The pro-health care reform group Health Care for America Now has released a study (pdf) that contradicts insurance companies' claims that their recent, exorbitant rate hikes were driven by increases in the cost of medical care. The study shows that over the last eight years premiums have almost doubled, while medical inflation only increased by 40 percent. HCAN found that insurance companies are raising their rates more than 20 percent faster than the amount they are paying out to doctors, and twice as fast as their underlying costs of medical care are rising. In short, insurance companies are hiking premium prices much more quickly than their costs are increasing. HCAN also found that insurance companies are spending the extra money on perks. For example, Anthem spent $27 million on 103 executive retreats to locations like Hawaii in 2007 and 2008 alone. From 2000 to 2008, insurance companies spent $716.4 billion of their premium dollars on administrative costs, salaries for their CEOs, and investor profit -- practically enough to fund the entire health reform bill.

The political race between two doctors duking it out for the elective office of Parish Coroner in New Orleans has resulted in arguably the weirdest political campaign ad in history. The incumbent is Dr. Frank Minyard, who is running for a tenth term after serving 36 years in the office, and the challenger is Dr. Dwight McKenna, a convicted tax evader who spent nine months in federal prison for underreporting his income by $367,000 in 1992. Dr. McKenna has launched a campaign ad against Dr. Minyard that highlights a mini-scandal that occurred in the 1990s, after Minyard was sued for allegedly removing pieces of bone and corneas from bodies and sending them to transplant centers without permission. The ad portrays Dr. Minyard as a mad, Frankenstein-style doctor in surgeon's garb, complete with a bloody hand-print on the back of his white coat. He and his assistant, Igor, hover ghoulishly over a dead body that bears a toe tag that says "DOA" on one side and "For Sale" on the other. Dr. Minyard carelessly waves around what looks like a rubbery calf's liver, and tells Igor that they need to retrieve a heart, a spleen and a liver "for tonight's sale." Igor sneers, "Ye-s-s-s, Dr. Minyard," and a deep voice-over intones, "Say NO to Dr. Minyard, and YES to Dr. McKenna."

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is asking President Obama not to attend this year's National Prayer Breakfast, the signature annual event of a secretive, Washington, D.C.-based, conservative Christian organization known as "The Fellowship" or "The Family." News reports link The Fellowship to the introduction of legislation in Uganda (pdf) that would sentence homosexuals and people who are HIV-positive to death. Jeff Sharlet, author of a book about The Family, reports that the Ugandan legislator who introduced the bill, David Bahati, is a "core member" of The Family. The Fellowship has also designed the prayer breakfast to have the appearance of a government-sanctioned event; Sharlet says the event "appears to the world to be an official function of the federal government," and reports that when he attended the National Prayer Breakfast in 2003, he obtained his press credentials through the White House. The Fellowship also operates the C Street House, a Congressional residence for which The Family illegally escaped paying taxes on the building by claiming it was church instead of a rooming house. C Street has also housed a number of "ethically-challenged" elected officials, including Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada), South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn.

After progressive historian Howard Zinn died on January 27, 2010, National Public Radio ran an unusual obituary on its January 28 All Things Considered news program. Noam Chomsky and Julian Bond, two of Zinn's well-known friends, offered overviews of his life and legacy. But NPR's remembrance also included darkly insulting comments from conservative pundit David Horowitz: "There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn's intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect," Horowitz said. "Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse." Horowitz called Zinn's famous book, A People's History of the United States, "a travesty." While NPR arguably tries to balance news reports with views from opposing sides of issues, it has not consistently adhered to this principle in its radio obituaries. When NPR covered the death of William F. Buckley, Jr., a figure as strongly admired on the right as Zinn was on the left, NPR aired fully six different segments about his life and legacy -- none of which included denigrating comments from critics who opposed him. Buckely left no shortage of things to criticize, either. He supported white supremacism in South Africa and the American south, nuclear war against China and even supported the tatooing of AIDS patients' buttocks. So far, NPR has not explained why it featured David Horowitz's harsh trashing of the late Howard Zinn in its commemorative piece, when its extensive eulogizing of William F. Buckley included no critical guests.

In his State of the Union address this week, President Obama urged members of Congress to be more transparent about their interactions with lobbyists. Yet this same week, members of the House Republican Caucus will attend a retreat sponsored by the non-profit Congressional Institute, where they will mingle privately with lobbyists. The Institute's 14-member Board consists of top Capitol Hill lobbyists who work for the leading pharmaceutical companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and major corporations, like American Express and Verizon. Ethics rules forbid lobbyists from directly financing trips and retreats for members of Congress, but there are no such prohibitions on travel or retreats sponsored by non-profit charitable or educations groups, like the Congressional Institute. The Institute skirts ethics rules by restricting lobbyists from participating in sessions at the retreat, while only allowing them to mingle with lawmakers at receptions and dinners, which are closed to the public. Ironically, the most prominent guest scheduled to speak at this week's exclusive gathering for public officials is President Obama, who will speak to the Republican Caucus on Friday.
LATE-BREAKING UPDATE: President Obama's Q & A session at the Republican retreat was televised and can be viewed here.

Cruise purveyor Royal Caribbean stirred up a public relations storm last week after it resumed taking vacationing tourists to its luxury Haitian beach resort, Labadee, located just 100 miles from the shocking scenes of rubble, suffering and desperation brought by the earthquake. Cruise passengers could choose to lounge on the beach under palm trees, get a massage on tables screened from view with billowing curtains or order up a fresh mai tai from the waiter while just a few hours away, desperate Haitians were scrounging to find some food or a drink of clean water. From a PR standpoint, resuming the cruises so soon seems like a violation of good taste and decency, and makes Royal Caribbean look bad. The cruise company, however, points out that while passing Haiti up might have been the more sensible decision, keeping their ships away would hurt the hundreds of Haitians who depend on cruise line passengers for their livelihood, and would keep the ships from bringing in food and relief supplies for the people who need them. Still, advertising and PR executives say the cruise line has done lasting damage to its image by resuming its luxury cruises to Haiti. Some cruise critics who defend Royal Caribbean's move are urging people to go to Haiti, get off the ship, have a subdued day, spend and tip generously, and perhaps leave some unopened bottles of water, new T shirts, food and some brand new flip flops with the Haitians.

Many relief organizations are soliciting donations to help victims of the earthquake in Haiti by using hotlines and Web sites that prompt people to use their credit cards. While most of the money people give will make it to the designated organizations, credit card companies are charging a two to three percent "transaction fee" or "charity processing fee" that gets subtracted from the donations. These hidden fees -- which are estimated to amount to hundreds of millions of dollars -- are helping credit card companies profit significantly from the Haitian tragedy. There are a few rare instances when credit card companies have waived this fee: American Express temporarily waived its charity processing fee after the 2004 tsunami disaster, and Capital One has a "No Hassle Giving Site" through which it waives transaction fees for holders of Capital One Visa or MasterCards, so that 100 percent of donations to go to charity. Charities are hesitant to protest credit card company fees, since they feel they have no choice but to accept credit cards and there is so much money at stake. There are currently no laws barring the fees. In fact, the government subsidizes credit card companies' profiting off of donations by making charitable contributions 100 percent tax deductible, even though only about 97 percent of the money given actually gets to the charity.

A newly-issued Congressional Research Service (CRS) study (pdf) on the activities of the community group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) found no evidence the group has engaged in fraudulent voting or violations of federal financing rules over the last five years. Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives ordered the study after conservatives accused ACORN of conducting voter registration fraud in poor neighborhoods and contributing to the country's financial crisis by "pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans." The accusations led some members of Congress to push to cut off the group's federal funding. A Federal District Court Judge recently ruled that cutting ACORN's funding was an illegal bill of attainder against the group, a term that refers to Congress targeting punishment at specific individuals or organizations. The CRS report also said that conservative activists may have broken privacy laws in two states when they secretly videotape an encounter with ACORN representatives while posing as a pimp and a prostitute, to see what kind of advice ACORN representatives would offer them about evading taxes and hiding their activities.

California's third largest auto insurer, Mercury Insurance, created a front group called Californians for Fair Auto Insurance Rates (Cal-FAIR), to advance a ballot initiative that, if passed, would allow insurers to slap surcharges on drivers who allow their auto insurance coverage to lapse for any reason. Cal-FAIR shares the same Sacramento address as the public relations firm Goddard Claussen, which boasts that it is "the most successful issue-advocacy firm in America." Cal-FAIR is submitting signatures this week to place Mercury's measure on the state ballot in 2010. The initiative is Mercury's attempt to make an end-run around a law Californians passed in 1988, which prohibits auto insurers from considering people's prior insurance coverage in setting rates. Mercury is Cal-FAIR's only donor, and so far has put $4.5 million into the campaign to try and pass the measure. Cal-FAIR portrays Mercury's ballot initiative as giving discounts to people who’ve had auto insurance continuously, but it doesn't let people know that the measure would also bring rate increases on anyone else who lets their insurance lapse, for example people who use public transportation for a time, military personnel who temporarily leave the state, people who let their insurance coverage lapse while recovering from an illness, and anyone else who doesn’t need insurance for a time. If you are late making auto insurance payments for any reason and get canceled -- for example due to an illness, home foreclosure or loss of a job, Mercury's ballot measure allows insurance companies to jack up rates when you resume paying. In a February, 2009 court filing, the California Insurance Department's Legal Division described Mercury as "an abusive, anti-consumer company," and said the company has "a deserved reputation for abusing its customers and intentionally violating the law with arrogance and indifference."