Fort Myers & Naples Insurance | (239) 594-9567

Email compliance has become essential for all types of businesses. It can help protect harassment, security and your business. There are solutions in which those who violate email compliance can be stopped before they occur. Of course, for this to happen, there are automated tools to help accomplish this amazing task. There are even email compliance laws that all public businesses have to abide by. Even HIPAA, (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) has to engage in email compliance laws. The problem with this as many suggest, some HIPAA and email compliance laws contradict each other making this a controversial subject.

I understand that businesses must have a policy with email compliance, but some businesses are subject to privacy. Files are becoming increasingly kept in databases and archived. The government is allowed to track email in certain businesses, but if I am writing this business, the government should have no business interfering. For example, if I go to a doctor and I am diagnosed with a chronic cough. He prescribes me codeine to relieve the cough. A week or so later, I email the doctor and say I need more. If a government official wants to check email records, he/she may think I am addicted. This violates doctor – patient confidentiality. This scenario was light, but what if it was about a girl revealing teenage pregnancy. Government does not have the right to know about it. At the same time, if the doctor told his staff through email about someone’s diagnosis, he/she would be violating email compliance and HIPAA, which could result in serious consequences for the doctor.

One positive aspect of email compliance is that it can reduce spamming of real businesses. What do I mean by this exactly? For some businesses, it is a good idea to get a mailing list and send bulk email. It’s really no different than an annoying telemarketer. Legitimate businesses send bulk email after you sign up for certain things online like how to make money off the internet. The specific site that you signed up for may be a partner with another site you are now receiving email from. The email compliance they have to follow is usually an opt-out choice. The opt outs are usually in the fine print at the bottom of the email saying “you have received this email because you signed up for (whatever you signed up for) and if you would like to opt out from receiving this email, please click this link.” When you sign up for a lot of these, it does feel like spam. If this email compliance rule was not in affect, my inbox would be full on a daily basis.

Email compliance can be positive or negative. In any case, every business needs a policy. The use of phones, radio, television, or any other form of communication has a policy. Email may be relatively new, but it is communication, which gives right to all businesses to have an email compliance policy.

By SCOTT HARRINGTON

During his weekly radio address last Saturday, President Obama attacked health insurers for allegedly making excessive profits and paying excessive bonuses, for spreading “bogus” misinformation about the impact of Democrats’ reform agenda on the cost of health insurance, and for “figuring out how to avoid covering people.” He opined that health insurers are “earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exemption from our antitrust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.”

Mr. Obama’s comments followed hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. In an unusual move, Majority Leader Harry Reid testified as a witness, alleging that “exempting health insurance companies [from antitrust] has had a negative effect on the American people” and that “there is no reason why insurance companies should be allowed to form monopolies and dictate health choices.”

Such populist rhetoric might exert additional pressure on insurers to fall (back) into line behind the Democratic reform agenda. But there is no evidence that their antitrust exemption has contributed to higher health insurance costs, premiums or profits, or, as implied by Sen. Reid, of “health insurance monopolies . . . making health-care decisions for patients.”

The legislative basis for the insurance antitrust exemption is the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act, which also codified state insurance regulation as national policy. This statute exempts the “business of insurance” from federal antitrust law provided that the activities are (1) regulated by state law and (2) do not involve boycott, coercion or intimidation. Its passage followed a 1944 Supreme Court ruling that insurance was interstate commerce and therefore subject to federal antitrust law—a ruling that cast doubt on states’ exclusive regulatory role, and the legality of then typical agreements among property and casualty insurers to use rates developed jointly by state or regional insurance rating organizations.

Most states responded to McCarran-Ferguson by enacting or modifying laws giving regulators authority over property/casualty insurance rates, including those developed by rating organizations. The next several decades saw a steady erosion of the role of collective pricing systems in conjunction with increased price competition, less price regulation, and a significant narrowing of the antitrust exemption’s scope by the courts.

The traditional debate about the antitrust exemption involved property/casualty insurance and medical malpractice liability coverage. Subject to state regulation or prohibition, property/casualty rating organizations collect and analyze loss costs and disseminate projections of future losses. And insurers, subject to state law, can incorporate these forecasts in their ratemaking.

In principle, this system helps produce more accurate rates, thus improving financial stability. More important, it reduces entry barriers for small insurers or insurers entering new markets. Small property/casualty insurers are particularly strong supporters of the antitrust exemption, which allows the sharing of loss projections.

None of this is germane to health insurance, where insurers do not jointly develop forecasts of future medical costs for use in pricing. The antitrust exemption also does not prevent review and challenge of mergers of health insurers by the Department of Justice, which, for example, challenged the 2005 merger of UnitedHealth Group and PacifiCare, and obtained a consent decree requiring the divestiture of certain portions of PacifiCare’s commercial health business.

Mergers and acquisitions of health insurers also are generally subject to approval by state regulators. Earlier this year, Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario derailed a proposed merger between the state’s two largest health insurers, Highmark and Independence Blue Cross.

Repealing the antitrust exemption for health insurers would not significantly increase competition, and it would not make health-insurance coverage either less expensive or more available. There is no evidence that the exemption has increased health insurers’ prices or profits or contributed to higher market concentration.

Repealing the antitrust exemption would also not lower the cost of malpractice insurance, or prevent future malpractice insurance crises, such as those that occurred in the mid-1970s, mid-1980s, and earlier this decade. It would instead tend to reduce rate accuracy and undermine competition in already fragile malpractice markets.

In other words, the insurance industry’s antitrust exemption is inconsequential to the health-care reform debate. It just distracts attention from important issues and further demonizes private health insurance.

Rhetoric about monopoly notwithstanding, Congress’s reform proposals are not designed to increase competition in private health insurance. The House bill proposes a government-run insurer. The Senate Finance Committee proposes creation of quasi-public cooperatives. Both bills (and the Senate HELP bill) include restrictions on health insurance underwriting, pricing, profitability and policy design that would essentially turn private health insurers into regulated public utilities.

If the goal were to promote robust concentration in private health insurance, Congress would focus on reducing impediments to competition. It could do so by allowing consumers to buy insurance across state lines at terms that do not require them to subsidize other buyers or to buy coverage for state-mandated benefits they are unwilling to pay for. Congress could also eliminate tax and regulatory rules that favor employment-based coverage over individual coverage.

In short, the rationale for repealing the insurance antitrust exemption is—to borrow a word used by Mr. Obama in his radio address—bogus.

—Mr. Harrington is professor of health-care management and insurance and risk management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:31 PM on 07th October 2009

Two thugs who attacked what they thought were a pair of transvestites picked on the wrong men – when their intended victims turned out to be cage fighters on a night out in fancy dress.

Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22, singled out the two men walking along a street in wigs, short skirts and high heels.

Bare-chested Gardener was caught on CCTV confronting one of the men in a pink wig, black skirt and boob tube – then seen swinging a punch, a court heard.

Taunts: Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22, are punched to the ground after attacking two cross-dressing cage fighters

But the other cage fighter, wearing a sparkling black dress and matching long wig, sprang to his friend’s help, delivering two lightning-quick punches to the two stunned yobs.

The cage fighters were then seen teetering away in their high heels, stopping only to pick up a clutch bag they dropped during the melee.

Gardener and Fender were left dazed and seen staggering to their feet after their failed attack.

Knockout: One of the cross dressers casually feels for his clutch bag before walking away

CCTV cameras followed the pair as they weaved along The Kingsway in Swansea, South Wales, before being arrested by police.

Mark Davies, defending, said: ‘You know it cannot have been a good night when you get into a fight with two cross-dressing men.

‘Unfortunately they were extremely drunk.

Dazed: The two cage fighters teeter off on their high heels as their two attackers struggle to get to their feet

‘They had been out drinking jugs of cocktails and Fender had drunk at least 10 pints of cider.’

Police later discovered the two drag queens were cage fighters on a fancy dress stag night out with other friends.

Both Gardener and Fender, from Bonymaen, Swansea, pleaded guilty to using abusive words and behaviour.

CCTV footage of the attacks was shown at Swansea Magistrates’ Court. It shows them fighting with several men before the approach the two cage fighters.

The pair were sentenced to a four-month community order, were electronically tagged and placed under a curfew between 7pm to 7am.

In the light of day: The Kingsway Swansea, where the incident took place

LONDON — Ireland’s vote to ratify the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty has finally cleared the way for the creation of a powerful new president, intended to elevate the 27-nation bloc’s standing on the global stage.

But do European leaders actually want one?

Ahead lies a difficult discussion about how much power and influence a new European Union president should have and whether the post should fall to a political star — like former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain — or one of his grayer, more technocratic rivals.

The leaders of member countries will decide, probably this month, and their decision could determine whether the union really seeks the bigger role it says it needs to try to match the influence of the United States and that of rising powers like China, Russia, India and Brazil.

The Lisbon Treaty, which aims to streamline decision-making and reform the bloc’s ramshackle structures, lays down a two-and-a-half-year term for a full-time president of the European Council, the body that represents member nations. The treaty, if finally ratified by the Poles and Czechs, also mandates a single new foreign affairs chief, in charge of both policy and aid money, and a new European diplomatic corps.

Both new jobs would be subordinate to the leaders of member countries, and the position of commission president, held by José Manuel Barroso of Portugal, continues. But those who fill the two new posts will have a considerable chance to carve out significant roles for themselves, since they will be the most prominent faces of a collective Europe.

There would also be greater powers for the European Parliament — the only popularly elected European Union institution — an effort to improve democratic accountability.

The treaty, assuming it passes, is “a splendid virtual success,” said Justin Vaïsse, a French scholar at the Brookings Institution. “It is virtual not only because much will depend on the men and women who occupy the main functions, and how they choose to define them and assert their authority, but also because there will be no real improvement without greater convergence and cooperation between the big three European countries,” he said, referring to France, Germany and Britain.

So when they gather at a summit meeting this month, the 27 European leaders face a clear choice between appointing a prominent president to represent them, or someone who will be more submissive.

The identity of the new president will determine the type of job that is created, said Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the Center for European Reform, a research institute in London. “If you have someone like Tony Blair, he will not want to be talking about the minutiae of service-market liberalization,” she said. “He would want to be talking about Iran to Barack Obama.”

While the European Union says it desires a bigger international role, national politicians know that a charismatic figure would overshadow many of them and could shift the bloc’s center of gravity.

There are no declared candidates. But the politician thought to have the best prospect is also the most controversial: Mr. Blair. Other contenders include: Jan Peter Balkenende, François Fillon, Herman Van Rompuy, and Jean-Claude Juncker, respectively the Dutch, French, Belgian and Luxembourgian prime ministers; Paavo Lipponen and Felipe González, the former Finnish and Spanish prime ministers; and former President Martti Ahtisaari of Finland.

Though Mr. Blair led the British Labour Party to three victories, he does not have the support of most European center-left parties, which have not forgiven him for his role in the Iraq war. Britain remains outside several important union initiatives, like its single currency, the euro, and Mr. Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, is thought very likely to lose the next election to David Cameron of the Conservatives, who is sharply critical of further European integration.

But with the possible exception of Mr. Fillon, Mr. Blair’s is the only credible big name to emerge so far from informal discussions. Supporters say that Mr. Blair thinks he could play a useful role because of his good relations with Mr. Barroso and several other European leaders. Smaller countries suspect that Mr. Blair would be too susceptible to favoring the big nations, reducing the influence of the bloc’s minnows.

Mr. Fillon, who is reaching the end of a successful premiership, has already proven his ability to work with and around an imperious and sometimes petulant leader, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

But Mr. Sarkozy and the freshly re-elected German chancellor, Angela Merkel, will be crucial in deciding who gets the job, and both do not want their influence diminished.

Mr. Sarkozy has spoken positively of Mr. Blair for the post, but his current thinking is unclear. Mrs. Merkel was never enthusiastic about Mr. Blair, but she was more open to the idea during recent talks with Mr. Sarkozy, a European diplomat said.

Olivier Ferrand, the president of Terra-Nova, a research institute in Paris, said Mr. Sarkozy backed Mr. Blair because the British leader would strengthen the leadership of big member states like France in an enlarged Europe.

But there will be other political considerations, too, like balancing politicians from the left and the right and from large and small nations.

If the president comes from the center-right, for example, the foreign policy chief is likely to come from the left.

Mrs. Merkel is pressing for a woman to be appointed to one of the two big jobs, with the Greek foreign minister, Dora Bakoyannis, and Austria’s former foreign minister, Ursula Plassnik, possible contenders.

“We don’t want to have a big-personality president, like Tony Blair, and then a big-personality foreign high representative, because then they will compete with each other,” said Ms. Barysch, of the Center for European Reform. “We already look ludicrous on the international stage having so many different voices.”