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By Art Spiegelman
By Juan Cole
$22
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StockMonkeys.com (CC BY 2.0)
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Now that it’s paying an average of $50 billion a year in weather- and climate-related losses, the insurance industry has become a believer in global warming.
Posted on Dec 15, 2012
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Screenshot via Progressive website
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Progressive has settled with the family of a policyholder that claimed the insurance company defended her killer, but the deal came about only after the truly awful story made its way around the Internet.
Posted on Aug 17, 2012
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Flickr / woodleywonderworks
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Don’t mistake the claims of relative unimportance coming from the big shots on Wall Street before an audience of federal regulators over the past several months for some sort of newfound humility. (more)
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Flickr
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The health insurance industry is raking in profits on the backs of consumers who are increasingly forgoing medical care due to economic concerns, though that hasn’t stopped big insurers from drastically raising premiums. (more)
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flnd.uscourts.gov
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On Monday, another federal judge from our nation’s south made a bid to squelch President Obama’s big health care win from last year by arguing that the mandatory health insurance component of the law makes the whole thing unconstitutional.
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By David Sirota — If you’ve turned on the tube these last few weeks, you’ve probably been a collateral casualty of the biggest televisual war of attrition in recent memory.
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AP / Susan Walsh
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The health industry spinmaster-turned-whistle-blower says the consumer is funding the industry’s smear campaigns: “A big portion of what we spend or pay in premiums is skimmed off to operate and conduct these fear-mongering and anger-mongering campaigns.”
Posted on Nov 30, 2010
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AP / Susan Walsh
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The health industry spinmaster-turned-whistle-blower says the consumer is funding the industry’s smear campaigns: “A big portion of what we spend or pay in premiums is skimmed off to operate and conduct these fear-mongering and anger-mongering campaigns.”
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White House / Pete Souza
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The ink has dried on President Obama’s much ballyhooed health care reform bill—that’s “Obamacare” for all the haters—but according to select scheming members of the GOP, the fight might not be over yet on this one.
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wikileaks.org
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The Pentagon attempted to reassert control in its power struggle with WikiLeaks on Thursday by demanding that the online whistle-blower relinquish about 15,000 unreleased Afghan war records and delete information already posted to the site.
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AP / Mark Lennihan
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American International Group, 80 percent owned by the U.S. government, has announced it will pay out $725 million in a settlement of a securities fraud lawsuit, begun in 2004, that accused the insurance Gargantua of accounting fraud and stock manipulation.
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The president took a break from leaning on House members Wednesday to pitch his health care plan to Fox News. Things got a little testy, but Fox’s Bret Baier ended up apologizing for interrupting so much.
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If the politics behind the health care reform bill and the current tide of resentment against Dennis Kucinich for being the public option’s last holdout leave you a bit mystified, Firedoglake’s Jane Hamsher might be able to help you out, judging by this interview with Ian Masters.
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How are those poor, downtrodden and hurting health care executives supposed to recover from ... billions in profits? Double-digit percentage hikes for the captive audience known as their paying customers? Captain Moneybags brings his “Daily Show” camera crew to investigate ... (continued)
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AP / Jason Reed, pool
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich tells us why he isn’t buckling under pressure to vote for the president’s health care reform bill: “Every plan that’s put forth by our government ends up benefiting the health insurance industry.”
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AP / Jason Reed, pool
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich tells us why he isn’t buckling under pressure to vote for the president’s health care reform bill (“Every plan that’s put forth by our government ends up benefiting the health insurance industry”).
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White House / Pete Souza
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Here we go again. In preparation for this week’s health care summit on Capitol Hill, President Barack Obama has unveiled his own plan for reforming America’s ailing system, which includes a mandate for consumers to buy insurance and doesn’t include a public option.
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AP / Mark Lennihan
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Recently disclosed internal documents and an audio recording regarding a 2008 securities standoff between Goldman Sachs and insurance giant AIG appear to be the smoking guns necessary to pinpoint Goldman’s culpability in the mortgage meltdown and the collapse of AIG.
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By Rep. Dennis Kucinich — We can still have health care reform in America. We need to take a short-term and a longer-term view.
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Flickr / edEx
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Another indicator that Congress needs to get to work on the country’s pressing unemployment problem came in the form of a Labor Department report showing a spike in the number of first-time filers for unemployment benefits last week, according to The Associated Press.
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AP / Eugene Hoshiko
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By Robert Scheer — The Chinamen did it. In the great American tradition of finding foreign scapegoats for our problems, the hunt is on to somehow hold China responsible for the misery that Wall Street financiers inflicted upon the world.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — There is broad agreement on the kinds of concessions the Senate can make to the House and still preserve the 60 votes needed for passage of a unified health care reform bill.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Back in 2008, when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was just the lowly president of the New York Federal Reserve, he was involved in some interactions with embattled insurance giant AIG that apparently resulted in AIG withholding important information from the public. Now Geithner’s under pressure from at least one concerned member of Congress to testify about this matter.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Bill Boyarsky — The flawed health care bill could still be improved if the president would stand up to the insurance companies that have, so far, been the most powerful force shaping reform.
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AP / Susan Walsh
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By Robert Scheer — Obama’s faux populism is beginning to grate, and when yet another one of those “we the people” e-mails from the president landed on my screen as I was fishing around for a column subject, I came unglued.
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By Ruth Marcus — Law students may debate whether Congress has the right to mandate health insurance, but in the real world, it’s not a big worry.
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Flickr / Rosser321
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A new Harvard study has uncovered another disturbing reality of America’s broken health care system: Trauma patients without insurance are almost twice as likely to die in the emergency room. Researchers were unable to determine why, but hospitals’ eagerness to transfer the uninsured could be to blame.
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By Joe Conason — Anyone infuriated by the grossly inflated compensation of the masters of finance should check out the incredible earnings of the top executives in the health insurance business.
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AP / Lynne Sladky
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President Barack Obama has finally put into words what everyone already knows: that insurance companies are “deceptive and dishonest” in their efforts to kill any semblance of health care reform, no matter the cost. Now let’s see if he does anything with this knowledge.
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AP / Charles Dharapak
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Maine’s Olympia Snowe explained her vote for health care reform by saying “when history calls, history calls.” It called, she answered, and now the Senate Finance Committee’s Baucus bill, which would force Americans to buy health insurance without offering a public option, is off to get married to the more progressive Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill.
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AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Marie Cocco — The votes of lawmakers are so routinely purchased by corporations that it takes a scandal of unusual proportions to generate news coverage.
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The “Countdown” host, having just emerged from a personal encounter with the system, pulls out all the stops for a special hour-long comment on the need for health care reform.
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AP / Jae C. Hong
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By Bill Boyarsky — One way to give people a good deal on their health care is the so-called public option. A better way is the kind of strong regulation that isn’t even being discussed.
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Wikimedia Commons/senate.gov
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Good to know there are some seemingly dyed-in-the-wool GOP types who are at least partly open to some of the health care reform proposals knocking around the halls of Congress. Count among that tiny minority the former Senate Republican chief Bill Frist, who says he’d vote for the measure despite its shortcomings.
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By Marie Cocco — Sen. Max Baucus’ health care plan would shift massive amounts of tax money away from traditionally blue states.
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By Marie Cocco — Finally, a health care proposal George W. Bush could love. Sen. Max Baucus’ idea to tax “Cadillac” insurance plans has been pushed by Republicans for years.
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visitbulgaria.info
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After narrowly escaping catastrophe during the financial implosion that began last fall, American International Group—otherwise known as AIG—is leveling out, according to a cautiously optimistic new report from Congress’ Government Accountability Office.
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — All of the health bills on offer, even the supposedly “liberal” House bill, are already centrist compromises built on a private health insurance market. Above, Olympia Snowe, who may turn out to be the single Senate Republican voting for reform.
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Bill O’Reilly says of the very public option that makes his Foxy friends’ heads explode: “I want that. ... [I]f the government can cobble together a cheaper insurance policy that gives the same benefits, I see that as a plus for the folks.” Quick, look out your window to see the flying pigs.
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finance.senate.gov
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Sen. Max Baucus bent over backward to please Republicans with his insurance-friendly vision of health care reform, which forces everyone to buy private insurance and has no public option, but the very Republicans he negotiated with now won’t have anything to do with the bill.
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AP / Charles Dharapak
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By Robert Scheer — A president has only so much capital to expend, both in tax dollars and public tolerance, and Barack Obama is dangerously overdrawn. He has tried to have it all on three fronts, and his administration is in serious danger of going bankrupt.
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YouTube / BarackObamadotcom
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When emotions run high about certain hot-button issues, good judgment can fall by the wayside, and facts can get lost in the shuffle. Luckily, the helpful researchers at FactCheck.org are around to round them up again, as they’ve done here with President Obama’s health care speech.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Remember President Obama’s reference during his health care address to “Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations”? Well, those expectations were apparently met by that same address. Insurance company stocks got a boost from the speech, which foreshadowed the death of the public option and promised to deliver millions of currently “irresponsible” customers.
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By Marie Cocco — Thousands of those who descended on lower Manhattan after the terrorist attack were not cops or firefighters, and didn’t have the safety nets those jobs provide.
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Sure, being POTUS is tough sometimes, and you’re bound to royally tick off a large percentage of your constituency no matter what you do. But in the case of health care reform, President Obama, you have one Lee Stranahan to help you break this one down.
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Glaciers Are Melting Slowly but Surely
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