Year: 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — Uninsured Americans are still procrastinating about President Barack Obama's health care law. With fewer than 60 days left to enroll, can the administration find the millions of customers needed to sustain new insurance markets?

Why we are different – Are you fed up with yoyo dieting and losing weight … How many times have you reached for food, citing boredom, loneliness, …

In a strange turn of life imitating art–the art in this case being the 2000 movie Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks–a fisherman who went missing just over a year ago turned up on the shores of the Marshall Islands. His identity hasn’t been confirmed yet, but authorities in the Marshall Islands believe Jose Salvador Alvarenga was adrift at sea for 13 months after setting off from the Mexican village of Chiapas in late 2012.

JPMorgan and Sterne Agee cut the target price of the stock – JPMorgan to $5 from $6 and Sterne Agee to $3 from $9. Shares of Yum Brands Inc rose 8.9 percent to $72.06 after the KFC parent reaffirmed its 2014 profit outlook and said a resurgent bird flu in China had not hurt national sales in its top market.

By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. health officials have investigated whether some of the software used in computers at the heart of President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform was written in Belarus, but have found no evidence of that being the case, a White House official said on Tuesday. A report of the probe, first published by the conservative Washington Free Beacon website late Monday, was seized on by Republicans who are campaigning to scuttle the reforms and say the website HealthCare.gov remains vulnerable to hackers four months after its botched roll-out on October 1. Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for Obama’s National Security Council, said investigators for the Department of Health and Human Services had “found no indications that any software was developed in Belarus.” The main contractor for the HealthCare.gov project, CGI Federal, said: “At no time during its work on HealthCare.gov did CGI subcontract any work to any entity or persons from Belarus, specifically from the high-technology park in Minsk.” It added in a statement: “All of CGI’s work for HealthCare.gov was performed in the United States.” QSSI, a unit of health insurer UnitedHealth Group which took over late last year to oversee repairs to the faulty website, declined to comment.

By David Morgan and David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama's healthcare law will reduce the American workforce by the equivalent of 2 million full-time workers in 2017, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday, prompting Republicans to paint the law as bad medicine for the U.S. economy. In its latest U.S. fiscal outlook, the nonpartisan CBO said the health law would lead some workers, particularly those with lower incomes, to limit their hours to avoid losing federal subsidies that Obamacare provides to help pay for health insurance and other healthcare costs. White House officials characterized reduced hours as a reflection of new choices for workers. CBO officials pointed to older workers as one example, saying some nearing retirement could decide to keep their work hours shorter to maintain healthcare subsidies until they qualified for Medicare.

(Reuters) – Research services provider Covance Inc reported a better-than-expected 19 percent jump in quarterly adjusted profit as it gained from higher investments in later stages of drug development by pharma companies. The company forecast 2014 adjusted earnings of $3.65 to $4.00 per share, compared to analysts’ expectation of $3.81. Covance, considered a bellwether for the contract research business, said fourth-quarter revenue jumped 14.5 percent in the later-stage research business. …