From Finance Chief, a Bill That May Weather the Blows

On the surface, it appears that no one is happy with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) -- and that may be the best news President Obama has haWithin minutes of the release of the Senate Finance Committee chairman's long-awaited health-care reform bill Wednesday, the attacks started flying. Liberal Democrats and allies, particularly labor unions, fumed. Republicans, after being courted for months, denounced the work as pure partisanship.

But behind the rhetorical fireworks was a sense that the fragile coalition of major industry leaders and interest groups central to refashioning the nation's $2.5 trillion health-care system remains intact. As they scoured the 223-page document, many of the most influential players found elements to dislike, but not necessarily reasons to kill the effort. Most enticing was the prospect of 30 million new customers.

At the White House, after the delays and drama of summer, strategists spoke finally of movement and a possible path toward success on the president's centerpiece domestic policy goal. To keep up the pressure, Obama met with three lawmakers who had warned they would not support the Baucus bill.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), who is upset that Baucus did not include a public health insurance option, tempered his criticism after a private meeting with Obama, signaling that he hopes to work out a compromise.

"Nothing is clearer than the president's commitment to providing affordable and effective health care for all Americans, and he and I are united in our efforts to deliver on this promise," he said.

Lawmakers and lobbyists alike cautioned that Obama remains far from a White House signing ceremony and that perhaps the greatest danger at this point is death by a thousand legislative changes.
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The goal now is to keep the legislation moving toward a House and Senate conference committee, in which the administration would have its greatest influence on the outcome.

"He is open to a variety of different approaches if it gets it out of the Finance Committee," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said after talking to Obama. "He also knows he's got a lot of heavy lifting to do to get it out of the Finance Committee."

At the heart of the administration's strategy -- and Wednesday's guarded optimism -- is a collection of deals intended to neutralize the interest groups that helped defeat President Bill Clinton's health-care overhaul 15 years ago. In each instance, the industry has agreed to make financial concessions in return for new customers or other protections that could have lasting effects.

Hospitals, for example, have said they would accept about $155 billion in cuts over the next decade in return for promises that they would be exempt from actions taken by a proposed commission that would pursue additional savings in the Medicare program.

The best evidence that the approach was holding was the calm emanating from organizations that have criticized House health-care bills and a version approved by the Senate health committee.
d in months.

Twitter Strategies for Marketing Your Business

-“Brevity is the soul of wit,” wrote William Shakespeare. And it also appears to be the heart of the microblogging phenomenon, Twitter. Microblogging as a marketing strategy is bound to thrive, and sooner or later you’ll find it’s just smart business to communicate with your customers 140 characters at a time.
“Twitter is a great way to position yourself as an expert and go-to source in a particular field,” says Julio Ojeda-Zapata, author of Twitter Means Business: How Microblogging Can Help or Hurt Your Company. Ojeda-Zapata says people have found jobs, hired staff, promoted books, and been written about by major media outlets by blogging on the popular site. And while most business owners have heard of Twitter, relatively few are taking advantage of its power to promote their businesses.

The irony is that while blatant self-promotion and marketing on Twitter can be a recipe for failure, there are other uses that make it a back-end marketing and public relations bonanza. Here are three Twitter strategies every company should consider.

1. Search and respond: To see what your customers are saying about you, follow the advice of Tim O’Reilly, author of The Twitter Book, and search for your name, your company name, your Twitter name, and your brand or product. A few useful search engines include Twitter Search, TweetGrid, and Monitter.

2. Educate customers and be an expert: Natural Food Exchange in Reading, Massachusetts, is an independent, natural food store featuring the largest gluten-free stock of supplies in the state. Lisa Kalner Williams says the company uses Twitter as a way to distinguish it in the whole/natural food marketplace by tweeting useful information about celiac disease, a condition where a gluten-free diet has produced positive changes in those afflicted. Occasionally the company will do promotional tweets that mention gluten-free products available in the store.

3. Engage in conversations with customers: Of all the misconceptions that business owners have about Twitter, the biggest one is thinking of Twitter in terms of a monologue rather than a dialogue. “Old-school, one-way marketing is at best quaint and at worst annoying in this two-way world of social media,” according to Steve Mulder, director of emerging interactions at Molecular, part of Isobar, a global network of digital marketing companies.

Australia to Open Auto Finance Fund - Sydney

SYDNEY -- Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan said Friday the government will activate from Sept 1. a special fund to provide liquidity for auto dealer financiers encountering difficulties due to the global credit crisis

The government announced last December it would create the special purpose vehicle worth up to 2 billion Australian dollars ($1.66 billion) with the support of country's big four banks -- Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank Ltd., Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. and Westpac Banking Corp.


The government in June lowered the estimated size of the vehicle to around A$550 million, following a better-than-expected functioning of the market and the ability of dealers to secure funds through remaining lenders.

Like in the U.S., scarce credit has hammered Australia's A$7.7 billion auto sector in recent times.

The Australian government decided to establish the auto fund following plans by GE Money, a unit of General Electric Co., and GMAC, to exit the local market, leaving an estimated A$2 billion hole in funding lines to auto dealers. Swan said Friday the so-called OzCar program has helped ensure their orderly withdrawal.

"However, it will still be necessary to activate OzCar so that the remaining GE and GMAC dealerships will have more time to secure ongoing financing," Mr. Swan said in a statement.

"The activation of OzCar will also provide Ford Credit Australia with access to the liquidity required to continue to support its dealerships -- most of which are in regional areas."

Legislation enabling the fund was passed by lawmakers in June.

The fund is backed by the government's AAA sovereign guarantee but the government won't contribute direct funding.

Holden, the Australian unit of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. currently manufacture cars in Australia.

Source: WSJ.com

Health finance reform needed

The behavior of opponents of health reform is completely embarrassing and also seems to miss the main point -- our current system of financing health care in this country is completely unsustainable.

With the increases of between 10 and 20 percent annually for private insurance coverage, eventually all small businesses will have to stop subsidizing employee health insurance. Already many companies, large and small, are in effect reducing employees' wages by increasing the amount each must contribute for health insurance -- a process that will only increase over time and harm the average American's standard of living.

Meanwhile, those without insurance often use emergency rooms for their care and end up with hospital bills that they can't pay and therefore harm their credit or end up in bankruptcy. Then the cost of uncompensated care is passed on to those with insurance.

Our public health insurance system is also a mess. Medicaid seems to be chronically underfunded, resulting in large numbers of providers refusing to accept Medicaid coverage. Medicare reimbursements reportedly are also insufficient, yet the expenses of Medicare continues to rise and, with the upcoming spike in the 65 and over population, will bankrupt our federal government by about 2020 without more cost controls being put in place.

Solving these problems is far from easy, or else solutions would have been enacted long ago -- but the status quo is not acceptable. Rather than ranting and raving, the opponents attending town hall meetings should discuss constructive suggestions to these problems. All Americans need to have access to decent, affordable health care, and those Americans with the means (and desire) to pay for "premium" health care services should be free to spend in that manner.

Source: Baltimoresun