Affordable Health Insurance

We were reading through a good article today about investment mistakes that people make, including nearly 200 comments from people who related their own investment mistakes over the last year (lots of good lessons there, if you’re interested).  One reader mentioned (it’s the 4th comment, fool.com doesn’t have the ability to link to specific comments) that his biggest mistake was investing rather than setting aside cash for emergencies…

My worst investing mistake was, well…investing. I ignored (until recently) putting aside 3-6 months worth of living expenses in my money market fund. So going forward I am building up my cash reserves by setting aside a set amount each month that will remain untouched unless needed. My “wake u

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Clark County Nevada commissioners are discussing making the only public hospital in Las Vegas private according to the article “County Talks of Privatizing Vegas Public Hospital” by The Associated Press on Mercury News’s website.

Commissioners say that the University Medical Center (UMC) is southern Nevada’s safety net hospital and treats many with no Las Vegas health insurance.  They are considering making this hospital private to save money, and if they do they may still treat those uninsured.  An audit that was performed recently shows that UMC lost $83 million last year.  Commissi

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President Signs COBRA Subsidy Extension Legislation

Extends the premium subsidy eligibility period by two months, so it will end on February 28, 2010, rather than December 31, 2009. Extends the period of the 65 percent COBRA subsidy from nine months to 15 months. Establishes a transition period that applies to individuals who lost subsidies before the effective date of the Act because they received the maximum number of months of subsidies under the original subsidy provisions. Establishes new notification requirements by group health plans or other entities. Full Post…

The Senate health care reform bill is headed for a Christmas Eve vote, and is expected to pass, needing only a simple majority of votes.  The Daily Kos published an article this week detailing reasons why the bill should pass, and there are several good points in the article.  But I felt that the very first point needed to be addressed, as there seems to be so much misunderstanding around what people actually pay for their health insurance.  The author is responding to another article that noted that the Senate reform bill “forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations – whether you want to or not.”  The Daily Kos article responds with

“If American families could get health insurance for only 8% of their income, you could bet a lot more of us would have it.  In 2008, t

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Texas insurance consumer advocate is looking to get rid of the blanket authority of health insurance companies to decide what their policies will cover according to the article “Texas Consumer Advocate Wants Ban on Health Insurers’ Blanket Clauses” by Terrence Stutz on DallasNews.com.  This would cause a big impact on individual health insurance in Texas.

Deeia Beck, the Public Insurance Counsel, asked the state’s insurance commissioner to stop provisions present in many health insurance policies, called discretionary clauses.  This gives health insurance companies the freedom to decide what benefits will get paid.  The heal

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Colorado Senator Michael Bennet has been drawing some heat for his support of health care reform and his commitment to vote in favor of the bill even if it costs him his job when election time rolls around.  Critics have mentioned that it’s his responsibility to represent the will of the people of Colorado, and that if they don’t support health care reform, he shouldn’t either.  Of course most political issues tend to be split along party lines these days, and health care is no exception.  This m

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It has been weeks since I have published any new articles on health care reform.   I wanted to get out a general update out to those that read my interpretations.   It’s hard to latch on to a general theory or pattern since the House version was dead when it passed, and the Senate version changes more frequently than the weather.  

The popularity of health care reform has dropped to its lowest levels since it was first outlined early in the summer. There is

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