war? Because under New York Consolidated Law S3203.a.17.c.1.C, insurance companies don't have to pay for acts of war. (More inside.)
posted by Allen Varney on Sep 12, 2001 - 21 comments

The Day My Car Ratted Me Out.
Dear Winston Smith,
Your 1984 Corvette has informed us that over the past month, you have failed to obey the speed limit 36 times, at times reaching speeds exceeding 130 MPH. As A result, we feel that we can no longer provide you with coverage. We have also supplied this information to the proper authorities, their jackbooted thugs should be in your driveway momentarily. Thank you.
INGSOC Insurance

First it was the rental car companies, now it is GM and the Insurance companies. This is the top of a very slippery slope of privacy issues and technology, specifically GPS.

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
posted by hotdoughnutsnow on Jul 27, 2001 - 45 comments

We live in a sad, sad world. Teacher now get homicide insureance. This speaks for itself.
posted by aj100 on Jul 26, 2001 - 17 comments