Wal-Mart seeks inroad to finance & banking

Banks are making money hand over fist, and yet they claim they need protection?

It’s their customers who need protection!

And that is but one reason why I don’t bank. I use Credit Unions.

At a bank, you’re a customer.

At a Credit Union, you’re an owner.

Big difference.

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Business

New Bluebird prepaid card is alternative to checking accounts

Bluebird by American Express and Walmart
Walmart and American Express have teamed up to offer the new Bluebird card. They say it should help people avoid the high fees on checking accounts and debit cards.

by Jeff Tyler
Marketplace Morning Report for Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Fewer fees mean more customers. That’s the hypothesis behind a new prepaid card called Bluebird. It’s the product of an odd-couple partnership between elite financial services company, American Express, and populist low-cost retailer, Walmart.

What makes the Bluebird card different? In a word: Fees. The prepaid card promises no minimum balance requirements, no monthly fees, no annual fees, and no overdraft fees.

Dan Schulman with American Express says, “Last year, banks charged $31.6 billion in overdraft fees. And according to a recent Bank Rate study, the minimum balance average to avoid a maintenance fee is now $723.02. That’s up 23 percent from last year.”

He says

“Will that be cash, or charge?”: Many hospitals & doctors offer cash discount for care

Regular readers will recall the entry entitled “Q: Why do hospitals charge $75 for aspirin? A: Because they can.,” which was posted Wednesday, May 2, 2012.

In another venue, I had posted the following remark in response to the exorbitant healthcare costs, “It’s a simple concept, really. Anytime anyone gets in between you & who you’re buying from, it costs more. Insurance does that.”

And it’s true.

It’s not trite.

Let’s consider this example: You’re at the grocery store in the check-out line, about to pay for your groceries which have already been bagged and placed in your shopping cart. When the clerk announces the total, you have some strange feeling because the total is about ten times as much as you imagined.

When you double check the price of milk you find the sticker says $2.50/gallon, but your clerk rang up $25. You double check the price of frozen spinach. The sticker price says $1.37, but the clerk rang up $13.70. The chocolate was $4.50, but the clerk rang up $45.00. And the lean ground beef, instead of the posted $2.60/lb, the 5lb chub was… $130.00.

Talk about sticker shock!

You are aghast at the price, and in frustrated terms exclaim that “there is obviously some gross mistake!” – to which the clerk replies, “Let me check with your Food Insurance Agent,” picks up a phone beside the register, presses one button, and whispers into the receiver. 

Suddenly, out of a door leading to an inside office,

SCOTUS, PPACA & American Healthcare: Links from Days 1 & 2

Naysayers, conservative political pundits and Obama “haters” of all stripe – Radical Republicans, TEA Partiers, White Supremacists, Neo Nazis, et al – have vilified and unified against already-enacted federal legislation that foremost, regulates practices by the Health Insurance industry, such as denial of coverage for children born with certain health conditions, denial of coverage for women with breast cancer, cancelling coverage in the midst of medical treatment, exorbitantly raising premium rates without actuarial justification, denying payment for covered services deemed medically necessary and rendered by qualified physicians or others, and more.

Such practices have been rightly demonized and justly described as onerous by almost everyone, even by the most staunch conservatives. So it remains a great mystery why so many are seemingly straining against what they denigrate as “ObamaCare.”

At least two elements of the law – the so-called

Newt Gingrich supported Obamacare before he didn’t support Obamacare

Colloquially, of course, such behavior could be described as either ‘schizophrenic,’ ‘conflicted,’ ‘incompatible,’ or ‘contradictory’.

None of those terms are positive or encouraging. And certainly, none are like the sound of

Ending Obamacare

Among conservatives, there’s little argument that Obamacare should be abolished. ‘It’s time to get government out of our lives,’ they say.

They make many very valid points. Those same folks have expressed concerns that instead,

Our National Economy

This is the second in a multi-part series about our national economy.

How we are affected by downturns, spikes and elevations in the economy individually/personally and as families/communities has great similarity across a wide spectrum. But perhaps most importantly, in this instance, once we know the problem, or the causes of the problems, we also know the solutions. That is the natural corollary to identifying those problems.

The CIA World Factbook – which is available online at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html – indicates that “Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.”

The next question that arises from that fact is this: Why?

The Central Intelligence Agency offers this explanation:

Insurance abuses

Historically, of course, health insurance is a relatively new thing. That is, by comparison to other types of insurance. And as once shared with me by an insurance man, “Health insurance is me saying ‘I’ll wager you stay healthy,’ and you say ‘I’ll wager I don’t.'”

As well, a retired insurance man (one whom developed a very large business and sold it years later) said to me recently, “I could not sit on a jury in an insurance company case because I’d stick it to them!”

The way I see it, is that insurance companies should be regulated to prevent the abuses such as you describe. It’s abusive not just because of unwarranted price increases, but because of the position they’re in (and have a track record of doing) to exercise control over the weak and vulnerable – those whom are sick, or need compassionate healing care.

It’s not just those members of society, either. It’s the physicians and other care providers whom also receive the short end of the stick in payments.

That’s because they’re not the class of people known as “STOCK HOLDERS” in the Wall Street traded industry called insurance.

More than anything else, it bespeaks of greed, even avarice – greed gone wild. Because human nature is to get more of the thing one loves – whether a spousal or other human relationship – when one loves money, they will do whatever it takes to get more of the object of their affection… including hurt other people. That occurs because an inanimate object cannot return love, and is  an imbalanced, indeed warped, relationship.