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The minority government has 76 votes to 73 on the floor of the house after Harry Jenkins resigned as Speaker, giving Labor an extra vote.Photo: Alex Ellinghausen LABOR will use its new increased majority in the House of Representatives to try to push through stalled policies including means-testing for the private health insurance rebate and the Malaysia plan for asylum seekers. Labor MPs who have been fretting about the poker machine reforms that Andrew Wilkie has been demanding say they plan to start speaking out for those reforms to be moderated, given Mr Wilkie no longer has the power to bring down the government. One MP, who did not want to be named, said MPs would call for changes such as insisting on a trial before pressing ahead with mandatory pre-commitment. Advertisement: Story continues below ”We can’t just drop the policy but we’ll be pushing for a trial first,” the MP said. ”This changes the whole dynamic. It’s good to have a bit of stability.” Mr Wilkie has been assured by the Prime Minister that Labor will try to honour its commitment to place mandatory pre-commitment technology on poker machines. The minority government has 76 votes to 73 on the floor of the House after Harry Jenkins resigned as speaker and went to the backbench, giving Labor an extra vote. The Coalition lost a vote when Peter Slipper replaced Mr Jenkins. This means Labor now needs the support of three of the six crossbenchers instead of four to pass a bill. The 76 votes gives Labor an absolute majority and much greater powers to control events in the House. As the opposition railed against the ambush as a grubby deal, recriminations inside the party began, with enemies of Mr Slipper saying he should have been disendorsed years ago. The federal Liberal National MP Alex Somlyay said the LNP executive, which had been debating this week whether to expel Mr Slipper or fast-track his preselection defeat, should have moved long ago. ”People like me and many other branch members have been warning the party this was going to happen … that something should have been done years ago,” he said. ”It has all come to a head now, and we’ll have to live with the consequences for the next two years.” It needs now just one vote to means-test the private health insurance rebate, which is worth $2.9 billion to the budget. It has the numbers to pass through the lower house the legislation for the Malaysia plan in a bid to increase the pressure on the Coalition to back down and allow it through the Senate. The manager of government business, Anthony Albanese, who lined up Mr Slipper on Thursday morning after Mr Jenkins resigned, denied yesterday that he had advance knowledge of Mr Jenkins’s decision. It emerged that Mr Jenkins had consulted Simon Crean on Wednesday and then contacted Government House to arrange his resignation.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au

By Kristine Guerra, The Oregonian The Oregonian

View full size Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian Debbie Pain, of Woodland, Wash., and Rich Enders converse in an examination room at the Free Clinic of Southwest Washington. Pain is one uninsured Clark County residents who visits the Free Clinic for basic medical services. Gov. Chris Gregoire is proposing to eliminate subsidized health care for the poor to bridge a $2 billion budget gap. Already at capacity, the Free Clinic would be inundated with uninsured individuals who can’t get health service anywhere else — if the cuts happen.

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Uwe E. Reinhardt is an economics professor at Princeton. He has some financial interests in the health care field.

For decades Americans have been served, in the print media and on television, with sorry vignettes of fellow Americans who have seen their health-insurance premiums increased or lost their insurance coverage altogether because illness struck or were denied coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions.

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Below are the three companies in the Life & Health Insurance industry with the highest dividend yields. Dividends can enhance returns for investors seeking income in addition to capital gains.

Kansas City Life Insurance (NASDAQ:KCLI) is highest with a dividend yield of 3.3%. Kansas City Life Insurance Company offers a variety of individual life insurance and annuity policies, as well as group life insurance distributed primarily through numerous general agencies. The Company is licensed and operates in the United States. Thus far today, Kansas City Life Insurance has traded 1,000 shares, vs. average volume of 18,000 shares per day. The stock has outperformed the Dow (-0.7% to the Dow’s -1.5%) and outperformed the S&P 500 (-0.7% to the S&P’s -1.7%) during today’s trading.

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Have you heard the term dead peasant life insurance? It refers to a life insurance policy an employer holds on an employee. The employer is listed as the beneficiary and collects a death benefit if the employee dies.

The practice began with companies insuring key employees, those whose loss would severely impact company operation. The insurance was to help compensate the companies for the loss of the employees’ highly valued services. Later, some companies decided that employee life insurance was a sound investment in general, and they began to take out policies on low- and middle-level employees. At times, the employees would not be informed. Interest would accrue on the policies, and the proceeds were non-taxable. Also, the cash value of the policies could serve as loan collateral.

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NEW YORK, Nov. 23, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue:

Non-life Insurance: Global Industry Almanac, MarketLine

http://www.reportlinker.com/p0688959/Non-life-Insurance-Global-Industry-Almanac-MarketLine.html #utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=Life_Insu

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IN 1987, Washington state created an innovative program that provided subsidized coverage to the working poor. Since then, the Basic Health program has served hundreds of thousands of individuals and families, keeping people healthier and able to work.

Fast-forward to 2011: The Basic Health program, which now serves 35,000 people, is at risk for total elimination, leaving these residents without the health care they need to keep themselves and their families from falling victim to a worsening chronic condition or a mental-health condition in full crisis mode.

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A small central Contra Costa health district on Monday hired an interim executive director — its first since it lost its hospital in 1996 — in the board’s latest move to save itself from dissolution.

The Mt. Diablo Health Care District board voted 3-0 to negotiate a six-month contract with retired Petaluma Health Care District CEO Daymon Doss.

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The U.S. Supreme Court, or so we are told, follows the election returns. Perhaps, but it shouldn’t anticipate them — or, for that matter, rule with the campaign calendar in mind.

The proper legal course — and, as it happens, by far the best thing for the country — is for the court to decide on the constitutionality of the new health care law by the summer, despite the fact the opinion would come down in the heat of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

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Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) — In the most important Supreme Court case of his term in office, President Barack Obama will be defending a policy that he opposed as a candidate. During the 2008 Democratic primaries, one of the few differences he had with rival Hillary Clinton was that her health-care plan featured an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, while Obama rejected a mandate on principle. But the health-care law he eventually signed included a mandate, and the court has now agreed to rule on whether that is constitutional.

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