Sears CEO D'Ambrosio to step down









Sears Holdings Corp. said Monday night that Chief Executive Officer Louis D'Ambrosio will step down Feb. 2, due to family health matters, and Chairman Edward Lampert will add the role of CEO.

The surprise move fuels uncertainty at the Hoffman Estates-based company, which has struggled for years to re-establish itself as a department store in an ultracompetitive retailing industry dominated by low-price giant Wal-Mart and big box and specialty stores.

Shares of Sears Holdings were down 5.6 percent in mid-morning trading to $40.51  on the news.

The decision by Lampert, a hedge fund operator who is the company's biggest shareholder, to take over day-to-day control represents a reversal from his naming of D'Ambrosio as chief executive nearly two years ago after operating with an interim CEO.

"In light of Lou's decision to step down, the board feels it is important that there is continuity of leadership during this important period of transformation and improvement at Sears Holdings," Lampert said in a statement. "I have agreed to assume these additional responsibilities in order to continue the company's recovery and sustain the momentum we are experiencing, as well as further the development of the management team under the distributed leadership model, which provides our business unit leaders with greater control, authority and autonomy."

Sears Holdings, which operates Sears and Kmart, also updated its fourth-quarter earnings outlook Monday night. The company said it expects to report a net loss $280 million to $360 million, or $2.64 to $3.40 per diluted share, for the quarter ending Feb. 2. The loss includes a charge of about $450 million because of pension settlements and an additional $42 million in pension expenses.

Excluding pension expenses, Sears said it expects to earn $132 million to $212 million, or $1.25 to $2 per share.

Analysts polled by Bloomberg had been expecting adjusted net income of about $137 million.

For the fiscal year, Sears said it expects to lose $721 million to $801 million, or $6.80 to $7.56 per diluted share, which includes pension-related costs and other adjustments reported late last year. Excluding those items, the company said it expects to lose $123 million to $203 million, or $1.16 to $1.92 per share.

D'Ambrosio became CEO after working for the company as a consultant. The 16-year veteran of IBM Corp. had been CEO of a telecommunications company before joining Sears.

"I have worked very closely with Eddie over the past two years. I can say this: there is simply no one in the world that cares more about Sears Holdings and has thought more deeply about our company than Eddie," D'Ambrosio wrote to employees.

Lampert gained control of Sears in 2005 after engineering the merger between Kmart and Sears Roebuck & Co. For years, speculation about Lampert's intentions for the company focused on the value of its real estate, but under D'Ambrosio, Sears appeared to pay more attention to retail aspirations.

The company reported improved performance — it beat Wall Street expectations — in the previous quarter, but Sears stock has lost more than 35 percent of its value since November, closing Monday at $42.92, up 1.7 percent.

 Crshropshire@tribune.com | Twitter: @corilyns 

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Illegal immigrant driver's license plan advances in Springfield


















Illinois legislature considers a bill to grant driver's licenses to a quarter million illegal immigrants.















































SPRINGFIELD—





A bill to give illegal immigrants in Illinois a chance to get a special license to drive cleared another hurdle today, winning approval in a committee and moving one step away from the governor’s desk.

Sponsoring Rep. Eddie Acevedo, D-Chicago, could call the measure for a vote today in the full House, where any roll call is expected to be close. The bill advanced to the House floor on a 6-3 vote of a House transportation panel.






The proposal would allow an estimated 250,000 illegal immigrants in Illinois to get three-year renewable license to drive a vehicle. They could not officially be used for other identification purposes, such as for boarding a plane, buying a gun or voting.

To become eligible, a person would have to live within Illinois for at least a year, a provision that would require applicants to provide a copy of a lease, utility bills and the like.

Under current law, people without a Social Security number or proper documentation to be in the country can't get a driver's license and often have trouble getting car insurance.

The proposal won't require somebody to have insurance before applying for a license because insurance is tied to a vehicle, but supporters note it's already illegal to drive an uninsured car whether a person has a license or not.

The bill already passed the Senate. Passage in the House would send the bill to the governor.




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Kuwait sentences second man to jail for insulting emir: lawyer






DUBAI (Reuters) – A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to two years in prison on Monday for insulting the country’s ruler on Twitter, his lawyer said, the second to be jailed for the offence in as many days.


The U.S.-allied Gulf Arab state has clamped down in recent months on political activists who have been using social media websites to criticize the government and the ruling family.






Kuwait has seen a series of protests, including one on Sunday night, organized by the opposition since the ruling emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, used emergency powers in October to change the voting system.


The court sentenced Ayyad al-Harbi, who has more than 13,000 followers on Twitter, to the prison term two months after his arrest and release on bail.


Harbi used his Twitter account to criticize the Kuwait government and the emir. He tweeted on Sunday: “Tomorrow morning is my trial’s verdict on charges of slander against the emir, spreading of false news.”


His lawyer, Mohammed al-Humidi, said Harbi would appeal against the verdict. “We’ve been taken by surprise because Kuwait has always been known internationally and in the Arab world as a democracy-loving country,” Humidi told Reuters by telephone. “People are used to democracy, but suddenly we see the constitution being undermined.”


On Sunday, Rashid Saleh al-Anzi was given two years in prison over a tweet that “stabbed the rights and powers of the emir”, according to the online newspaper Alaan. Anzi, who has 5,700 Twitter followers, was expected to appeal.


Kuwait, a U.S. ally and major oil producer, has been taking a firmer line on politically sensitive comments aired on the Internet.


In June 2012, a man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.


Two months later, authorities detained Sheikh Meshaal al-Malik Al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family, over remarks on Twitter in which he accused authorities of corruption and called for political reform, a rights activist said.


Public demonstrations about local issues are common in a state that allows the most dissent in the Gulf, and Kuwait has avoided Arab Spring-style mass unrest that has ousted four veteran Arab dictators in the past two years.


But tensions have risen between Kuwait’s hand-picked government, in which ruling family members hold the top posts, and the elected parliament and opposition groups.


(Reporting by Mahmoud Habboush; Editing by Mark Heinrich)


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Women dominate UK film’s “rising star” shortlist






LONDON (Reuters) – Actresses dominated the shortlist for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts‘ Rising Star awards on Monday, taking four of the five places.


Juno Temple, who appeared in the 2007 drama “Atonement”, and Andrea Riseborough, best known for her leading role in Madonna‘s biopic of Wallis Simpson “W.E.”, represent British interests on the list.






They are up against U.S. actress Elizabeth Olsen of the acclaimed 2011 drama “Martha Marcy May Marlene“, and Sweden’s Alicia Vikander, who starred in Danish period drama “A Royal Affair” and last year’s adaptation of the novel “Anna Karenina”.


Suraj Sharma is the youngest on the list at 19 and the sole male representative, having been picked from 3,000 hopefuls to star in Ang Lee’s recent 3D picture “Life of Pi” despite no previous acting experience.


The Rising Star Award is handed out on February 10 at the main BAFTA prize ceremony, Britain’s top film accolades. It is the only category voted for by the public, who can cast their votes at ee.co.uk/bafta.


Previous winners of the award aimed at spotting stars of the future include James McAvoy, Eva Green, Shia LaBeouf and Kristen Stewart.


(This story has been refiled to change word in headline to “women” from “females”)


(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)


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Books Of Style: Three Books on Becoming a Better You — Books of Style





The Beauty Experiment: How I Skipped Lipstick, Ditched Fashion, Faced the World Without Concealer, and Learned to Love the Real Me, by Phoebe Baker Hyde. Da Capo Press. 248 pp. $16.




Wheat Belly Cookbook: 150 Recipes to Help You Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health, by William Davis, M.D. Rodale Books. 352 pp. $27.99.


Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don’t, and How to Make Any Change Stick, by Jeremy Dean. Da Capo Press. 256 pp. $26.


OH, those pesky Mayans. It was bad enough that their ancient astro-forecast led many people to quake all year long for fear that the end of the world was not only nigh but specifically nigh — as in, Dec. 21 nigh. But when, on Dec. 22, the human race discovered that doomsday had come and gone without apparent incident, more Mayan mischief kicked in: mankind found itself with only 10 days to come up with New Year’s resolutions, a necessity too many had assumed would be made moot by apocalypse.


Remarkably, three books have emerged since the nonfateful winter solstice that can help everyone become a finer creature in the brave new world of 2013. All of these books — one about self-image, one about diet and one about habits — would seem, on the face of it, to be counterintuitive. That’s an appropriate attribute for a year that never was supposed to exist.


The first thing you might like to know about “The Beauty Experiment,” a memoir by Phoebe Baker Hyde, is the improbable fact that the author’s picture was taken by a 4-year-old. What woman, what writer, would make such a devil-may-care move? Experiment, indeed. Ms. Hyde’s book is a testament to her hard-won conviction that, when it comes to appearance, externals do not matter. In her early 30s, after giving birth to her first child (a daughter), Ms. Hyde “bought thicker makeup and brighter lipstick” and a flashy red velvet dress, hoping to glamorize the “zombie” she saw in the mirror. A photo of herself in the velvet togs showed her that she looked “not sexy, but shaggy; not ‘Red-Hot,’ but hangdog,” and made her cry, “because I was stupid, vain, heartbroken and ashamed of all of it.”


In February 2007, woebegone and “at war with myself,” she decided to shun cosmetics, hair salons and pricey clothes for an entire year to see if she could shore up her self-esteem by making peace with her unadorned raw materials. The antidote to her feelings of inadequacy, she decided, was “to be free of illusions.” Getting a short haircut at her husband’s barbershop, eschewing lipstick and even earrings, she “dragged an oppressive sense of plain Janeness” around for a month, but soon began to feel empowered by her “Momnisexual” look. After having another child (a son), she stuck with a pared-down approach. These days, she writes, when she spots her reflection in a mirror, she no longer sees “wrinkles, anxiety, zits, or exhaustion, although they are all there. Instead, I see a face, a person, a personality, a life.”


Ms. Hyde’s postpartum funk was caused in part by baby weight she could not shed, but childbirth is not the only spur to extra poundage. Dr. William Davis, a preventive cardiologist in Milwaukee, argued in his best-selling 2011 book “Wheat Belly” that wheat — yes, even whole-grain wheat — the ingredient of everyone’s daily bread, is unhealthy. “I recognize that declaring wheat a malicious food is like declaring that Ronald Reagan was a Communist,” he concedes.


Nevertheless, the doctor not only stuck to his guns, but also issued a manifesto expounding his wheatless worldview, in the form of the “Wheat Belly Cookbook,” which he dedicates to “everyone who has come to understand the liberation that emerges with wheatlessness.”


Over the last decade, Dr. Davis put himself and thousands of his patients who were “at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and the myriad destructive effects of obesity” on wheat-free regimens. He says he watched them not only lose 20, 30, 50, even 100 pounds or more, but also recover from chronic diseases like ulcerative colitis and diabetes.


Investigating these results, he learned that a high-yield hybrid “dwarf” strain of wheat had been developed in the United States in the middle of the last century, and adopted not only here but also around the world. This “Frankengrain” as he calls it, thickens waistlines and causes ills from acne, psoriasis, depression and migraines to arthritis, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. Worse, the doctor contends, it contains a protein called gliadin that stimulates appetite and dupes gullible neurons into craving food the body does not need. In his cookbook, Dr. Davis says that gliadins tempt people to eat 440 calories more per day than their grandparents did. Gliadins are opiates, he explains, which “generate a need for more ... and more, and more.”


Whether or not you’re persuaded, such arguments have played a part in starting the gluten-free wave that engulfs the country. But the doctor warns against assuming that every glitch is gluten. Though he considers wheat the worst offender, he mistrusts other grains as well, and warns gluten-free converts to read labels closely, because “rice starch, cornstarch, potato starch, and tapioca starch” send blood sugar levels soaring.


In his cookbook, with scores of grain-free recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and even dessert — brownies, cupcakes and Key lime pie, made with flour ground from beans, nuts and flaxseed — he points another way forward. Cooking, baking and eating without wheat is a “cataclysmic revelation for most people,” he admits. “It’s unsettling, it’s upsetting, it’s downright inconvenient.” Still, he asks, what is a bit of inconvenience, weighed against the rapture of watching a “protuberant, flop-over-the-belt belly vanish?”


If you were to try to give up wheat for the new year, how long do you think you would be able to stick it out before you crumbled and ordered a bagel? Jeremy Dean, a London psychologist and pop psychology blogger, notes in “Making Habits, Breaking Habits” that conventional wisdom holds that it takes the “magic figure of 21 days” to form a new habit. This reckoning turns out to be faulty, Mr. Dean explains, if the habit is complicated or replaces an existing one. Sixty-six days — a little more than two months — is a more reasonable span, he suggests; but 254 days is not out of the question.


Demonstrating how a person might forge a new pattern of behavior, Mr. Dean describes the notional measure of switching to whole-wheat bread from white over a period of several weeks. “I intended to eat more healthily, and now I am,” he explains. Obviously, Dr. Davis would beg to differ — not that Mr. Dean, who addresses generalities, not gastrointestinal realities, and motivation rather than medicine, would care, in all likelihood. “Why, exactly, do you want to make a new habit?” he asks. “Sometimes, the reasons are obvious and don’t need any further soul-searching, but this isn’t always the case.”


This statement hints that he might suspect that the business of making habits and breaking habits, fraught and chancy as it may sometimes be, is not the end of the world.


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 7, 2013

An earlier version of this column misstated in a passing reference the equivalent length of time that Jeremy Dean, the author of “Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don’t, and How to Make Any Change Stick,” believes is reasonable for forming a new habit. As the column stated, Mr. Dean believes it is 66 days. But that is equivalent to a little more than two months, not three. 



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BofA to pay $3.6B to Fannie Mae




















CBS MoneyWatch's Alexis Christoforous reports for CBS2. (1/7/2013)




















































Bank of America on Monday announced roughly $11.6 billion of settlements with mortgage finance company Fannie Mae and a $1.8 billion sale of collection rights on home loans, in a series of deals meant to help the bank move past its disastrous 2008 purchase of Countrywide Financial Corp.

The settlements and transactions and other charges will result in Bank of America posting only a small profit for 2012's fourth quarter. The bank is due to report results Jan. 17.






Bank of America is paying $3.6 billion to Fannie Mae and buying back $6.75 billion of bad loans from the mortgage company to clear up all claims that government-owned Fannie Mae had made against the bank.

Fannie Mae and its sibling, Freddie Mac, have been pushing banks to buy back loans they sold to the two companies that never should have been sold to them because the loans did not meet the companies' criteria for purchasing.

Bank of America said most of the settlement would be covered by reserves, and another $2.5 billion, before taxes, that it set aside in the fourth quarter.

A separate settlement over foreclosure delays will result in Bank of America paying $1.3 billion to Fannie Mae, the mortgage company said. Bank of America had already set aside money to cover most of that, but took another $260 million charge in the fourth quarter to cover the balance.

Bank of America also sold the rights to collect payments on about $306 billion of loans to Nationstar Mortgage Holdings and Walter Investment Management Corp. Nationstar is paying $1.3 billion for the right to service some $215 billion of loans, while Walter Investment is paying $519 million for the right to service about $93 billion of mortgages.

Reuters first reported that Bank of America was talking to Nationstar and Walter Investment on Friday.


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Man killed in I-94 shooting




















There is one person dead and another injured after a fatal shooting on the Dan Ryan.




















































An early morning shooting on Interstate 94 near Canalport Avenue left a 22-year-old man dead and another man injured, authorities said.


Both men were traveling northbound in a Nissan Sentra when shots rang out about 2:35 a.m., Trooper Ivan Bukaczyk of the Illinois State Police said.


Following the shooting, the damaged car pulled up to Rush University Medical Center, with two of its occupants bleeding from gunshot wounds.








The driver was not hurt in the shooting, according to a police spokeswoman. A fourth person, who was sitting next to the driver at the time of the shooting, fled from the vehicle at some point, according to the spokeswoman.


Police said they believe the shots came from another vehicle but they have been unable to come up with a description of the other vehicle.


The two men who had been shot were rear-seat passengers. The deceased man was sitting directly behind the driver as bullets hit the body and shattered the windows of the vehicle, the spokeswoman said.


Lavonshay Cooper, of the 4200 block of West Cortez Street. was pronounced dead at 3:05 a.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.


The other man who was shot was transferred to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, where he was treated and later released, police said. Reports had earlier listed him in critical condition, the spokeswoman said.


State Police officers located the scene of the shooting and were able to collect evidence, Bukaczyk said.


chicagobreaking@tribune.com


Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking






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10 Vintage Photographs of Snowflakes






Photo courtesy of Flickr, Smithsonian Institution.


Click here to view this gallery.






[More from Mashable: 5 YouTube Videos to Help Winterize Your Home]


If for some reason you didn’t believe no two snowflakes were alike, here’s your proof.


In 1885, Wilson A. Bentley successfully photographed over 5,000 snowflakes by attaching a camera to a microscope (and in turn honing the field of Photomicrography). His photographs supported his and others’ beliefs that all snowflakes were unique.


[More from Mashable: 20+ Online Resources for Planning a Winter Getaway]


Bentley become fascinated with snow as a child on a Vermont farm. He later spent time experimenting with ways to view individual snowflakes and their crystalline structure, which eventually came in handy when he had to be quick enough to capture a flake in a picture before it melted.


These photographs quickly became popular with dozens of scientists who studied Bentley’s work and published the images in several scientific magazines. In 1903, Bentley sent about 500 of his photographs to the Smithsonian, hoping they would be of interest to Secretary Samuel P. Langley.


The Smithsonian now has his vintage pics on display, undeniably proveing that snow is just so, so pretty.


Gallery photos courtesy of Flickr, Smithsonian Institution. Thumbnail photo courtesy of Flickr, AMagill.


This story originally published on Mashable here.


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French actor Depardieu meets Putin, picks up Russian passport






MOSCOW (Reuters) – French film star Gerard Depardieu met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea town of Sochi and obtained his Russian passport, the Kremlin said on Sunday, after he left his homeland to avoid a new tax rate for millionaires.


Putin signed a decree on Thursday granting Russian citizenship to Depardieu, who objected to French Socialist president Francois Hollande‘s plan to impose the 75 percent tax rate. His decision to quit France had prompted accusations of national betrayal.






The Russian president and Depardieu were shown on state-run Channel One shaking hands and hugging each other early on Sunday during what the Kremlin said was a private visit by the actor to Russia.


“A brief meeting between the president and Depardieu took place,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “On the occasion of his visit to Russia, he was handed a Russian passport.”


Peskov did not say whether Putin personally gave Depardieu the passport or if he picked it up through standard procedures. He said the actor also told Putin about his career plans.


Depardieu, star of the movies “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “Green Card”, is a popular figure in Russia, where he has appeared in many advertising campaigns, including for ketchup. He also worked there in 2011 on a film about the eccentric Russian monk Grigory Rasputin.


Putin asked Depardieu whether he was pleased with his work in the movie, TV footage of their meeting showed, with the French actor saying he had already sent Putin some excerpts from it.


Depardieu bought a house in Belgium last year to avoid the French income tax increase. French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called Depardieu’s decision to seek Belgian residency “pathetic” and unpatriotic, prompting an angry response from the actor.


Putin said last month that Depardieu would be welcome in Russia, which has a flat income tax rate of 13 percent, compared to the 75 percent on income over 1 million euros ($ 1.30 million) that Hollande wants to levy in France.


He offered Depardieu a Russian passport, saying he had a close, special relationship with France and had developed warm ties with the actor, even though they had rarely met.


Some of Putin’s critics said the passport move was a stunt and pointed out that the president announced last month a campaign to prevent rich Russians keeping their money offshore.


($ 1 = 0.7666 euros)


(Reporting By Alexei Anishchuk; Editing by Pravin Char)


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Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums





Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.







Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies could raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.







Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.


In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.


 In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.


The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.


Under the health care law, regulators are now required to review any request for a rate increase of 10 percent or more; the requests are posted on a federal Web site, healthcare.gov, along with regulators’ evaluations.


The review process not only reveals the sharp disparity in the rates themselves, it also demonstrates the striking difference between places like New York, one of the 37 states where legislatures have given regulators some authority to deny or roll back rates deemed excessive, and California, which is among the states that do not have that ability.


New York, for example, recently used its sweeping powers to hold rate increases for 2013 in the individual and small group markets to under 10 percent. California can review rate requests for technical errors but cannot deny rate increases.


The double-digit requests in some states are being made despite evidence that overall health care costs appear to have slowed in recent years, increasing in the single digits annually as many people put off treatment because of the weak economy. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers. But the companies counter that medical costs for some policy holders are rising much faster than the average, suggesting they are in a sicker population. Federal regulators contend that premiums would be higher still without the law, which also sets limits on profits and administrative costs and provides for rebates if insurers exceed those limits.


Critics, like Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner and one of two health plan regulators in that state, said that without a federal provision giving all regulators the ability to deny excessive rate increases, some insurance companies can raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.


“This is business as usual,” Mr. Jones said. “It’s a huge loophole in the Affordable Care Act,” he said.


While Mr. Jones has not yet weighed in on the insurers’ most recent requests, he is pushing for a state law that will give him that authority. Without legislative action, the state can only question the basis for the high rates, sometimes resulting in the insurer withdrawing or modifying the proposed rate increase.


The California insurers say they have no choice but to raise premiums if their underlying medical costs have increased. “We need these rates to even come reasonably close to covering the expenses of this population,” said Tom Epstein, a spokesman for Blue Shield of California. The insurer is requesting a range of increases, which average about 12 percent for 2013.


Although rates paid by employers are more closely tracked than rates for individuals and small businesses, policy experts say the law has probably kept at least some rates lower than they otherwise would have been.


“There’s no question that review of rates makes a difference, that it results in lower rates paid by consumers and small businesses,” said Larry Levitt, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which estimated in an October report that rate review was responsible for lowering premiums for one out of every five filings.


Federal officials say the law has resulted in significant savings. “The health care law includes new tools to hold insurers accountable for premium hikes and give rebates to consumers,” said Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare, which is helping to oversee the insurance reforms.


“Insurers have already paid $1.1 billion in rebates, and rate review programs have helped save consumers an additional $1 billion in lower premiums,” he said. If insurers collect premiums and do not spend at least 80 cents out of every dollar on care for their customers, the law requires them to refund the excess.


As a result of the review process, federal officials say, rates were reduced, on average, by nearly three percentage points, according to a report issued last September.


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