Word: markets
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While toy company Mattel could barely keep up with demand for its Barbie dolls in the early 1960s, its competitor, Hasbro, realized the market had no analogue for boys. In 1963, Hasbro began development on a military-themed line of dolls that, like Barbie, could be accessorized with different outfits and equipment. The original strategy called for a different figure for each branch of the military, but seizing on a 1945 film called The Story of G.I. Joe, the toys were eventually genericized. (The term itself comes from World War II, where it was used as a shorthand symbol...
...ethical errors derail their chairmanships. Lately, Rangel has been seen to have stumbled as well. He has become the focus of several ethics scandals over matters ranging from the relatively petty to the potentially serious. Last summer, it was revealed that Rangel was occupying four apartments at below-market rents in a Harlem building owned by a prominent real estate developer. (He has since given up one apartment that he used as an office.) In September, he admitted he had neglected to pay some taxes by failing to report $75,000 in rental income earned from a beachfront villa...
...that it is being unfairly vilified, the insurance industry is far from ready to simply accept the reform proposals currently on the table. Most of its efforts are concentrated on defeating the creation of a public-health-insurance alternative primarily for Americans currently priced out of the private-insurance market. But the industry's opposition to Democratic reform proposals goes far beyond the public option, which it believes will have an unfair, government-afforded advantage over insurers, and the industry is quietly lobbying for legislative language changes that could have major consequences. (Read TIME's special report "What Health-Care...
...Insurers have agreed to discontinue practices like turning down customers in the individual and small-group market who have expensive pre-existing conditions and basing premium rates on health status and gender. But one variable that will persist is age, since older enrollees represent more health risks than younger enrollees, and insurers are doing their best to retain the most flexibility in 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...
...Insurers are also keenly aware that they can afford to offer coverage to everyone who applies only if coverage is truly universal. "If there's a requirement that everyone will participate, it's possible to do these market reforms without cost skyrocketing," says Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for Ignagni's group, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). Put another way, says Kahn, "Insurance isn't free, and you have to have groups with many more healthy people than sick." As a result, insurers are pushing for harsher financial penalties on Americans who would forgo insurance even in the face...