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Health-Care Reform: Who is Winning, Who is Losing (Part: II)

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 17:04:05 +0000

Yesterday, the media was all over talking about the legal glitches in Health-Care Reform’s provision for covering pre-existing conditions for children. I wrote this post few days back in another blog. I would like to share it with you.

Thanks,

Roytutu

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In my previous write-up on this topic, I talked about inclusion of preventive services. Today, I’ll discuss including children with pre-existing conditions into the health-care system. According to a new report , there are 5 million children under the age of 18 who has pre-existing conditions. So far, insurance companies had been denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. The Affordable Care Act recognized the need for brining in all those children with pre-existing conditions into the system. So accordingly, health plans beginning on or after September 23, 2010 for new plans and existing group plans, “The new law includes new rules to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to children under the age of 19 due to a pre-existing condition.”
Now the law says that from this year no children should be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
This is a very good step to consumer protection. But there are some loopholes in this law. The law states that children cannot be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, but it did not say that all children need to be covered. So, insurance companies can stop offering coverage to these children till 2014, when everyone need to be offered insurance. Anticipating that the insurance companies would read through these fine prints, the Health and Human services announced a Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan that will “offer coverage to uninsured Americans who have been unable to obtain health coverage because of a pre-existing health condition”.
So will this provision of Health-Care Reform help the consumers?
The actual benefits will be delayed till 2014 for sure.

Health-Care Reform: Who is Winning Who is Losing? (Part I)

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:59:59 +0000

By Roy Tutu

“On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. The law puts in place comprehensive health insurance reforms that will roll out over four years and beyond, with most changes taking place by 2014.”

I am guest writing a mini-series examining different aspects of the Act on the blog : Cocacolabuffet: Passion for Stock and Life. Here’s an excerpt from my first write-up on this series:

The Act states that for health plan years beginning on or after September 23, 2010, “All new plans must cover certain preventive services such as mammograms and colonoscopies without charging a deductible, co-pay or coinsurance.”

How does it affect us?

Consumers can expect that their overall deductible/coinsurance/copays to rise.
Demand for all devices that helps in preventive care will rise.
Lower overall health-care burden to the society: less frequent emergency visits and other costly medical procedures.

For more on this write-up, please visit:

http://cocacolabuffet.blogspot.com/2010/08/health-care-reform-part-i.html

Have Steel Prices Bottomed?

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:02:15 +0000

By Guest Author: Coke

Steel prices in China have reversed a sequence of decline that lasted for more than 3 months since April, according to data reported by China Iron and Steel Association (CISA). As China is the world largest producer of steel, producing half of the global steel output, steel prices of China have significant impacts on global steel prices. In the first quarter of 2010, over-production in China created downward pressure on steel prices worldwide as steelmakers such as those in the US face fierce competition from low-priced imports from China.

However, analysts cautioned that it is too early to call for a turnaround in the sector. In Marketwatch,”We believe that the signs of a tentative recovery are welcome for a beleaguered sector,” said Goldman Sachs analysts in a report this week.

“However, we caution that channel checks with steel traders themselves suggest that it is too early to tell if the current recovery is sustainable,” said analysts Rajeev Das, Nana Hasegawa and HJ Moon.

“Many traders do not believe the recovery to be real,” they said, because the price rises for flat steel “represent the raising of asking prices, as few actual transactions appear to have taken place.”

Moreover, they said, traders have indicated that “barring the auto sector, demand from many other industries remains weak” amid a seasonal slowdown in many Asian markets, particularly South Korea. While activity in China “still appears to be quite strong, some traders are afraid that the government tightening could yet have a delayed impact when construction in progress is finished,” they said. But they cited consensus among traders that production cuts in July were deeper than those in June, and economic data due out in the middle of this month “will help soothe concerns.”

Despite this caution, investors took advantage of this short-term rally of steel prices. Steel stocks such as AKS, X, NUE had large gains since mid-July after months of downtrend. Steel ETF, SLX, rallied 12% since mid-July versus 3% of the major index, S&P 500.