Top 10 Stories of 2011

Huffinton Post
Here Are 2011's Top 10 Stories, In Order, From Ballots Cast, Huffingtonpost

OSAMA BIN LADEN'S DEATH: He'd been the world's most-wanted terrorist for nearly a decade, ever since a team of his al-Qaida followers carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In May, the long and often-frustrating manhunt ended with a nighttime assault by a helicopter-borne special operations squad on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Bin Laden was shot dead by one of the raiders, and within hours his body was buried at sea.

JAPAN'S TRIPLE DISASTER: A 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Japan's northeast coast in March unleashed a tsunami that devastated scores of communities, leaving nearly 20,000 people dead or missing and wreaking an estimated $218 billion in damage.

ARAB SPRING: It began with demonstrations in Tunisia that rapidly toppled the longtime strongman. Spreading like a wildfire, the Arab Spring protests sparked a revolution in Egypt that ousted Hosni Mubarak, fueled a civil war in Libya that climaxed with Moammar Gadhafi's death, and fomented a bloody uprising in Syria against the Assad regime. Bahrain and Yemen also experienced major protests and unrest.

EU FISCAL CRISIS:

US ECONOMY:

PENN STATE SEX ABUSE SCANDAL: One of America's most storied college football programs was tarnished in a scandal that prompted the firing of Hall of Fame football coach Joe Paterno.

GADHAFI TOPPLED IN LIBYA: After nearly 42 years of mercurial and often brutal rule, Moammar Gadhafi was toppled by his own people. Anti-government protests escalated into an eight-month rebellion, backed by NATO bombing, that shattered his regime, and Gadhafi finally was tracked down and killed in the fishing village where he was born.

FISCAL SHOWDOWNS IN CONGRESS: Partisan divisions in Congress led to several showdowns on fiscal issues. A fight over the debt ceiling prompted Standard & Poor's to strip the U.S. of its AAA credit rating. Later, the so-called "supercommittee" failed to agree on a deficit-reduction package of at least $1.2 trillion — potentially triggering automatic spending cuts of that amount starting in 2013.

OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTESTS:

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS SHOT: The popular third-term congresswoman from Arizona suffered a severe brain injury when she and 18 other people were shot by a gunman as she met with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket in January. Six people died, and Giffords' painstaking recovery is still in progress.

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Why You Should Care About The 'Medical Loss Ratio'

Atlantic Wire - Ted Mann - December 3rd
Unless you are a health care worker or a health care industry employee, you likely haven't given a ton of thought to the medical loss ratio. That is, simply stated, the percentage of health insurance company spending that actually goes to pay for the medical care delivered to people.

If you are a health care industry employee, particularly one of the executive variety, you have likely given a lot of thought to the medical loss ratio in the last several years, and especially in the past day. That's because the federal Department of Health and Human Services just issued its final rule on the topic, implementing an aspect of the Obama health care law that played little part in the public debate, but matters tremendously to insurance companies.

Under the new rules, insurers must spend at least 80 percent of the money they take in from insurance premiums (less taxes and fees) toward providing health care to their customers. If they don't spend that percentage, insurers will now be required to send rebates back to the people paying the premiums.

A thorough explanation of the rule and its effects is at Health Affairs. Over at Forbes, Rick Ungar writes that this is the actual "bomb" health insurers were worried about in the otherwise not-all-that-radical Obamacare bill.