“The United States has suspended planned food aid to North Korea as Pyongyang vows to push ahead with a plan to launch a long-range missile in defiance of international warnings, U.S. military officials said on Wednesday,” Reuters reports . “Under a deal reached last month, North Korea agreed to a partial nuclear freeze and a moratorium on missile testing in return for U.S. food aid,” but “Pyongyang then announced it would use a long-range rocket to launch a satellite,” VOA’s “Breaking News” blog writes . Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Lavoy on Wednesday “told lawmakers North Korea had violated [the] moratorium agreement and could not be trusted to deliver the aid properly,” BBC News writes .

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TheSupreme Court is expected to vote on the fate of the health care reform law under President Obama this morning. In the meantime, the cost of health care has continued to increase with predictions that families will pay expenses surpassing $20,000 this year.

Health Care Reform Under Review

After months of anticipation on the fate of health care reform, the Supreme Court is set to issue a verdict on whether the mandate to purchase coverage by 2014 will stand.

Despite coming to this quick decision after more than six hours of arguments earlier in the week, Americans will not hear the official verdict until June.

This delay is largely due to the fact that individual votes are allowed to change between today and early summer. W

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Still think term life insurance is the better option? If the answer to this question is a Yes, then this article may change your opinion. Whole life insurance offers the most comprehensive life insurance coverage compared to other life insurance alternatives, but there are more reasons why you need to choose whole life coverage.

For starters, whole life insurance policies are now very affordable. Compared to the extra benefits you get to enjoy when you opt for a whole life insurance policy, you will be surprised by how small the difference between term life and whole life premiums are. Full post…

In the past few years, dozens of property/casualty insurers have announced innovative protections for risks involving new technologies, current economic concerns, personal and family relationships, home-based small businesses, and more.

This is a new era in property/casualty insurance. Innovation is breaking out all over, said Roger Hurtvig, president of the Insurance Innovation Institute in Warwick, Rhode Island.

The P/C industry has a reputation of being slow to embrace new ideas but the IIIs own measure of innovation — the P/C New Products Index — has been rising steadily for the past year and hit a record high of 75 out of a possible 100 points last month.

It seems that with every day comes a new idea, Hurtvig said. The

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A study published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals, reveals that newly insured and newly uninsured adults are more likely to go to the emergency department (ED) due to recent changes in health insurance status. The report is part of the journal’s Health Care Reform series.

The hospital ED is a significant indicator for access to care. According to the researchers, newly insured and newly uninsured individuals can find it hard to access outpatient care, and as a result may turn to hospital EDs in order to receive medical care.

The research team led by Adit A. Full post…

Personable Holdings, a provider of non-standard auto insurance has acquired Network Holding, the parent company of First Insurance Network and Peachtree Casualty Insurance Company.

First Insurance Network is a managing general insurance agency and Peachtree Casualty Insurance Company is a P&C insurance company licensed to write private passenger automobile insurance in 38 states.

The transaction has been approved by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation.

The acquisition expands Personable’s geographic footprint into Florida and Georgia states in the US and will bring 18,000 policyholders to the company and will add 400 new independent agent partners.

Personable chairman Kieran Sweeney said that the company is well positioned to execute its long-term growth strategy following this acquisition.

“Personable now has a strategic presence in four of the five largest states for non-standard auto insurance in the US, over 45,000 customers and 3,000 quality retail partnerships,” Sweeney said.