e-Coops

WASHINGTON—Seniors and the disabled who are enrolled in some managed-care plans will get telephone calls from their insurers next year Д just to be sure they intended to sign up after all, a Medicare official said Wednesday.

The precaution is a result of confusion and unscrupulous behavior on the part of some insurance agents.

The plans in question are part of Medicare’s program, in which the government pays a private insurer a monthly fee for providing enrollees with health care. One type of plan, called “private fee for service,” has had skyrocketing enrollment in the past year because of the generous subsidy the government provides as well as fewer restrictions on which health care providers a patient can see.

More than 1 million people have enrolled in private-fee-for-service plans.

A Medicare official acknowledged Wednesday that some of those enrolling were misled or not told everything they needed to know about the plan. So Medicare will require insurers to use clearer language in marketing materials and make a follow-up call to confirm seniors understand the features of the plan and wish to enroll.

“Our experience shows that on occasion, private-fee-for-service plans have not been clear about what they offer our beneficiaries Д and what they don’t provide,” said Abby Block of the .

State insurance commissioners have been raising concerns about tactics that some agents have used to enroll beneficiaries.

Sean Dilweg, the insurance commissioner in Wisconsin, told the Senate Aging Committee that 37 out of 43 states surveyed have received complaints about misleading or confusing marketing practices. Some just wanted coverage for their medicine but found themselves enrolled in plans that cover all of their health care.

“In the most troubling of these cases, unscrupulous agents have enrolled beneficiaries with dementia into an inappropriate plan,” Dilweg said.

Sherry Modwell, a special agent with Georgia’s Insurance and Fire Safety Commission, said one insurance agent signed up people for a drug plan, then switched their coverage to a managed care plan without the knowledge of the patients or their guardians. In another case, beneficiaries were enrolled in a managed care plan even though they had never met or talked to the agent who enlisted them.

Has Matsushita Electric Industrial’s («www.businessweek.com») growth engine started to sputter? It’s a question that a growing number of financial analysts are asking about the company’s TV business, and CEO «investing.businessweek.com» will be hard-pressed to come up with answers.

On July 25, the Japanese technology giant reported first-quarter profit gains for the sixth straight year. But that was almost an afterthought to bad news a day earlier, when the company revised downward its forecast for full-year earnings after announcing the sale of part of its stake in ailing Victor of Japan («www.businessweek.com»). The revision spooked investors and triggered a sell-off that left the company’s shares 3.6% lower.

Among the biggest worries: lower-than-expected flat-screen TV sales in North America. Ohtsubo himself had expressed concern earlier this year that plasma TV makers were forfeiting ground in the face of a marketing blitzkrieg from liquid-crystal displays, the rival flat-panel technology. That observation from the man whose company has one-third of the global plasma TV market now seems prescient. Yen’s Weakness Helps

Of course, nobody thinks plasma is about to get ousted completely by LCDs. Plasma producers still rule in big-screen TVs because they can make large panels at a lower cost than LCD producers can. But the market outlook doesn’t seem as sunny as Matsushita had hoped, and LCD makers are quickly closing in.

In the fiscal first quarter, Matsushita’s operating profit rose 13%, to $615 million, despite a modest 5% gain in sales, to $18.6 billion. Strong sales of digital cameras, video cameras, DVD recorders, and household appliances, along with the yen’s weakness, were behind the gains (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/1/07, «www.businessweek.com»). But full-year profit and sales forecasts were revised down 5%, to $3.97 billion, and $73.1 billion, respectively, due to the accounting change after Matsushita issues $290 million worth of JVC shares to Japanese consumer electronics company Kenwood («www.businessweek.com») and Kenwood’s biggest shareholder, the «investing.businessweek.com», a fund.

At first glance, the TV business doesn’t look bad. From April to June, Matsushita sold 800,000 plasma TVs, a 31% improvement over the 610,000 sets it sold in the same three-month period last year. Overall flat-panel TV revenues were up 2% as well. But the company needs to pick up the pace if it’s to reach its target of shipping 5 million sets this year—a 43% gain from 3.5 million. ‘On Track’ for Targets

Another troubling trend: a fall in first-quarter TV revenues in Japan and North America. Matsushita’s chief financial officer, Makoto Uenomura, blamed competitive prices, and said prices had fallen 29% in the quarter from the same period a year ago. But Uenomura said he was confident Matsushita was “on track” to hit its targets, and dismissed rising inventories. “We’re just switching to a new lineup of high-definition TVs in Europe and the U.S. so the inventories you’re seeing are new products, not old,” Uenomura told reporters. “We’re not worried.”

Maybe they should be. Even before Matsushita’s first-quarter numbers were released, some analysts had already lowered their volume sales estimates. Morgan Stanley («www.businessweek.com»), for one, challenged Matsushita’s forecast that the global plasma TV market would expand to 12.5 million sets this year, from around 9.7 million in 2006. The brokerage has global plasma TV sales at between 10 million and 11 million.

THE ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are no excuse for terrorism, Scotland’s deputy first minister told a 1,500-strong crowd in Glasgow yesterday.

Nicola Sturgeon was addressing the inter-faith rally, a week after the attack on the city’s airport.

Glasgow also played host to more than 10,000 Orangemen who marched through the city to Bellahouston Park for their biggest parade of the year.

Sturgeon was applauded by the crowd when she told them: “Islam is a religion of peace. Muslims in Scotland, like so many of the rest of us in Scotland, have grave concerns about what is happening in our world today.

“But we, all of us, believe that the way to effect change is through peaceful, democratic process. That is what we are here to say today.”

Sturgeon made reference to statistics released by Strathclyde Police following the airport attack which showed a significant rise in the number of reported racial incidents.

She said that anyone convicted of such an offence would face the “full wrath of the law”.

The deputy First Minister also praised the members of the public who stepped in to help police in the aftermath of the incident.

Osama Saeed, of the Muslim Community of Scotland, denied fellow Muslims were “turning a blind eye” to terrorism.

He said: “Let us be clear, no one wants to beat these terrorists more than the Muslim community.”

He added that “hard facts and hard research” were needed to learn what was behind the attacks.

Related topic

- «news.scotsman.com»
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=758

U.S. crude futures ended more than 3% higher on Wednesday after government data showed that crude stocks fell last week as refinery usage rose.

Crude touched off a short-covering rally around midday after weakening earlier as refined products fell in the initial reaction to data showing gasoline and distillate inventories rose last week.

Gasoline futures recovered from session losses to post strong gains as some traders took the day’s price dip as a buying opportunity, some analysts said.

Heating oil futures also recouped losses to end higher.

Electronic trading of NYMEX energy futures in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Globex platform suffered a technical glitch late morning and was down for more than an hour.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, September crude settled up $2.32. or 3.1%, at $75.88 a barrel, after trading after trading from $73.10 to $75.92. After settlement, September crude continued to rise, hitting $76.13.

While crude stocks fell within market expectations, some analysts attributed the rally to a big drop in supplies stored in the Cushing, Okla., delivery point for NYMEX-traded crude.

At the Midwest hub, crude stocks fell 1.4 million barrels, or 6.2%, to 21.2 million barrels, the data showed.

“The market is generally concerned about that draw in Cushing. Regardless of the supplies we see elsewhere in the United States, we are still seeing draws at Cushing. I think that has underpinned the market.” said Stephen Schork, president of the Schork Report.

In London, September Brent was up $1.27, or 1.7%, at $76.35 a barrel, trading from $74.23 to $76.40.

In New York, NYMEX August RBOB gasoline gained 4.02 cents, or 2%, to settle at $2.0879 a gallon, after trading $2.02 to $2.0958.

“There is nothing bullish about the EIA report on gasoline, but a lot of people may have covered shorts,” said Eric Wittenauer, analyst at A.G. Edwards in St. Louis, Missouri.

“Also, we’ve seen that recently people like to add longs over dips and this is probably a case where they saw the dip as a buying opportunity,” he added.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said for the week ending July 20, U.S. crude stocks fell 1.1 million barrels to 351 million barrels, against forecasts in a Reuters poll for a draw of 1.2 million barrels.

Domestic production dipped 17,000 bpd, or 0.3 %, to 5.18 million barrels per day while imports were nearly static at 10.38 million bpd.

Refinery utilization rose 0.7 percentage point to 91.7% of production, just below the average forecast for a 0.8 percentage point increase.

BLAINE, Wash. — were thinking landscaping, not politics, when they built an 85-foot-long concrete wall in their backyard.

But their yard happens to run along the U.S.-Canadian border Д a situation that has put the Leus in the middle of a property rights battle, led the Bush administration to fire its own hand-picked border caretaker, and given rise to a legal dispute over the extent of presidential authority.

The Leus, who moved about two years ago from Hawaii to this town in the state’s northwestern corner, had just finished building the 4-foot-high wall when they were visited earlier this year by the , a joint U.S.-Canadian agency maintains the countries’ long, often-unguarded border.

American commissioner Dennis Schornack, a Republican appointed by President Bush, told the Leus their retaining wall stuck about three feet into a 10-foot border buffer zone that had to remain free of obstruction. He said if the Leus didn’t tear their wall down, the commission would do it for them Д and send them the bill.

The Leus were outraged. They said they had done all their homework before putting in the wall, and none of the local officials who issued building permits ever mentioned such a problem.

So the Leus sued, with help from the , a conservative law firm that takes up property rights cases against government regulators and “environmental extremists.” The foundation, which also opposes the and affirmative action policies, has an annual budget of about $9 million, versus less than $1.5 million for the Boundary Commission.

Schornack began preparing a defense, and resisted when the Justice Department appeared ready to settle with the Leus. If this little wall is allowed to go forward, Schornack argued, what’s to stop any other property owner from building an even bigger wall near the border?

Soon enough, Schornack got a one-page fax from the White House: You’re fired.

“All he does is try to do his job, and he gets told, `You’re fired Д because you’re trying to do your job,”‘ said , Schornack’s lawyer.

Now Schornack, a lifelong Republican and longtime aide to former GOP Michigan Gov. , has taken his own battle with the Bush administration to federal court.

He argues that he is trying to uphold the treaty he was sworn to protect, while the administration is seeking to remove him for disloyalty Д simply because he didn’t go along with Justice Department in the Leus’ case.

Not only that, but Schornack claims the president cannot fire him, because he works for a binational agency governed by international treaty, not U.S. law. He says the only way to get rid of him is to wait for him to resign, die or become incapacitated.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle, which is representing the government in its dispute with Schornack, recently called his claims “breathtaking.”

“Mr. Schornack’s strained interpretation of the treaty would lead to the absurd result that a commissioner … receives lifetime tenure and cannot be removed even for malfeasance,” government attorneys said in court papers.

The Bush administration has appointed a replacement for Schornack, both on the Boundary Commission and for his second job on the International Joint Commission, which handles boundary waters issues. Schornack was paid about $135,000 a year.

In Blaine, the Leus Д he is a 69-year-old retired electrician, while his 72-year-old wife raises Pomeranian showdogs Д say all the high-level political controversy seems a little bewildering.

The Leus, who live across from rural British Columbia, say they built the wall to keep their sloping backyard from washing away into the shallow ditch that marks the 49th Parallel, the border with Canada.

Their only motivation, he said, was a nice lawn and a neat patio, with a relaxing view of the neighboring Canadian farm fields and distant, snowy mountains.

Herbert Leu would not discuss his political affiliations.

For now, the wall stands. But while the case winds its way through the courts, the yard remains an unfinished mess of piled dirt, scattered weeds and stacks of lumber because the Leus are waiting to see what happens before they finish landscaping the yard.

“It doesn’t make sense Д moving a wall just three feet in and it’s OK,” Leu said. “The whole thing is, we’re not putting a wall on the government’s property. We’re putting it on our property.”