Bob Herbert: Obama plan to be windfall for insurance companies

This is just sick.

The hope of a government-run insurance option is all but gone. So there will be no effective alternative for consumers in the market for health coverage, which means no competitive pressure for private insurers to rein in premiums and other charges. (Forget about the nonprofit cooperatives. That’s like sending peewee footballers up against the Super Bowl champs.)

Insurance companies are delighted with the way “reform” is unfolding. Think of it: The government is planning to require most uninsured Americans to buy health coverage. Millions of young and healthy individuals will be herded into the industry’s welcoming arms. This is the population the insurers drool over.

So just to get this straight. You and I are probably going to pay more in taxes, regardless of what they tell us, and our country is going to be set back another trillion bucks, so that Blue Cross can make even more money, while continuing to up our premiums by 25% a year with no commensurate increase in benefits. It's good to be king. And let's not forget the drug companies:

The White House, for its part, agreed not to seek additional savings from the drug companies over those 10 years. This resulted in big grins and high fives at the drug lobby. The White House was rolled. The deal meant that the government’s ability to use its enormous purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices was off the table.

This is what it feels like to be rolled. And played. Read More......

Republican party still opposes health care reform, even after Obama caved - imagine that

Maybe if we carve out 40% of the health care reform proposal as tax cuts... Read More......

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Busy week already. There was actually some forward movement on LGBT issues yesterday from Team Obama. We needed to see that from them. It's unfortunate that we had to go through the battle over the DOMA brief. But, clearly, someone over there heard us.

Hopefully, someone over at the White House is listening us now on health insurance reform. There has to be a public option to rein in the insurance industry. Obama has stated that repeatedly. I believe him. But, in Rahm's White House, just because Obama says something, apparently, it doesn't hold much weight. Someone needs to rein him in. And, as we learned from the DOMA brief, if you want the attention of the Obama administration, be loud and be aggressive. Don't hold back. It's the only way they listen.

Also, it helps to speak the truth if one doesn't want anything from the Obama administration, like a job or help with clients. I just want Obama to deliver on his promises.

Let's get it started... Read More......

Average pay for bankers in London rose 6% last month

Reform, anyone? How many people in the real world do you know who have seen such increases during the recession? This system is rotten to the core. Each time the numbers go up they have a new excuse for justifying but in the end it always goes up.

Average pay for financial employees in London rose 6 percent in July from June due to intensified competition for "star performers" and confidence continued to improve across the industry, a survey showed on Tuesday.

The average salary paid to financial sector workers in London rose to 53,223 pounds ($87,220) in July, up 6 percent from June but down 1 percent from a year ago, recruiters Morgan McKinley said.

And remember, the salary alone is only a small piece of the puzzle. Bankers receive bonus money that can double their annual pay and it's not unusual to generate much more. Read More......

At least someone is building houses out there

Very retro but I loved Lego as a kid.

Lego has positively thrived during the recession, as parents revert back to longer-lasting toys. Its parent company, Lego Group, has now posted a two-thirds rise in pre-tax profits to £99.5m, boosted by a 20 per cent rise in consumer sales in the UK. Total sales rose to £469m over the first half of 2009.

Retailers of board games and other traditional toys have also seen a renaissance in demand during the downturn. Last month, Hamleys cited Barbie and Transformers, as well as Lego, as toys it expects to do well this Christmas.

Part of the appeal of Lego during a recession is its "longevity", said Marko Ilincic, the managing director of Lego UK. "Parents spend lots of money on plastic imported toys, but they only do what it says on the tin. But children take Lego to pieces, build them up again and add it to other Lego, and that gives it longevity."

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Anti-corruption takes another hit in Africa

Bad news for Zambia. If only corruption was limited to Africa though. In the west, our leaders cash in *after* they leave office because that somehow makes it all better. The Independent:

Prosecutors had chosen to pursue only a fraction of the monies alleged to have been looted by Mr Chiluba, which a UK court in 2007 estimated at more than $57m, in order to keep the case watertight. The former president's wife, Regina, was convicted in March by a Zambian court of receiving stolen goods but was freed pending her appeal and was in court with her husband to witness the acquittal.

Hopes of a conviction had been high, following the 2007 civil action, brought by Zambia's attorney general in Britain. The judge in that case had concluded that Mr Chiluba's official earnings after a decade in office amounted to $100,000 and yet, during the same period, he had spent five times that amount in a single shop, Boutique Basile, an exclusive outfitters in Geneva.

Investigators uncovered an extraordinary decade of spending while in office that saw the notoriously vain politician amass hundreds of designer outfits. The prosecution, led by Michael Sullivan QC, described accounts in several countries, including the UK, Switzerland and the Caribbean, that had been used to cover the president's lavish spending under the pretence of financing overseas intelligence operations.

Mr Justice Smith said in his ruling that Mr Chiluba should be "ashamed of himself" and ordered him to repay $57m in stolen monies. The judge remarked that "the president (unlike the emperor) needs to be clothed".

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Credit card defaults up yet again

Maybe the "recovery" talk could hold off until statistics such as this level off.

Capital One Financial Corp's U.S. credit card defaults and delinquencies rose in July, as Americans kept losing jobs and struggled to pay their debts.

In a regulatory filing on Monday, Capital One said the annualized net charge-off rate for U.S. credit cards -- debts the company believes it will never collect -- increased to 9.83 percent in July from 9.73 percent in June.

Capital One, one of the largest issuers of Visa and MasterCard credit cards, said accounts at least 30 days delinquent -- an indicator of future loan losses -- inched up to 4.83 percent from 4.77 percent.

For U.S. auto loans, Capital One's charge-off rate rose to 4.26 percent in July from 3.89 percent in June, and the delinquency rate increased to 9.22 percent from 8.89 percent.

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Jefferson, Franklin, Rivkin

Just like other modern presidents, Obama dished out the big two (London and Paris) to the big money donors. Muppet diplomacy.

At 47, Mr. Rivkin is the youngest American envoy in Paris in 56 years. His father was a well-regarded diplomat, but the son has carved out his place in life in Hollywood. And, of course, he raised over $500,000 for Barack Obama in Southern California last year, and the palatial residence on the swanky rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré is his reward.

To judge by a story from 2002, Mr. Rivkin may inject new and different life into the palatial but ritualized world of Parisian diplomacy.

In 2002, Mr. Rivkin, something of a Tinseltown wunderkind, was chief executive of the entertainment world’s Jim Henson Company. For a Christmas movie featuring the world-beloved Muppets, a Henson crew filmed Kermit and Snoop Dogg rapping together.

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