Word: highes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...relief over the jobless figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday morning - 247,000 jobs were lost in July, far fewer than economists had expected - a dark problem lurks in the numbers: dangerously high levels of long-term unemployment in America. Unlike recent recessions, the current economic crisis has been characterized by skyrocketing numbers of those out of work for three, six or more months at a time. Economists worry that the shock of the past year's financial crisis may have driven the U.S. into a period of permanently high unemployment similar to what Europe has suffered...
...that area. Current reform legislation in the House and the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee would allow insurers to vary premiums on the basis of age only by a factor of two, meaning insurers would be allowed to charge older enrollees premiums that are twice as high as those for younger ones. (In the health-policy world, this is known as a 2-to-1 age rating.) That may sound like a huge concession to private insurers, but they insist it would lead to only one of two scenarios: financial ruin for private insurers or exorbitantly high...
...couldn't do business at 2 to 1. The younger people's premiums would just be too high," says Charles Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, a lobbying group for investor-owned hospitals, and a former lobbyist for the insurance industry during Bill Clinton's health-care reform battle in the 1990s. Essentially, a wider "age band," like the 5-to-1 ratio insurers favor, would allow them to charge higher amounts to middle-aged people not yet old enough to qualify for Medicare, while keeping younger people's premiums much lower. In a recent letter to Henry...
...remember all the high-fiving each other [after passage of] portable health care in 1996," said Emanuel before adding, "It's been empty." Although HIPAA prohibited insurers from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions, it didn't limit how much insurers could charge in premiums. The result: insurers in states without premium caps were charging those with pre-existing conditions as much as 464% of standard premiums, according to the Government Accountability Office. (Other researchers found examples that were even more egregious, including a Colorado insurer charging premiums as much as 2,000% of normal rates...
...simmering ethnic tensions by easing up on wealth ownership rules that had long-favored native Malays over the nation's significant Chinese and Indian minorities. The citizens those policies were aimed to please rewarded Najib with good numbers: In mid-July, public opinion polls showed the new PM with high approval ratings of 70%, compared to low ratings of 35% as deputy PM before taking office...