News

2009

October

18

• Making sense of high-deductible health plans. And now comes the pitch: What can you do to reduce health care costs? During the open enrollment season for employee benefits, now under way for next year, you are likely to hear a whole

• Obama threatens insurers' anti-trust exemption. President Obama mounted a frontal assault on the insurance industry on Saturday, accusing it of using “deceptive and dishonest ads” to derail his health care legislation and threatening to strip the industry of its longstanding

17

• Beware fast credit fixes. With Americans' credit scores plunging amid record numbers of mortgage and credit card delinquencies, companies that promise to eliminate negative information in credit bureaus' files are proliferating, federal regulators say. The pitches from these firms

15

• Perils of ignoring open enrollment. It's that time of year -- open enrollment for your employment benefits. It's time to determine whether you want to stick with your current health insurance plan or switch to another. You may have to

• Hidden costs of Medicare Advantage. TUCSON -- Patrick Higney, 66, doesn't want to give up the freebies that come with his zero-premium Medicare Advantage plan: free aspirin and free Band-Aids, a free blood pressure machine and a free ear thermometer. Nancy

13

• Senate panel votes on health care reform. The Senate Finance Committee will hold a landmark vote on health-care reform legislation Tuesday that is expected to underscore the deep partisan divisions that have emerged and hardened over five months of debate. With few,

12

• Industry says health bill would raise rates. After months of collaboration on President Obama's attempt to overhaul the nation's health-care system, the insurance industry plans to strike out against the effort on Monday with a report warning that the typical family premium

• If a health bill passes, benefits not immediate. Sixty years is how long Democrats say they've been pushing for legislation that provides health care access for all Americans. They'll have to wait three more if President Obama gets a bill to sign this

11

• Annual task of finding an insurance plan. It's that time of year again. In a few weeks, if you have health benefits through work, you will probably receive e-mail messages and brochures from your employer about your benefit options for 2010. Once again

05

• Health care bills tackle gender gap in coverage. Women's health groups, legal organizations and some female senators are fighting for a host of little-known provisions in the health care legislation being debated in Congress that they say will dramatically improve health care and

04

• 'Minute clinics' demand care. Should you be adding “doctor visit” to your grocery list? It is a question that millions of people have probably asked themselves, as hundreds of retail medical clinics have popped up the last few years

01

• What makes a 'Cadillac' health plan?. In the scramble to find money to overhaul the health-care system, Senate Democrats have been eyeing the most generous insurance packages -- what some call the "Cadillac" plans -- as a lucrative target to tax.

September

29

• Health insurance: Get it at work or go it alone?. Soon you'll get your employer's open enrollment packet, and if the benefits experts are right, you could be facing a premium increase as high as 20 percent. If you're young, healthy and barely use insurance, you

• Striking a balance on health spending. A dirty word in health-care reform is "rationing," a term that conjures up the image of faceless government bureaucrats denying lifesaving therapies in the name of cutting costs. But what if the real issue is

28

• Role reversal on Medicare spending. After years of trying to cut Medicare spending, Republican lawmakers have emerged as champions of the program, accusing Democrats of trying to steal from the elderly to cover the cost of health reform. It's a

27

• The fight over flexible spending accounts. The tumult at the town hall meetings has mostly died down and the debates over socialized medicine have gotten a bit old for everyone. But the fate of a benefit that puts hundreds of millions

• Could your financial life survive a disaster?. Every natural disaster sears us with the same images: Forlorn families sifting through ashes for possessions. And business owners peeling open the charred remnants of payroll records and money bags. Fires, floods, earthquakes and other

25

• Buenas noticias para ancianos con Medicare. La Cámara Baja estadounidense aprueba frenar aumentos en este programa de salud Millones de pacientes de Medicare, un programa de salud público destinado a los ancianos, no tendrían que pagar cuotas mensuales

24

• Time to prepare for 2009 taxes. If you've been pounded by the recession, I imagine the last thing you want to think about is your tax situation. But you'd better be thinking about it, because you don't want to get clobbered

22

• Who pays for health-care reform; is it fair?. No one is against expanding health coverage on principle. As we come down to crunch time, the health-reform debate is all about money. Once you accept that health insurance plans must meet some minimal criteria