Tips on Getting Cheaper Medical Health Insurance Quotes | Find ...

Medical expenses have already touched the sky and are still rising. This has made health care insurance a necessity. Medicare supplemental insurance is designed for people on Medicare who wish to have more comprehensive coverage. These supplemental plans may include Managed Care HMO plans or Medigap PPO plans that provide you with greater access to participating physicians. Medical terms can be confusing, and before speaking with an insurance agent, you should make sure you understated his or her language.

Medical insurance premiums are a result of careful consideration by medical insurance companies and are regulated by every state. Premiums can vary depending on the type of coverage, amount of the deductible, and benefit coverage.

Individual, or family, health insurance is also commonly known as personal health insurance or private health insurance . Most insurance companies offering this product will refer to it as individual health insurance. Individuals, families, self employed, student, small and large group. Traditional major medical, health savings accounts and temporary medical coverage. Individuals, families, self employed, student, small and large group. Traditional major medical, hospital, health savings accounts, temporary and short term medical coverage.

Choosing insurance in your state can be a difficult process. There are many companies to choose from and many plans within companies. Choose the right health plan based on what you want. If you have a certain doctor that you can?t bare not to see then a free-for-service plan is probably for you. Choose an individual health plan to find the cheapest health insurance coverage for the best value.

Within minutes, you can determine your eligibility, the type of plan you want and they will give you immediate quotes. Within minutes, you can receive an online health insurance quotes for life insurance and dental plans from America?s leading insurance companies. This unbiased approach to selecting a benefit package now allows you to customize your insurance quote, select the company of your choice with the benefit plan features and price that fits your situation and budget.

Source: http://www.projektgenerika.org/tips-on-getting-cheaper-medical-health-insurance-quotes.html

stevan ridley breast cancer awareness month breast cancer awareness month barbara walters new ipod touch new ipod touch dwts results

Life on Mars Driven Underground?

For youtube videos, paste embed code directly in the text box

-

Members do not need to provide an address

-

Rate Article

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Total votes: 0 Select Comment Validation Method
Member
Name/URL (Guest)
FaceBook (Guest) Member Commenting:


Authenticate with Facebook before submitting

Add Comment

OR


Add Comment

Make your LabSpaces comments count. Start earning LabSpaces points by becoming a member! Learn more. Please verify that you are human:
Register for LabSpaces
Add Comment Make your LabSpaces comments count. Start earning LabSpaces points by becoming a member! Learn more.

Please authenticate before trying to post a comment.

If you would like to remain anonymous, please enter a new name and link below


Add Comment

Friends

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/114886/Life_on_Mars_Driven_Underground_

bill buckner christmas island antonio gates antonio gates challah oxford comma oxford comma

Immigration: Feds seek info on Ala. students (AP)

MONTGOMERY, Ala. ? The U.S. Justice Department is requesting that school districts in Alabama turn over enrollment information about all of their students as part of a federal lawsuit challenging the state's tough new immigration law.

The department sent letters Monday to 39 school superintendents seeking lists that include the race and national origin of students, as well as whether English is their primary language. Justice department attorneys also are seeking the names of students who have withdrawn from school and the dates they left.

The Obama administration is concerned that the law enacted by Alabama's GOP-controlled legislature this year may chill student participation. The agency wants the information to determine if further action is warranted.

Justice Department spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said the letter went to districts with significant Hispanic populations. Alabama has 132 school districts.

Federal courts have put on hold a portion of Alabama's law that requires schools to report the number, but not the names, of students whose immigration status is in question.

State Sen. Scott Beason, a Gardendale Republican who sponsored the law, said the Justice Department's letter shows the importance of compiling information. "They are asking for the same student information we tried to get. They are proving our point," he said.

The Justice Department's letter reminds school superintendents that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that schools may not deny a student access based on immigration status and that the Justice Department enforces civil rights laws.

Beason said the Alabama law only sought statistics and did not deny enrollment to any illegal immigrant.

Michael Sibley, spokesman for the state Department of Education, said the Justice Department went directly to city and county superintendents rather than going through the department. He said he's not aware of the Justice Department ever seeking lists of students' names before in Alabama.

He said schools will need to devote significant resources and staff time to meet the Justice Department's deadline of Nov. 14.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/education/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111102/ap_on_re_us/us_alabama_immigration_law

matilda new jersey weather halloween movies halloween movies ohio state football new york snow new york snow

Appeals panel sides with CBS over Super Bowl fine (AP)

PHILADELPHIA ? A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld its finding that the Federal Communications Commissions acted improperly in fining CBS over the fleeting exposure of Janet Jackson's breast during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

A three-judge panel from 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that the FCC improperly assessed a $550,000 fine against the network for the so-called "wardrobe malfunction" that lasted just over half a second.

During the Super Bowl performance in Houston, Justin Timberlake ripped off Jackson's bustier, briefly exposing her breast and a silver sunburst "shield" covering her nipple. In arguments last year, the FCC argued that CBS should have been aware the performers might add shock value to the act.

"CBS had a duty to investigate," FCC lawyer Jack Lewis argued.

The network countered that regulators were now trying to apply different standards to words and images despite previously excusing fleeting instances of both.

The Supreme Court last year ordered the appeals panel to reconsider its 2008 decision, citing a ruling in a Fox television-led challenge, when it said the FCC could threaten fines over the use of a single curse word on live TV.

In the majority opinion, 3rd Circuit Judge Marjorie Rendell wrote that the Fox opinion did nothing to undermine the earlier decision on the CBS fine and, in fact, confirms the appeals panel's ruling.

The FCC "arbitrarily and capriciously departed from its prior policy excepting fleeting broadcast material" in assessing the fine, Rendell wrote.

The same panel initially sided with the network in 2008.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111102/ap_en_tv/us_cbs_janet_jackson

usnews new york special election windows 8 2pac kabul build build

Inmates freed after crack penalties are eased (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Antwain Black was facing a few more years in Leavenworth for dealing crack. But on Tuesday, he was on his way home to Illinois.

Black, 36, was among the first of potentially thousands of inmates who are being released early from federal prison because of an easing of the harsh penalties for crack that were enacted in the 1980s, when the drug was a terrifying new phenomenon in America's cities.

"I can't wait for my son to get home," said Black's mother, Donetta Adams of Springfield, Ill. "I'll just be glad to hug him and kiss him and see him right now."

The 1980s-era federal laws punished crack-related crimes much more severely than those involving powdered cocaine ? a practice criticized as racially discriminatory because most of those convicted of crack offenses were black.

More recently, the penalties for crack were reduced to bring them more in line with those for powder, and Tuesday was the first day inmates locked up under the old rules could get out early.

Black pleaded guilty in 2003 and was sentenced to 15 years. With changes in the law, good behavior and credit for time served in jail while awaiting sentencing, he was set free Tuesday from the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan. He spent 8 1/2 years locked up for the crime.

Adams said her son earned a high school equivalency diploma behind bars, likes to cook and has talked about opening a restaurant.

"He told me, `They don't have to worry about Antwain coming back,'" Adams said. "I tell him, get out here and get a job and get something on his mind."

Some 12,000 prisoners are expected to benefit from reduced sentences over the next several years, with an estimated 1,900 eligible for immediate release as of Tuesday. On average, inmates convicted of crack crimes will get three years shaved off their sentences. The reductions do not apply to people found guilty of crack offenses under state laws.

Kentucky inmate Darryl Flood, 48, thought he would have to wait until 2013 to get out of prison, more than a decade after he pleaded guilty to being part of a conspiracy to distribute crack. But on Monday a judge approved his release two years ahead of schedule.

Susan Cardwell, his sister in Haymarket, Va., said she was expecting him to arrive on a bus on Wednesday. She said she cried after getting a call from his lawyer with the news.

"He wants to get out, get a job and get his life back together," she said in a telephone interview. "He says he'll work two jobs if he has to."

Under the old system, a person convicted of crack possession got the same mandatory prison term as someone with 100 times the amount of powdered cocaine. Five grams of crack, about the weight of five packets of Sweet N'Low, brought a mandatory five years; it took 500 grams of powder to get the same sentence.

The law was seen as racially unfair since blacks made up the majority of people convicted of crack crimes, while whites were more likely to be found guilty of offenses involving powdered cocaine.

In 2010, Congress reduced the disparity in sentences for future cases. Last summer, the U.S. Sentencing Commission decided to apply the measure to inmates already doing time.

Chris Burke, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said that he could not say exactly how many people would be let out Tuesday but that officials were working around the clock to process hundreds of orders from judges granting early release. In certain cases, prison officials have been given a grace period of several days to free inmates, Burke said.

The releases are the result of months of work by prosecutors, public defenders and judges across the country. Inmates' requests for sentence reductions were decided on a case-by-case basis, with courts taking into consideration such factors as the prisoner's behavior behind bars and threat to society.

In San Antonio, the federal public defender's office reported that it had about 15 to 20 inmates eligible for immediate release. In St. Louis, the office said it submitted 30 to 50 petitions asking for inmates to be set free right away.

In the eastern district of Virginia, which has the highest number of affected inmates anywhere in the country, public defender Michael Nachmanoff said that judges had ordered the immediate release of about 75 people.

Susan Cardwell said the last time she saw her brother was the day he went to prison. She can't wait to see him, she said, and has promised an all-you-can-eat buffet dinner to celebrate his return.

"After jail food for all those years, I'm sure he's going to pig out," she said.

___

Associated Press writer John O'Connor in Springfield, Ill., contributed to this story.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111101/ap_on_re_us/us_freeing_crack_prisoners

sharia law sharia law demarco murray ed reed teresa giudice red ribbon week much ado about nothing

Motorola Unveils The Xoom 2 And Xoom 2 Media Edition

hgalleryxoom2dynrhorizhomeemaramat800We've been seeing them in one form or another for months now, but today Motorola has officially unveiled the Xoom 2 and Xoom 2 Media Edition tablets. In most ways, the two tablets are nearly identical: they both sport 1.2GHz dual-core processors, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a 5-megapixel rear shooter, and a 1.3-megapixel front-facer. As expected, both run Android 3.2 (sorry Ice Cream Sandwich fans), and they both pack the same complement of Google apps out of the box.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/uWe9HD38Hhk/

arturo gatti stoma stoma money ball bill cunningham vladimir putin vladimir putin

Light and Natural: The Offices of Parasol Island [Featured Workspace]

Light and Natural: The Offices of Parasol IslandVirtually any office is warm and welcoming when the sunlight is pouring in through its many massive windows, but the offices of Parasol Island doubles up on its inviting nature with a beautiful, minimalistic design.

Nothing in the space is complex?only simple tables, chairs, and a few storage shelves. Even the carpet would be considered bland by default, but the subtle green walls and the matching tan tabletops create a color scheme that's pleasantly soft. It's nothing that the average person couldn't accomplish themselves as well. While we can't speak to the cost of the furniture in this workspace, minimalist tables, pastel green paint, and paper lanterns are all inexpensively acquired. Manage your cables well and you could easily pull off something similar for your home office (or anywhere, for that matter). For the entire set of photos, be sure to check out the full post over on Office Snapshots.

If you have a workspace of your own to show off, throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker.

Parasol Island | Office Snapshots via Unplggd


You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. ?Twitter's the best way to contact him, too.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/qFV0mc7ivmo/light-and-natural-the-offices-of-parasol-island

conficker conficker rock and roll hall of fame zach braff kevin federline mega millions amy smart

Insight: Firms to charge smokers, obese more for healthcare (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Like a lot of companies, Veridian Credit Union wants its employees to be healthier. In January, the Waterloo, Iowa-company rolled out a wellness program and voluntary screenings.

It also gave workers a mandate - quit smoking, curb obesity, or you'll be paying higher healthcare costs in 2013. It doesn't yet know by how much, but one thing's for certain - the unhealthy will pay more.

The credit union, which has more than 500 employees, is not alone.

In recent years, a growing number of companies have been encouraging workers to voluntarily improve their health to control escalating insurance costs. And while workers mostly like to see an employer offer smoking cessation classes and weight loss programs, too few are signing up or showing signs of improvement.

So now more employers are trying a different strategy - they're replacing the carrot with a stick and raising costs for workers who can't seem to lower their cholesterol or tackle obesity. They're also coming down hard on smokers. For example, discount store giant Wal-Mart says that starting in 2012 it will charge tobacco users higher premiums but also offer free smoking cessation programs.

Tobacco users consume about 25 percent more healthcare services than non-tobacco users, says Greg Rossiter, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, which insures more than 1 million people, including family members. "The decisions aren't easy, but we need to balance costs and provide quality coverage."

For decades, workers - especially with large employers - have taken many health benefits for granted and until the past few years hardly noticed the price increases.

But the new policies could not only badly dent their take home pay and benefits but also reduce their freedom to behave as they want outside of work and make them resentful toward their employers. There are also fears the trend will hurt the lower-paid hardest as health costs can eat up a bigger slice of their disposable income and because they may not have much access to gyms and fresh food in their neighborhoods.

"It's not inherently wrong to hold people responsible," says Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a research and advocacy organization on employment issues based in Princeton, New Jersey. "But it's a dangerous precedent," he says. "Everything you do in your personal private life affects your health."

Overall, the use of penalties is expected to climb in 2012 to almost 40 percent of large and mid-sized companies, up from 19 percent this year and only 8 percent in 2009, according to an October survey by consulting firm Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health. The penalties include higher premiums and deductibles for individuals who failed to participate in health management activities as well as those who engaged in risky health behaviors such as smoking.

"Nothing else has worked to control health trends," says LuAnn Heinen, vice president of the National Business Group on Health, which represents large employers on health and benefits issues. "A financial incentive reduces that procrastination."

LACK OF JOBS

The weak economy is contributing to the change. Employers face higher health care costs - in part - because they're hiring fewer younger healthy workers and losing fewer more sickly senior employees.

The poor job market also means employers don't have to be as generous with these benefits to compete. They now expect workers to contribute to the solution just as they would to a 401(k) retirement plan, says Jim Winkler, a managing principal at consulting firm Aon Hewitt's health and benefits practice. "You're going to face consequences based on whether you've achieved or not," he says.

And those that don't are more likely to be punished. An Aon Hewitt survey released in June found that almost half of employers expect by 2016 to have programs that penalize workers "for not achieving specific health outcomes" such as lowering their weight, up from 10 percent in 2011

The programs have until now met little resistance in the courts. The 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prevents workers from being discriminated against on the basis of health if they're in a group health insurance plan. But HIPAA also allows employers to offer wellness programs and to offer incentives of up to 20 percent of the cost for participation.

President Barack Obama's big health care reform, the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will enable employers beginning in 2014 to bump that difference in premiums to 30 percent and potentially up to 50 percent.

Employers do, however, also need to provide an alternative for workers who can't meet the goals. That could include producing a doctor's note to say it is medically very difficult, or even impossible, to achieve certain goals, says Timothy Jost, a professor at the Washington and Lee School of Law. For example, a worker with asthma may not be able to participate in a company exercise program.

These wellness programs typically include a health risk assessment completed online, and on-site free medical screenings for things such as blood pressure, body mass index, and cholesterol.

The programs, while voluntary, often typically offer financial benefits - including lower insurance premiums, gift cards and employer contributions to health savings accounts. For example, workers at the railroad company Union Pacific get $100 in their health savings account for completing the health assessment, $100 if they don't use tobacco and $100 if they get an annual physical (tobacco users also can get the $100 if they participate in a tobacco cessation program).

INCENTIVE TO EXERCISE

Like Wal-Mart, more employers are coming down harder on individuals who have voluntarily identified themselves as tobacco users, often during their health risk assessment. As yet, very few employers identify smokers through on-site medical screenings.

Veridian, which until now has not charged its employees for healthcare premiums, says increases to its health care costs have been unsustainable, climbing 9 percent annually for the past three years. Earlier this year, it rolled out a wellness program and free screenings, which 90 percent of workers have now completed.

As it starts charging, it will provide discounts to those making progress as it "wants to reward those who have healthy lifestyles," says Renee Christoffer, senior vice president of administration for the credit union.

Mark Koppedryer, vice president of branches at Veridian, was one of the workers who participated in the screenings. The 37-year-old father of three initially participated to show his support but was shocked to find out that he had elevated blood pressure and cholesterol scores.

His colleague, Stacy Phillips, says she used the new wellness programs to exercise more. "I knew there needed to be a change in my life," says the 35-year-old, who has lost 40 pounds since January. "This made me more aware that at some time there would be a cost."

These changes come at a time when health insurance premiums are soaring. In 2011, the average-cost of an employer-provided family plan was more than $15,000, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust. That's 31 percent higher than five years ago. And the number is expected to climb another 5-8 percent next year, according to various estimates.

In contrast, the giant medical and research center Cleveland Clinic, which employs about 40,000 people, has seen these costs grow by only 2 percent this year because it has implemented a comprehensive wellness program that has dramatically improved the health of many workers.

The effort began several years when it banned smoking at the medical center and then refused to hire smokers. It later recognized that having a gym and weight loss classes wasn't enough to get people to participate. It made these facilities and programs free and provided lower premiums to workers who maintained their health or improved it, typically with their doctor's help.

"You don't do this overnight," says Paul Terpeluk, Medical Director of Occupational Health at the Cleveland Clinic. You have to develop a program and change the culture, he said.

INTRUSIVE

But not all programs are as well constructed and effective, says Mark A. Rothstein, a lawyer and professor at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. The wellness programs may be well-intentioned, he says, but there's not strong empirical evidence that they work and getting a weekly call about your weight or smoking habits, which is offered by some programs, could be humiliating for participants.

"What might be seen as a question to one person may be an intrusion to another," he says. That's one reason that lower-paid janitors at his school participate but, "the professors on campus consider it a privacy tax so we don't get some stranger calling us about how much we weigh."

And there are also those that no matter how much they exercise or how healthy they eat can't lose weight or lower their blood pressure or body mass index. "There are thousands and thousands of people whose paycheck is being cut because of factors beyond their control," says Maltby from the National Workrights Institute.

The programs could be especially burdensome for low-income workers, who are more likely to fail health assessment tests and less likely to have access to gyms and healthier fresh produce, says Harald Schmidt - a research associate at the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

"We want to use provisions to help people and not penalize people for factors beyond their control," Schmidt says. "Poorer people are often less healthy and this constitutes a potential double whammy. They are likely to face a higher burden in insurance premiums."

That's the case for Barbara Collins, a 35-year-old Wal-Mart employee - who lives in Placerville , California. She says she'll have to pay $127 every two weeks for health insurance next year, including a penalty of almost $25 because she's a smoker.

"I'll cut back on cigarettes and hopefully eventually quit," says Collins, who earned $19,000 pretax, or about $730 every two weeks, last year. "Christmas will definitely be tight this year and for years to come if this lasts," she says. "Family vacations, there's no way I can afford that.".

(Reporting by Jilian Mincer in New York. Editing by Martin Howell in New York)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111031/us_nm/us_penalties

dr oz hakeem nicks hakeem nicks alpha lipoic acid 105.1 alex trebek lightsquared

The Joke's on Your Computer

In Google Maps, the distance-measuring tool offers a choice of three unit systems: Metric, English or ?I?m Feeling Geeky.? If you click the third one, you?re offered a long list of, ahem, somewhat uncommon measurement units, including parsecs, Persian cubits, and Olympic swimming pools.

Mac OS X?s text-to-speech feature, meanwhile, lets you endow your Mac with any of dozens of different human voices. Each speaks a funny sample sentence. The Fred voice says, ?I sure like being inside this fancy computer.? The quaking, semihysterical Deranged voice says, ?I need to go on a really long vacation.? The alien-sounding Trinoids voice says, ?We cannot communicate with these carbon units.?

On YouTube, if you pause a video and hold down the up and left arrow keys, you trigger a secret game of Snake. Try to guide the increasingly long snake?s body around the screen with your arrow keys without tripping over yourself.

In each of these cases, some programmer deep inside these megalithic corporations exhibited a sense of humor?a display that somehow made it past committee, through the lawyers and out into the world.

In the olden days?10 or 20 years ago?this sort of playfulness in software was more common. Software engineers took pride in embedding into their code all manner of jokes, whimsy and Easter eggs (hidden surprises triggered by unlikely sequences of keystrokes).

Some of it was simple pride. Easter eggs often took the form of programming credits; after all, programmers usually don?t get any public recognition, not even in the user guide.

Often the buried humor in software consisted of elaborate inside jokes. In the original system software for the Palm Pilot, for example, programmer Ron Marianetti created an animated taxicab, resembling a fat Volkswagen Beetle, programmed to race across the screen at random times?a tribute to the Pilot?s original proposed name, the Taxi.

Across the hall, fellow engineer Chris Raff embedded an Easter egg of his own. If you held down your stylus in the lower right corner of the handwriting-practice game screen and then pressed a scroll button, a photo of himself with a buddy, tuxedoed at Palm?s annual Christmas party, would inexplicably appear.

In time, though, Silicon Valley?s corporate bosses began to frown on the practice of burying jokes in software. Part of the reason was quality control: by definition, an Easter egg is an untested feature. It?s a loose cannon that could, in theory, interfere with other, more important parts of the program. It made the overlords nervous.

Another problem was employee retention. When programmers buried their own names into their work, they were, in essence, advertising their own skills. Their names were clearly displayed for inspection by headhunters at rival software companies.

Finally, there?s the simple matter of corporate image. An Apple or a Microsoft or a Palm may spend millions to create a certain public image of professionalism. The last thing its image meisters want is some rogue animation of a taxi driving across the screen during an important public demo. (Which actually happened to Palm. The taxi Easter egg was removed shortly thereafter.)

These days, the spirit of in-jokes and whimsy lives on, but it has moved to new addresses: video games and movies?especially movies on DVD. Software jokes still live on in mainstream apps, but they?re less ambitious, and most of them seem to come from Apple and, especially, Google.

Inside jokes lurk on the icon for Apple?s TextEdit, for example (view the icon at the largest possible size). Or turn on the Mac?s Speech Recognition feature and say to your computer, ?Tell me a joke.?

Or search Google for ?recursion? and click the ?Did you mean?? suggestion. Or call up the Sydney Opera House in Google Earth and then spin around to the waterfront side; a late, great TV celebrity waits for you there. Or ask Google Maps to give you the directions from Japan to China and marvel at Google?s suggestion for getting across the Pacific (step number 42).

Thank you, anonymous programmers; keep it up. You?ve made it clear that software can do more than make us productive?it can also make us happy.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=a9b4bc43eee874a464cc20fa44a0e8dc

linus pauling chris cooley chris cooley stevan ridley breast cancer awareness month breast cancer awareness month barbara walters

Global Update: Silicosis From Work on Blue Jeans Killed Workers, Study Says

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Six of 32 young male workers who went to a hospital with breathing problems died, and 16 others had disabling lung damage from breathing the fine sand, the study found.

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=cd70550ce5ef8b6b6f21b5b5b69fe10d

january jones top gun kat von d the talk its always sunny in philadelphia free agents free agents