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A Stanford Study Finds Postmenopausal Estrogen Decline Largely Unrelated to Cognition Changes

By Michelle Brandt

A new study led by a Stanford University School of Medicine researcher shows that decreased estrogen levels after menopause are largely unrelated to changes in cognitive ability and mood. It did find, however, a possible link between levels of another hormone — progesterone — and cognition among younger postmenopausal women.

Estrogen Receptor

The research is the first to investigate associations between sex hormones and cognition in both younger and older postmenopausal women, and to determine whether the hormones affect women differently based on their age and how much time has elapsed since they reached menopause.

The work helps clarify the role of hormones in age-related brain disturbances, lead author Victor Henderson, MD, professor of health research and policy and of neurology and neurological sciences, and his colleagues note in the study, published online Nov. 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Estrogen, the main sex hormone for women, plays a crucial role in a woman’s reproductive cycle and overall health. After menopause, the depletion of ovarian follicles leads to a permanent reduction in a woman’s levels of estradiol (the predominant estrogen before menopause), estrone (the predominant estrogen after) and progesterone, another hormone involved in the menstrual cycle. Several studies have examined the association between hormone concentrations and cognition, but results have been inconsistent.

Some researchers have speculated that the effect of estrogen on cognitive aging might differ depending on when exposure occurs. “Some effects might be more beneficial for younger postmenopausal women closer to the time of menopause than for older postmenopausal women,” Henderson said of the so-called “critical-window” hypothesis.

For their study, Henderson and his colleagues analyzed data on 643 healthy postmenopausal women who were part of the ongoing Early Versus Late Intervention Trial With Estradiol. The women, none of whom were on hormone therapy, ranged in age from 41 to 84.

They were sorted into two categories: those who had gone into menopause less than six years previously, and those who had gone into menopause more than 10 years previously. The researchers gave the women a series of neuropsychological tests to gauge their memory and overall cognition. Then, the researchers assessed them for depression and measured their levels of estradiol, estrone, progesterone and testosterone.

November 29, 2013
License Plate Readers Spark Privacy, Public Safety Debate

By Maggie Clark, *Stateline Staff Writer

Police have used cameras that read the license plate s on passing cars to locate missing people in California, murderers in Georgia and hit-and-run drivers in Missouri.

A City of Alexandria Dodge Charger police car equipped with mobile ANPR produced by ELSAG North America (Mobile Plate Hunter 900). Two forward facing ANPR units are mounted on the trunk of this vehicle. 2010

The book-sized license plate readers (LPRs) are mounted on police cars, road signs or traffic lights. The images they capture are translated into computer-readable text and compiled into a list of plate numbers, which can run into the millions. Then police compare the numbers against the license plates of stolen cars, drivers wanted on bench warrants or people involved in missing person cases.

Privacy advocates don’t object to police using LPRs to catch criminals. But they are concerned about how long police keep the numbers if the plates don’t register an initial hit. In many places there are no limits, so police departments keep the pictures — tagged with the date, time, and location of the car — indefinitely.

The backlash against LPRs began in earnest this year, as three more states limited law enforcement use of the systems and in some cases banned private companies from using the systems, for example, to track down cars for repossession. So far, five states limit how the cameras are used, and the American Civil Liberties Union anticipates that at least six other states will debate limits in the upcoming legislative session.

In New Hampshire, police and private companies (with the exception of the tolling company EZ Pass) are forbidden from using license plate readers. Utah requires police to delete license plate data nine months after collection. In Vermont, the limit is 18 months and in Maine it is three weeks. Arkansas police have to throw out the plate numbers after 150 days and parking facilities are the only private companies allowed to use the technology.

“It’s been surprising to find out how license plate readers are being used and how long the data is being kept,” said Michigan state Rep. Sam Singh, a Democrat, who is sponsoring legislation to limit police in his state from keeping license plate numbers for longer than 48 hours. Police are using the cameras in a handful of Michigan cities, including Detroit and East Lansing.

Singh’s legislation would also make the license plate data exempt from public records requests so that, for example, divorce attorneys couldn’t request license plate reader data to confirm where a spouse was at a particular time. The bill, which is still in committee, also would limit how private companies can use license plate readers to track down cars for repossession.

“We just fundamentally believe that Americans don’t need to be watched unless there’s probable cause of wrongdoing,” said Shelli Weisberg, legislative director for the Michigan ACLU, which supports Singh’s bill. “We don’t need a ‘just in case’ database. That just turns democracy and our sense of due process on its head.”

NSA Fallout

The debate over license plate readers and other law-enforcement technologies is a local expression of a national wariness about government spying in the wake of revelations about the National Security Agency’s far-reaching data collection on ordinary citizens across the world.

November 27, 2013
Thursday is the New Black

By Doris O’Brien

Some children looking at a selection of Christmas Cards during the 1910 holiday season. The New York Times

This year, Black Friday is creeping relentlessly forward into what will be known as Black Thursday. More and more turkeys in the retail industry have decided — some with apparent reluctance — that the best way to give thanks is via the swipe of a credit card and the ka-ching of a cash register. In other words, stuff the stores along with the turkey!

I’m sure management has its reasons for keeping stores open on Thanksgiving Day. Nobody wants to be left behind other retail outlets, like grocery and drug stores, that never seem to close. And, of course, the brick-and-mortar facilities face increasing competition from online retail sites, which have made it much easier for America to shop.

If a rationale other than the dollar sign can be proffered, the moguls of merchandising might insist that people simply love to shop , especially when the lure is a big bargain. And since most of the stores are not swinging open their doors until late afternoon, it might even be argued that mall walking offers a means of offsetting a big Thanksgiving feast.

So why deny folks that pleasurable opportunity in lieu of staying home with family and friends, watching TV, or maybe even talking to one another? There are lots of movie-goers on Thanksgiving; why not shoppers?

Still, I’d like to suggest that it might be sound for the soul of Americans if on one solemn day of the year we were denied the option of going to the temples of commercialism to acquire more material goods, and concentrated, instead, on giving thanks for what we already have.

I come from a generation that managed to deal with the reality of stores being closed on designated days. During my childhood only bars and restaurants remained open on Sundays. The shopkeepers and clerks had the day-long luxury of doing something other than being at the disposal of customers. Such a policy might suggest that there is life beyond Best Buy or Bed, Bath and Beyond.

A number of church leaders are incensed by the very idea of Black Thursday. But far be it from me to tell business people how to run their enterprises or customers how to spend their time or money. After all, nobody has to shop on Thanksgiving if they don’t want to. Our democracy’s competitive marketplace offers us an abundance of choices. There are many others who share our world but not our liberty and largess.

Nevertheless, the idea of Black Thursday is not without a twinge of conscience on the part of employers. Wal-Mart will be paying its staff holiday wages and serving them a Thanksgiving dinner. That’s good. I hope it’s worth it for all concerned. However, I won’t be among them.

©2013 Doris O’Brien for SeniorWomen.com

November 24, 2013
Beauty’s Legacy, Material Opulence and Personal Excess: Gilded Age Portraits

Beauty’s Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America, a new exhibition on view at the New-York Historical Society through March 9, 2014, explores the critical and popular resurgence of portraiture in the United States in the period bounded by the close of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I. Known as the Gilded Age, the era was marked by unprecedented industrial expansion yielding vast personal fortunes. Today, the Gilded Age conjures visions of material opulence and personal excess, yet it also inspired a fascinating chapter in American cultural and social history. With the amassing of great fortunes came the drive to document the wealthy in portraiture, echoing a cultural pattern reaching back to colonial times. A brilliant generation of American and European artists rose to meet that demand.

Théobald Chartran (French, 1849 –1907), James Hazen Hyde (1876-1959), 1901. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Gift of James Hazen Hyde, 1949.1

(Editor’s Note. Addition information about Hyde from the Frick Collection text about collectors follows. A recently updated article, James Hazen Hyde and the Allegory of the Four Continents, is from the Oxford journal, Journal of the History of Collections, and more can be read about his collections.)

James Hazen Hyde was a businessman, socialite, art collector, philanthropist and Francophile.

Born on June 6, 1876 he was the son of the founder of Equitable Life Assurance Society, Henry Baldwin Hyde, and served as the company’s president from 1899-1905. After a business scandal and selling his business interests to Thomas Fortune Ryan, Hyde lived in self excile in Paris from 1905- 1941. Hyde’s art collection of paintings, porcelains, engravings and tapestries was distributed to several museums, including Cooper Union, now the Cooper-Hewitt, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

Hyde was a founder of the Alliance Française in 1953; chosen as chairman of the executive committee of the Federation of French Alliances in the United States; and, awarded the Grand Cross of the French Legion of Honor.

The exhibition features sixty-five portraits selected from New-York Historical’s outstanding holdings. The sitters — ranging from famous society beauties to powerful titans of business and industry — left lasting legacies that contributed to the cultural and economic growth of the nation. Beauty’s Legacy also takes its cue from a series of three important portrait loan exhibitions mounted in New York in the 1890s that were organized for charitable purposes by the city’s social elite. A number of paintings in Beauty’s Legacy were featured in those historic displays and are installed to evoke the late-nineteenth-century viewing experience.

November 23, 2013
And Now for Something Completely Unstuffed: OrigaMIT, Paper Architects, Fairy Tales, Explorations in Personal Geographies and Stencil Styles

The holidays are absorbing some of our audience but there are readers who might not be gathering, shopping, cooking, conversing and socializing with others. For you and all those who might be interested in some ancient arts easily entered into (though perhaps not mastered immediately), we present MIT’s Origami Club, OrigaMIT, as well as a list of favorite paper craft-dominated books we’ve collected this year that can be considered as gifts:

History of Origami – How origami came about – Origami Instructions

www.origami-instructions.com/history-of-origami.html‎

The exact origin of the art of origami is unknown. But paper was … References: 1) Origami: A Brief History of the Ancient Art of Paperfolding, by Joseph Wu.

Into the Fold | Science & Nature | Smithsonian Magazine

www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/origami.html‎

Physicist Robert Lang has taken the ancient art of origami to new dimensions. By Beth Jensen; Smithsonian magazine, June …

Background and history of origami with some extraordinary …

This form of art became part of the cultural heritage of the Japanese people. One major problem of ancient origami was that the techniques and designs were all … www.papertheworld.org/about.html

Now to the Books:

We’ll start off with The Paper Architect; Fold-It-Yourself Buildings and Structures, With 20 Ready-to-Use Templates by Maria Victoria Gerrio Bianchhini, Ingrid Siliakus and Joyce Aysta, published by Potter Craft.

Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking; 21 mixed-media map projects feature techniques with alcohol inks and pochoir, painting on a black surface and carving custom stamps.

Stencil Style 101 by Ed Roth, published by Chronicle Books. Be your own fashion designer with 20 stencils for customizing clothing and accessories: Argyle, houndstooth, chevron, leopard print, polka dots, etc.

Sit back and just read Seven Classic Stories from the Enchanted Forest by Su Blackwell, Published by Thames & Hudson. “Ms. Blackwell’s well-known paper sculptures evoke a magical world of beauty and mischief, and are accompanied by Wendy Jones’ lyrical retellings of seven classic stories.” Perfect for gift-giving as well as the other books cited above.

Photograph at top depicts Mens et Manus II, copyright 2007 Brian Chan

November 22, 2013
How Do We Protect Private Information? Consumer Privacy Framework Needs to Reflect Changes in Technology & the Marketplace

Source: Government Accountability Office*

No overarching federal privacy law governs the collection and sale of personal information among private-sector companies, including information resellers. Instead, a variety of laws tailored to specific purposes, situations, or entities governs the use, sharing, and protection of personal information.

For example, the Fair Credit Reporting Act limits the use and distribution of personal information collected or used to help determine eligibility for such things as credit or employment, but does not apply to information used for marketing. Other laws apply specifically to health care providers, financial institutions, videotape service providers, or to the online collection of information about children.

The current statutory framework for consumer privacy does not fully address new technologies – such as the tracking of online behavior or mobile devices – and the vastly increased marketplace for personal information, including the proliferation of information sharing among third parties. With regard to data used for marketing, no federal statute provides consumers the right to learn what information is held about them and who holds it.

In many circumstances, consumers also do not have the legal right to control the collection or sharing with third parties of sensitive personal information (such as their shopping habits and health interests) for marketing purposes. As a result, although some industry participants have stated that current privacy laws are adequate – particularly in light of self-regulatory measures under way – GAO found that gaps exist in the current statutory framework for privacy. And that the framework does not fully reflect the Fair Information Practice Principles, widely accepted principles for protecting the privacy and security of personal information that have served as a basis for many of the privacy recommendations federal agencies have made.

Views differ on the approach that any new privacy legislation or regulation should take. Some privacy advocates generally have argued that a comprehensive overarching privacy law would provide greater consistency and address gaps in law left by the current sector-specific approach. Other stakeholders have stated that a comprehensive, one-size-fits-all approach to privacy would be burdensome and inflexible.

In addition, some privacy advocates have cited the need for legislation that would provide consumers with greater ability to access, control the use of, and correct information about them, particularly with respect to data used for purposes other than those for which they originally were provided.

At the same time, industry representatives have asserted that restrictions on the collection and use of personal data would impose compliance costs, inhibit innovation and efficiency, and reduce consumer benefits, such as more relevant advertising and beneficial products and services.

Nonetheless, the rapid increase in the amount and type of personal information that is collected and resold warrants reconsideration of how well the current privacy framework protects personal information. The challenge will be providing appropriate privacy protections without unduly inhibiting the benefits to consumers, commerce, and innovation that data sharing can accord.

*The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. Often called the “congressional watchdog,” GAO investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. The head of GAO, the Comptroller General of the United States, is appointed to a 15-year term by the President from a slate of candidates Congress proposes.

November 19, 2013
A Measure of Courage

(Editor’s Note: JFK 50 Years: Celebrate the past … An Idea Lives On; both videos are from JFK Presidential Library and Museum. See Postscript below with an excerpt from Jaqueline Kennedy’s note to Marie, the widow of J.D. Tippit.)

By Doris O’Brien

November 22, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s untimely death. Those of us who have survived the intervening half century can likely still remember where we were when we heard the shocking news of the president’s assassination.

I was 30 years old and about to give birth to my first child. At the time, I lived in Fort Worth, Texas the last city which JFK visited before his fateful motorcade to nearby Dallas. I watched his brief Fort Worth speech on television, timing my labor pains in the process. For me, at least, the rest of that long day was a crazy mix of joy and sadness: the death of a young, charismatic president, followed a few hours later by the birth of a beautiful baby girl. Through a haze, I remember my doctor remarking that his medical colleagues at Parkland Hospital in Dallas told him Kennedy was dead on arrival there, contrary to press reports.

Since then, many other tragic events have struck at the heart of our great nation: the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King; the treacherous toppling of the Twin Towers on 9/11; and the Boston marathon bombings among them. None of these horrific happenings plunged our nation into greater grief than the shots that rang out across a grassy knoll in downtown Dallas on a bright fall day in 1963. There may be anger around the edges of all tragedies, but JFK’s untimely death was indelibly marked by a profound, heart-breaking sorrow. Our country was in mourning. Everywhere across the land, Americans — regardless of their politics — openly wept.

As the milestone anniversary of JFK’s death approaches, much will be said and written about him. And in all probability, the conspiracy theories of his assassination will be resurrected.  When he was a US Senator, Kennedy wrote a book called Profiles in Courage. The authorship is still suspect — it was a generally felt that speechwriter Ted Sorenson had composed most of the text — but the subject matter remains important to this day.

Chapters of the book are devoted to eight US Senators throughout our history and from all shades of the political spectrum. They were a diverse lot, and a few were even relatively obscure. But the uncommon thread of personal courage united them all.

November 18, 2013
The Seven Ages of Women

by Julia Sneden

An eon or two ago, one of my English teachers required us to memorize Jacques’ “All the world’s a stage” speech from As You Like It by William Shakespeare. It begins:

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

A Scene from As You Like It by Walter Deverell, 1853, oil on canvas. Private collection

It’s a brilliant metaphor, from England’s greatest dramatist. The Bard goes on to enumerate those acts, beginning with “… the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.” Anyone who has ever held an unhappy, colicky baby knows the image to be true.

Next comes “… the whining schoolboy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like a snail unwillingly to school.” In our house, he’d have had to include the missing left sneaker, the forgotten lunch bag, the cardboard Social Studies project that was drooping before it even got out the door, and the missed bus.

The third age, Shakespeare calls “… the lover, sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow.” These days any mother of a college student worries less about the “woeful ballad” and more about rap music, since its misogynistic lyrics are plenty full of woe for humankind, male or female. The furnace, however, still sighs, which bodes well for the future of the species.

After that we have a soldier, “full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard (leopard), jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the canon’s mouth.” (Would that our soldiers at My Lai or Abu Ghraib had considered reputation).

“And then the justice, in fair round belly … eyes severe … full of wise saws and modern instances …” as fine a description of middle-aged pomposity as has ever been written down.

“The sixth age shifts into the lean and slippered pantaloon (16th century slang for geezer) with spectacles on nose … his youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide for his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, turning again toward childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound.”

And last of all, “… is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

Shakespeare was, God knows, a fine describer, but it seems to me that he missed a couple of things: in the first place, the description notes what the world sees, but I’d bet my arthritic knees that his man still, on the inside, felt continuously like himself. Age brings changes of body and points of view, but the self, the essential me-ness, doesn’t change, just as it doesn’t when a fine actor takes on a role in a play or movie.

November 17, 2013
Dramatic, contemplative, violent, beautiful, dangerous and sublime: Turner and the Sea

Opening on 22 November 2013, Turner and the Sea at the National Maritime Museum is the first full-scale examination of J.M.W Turner’s lifelong fascination with the sea. Dramatic, contemplative, violent, beautiful, dangerous and sublime – the sea was the perfect subject to showcase Turner’s singular talents, and the 120 pieces on display include some of the most celebrated paintings of the artist’s long career.

Battle of Trafalgar, 1824, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Oil on canvas. Painting: 2614 x 3685 mm. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Greenwich Hospital Collection*

The extraordinary quality of the works gathered together for Turner and the Sea confirms his status as the pre-eminent painter of water, and demonstrates his unique ability to represent the elemental power of the sea. The exhibition features items on loan from some of the world’s most prestigious artistic institutions including: The National Gallery, Tate, Yale Center for British Art, British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Royal Collection, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon and National Gallery of Art, Washington.

From his transformative Royal Academy paintings of the late 1790s and early 1800s to the unfinished, experimental seascapes he produced towards the end of his life, more than half of Turner’s artistic output depicted maritime subjects. It should come as no surprise that a man who spent much of his life along the coastlines of Britain and Europe, who spent days fishing the river Thames, and who reportedly had himself lashed to the mast of a ship to better paint a storm at sea, captured this subject so often and with such evocative mastery. Nonetheless, the sheer volume of material Turner created in his quest to depict the sea is remarkable.

The Fighting ‘Temeraire’ (1839), Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth (1842), Staffa, Fingal’s Cave (1832), ‘Now for the Painter’ (1827), Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight (1835), Whalers (c.1845) and Calais Pier (1803) will all be shown, alongside works by other major British and European artists, including Willem van de Velde, Claude-Joseph Vernet, Thomas Gainsborough, Nicholas Pocock, John Constable and Richard Parkes Bonington. Turner and the Sea re-evaluates the compelling appeal of the sea for Turner and his contemporaries, and gives visitors the opportunity to see the ways in which he responded to the art of the past, while challenging his audiences with a new and exciting maritime vision.

Further highlights include: Turner’s largest painting and only royal commission, The Battle of Trafalgar (1824), one of the jewels in the National Maritime Museum’s fine art collection; Fishermen at Sea, the first oil painting Turner exhibited at the Royal Academy; The Wreck of a Transport Ship (c.1810), not seen in London since 1970s, displayed alongside The Shipwreck (1805) and Calais Pier – the first time these three storm paintings have been shown together; and The Wreck Buoy (1849), Turner’s last exhibited marine painting.

* This is Turner’s only work by ‘royal command’ and the largest and most publicly controversial painting of his career. George IV gave him the commission late in 1822 on the advice of Sir Thomas Lawrence, President of the Royal Academy. It was to form a naval pair with Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg’s 1795 view of The Battle of the Glorious First of June 1794 (see above), in a patriotic post-war redecoration of the State Rooms at St James’s Palace. Lawrence and George Jones – both Turner’s friends – were also represented, the former by his portrait of King George III and the latter by paintings of Wellington’s victories at Vittoria and Waterloo.

Visit the Editor’s Pinterest Museum Shops Board

November 15, 2013
Finally: Nearly A Million Consumers Have Completed The Health Insurance Sign Up Process; 106,185 Have Selected Plans

Nov 13, 2013

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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced enrollment numbers today for the federal and state online health insurance marketplaces that opened Oct. 1. Medicaid enrollment data were also released.

Read the HHS enrollment report here.

The Washington Post: Administration: 106,000 Enrolled In Health Insurance In First Month Of HealthCare.gov
The Obama administration reported Wednesday that slightly more than 106,000 people were able to enroll in new health-insurance plans during the first month of the troubled Internet marketplace under the new health-care law. … The numbers represent a fraction of the half-million health-plan enrollees that the Obama administration had initially projected, before the HealthCare.gov Web site’s rocky rollout thwarted many shoppers’ attempts to sign up for insurance. Budget forecasters previously projected that 7 million people would enroll in coverage during the open enrollment period for the insurance exchanges, which runs until March 31 (Branigin and Somashekhar, 11/13).

The New York Times: Health Law Enrollment Figures Far Lower Than Initial Estimates
The White House has spent weeks trying to lower expectations about the enrollment figures, which have set off a pitched political battle among supporters and critics of the health overhaul, each seeking political advantage in the numbers. One point of contention is around the way the Obama administration defines who, precisely, is enrolled. The administration counts new enrollees as those who have “selected a marketplace plan” (Stolberg, 11/13).

Politico: October Obamacare Enrollment Low
One quarter of those people came through the flawed HealthCare.gov site, which is used by 36 states. The rest enrolled in the 14 states and Washington DC, that are running their own enrollment system, most of which are generally operating much more efficiently than the federal site. The figures, which fall well short of the administration’s early goals, include people who have selected a health plan, whether or not they have actually paid for it. The White House has been tamping down expectations for weeks, warning that they have always expected the first month of enrollment to be low, even before the problems with the website became clear (Cheney and Millman, 11/13).

USA Today: Only 26,794 People Bought Insurance Via HealthCare.gov
Despite the low numbers, Sebelius touted the overall level of interest in buying health insurance. “We expect enrollment will grow substantially throughout the next five months, mirroring the pattern that Massachusetts experienced,” she said in a release before the official announcement of the enrollment figures. The states with their own exchanges outperformed those in the federal exchange: 3,736 signed up in Colorado; 4,418 in Connecticut; 5,586 in Kentucky; 16,404 in New York; and 7,091 in Washington (Kennedy, 11/13).

The Wall Street Journal: Obama Administration Gives First Month Health-Site Tallies
“There is no doubt the level of interest is strong. We expect enrollment will grow substantially throughout the next five months,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a statement on the release. “They’re also numbers that will grow as the website, HealthCare.gov, continues to make steady improvements.” … The formal release of these numbers is likely to fuel further attacks by Republican critics who have sought to repeal the 2010 health law. The woes of the HealthCare.gov website, which prevented many people from creating accounts and enrolling in a health plan, have also put pressure on Democrats. President Barack Obama is looking for ways to bolster Democratic lawmakers up for re-election next year. The House is set to vote Friday on legislation that would allow insurers to continue selling current insurance policies that don’t meet the standards of the new law. Many people among the 5% of Americans who buy coverage on the individual market have received cancellation notices in recent weeks (Radnofsky, 11/13).

November 13, 2013