Chris' Space

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Health Savings Accounts: a windfall for U.S. Banks....A disaster for society?

“Banks, credit unions and money management firms are now positioning themselves to become central players in the business of healthcare.

Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, Fidelity investments and hundreds of others are hoping to capitalize on the latest wrinkle in medical care paid by consumers: health saving accounts, which have been around since 2003 (…)

These supercharged checking accounts, which must be linked to high deductible health insurance plans, allow consumers to invest their own money for current and future medical expenses and have it grow tax free.

They are the centre piece of Bush’s plans on health care, just as private accounts were offered as Social Security fix (..)

Currently, only about 3 million Americans have signed up for the high deductible insurance policy that is eligible for such accounts (…) That number has roughly tripled from last March (…) By 2010, more than 15 million Americans, or about 10% of all those insured, will have a health savings accounts (…)”

 This article from the International Herald Tribune really focuses on the opportunity for the financial industry to reap huge profits from health savings accounts.

And no doubt that similarly to the pension funds case the main beneficiaries will be the financial industry, much more so then the “consumer”.

It is said, in the same article, that in addition to receiving “lucrative” fees by offering mutual funds and other investments the market participants would also charge between $50 to $75 to set up such account and would then “collect  perhaps $40 or more in maintenance charges and service fees”.

To start with, one could argue with the word “consumer”. I would say that they are either patients who need treatment or they are investors in what ever investments the providers will offer.

And this is where it could and will go very wrong. Already the U.S. system and the Anglo-Saxon approach in general (U.K….) towards healthcare is …peculiar. How many times have we heard of people unable to meet the cost of health treatment to treat life threatening illnesses? Even Hollywood raised the issue with so many movies dealing with health insurance policies not covering this or not covering that.

What they are now saying is that in addition, U.S. citizens will only be able to afford treatment that they could fund themselves in the first place anyway. Good enough for high income people who could already save enough regardless of the legislation, especially if they are single for instance (potentially less risk to need health care). But what about low to mid level income families?...Large families?

So funding the health saving accounts is an issue in itself, even though the employers may contribute to some extent. The only positive thing on that side of the equation is that U.S. citizens are not savers anyway (households save in average less than 2% of their income) hence this could potentially force them to save more.

But on the other side of the equation are the investments which will “grow” tax free. Am I missing something or have we all forgotten the disasters linked to some 401K plans? What about entire life savings gone due to Enron and the likes? As they say in the disclaimers of investment produ

Have you ever had a chance to check out any of the sports website lately? If you are a hardcore sports fan, you would be amazed by the information that technology could bring to you today, most importantly - lots of them are free of charge!!

Thanks to Internet and millions of fantasy sports participants. Statistics are available everywhere. Even you don't know anything about these stat figures. You could just pick their fantasy scores or rankings to see how the people think about their performance are (see more insight discussion on modern baseball statistics in "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis).

Now these statistics are even easier to retrieve and user-friendlier than ever.

If you are English Premier League follower, check out Actim Station, which gives you a completed commentaries and statitics.

Golf fans, can't get a grip on each stroke? Pay $9.95/mo. For PGA TOURCast, you'd get a professional analyzer based on the courses. It's even nominated by Emmy Awards.

My favorite site goes to Gameday from Major League Baseball official website. Not only it's free, but it contains a real action of location of the pitches/hits and links to players' stats. That looks like Bloomberg in the baseball world with a more graphic interface.

Some more on the web:
NFL:
http://www.nfl.com/

NBA:
http://www.nba.com/

From Andrea - Diary of Insomniac

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Typoglycemia

Believe it or not you can read it.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

Also from The Space Craft

Tweak UI PowerToy: http://spaces.msn.com/members/thespacecraft/Blog/cns!1pBU8QRvZvOfXG4QTjpv_GFg!127.entry

Custom HTML PowerToy: http://spaces.msn.com/members/thespacecraft/Blog/cns!1pBU8QRvZvOfXG4QTjpv_GFg!126.entry

Windows Media Player PowerToy: http://spaces.msn.com/members/thespacecraft/Blog/cns!1pBU8QRvZvOfXG4QTjpv_GFg!105.entry

Talking about MSN Alerts PowerToy

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MSN Alerts PowerToy

Alerts aren't available broadly yet, but you'll notice some people already have them on their Space. The instructions below show how you can hack something together yourself.  

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MSN Alerts on your own Space is a great way to enable people to get instant updates whenever you update your Blog!

 

While it definitely requires a little more work, it's actually pretty easy to set up.

 

1.  Install the PowerToys "HTML Container Part" - click here to learn how to do this:  (http://spaces.msn.com/members/thespacecraft/Blog/cns!1pBU8QRvZvOfXG4QTjpv_GFg!127.entry)

 

2.  Sign up for Alerts at http://signup.alerts.msn.com/brochure/index.html. 

 

3.  Receive Welcome Email - Accept Terms of Use

 

4.  You'll receive another instruction email with HTML code for your Alerts signup button.  Copy and paste that HTML code provided in the into the HTML Container Window.  Here's an example of mine:

 

<a href="http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts/login.do?PINID=xxyourPINxx &returnURL=http://spaces.msn.com/members/yourname/">

 

<img src="http://images.alerts.msn.com/mcwebsite/graphics/blog/alert_signup_eng.gif" alt="MSN Alerts" border=0></a>

 

5.  Click Save

 

6.  You're all set!  Users can get alerted whenever you or a friend updates your space!

The discussion in regard to the tax treatment on structured products was finally concluded couple of weeks ago. Although the actual tax rate hasn't been decided yet, Ministry of Finance and Banking Bureau (formerly known as BoMA) have preliminarily proposed to charge a unified withholding tax on structured products issued by banks, insurance companies, and securities firms.

I went to a Japanese fried cutlet restaurant on Saturday's evening. There was a long queue. My friend and I had to wait almost 30 minutes to get in and was rushed out immediately right after my last bite of the dessert. Went to Taipei 101 and stood in a line for 40 minutes to just get a donut. Got a movie ticket - another 20 minutes. Do a simple calc, I spent 1.5 hr in that evening to WAIT. Since when Taipei has become a place of queuing?

From Didier's Blog  - Finance and Technology

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www.linkedIn.com : Communities over the internet

You may have recently received an invitation to join LinkedIn or one of the other professional "communities" which are now spreading over the Internet ( openBC, Viaduc...).

 

To be honest, until last week, I had received may be a dozen or so (yes, let's say a dozen so that I do not appear to be a sad lonely forgotten executive in a remote location) and everytime I had just pressed the "delete" button without even reading these invitations.

I guess it comes from two kind of fears: first of all, fear of viruses (If I do not understand, I do not click and do not even read...not to be tempted to click); then, the fear of joining any sectarian kind of movement/organisation. Indeed, the standard invitation which is being sent at LinkedIn -which I eventually joined a few days ago- is entitled "Join my network on LinkedIn" and to me it very much sounds like "join the church of X" or "the brotherhood of Y".

It may sound ridiculous but I can garantee that during the few days I have been sending invitations to ex-colleagues or business relations, 2 of my current colleagues sent me an email back asking if this was for real, a 3rd one, whom I called over the phone, confessed that he had deleted many such invitations before.

But overall, if 19 people have joined my Internet network so far I am still expecting news from 38 other invitations which I doubt will give any positive results: my short experience tells me that either people answer and join the network on the same day they receive the invitation or...they never do (and like me before, it is very likely that they just deleted the email they received without even reading it).

 

SO WHY JOIN?

 

As I mentionned before, I was not willing  to join any of these networks but, last week end, I read a series of articles in Management, a French speaking magazine, entitled " New technologies to find a job".

And they were describing how and why to set up a blog, join a community etc...

And then I realized the value of this stuff: I had known for long that jobs are found primarily -at senior level- via personal relationships/networks. But having now been in Asia for almost 5 years, I had lost the habit of being regularly called by headhunters as I had been in London or Paris before. And being 200% commited to growing my business (I hope my boss will eventually read these lines) I had not spent much time networking for my own sake.

Big mistake...

So Job seeking may be a reason. I can think of at least a couple of others: finding sales opportunities, finding references for people you may want to hire.

But for me, the most important was to keep in touch with people I may not have the opportunity to talk to very often.

And you would be surprised: although I have not been in contacts with some people over the past few years they immediatly joined my network. Great feeling: I guess they kept a good impression of me.

 

DOES IT WORK?

 

Well I guess it is like everything: you need to invest some of your time in it. After one week of joining I now have 19 "connections