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Let’s start with this headscratcher. Two 64 year old women in good health and with no history of persistent claims are “individual plan” customers of Blue Cross/Blue Shield. One lives in downtown Boston and the other resides in a small town in Connecticut. Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BC/BS) in Connecticut charges one woman $1,062.60 per quarter…

There are times in the history of the insurance industry when one company boldly steps out of the marching lane and travels in a better direction. Allstate made such a move in the early seventies when it strongly and repeatedly came out for air bags. Next week, the bold foray will belong to the Progressive…

Labor Day, once conceived as a celebration of American workers has become a Day for Sales. This should not obscure the Day’s opportunity to reflect on the state of American labor. A report titled “The State of Working America, 1992-93, by the Economic Policy Institute adds to the previous data showing that, adjusted for inflation,…

One of those age-old battles between grasping tobacco, drug, auto, chemical, oil and insurance companies, on one side, and the health, consumer, elderly, worker and environmental groups on the other, temporarily concluded the Senate last week. The winners: present and future Americans, wrongfully injured by product defects, who wish to have their full day in…

Bloomington, MN — It is called officially The Mall of America and unofficially the Megamall. After spending several hours touring this domed merchant city of nearly 400 stores outside Minneapolis I believe the unofficial name is more suitable than what is on the marquee. The Megamall is so large, so diverse, so overwhelming in its…

George Bush at the Republican National Convention had an easy act to follow. Preceding him was the recast-again Dan Quayle, whose volcanically delivered fibs and fantasies, prompted a usually sympathetic observer, Tom Shales, of the Washington Post, to write: “His eyes were popping like a wolf’s in an old Tex Avery cartoon. A person watching…

Imagine for a moment a hypothetical, joint project by the National Parent-Teacher Organization, the League of Women Voters and the National Urban League to provide seventh graders through high school senior’s a twelve minute free daily television program on American democracy in action. Imagine further that those schools accepting such a program must require all…

It is not often that a letter arrives which is so self-contained and precise a consumer complaint. Rather than try to edit this correspondence, I want to share it with readers as written: July 27, 1992 Dear Mr. Nader, I am enclosing a copy of a letter I sent to Hanes. In your continuing efforts…

By comparison with many other nations, our country over the years has adopted stronger health and safety standards in the environment, marketplace, and workplace. Many of these standards have been under attack by the mindless deregulators of the Reagan/Bush Administrations. Now, a new assault looms on the horizon in the guise of “free trade” to…

With so many safety regulatory agencies twiddling their’ thumbs while preventable human casualties continue, a number of Senators, including Connecticut’s Chris Dodd and Joseph Lieberman, are backing a bill which starts making it harder for injured Americans to use historic rights in court against the manufacturers of dangerous products that harmed them. Part of the…