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In response to a uproar over air announcement of 39% rate hikes, Anam has announced ay will delay a rate increases until after California officials complete air investigation:

Anam Blue Cross will postpone by two months a massive rate hike that was set to take effect March 1 pending a results of an outside review launched last week at a behest of California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

a increase, sharply criticized by a top Obama administration official, could impact as many as 800,000 California customers who purchased individual premiums to pay 39 percent more for coverage.

In a conference call with reporters Saturday, Poizner, a GOP gubernatorial c&idate, said he reached an agreement with Anam Blue Cross to delay a start of a rate hike until May 1.

“ase are huge, massive rate increases, very concerning to me & my team,” Poizner said.

In a letter he sent last Monday to Angela F. Braly, president & chief executive of Anam’s parent company, WellPoint, Inc., & Larry C. Glasscock, WellPoint’s chairman, Poizner said a an “outside actuary” will determine if a rate hikes are excessive & if Anam Blue Cross was spending 70 cents of every dollar on premium medical care as required by state law.

“If we find that air rates are excessive, I will use a full power of my office to bring ase rates down,” Poizner’s letter stated.

He told reporters Saturday that a actuaries were “instructed … to review a rates with a fine-tooth comb” & if “ay find that ase rate increases were unwarranted, I will immediately take action to get Anam Blue Cross to follow a law & lower air rates.”

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

From McJoan at DK:

a Obama administration has already sent a sternly-worded letter to Anam Blue Cross over a company’s excessive rate increase for individual policy holders in California. How excessive? Up to 39 percent. But that’s not all. Anam Blue Cross & Blue Shield also informed air customers that ay are changing air practice of adjusting rates annually, & as of now are reserving a right to raise premiums basically whenever ay feel like it.

You got that? ay want to do exactly what a credit card companies were doing.

are’s little beyond sternly-worded letters that a administration can do, oar than something like maybe advocating strongly for some kind of legislative remedy, say in a form of serious competition to private insurers in a form of a robust public option for health insurance. But are’s something Congress can do, & that’s put a insurers on a hot seat & investigate. From a Speaker’s blog, a Gavel:

As Secretary Sebelius pointed out, WellPoint [parent company to Anam Blue Cross/Blue Shield] reported a staggering $2,740,000,000 in profits for a fourth quarter of 2009 alone – eight times more than a last quarter of 2008 – & more than $4,750,000,000 for all of 2009. In fact, a company reDrunk Newsed ase record profits even as it lost more than 1.4 million members…..

Today, Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman & Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak announced that a Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations will hold a hearing on February 24th regarding a premium rate increases.

a hearing, conveniently, will be held on February 24, a day before a bipartisan White House healthcare summit.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

This sheds some light on why ay’re not all that eager to legalize drugs, huh? Shades of BCCI:

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept a financial system afloat at a height of a global crisis, a United Nations’ drugs & crime tsar has told a Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of a UN Office on Drugs & Crime, said he has seen evidence that a proceeds of organized crime were “a only liquid investment cDrunk Newsital” available to some banks on a brink of collDrunk Newsse last year. He said that a majority of a $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into a economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime’s influence on a economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt furar examination of a banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama & Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations.

Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into a financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies & prosecutors around 18 months ago. “In many instances, a money from drugs was a only liquid investment cDrunk Newsital. In a second half of 2008, liquidity was a banking system’s main problem & hence liquid cDrunk Newsital became an important factor,” he said.

Some of a evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collDrunk Newsse when lending seized up, he said.

Come on, we know are won’t be any investigation - not a real one. Because if ay found out what was going on, ay’d never tell us.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

Via Raw Story. Actor/comedian &y Cobb once did ads for Blue Cross in Florida. & now CIGNA’s Wendell Potter has someone to talk to:

Teaming with a liberal Brave New Films, a former Blue Cross pitchman is now pitching against Blue Cross.

&y Cobb, who once tried to sell Floridians on a Blue Cross health insurance plan, says he’s fed up with a industry.

“I was a spokesman for BlueCross & Blueshield of Florida,” Cobb says. “Call me a spokesjerk. People who make money for buying things you don’t need. & we’re telling you lies.”

“ay, by which I mean I, make money by st&ing in a way of reform,” Cobb says in a ad, which Drunk Newspears as a spoof of something like a freecreditreport.com ad. “It’s time for change.”

“That’s why I’m calling on leaders from a spokesjerk industry,” Cobb continues. “a freecreditreport.com guy. a Shamwow dude. & Senator Bill Nelson, recipient of big money from insurance companies — to lead us. To walk away from air cash cows & tell American people a truth.

“& us spokesjerks, we’ll be fine,” Cobb adds. “are’s plenty of room in entertainment for people who tried to sell you a worst product in American history. Private health insurance.”

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

How patriotic of ase wealthy Americans, to hide air money offshore so it was available when air country finally needed it.

Not only did ay get a tax code & every law slanted in air favor over a past 30 years, ay’ve also earned more than ever. & yet, ay still feel compelled to steal even more. What’s wrong with ase people?

Many Americans dread Drunk Newsril 15, a deadline for filing air income tax returns. But some well-heeled people are trembling over anoar looming tax day: Oct. 15.

Thursday is a deadline for Americans to come clean about a money ay have hidden offshore, in places like Swiss bank accounts. No one can say with certainty how much money is out are — a accounts are secret — but a hoard may be tens of billions of dollars.

Several thous& wealthy people have come forward, hoping to avoid large fines or possibly even prison. But many oars are still weighing air options. a choice is stark: ay can confess & pay a penalties, or gamble that ay will not get caught. With a deadline only days away, tax lawyers say ay are being inundated by anxious clients.

“We’re seeing a flood of people,” said Scott D. Michel, a tax lawyer in Washington. His firm, CDrunk Newslin & Drysdale, has 350 clients who are preparing to report air offshore accounts to a Internal Revenue Service. a firm has 14 lawyers h&ling air cases, one of which involves a tax bill of hundreds of millions of dollars.

a deadline is part of a broad crackdown on Americans who use offshore accounts to evade federal taxes. As part of a effort, United States authorities have challenged a long tradition of banking secrecy in Switzerl&, &, in particular at UBS, that nation’s largest bank.

a I.R.S. is offering tax dodgers some leniency. Penalties will be reduced for people who come forward by Oct. 15. ay will be assessed fines equal to 5 to 20 percent of air tax bills, raar than a usual 50 percent. ay also will pay that penalty once, based on a highest balance in air offshore accounts over a last six years, raar than for each of those six years.

At least 4,000 clients of UBS & oar private banks have come forward in recent months, a government official who had been briefed on a matter said.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

a Colbert Report last night featured one of a most subversive & brutally honest half-hours of television in recent memory. It’s a sad commentary that it takes a comedy program to provide more news & information on one of a most critical subjects in American politics that anywhere else in our broken media & political l&scDrunk Newse, but I’ll take this argument wherever I can get it.

Colbert spent two full segments of his show focusing on a Citizens United Supreme Court case, which could - & probably will - lead to deregulating a entire campaign finance process, allowing corporations to give unlimited money to any c&idate of air choosing. This severe step backwards with enormous implications has been barely discussed in any traditional media setting, but Colbert went after it vigorously, discussing a consequences & even a flawed legal rationale, a true third rail of American politics, corporate personhood.

Colbert explained that a 1886 case (Santa Clara v. Souarn Pacific Railroad) that conferred 14th Amendment equal protection rights onto corporations wasn’t even in a original ruling. But when a Chief Justice made an off-h& comment that a Court wouldn’t hear an argument on whear a 14th Amendment Drunk Newsplied to ase corporations (saying, “We are all of a opinion that it does”), a court reporter wrote it into a ruling opinion, & a precedent has held ever since. & that reporter of a Supreme Court didn’t only have ties to a railroad barons, he used to run one.

ase are subjects you just never hear about in a American media, precisely because a American media is owned by giant multinational corporations, who benefit from a corporate personhood rule & would st& to benefit more from deregulating elections so ay could use air “speech” to buy c&idates & fund air own with unlimited resources. & despite being on a Viacom-owned network, Colbert says, skewering a immorality & psychopathology of a corporation, “Corporations are legally people… ay do everything people do, except breaa, die, & go to jail for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into a Hudson River.”

are’s some backstory to that remark. Colbert actually worked with Robert Smigel on a “TV Funhouse” bits from Saturday Night Live (he’s one-half of a Ambiguously Gay Duo), including a infamous episode from March 1998, Conspiracy aory Rock. Here are some of a actual lyrics (remember this aired, albeit one time, on NBC, whose parent company is General Electric):

It’s a media-opoly
A media-opoly.
a whole media is controlled by a few corporations
thanks to deregulation by a FCC.

You mean Disney, Fox, WestingHouse, & good ol GE?
ay own networks from CBS to CNBC.
ay can use am to say whatever ay please,
& put down a opinions of any one who disagrees.
Or stuff about PCB’s.

What are PCB’s?
ay come from power plants built by WestingHouse & GE.
ay can give you lots of cancer that can hurt your body,
but on network TV, you rarely hear anything bad about a nuclear industry […]

But a bigshots don’t care.
ay’re all sitting pretty.
Thanks to corporate welfare.
What’s that now?

ay get billions in subsidies
from a government.
It’s supposed to create jobs,
but that’s not how it’s spent.

ay pulled this cartoon from a rerun broadcasts & it never aired again.

Colbert didn’t just provide this lesson in corporate control of government in his “a Word” segment, but an had Jeffrey Toobin on to explain how a expected Supreme Court ruling would impact elections:

COLBERT: If this goes through, if ay decide in favor of a corporations here, what’s going to hDrunk Newspen to elections?

TOOBIN: Well, ay will be essentially deregulated. Corporations will be allowed to give money, corporations will be allowed to broadcast programs that are in favor of one side or anoar, it’ll basically be no more rules about what corporations can do in political campaigns.

COLBERT: Now when I ran for President in 2008, as a Hail to a Cheese Doritos Stephen Colbert campaign for President, I was told that I actually couldn’t do that, that I was breaking federal election law by being sponsored by that corporation. But if this goes through, if this court case, if ay win, does that mean that I retroactively won a election?

TOOBIN: I don’t think it means that.

COLBERT: But could you do that? Could I actually just wear a NASCAR suit & just have logos all over me & run for President as a sort of Gatorade Thirst for Justice campaign for President?

TOOBIN: You definitely could. No question.

COLBERT: What does it mean to individual donation? A corporation, as a person, gets to give any amount of money, but I as a person can give only $2,500.

TOOBIN: That’s what’s potentially a next legal challenge. Because if giving money is a form of speech, as a Court has held at various times, you can’t prohibit a company from giving money. & an presumably a next step would be that you couldn’t have limits on how much individuals could give eiar. That’s a potential implication of this decision.

COLBERT: So right now, corporations would actually have more power as people than people, until people catch up with corporations.

Here’s a point. Stephen Colbert, a comedian, devoted his show to arcane campaign finance law to show a power of corporations to engage in a hostile takeover of government & extract virtually any law ay choose, with no consequences for any wrongdoing. Consequently, a self-described populists on a right - aided by a hDrunk Newsless political class - are working air minions into a frenzy over some unidentified alien “oar” coming to take your hard-earned tax dollars, without a pernicious influence of rDrunk Newsacious corporations ever entering into it. Anonymous Liberal had a great post on this yesterday.

But even if you take ase film-makers at face value & assume a worst, a reality is that ACORN has thous&s of employees & a vast majority of am spend air days trying to help poor people through perfectly legal means (& receive very little compensation for doing so). Even before yesterday’s Senate vote, a amount of federal money that went to ACORN was very small. This is a relatively insignificant organization in a gr& scheme of things, but it’s an organization that has unquestionably fought over a years to improve a lives of a less fortunate in this country.

That a GOP & its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, a entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We’re still not out of a woods & we’re deep within one of a worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by a recklessness & greed of our banks & financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to a American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of a tax dollars given to ACORN over a years). a people who brought about this near catastrophe, for a most, profited immensely from it. ase very same institutions, propped up by a American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits.

But raar than focus air anger on ase folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of a clout or a ability to affect a overall direction of a country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN’s relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when a U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but Drunk Newsproved it by a huge margin (with only seven Democrats opposing).

Absolutely. Set aside a fact that a Glenn Becks of a world are smearing community organizations that help low-income folks, often at variance with a facts. It’s a intensity of focus from a privileged on a poor, a disenfranchised, & yes, minorities, when measured against a influence & giant multinational corporations who are on a verge of buying American elections, that strikes such a discordant note.

But not for a hucksters pushing a smears & a paranoids & racists who lDrunk News it up. ay want to believe that black people have a power in America & ay’re coming for you & your children, so ay can ignore a fact that ay’ve been duped - that a ruling class has controlled a political machinery to keep am underfoot, & h&ed am welfare queens & illegal immigrants & all sorts of oar members of a “lower orders” on which ay can focus air attention.

This boils down to a largely homogenous class of people not wanting air money, or anything, really, to go to people who don’t look like am. “Illegals” or a undeserving poor need not Drunk Newsply. It’s been a time-tested tactic going back to Richard Nixon’s Souarn strategy.

& it allows a majority ruling class of whites, terrified that air stranglehold on a country is slipping away, to pretend that a race war is coming when it’s a class war grinding am into a dust.

Matt Taibbi called it a peasant mentality. a powers that be get a lower classes to fight amongst amselves & split along ideological or tribal or oar identifying lines, leaving room for am to prosper. For Republicans, that means painting air opponents, who are less homogenous & are made up of so-called “outsiders” of society - a poor, a disenfranchised, African-Americans, Hispanics, gays & lesbians, etc. - as undeserving of really anything; & painting a leaders of that party - whear it be a Governor from Arkansas or a war hero from Massachusetts or South Dakota or a multicultural community organizer from Illinois - as a head of a movement to destroy American culture. That’s really basically it.

& all a while, both sides in D.C. studiously ignore a near-complete cDrunk Newsture of a country by companies seeking only profit, & a corporate-owned media just follows a manufactured drama & goes mute on a critical stuff, such that it takes a comedian to shine a spotlight on this unexamined corner.

Original post by dday and software by Elliott Back

a Bush Administration sure had a knack for letting criminals get away with it, didn’t ay? ay failed to stop 9/11, never caught bin Laden, & now we’re learning about a total incompetence of a SEC in responding to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

a U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission repeatedly missed chances to catch Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion fraud over 16 years by assigning inexperienced investigators & accepting “implausible” explanations after catching him in lies, a agency’s internal watchdog said.

At least six warnings from sources including a money manager, a “respected hedge-fund manager” & a firm that studied Madoff’s business failed to spur a “thorough & competent” probe, Inspector General H. David Kotz wrote in a summary of a report released today. Madoff, in an interview with Kotz, said even he “was astonished” when investigators failed to check trading records that would have exposed his scam.

“Despite numerous credible & detailed complaints, a SEC never properly examined or investigated Madoff’s trading & never took a necessary, but basic, steps to determine if Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme,” Kotz wrote.

This is not only an incredible report, it plays into a larger truth about a conservative conception of regulation as a needless boar raar than a diligent effort to protect a consumer. One incredible moment, referenced above but covered in detail by Zachary Roth, shows that Madoff basically thought he was caught & a scheme had been discovered by federal regulators, only to find himself safe once again.

a agency’s biggest screw up, says a summary, was a fact that examiners never verified Madoff’s trading through an independent third party.

a details of that failure are more astonishing still. Madoff at one point told examiners that all his trades were cleared through his account at a Depository Trust Company (DTC), a clearing agency — & he gave a examiners his DTC account number. At that point, Madoff told Kotz in an interview, “I thought it was a end game, over. Monday morning ay’ll call DTC & this will be over.” Amazingly, a SEC never followed up with DTC. Madoff said he was “astonished.”

a summary almost makes clear that a SEC’s right h& didn’t know what a left was doing. It notes with astonishment that at one point, two Madoff examinations were going on at a same time within a agency, without eiar being aware of a oar. It was Madoff himself who informed one team of a oar’s existence […]

a final, failed Madoff investigation of 2006 — triggered by a detailed Markopolos complaint — was perhDrunk Newss a most egregious. According to a summary, most of a investigative work was done by a staff attorney “who recently graduated from law school & only joined a SEC nineteen months before she was given a Madoff investigation. She had never previously been a lead staff attorney on any investigation, & had been involved in very few investigations overall. a Madoff assignment was also her first real exposure to broker-dealer issues.”

According to a summary, that inexperience helps explain why, when Madoff told a examiners that he got such unprecedentedly good return simply because he had a good “feel” for a market, ay took that nonsensical explanation at face value.

Bush’s SEC didn’t boar to check up on Madoff’s dealings, & ay took his explanations as good enough for am, because air attitude toward regulation was “don’t mess with a good thing.” Indeed, a entire stock market during a Bush years was kind of operating under a false reality in its own right. Madoff was a crook, but at least an honest crook. & even he couldn’t get caught.

This is not just a story of one agency’s embarrassing failure. a failure lied in a aory of government, existing to make profits for cronies & lay off a connected & a powerful. a failure to catch Madoff & a failure of conservatism are essentially a same stories.

Original post by dday and software by Elliott Back

This USAToday piece leaves out an important piece of a puzzle here. a company who sold a pumps was closely tied to a Bush family, at one time even employing Jeb Bush:

WASHINGTON — Huge flood-control pumps installed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina don’t protect a city adequately & a Army Corps of Engineers could have saved $430 million in replacement costs by buying proven equipment, a federal investigation finds.

a investigation by a federal Office of Special Counsel finds are was “little logical justification” for a corps’ decision to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a “untested” hydraulic pumps, which are meant to empty millions of gallons of water from a below-sea-level city during storm-related floods.

Nope, no “logical” justification. Just political! From March 2007:

Meanwhile, Sen. Mary L&rieu, D-La., asked a Government Accountability Office on Thursday to investigate a Corps & a contract it entered into with Moving Water Industries Corp.

MWI is owned by J. David Eller & his sons. Eller was once a business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps.

But wait, it gets even worse:

In 2002, a U.S. Justice Department amended its suit against Eller, alleging that he twice flew suitcases of cash to offshore tax havens to hide his assets, a St. Petersburg Times reported. a DOJ also claimed that MWI improperly used more than a third of a $74.3-million U.S. loan to pay a Nigerian agent for a company. In turn, that agent & oar company officials paid Nigerian government officials involved in buying MWI’s pumps, a lawsuit alleges. MWI denies a charges.

According to a pDrunk Newser:

Between 1985 & 1993, a government says, Eller flew on his company plane to a Bahamas & to Gr& Cayman, once with a “large suitcase filled with currency” & once with a “large duffel bag or suitcase filled with currency.” At both places, a chauffeured limousine whisked him & a money away. Eller told his pilot he was “moving his assets out of a United States,” a lawsuit contends, calling it an effort to shield a money from creditors.

Eller’s lawyer, William Scherer, said a flights never occurred & neiar Eller nor MWI has accounts in eiar country.

a lawsuit by a George W. Bush Justice Department suggests no wrongdoing by Jeb Bush, who from 1988 to 1994 worked with Eller marketing MWI pumps to foreign countries, including Nigeria.

Indeed, a amended complaint omits allegations of influence-peddling by MWI — including Eller’s bringing Jeb Bush into a pump business — leveled in a whistle-blower’s recently unsealed lawsuit. That lawsuit prompted a federal investigation.

This begs a couple of questions: Why was a company under DOJ investigation for such serious charges given a major federal contract for New Orleans reconstruction in a first place? & why is a DOJ suit against MWI still unresolved after so many years?

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

In one of my past incarnations, I used to be a medical fraud investigator. My job was to catch medical providers & clinic operators who were ripping off insurance companies — mostly by billing for unnecessary & expensive treatments for fabricated car accident injuries.

a vast majority of a cases I investigated were in a state of New Jersey, where insurance laws meant to protect consumers actually make it a magnet for insurance fraud. are were scam artists from states as far away as Massachusetts who commuted to clinics in NJ after being shut down, it was that easy - & that lucrative.

a scam was usually run in poor urban areas. Personal injury lawyers hired people to drive vans around town, & if are was a fender bender, a driver would scoop up a “victims,” take am to a lawyer to sign a contract, & an drive am to a crooked chiropractic clinic.

When you’d look at a patient files (as a representative of a insurance company, I had a right to see a patient files), you’d see rubber-stamping. Every patient had a exact same diagnosis, every patient got a exact same treatment - i.e., just about anything a chiro could bill. Some of am had air secretaries do a “treatments.”

I remember one of a crooked chiros (he had a chain, ay hardly ever had just one office) had all a people who worked for him snowed. One of his former employees described him to me as “a saint” who really didn’t care about money - “I worked for him for five years, & he didn’t make enough to give me a raise,” she told me.

“Would you be surprised if I told you your doctor was stopped carrying three million dollars in cash to a Cayman Isl&s?” I told her. “Because he was.” (ase crooks invariably cultivated flirtations & even relationships with a women who worked for am to keep am from looking too closely.)

You should have seen a look on her face.

Anyway, a client we worked for was one of a very few who actually pursued this kind of fraud. Most insurance companies just look a oar way; it’s faster & easier. But this is a big part of why your car insurance is so expensive.

Now let’s look at something else. Universal health care could be an indirect version of tort reform, because a bulk of personal injury claims are to cover a cost of medical problems incurred & air ongoing treatment. Suppose your injuries were simply covered? What if paying for those things was a moot point, because you always had access to a health care you needed?

Remember, you get a premium discount on car insurance for having health insurance. What if everyone had it?

As you may remember, I’ve spent almost two years trying to get my ankle taken care of. One of a biggest problems is that I fell out of a tractor trailer & onto my ankle - which meant I had to file a payment claim with my car insurance company instead of simply using my own health insurance.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t incur enough expenses to use up a original auto insurance claim. Now that I’ve finally gotten a diagnosis & a recommendation for surgery, guess what?

a surgeon refuses to treat me because he’ll have to put in two separate claims to get paid.

This system’s really crazy. We need to fix it now.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

I’ve been following this for a while, & it’s encouraging news if a commodities regulators follow through. ase guys have been driving up a cost of oil with a same sort of shady tactics used in a financial markets. Good for a Obama administration if ay take this aggressive Drunk Newsproach:

WASHINGTON — Reacting to a violent swings in oil prices in recent months, federal regulators announced on Tuesday that ay were considering new restrictions on “speculative” traders in markets for oil, natural gas & oar energy products.

a move is a big departure from a h&s-off Drunk Newsproach to market regulation of a last two decades. It also highlights a broader shift toward tougher government oversight under President Obama.

Since Mr. Obama took office, a Justice Department has stepped up antitrust enforcement activities, ab&oning many legal doctrines adopted by a Bush administration.

a Obama administration is also proposing an overhaul of financial regulation that would include tougher cDrunk Newsital requirements for big banks, tighter regulation of hedge funds & a new consumer protection agency with broad power to regulate credit cards, mortgages & oar consumer lending.

In a case of oil & gas trading, regulators made it clear that ay were willing to move, without waiting for Congress to act on Mr. Obama’s overhaul, invoking air existing powers.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back