AFFORDABLE CARE ACT DOESN’T COVER LONG-TERM CARE POLICIES

Starting next year, the Affordable Care Act will largely prohibit insurers who sell individual and small-group health policies from charging women higher premiums than men for the same coverage.

Long-term-care insurance, however, isn’t bound by that law, and the country’s largest provider of such coverage has announced it will begin setting its prices based on sex this spring.

“Gender pricing is good for insurance companies,” said Bonnie Burns, a policy specialist at California Health Advocates, a Medicare advocacy and education organization, “but it’s bad public policy and it’s bad for women.”

Genworth Financial says the new pricing reflects the fact that women receive two of every three claims dollars. The change will affect only women who buy new individual policies, or about 10 percent of all purchasers, according to the company. The new rates won’t be applied to existing policyholders or those who apply as a couple with their husbands.

“This change is being made now to reflect our actual claims experience and help stabilize pricing,” Genworth Financial spokesman Thomas Topinka said in an email.

Women’s premiums may increase by 20 to 40 percent under the new pricing policy, said Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. The average annual premium for a 55-year-old who qualified for preferred health discounts and bought between $165,000 and $200,000 of coverage was $1,720 last year, according to the association.

Experts say they expect other long-term-care insurers will soon follow suit.

Long-term-care insurance provides protection for people who need help with basic daily tasks such as bathing and dressing. It typically pays a set amount for a certain number of years — say, $150 daily for three years — for care provided in a nursing home, assisted living facility or at home. Never a very popular product with consumers, many of whom found it unaffordable, in recent years the industry has struggled and many carriers have raised premiums by double digits or left the market.

Consumer health advocates say they aren’t surprised that women’s claims for long-term-care insurance are higher than men’s.

Because women typically live longer than men, they frequently act as caregivers when their husbands need long-term care, advocates say, thus reducing the need for nursing help that insurance might otherwise pay for. Once a woman needs care, however, there may be no one left to provide it.

“Women live longer alone than men,” Burns said. “If you don’t have a live-in caregiver when you start needing this kind of care, you’re in big trouble.”

LuMarie Polivka-West knows the potential problems all too well. Polivka-West, 64, is the senior director of policy and program development for the Florida Health Care Association, a trade organization for nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

About 15 years ago, she bought a long-term-care policy. The company went out of business after five years, and she let her policy lapse rather than switch to another plan with higher premiums and less comprehensive coverage. But she’s reconsidering that decision. Polivka-West’s husband is four years older than she is. Her mother died of Alzheimer’s disease at age 89 after struggling with it for eight years. What if a similar fate awaits her?

Polivka-West thinks insurers shouldn’t be allowed to charge her more just because she’s a woman.

“The Affordable Care Act recognized the gender bias in health insurance,” she said. “The same (rules) should apply to long-term-care insurance.”

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Miami mayor: City will fight to keep fed funding for housing, anti-poverty programs

Miami city administrators said Thursday they will do “everything possible” to avoid losing out on $5.8 million in federal community development funds.

The promise came days after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development threatened to penalize Miami for failing to spend $13.3 million in Community Development Block Grants over the past three years. Cities that do not adhere to a strict spending schedule can see their funding reduced.

Commissioners slammed the city administration for not spending the money fast enough. CDBG dollars can go toward affordable housing, economic development and anti-poverty programs. In Miami, they fund daycares like the Centro Mater in Little Havana and community centers such as the Allapattah Community Action Center.

“This is a very serious issue,” Commissioner Francis Suarez said.

Assistant City Manager Alice Bravo promised a quick solution.

“We are going to do everything possible not only to spend down the funds that are in place, but to work with officials in Washington to explain our situation,” she said. “We are going to do everything in our power to make sure our funding is not removed.”

Commissioner Frank Carollo said he was “baffled” by the situation, in part because he attended a meeting with HUD consultants earlier this month at which Miami administrators were told the city was in full compliance.

Miami Community Development Director George Mensah said the HUD consultants must have received bad information from the federal government.

Under HUD guidelines, grant recipients can keep up to 1.5 times the amount of their annual allocation on reserve, in a HUD line of credit. Miami received about $5 million in 2012, meaning its fund balance could be as high as $7.5 million. But as of last month, the CDBG balance topped $13.2 million.

Mensah said the city was having problems, in part, because the feds have reduced the amount Miami could keep on reserve.

“In some ways, this is a mathematical issue,” he said.

But neither he nor City Manager Johnny Martinez nor Mayor Tomás Regalado answered questions from commissioners and a reporter about why the allocated money had not been spent over three years.

Earlier in the day, Regalado told The Miami Herald that city administrators were working to schedule a meeting with HUD officials in Washington, D.C.

“We’re not going to lose that money,” Regalado pledged.

The mayor noted that some CDBG-funded projects were moving forward, including a new community center in Little Havana and road repairs in District 4.

Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones implored city leaders to do a better job of moving projects along.

“We need to make sure that if we have projects sitting there, that we move the money,” she said. “At the end of the day, whatever we’re not doing affects the whole entire city.”

In other business, Carollo sponsored a resolution directing the building department to deny 40-year building re-certifications when properties have outstanding code violations or are deemed unsafe.

The proposal came in response to a series of stories in El Nuevo Herald about Little Havana condominium owners who saw their floors collapse and who had little recourse.

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Read the heartbreaking impact statement read by the Figoski girls

Pool Photo

Below is the impact statement read in Brooklyn Supreme Court today by the four daughters of NYPD Det. Peter Figoski at the sentencing of his killer, Lamont Pride. The one joint statement was read in court, with each daughter taking a portion.

CHRISTINE FIGOSKI, 21:

On the evening of Sunday, December 11, my sisters and I went to bed with the worries of your average teenage girl. We were worried about studying for upcoming college final exams, and high school tests, and looking forward to going home for the Christmas holiday and having the family together.

We all got our normal “Night, I love you” text from Daddy, and only a few hours after, my sisters and I were faced with the tragedy that would impact the rest of our lives. The next events that happened that morning are events that will haunt us for the rest of our lives.

We were awoken by my Mom in a panic after hearing that Daddy had been in an accident. We were startled and from that moment on everything seemed to get worse.

We all came to the hospital to “Hope” and “Pray” that our Dad would pull through. Our Father was shot in the face, and still breathing at that moment, and even though as bad as his condition was, we still thought just somehow he would survive. Nothing at that moment felt real and till this day, it still doesn’t.

Two of us arrived at the hospital to see the grim faces of family members and the sad faces of hundreds of police officers that were lined up throughout the hospital.

The next several hours were some of the hardest of our lives as we were told that our Father died as a result of a gunshot to the face. We spiraled into the confusion of having to deal with the hard reality of having to prepare with life without our Dad.

CORINNE FIGOSKI, 15:

Our dad was our world, our everything. He was our hero, protector, role model and our best friend. He always made everything better. And not at one moment would any of us realize what it would be like without a father, it’s more than anyone could ever imagine. Everything our Dad did was for us. He was always trying his hardest to make us the best people we could be.

Now a day's “Promise” is just a word. When people say, “I promise everything will get better, and it’s going to be OK,” it’s just a lie to us.Nothing will ever be the same again and we will never feel the way we used to.

We lay in bed for hours in the dark at night, thinking about every possible thing that has changed in our lives since December 12, 2011. Sometimes we want to believe that this world is hell and there is another peaceful world where our dad is now. I’m not sure if we are depressed, but we are constantly angry and sad, but we continue to put smiles on our faces and laugh and joke with one another like our Father would want. But inside we are numb, and broken. We find it so hard to be happy, sometimes we forget how to feel. The past is better than it is now, and the future is less resolved. When our father died, a part of us died inside. We realize that once you’re broken in certain ways, they couldn’t ever be fixed now, no matter how hard you try.

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Don’t get too personal on LinkedIn

Have you ever received a request to connect on LinkedIn from someone you didn’t know or couldn’t remember?

A few weeks ago, Josh Turner encountered this situation. The online request to connect came from a businessman on the opposite coast of the United States. It came with a short introduction that ended with “Let’s go Blues!” a reference to Turner’s favorite hockey team in St. Louis that he had mentioned in his profile. “It was a personal connection … that’s building rapport.”

LinkedIn is known for being the professional social network where members expect you to keep buttoned-down behavior and network online like you would at a business event. With more than 200 million registered users, the site facilitates interaction as a way to boost your stature, gain a potential customer or rub elbows with a future boss.

But unlike most other social networking sites, LinkedIn is all about business — and you need to take special care that you act accordingly. As in any workplace, the right amount of personal information sharing could be the foot in the door, say experts. The wrong amount could slam it closed.

“Anyone in business needs a professional online presence,’’ says Vanessa McGovern, the VP of Business Development for the Global Institute for Travel Entrepreneurs and a consultant to business owners on how to use LinkedIn. But they should also heed LinkedIn etiquette or risk sending the wrong messages.

One of the biggest mistakes, McGovern says is getting too personal — or not personal enough.

Sending a request to connect blindly equates to cold calling and likely will lead nowhere. Instead, it should come with a personal note, an explanation of who you are, where you met, or how the connection can benefit both parties, McGovern explains.

Your profile should get a little personal, too, she says. “Talk about yourself in the first person and add a personal flair — your goals, your passion … make yourself seem human.”

Beyond that, keep your LinkedIn posts, invitations, comments and photos professional, McGovern says.

If you had a hard day at the office or your child just won an award, you may want to share it with your personal network elsewhere — but not on LinkedIn.

“This is not Facebook. Only share what you would share at a professional networking event,” she says.

Another etiquette pitfall on LinkedIn is the hit and run — making a connection and not following up.

At least once a week, Ari Rollnick, a principal in kabookaboo, an integrated marketing agency in Coral Gables, gets a request to connect with someone on LinkedIn that he has never met or heard of before. The person will have no connections in common and share no information about why they want to build a rapport.

“I won’t accept. That’s a lost opportunity for them,” Rollnick says.

He approaches it differently. When Rollnick graduated from Emory with an MBA in 2001, he had a good idea that his classmates would excel in the business world. Now, Rollnick wanted to find out just where they went and reestablish a connection.

With a few clicks, he tracked down dozens of them on LinkedIn, requested a connection, and was back on their radar. Then came the follow-up — letting them know through emails, phone calls and posts that he was creating a two-way street for business exchange. “Rather than make that connection and disappearing , I let them know I wanted to open the door to conversation.”

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Florida advocates say 2012 proved need for Voting Rights Act

As a skeptical U.S. Supreme Court raised doubts about a central provision of the federal Voting Rights Act on Wednesday, the law’s defenders said the 2012 election provided a vivid example for why it was needed to protect Florida from voter suppression.

“Look at the performance of our governor and Legislature in the last election,’’ says Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida whose parent organization has joined in the lawsuit to retain the law. “They are walking advertisements for why we need the Voting Rights Act.”

After the Legislature passed a sweeping elections bill in 2011, the act’s provisions required the state to get federal approval from either a federal trial court or the Justice Department before the law could take effect in Monroe, Hillsborough, Hardee, Hendry and Collier counties.

In addition to seeking the review, Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi challenged the act’s constitutionality. Former Secretary of State Kurt Browning called the provisions of the act an “arbitrary and irrational coverage formula based on data from 40 years ago that takes no account of current conditions.”

The five Florida counties have been subject to the pre-clearance requirement of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act protections since 1975 because of a history of discrimination against language minorities. Monroe County, for example, failed to print ballots in Spanish even though the Spanish-speaking population was large enough to warrant its own ballot.

The law’s most controversial provision, passed by the Republican-led 2011 Legislature, was a plan to reduce the number of early voting days. The ACLU and other citizens groups used the pre-clearance requirements to challenge the law, arguing that the changes disproportionately affected minority voters, who rely on early voting more than white voters.

A three-judge federal court concluded the law could have the effect of cutting voting hours in half. It suggested the law could stand if the five counties would expand early voting hours each day to maintain the total number of hours they offered in the past — a remedy initially rejected by Scott and lawmakers.

All but Monroe County agreed to the change. Monroe argued that reducing early voting days was more important to maintain voter access than extending hours on fewer days.

When the federal court agreed to accept the four-county compromise, Monroe was forced to go along with the compressed schedule and the state dropped the challenge.

The result: long early voting lines in the state’s most urban counties, putting Florida’s elections laws under the national spotlight again.

“I think now the state will agree that fewer days didn’t work out,’’ said Joyce Griffin, a Democrat who has worked in the Monroe County Supervisor of Elections office for 28 years before she was elected supervisor in November. She believes the act’s pre-clearance provisions should be retained.

“I have always viewed it as an extra safeguard,’’ she said. “It gives us another layer of protection — and I was very happy to have it last year.”

If the U.S. Supreme Court throws out the pre-clearance requirement, Florida would be allowed to enact its voting laws first, while opponents would have to challenge it later, said Julie Ebenstein, staff attorney for the ACLU of Florida.

“Without the Voting Rights Act ..., the confusion and chaos regarding elections in 2012 here would have been far worse,” she said.

In the last 20 years, the Section 5 rule also has forced the state to rewrite its reapportionment maps, creating a majority-minority state Senate district in the Tampa Bay area in 1992 and requiring lawmakers to restore a Hispanic majority seat in Collier County they had planned to eliminate in 2002.

Bondi did not file a brief in the Shelby County v. Holder case, but she and other Republican state officials echoed arguments of the Alabama Attorney General in 2011 when the state challenged the law.

“I strongly support the many provisions of the Voting Rights Act that appropriately enforce the right of citizens to register and vote free from discrimination,’’ Browning said at the time. “But there is no constitutional basis to arbitrarily single out five Florida counties and a few other covered jurisdictions, based solely on information from decades ago, and subject them to procedures that don’t apply to the rest of the country.”

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Hoarding: Buried Alive Daughter Goes Ballistic After Mom's Death

In the aptly titled This House Killed Her, tonight's Hoarding: Buried Alive tells the story of a deceased hoarder whose daughters are forced to clear  jaw-dropping amounts of clutter left in their mother's wake.

Pics: Star Sightings!

Sifting through endless piles of rubbish crawling with roaches and rats, sisters Aimee and Cheryl are desperate to locate the deed to their mom's home before the bank forecloses on the mortgage. During a moment of particular distress, Aimee loses her cool and begins to toss and break furniture in anger over the situation.

Watch an exclusive sneak peek in the player above!

Related: Hoarder's Son Feels 'Like a Dog in a Cage' 

Hoarding: Buried Alive airs Wednesdays on TLC.

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Ex-con who shot parole officer was having 'a terrible month': lawyer

The Brooklyn ex-con who blasted his parole officer only attacked because he was “in the grips of extreme emotional distress,” his defense attorney said during the trial’s opening yesterday.

Robert Morales, 52, shot his parole officer Sam Salters in the shoulder in 2010 because he said his new parole officer’s demands were ruining his life.

“It was a terrible, terrible month,” defense attorney John Stella said in Brooklyn Supreme Court, referring to the time Morales reported to Salters.

“It was the worst month in the life of a guy who has been in more correctional facilities than you can count on two hands.”

Gregory P. Mango

Robert Morales is being re-tried for shooting Samuel Salters, his parole officer.

This is Morales’ retrial after his first trial ended in a mistrial last year.

Stella even laid some blame on Salters, who spent months in the hospital after the attack.

“Sam Salters treated him in a manner that he had never been treated by anyone in the correctional system.”

Stella argued that Morales is guilty only of aggravated assault of an officer, while prosecutors made the case for attempted aggravated murder.

“He shot him at point-blank range with full intent to kill him,” said Brooklyn assistant district attorney Lew Lieberman. “There is no extreme emotional distress defense here.”

In 1979 Morales was sentenced to 25 years to life for setting a fire that killed an 8-year-old boy.

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Economic development chief faces bruising fight

An organization charged with reviving Miami-Dade’s battered economy finds itself with some bruises, too.

The Beacon Council, a non-profit that relies on tax dollars, is contending with a threat to its public funding, lukewarm support from County Hall and a rift within its own leadership. CEO Frank Nero faces a revolt from some board members, and the full board this month opted not to pass a motion expressing confidence in the Beacon Council’s management, according to several participants.

“Not everybody loves Frank,’’ said Joseph Pallot, the group’s volunteer chairman and general counsel at Heico Corp. But Pallot said Nero has performed well as the head of an organization that receives about $4 million a year in Miami-Dade taxes. “Frank’s economic-development skills are second to none.”

Nero, a former New Jersey municipal leader who earns about $400,000 a year, declined to comment. He has tussled with board members and elected officials in the past. But he now faces pressure on multiple fronts, with Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez wanting to revamp the county’s economic-development strategy, commissioners wanting to take away $1 million in tax funding and give it to local businesses, and some Beacon board members pushing for a change at the top.

“We have issues with the Beacon Council,” Gimenez said this week in an interview. “The commission also apparently has issues with the Beacon Council. We’re trying to work with them as best that we can.”

In his comments, Gimenez also said his concern was with the county’s “disjointed” approach to economic development, saying, “I’d like to kind of bring that all together.”

The Beacon Council’s primary mission is to recruit companies to Miami-Dade, serving as a go-between among corporate relocation firms and local agencies and helping line-up incentives and subsidies from county and state pools of money. It also pursues various economic efforts and promotions, including a year-long “One Community One Goal” study of how to grow the economy, and next month’s awards fundraising lunch aboard a cruise ship at Port Miami.

In the budget year that ended in September 2011, the Beacon Council received about $1.6 million from businesses paying dues, events and other private-sector sources, according to the most recent fianancial statement available.

Last year, the Beacon Council said it helped 27 businesses either expand in or move to Miami-Dade, accounting for about 2,000 new jobs. Among the big companies it helped land incentives for was the new cable network Univision is forming with the ABC national network in Doral.

But the Beacon Council’s public dollars have proved a ripe target, with commissioners complaining the money goes to recruit large companies to town that then compete with constituents’ smaller businesses.

Combined, the Beacon Council’s top eight executives make about $1.5 million a year, and during the recession the group spent about $1.5 million on a 2009 renovation of its rented Brickell Avenue office, according to tax filings and financial statement.

“When you’re trying to bring a CEO to Miami, you have to play the part that you’re a cosmopolitan, global city,’’ said Ana Acle-Menendez, head of communications for the Beacon Council. “That was the idea behind the renovation.”

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Somerset parents, neighbors unhappy with school’s plans to move campus to Kendall

Somerset Academy is drawing the ire of both parents and neighbors in Coral Gables and Kendall as it expands its charter school empire.

Angry parents crowded into a cafeteria recently to hear that their kindergartners likely will be bused to a new school in Kendall after Somerset lost its Coral Gables lease at Granada Presbyterian Church.

Meanwhile, about 40 neighbors of the proposed school met Sunday, outraged by Somerset’s plans to replace a small neighborhood school that has been run by the same family for six decades and attended by fewer than 300 students.

Somerset wants to build a new campus on the site of the old Pinewood Acres, 9500 SW 97th Ave. in Kendall, to serve 2,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

“We’re not against education, but what we are against is the numbers they’re trying to introduce into the area and the huge buildings,” said Jose J. Suarez, who chose the secluded neighborhood 14 years ago for his modern glass and concrete house.

The outrage among both groups highlights the tricky waters Somerset has tried to navigate in opening its charter schools in residential neighborhoods. Since it was founded 15 years ago, Somerset, a nonprofit managed by its for-profit partner, Academica, has grown into one of the state’s largest charter school companies, with 42 schools around Florida, in Texas, Nevada and online.

This fall, Somerset took over kindergarten classes at Granada, telling parents that their students would be eligible to attend first grade at its campus at Christ Journey Church.

After a hard-fought battle with neighbors, Somerset opened a school at the church, but the enrollment was capped at 260 – down from the 700 Somerset had proposed. To minimize traffic, Somerset also agreed to give preference to students who live within a mile of the church, and only admit outside students if space allowed.

The fight shaping up over Kendall’s historic Pinewood Acres School nearly mirrors that of Coral Gables: an affluent community with A-rated schools where neighbors cherish their quiet streets and the area’s towering live oaks.

Over the last six decades, the Pinewood Acres School changed little. Two University of Miami education grads fashioned it out of a 20-acre pig farm. The founders lived in the building where they taught, and as the school grew, they built homes for teachers and their families.

But a tough economy in recent years has been hard on the school, said Judy Lones, daughter-in-law of its founders.

“The enrollment had dropped and it was going to take a lot of money to invest in it to wait out the storm.”

So last year, the family negotiated a five-year lease with Somerset with an option to buy. And in December, the family and Somerset submitted plans to the county that would replace the ranch-style buildings scattered around the eight-acre campus, making it look more like a camp than a school, with new two-story buildings that echo the style of other Somerset campuses.

Neighbors say the campus is too big for the area, where one-acre estate homes with tennis courts in their backyards abut smaller single-family and zero-lot-line homes serviced by just one two-lane thoroughfare, 97th Avenue.

Somerset intends to initially open the new school, Somerset Bay at Pinewood Acres, as a K-8, with only 290 students — not the 2,000 that it eventually hopes to enroll, said Andreina Figueroa, the school’s board chair.

“It is our goal to be good neighbors,’’ she wrote in an email.

Somerset already is advertising the new school on a website and soliciting applications. However, the Miami-Dade School District said it has not yet received an official request from Somerset to open a school at the site.

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Does Miranda Kerr Want Another Baby

Model Miranda Kerr quickly got back into runway shape after giving birth to her first son Flynn in 2011, but could she and husband Orlando Bloom be planning to expand their family further? ET Canada caught up with the Victoria's Secret Angel to find out.

PICS: Who Wore What?

"Someday," Miranda answered when asked if she planned on giving her son Flynn a sibling to play with. "Not right now."

Miranda and a few of her fellow Angels flew to New York City to help launch the Fabulous Bra by Victoria's Secret as well as a new fragrance.

"It gives you a little lift, but not too much," Miranda said of the new bra. "It's very soft and lightweight. I'm wearing one right now, but I'm wearing the strapless version, because this also comes in a multi-way conversion bra."

Watch the video to see Miranda strut some of Victoria's Secret's top items down the catwalk.

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