Word: coste
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...takers. But the ultimate point is that orangutans, as odd and ungainly as they look, are uniquely adapted to the jungle, to life among the trees - an existence that is being threatened by the continued logging of Southeast Asian jungles. "Orangutans can move in logged forest, but the energetic cost may be much greater, and food availability is likely to be lower, so populations become less healthy and less viable in the long term," says Thorpe. A 2007 United Nations report estimated that if current trends continue, 98% of forests in Sumatra and Borneo could be gone...
...congressional lawmakers scramble to find ways to pay for health-reform legislation that could cost upwards of $1 trillion over the next decade, there is probably no funding method more unpopular with the American public than taxing health benefits. Employers have been providing tax-free insurance to workers since World War II, when federally mandated wage freezes led to a bonanza in this form of nonsalary compensation...
...health-insurance plans. Doing so would generate some tax revenue - though far less than the $1 trillion-plus over 10 years that could be generated by eliminating the tax-benefit break entirely - and possibly help "bend the curve" (to borrow the wonky slogan du jour) of rising health-care costs. The theory is that high-end insurance that covers everything at little or no cost to consumers discourages those people from shopping around for less expensive care and encourages wasteful overuse of the health-care system...
...health reform, it's not nearly that simple. For starters, most large companies (1,000 employees or more) are self-insured, with a private health-insurance company merely acting as the benefits administrator. In these cases, Kerry's proposal would levy the excise tax directly on employers, whose extra cost burden could be (and many say most certainly would be) passed onto employees in the form of higher contributions to premiums, higher deductibles and higher co-pays. "It is not a tax on insurers," says James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, which advocates for employer-provided benefits...
...Senate Finance Committee has not yet introduced draft legislation, so it's still unclear what level of Cadillac health benefits would be taxed under the Kerry proposal. But those familiar with the committee's discussions say the tax threshold could be based on either what federal-employee benefits cost or the average cost of insurance nationwide. Nearly 20% of Americans covered by employer-sponsored health insurance have policies costing more than 120% of the national average, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation...