3 blasts outside hideout of French terror suspect

TOULOUSE, France (AP) ? Three explosions were heard near an apartment building in southwest France where a suspected gunman is holed up, but an Interior Ministry spokesman would not confirm the blasts meant the start of an assault.

Another Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of office rules, said the suspect had gone back on a previous decision to turn himself in ? and that police had blown up the shutters outside the apartment window to pressure him to change his mind.

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet would not confirm an assault.

Orange flashes lit up the night sky with each blast near the Toulouse apartment building where police have been surrounding 24-year-old suspect, Mohamed Merah, since a pre-dawn effort to arrest him went awry.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

TOULOUSE, France (AP) ? Riot police surrounded an apartment building into the night on Wednesday, laying siege to a gunman who boasted of bringing France "to its knees" by carrying out an al-Qaida-linked terror spree that killed seven people.

Hundreds of heavily armed police, some in body armor, cordoned off the five-story building in Toulouse where the 24-year-old suspect, Mohamed Merah, had been holed up since the pre-dawn hours.

As midnight approached, three explosions were heard and orange flashes lit up the night sky near the building.

Authorities said the shooter, a French citizen of Algerian descent, had been to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he claimed to have received training from al-Qaida.

They said he told negotiators he killed a rabbi and three young children at a Jewish school on Monday and three French paratroopers last week to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and to protest the French army's involvement in Afghanistan, as well as a government ban last year on face-covering Islamic veils.

"He has no regrets, except not having more time to kill more people and he boasts that he has brought France to its knees," Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference.

The standoff began when a police attempt at around 3 a.m. to detain Merah erupted into a firefight. Three police were wounded, triggering on-and-off negotiations with the suspect that lasted into the night.

As darkness fell, police cut electricity and gas to the building, then quietly closed in to wait out the suspect.

Authorities were "counting on his great fatigue and weakening," said Didier Martinez of the SGP police union, adding the siege could go on for hours. Street lights were also cut, making Merah more visible to officers with night vision goggles in case of an assault.

French authorities ? like others in Europe ? have long been concerned about "lone-wolf" attacks by young, Internet-savvy militants who self-radicalize online since they are harder to find and track. Still, it was the first time a radical Islamic motive has been ascribed to killings in France in years.

Merah espoused a radical brand of Islam and had been to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region twice and to the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan for training, Molins said.

He said the suspect had plans to kill another soldier, prompting the police raid.

The gunman's brother and mother were detained early in the day. Molins said the 29-year-old brother, Abdelkader, had been implicated in a 2007 network that sent militant fighters to Iraq, but was never charged.

Wednesday's siege was part of France's biggest manhunt since a wave of terrorist attacks in the 1990s by Algerian extremists. The chase began after France's worst-ever school shooting Monday and two previous attacks on paratroopers beginning March 11, killings that have horrified the country and frozen campaigning for the French presidential election next month.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has played up nationalist themes in his bid for a second term, vowed to defend France.

"Terrorism will not be able to fracture our national community," Sarkozy declared Wednesday on national television before heading to funeral services for the two paratroopers killed and another injured Thursday in Montauban, near Toulouse.

The suspect repeatedly promised to turn himself in, then halted negotiations. Cedric Delage, regional secretary for a police union, said police were prepared to storm the building if he did not surrender.

After bouts of deadly terrorist attacks in France in the 1980s and 1990s, France beefed up its legal arsenal ? now seen as one of the most effective in Western Europe and a reference for countries including the U.S. after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Sarkozy's office said President Barack Obama called him Wednesday to express condolences to the families of the victims and praise French police for tracking down the suspect. The statement said France and the United States are "more determined than ever to fight terrorist barbarity together."

In recent years, French counterterrorism officials have focused mainly on al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of Osama bin Laden's network that has its roots in an insurgent group in Algeria, a former French colony.

Molins said Merah's first trip to Afghanistan ended with him being picked up by Afghan police "who turned him over to the American army who put him on the first plane to France."

"He had foreseen other killings, notably he foresaw another attack this morning, targeting a soldier," Molins said, adding also planned to attack two police officers. "He claims to have always acted alone."

Merah has a long record as a juvenile delinquent with 15 convictions, Molins added.

An Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Merah had been under surveillance for years for having "fundamentalist" Islamic views.

During the standoff, police evacuated the five-story building, escorting residents out using the roof and fire truck ladders. The suspect's apartment was on the ground floor of the postwar building, locals said.

French authorities said Merah threw a Colt .45 handgun used in each of the three attacks out a window in exchange for a device to talk to authorities, but had more weapons like an AK-47 assault rifle. Gueant said other weapons had been found in his car.

"The main concern is to arrest him, and to arrest him in conditions by which we can present him to judicial officials," Gueant added, explaining authorities want to "take him alive ... It is imperative for us."

Delage said a key to tracking Merah was the powerful Yamaha motorcycle he reportedly used in all three attacks ? a dark gray one that had been stolen March 6. The frame was painted white, the color witnesses saw in the school attack.

According to Delage, one of his brothers went to a motorcycle sales outfit to ask how to modify the GPS tracker, raising suspicions. The vendor then contacted police, Delage said.

The shooter has proved to be a meticulous operator. At the site of the second paratrooper killing, police found the clip for the gun used in all three attacks ? but no fingerprints or DNA on it.

Those slain at the Jewish school, all of French-Israeli nationality, were buried in Israel on Wednesday as relatives sobbed inconsolably. The bodies of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his sons Arieh, 5, and Gabriel, 3, and 8-year-old Myriam Monsenego had been flown there earlier in the day.

At the funeral ceremony, Myriam's eldest brother, Avishai, in his 20s, wailed and called to God to give his parents the strength "to endure the worst trial that can be endured."

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, meanwhile, denounced the deadly shooting attack at the Jewish school and condemned the link to Palestinian children.

"It's time for criminals to stop using the Palestinian cause to justify their terrorist actions," Fayyad said in a statement. "The children of Palestine want nothing but dignified lives for themselves and for all the children."

Before he was killed last year, bin Laden stressed the importance of focusing on the Palestinian cause. In what is believed to be a draft letter to al-Qaida's top lieutenant, the al-Qaida leader wrote about the need for the terror group's affiliates to tie their operations to broad concern for Palestine instead of local grievances, according to declassified documents obtained in last year's bin Laden raid that were reviewed by the Washington Post.

___

Elaine Ganley, Thomas Adamson, Jamey Keaten, Ingrid Rousseau, Cecile Brisson and Sylvie Corbet in Paris, David Rising in Berlin, Daniella Cheslow in Jerusalem and Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/3-blasts-outside-hideout-french-terror-suspect-224535888.html

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Business to Business PR | Online Success Articles

?

Sometimes called B2B PR is 100 per cent different to the sort of PR you hear about with celebrities, paparazzi and champagne. It?s even legal, decent and truthful! There?s a total culture difference and thankfully, editors of trade magazines are not out to sell copies based on sensationalism ? they?re in the business of providing high quality, relevant information to their readers about their market sector. Your market sector.

In fact, because most trade journals actually have a staff of only one and bit (the editor and a part time advertising sales rep), they are almost totally dependent on material submitted by companies. So if you?re providing a flow of high quality press releases and feature articles, or case studies, they?ll use it. If you don?t, they?ll use your competitors? material instead.

Running, as I do, a PR division, you?d probably expect me to tell you at this point that PR is a really difficult black art. But it?s not. Granted, we have learned a trick or two over the years which help, but the core skill is simple hard work and gentle sales technique.

The B2B PR game plan is:

Analyse the journals in the sector (remember that many are online magazines these days) and understand what the editors want.
Brainstorm the subjects on which your company has something to say and then speak to the relevant editors.
Write and distribute press releases on any real news stories you have ? but don?t send rubbish. This way, editors will come to know that your releases will be worth reading and they won?t get binned along with the hundreds of dreadful non-stories they receive every week.
Keep a steady flow of material heading towards the editors. Properly done, you should be able to feature in the key titles 10 months out of 12 ? maybe even 12/12!
Use a cutting service to make sure you pick up on all the coverage you obtain. And don?t just file it; you can reprint into a direct mail, put it on your website or hand out items, which makes excellent and authoritative ammunition for the sales force.
If you don?t want to do all of this yourself, then consider using a PR agency but only one that specialises in your sector. Ask one of the Editors for his/her recommendation.

Cost Effective B2B advertising is far from cheap with a typical colour page costing from ?1700 to ?2500 plus the cost of producing the advert. To be effective, it needs to be regular and in several magazines. Budgets need to be in the hundreds of thousands to be effective. B2B PR on the other hand can start from ?zero if you do it yourself and as little as ?15k a year using an agency. You can achieve editorial coverage valued at many times what you spend.

We regularly calculate the Advertising Equivalent Value for our own clients and frequently achieve Return On Investment from 1000 per cent and upwards.

Of course, there are also good reasons to advertise ? particularly when you need to get over a message which is not ?news?. And of course if no-one advertises there won?t be any magazines left for PR to work in. So it is a responsibility to support sector magazines with advertising too.

Source: http://online-success-articles.com/business-to-business-pr/

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Warrant with county clerk but not with warrant division ... - Legal Help

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Texas

I applied for a job and was denied because of a warrant that came up for a misdemeanor class A that happened back in 2009. I went to the county warrant division to turn myself in and was told they have nothing in their file and they said I should go to the city police department. I went there and they also had no record of a warrant for my arrest. I did some research and found that the county clerk had it in their files but it was never processed through the system, I guess this is why I never was informed prior about a warrant. They said they would have to process it through the system...on a warrant that was made out 3 years ago...then i could turn myself in. I waited 3 hours at the county clerks office and was finally told that they was missing some file number and could not process the warrant through the system until they get this number. They told me they would call with an update. Some time passed and they never called so I called them back and they are now telling me they are waiting reply from the police officer who filed made the charges. I was wondering if this would be cause to have this misdemeanor dismissed and if so, how can I expedite this so I do not miss out on my dream job because they are only giving me a couple of days to clear this up. I do not have money to pay a lawyer so is there a way I can do this for free?

Source: http://legalhelp.org/criminal-law-criminal-procedure/2024-warrant-county-clerk-but-not-warrant-division-your-advice-what-do.html

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Protecting Your Health With Personal Health-related Insurance ...

We scrimp and preserve more than the most recent designer wear, even the best vehicles or fancy jewelry but only a handful of folks have really believed about guarding their economic future with private health-related insurance coverage. This splendor behind having a private medical insurance coverage is the fact that it allow you to live your life free from unwanted worry for those who had been to acquire sick or have an incident that outcomes in unpredicted medical bills.

If you are wise you will get protection whilst you are able to nevertheless qualify for and manage it, which is ahead of you need it. Should you wait until you have been hurt or sick, in many situations you wont qualify and when you do the monthly rates are going to be incredibly high.

Although, personal medical insurance does not cover long-term sicknesses, it really is created to address the economic burden of short-term sicknesses and accidents, some people opt pick out private health-related insurance considering that it might become a genuine help for particular emergencies.

An additional perk of private medical insurance is that you really get to opt for which hospital you would prefer to be treated in, what specialist you would like to check with and what treatment you get. In many instances, youll also really feel like your moneys well spent due to the fact you will have the additional perk of having your personal private area full having a television along with other comforts of home.

If youre significantly thinking of getting private health-related insurance coverage, youll need to investigation which one with the huge variety of reputable insurance coverage providers essentially delivers the most effective overall protection. Which one delivers the most effective stability amongst premium expense and rewards in order that when you actually will need it, youll get your moneys really worth without any surprises.

After applying for coverage, the provider will send out you their insurance coverage insurance policies to insure that you stick to their requirements and specifications. In relation to which personal health-related insurance coverage strategy thatll most effective fits your wants and spending budget, its wise to question the insurance coverage business that you are applying for any complete comparison evaluation of the sorts of personal health-related insurance coverage which they offer.

I have detailed a few samples of possible private health-related insurance coverage protection below:

- In Patient: Like an individual, this is wherein you finish up remaining in the hospital for one or a lot more days.

- Out Affected individual: From uncomplicated treatment options to mere consultations, the individual will not be asked to remain within the hospital for observation or recovery any longer.

- Day Patient: Related to In-patient protection, this can be exactly where you nevertheless remain in the hospital but for much less than each day, generally inside the early morning.

There is basically an incredible variety of available cost selections for personal health-related insurance consumers in the ever-popular, low price coverage, which typically presents only limited protection for the far more extensive wide-ranging protection and benefit plans. Its fairly easy to become accepted for day and out-patient personal medical insurance protection, with in-patent getting a little much more challenging due to the higher danger concerned with prolonged hospital stays.

The next step is for you to actually get yourself into a trustworthy doctor wholl provide you with a check-up so you will be capable of know depending on your physicians assessment which kind of personal medical program you finest fit your future desires.

In terms of selecting, you will really must consider these options:

- Normally be certain that you are totally conscious of the conditions that are incorporated within your private medical insurance program.

- Do you would like to have your private health-related plan to also enable consultations from professionals and also out-patient remedies

- Would you prefer to possess the choice of picking out which hospital you would prefer to be handled at or doesnt issue exactly where they send you to

For the application for the personal health-related insurance program, companies essentially need to have a duplicate of particulars regarding your well being in order that they will be assured that youre not only merely duping them into having to pay for the recurrent illnesses and also you might not be covered for pre-existing circumstances. Lastly, with regards to distributing your declare, you need to speak to your personal medical insurance coverage organization first just before receiving any hospital providers or treatment options simply because you will need to verify that your personal medical insurance strategy actually addresses the therapy which you want or should have performed.

Your physician and also the resident specialist within the hospital also desires to indication your claim forms to reassure the company which you have in fact been handled for that said illness or damage.

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Source: http://web-mercadeo.info/protecting-your-health-with-personal-health-related-insurance/

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How to Get Started Photographing Pets

Before you leave on your next trip, would you prefer to have your dog picked up in a Ferrari 458, a Lamborghini Gallardo, a Bentley, a Porsche, or a Rolls Royce?

D Pet Hotels in Hollywood, CA, fetches your pet in style and delivers him to his own hotel room, where he can relax on a queen-sized bed and catch his favorite shows on a flat-screen T.V.

Bonnie here again, still filling in for Lori while she?s on maternity leave.

It may seem ridiculous the lengths people will go to for their pets these days. But if you like animals, and you like to take photos... it could spell big opportunity for you.

After all, professional pet photos now claim their place on the mantle next to the rest of the family.

This week and next, we?re going to look at four photo niches that are fun, approachable for beginners, and super-hot right now... starting today with pet photography.

Professional pet photographer Michelle Pelberg goes to people?s homes to capture the best of their pets on camera. She loves doing it so much, she feels weird getting paid for it.

Read on below to find out how she got started and what you need if you?d like to try it, yourself...

[EDITOR'S NOTE:? It might feel a little strange the first time someone hands you cash for doing something you love... but don?t worry, you?ll get used to it. Michelle will be with us this April at the Ultimate Money-Making Photo Workshop, to talk about breaking into her fun, lucrative niche, along with a flurry of other pros in niches like food photography, newborns, and boudoir. Come find out how to turn your passions into a fun photography income. Sign up before Friday, March 30 and we?ll give you a $200 Flight Credit Discount you can put toward your airfare.]

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSIONAL PET PHOTOGRAPHER MICHELLE PELBERG
By Bonnie Caton in Portland, Oregon

BONNIE: Michelle, I?m interested to hear how you got started in pet photography. Is this something you always planned to do?

MICHELLE: Though I certainly always wanted to work with animals, photography wasn?t my original plan. When I was 7, I got my own snake and from then on, I?ve had a particular love for reptiles. For a long time, I wanted to be a herpetologist (studying reptiles and amphibians) but eventually wound up studying zoology for about a year.

I decided it wasn?t for me and instead enrolled in a graphic design school with a goal to design the packaging for pet products.

That changed when the first ?real? photo I took became the cover of a local magazine.?From there, I moved to California to attend photography school. There, I quickly developed a reputation as the girl who always brought strange creatures into the studios for my projects. The rest is history. I finally achieved my goal to work with animals.?It just took me several paths to get there.

BONNIE: What would you say is your favorite part of your job?

MICHELLE: I?ve been working as a professional photographer for about four years now, and my favorite part is when owners -- or even just people who happen across my site -- write to tell me how much they love the photos and how I really capture the personality of my subjects.?My goal isn?t just to photograph a Labrador. My goal is to photograph Chester... who happens to be a Labrador.

BONNIE: What does someone need to be a good pet photographer?

MICHELLE: The top requirement is patience.?You?re going into a pet?s home with a bunch of equipment that is foreign to him... and a little scary.?Then, you have an owner who is desperate for their pet to do his best trick. Of course, the pet won?t. So, you?re left with a frustrated owner and a confused pet on your hands. If you can keep your cool through this, and help your subject relax and be himself, you?ll get some great shots.

BONNIE: Would I need a studio if I wanted to do this?

MICHELLE: No, all of my work is done on location.?This can be the pet?s home, the home of the owner?s friend or even a park.?You don?t need a studio to start doing this, but you do need some of the equipment that comes with a studio.?I use professional lights that I take with me and set up in the home. You have to let the location of the shoot be your studio.

BONNIE: What are a few tips you?d give to someone who?s interested in selling pet photos?

MICHELLE: After I graduated school, it took me about six years to decide that I could do this ?for real.? Now, I?d tell myself to start right out of school.?There?s no reason to be afraid.

And if you?re like me and you?re not a very big fan of approaching strangers or giving public talks, I?d advise taking some speaking classes or maybe joining your local Toastmasters club.?In order to network, you need to be good at that kind of thing.

BONNIE: Great advice, Michelle. Thank you!

[EDITOR?S NOTE: Pet owners are buying magazines, too, and those magazines also need photos of pets. Find out how easy it is to get your photos published in magazines when you know exactly what to say to editors. Sometimes just the right query letter is all you need. Pick up a copy of The Travel Photographer?s Resource Guide: A Surefire System for Breaking Into Magazines and access a professional photographer?s personal query letters, follow-up notes, and more... so all you need to do is change the details to your own, and you?re done. Now you don?t even have to think up what to say. Get it for 20% off before midnight on Tuesday, March 27.]

Source: http://www.thephotographerslife.com/2012/03/how-to-get-started-photographing-pets/

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The New Jersey Experience: Do Insurance ... - Kaiser Health News

On Monday, when the Supreme Court hears arguments about whether the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, the justices will also contemplate a policy issue: Is it possible to reform the private insurance market, making affordable coverage available to all, without an individual mandate?

Under former Gov. Jim Florio, New Jersey attempted to reform its insurance markets without imposing a mandate (Photo by Diana Walker/Getty Images).

The Obama administration has told the court that if it invalidates the mandate it should also invalidate two key insurance reforms that would prevent discrimination because of preexisting conditions. On this, the administration has a somewhat unusual ally: The insurance industry. Although insurers have fought many parts of the health law, they have long favored the establishment of a mandate, which requires?almost everyone?who can afford it to?buy health insurance?or pay a fee, saying the reformed market cannot function without it. (Critics point out that a mandate would also help insurers generate more business.)

Legally, the administration's argument is as potent as it is risky. The Constitution says that the federal government may do whatever is "necessary and proper" to carry out its other functions. The Supreme Court historically has interpreted that power broadly. If insurance market reform really is more prone to failure without a mandate, that fact alone could, in the eyes of the justices, make the law constitutional.

But is the administration's claim correct? For some clues, the justices could examine what happened in New Jersey, a state that tried to reform its insurance markets without a mandate -- and failed pretty miserably.

Deconstructing The New Jersey Experience
The New Jersey effort began in the late 1980s, when rising health care costs were getting the attention of business and political leaders across the country. And a big worry then, as now, was what to do about people who couldn't get insurance from a large employer. When those people tried to get coverage in the individual or small-group market, they underwent scrutiny from insurers, who were wary of taking on big medical risks. "Insurance companies make their money not by being efficient, or managing care, but by weeding out the sick and insuring only the healthy," a frustrated Jim Florio, then governor of New Jersey, said in 1992.

The exception was Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey, which was an "insurer of last resort." By law, and in exchange for its tax-exempt status, Blue Cross could not turn away applicants because of pre-existing conditions. Because that arrangement saddled Blue Cross with sicker and more costly beneficiaries, the state effectively decreed that hospitals charge the insurer less. But that approach was financially straining the state's hospitals, particularly as the number of people without insurance and seeking charity care rose. Blue Cross, meanwhile, maintained that it was struggling even with the extra subsidies -- and kept asking state regulators for permission to impose impressive premium increases.

Eventually the state's stakeholders sat down with lawmakers and, in a negotiation that seems quaintly non-partisan by today's standards, hashed out a deal as part of a broader package of health care initiatives. Blue Cross would no longer be the lone insurer of last resort. Instead, the state would create something called the "Individual Health Coverage Program." Insurers wishing to sell coverage to individual customers would have to do so through this program. And insurers could not deny coverage or charge higher premiums to the sick. In other words, they had to practice what policy wonks call "guaranteed issue" and "community rating." The new law applied similar, although not identical, rules to insurers that sold to small businesses.

The hope was to recreate an environment that had existed many decades before, when the early Blue Cross plans first established modern health insurance in this country. From the 1930s to the 1950s, Blue Cross plans dominated the market, making coverage available to nearly everybody who had the money to pay for it. But then commercial insurers entered the market, targeting only healthy beneficiaries whose small medical needs required much lower premiums -- and leaving the Blue Cross plans with sicker patients, forcing them to raise premiums to unsustainable levels. Around the country, Blue Cross plans bled money, gave up on community rating and guaranteed issue, or some combination of the two -- in other words, they had become victims of what health policy analysts call an "adverse selection death spiral."

New Jersey officials realized their new system might be subject to similar problems. Forcing insurers to charge the same rates universally meant that older, sicker people would pay less -- but younger, healthier people would pay more. Plans might find new, more subtle ways of competing to attract the lowest medical risks, in ways that left other plans with ever-sicker, ever-more expensive beneficiaries. And healthier people might put off buying insurance altogether, since they could always wait until they got sick before getting coverage. To ward off that possibility, the state decided that insurers making more money would subsidize those making less.

The plan went into effect in late 1993, not long before President Bill Clinton's efforts to reform health insurance nationally started foundering. And, for a while, it looked like Florio and his advisers had done what Clinton and his advisors could not. Nobody believed New Jersey's plan would bring universal coverage to the state. But "people thought this would have a significant impact," says Bruce Siegel, who was the state health commissioner and is now president of the National Association of Public Hospitals. "They thought it would ? change the situation for the uninsured."

An early assessment of the program, by researchers at Harvard and sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, declared the experiment a success. But, by 1996, enrollment in the regulated plans started to slide after peaking at about 186,000. By 2001, it was down to about 85,000. Not coincidentally, the mix of people left in the program changed dramatically. According to a study published in?Health Affairs, the median age for enrollees jumped from 41.9 years to 48.4 years in just five years, and premiums rose by between 48 percent and 155 percent, depending on the plan.

These were the tell-tale signs of adverse-selection death spiral: An exodus of healthy people from the insurance pool, leaving behind a population of ever-sicker people whose high health costs keep driving up prices. (The rest ended up uninsured or found their way into other forms of coverage). Ward Sanders, director of the New Jersey Association of Health Plans, says that's exactly what all the stakeholders were seeing. "We had quarterly reports on demographics," says Sanders, who was the state's chief regulator for the individual insurance market during the program's first few years. "And it was empirically indisputable that the claims experience, the medical needs of the population, just went way up."

New Jersey reacted by scaling back its reforms and, in 2003, created a "Basic and Essential" insurance alternative offering fewer benefits, at lower rates. Today, approximately 85,000 have taken up this option. But the B and E plans, as New Jersey calls them, don't cover prescription drugs, rehabilitation, chemotherapy, or transplants. They have no protection against catastrophic expenses, cover delivery but not prenatal care and allow insurers to charge women higher premiums.

Meanwhile, just 49,000 people are still getting comprehensive insurance through the regulated individual market. Overall, those people may still be better off than they would be if New Jersey had never created it. "In a state that allowed medical underwriting ? that allowed insurers to turn away anybody with health problems ? these people would be uninsured," says Joel Cantor, one of the lead authors on that Health Affairs study. But the price of that change is higher insurance premiums overall: By most reckonings, health insurance in New Jersey is among the nation's most expensive.

New Jersey's experience hardly seems unusual. Kentucky, New York and Vermont all tried to reform their insurance markets without a mandate. All ended up with higher premiums, lower enrollment in insurance or some combination of the two.

Does The Mandate Make A Difference?
Would a decision to strike down the Affordable Care Act's mandate impose a similar fate on the U.S. as a whole? That's a more complicated question. Cantor, who is director of the Center for State Health Policy at Rutgers University, notes that other factors were also at work in New Jersey. Not long after the program started, the state rescinded the scheme for compensating insurers that attracted bad risks, because officials came to believe some insurers were gaming the system. The state also stopped offering subsidies to people in the individual market. (Lawmakers did so in order to move funding over to the newly created State Children's Health Insurance Program, which attracted federal matching funds.)

In these respects, the Affordable Care Act might be more resilient. It has relatively generous subsidies, particularly for lower incomes. It also has a "risk adjustment" mechanism that should, in theory, help protect insurers from adverse selection effects. Those buffers are one reason why researchers from the Urban Institute, Rand Corporation, and Congressional Budget Office, as well as Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber, all predict the numbers of Americans without insurance would decline even if the law proceeds without a mandate. It's also possible that, in response to a court decision striking down the mandate, Congress would find alternative methods of boosting participation in the insurance market. (Paul Starr, a Princeton sociologist and historian of health care, has been a prominent proponent of this possibility.)

Still, the economists all believe that the mandate, as envisioned by the law, will make a significant difference in reform's impact. Gruber has suggested that removing the mandate from the law would diminish the number of newly insured by nearly two-thirds and raise premiums overall by 30 percent. The Rand Institute researchers predict that eliminating the mandate would have little effect on premiums for individuals. But they, too, believe that health insurance coverage would fall dramatically -- from 27 million additional people insured to just 15 million.

Those are just projections, but the experts note that one state has managed to impose insurance reforms without weakening its insurance market. It's Massachusetts, which happens to be the one state that also imposed an individual mandate. More than 98 percent of the state's residents now have insurance, by far the highest percentage in the country. Premiums in the non-group market have fallen by 50 percent, relative to national trends, while premiums in the group market aren't rising any faster than they were before the reforms began.

Veterans of the New Jersey experiment certainly think Massachusetts got it right -- and warn that the ultimate effects of reform without a mandate could be even more catastrophic than the mathematical models suggest. "I think the lesson of New Jersey," Sanders says, "is that when you're down to the individual market, where the decision to purchase coverage is in the hands of somebody who is buying for themselves and knows their own health status, it's very hard to make that market work if there's not a mandate coupled with subsidies for folks who need help to meet that responsibility."

Cantor agrees. "If there is guaranteed issue and no mandate, I think it essentially spells the end of the health insurance industry as we know it," Cantor says. "Eventually the insurance market would become so dysfunctional that carriers would pull out, premiums would go through the roof, and enrollment would collapse. That's certainly consistent with what happened in New Jersey."

Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor at The New Republic.

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Source: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2012/March/21/nj-ind-mandate-case-study.aspx

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Hanks calls blackface video 'hideously offensive'

Andrew D. Bernstein / NHLI via Getty Images

By Brent Lang, The Wrap

UPDATED 11:15 a.m. ET: Fallout from a 2004 fundraising auction emceed by Tom Hanks continued Wednesday, as James Montgomery, the investment banker caught wearing blackface at the school event, apologized Wednesday for his costume.

"Each of us does and says things at one point or another in our lives we regret," Montgomery told TheWrap. "The costume I wore to the 2004 Fundraiser was one such thing for me."

The video shows Montgomery wearing African tribal wear and carrying a stuffed gorilla.

Montgomery, who is CEO of the Santa Monica-based Montgomery & Co., said he did not intend to cause offense.

"While I can understand that some people may have read something other than what was intended into my wearing that costume to a costume party, as anyone who knows me would attest, that is not consistent with my beliefs nor is it with who I am," Montgomery added. "I am sick about the false impression it gave. All I can do now is to do what I did then and apologize for any offense I may have caused."

ORIGINAL STORY: Tom Hanks responded to a controversial video that emerged Tuesday showing the actor hosting a fundraising auction that featured a white man in blackface, labeling the incident "hideously offensive."

Hanks acknowledged that he emceed the annual fundraising event for St. Matthew's Parish School, the Pacific Palisades school his children attended, but said the incident was regrettable.

"In 2004, I was blindsided when one of the parents got up on the stage in a costume that was hideously offensive then and is hideously offensive now," Hanks said in a statement to TheWrap. "What is usually a night of food and drink for a good cause was, regrettably, marred by an appalling few moments."

The video came to light in a report on the Daily Caller. Eagles member Glenn Frey co-hosted the event, but the man in blackface was identified by the publication as investment banker James Montgomery, CEO of Montgomery & Company.

In the video he is outfitted in African tribal wear and is holding a stuffed gorilla.

At one point in the video, Hanks jokes, "Ladies and gentlemen, a celebrity in our midst. Who would have thought that Bill O'Reilly would join us?"

The fundraiser was reportedly centered on a "Castaway" theme -- a reference to the 2000 hit film starring Hanks.

The Daily Caller was co-founded by political analyst Tucker Carlson and launched in 2010.

(Note: The video below features a scene from the event, and may be offensive to readers.)

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Source: http://entertainment.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/21/10790412-tom-hanks-calls-fundraiser-blackface-video-hideously-offensive

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