Word: plan
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...Most insurance companies will make patients jump through hoops before they will actually pick up the tab for bariatric surgery. Providers often require that patients lose a specified amount of weight by staying on a medically enforced diet plan. However, a new study from Duke University Medical Center found that 62% of bariatric surgery patients trimmed the excess fat regardless of whether they lost or gained 10 pounds before surgery. "There is no value in policies like this," says Dr. Eric DeMaria, the study's lead author. "If there is no value, we shouldn't use it as a requirement...
Joseph Sitt, the Brooklyn-born developer whose company paid $150 million for 10 acres of central Coney Island, wants to restore the splendor. His plan includes an indoor water park, two hotels and a roller coaster that wraps in and out of buildings. That a large investor has come to the neighborhood is a vindication of the city's strategy to spark private interest by plowing municipal money into improvements such as a minor-league baseball stadium. Coney Island fixture Dick Zigun, who has brought back old traditions like the circus sideshow and invented new ones like the Mermaid Parade...
What the OECD data seem to suggest is that you can run a retirement plan that's fiscally sound but stingy, or you can make big promises that will eventually go sour. The U.S. fits mostly in the former category--for all the gnashing of teeth about Social Security, its funding problems are modest by global standards...
...that really the choice? Actually, no. At least one country appears to have found a better way. In the Netherlands--"the globe's No. 1 pensions country," says influential retirement-plan consultant Keith Ambachtsheer--the average retiree can count on a pension equal to 96.8% of his working income. Ample money is set aside to fund pensions, and it is invested prudently but not timidly. Companies contribute to employees' accounts but aren't stuck with profit-killing obligations if their business shrinks or the stock market tanks...
...Dutch have steered a middle way between irresponsible Continental generosity and practical Anglo-American stinginess. They have also, to lapse into pension jargon, split the difference between DB and DC plans. In a defined-benefit (DB) plan, workers are promised a retirement income, and the sponsor--usually a corporation or government--is on the hook to provide it. In a defined-contribution (DC) plan, the worker and sometimes the employer set aside money and hope it will be enough...