Why
Obamacare Could Worsen Uninsured By Encouraging "Cost-Benefit"
Opt-Outs - (www.voiceofsandiego.org) Recently
I got a notice that Health Net was terminating my family’s medical insurance
effective Jan. 1. They offered new “Covered California insurance plans”
compliant with the Affordable Care Act to replace my existing coverage. Five
tiers of service were outlined: Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and
Catastrophic. The Silver plan most closely matched our previous coverage. To
calculate the cost of this new plan, a Premium Rate Guide was provided. It is a
multi-page chart listing rates for each age and different tables for Los
Angeles, San Diego, Riverside, Orange and San Bernardino county residents. A
quick analysis reveals San Diego County was the second most costly, about 10
percent higher than the lowest among them. By adding up the cost for each
person on the plan, I determined the new family plan would be $10,523 per year,
without a subsidy because our annual household income comes to more than
$80,000. The cost of the Obamacare plan is an astounding 58 percent higher than
the existing plan’s cost of $6,828. A $4,000 deductible means that only after
paying $14,523 will the health care plan provide financial benefit.
After sudden plunge, gold traders cry
conspiracy - (www.cnbc.com) Gold dropped $25 in two minutes Friday morning
following what appeared to be a single massive sell order, and professional
traders are now pronouncing the sale a deliberate attempt to manipulate the
market. At 8:42 a.m. ET Friday morning, a firm appeared to sell 5,000 gold
futures contracts "at the market," meaning at whatever price was
available. The massive order was more than the market could take at once and
led the CME to automatically halt trading for 10 seconds. Eric Hunsader of
Nanex told CNBC.com on Friday that 2,700 contracts were sold, which triggered
the halt, and that the remaining 2,300 were sold once the market resumed
trading.
Asmussen
rejects Athens' call for ECB to roll over Greek bonds - (www.reuters.com) The
European Central Bank cannot roll over Greek bonds as this goes against a ban
on financing governments, a senior ECB policymaker said on Monday, dashing
Athens' hopes it will help plug a funding gap next year through such a move. Athens
will be financed by bailout loans until the second half of 2014, when it hopes
to tap bond markets again. It then faces a funding gap of nearly 11 billion
euros for 2014-15, the International Monetary Fund and Athens estimate. Finance
Minister Yannis Stournaras said on Monday that Greece planned
to roll over debt next year to narrow the funding shortfall. He said that euro
zone central banks had promised to roll over Greek bonds and that if they did
not they should make up the difference by other means.
Shutdown costs family $10,000 and dream house - (www.cnbc.com) Tom and Casey Maloy are living every
homebuyer's bad dream: Though they were able to sell their too-small house in
Baton Rouge, La., the government shutdown has shut them and their five kids out
of a great deal on a move-up house. "We get the phone call that, hey,
you're approved, but the government is shut down, and your government
backed-USDA loan cannot be processed, so you have to wait," Tom said. The
Maloys had planned to use a Department of Agriculture rural development home
loan, a 30-year fixed product requiring no down payment. The program, designed
to help families just like the Maloys, is now on hold because of the shutdown.
No loans are being processed. "I'm pretty stressed out, unsure of where
our country is heading and how to provide day to day for our children if we
can't finish our loan now, because we do have to be out of this house in a week
for the new owners to move in," Casey said. "They've given us an
extra week, so it's kind of stressful."
$57B
of FHA Loans Big Banks May Have to Eat - (www.americanbanker.com) The
nation's four largest banks are holding $57 billion of seriously delinquent
loans that they've been slow to move into foreclosure over concerns that the
Federal Housing Administration, the government mortgage insurer, will refuse to
cover the losses and hit them with damages, according to industry sources. The
banks — Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (NYSE:C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and
Wells Fargo (WFC) — have assured investors in the footnotes of quarterly
filings that the loans are government-insured and therefore pose no threat to
their bottom lines, even if they end up in foreclosure. What's more, the banks
have used these supposedly iron-clad government guarantees as a pretext for
continuing to classify the loans as performing and for holding no reserves
against them.
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