Hello
Easter weekend mishmash under the cut.
2 million young adults are eager to get on parents' health care plans
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....- Congress voted to overhaul the health care system on a Sunday. On Monday, Patti Lawson e-mailed her employer's human resources office to ask how soon she could get her 22-year-old daughter back on her health insurance...
...Lawson, a Gettysburg College administrator in Pennsylvania, said she is hoping to get her daughter back on her health plan because she is tired of playing "a roulette game." Her daughter has just a temporary job that doesn't provide insurance.
"You're banking on your child staying well," said Lawson, who has been a single parent since her husband died of cancer three years ago...
...Lawson bought her college graduate daughter, Katie Byrne, catastrophic coverage on the independent market, so she wouldn't be completely uninsured while she searches for a job with benefits. But the $100-a-month plan does not include doctor visits. Meanwhile, Lawson's 19-year-old son is still covered.
"My son can go to a doctor if he twists his knee playing soccer and it's a $15 copay," Lawson said. "Then I have a daughter who does not have the same benefits. It illustrates for me what a lot of Americans face."
...In the meantime, Lawson plans to fill an Easter basket with dental floss, medications and other health items for her daughter.
She is encouraging her daughter to stay healthy while they wait to get her back on Lawson's plan.
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More:
April 5 (Bloomberg) -- When Brian Howell, a 23-year-old Nashville, Tennessee, guitar player, feared a lingering cold had turned into an infection last year, he decided against seeing a doctor. It would have cost too much, he said.
"I decided just to drink a lot of tea and take some Mucinex," Howell said. "It turned out OK -- thankfully."
Howell hopes to stop gambling with his health, he said, when young adults up to age 26, who aren’t covered by a company insurance plan, will be able to join their parents’ policies under the U.S. health overhaul signed into law last month. The change may save Howell $800 a year in premiums, money he said he plans to put into savings and a diet that’s less dependent on road-tour fast food...
....Fourteen million Americans ages 19 to 29 were uninsured in 2008, the largest group among the 46 million without coverage, according to a January report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a research group. The expanded benefits will help people seeking their first jobs, those working for firms that don’t offer insurance and risk-takers starting their own business, said Landon Gibbs, executive director of SHOUTAmerica, a Franklin, Tennessee-based health-care advocacy group...
....Entrepreneurs may also gain, said Gibbs. "There’s a lot of young adults who want to go out and start their own company, but they’re scared to leave the security of health-care coverage through their jobs," he said.
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High-risk health insurance pools set to begin in June
One of the first big pieces of the federal health-care overhaul to take effect is the creation by late June of temporary high-risk insurance pools for people who can't get affordable coverage because of a pre-existing condition.
On Friday, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent letters to governors and state insurers, laying out the requirements for these pools and asking states to decide whether they'll participate.
States have 90 days from the March 23 signing of the health reform bill to set up a program to cover people with pre-existing conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months. If they can't or won't comply, the Department of Health and Human Services will administer one for them.
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U.S. Wealthy Lack Easy Loopholes to Offset Obama’s Tax Plans
In 2011, income tax rates for the highest earners will go to 39.6 percent, up from 35 percent, and the capital gains tax will rise to 20 percent from 15 percent, unless Congress acts. The increases aren’t likely to be overturned by Congress, said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Washington- based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The capital gains tax will rise to 23.8 percent in 2013, to help pay for health-care reform signed by President Barack Obama March 23. That’s because the legislation applies a 3.8 percent Medicare tax on unearned income such as realized capital gains, dividends, interest, rents and royalties. The health-care bill also increases the employee’s share of the Medicare payroll tax levied on wages by 0.9 percentage points to 2.35 percent in 2013.
Both increases related to the health-care legislation will apply to the approximately 1 million individuals who earn more than $200,000 annually and about 4 million couples who file jointly and make more than $250,000.
"No loopholes stick out," said John Olivieri, a partner in the private clients group at the law firm White & Case in New York. "It’s very difficult to avoid the tax," said said Matthew Keator, a partner at Keator Group LLC, a Lenox, Massachusetts-based wealth advisory firm. "There’s not any silver bullet."*
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Services in U.S. Grow at Fastest Pace Since May 2006
April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Service industries expanded in March at the fastest pace since in more than three years, a sign the U.S. recovery is extending beyond manufacturing and starting to create jobs.
The Institute for Supply Management’s index of non- manufacturing businesses, which make up almost 90 percent of the economy, rose to 55.4, the highest level since May 2006, from 53 in the prior month. Today’s figure exceeded all forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. Readings above 50 signal expansion.
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Pending home sales rise 8.2 percent in February
WASHINGTON – The number of buyers who agreed to purchase previously occupied homes rose sharply in February, far exceeding expectations, in a sign that the housing market may be coming back from the winter doldrums.
The National Association of Realtors said Monday its seasonally adjusted index of sales agreements rose 8.2 percent from January to a February reading of 97.6. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected the index would fall slightly to 90.3.
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President Obama and his family attended Easter Sunday service yesterday at Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a 2,500-member congregation in the poorest section of DC.
Hundreds of people began lining up in front of the chapel in Southeast Washington hours before the service was scheduled to start, at times stepping into the street and peering around the crowd to try to catch a glimpse of the president. Even those passing by seemed astonished by the gravity of the situation.
"That is such a blessing," a woman walking by wearing headphones exclaimed, looking at the line of people going through security. "He came over here on the southeast side. That is such a blessing! That is such a blessing!"
LaJuan Dixon-Fleming, 26, who lives in Northeast Washington, was among the first people in line, along with her mom and sisters. She said she was especially struck that the president was coming to the "heart of Southeast" and took his visit as a sign that the area was "not being ignored."
"At night, you can't walk through this neighborhood," she said. "Not in a million years would you think the president would come to church on Alabama Avenue Southeast on Easter Sunday."...
....Obama's visit comes less than a week after four young men in a minivan allegedly sprayed a crowd of youths with bullets in the Bellevue neighborhood, killing four and injuring five, leaving residents to wonder whether their hopes for renewal were in vain. The neighborhood is a short drive from Allen Chapel.
"When you think about what has taken place in our community this past week, he is coming at a critical time," Bell said. "Just the fact that the president would still come brings so much calm and healing to Southeast Washington."
President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and daughters, Sasha and Malia, attend Easter Sunday service at Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., April 4, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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Excellent piece by Jonathan Capehart
...Late last year, I re-read 13 Obama speeches, including his 2004 address in Boston. That stirring speech fixed Obama in the American political consciousness. Six years later, it is now revealed as a blueprint. The themes espoused there -- common ground, shared responsibility and moral authority with healthy dollops of tough love -- endured in speeches from Cairo to Congress, before Europeans, Arabs, blacks and gays...
... Frank Rich nails it when he writes, "What’s clear is that Obama largely remains a fixed point even while the rest of us keep wildly revising our judgments, whether looking at him through the prism of partisan politics, race, media melodrama or any other we choose. It’s our recession-tossed country, not his presidency, that is rocked by violent mood swings."
Obama might drive people crazy because he doesn't fit with the image they thought they had of him, but I find his steadiness and consistency to be a virtue. And if you're prone to mood swings -- violent or otherwise -- or know someone who is, you know how important that is.
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New Yorker editor, David Remnick' new book - 'The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama' - is out tomorrow, to the sound of many great reviews, like the one by Douglas Brinkley in the LA Times:
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...A brilliantly constructed, flawlessly written biography. A towering monument to Obama's hyper-professionalism when it comes to the art of politics. The president is an unflappable Zen master with a belly full of audacity. Hard work, endurance and civility are inherent in his personality. His greatest strength is that the opposition always underestimates him. In "Alice in Wonderland" terms, he's the Cheshire Cat, the magical creature who saves the day just as the guillotine is about to drop...
...Remnick dutifully explains the year-by-year processes that led to the 2008 presidential election -- only "First in His Class," David Maraniss' 1996 biography of Bill Clinton, is as profound on a sitting U.S. president. Except for a tack-on epilogue aimed at keeping "The Bridge" as up-to-date as possible, Remnick has written a near-definitive study of Obama from 1961 to 2009"...
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The book' main theme comes from the race angle, placing Obama in the wider context of the black liberation movement. In it the president have this to say about the racial component of the opposition, including the tea-party:
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"America evolves, and sometimes those evolutions are painful. People don't progress in a straight line. Countries don't progress in a straight line. So there's enormous excitement and interest around the election of an African-American President. It's inevitable that there's going to be some backlash, potentially, to what that means—not in a crudely racist way, necessarily. But it signifies change...
"And so I think that nobody should have ever been under the illusion—certainly I wasn't, and I was very explicit about this when I campaigned—that by virtue of my election, suddenly race problems would be solved or conversely that the American people would want to spend all their time talking about race. I think it signifies progress, but the progress preceded the election. The progress facilitated the election. The progress has to do with the day-to-day interactions of people who are working together and going to church together and teaching their kids to treat everybody equally and fairly. All those little interactions that are taking place across the country add up to a more just, more tolerant, society....
"But that's an ongoing process. It's one that requires each of us, every day, to try to expand our sense of understanding. And there are going to be folks who don't want to promote that understanding because they're afraid of the future. They don't like that evolution. They think, in some fashion, that it will disadvantage them or, in some sense, diminishes the past. I tend to be fairly forgiving about the anxiety that people feel about change because I think, if you're human, you recognize that in yourself."
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You can listen to Remnick talk about his experience of writing this book here.
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Speaking of opposition underestimates Barack Obama, here's the very entertaining little HORSE (or in this case POTUS) game between the president and CBS Sports' Clark Kellogg:
"Clark missed some shots on purpose so he won't embarrass his president, but it was only because he didn't know he was going to end up losing. You can't give me that kind of room".
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Easter Egg-Roll party today at the White House, with 30,000 guests. Please don't hot-link.
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(SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
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(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
President Barack Obama talks with David Plouffe, as he holds his daughter Lilian Plouffe, during the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon))
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President Barack Obama helps Lilian Plouffe, daughter of David Plouffe, during the annual Easter Egg Roll. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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(SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
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(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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(SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
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(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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(SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
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(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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(SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images))
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(White House Photo, Samantha Appleton)
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With his daughter Sasha and Malia at his feet, President Barack Obama reads "Green Eggs and Ham," by Dr. Suess, during the Easter Egg Roll at the White House. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images)
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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President Barack Obama puts on his Chicago White Sox hat and deliver the ceremonial first pitch during opening day ceremonies for a baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Washington Nationals, Monday, at Nationals Park in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
(SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)