General Motors To Audit Health Coverage Eligibility Of Hourly Workers' Dependents

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General Motors recently announced it will conduct an audit to determine whether hourly workers' dependents enrolled in the automaker's health plans ar eligible for coverage, the Detroit Free Press reports. GM is attempting to reduce the $4.6 billion it spends p.a. on health care by removing ineligible dependents (Detroit Free Press, 8/13).

This is not the first health benefits audit GM has conducted, according to the Wall Street Journal. However, a GM voice said this audit volition be more extensive than previous efforts. GM notified its 67,000 hourly workers that they throw until Aug. 20 to voluntarily get rid of dependents world Health Organization are ineligible from their health plans. The carmaker last class spent $1.3 billion on health care for hourly workers and their dependents. Workers who are found to have standard health benefits for ineligible dependents power be compulsory to reimburse the company, the spokesperson said.

According to HRAdvance, removing ineligible dependents can redeem an employer between 2% and 5%. GM estimates that 5% to 10% of dependents enrolled in its wellness plans ar ineligible. Paul Fronstin, music director of health research and educational programs for the Employee Benefit Research Institute, said that health benefits audits are becoming more than common as employers search to boil down growing health care expenditure (Terlep, Wall Street Journal, 8/13).


Reprinted with kind license from hTTP://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can vista the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email speech at hTTP://www.kaisernetwork.

Full Battle Rattle - movie review

The electric potential for wartime satire is almost unbearably high in the background for Tony
Gerber and Jesse Moss's documentary Full Battle Rattle, a fact which regrettably may
sustain left them unable to do very much more to capitalize on their matter, assuming that
it would provide the context and satire for itself. This can occur sometimes to
the best of filmmakers, where they become most paralyzed by the wide-cut weight of what they're
beholding. The better ones learn how to moil deeper, those on the lower end of the
scale skate along the surface. Gerber and Moss are the latter.



After introductory training merely before they are deployed to Iraq, many fresh-minted American
soldiers have some other stop to make. Somewhere in the Mojave desolate, the Army runs
an Iraqi Potemkin village where trainees ar sent to take part in tierce weeks of
simulated missions, complete with Arabic-speaking villagers and insurgents who like to
stir up trouble. Looking like a knocked-together film place, the aggregation of dun-colored
buildings called Medina Wasl also serves as a home to the people who ar "playing"
the villagers. That many of the villagers are Iraqi exiles, and probably making a better
and safer living than most of their countrymen, brings a bittersweet fucus serratus to their
scenes, which provide some of the only elements of humanity in this otherwise colourless
and dull film.



It is indeed a surreal sight to witness American soldiers in wide gear roar into
Medina Wasl and parlaying with shouting and gesticulating actors in order to maintain
the greenwich Village from devolving into finish anarchy. But Full Battle Rattle takes the integral
strangeness of that imaginativeness as a given and never quite expands on it, flunk to crowd
the story outside of the filmmakers' comfort zone. Given the infamous want of grooming
displayed by the Pentagon in the planning for the Iraq invasion, it represents a quantum
shift in scheme that such a specific training run aground would even be developed (a
exchangeable camp was created for jungle warfare training during Vietnam). But you wouldn't
know the import of this from Gerber and Moss' feeler, which brings in no outside
viewpoints or historical perspectives and instead sticks with the people living and
working in Medina Wasl.



Even with the subjects it does interview, Full Battle Rattle comes up short, in that it
rarely seems to ask any of the tougher questions, peculiarly to those in unvarying.
Only a very few officers talk at length, offering unilluminating platitudes for
the most part. The most glaring oversight, even so (and one that seems likely to have
been a compromise in order of magnitude to secure access in the low place) is the about complete
deficiency of discussion with the frontline soldiers being put through the training. One
would take that the viewpoints of those for whom the whole compound has been constructed
would have been of interest.



Given disturbingly more than screen time are the American veterans of the Iraq scrap,
who have come to Medina Wasl to use their fight experience in order to play the
bad guys. Somewhat

Free System Projekt and Patchwork

   
Artist: Free System Projekt and Patchwork

   Genre(s): 
Electronic
   

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Discography:


   
 E-Live 2000

   Year: 2000   
Tracks: 3


   
 Live 30 10 99

   Year: 1999   
Tracks: 4

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'Billy Joel' wins Stars In Their Eyes

The Grouch and Eligh

   
Artist: The Grouch and Eligh

   Genre(s): 
Electronic
   

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Discography:


   
 No More Greener Grasses

   Year:    
Tracks: 15

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Obituary: Dick Charlesworth

Katy Perry - Fascinating Fact 5448

U.S. pop sensation KATY PERRY can belch the alphabet - she performed the odd party trick during an appearance on MTV's TRL on Thursday (12Jun08).

See Also

• Wagon Cookin’
• Tunstall’s birth mum not invited to wedding
• Numb Encore
• Beyonce Knowles - Williams Denies Beyonce Baby

Victoria Beckham - Beckham Im A Terrible Actress

Former SPICE GIRL VICTORIA BECKHAM has laughed off reports she is harbouring ambitions to become a Hollywood movie star - by insisting she can't act.

The singer/fashion designer moved to Los Angeles last year (07) with her soccer ace husband David and their three sons, and now has a string of A-list pals including Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and Eva Longoria Parker.

But the star laughs off rumours she is using her friendships with Hollywood's most powerful players to break into the industry, claiming she has been inundated with film roles.

She says, "I'm a terrible actress. Everyone thinks I'm only friends with Tom and Katie to be in a movie but it's not true. I've turned down lots of roles."

See Also

• My Bloody Valentine to remaster classic albums
• Mariah Carey’s Ex-Boyfriend Left Heartbroken
• Tom Cruise to star in 28th Amendment

Spears still not allowed to visit sons

Pop singer Britney Spears has failed to regain access to her two young sons following a closed-door court hearing.
Spears, who was recently admitted to hospital for psychiatric evaluation, was barred from visiting her sons last January after she refused to hand the children back to their father Kevin Federline, who currently has primary custody of the boys.
Los Angeles Superior Court spokesman Alan Parachini told reporters after yesterday's hearing that there had been no change in the orders handed out by the family judge who last month stripped Spears of her visitation rights.
The court denied a motion by Spears' lawyer to issue a gag order to keep attorneys from talking to the media.