News

2010

August

11

• Travel surgeries: One way to cut health care costs. Tina Follett and her husband Patrick are in Panama on a two-week all-expenses paid trip. But Tina isn't on vacation. She's there to get surgery. The Folletts are among a growing number of Americans whose

10

• NY AG probes health care credit cards. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo expanded his health-care credit card probe, which has included subpoenas to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Chase Health Advance, Citigroup Inc.’s Citi Health and CareCredit, a division of General

• Uninhabited or rented homes get different insurance coverage. n many neighborhoods around the country, "for sale" signs outnumber telephone poles, and some of those signs are looking awfully weather-beaten. Even owners of oceanfront properties are having trouble finding buyers, at least at a

09

• Angry customers venting online. You've been cheated or mistreated by a business, and no one from the company seems to care. Now what? Thousands of jilted consumers have turned to complaint websites, where they anonymously share with the Internet

07

• Demystifying emergency room bills. During a snowstorm last winter, my 6-year-old son fell and cut his chin — not outside on the ice, but inside on the tile bathroom floor. My husband walked our son, Charlie, through the knee-high snow

05

• Regulators' top 10 investment scams. Investment scams always sprout during a recession, and con artists are reaping a big harvest in this economic downturn. "It's pretty bad out there," says Texas Securities Commissioner Denise Voigt Crawford. Investors desperate to make

• Insecure about securities? Lawmakers hope studies will help. Within the massive financial reform package is a requirement for no fewer than seven studies intended to help protect individual investors. They fall under a subsection of the act devoted to improving the regulation of

01

• Arbitration quietly closes doors of protest. Lease a car, enroll in a cell phone plan or finance the purchase of a major appliance, and you're likely signing away your rights. Most consumer contracts include clauses that require you to take any

July

30

• Health insurance rates: California plans crack down, but how hard?. As millions of Californians continue to cope with surging costs for health insurance, state lawmakers, consumer advocates and lobbyists in Sacramento are haggling over how tough to get with companies seeking large rate increases. August

• Websites help patients compare prices for health care. As Alan Grunberg neared 50, he knew he was going to need a colonoscopy, so the Chicago-based Realtor began shopping around to try and find the best place to get the procedure done. "I couldn't get

29

• Toyota recalls 412,000 cars in U.S.. Toyota Corp. said Thursday that it is recalling 412,000 Avalons and Lexuses for steering problems, bringing the number of cars recalled around the world since October to nearly 9 million. The 373,000 recalled Avalons, dating from between 2000 and 2004,

• Social Security benefits need protection from payday lenders. Over the years, I've met too many people who were stuck in a hellish payday-loan cycle, rolling one loan into another until the fees and the outstanding balance crushed them. So I completely agree with

• Soldiers' families denied cash payout as insurers profit. The package arrived at Cindy Lohman's home in Great Mills, Maryland, just two weeks after she learned that her son, Ryan, a 24-year-old Army sergeant, had been killed by a bomb in Afghanistan. It was

22

• Battle brews over director for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. President Obama reversed decades of lax oversight of the financial industry Wednesday by signing a landmark overhaul of regulations, but he still faces a major task — appointing a director for the powerful new agency charged

• Health insurers kept surplus while hiking premiums. Non-profit Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans stockpiled billions of dollars during the past decade, yet continued to hit consumers with double-digit premium increases, Consumers Union found in an analysis of 10 of the plans'

• Obama signs financial overhaul into law. As much as it felt like an ending, President Obama launched a new era in the relationship between Washington and the financial world when he placed his signature Wednesday on a massive bill to rewrite

• New rules to appeal denials of health insurance claims. Patients will find it easier to appeal the denials of health insurance claims under rules being issued Thursday by the Obama administration, which is trying to boost political support for the new health-care law by

21

• Wall Street reform law's starting line. As soon as President Obama's name shows up on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law Wednesday, there will be some changes in the way the financial industry does business. Immediately, regulators will get new powers

• Safety-driven software to block texting while driving. Technology is emerging that could solve a growing menace on the nation's highways: texting while driving. A Georgia company today announces a partnership with an Irving, Texas, firm to provide software to government agencies and

18

• Insurers push plans limiting patient choice of doctors. As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country’s biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors