Affordable Health Insurance

Windsor Genova – AHN News News Writer
Henderson, NV, United States (AHN) – Zappos.com has reset the passwords of its 24 million users after the server of the online shoe and clothing store was hacked and customers’ personal information were believed stolen. The Amazon-owned company is calling on its customers to reset their passwords as the hacker of one of their Kentucky servers may have stolen their names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, the last four digits of their credit card numbers and encrypted passwords. Zappos.com also e-mailed customers warning them that they may receive phishing e-mails from the hackers asking for their account or financial details. CEO Tony Hsieh assured that the database that stores customers’ critical credit card and other payment data was not affected or accessed, according to Forbes.com. Hsieh said the hacking incident is now under investigation. He said employees will respond to queries via e-mail as their phone system cannot accommodate the millions of Zappos.com users expected to call. Amazon bought Zappos in 2009 for $807 million on top of $40 [...] Continue Reading…

Washington, DC, United States (KaiserHealth) – Kansas and Oklahoma are the seventh and eighth states to get the thumbs down from the federal government on their requests to phase in new regulations that could result in health insurance rebates to consumers. Under the Affordable Care Act, companies that sell individual insurance policies must spend at least 80 cents of each premium dollar on health care or quality improvement for their members. Companies that fall short of the 80 percent standard will have to pay rebates to their customers to make up the difference. Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger and Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John D. Doak had asked the federal Department of Health and Human Services for waivers that would allow the state to slowly phase in the requirement. Both requests were denied Wednesday. HHS official Steve Larsen says he’s seen no evidence that the new requirement will destabilize the individual insurance market in Kansas. In fact, Larsen anticipates that none of the eight companies currently writing individual health insurance policies in Kansas will pull out of [...] Continue Reading…

Kris Alingod – AHN News Contributor
Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The Federal Aviation Administration was expected on Wednesday to release new rules to prevent accidents in commercial airlines due to pilot fatigue. The announcement comes four months after a congressionally prescribed deadline and more than a year after lawmakers passed legislation strengthening air safety, including a requirement that the FAA reform decades-old flight-and-duty time regulations and set minimum rest requirements for pilots. The Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act was enacted in August last year, largely in response to a crash near Buffalo, NY, in 2009 that killed 50 people. Under the measure, which passed by a unanimous House vote, commercial carriers have to submit and regularly update a fatigue risk management plan, which the FAA will approve every two years. In addition, the FAA is required to issue regulations within a year of the law’s enactment, limiting the number of flight and duty hours allowed for pilots based on the time of the flight and time zone. The new [...] Continue Reading…

Linda Young – AHN News Writer
Tokyo, Japan (AHN) – Unemployment and retail sales both rose in Japan although household spending dropped. Retail sales rose by 1.9 percent in October compared to the same month a year earlier. It was the first increase in retail sales in three months. However, the unemployment rate also rose, climbing to 4.5 percent in October from 4.1 percent a month earlier. However, the increase in retail sales did not translate to an increase in household spending. Private consumption moved down to a lower than expected increase of only 0.4 percent during October.

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San Antonio, TX, United States (KaiserHealth) – A lawsuit filed in Dallas against one of the nation’s largest hospice companies identifies how Medicare’s payment methods can offer unintended financial incentives to inappropriately move patients from HMOs into hospice programs and then into hospitals. In a complaint unsealed last week in a federal court, a former general manager of Vitas HealthCare Corp.’s San Antonio office alleged the company defrauded Medicare through a “conspiracy” with two HMO companies. Vitas and the companies have denied the allegations. The Department of Justice and the state of Texas have declined to join with the plaintiffs in the suit “at this time.” Here’s how the complaint alleges the arrangement worked: Since Medicare Advantage pays HMOs monthly per-patient fees, the HMOs had a financial incentive to avoid chronically ill patients, who need lots of treatments. So the HMOs referred many of their chronically ill patients for hospice care at Vitas, which accepted them even though their conditions weren’t considered terminal. Although expensive for the HMOs, these patients made money for Vitas, the complaint [...] Continue Reading…

Diane Alter – AHN News Reporter
West Palm Beach, FL, United States (AHN) – There are a few things you should remember this weekend when you “fall back” for Daylight Savings Times. First, remember to set your clocks back one hour before you go to sleep Saturday. Daylight Savings Time for 2011 officially ends at 2 a.m. Sunday in the United States and Canada. Second, make time to check and replace the batteries in your smoke detectors. Not all areas in the United States observe Daylight Savings Time. These include the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, Hawaii and most of Arizona except for the Navajo reservation. While many people look forward to the extra hour of sleep, Daylight Savings Time can wreak havoc on our basic circadian rhythm (the body clock). It is easier to stay up an hour later than to go to sleep an hour earlier, health experts say. But there are some things that you can do to help your body adjust. To sleep well, your body clock must be [...] Continue Reading…

Washington, DC, United States (KaiserHealth) – Signing up for health insurance during your company’s annual enrollment period, which for many plans is right now, may feel like taking a nasty dose of medicine: You know it’s good for you, but it sure doesn’t go down easy. On the plus side, nearly two-thirds of companies are still offering health insurance to their employees, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual survey of employer health benefits. That’s worth a lot. But that coverage won’t come cheap, as premiums, deductibles and cost sharing continue to rise, sometimes even more steeply than in previous years. More employers are also moving to high-deductible plans that shift increasing expenses onto their employees, requiring them to pay more before benefits kick in. And companies are making it pricier to insure spouses and children. There is a bright spot, however: Employees who participate in the increasing number of company wellness programs can often reduce premium and other cost increases. “It makes sense for the employer,” says Ron Fontanetta, a director at benefits consultant [...] Continue Reading…

Windsor Genova – AHN News News Writer
Waterloo, Canada (AHN) – Research in Motion (RIM) has fully restored its BlackBerry services on Thursday ending three days of agonizing downtime for many of its 70 million customers worldwide. RIM president and co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis posted a video on its website apologizing for the inconvenience caused by the outage that prevented BlackBerry users from e-mailing and browsing the Internet on the smartphone. Lazaridis also told reporters in a conference call that the email backlog that followed after a backup server in Europe failed caused much of the problem. He advised BlackBerry users to reset their smartphones get in it synchronized again with the network by taking out the battery for a short time. The outage, the worst in RIM’s history, began in Europe on Monday and spread worldwide by Wednesday. The hardware for a backup switching architecture failed and technicians have to restart the server. But the backlog of messages and data traffic took troubleshooters time to send and prolonged the disruption. Lazaridis said measures were undertaken, [...] Continue Reading…

Diane Alter – AHN News Reporter
San Ramon, CA, United States (AHN) – Roughly 3 billion pizza pies are sold in the United States every year from the 61,269 pizza parlors around the country. So it shouldn’t be surprising that an insurance company has designed a policy to protect parlor owners and their drivers. California-based EPIC Programs wants a “Slice” of the $30 billion pizza industry. The “Safety, Loss Control, Insurance, Coverage, Expertise,” program, available in 40 states, addresses liabilities pizza parlor owners face from their delivery drivers. The program is underwritten by an unnamed insurer that specials in auto coverage. It includes mandatory driver training, education and other risk measures. Industry websites state that delivery drivers own insurance policies that do not cover them when they are delivering food for their employers. Pizzerias take out excess coverage on their employees’ behalf as a result. Pizza business insurance is an important line of coverage in the food service industry. Some of the world’s best known insurers and insurance brokers including Progressive and Fireman’s Fund, offer specialized [...] Continue Reading…

Windsor Genova – AHN News News Writer
Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – A growing number of Americans who use SMS to communicate prefer to be reached via text messaging than voice call based on a survey of the Pew Research Center, which studies U.S. trends. In the phone survey of 2,277 adults ages 18 and older that the center conducted for its Internet & American Life Project, 31 percent of heavy texters said they would rather be contacted by SMS than by voice call. Those who preferred talking over the mobile phone comprise 53 percent of the number of text senders. The profile of a heavy texter is one who sends at least 50 SMS per day, according to the study. The survey also found that adults aged between 18 and 24 send an average 109.5 SMS daily. The survey was conducted from April 26-May 22, 2011, and included 755 cell phone interviews.

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