Coffee prices continue to climb
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Coffee lovers face rising prices because prices for coffee beans continue to rise on commodity markets.
Retail prices for bagged coffee on grocery store shelves have already gone up and more price increases are expected.
Poor growing conditions in South America and other coffee-producing areas has caused concern over shortages of supplies, resulting in investor speculation in commodity markets that has driven up coffee futures prices by 95 percent during the past 12 months.
Companies that roast green coffee beans and sell bagged coffee have raised prices by varying amounts in response to the increased prices they must pay for green coffee beans.
Earlier this week J.M. Smucker increased prices by 11 percent. It marks the fourth time it has raised prices in a year. Smucker sells Dunkin Donuts, Folgers and Millstone brands. Kraft, which owns Maxwell House, has raised its prices three times recently.
Then on Wednesday, Starbucks announced plans to raise prices in mid-July by 17 percent for bagged coffee.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters also announced plans to raise coffee prices by 10 percent.
View full post on All Stories
Needed but discouraged, Mideast entrepreneurs struggle
Cairo, Egypt David Rosenberg – When Hind Wassef, a thirty-something Cairo resident, got the idea to open a boutique bookstore with three friends in 2002, the idea seemed promising. Greater Cairo counted 16 million residents, including large numbers of university-educated people. The city’s existing bookstores were dour and drab affairs that would present little competition. President Husni Mubarak’s government was taking measures to encourage private enterprise.
But Wassef and her partners received little encouragement. Rather than seeing the absence of competition as a chance to address an untapped market, friends, family and others warned that the business would never take off. Egyptians don’t read and if bookstores are dull, there must be a good reason. Don’t take any chances.
“Nobody had seized the opportunity. No one felt that it would work,” Wassef told The Media Line. “We were fighting this image that nobody reads. We kept hearing that whenever we shared our idea with somebody.”
Wassef and her partners stood their ground, investing their own capital in what became Diwan Bookstore, which combines hints of Middle Eastern décor with modern accoutrements and reader-friendly touches like sofas, on-line ordering and a virtual community of readers. Diwan not only sells books like its fusty competitors, but DVDs and stationery. Its stock includes literature in English, French and German as well as Arabic.
The Diwan partners succeeded. But if Egypt and the rest of the non-oil Middle East is going to pull itself out of the economic morass it’s in today, it will need millions of others like her, who are willing to risk quitting secure jobs and their reputations, investing their money or taking on loans. That will demand a delicate combination of institutional reforms to free markets as well as a different mindset for people used to counting on the state to provide jobs and hand out assistance.
The U.S., Europe and Saudi Arabia, not to mention an array of global financial institutions, are set to provide Egypt, Tunisia and other countries billions of dollars in financial aid. But economists warn that the money is only a stopgap – that the real economic growth that the non-oil Middle East desperately needs in order to sustain a rapidly-growing population can only come when ordinary people create innovative, efficient businesses.
The region is a private enterprise laggard by almost every measure. Much of the non-oil Middle East – countries like Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Tunisia, without the benefits of petroleum profits – took steps over the last two decades to encourage private business.
But it was too little effect. The biggest beneficiaries tended to be people like Ahmed Ezz in Egypt, who exploited their ties to politicians to buy state-owned businesses, rather than ordinary people like Wassef.
The International Institute for Finance estimates that private investment averages less than 15 percent of the gross domestic product in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), compared with more than 20 percent in other regions. Business executives and the firms they own and manage tend to be among the oldest in the world, a testament to the absence of the kind of start-up dynamism driving the world’s fastest-growing economies.
“A more open and enabling environment for the private sector is important both for faster growth and for greater acceptance of private sector-led growth among the population,” the International Monetary Fund said in a report to the Group of Eight conference last week, spelling out policy reforms the Middle East requires. It noted that per capita growth in the MENA region over the past 30 years was the slowest in the world.
On paper, the Middle East looks like a great place for entrepreneurs. In the World Bank’s 2010 annual ranking of business climate Doing Business, Saudi Arabia was in 11th place, ahead of South Korea and Germany. Bahrain was 28th and the United Arab Emirates 40th. That puts them way ahead of China. Egypt at 94th place was 40 places ahead of India.
In the Arab world, it takes an average of nine procedures and 22 days to start up a business, according to the World Bank. That makes it the third fastest in the world. The cost for starting a business is a relatively high 46.2 percent of per capita income, but that is far less than it was a few years ago.
Indeed, the absence of young, innovative enterprises is an inviting proposition for those who want to take advantage of it. So is the relative ease of expanding out of your home country to markets elsewhere in the region, which share the Arabic language and cultural norms. The Arab world counts a population of close to 300 million people, almost the same as the U.S., and includes some of the world’s wealthiest countries.
Mohamad Haj Hasan was thinking just these things in 2007 when he started the on-line jobs site Akhtaboot (Arabic for octopus) in his home country of Jordan. The site matches job seekers with over 500 registered employers, including international players such as Google, FedEx, and LC Electronics.
“The region offers a lot of opportunities because there are lots of kinds of business that don’t exist yet,” he told The Media Line. “I liked the economics of the Internet, especially being based out of Jordan. Jordan itself doesn’t offer a great market. All successful companies in Jordan, whether they are goods or services, they export ….[but] it had reasonable costs when it comes to employees and rent, and it has pretty high caliber talent.”
Haj Hassan moved quickly once he had established himself in Jordan to enter the much bigger markets of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. “It was easy to get cash flow positive, but once we did that – because Jordan is a very limited and tough market – we opened Saudi Arabia and Egypt,” he recalls.
But investors in MENA, especially executives in small and medium-sized firms, say they are discouraged by fickle regulations, corruption and an uneven playing field that favors older firms at the expense of new ones.
Wassef certainly encountered her fair share of such obstacles as Diwan expanded to what today is 10 outlets across Egypt. Some of the barriers were silly, like the one that gives local officials the right to vet what products a store can carry. Diwan ran into problems because it wanted to sell books and DVDs, Wassef recalls.
Others, such as censorship, are more serious for someone in the book business. Wassef says she often spends time in long discussions with customs officials and regulators, who have wide powers, often arbitrarily exercised, over business regulations.
“If you’re involved in buying and selling there’s always the suspicion that you’re doing something wrong,” she says of government officials. Often she has to negotiate to get books subject to censorship past customs. “You have to use the personal touch. You meet and have a talk with them. They say they have instructions from the top and you say ‘Well, it’s just a cookbook’ and they say ‘Oh, I see.’”
Being a woman isn’t a handicap; being a business person of either gender is the real problem. “As a woman, you can sometime get your way more easily,” she adds.
David Wachtel is senior vice president for marketing and communications at Endeavor, which helps entrepreneurs by providing mentorship, expert networks and strategic advice. The New York-based non-profit added the Middle East to its portfolio in 2007, starting with Egypt and most recently adding Lebanon. Regulations aside, he says, much has to be done to change the culture of business in the Middle East.
“The whole issue of the cost of failure in the Middle East for entrepreneur is quite high,” Wachtel told The Media Line. “It isn’t acceptable to take risks and fail. This is reinforced by institutional issues like the lack of bankruptcy legislation.” In Egypt, for instance, there is no such thing as a business bankruptcy. Owners must take personal obligations. “That raises the bar.”
Other problems are the preponderance of family-owned business. The next generation may have the will to shake up an enterprise by entering new markets, developing new products, streamlining management, but older family members often will hold them back. Often no one controls the company at all as shares are divided among more and more heirs.
The Middle East also lacks angel investors and others willing to risk capital on new and untried businesses, Wachtel adds. Banks are also unfriendly to start-up entrepreneurs, says Imad Malhas, a Jordanian who founded and owns the high tech company IrisGuard.
“Financing and money is a big issue. Banks are the biggest problem in Jordan – they won’t give you money based on your business plan,” Malhas told The Media Line. “In the end, they want collateral – your father or someone else who’s wealthy enough to sign. They’ll go through the motions of studying your business plan, but in the end they want collateral. That needs to change big time.”
IrisGuard is an unusual start-up by Middle Eastern standards – a path-breaking, technology start-up that is the market leader in its field. Formed in 2001, the company developed a camera that photographs the iris, which is as unique as a fingerprint to every person. It’s used by Cairo Amman Bank to verify customers’ ID and by the United Arab Emirates to screen incoming travelers.
Malhas says an important element in fostering new business is mentoring. He acts as a mentor himself, and is also working both inside his company and out to teach young Jordanians the ropes. Together with the King Abdullah II Fund for Development, he is helping to run a program that sends young Jordanian engineers to work in multinational companies abroad in the hope they will later put their technology and management skills to work back in Jordan. IrisGate, which runs its research and development center in Britain, does the same on a smaller scale.
Budding entrepreneurs don’t have many role models and people they can turn to for practical advice in their home countries, Malhas says.
“The problem with doing mentoring is our young kids look at these guys like John Chamberlain from Cisco and say ‘There’s no way on earth that’s something we can aspire to.’ If you do $10 million in sales in the Middle East in the first five years, you’re super successful.”
View full post on All Stories
Antiretroviral drug price cuts secured amid growing funding fears
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (IRIN) – Three international organizations have negotiated reductions on key first- and second-line, and paediatric antiretrovirals (ARVs) that will help countries save at least US$600 million over the next three years.
The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), the international drug purchasing facility UNITAID and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) made the announcement on 18 May.
The deal, expected to affect most of the 70 countries comprising CHAI’s Procurement Consortium, features notable reductions in the prices of tenofovir (TDF), efavirenz, and the second-line ritonavir-boosted atazanavir (ATV/r) used in HIV patients who have failed initial, or “first-line”, regimens.
As part of the deal, the three bodies set price ceilings for more than 40 adult and paediatric ARVs with eight pharmaceutical manufacturers and suppliers, including Cipla Ltd, Matrix Laboratories and Autobindo Pharma.
Together these eight companies account for most ARVs sold in countries with access to generic drugs, according to David Ripin, scientific director of CHAI’s Drug Access Programme.
As a result, the cost of ATV/r is down by two-thirds from just three years ago. Meanwhile, a once-a-day fixed-dose combination (FDC) pill containing TDF and efavirenz will now cost countries less than US$159 per patient per year. In 2008, low-income countries paid about $400 per patient per year for the same pill.
How did they do it?
According to UNITAID and CHAI, this success is a product of increased demand for these drugs and more efficient manufacturing of the active ingredients, which are estimated to account for as much as 75 percent of generic ARV costs.
“When you make an active ingredient, you use a multistep chemical process,” Ripin told IRIN/PlusNews. “To reduce costs, you can look for a less expensive source of raw materials of which there are a few examples, including TDF … or you can tinker with the chemical process used to make the product to make them more efficient.”
But Ripin added that doing either comes at a cost for pharmaceutical companies, for whom a change in raw material suppliers or manufacturing processes means re-applying for approval of the drug with regulatory bodies.
“Any time you change anything with the way you make a drug, you need to get regulatory approval,” he said. “You have to do a fair amount of work to prove that your product works just as well now as it did before.
“The pharmaceutical companies and generic manufacturers are fantastic at making these types of improvements… [but] they have a limited set of research and development resources available to them,” Ripin said. “They often need to make a decision where they are going to get a higher return on that research and development, and typically that comes from the introduction of new products on the market.”
According to Ripin, the key is providing companies with data on the large and growing markets for ARVs.
“We help companies evaluate for themselves whether it’s a worthwhile business opportunity,” he said. “The second key factor they have to consider is the competitive marketplace for their drugs, where there is an incentive for lower [production] costs and lower-priced products as they want to maintain their market share.”
CHAI also provides countries with data on best market prices for drugs to help inform national procurement, as was the case with South Africa’s recent ARV tender. Although South Africa is not expected to benefit from the new price cuts, the country has the largest ARV tender in the world, and could secure the drugs at competitive prices. In terms of the CHAI agreement, lower prices are available to members of the Procurement Consortium but are dependant on volumes ordered.
How low can we go?
TDF has become an important drug for many countries, including South Africa, hoping to implement the 2009 World Health Organization (WHO) HIV treatment guidelines, which recommend starting HIV patients on treatment sooner but also a shift away from more toxic ARVs to TDF.
However, the high cost of earlier treatment and better drugs has prohibited many countries from fully implementing the WHO recommendations. According to a recent report released by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), both Malawi and Zimbabwe reversed their move to WHO guidelines due to financial constraints.
While new price reductions bring TDF’s price closer to that of the long-time and widely adopted first-line ARV Zidovudine, further drops in TDF’s price will have to be logged to ensure widespread uptake, said Brenda Waning, coordinator of market dynamics for UNITAID.
For Waning and others like MSF, the issue of sustainable funding for the HIV response looms large ahead of the June UN meeting on HIV/AIDS in New York, rumoured to be the last for years to come, according to MSF’s report.
“There has been a lot of attention on commodities and not at other major drivers of cost,” she told IRIN/PlusNews. “We have to look at other places in the health system where we can capture cost-effectiveness.”
In particular, Waning pointed to the potential savings associated with the roll-out of new point-of-care diagnostics, which, although not high on the global agenda, will help countries task shift such testing away from scarce doctors.
Although the cost remains high, introducting FDC would help governments save on ARV shipping, transportation and storage, while improving adherence and patient outcomes.
llg/kn/mw
– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.
View full post on All Stories
Wealth of worlds’ millionaires calculated to rise to $202 trillion by 2020
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Financial analysts from service company Deloitte say the total wealth among millionaire households could more than double over the next decade in 25 major economies. Their wealth now calculated at nearly $92 trillion could rise to a staggering $202 trillion in 2020.
According to the study, the United States and Europe will continue to have the greatest concentrations of wealth, despite emerging markets closing in. The findings also highlight that numerous opportunities for growth in local markets across the country still remain.
“We wanted to go beyond some existing wealth management statistics by looking both into the future and across the globe to forecast how wealth among millionaire households might evolve,” says Andrew Freeman, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Financial Services. “Identifying and understanding how different market segments are changing can help formulate growth strategies.”
Freeman adds, “Which countries may offer the most promising future and how wealth managers can potentially increase profitability in the next decade are important questions for a wide range of financial institutions.”
Some of the other findings in the report include China continuing to be the driving force in the growth of millionaire wealth, followed by Brazil and Russia. Of the 25 countries examined in this study, China and South Korea will join the top 10 countries in terms of the total number of millionaires by 2020.
Millionaire households in the U.S. could reach $87 trillion in 2020, up from $39 trillion in 2011.
Among the forecasts for each of the 50 U.S. states, California is expected to remain the state with the wealthiest households, while New Jersey will continue to have the greatest density of millionaire households. The East Coast could see the highest growth rates with New York and Florida adding 1.5 million new millionaire households by 2020.
View full post on All Stories
Higher commodity prices for food and fuel a fact for the future
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Soaring commodity prices are wreaking havoc on consumer’s budgets here in the U.S., but experts say not to expect them to go down because the culprit is increased global demand for food and fuel.
Increased demand from population growth in developing nations is not only causing prices to increase but it is also causing a scarcity of resources, according to Jeremy Grantham, who helped found Boston-based GMO asset management firm.
Grantham says that population growth and the rise of India, China and Brazil have caused a shift in balance in the world that has resulted in increasing prices for food, energy and metals.
Those factors are contributing to soaring global prices for those commodities. Although some people have blamed speculation in commodity markets or the fiscal policies of some governments or central banks, population growth is also a driving force in pushing prices upward. That means that if even commodity markets crash, prices will not stay far down for long, Grantham says.
Grantham notes that in the past century commodity prices declined by 70 percent because of economies that were achieved in using materials more efficiently or substituting materials. However, he said that trend is reversing as we reached the end of being able to achieve efficiencies at a time when the world population was growing.
In addition to global population growth, people in developing nations are earning more and consuming more as a result.
In his April 2011 newsletter, Grantham warned that it was “time to wake up” because “the days of abundant resources and falling prices are over forever.”
“The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value,” Grantham wrote. “We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.”
Grantham summarized the problem:
- Until about 1800, our species had no safety margin and lived, like other animals, up to the limit of the food supply, ebbing and flowing in population.
- From about 1800 on the use of hydrocarbons allowed for an explosion in energy use, in food supply, and, through the creation of surpluses, a dramatic increase in wealth and scientific c progress.
- Since 1800, the population has surged from 800 million to 7 billion, on its way to an estimated 8 billion, at minimum.
- The rise in population, the ten-fold increase in wealth in developed countries, and the current explosive growth in developing countries have eaten rapidly into our finite resources of hydrocarbons and metals, fertilizer, available land and water.
- Now, despite a massive increase in fertilizer use, the growth in crop yields per acre has declined from 3.5% in the 1960s to 1.2% today. There is little productive new land to bring on and, as people get richer, they eat more grain-intensive meat. Because the population continues to grow at over 1%, there is little safety margin.
- The problems of compounding growth in the face of finite resources are not easily understood by optimistic, short-term-oriented, and relatively innumerate humans (especially the political variety).
- The fact is that no compound growth is sustainable. If we maintain our desperate focus on growth, we will run out of everything and crash. We must substitute qualitative growth for quantitative growth.
- But Mrs. Market is helping, and right now she is sending us the Mother of all price signals. The prices of all important commodities except oil declined for 100 years until 2002, by an average of 70%. From 2002 until now, this entire decline was erased by a bigger price surge than occurred during World War II.
- Statistically, most commodities are now so far away from their former downward trend that it makes it very probable that the old trend has changed – that there is in fact a Paradigm Shift – perhaps the most important economic event since the Industrial Revolution.
- Climate change is associated with weather instability, but the last year was exceptionally bad. Near term it will surely get less bad.
- Excellent long-term investment opportunities in resources and resource efficiency are compromised by the high chance of an improvement in weather next year and by the possibility that China may stumble.
- From now on, price pressure and shortages of resources will be a permanent feature of our lives. This will increasingly slow down the growth rate of the developed and developing world and put a severe burden on poor countries.
- We all need to develop serious resource plans, particularly energy policies. There is little time to waste.
View full post on All Stories
Oil companies Shell and Exxon rack up billions in profits on soaring oil prices
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobile oil companies both reported robust first quarter profits because of higher global prices.
Those higher prices amounted to $113.70 per barrel for US crude oil futures, the highest level in 2.5 years, and $125.71 per barrel for Brent crude.
That helped Anglo-Dutch firm Shell to record $6.9 billion in profits for the first three months of 2011, up a hefty 41 percent from the same period in 2010.
Texas-based Exxon group did even better reporting profits of $10.7 billion, up a whopping 69 percent from the same time last year.
View full post on All Stories
Finding A Path Through The ‘Gobbledygook’ Of The Insurance Market
Washington, DC, United States (KaiserHealth) – My ZIP code is a black hole for individual health insurance.
That’s what I recently discovered when I tried to find the coverage I want at an affordable price. What hubris I had.
My story started in 2009, when my position as a journalism professor at a small college was eliminated, and I lost my health benefits along with the job. In the ensuing months, as the clock ticked on my COBRA extension, I began to focus on finding a new health plan. I thought it would be a matter of dealing with mild sticker shock and doing comparative shopping. I was wrong.
As an experienced writer and researcher, I am used to making calls, asking questions and digging through hard-to-understand details. But it never occurred to me that the answers I uncovered about Tompkins County, N.Y. — a paradise of farmland, lakes and waterfalls close to the cultural attractions of Ithaca, home for me and Cornell University — would be so frustrating. It turns out it’s one of the state’s worst places to find good individual health coverage.
When I tell people about my dilemma, they get curious — even participatory. “Did you try a professional group?” they ask. “Did you try an online broker?” (Yes and yes.) Maybe they get caught up in my story because, unlike many people with tales of insurance woes, I’m in my fifties and healthy. My story doesn’t involve a medical condition that’s unsolvable or hard to talk about. Or maybe it’s just that my experience lights a path, however convoluted, through the insurance gobbledygook.
I started my quest with Aetna, my COBRA insurer. Under New York state law, I thought I had “conversion rights” — meaning I could convert my former employer’s group coverage, the basis for my COBRA plan, to individual coverage. Though the full monthly cost was already $565, and I worried I wouldn’t be able to afford any increases that kicked in when it became an individual plan, it was great insurance — providing excellent benefits and the ability to choose my own doctors. But it turned out my cost concerns were not even relevant. There is a caveat in the law: self-insured employers are subject to federal, not state, regulation. And because my former employer is self insured — meaning Aetna administers the plan but the college assumes all the financial risk — the conversion option did not exist.
After this idea evaporated, I explored possibilities on the website of The Freelancers Union, a professional association that offers its own health insurance in New York. Five plan choices popped up. Great, I thought. Then I clicked further to read about the plans’ residency requirements and up came a map. The right side of the state — covering 34 counties that share borders with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Canada — was colored in blue. These counties are the lucky ones. Those on the left — 28 counties that border more of Pennsylvania and Canada, extending all the way to Lake Erie and Lake Ontario — were white, meaning no Freelancers Union health insurance. That’s where Tompkins County is.
This development was crushing. Somewhere along the way, the notion had lodged in my head that if I ever turned to freelance writing as my full-time job, I could get benefits through this type of organization. But — at least as far as I could tell — there are no such groups with health plans in my area.
I felt stupid. I also was getting curious, which happens whenever I feel stupid. The reporter in me wanted to know what the heck was going on. But the consumer in me needed a health plan. So I kept looking.
I tried other websites, starting with AARP. The site directs consumers to an AARP-branded Aetna plan. I entered my ZIP code and got the same response: the plan was “not available in your area.” Next, at a top-rated insurance broker site, my ZIP code brought up one result. The $561-a-month GHI policy covered annual physical and gynecologic exams, prescription drugs with a co-pay, hospitalization and outpatient surgery. But it did not cover, among other things, any other office visits; inpatient physical therapy; ER professional charges; diagnostic admissions; and diagnostic lab tests. To me, that seems like too much money to spend for what amounts to catastrophic coverage.
Curiosity was getting the better of me, so I did some random comparisons on the same website. Zip codes in the District of Columbia; Seattle; Fairbanks, Alaska; and New York City offered 80, 45, 56 and 16 insurance choices, respectively. I also tried random rural areas. Residents of Aladdin, Wyo., had 27 plan choices, starting at $380 a month. Residents of Amelia, Neb., had 87, starting at $133.05.
In search of clarity, I visited the New York state insurance website and discovered a whole new possibility: Healthy NY, a subsidized program for low-income people. Several different insurers offer the same basic menu of coverage through different regional HMOs, which charge different rates.
At first I ruled it out because I wouldn’t be able to choose my own doctors, which has always been very important to me. But I was starting to feel desperate. And I qualified for the plan because it just so happens that in January, I made less than $2,269. I never imagined I would be glad to have a dry spell with my freelancing.
I was not surprised to discover that, although New Yorkers in many other parts of the state can choose a Healthy NY insurer from several options, I only had one: Excellus BlueCross BlueShield. I was just glad to learn that I could get insurance. A phone call led to an additional choice, through the same insurer, that would let me see my own doctors. But it would have cost around $1,400 a month, which is the same as my mortgage. There was also a plan for sole proprietors, but I didn’t qualify.
At this point I went into full reporter mode. I called Troy Oechsner, New York state deputy superintendent for health, and asked him about my scarcity of coverage options and the high costs associated with them. He told me that some other rural areas in the state are in a similar fix, and he said, “For an insurer to get into the area of Tompkins County, where Excellus has such a large hold on the commercial market, is really difficult.”
Ah. That rings a bell. I remembered reading a very similar conclusion in a 2009 United Hospital Fund report: “Entering Central New York is entering the Excellus zone” — a 15-county region where “the region’s nonprofit BCBS plans vigorously defend their turf.” Who do they defend it against? Mostly for-profit insurers, which have a much stronger foothold in downstate areas, including greater New York City. Nonprofits have historically claimed upstate markets (which include Central New York). In my region, Excellus in particular dominates, with a strong record of well-established health-provider relationships.
Not only am I in the Excellus zone, said Oechsner, but I’ve stumbled into “the plight of the individual market in New York.” It’s a decades-long saga in which the state “traded the problem of a group of people who can’t get insurance at any price for another problem, which is that our individual rates are out-of-control expensive,” he said. In other words, the state gave up some of its power to regulate rate increases in exchange for guarantees of access to quality coverage for everyone — although as recently enacted legislation is phased in, the state is regaining more control over the increases.
I still didn’t get why the Freelancers Union insurance isn’t available to me. So I called Chief Operating Officer Ann Boger, who explained that the group’s plan in New York is linked to the service area of Empire BlueCross BlueShield. I knew from my other research that Empire can’t operate in Excellus territory without giving up the BlueCross BlueShield brand. Boger also said that offering insurance in rural areas is a challenge. “The nature of insurance is that it works best organized is around large numbers,” she added.
What about those rural areas I randomly sampled on the broker website? My answer came from Peter Newell, director of the United Hospital Fund’s Health Insurance Project. It’s simple: I didn’t compare the coverage. He talked of plans that have limited benefits, ratings for gender and age that push costs much higher than advertised, and exclusions for people with preexisting conditions. Broker websites, for all their ease of use, don’t instantly compare apples to apples. “If you compare my neighborhood to someone else’s neighborhood, you’ve got to think about those things,” said Newell.
Newell told me the federal health care reform should help me eventually — particularly with the establishment of health insurance exchanges that should yield more choices.
But for now, time has run out. I have signed up for the high deductible option in Healthy NY, with a drug benefit, for $296.48 a month. The deductible is $1,200 a year. I’m approaching this choice as a stop-gap measure, although, as I told Oechsner, I now have a strong incentive for limiting my income.
His response: “There’s no way to sugar coat it: You’re right. If you make too much money, individual health insurance in New York gets very expensive.”
I also have one foot out the door as I weigh my professional prospects. If I move, especially if I’m making a living as a freelancer, my first criterion in choosing a location will be something I’ve never before considered: the availability of good health insurance.
– Provided by Kaiser Health News.
View full post on All Stories
Supreme Court to decide states and private groups’ right to sue polluters
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments April 19 in a case that will decide whether states and private groups can sue utilities for their greenhouse gas emissions.
Additional legal briefs are due Monday in the case of American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, which already was joined by seven other states, New York City and three land trusts.
They are suing five utilities, saying they created a “public nuisance” by violating federal Clean Air Act limits on their emissions.
Environmentalists say the Supreme Court’s decision on whether states, cities and private groups even have a right to sue will have a dramatic effect on the nation’s efforts to stop global warming.
A decision saying public interest groups and local governments can sue is likely to unleash a flood of lawsuits that would increase the courts’ authority over emissions.
A ruling for the utilities would mean only the federal government can clamp down on how they operate.
The environmentalists already have won before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a 2009 ruling.
The power companies appealed to the Supreme Court. A decision is expected by July.
New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman filed a brief for New York City and state governments of California, Connecticut, Iowa, Rhode Island and Vermont.
“Climate change threatens our economy, our health and our natural resources,” Schneiderman said. “This lawsuit protects New Yorkers and our environment from the serious harms caused by unrestrained greenhouse gas pollution. As some of the biggest global warming polluters in the country, these five companies produce 10 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions. To protect our future, we must have the right to hold these polluters accountable in a court of law.”
Utilities named in the lawsuit are American Electric Power Co., Cinergy Corp., Southern Co., the Tennessee Valley Authority and Xcel Energy Inc.
Two states – New Jersey and Wisconsin – have dropped out of the lawsuit since the dispute started in 2004.
Three land trusts, the Audubon Society of New Hampshire, Open Space Institute and Open Space Conservancy, also are suing the utilities.
Business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and major oil companies, are staunchly opposed to broader court authority over pollution.
They said in amicus briefs that judges would enforce a patchwork of rulings against them that ultimately would hurt businesses and the nation’s economy.
American Electric Power Co. made the same kind of argument in its brief, which says allowing public nuisance claims against utilities would authorize lawsuits “by anyone who claims to be affected by climate change against any source of greenhouse gas emissions. It would empower courts to determine the ‘reasonable’ level of global greenhouse gas emissions, allocate them among economic sectors, and order individual actors to conform their emissions to the court’s judgments.”
As a result, judges would be able to override authority that should rest with the Environmental Protection Agency, American Electric Power’s brief says.
The utility’s lawyers cited previous federal court rulings in saying, “These issues are wholly inappropriate for resolution by an unelected, unrepresentative judiciary … under the vague and indeterminate nuisance concepts of the common law.”
The Tennessee Valley Authority argues that allowing public nuisance lawsuits against polluters is impractical..
“… virtually every person, organization, company, or government across the globe also emits greenhouse gases, and virtually everyone will also sustain climate-change-related injuries,” the Tennessee Valley Authority’s brief says.
The EPA was set to announce new greenhouse gas reporting requirements for large polluters by March 31, but has delayed the date.
View full post on All Stories
U.S. stocks tumble, 3-day gain streak ends
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – U.S. stocks tumbled on Monday ending a three-day gain streak as investors shrugged off a report of higher consumer spending in February and retreated over geopolitical concerns.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 23 points or 0.2 percent to close at 12,198. Home Depot was the biggest blue-chip decliner after announcing it will sell a $2 billion debt offering.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slid 3.6 points or 0.3 percent to 1,310, dragged by Marriott International’s slump.
The Nasdaq Composite Index shed 12 points or 0.5 percent to 2,731 with eBay among the losers after announcing it will acquire GSI Commerce for $2.4 billion.
Oil for May delivery declined $1.42 to $104 per barrel.
Gold futures for April delivery fell $6.60 to $1,420 per ounce.
View full post on All Stories
U.S. stocks up for second straight day on surge of tech shares
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – U.S. stocks gained for the second straight day on Thursday as technology firms’ positive earnings reports beat concerns on crises in Japan and Libya.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 85 points or 0.5 percent to 12,171 with Hewlett-Packard Co. as the top gainer.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index recovered lost ground since the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan increasing 12 points or 0.9 percent to 1,310. Linux vendor Red Hat was the top gainer after reporting high earnings and raising its profit forecast. Other gainers were semiconductor maker Micron Technologies and chipmaker Nvidia.
The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 38 points or 1.4 percent to 2,736.
Crude oil futures settled at $105.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The oil for May delivery was 59 cents or 0.6 percent lower.
Gold futures for April delivery fell $3.10 or 0.2 percent to $1,440 an ounce.
View full post on All Stories
Day Trading- China opposes EU’s emissions scheme
- A study on Automated Forex Trading and how it works
- Swing Trading System Automated Forex Trading – Many Advantages
- Why You Should Be Using Automated Forex Trading System To Leverage Your Time And Earn a Passive Income while You Sleeping
- Wall Street opens higher Friday fueled by a strong jobs report
- Court rules for Motorola and makes Apple pull iPads and iPhones in Germany
- How an Automated Forex Trading Software Helps You Become a Successful Forex Trader
- Never so divided, never so united
- President Obama lauds as U.S. Senate reigns in insider trading by lawmakers
- U.S. Senate puts lid on multi-million dollar bonuses of Freddie, Fannie
- Business loans
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- Trading 101
- Stocks fall Friday amid European downgrade concerns
- U.S. stocks fall as eurozone worries overshadow jobs news
- Stocks up after jobless claims hit 3 1/2-year lows
- Stocks open lower on eurozone deal doubts
- Dow holds strong gains Wednesday after Fed move
- Stocks slide on euro worries; oil trades over $100 a barrel
- Markets open down Friday despite drop in unemployment rate
- U.S. stocks rally Friday ahead of weekend Eurozone summit
- Apple shares drop 5.3% in Germany following news of Jobs’s death
- U.S. considers fraud investigation into Chinese Internet companies
- Internet Money
- Business Credit Information
- Honda widens recall for airbag problem
- GM CEO: Earnings good, but not good enough
- Chinese companies buying automaker Saab
- Suzuki demands VW return shares after alleged contract breach
- Chrysler has best September since 2007
- Honda recalls million cars worldwide
- General Motors to manufacture plug-in Cadillac ELR plug-in hybrid electric car
- GM earnings soar 92 percent on global sales
- Volkswagen postpones MAN supervisory board takeover
-
