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On July 1, the federal government and dozens of states set up temporary “high-risk” health insurance pools for people denied health insurance due to so-called pre-existing conditions. These pools were one of the major provisions included in federal health care reform signed into law early this year. However, this is only a temporary fix intended to provide health insurance to individuals without coverage until the law goes fully into effect in 2014, when insurance companies will no longer be ab

A significant – and often overlooked -- result of what’s been dubbed the Great Recession is that in just over half of the 50 states, the programs that pay unemployment insurance to workers who’ve lost their jobs are insolvent, leading states to borrow more than $39 billion from the federal government to keep writing checks. California, which has the largest unemployment program in the country, has the dubious distinction of leading 34 other states and the Virgin Islands in borrowing:  $8.5 bil

Receiving little press attention over the Easter weekend, filings with the Security and Exchange Commission on April 2 revealed that WellPoint Inc. CEO Angela Braly received a boost in total compensation of more than fifty one percent in 2009.  Specifically, Braly’s compensation rose from $8.7 million in 2008 to $13.1 million in 2009.  The boost was primarily due to a stock option grant and a performance bonus as WellPoint saw its profits surge to $4.7 billion in 2009 as compared to $2.49 billio

Reforming the health insurance industry has occupied Washington lawmakers and dominated the news for a better part of a year.  Why we need reform has become all too obvious.  Forty-five thousand Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance.  Each day, 14,000 people lose their health insurance coverage.  Insurance premiums have risen 131 percent over the past decade while the number of employers that offer health insurance to their employees has dropped to just 60 percent.   W

I always thought I was an Evan Bayh  Democrat. Today I became certain. In his surprise retirement announcement, Bayh  was careful to make it clear that he had wearied of the partisanship on both  sides of the aisle. He identified specific irrational  partisan acts by both Republicans and by Democrats. But, the timing of his departure spoke  loudly about his dissatisfaction with the entire Washington  establishment. Bayh underscored the declaration in his  retirement speech in which he said th

In 1995, Congress addressed this issue with the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, sponsored by Republican Senator Kempthorne of Indiana and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton.  The purpose of the bill was “to curb the practice of imposing unfunded Federal mandates on States and local governments..." and "to end the imposition, in the absence of full consideration by Congress, of Federal mandates on State, local, and tribal governments…”  The problem: the Act so narrowly defined wha

Approximately 1,500 fewer high school seniors will become freshman at University of California campuses than last year this fall. Fewer students were admitted for Fall 2009 to the UC campuses, mainly owing to a budget crunch and fewer allotted spaces. While more than 60,000 students became first-time UC freshmen last year, fewer than 60,000 have earned that distinction for next fall. Months ago, when budget issues throughout California came to a head, UC officials announced that fewer first-ti

Heads of the Pacific Coast side of the Fishery Management Council decided on Wednesday, April 8 to basically call off this year's salmon fishing season, after fears that the King/Chinook salmon population may be undersized and may be threatened by the additional fishing season, after a smaller number of the Sacramento River and Klamath River Chinooks migrated to California and Oregon this year. (One way that Pacific Coast fishery authorities have tried to alleviate the situation in the past has

With the passage of the bill calling for a 90 percent tax onthe AIG bonuses, the three-ring economic, political and media circuscentered around the AIG bonuses has now officially entered the realm ofabsurdity, and looks to be spending the remainder of its existencethere. And that circus is truly representative of everything that iswrong with the discourse surrounding the financial crisis and the Obamaadministration as of this moment, for in it one hears the dissonantnotes of envy, hypocrisy and

While legislatorstussle over how to fix the current gap in the state’s budgetdeficit, at least they addressed last summer’s budget deficit. Right? Maybe wrong. As part of thecompromise that closed that gap – then at around $17 billion –legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed to put a ballotmeasure before voters sometime in 2009 that would borrow againstfuture lottery revenues, with the understanding voters had to givethe okay to overhaul the lottery in such a way as to increase itsr