More than 100,000 Minnesota residents will have to hunt around for a new health insurance provider, after Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota announced it’s taking a step back from offering health plans to individuals and families in the state as of 2017.

The company, which is Minnesota’s largest health insurer, pegged the move on major financial losses, after leaking a reported $265 million on insurance operations from individual market plans in 2015.

“The individual market remains in transition and we look forward to working toward a more stable path with policy leaders here in Minnesota and at the national level,” the company said in a statement. “Shifts and changes in health plan participation and market segments have contributed to a volatile individual market, where costs and prices have been escalating at unprecedented levels.”

The move will affect about 103,000 Minnesotans who have purchased Blue Cross coverage on their own, through an agent or broker, or on MNsure, the state’s insurance exchange, the company says. Though the main Blue Cross Blue Shield unit is leaving the state’s individual market, its smaller subsidiary, Blue Plus, will still offer plans on the individual market. Blue Plus has about 13,000 members.

The last day of coverage for all other Blue Cross individual and family plans, other than those offered through Blue Plus HMO, will be Dec. 31, 2016.

“We understand and regret the difficulty we know this causes for some of our members,” the insurer wrote. “We will be notifying all of our members individually and work with them to assess and transition to alternative coverage options in 2017.”

A representative with the Kaiser Family Foundation, which analyzes individual health insurance markets nationwide, told NPR News that Blue Cross Blue Shield isn’t the only company doing a walk back in this area.

“Right now what it seems like is that insurance companies are really trying to reset their strategy,” she said. “So they may be pulling out selectively in certain markets to reevaluate their strategy and participation in the exchanges.”

Minnesota’s Largest Health Insurer To Drop Individual Plans [NPR News]

Cheesy Broccoli Potato Soup Recipe – Cheap and EASY!!! is a post from: Budgeting In the Fun Stuff

Get ready to have a new everyday food backup idea!  Kay made this very yummy soup while I was visiting her and her kids in Salt Lake City.  And when she gave me the recipe, I was so excited!  Cheap and easy – my favorite combo when it comes to cooking! 

Cheesy Broccoli Potato Soup

• 10 oz of fresh or frozen broccoli
• 1/2 cup of water
• 2 cans of Cream of Potato soup
• 2 cups milk
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

These are all of the ingredients that you’ll need for this soup. How cool is that?!

1.  Bring broccoli and water to a boil.  Then cover and simmer for 5 minutes.  Do not drain the water.

Boiling a little water with some broccoli – easy peasy!

2.   Stir in the canned soup and milk.  Stir over medium heat for 3-5 minutes.

Yep, I just added the canned cream of potato soup and some milk…

3.  Add shredded cheese slowly and stir until it melts.

And the last part is, of course, to add shredded cheese.

4.  ENJOY!  Seriously, it is that easy.  You can dip in French bread or use a bread bowl – that choice is the hardest part!

Okay, so this was supposed to be a picture of the soup in my pretty bead bowl. Well, it looked delicious, so I ate it, and this was the end result.

I have not reread this little classic article from 9 years ago, until a customer in California found it and complained that it was outrageous that the state would actually allow such a person as its author to operate anything in a state park.  So I suppose it is worth relinking, if just for that reason.  Most of it holds up pretty well, though I regret the jab implying that progressives supported suicide bombers.  Here is an example:

Beyond just the concept of individual decision-making, progressives are hugely uncomfortable with capitalism.  Ironically, though progressives want to posture as being "dynamic", the fact is that capitalism is in fact too dynamic for them.  Industries rise and fall, jobs are won and lost, recessions give way to booms.  Progressives want comfort and certainty.  They want to lock things down the way they are. They want to know that such and such job will be there tomorrow and next decade, and will always pay at least X amount.  That is why, in the end, progressives are all statists, because, to paraphrase Hayek, only a government with totalitarian powers can bring the order and certainty and control of individual decision-making that they crave.

Progressive elements in this country have always tried to freeze commerce, to lock this country's economy down in its then-current patterns.  Progressives in the late 19th century were terrified the American economy was shifting from agriculture to industry.  They wanted to stop this, to cement in place patterns where 80-90% of Americans worked on farms.  I, for one, am glad they failed, since for all of the soft glow we have in this country around our description of the family farmer, farming was and can still be a brutal, dawn to dusk endeavor that never really rewards the work people put into it.

This story of progressives trying to stop history has continued to repeat itself through the generations.  In the seventies and eighties, progressives tried to maintain the traditional dominance of heavy industry like steel and automotive, and to prevent the shift of these industries overseas in favor of more service-oriented industries.  Just like the passing of agriculture to industry a century ago inflamed progressives, so too does the current passing of heavy industry to services....

Take prescription drugs in the US - isn't it pretty clear that the progressive position is that they would be willing to pretty much gut incentives for any future drug innovations in trade for having a system in place that guaranteed everyone minimum access to what exists today?  Or take the welfare state in Continental Europe -- isn't it clear that a generation of workers/voters chose certainty over growth and improvement?  That workers 30 years ago voted themselves jobs for life, but at the cost of tremendous unemployment amongst the succeeding generations?