BP Agrees To Pay Claims, Obama Meets Victims' Families

Obama Meets With Relatives Of BP Oil Rig Blast Victims



President Obama met at the White House on Thursday with the families of the 11 workers killed in the BP oil rig explosion.

The meeting provided an opportunity for the president to "express his heartfelt condolences" for the April 20 tragedy and discuss "what type of changes can and must be made ... to ensure that deepwater drilling that goes forward is done in a way that is safe and not life-threatening," according to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

The meeting with the families came as Labor Secretary Hilda Solis headed to Louisiana to talk with fishermen affected by the oil spill and Congress continued with hearings on what has become an all-consuming issue on Capitol Hill.

Gibbs said earlier Thursday that the president planned, among other things, "to tell the families he is committed to work with Congress to ensure that any disparity in the law is addressed and the families receive due compensation."

Obama has announced plans to visit the Gulf Coast again next week. It will be his fourth trip to the region since the gusher began in late April.

Also Thursday, an Obama administration official said BP has pledged to speed up its payment of claims to businesses affected by the oil disaster.

The oil company has agreed to look at upcoming expenses of a business filing a claim rather than a company's expenses for a previous month, said Tracy Wareing of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"BP recognized that their previous approach of waiting until basically after the books have closed for each month to calculate losses will not work," Wareing said. "It won't get dollars out quickly enough for the businesses that are struggling on the ground."

BP's handling of claims related to the largest oil spill in U.S. history has come under intense criticism from idled workers in the Gulf states and from members of Congress.

BP is responsible for paying for the cleanup under federal law and has said it will pay "all legitimate claims" for damages that result from the disaster.

The company also has agreed to take workers' seasonal earnings into account in paying claims, said Wareing, an adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Frustration boiled over Thursday as federal and local officials complained at a key Senate governmental affairs subcommittee hearing that it remains unclear who is in charge of the oil disaster response.

"I still don't know who's in charge," said Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish. "Is it BP? Is it the Coast Guard? ... I have spent more time fighting the officials of BP and the Coast Guard than fighting the oil."

What is needed, Nungesser said, is someone "with the guts and the will to make decisions."

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, repeated his call for the U.S. military to take a greater role in the response effort, arguing that it has the best command-and-control system in the world.

Nelson blasted federal officials for failing to alert local authorities that oil from the Gulf disaster has entered Florida waters. Nelson noted that oil is now in Florida's Perdido Bay, near the Alabama border.

"The Coast Guard is doing a great job, but they are stretched to the limit," Nelson said during a Senate hearing on the spill. "We are livid that the command and control is not there. ... Communication is not coming to the state and local government."

And Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, blasted BP on Thursday for failing to attend her subcommittee's hearing on oil and gas worker safety. "Honestly, I find it very outrageous that even after an accident that killed 11 workers, BP is not putting a high enough priority on worker safety to send a representative to a hearing specifically focused on protecting workers in their industry," Murray said.

But another lawmaker mocked Congress for holding multiple hearings on the spill before experts have figured out how to halt the oil. House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, sarcastically called the packed hearing schedule, "Congress at its best."

"You know, why don't we get the oil stopped, all right? Figure out what the hell went wrong, and then have the hearing and get the damn law fixed," Boehner told reporters at his weekly press conference.

Earlier Thursday, Obama said the oil disaster has highlighted the inadequacy of current environmental pollution laws and urged Congress to move forward with a series of changes in an "aggressive, forward-leaning way."

The president made his remarks during a White House meeting with the bipartisan congressional leadership

"We had a frank conversation about the fact that the laws that have been in place have not been adequate for a crisis of this magnitude," he said.

The president specifically mentioned the 1990 Oil Pollution Act, which Democrats have criticized for imposing a $75 million liability cap on oil spills.

A White House spokesman said Thursday that the administration won't reconsider its six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling "without knowing exactly what happened" to cause the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

The administration ordered the halt to allow time for a probe into April's sinking of the drill rig Deepwater Horizon. Officials in Louisiana have called for the moratorium to be lifted, arguing it puts thousands of jobs at risk.

n the meantime, federal authorities have given BP until Friday to devise contingency plans for the continued collection of gushing oil into a containment cap in the event of an operational failure or severe weather.

In a letter written Tuesday, the government's on-scene administrator, Coast Guard Rear Adm. James Watson, instructed BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles to lay out a process for the recovery of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

BP said it has collected about 73,300 barrels, or about 3 million gallons, of oil since it placed a containment cap on its ruptured well.

Federal agencies responsible for monitoring the toll to wildlife reported Thursday that 473 oiled birds have been collected alive and that 658 were dead. The report said 52 sea turtles have been collected alive; 279 were dead.

As the environmental crisis worsens, states are tracking the disaster's health impact, including respiratory and skin irritation problems in Louisiana and Alabama, health officials said.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals is aware of 71 cases of oil spill-related illness as of Wednesday, said state health officer Dr. Jimmy Guidry. Of them, 50 involved workers on oil rigs or who participated in cleanup efforts, and 21 came from the general public.

Symptoms included throat irritation, cough, chest pain, headaches and shortness of breath, Guidry said. Eight workers were hospitalized, for an average of one day each, the department said.

In Alabama, 15 cases of illness have been reported, said Dr. Don Williamson, state health officer.

Florida has received no reports of illness connected to the oil spill, said health department spokeswoman Susan Smith.


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Sources: CNN, Google Maps

Goldman Prepares Its Defense To Market Timing & Subprime Risk Charges

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Goldman Readies Reply To Claims It Misled Clients

Goldman Sachs is preparing its most detailed defense yet to allegations that it misled clients in its mortgage securities business, arguing that the firm was unsure whether housing prices would rise or fall and did not take any action at odds with the interests of its clients.

An internal Goldman document, prepared for senior executives and obtained by The Washington Post, addresses the criticism that the bank invested its own money betting against the housing market while simultaneously urging clients to invest in securities that would increase in value only if the housing market did.

Those concerns over possible double-dealing spiked a week ago as the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a fraud suit against Goldman, alleging that it misled clients by selling them mortgage-related securities secretly designed to fail.

Goldman prepared the 11-page document to serve as the basis for testimony that chief executive Lloyd Blankfein is scheduled to deliver Tuesday before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The Goldman paper describes debates among top executives in 2006 and 2007 over whether the firm should make investment decisions based on the belief that the mortgage market would continue to prosper. The document details meetings and e-mails that ultimately resulted in a decision to reduce the company's exposure to the mortgage market, especially subprime loans, by making new investments that would pay off if housing prices fell.

Subprime Risk

Over the past few years, other financial firms and some in the media have complained that Goldman recognized the risks of the subprime mortgage market early on and, without telling clients, developed financial products that would allow the bank to bet against mortgages with its own money. At the same time, Goldman continued to sell mortgage-related investments to clients who expected the subprime loan business to remain vibrant, critics have alleged.

While the firm moved to significantly reduce its losses when the housing market cratered, the impression conveyed by the document is that Goldman was confused, like many other financial firms, over how bad the collapse would be and suffered losses as a result.

The document also reprises Goldman's frequent explanation that it was not investing its own money in financial transactions to make a trading profit but to help investors who wanted to do a deal and could not easily find someone else to trade with. That role, commonly played by investment banks, is known as being a market maker.

A spokesman for the Senate subcommittee declined Friday evening to comment on Goldman's defense.

"Our investigation has found that investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were not market makers helping clients," Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), who heads the panel, said Friday. "They were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that were a major part of the 2008 crisis."

In the paper, Goldman argues that it was a relatively small player in the mortgage market, bringing in only $500 million from its residential mortgage business in 2007, less than 1 percent of the firm's overall revenues.

Still, the bank's mortgage investments were large enough that executives began to worry in 2006 that it was betting too heavily on the health of the housing market.

According to the document, the concerns arose in late 2006, when Dan Sparks, the head of the mortgage unit, wrote to top executives that the "subprime market [was] getting hit hard," with the firm losing $20 million in one day.

On Dec. 14, 2006, financial officer David Viniar called Goldman's mortgage traders and risk managers into a meeting to discuss investing strategy. They concluded that they would reduce the firm's overall exposure to the subprime mortgage market.

But the prevailing view of executives, as described in the paper, was not that the housing market was headed into a prolonged decline. They were not looking to short the market overall. That would have entailed making such large bets against mortgage securities that the firm would turn a profit if the market as a whole collapsed, which in fact it did.

The document acknowledges that Goldman at times shorted the overall market but describes those periods as temporary while the firm was rebalancing its portfolio to limit losses if mortgage securities were to lose more value.

At some moments, executives were actually considering making new bets, buying potentially undervalued securities that could pay off when the mortgage market turned around. A day after Viniar met with traders and risk managers, he wrote to Tom Montan, co-head of the securities division, saying, "There will be very good opportunities as the markets goes into what is likely to be even greater distress and we want to be in position to take advantage of them."

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Market Timing

The back-and-forth over which way the market would go, and how to invest in it, continued into 2007.

On March 14, Goldman co-president Jon Winkelried e-mailed Sparks and others asking what the bank was doing to protect itself from a decline in prices of not just subprime loans but also of other loans traditionally considered less risky. Sparks replied that the firm was trying to have "smaller" exposure to those loans also.

But managing director Richard Ruzika took issue with that answer a few days later, saying that Goldman might be overestimating the decline in housing. "It does feel to me like the market in general underestimated how bad it could get. And now could be overestimating where we are heading," he wrote in an e-mail. "While undoubtedly there will be some continued spillover, I'm not so convinced this is a total death spiral. In fact, we may have terrific opportunities."

Sparks later endorsed that optimistic view, suggesting as late as August 2007 that Goldman begin buying more mortgage securities.

The bank did not immediately follow that path, and by Nov. 30, 2007, Goldman had largely canceled out its exposure to subprime mortgages by increasing its bets that the market would continue to slide, according to the document.

But by that account, Goldman also continued to have $13.5 billion in exposure to safer, prime mortgages. That cost the bank. In 2008, the firm lost $1.7 billion on investments in residential mortgages.


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Sources: CNBC, MSNBC, Washington Post, Google Maps

Toddler Denied Coverage For Being Too Small...We Need Health Care Reform Now!

(Petite toddler denied insurance: A 2-year-old in Colorado has been denied health insurance for being underweight. Her parents appeared on the TODAY Show.)

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(Baby denied insurance for being too fat: A Colorado couple was initially denied health insurance for their 4-month-old son because he was overweight. NBC’s Michael Okwu reports and NBC’s chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, weighs in.)

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Toddler denied insurance for being too small

First, a Colorado baby was turned down for health insurance for being too big. Now, another Colorado child has been turned down for health insurance for being too small.

Just a week after TODAY highlighted the story of 4-month-old Alex Lange, who at 17 pounds was considered obese, the show presented Wednesday the equally curious case of 2-year-old Aislin Bates, who at 22 pounds was turned down for health insurance for not meeting a proposed insurer’s height and weight standards.

Aislin’s dad, Robert Bates, told TODAY’s Erin Burnett he was shocked that United HealthCare turned down their request for coverage when their daughter is basically a picture of health, having suffered nothing more than a common cold in her life. Doctors have told Robert and his wife, Rachel, that Aislin’s small size is purely a matter of genes, not ill health.

“It seems as if they’re discriminating about the fact that she’s smaller, that her size is an issue,” Robert Bates said. “I don’t see why that would be a factor in whether or not a child is healthy.”

Bates told TODAY that he and his family were previously insured by United HealthCare. Two months after Aislin was born, his employer switched plans to Guardian Health Insurance. In August, Bates left his job to become self-employed, and he went back to United HealthCare requesting coverage. The insurer turned down coverage for Aislin — even though it had already insured Aislin as an infant — stating she did not meet height and weight standards and also noting the Bateses had sought treatment for Aislin’s finicky eating habits.

Doctor says child is normal
As the Bateses appealed the decision, their own family doctor went to bat for them, writing to the insurer and stating Aislin’s small size was genetic, that she was developing normally and there was no reason to deny coverage. But Robert Bates said the company rejected the appeal, simply reiterating that Aislin didn’t meet underwriting standards.

Rachel Bates told Burnett their daughter “is not sick at all; she’s just petite, and that’s the issue.” She said little Aislin has been graded in the 3rd percentile for child height and weight, but has been progressing normally in her own range.

Robert and Rachel realized Aislin was a picky eater early on, and went the extra mile to enroll her in food therapy. But instead of earning brownie points with the insurer, the family believes having their daughter in treatment is actually being held against them.

Therapy for picky eating
“We wanted to fix her picky eating, because we want her to be able to eat a wide variety of foods, and not just things she wants to eat, like chocolate,” Rachel Bates told TODAY.

“We personally sought out therapy; it was not prescribed by a doctor. In the process, it was found that [Aislin] has just a minor, minor gag reflex, causing her to not like certain foods. But the therapist says she’s thriving and fine, and she’s developing normally and in fact, possibly advanced.”

Appearing on TODAY with the Bates family, which also includes 3-month-old boy Elliott, Dr. Nancy Snyderman quickly broke in when Burnett professed she didn’t understand what the problem is with insuring Aislin.

“You don’t understand? Because there’s nothing here to understand,” Snyderman said. “This is just so bogus. A pre-existing condition for a child this age is birth, let’s be real!”

The case of Alex Lange had a happy ending. After the family appeared on TODAY, Rocky Mountain Health Plans reversed its decision and agreed to insure the child, and admitted there was a flaw in its underwriting system.

‘Cherry-picking of health plans’
Robert Bates, to date, has had no such luck. While he continues to lobby United HealthCare to cover Aislin, the family has been forced to look at other options. Aislin is currently insured under a COBRA plan from Bates’ previous job, but it expires in 18 months.

Snyderman was clearly agitated that the Bates family has to go through worry and uncertainty over insuring Aislin, and said her prognosticating skills have unfortunately been proven accurate.

“Last week we talked about how crazy it was that there was a chubby baby being denied, and I said next thing you know, we’ll hear about the skinny kid. So here’s the skinny kid,” she said, pointing to Aislin.

“I think what we’re really seeing is the cherry-picking of health care plans across the country,” Snyderman said, adding, “If anyone doubted the significance of health care reform in this country, this is why things have to change.

“This is egregious.”


Sources: MSNBC

Rape Victims Are Being Denied Coverage Too..."Pre-Existing Condition", Unbelievable!

(Some therapists and patients contend that insurance companies have been routinely denying coverage for sexual assault victims requesting long-term mental health services. Stories of how victims of sexual assault can get tangled in the health insurance system have been one result of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund's citizen journalism project, which is calling on readers to provide information and anecdotes about the inner workings of the insurance industry.

WATCH the video below about a rape victim's efforts to obtain mental health services.)





Rape Victim's Choice: Risk AIDS or Health Insurance?


Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine.

Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.

Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she had been raped. She never developed an HIV infection. But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.

Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions. They told her they might reconsider in three or more years if she could prove that she was still AIDS-free.

Stories of how victims of sexual assault can get tangled in the health insurance system have been one result of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund's citizen journalism project, which is calling on readers to provide information and anecdotes about the inner workings of the insurance industry. The project aims to uncover details and data that can inform the larger debate over how to fix the nation's health care system. As the Investigative Fund reported in September, health insurance companies are not required to make public their records on how often claims are denied and for what reasons.

Some women have contacted the Investigative Fund to say they were deemed ineligible for health insurance because they had a pre-existing condition as a result of a rape, such as post traumatic stress disorder or a sexually transmitted disease. Other patients and therapists wrote in with allegations that insurers are routinely denying long-term mental health care to women who have been sexually assaulted.

Susan Pisano, spokeswoman for the health insurance industry's largest trade group, America's Health Insurance Plans, said insurers do not discriminate against victims of sexual assault and ordinarily would not even know if a patient had been raped.

"These issues you are bringing up, they deserve to be brought up," said Pisano. "People who have experienced rape and sexual assault are victims and we want them to be in a system where everyone is covered."

Turner's story about HIV drugs is not unusual, said Cindy Holtzman, an insurance agent and expert in medical billing at Medical Refund Service, Inc. of Marietta, Ga. Insurers generally categorize HIV-positive people as having a pre-existing condition and deny them coverage. Holtzman said that health insurance companies also consistently decline coverage for anyone who has taken anti-HIV drugs, even if they test negative for the virus. "It's basically an automatic no," she said.

Pisano, of the insurance trade group, said: "If you put down on a form that you are or were taking anti-HIV drugs at any time, they [the insurance companies] are going to understand that you are or were in treatment for HIV, period," she said. "That could be a factor in determining whether you get coverage."

Some doctors and nurses said that the industry's policy is not medically sound. "The chance of a rape victim actually contracting AIDS is very low. It doesn't make any sense to use that as a calculus for determining who get health insurance," said Dr. Alex Schafir, faculty instructor at Providence St. Vincent Hospital in Portland, Ore.

Nurses who deal with sexual assault cases say the industry's policy creates a significant problem for those treating women who have been assaulted. "It's difficult enough to make sure that rape victims take the drugs," said Diana Faugno, a forensic nurse in California and board director of End Violence Against Women International. "What are we supposed to tell women now? Well, I guess you have a choice - you can risk your health insurance or you can risk AIDS. Go ahead and choose."

Turner, now a life and casualty insurance agent, said she went without health coverage for three years after the attack. She second-guesses her decision to take the HIV drugs. "I'm going to be penalized my whole life because of this," she said.

Several women told the Investigative Fund that after being sexually assaulted they had been denied care or ruled ineligible for health insurance because of what were deemed pre-existing conditions stemming from their assaults -- particularly post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

A 38-year-old woman in Ithaca, N.Y., said she was raped last year and then penalized by insurers because in giving her medical history she mentioned an assault she suffered in college 17 years earlier. The woman, Kimberly Fallon, told a nurse about the previous attack and months later, her doctor's office sent her a bill for treatment. She said she was informed by a nurse and, later, the hospital's billing department that her health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, not only had declined payment for the rape exam, but also would not pay for therapy or medication for trauma because she "had been raped before."

Fallon says she now has trouble getting coverage for gynecological exams. To avoid the hassle of fighting with her insurance company, she goes to Planned Parenthood instead and pays out of pocket.

A New Mexico woman told the Investigative Fund she was denied coverage at several health insurance companies because she had suffered from PTSD after being attacked and raped in 2003. She did not want to disclose her name because she feared that she would lose her group health insurance if she went on the record as a rape victim. "I remember just feeling infuriated," she said.

"I think it's important to point out that health plans are not denying coverage based on the fact that someone was raped," said Pisano of the insurance trade group. "But PTSD could be a factor in denied coverage."

"That might not be a discriminatory action, but it certainly would seem to have a discriminatory impact," said Sandra Park, staff attorney at the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "Insurance discrimination against rape victims will only further discourage them from coming forward to law enforcement and seeking medical help."

Even when patients have coverage, there are fundamental disagreements between insurance companies and doctors about what mental health treatment is medically necessary. The Investigative Fund spoke with doctors, psychologists, and licensed clinical social workers around the country who work regularly with victims of sexual assault. They said that their patients have been experiencing an increase in delays and denials, particularly for talk therapy.

"There's a lot of anger about this in the medical community," said Dr. George Shapiro-Weiss, a psychiatrist in Middletown, Conn. "You don't realize what an Alice in Wonderland web this has become."

"A lot of my patients are being told that their treatment isn't medically necessary," said Keri Nola, an Orlando, Fla., psychologist, who said about 75 percent of her patients are victims of sexual violence.

Several therapists cited problems with managed care companies that specialize in mental health. Such firms generally work under contract with health insurers to hold down costs while still authorizing appropriate care.

Some therapists and patients said the managed care companies have cut off necessary treatment for sexual assault victims in the name of cost containment. "The companies are peppering them with questions about their symptoms, and about their histories, and asking, 'Well, are you sure you really need therapy?'" said Jeffrey Axelbank, a New Jersey psychologist. "For someone who has been traumatized, it can feel like another trauma, and it makes the therapy less effective."

Pisano, of the insurance association, said it was not fair to draw a larger pattern from such anecdotal evidence. "These situations are evaluated on a person-by-person basis," she said. "There is nothing routine about this."

Jim Wrich, a Madison, Wis., a consultant who helps employers evaluate the companies that manage their mental health care, said his work has made him wary of the industry. "This is absolutely routine - these denials," Wrich said. "The default position is to reject care."

Magellan Behavioral Health Services, Inc., one of the nation's largest managed-care companies with more than 58 million customers, said that it does not routinely turn down treatment requests from victims of sexual assault or other clients. "We're not denying care. We are exercising our responsibility to make sure that medical necessity is met," said Dr. Lawrence Nardozzi, Magellan's medical director. "I think the process works well."

Asked if cost is a factor in the company's decisions, Magellan spokeswoman Erin Somers said: "If all the safeguards are in place to determine whether treatment is medically necessary and appropriate" then "the cost takes care of itself."

A former care manager for Magellan said in an interview that she felt pressure to deny care for cost reasons. Lois Gorwitz, a psychologist with thirty years of experience who went to work for Magellan in California in 2000, said her superiors would tell her: "We are not denying this person treatment, we are denying them their benefit. If they want the treatment they can still pay out of pocket." But, Gorwitz said, "You know that means that the person is not going to get the treatment because they can't afford to pay out of pocket."

Gorwitz quit after two years. "It's a very uncomfortable feeling of not being able to offer help," she said.

Asked for a response, Magellan's Somers said, "I think you should keep in mind that there have been a lot of changes at Magellan in the last seven years. I think the people who work at Magellan now are not having that experience."



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