The sour economy is prodding more Americans to buy their own health insurance, a daunting task for people not prepared to navigate the possible pitfalls. Tina Smith, who owns a residential-cleaning service with her husband in Lyndhurst, Ohio, was seeking to lower her premiums when she bought an Assurant Inc. policy from an agent who visited her at home. She says the agent played up the health plan’s affordability and its $2 million lifetime coverage.

To continue readin, please see the link to the Wall Street Journal.

A campaign to publicize the identities of thousands of people receiving hefty government pensions — from onetime professors to former fire chiefs — is catching on around the country.  The effort was launched earlier this year by a California interest group determined to promote its view that steep pension payments are bankrupting states and localities. Newspapers in New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Illinois and elsewhere have published lists of their six-figure public retirees.

To read the rest of this article please follow the Wall Street Journal link.

From Papa:

A successful nonprofit makes new friends and knows how to keep old ones.

The central idea behind the Obama administration’s effort to protect the personal finances of Americans boils down to this: put laziness to work. Tell people to set aside part of their paychecks every month and they’ll usually ignore the advice. But start the saving process for them — automatically siphoning off a raise from a paycheck into a bank account — and perhaps that will help them avoid the financial trauma that has affected millions of Americans in this recession.

To continue reading this article, please follow the link to the Wall Street Journal.

Some governors are pushing to scale back or kill proposals to expand Medicaid to provide health-care coverage to the uninsured, raising a new challenge to President Barack Obama’s effort to overhaul the system. Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor, is funded through a combination of federal and state tax money. Proposals in the House and Senate would expand the program to cover at least a third of the nation’s 46 million uninsured, but states are worried they would get stuck with a big part of the tab.

To read the rest of this article, please continue on to the Wall Street Journal page.

My brother and I are happy smile and feel good having fun with our parents and do not have to spend money.  I sometimes ask why they are always working.  They explain it is like going to school.  I guess that is ok since I have to always go to school  even when I do not want to. 

From Papa:

The bottom line for youth is enjoying activities with people that they consider key in their life.  This can be reading a story, walking a neighborhood, playing a game.  The measure is the amount of quality time spent with the youth where they are the focus of the connection.  Nonprofits have many volunteers whom can create that connection for the thousands of youth whom lack significant adult mentors.   The song “I want to be just like you Dad” is more true than false. 

IMS Health (RX) has built a lucrative niche collecting data on which drugs physicians prescribe, then selling the information to pharmaceutical companies. But legislators in more than 20 states are considering actions to curb the practices. The Supreme Court could shine a spotlight on this topic in the next few weeks if it decides to hear a closely watched case IMS has been fighting in New Hampshire. The court’s ruling would quickly reverberate beyond the pharmaceutical industry, affecting virtually any business that uses information about consumer buying behavior to guide its sales strategies.

To read the rest of this article please see the Business Week Page.

Whenever researchers compare drugs or treatments to see which works best, somebody’s ox gets gored. Such “comparative effectiveness” studies have already cast doubt on expensive newer blood pressure and schizophrenia drugs, as well as spinal fusions and other surgeries. And in one case, it is a very expensive ox: the heart procedure known as angioplasty.

To read the rest of this article please see the source page.

pic via Graela

Nonprofits who work with youth and provide mentoring need to provide better evidence base tracking to show the results of their services. (assuming they have created the best outcomes.)  The lack of evidence causes mentoring programs to be adversely hit during times of economic recessions. The number of youth in the country who lack a father due to the high incidence of divorce is shocking.  Divorce is above 56%.  The science has shown that most youth need a connection to their fathers to be able to develop to their full potential.

Fatherhood comes with responsibility and being accountable to the never ending questions.  Mentoring programs just might be what insurers to cover to make more successful, healthy, well adjusted youth.

Growing up without a father left a painful hole in his heart, President Obama told a lawnful of boys at the White House yesterday in a remarkably personal Father’s Day weekend message. He implored fathers everywhere to stay home and stay involved in the lives of their own children.

To continue reading, please follow this link to the Boston Globe.