New Study: Health Insurance Shoppers are Terrible at Choosing Cost-Effective Plans

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Health insurance shoppers do a terrible job of picking the plan that will serve them best, according to a new study.

The study presented subjects with health insurance websites that mirror the exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act and asked them to pick a plan. The results were not pretty: Left to their own devices, consumers who selected their own plans ended up only slightly better off than they would have had their plans been assigned randomly.

When given four options, the consumers chose the most cost-effective plan only 42 percent of the time. When given eight options, the success rate plummeted to 21 percent—a rate indistinguishable from random assignments.

The researchers then repeated the study, but this time with added “cost calculators” on the mock website aimed at helping consumers. Even then, shoppers picked the most cost-effective option only 47 percent of the time, typically choosing plans that would cost them an extra $364.

In a final iteration, researchers offered the shopping choices to M.B.A. students enrolled in a consumer finance class. In this pool—where more than half of the subjects came from consulting or financial-services related fields—consumers made the most cost-effective choice 73 percent of the time, and the average mistake dropped to $126.

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Even Mother Jones Blasts Obama Economy

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

That the U.S. is going through the worst economic downturn and longest unemployment crisis in generations is news to almost no one.

That a left-leaning longtime advocate for Barack Obama’s socialist policies would admit it is.

The blast at the Obama economy came this week from the far left Mother Jones, which said, “Not since the Great Depression has the United States experienced such massive and persistent long-term unemployment.”

The article, under a trio of bylines including Dave Gilson, Tasneem Raja and AJ Vicens, noted that while the Great Recession of 2007 “ended in Jun 2009,” the economy remains full of holes.

“In less than a week, emergency federal unemployment benefits for 1.3 million of these jobless Americans are set to run out. Proponents of ending the benefits argue that the economy is expanding and that the benefits prevent people from finding work,” the report explains.

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Is This Obama’s Monica Lewinsky? (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Lyndon Johnson had Vietnam. Richard Nixon had Watergate. Ronald Reagan had Iran-Contra. George H.W. Bush had taxes increases.

And, as first reported by The Drudge Report, Bill Clinton had an intimate relationship with a White House intern.

Now President Obama has a major credibility issue that is sure to forever taint his legacy.

Obama’s credibility will be difficult to regain after the failure of his core Obamacare promise, and the disastrous roll-out of the health-care law rescued the Republicans from a public relations nightmare following the government shutdown, according to one of the nation’s leading political scientists.

Larry Sabato is a professor of political science at the University of Virginia and directs the school’s Center for Politics. He told WND President Obama lost a lot of ground with the American people by promising them if they liked their health plans and doctors that they could keep them.

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Appeals Court Orders Utah on Christmas Eve: Move Forward With Same-Sex Marriages

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/The Deseret News, Tom Smart

Photo Credit: AP Photo/The Deseret News, Tom Smart

A federal appeals court has refused yet again to stop gay marriage in Utah, making it more likely that same-sex weddings in the home of the Mormon church are here to stay for the immediate future.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ rejection of Utah’s request for an emergency order to put gay marriage on hold marked yet another legal setback for the state. Utah lawyers have repeatedly struck out in their bid to block gay marriage, getting rejected on four occasions in recent days.

Utah’s last chance to temporarily stop the marriages would be a long-shot request before U.S. Supreme Court. That’s what the Utah attorney general’s office is prepared to do, spokesman Ryan Bruckman said. Gov. Gary Herbert’s office declined to comment on the decision.

“We’re disappointed in the ruling, but we just have to take it to the next level,” Bruckman said.

Carl Tobias, a constitutional law professor at Virginia’s University of Richmond who has tracked legal battles for gay marriage, said he expects the U.S. Supreme Court to make a decision by Friday. He thinks Utah faces long odds to get their stay granted, considering two courts have already rejected it and marriages have been going on for days now.

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Supreme Leader: If Jesus Were Here He Would Fight America

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Photo Credit: Office of the supreme leader

Photo Credit: Office of the supreme leader

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei marked Christmas Day with social media messages tying Jesus into political rhetoric directed at the United States.

“If Christ were among us today, he would not spare even a single moment to fight the leaders of despotism and global arrogance,” he said on Facebook, using the Islamic Republic’s favored term for America.

“Nor would he tolerate hunger and wandering of millions of people, degenerated by the hegemonic and colonialist powers into war, corruption, and violence,” he added.

On Twitter, Khamenei tweeted another message containing a veiled dig at the U.S.: “Jesus Christ was a minister of a heavenly justice to call all oppressed on earth for emancipation from the thralldom of bullying despots.”

In a separate message he claimed that Jesus is as important to Muslims as he is to Christians: “No doubt that Jesus Christ has no less value among Muslims than he has among the pious Christians.”

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Cleveland Settles, Pays Gun Owner for Weapon Seizure

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Derrick Washington is a law-abiding gun owner with a valid concealed-carry permit.

Last February, Washington called local police to report a shooting near his home in Cleveland, Ohio. When police arrived on the scene, they began questioning Washington about the incident.

Although he didn’t tell them initially, probably because it wasn’t germane to the investigation, Washington later admitted that he was a licensed gun owner and that he had a firearm stored in his parked car. The firearm was not linked to the shooting in any way.

According to police reports, officers claim that Washington said he had two vodka drinks that night– a claim that Washington vehemently denies.

Since Washington had been allegedly drinking and because he waited to tell the officers that he was a law-abiding gun owner with a carry permit, the officers put him in cuffs, confiscated his .38-caliber Taurus from inside his vehicle and charged him with using weapons while intoxicated and illegally carrying a concealed weapon.

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In Distress: The Battle Within the Democratic Party

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Photo Credit: Mike Theiler/Reuters

Photo Credit: Mike Theiler/Reuters

Things are not going well for Democrats. Riding high just weeks ago after Republicans shut down the government, the party now finds itself in a swoon: President Obama’s ratings have hit an all-time low. The implementation of healthcare reform remains a mess. Vulnerable Democrats are scrambling to distance themselves from the White House, and the party is on track to lose seats in the House and Senate next year.

Parties in distress tend to fall to bickering, and today’s Democrats are no exception. On one side, liberals calling for a muscular agenda of government expansion and progressive taxation; on the other, centrists who believe restraint is necessary in both policy and politics. Progressives have been emboldened by liberal victories like that of the new mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio. Centrists fear that liberals will drive the party out of the American mainstream with their talk of income redistribution and political correctness.

In the post-Obama era and without an incumbent on the ticket, “Where does the party go?” Jon Cowan, president of the centrist think tank Third Way, asked me. “I think that is going to be an incredibly heated debate.”

No one is saying Democrats are tipping into the kind of civil war that has riven the GOP. But the split is likely to worsen as the party confronts its future, complicating Democratic prospects in the 2014 midterm elections and coming to the fore in the 2016 primaries.

“When we focus on economic mobility, that’s a conversation that unites us,” Jack Markell, the popular two-term Delaware governor and a self-styled centrist, told me. “If it’s about inequality, it’s a conversation that has the potential of dividing us.” Markell says that middle-class voters hear in the crusade against “inequality” a desire to equalize people rather than make everyone better off.

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Bizarre Radio Meltdown During NSA Interview (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Aaron Klein’s WABC Radio show experienced what the host called a “tech meltdown” while he was conducting a live, on-air interview with the lawyer who won an injunction against the National Security Agency’s collection of phone records.

Software used by the radio station dropped the guest, Larry Klayman, and listeners who had called in to ask Klayman questions were cut off in mid-sentence. Other callers could not be put on the air due to technical difficulties at the radio station.

Audio clips saved on an independent system played at the wrong time.

Klein’s headphones had massive feedback that could be heard on the air.

At one point, the WABC call screener said, “We lost control of the software. It’s all going nuts.”

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Video: Xavier Hawkins, “Southeast Santa,” Shot with Pellet Gun at Toy Giveaway

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Photo Credit: wwarby

Photo Credit: wwarby

A man in a Santa Claus suit who has been identified as Xavier Hawkins was shot in the back with a pellet gun Tuesday morning during a toy giveaway in a part of Southeast Washington plagued by crime.

The video is disturbing. The man dressed as Santa has led the annual Barry Farm gift giveaway for the last seven years, and according to an ABC7 photographer who was interviewing the victim at the time of the shooting, the he was struck in his upper back then transported to a nearby hospital with the pellet still lodged in his shoulder.

Later on Tuesday, we saw Xavier Hawkins again after he was released from the hospital. He showed us the tear in his Santa suit as well as the scene of the depraved crime:

“Oh, here’s the hole. That’s where I got shot — right there.”

In the video, you can hear Hawkins’ booming voice faltering after being hit. It was an act of violence appalling on more levels than we can fathom.

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Another Dark Christmas for Iraq’s Christians

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/AHMED SAAD

Photo Credit: REUTERS/AHMED SAAD

By Alexander Dziadosz.

It’s Christmas in Baghdad, and once again Iraq’s Christians are celebrating behind blast walls and barbed wire.

At least 34 people died in bomb attacks in Christian areas on Wednesday, some by a car bomb near a church after a Christmas service. A church attack in 2010 killed dozens.

As prayers are offered and gifts handed out, many are wondering what a surge in violence to its worst levels in half a decade and politicking ahead of April elections means for a community whittled down by years of carnage and migration.

On Christmas Eve, the Mar Yousif Syriac Catholic church in western Baghdad looked like a walled fortress. Soldiers and police ran bomb detectors across cars, searched trunks and bags and patted down visitors before the evening ceremony.

Inside, the red confetti-strewn Christmas tree, bright blue-and-white tile mosaic, and strings of Santa Claus-themed bunting contrasted with drab streets strewn with concrete blocks and barbed wire outside.

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Karim Kadim

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Karim Kadim

Christmas day bombings in Iraq’s Capital kill 37

By Sinan Salaheddin.

Militants in Iraq targeted Christians in three separate Christmas Day bombings in Baghdad, killing at least 37 people, officials said Wednesday.

In one attack, a car bomb went off near a church in the capital’s southern Dora neighborhood, killing at least 26 people and wounding 38, a police officer said.

Earlier, two bombs ripped through a nearby outdoor market simultaneously in the Christian section of Athorien, killing 11 people and wounding 21, the officer said.

The Iraq-based leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Louis Sako, said the parked car bomb exploded after Christmas Mass and that none of the worshippers were hurt. Sako said he didn’t believe the church was the target.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but Iraq’s dwindling Christian community, which is estimated to number about 400,000 to 600,000 people, often has been targeted by al-Qaida and other insurgents who see the Christians as heretics.

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