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To get ourselves started, let’s start with a simple reassurance: there are some excellent drugs on the market that will treat even the most serious outbreak of heartburn. They are called proton pump inhibitors and they work by reducing the amount of stomach acid your body produces. The good news is there’s less acid to leak out of your stomach and cause the pain. The bad news is that, with less acid in your stomach, it takes longer to process the food. So put the drugs to one side for a moment and think about the problem. When food passes into the mouth and, after chewing, falls down towards the stomach, your body gets ready to break the food down into its chemical ingredients. The good stuff gets syphoned into the blood stream and sent off to where its going to do the most good. All the rest gets expelled from the body. The $64,000 question is how the stomach does the processing. It all starts with the acid, but mixed into it are a series of different enzymes to help break down the different types of food. Your body is a very clever machine and, left to its own devices, it produces just enough acid and enzymes to clear the stomach quickly.

If your body “likes” the food, it sends a pleasure message to the brain. This encourages you to remember what the body likes and to eat or drink more of it. Unfortunately, the body likes the food that puts on the unwanted pounds. That’s why you get a buzz when you eat or drink something sweet or savory. When food with a high-fat content arrives in the stomach, you feel good and the body orders more stomach acid to break it down. If there was only a small amount of food, it would quickly fall down the esophagus and the extra acid would stay in the stomach. But if you are eating a lot, the sphincter separating the esophagus from the stomach is kept open to keep the food on the move. The food pushes the acid out of the stomach. Worse, if you don’t sit up straight, the acid can also run into the esophagus. Either way, that burning pain starts. Lying down immediately after a big meal is asking for pain. Read the rest of this entry »

Although the latest employment statistics show a drop in the number of people claiming benefit, there’s little real improvement in the availability of work. It’s still tough to find and keep a job. Curiously, both the GOP and the Democrats see the need to encourage small business, believing new entrepreneurs will lead us out of the recession. The problem with this view is we are less entrepreneurial than we used to be. Many other countries have a higher percentage of people prepared to risk their capital in starting new businesses. The majority of our younger adults are just sitting back waiting for jobs to come along. That said, the Government is encouraging small business with tax breaks. All of which brings us to the Affordable Care Act.

Ignoring the usual politics and second-guessing what the Supreme Court will rule in 2012, let’s focus on what will happen between now and 2014 when the whole Act’s program is supposed to be in force. If you are a one-person business, you will be caught by the mandate just like any other individual. That means you buy cover or pay a penalty. For the record, the penalty is $695 or 2.5% of your income whichever is the greater unless the actual cost of the premium will be more than 8% of your income. You do the math to weigh up where you interests lie.

There’s no mandate for businesses, but there are penalties for failing to put a plan in place. If you have up to 25 employees, there’s a tax break to set off against half the cost of group cover. But you only get the maximum benefit if you are really small, i.e. you do not have the equivalent of 10 full-time employees and the average of their pay is less than $25,000. Your right to the tax break reduces as your size and the average pay increases. If you are small but your employees earn an average of $50,000 or more you lose the tax credit. In 2014 every state should have a Small Business Exchange in operation and, if you decide to buy through your local exchange, the tax credit will increase. However, these tax credits are only to prime the pump. Once you have a plan for your business, the credit will phase out over five years and only for two years after the exchanges are running. Read the rest of this entry »

An increasing number of companies advertise their willingness to buy your policy, but is this always a good idea?There’s news from Britain where some of these companies are based. It seems some have run into financial difficulty and the national regulator is imposing new limits on the right of British-based companies to buy US life policies. The problem is these companies are forced to guess how long you will live after the deal is made. Put simply, if the buyer makes a good guess, there is a good return on the money invested. But if medical science keeps you alive for more years than expected, the buyer may make a loss.

It will help understanding to put numbers on this. Suppose you are aged 72 and, looking at the current life expectancy statistics, you are expected to live for a further ten years. The guaranteed minimum payment is $500,000 and the annual premium is $18,000. In today’s market, you would expect to sell at around $220,000. If the estimate is correct and you live for a further ten years, this means the buyer will pay $180,000 in installments and make a profit of at least $100,000 less the cost of financing and administration. But if you live for more than fifteen years, the buyer has paid out more than it will receive unless there is a good cash value.

As average life expectancy increases, this makes the decision for the potential buyers much more difficult. Will you be one of the many who will die young or will you be the less common person who lives until more than one-hundred? This decision is easier when the buyer has a medical report prepared, but it is not always convenient and cost-effective to pay for a full report. Faced with this uncertainty, there is increasing pressure on buyers to offer less. Indeed, many informed observers are beginning to describe some of the offers as so low they are potentially fraudulent. All of this should encourage you to approach the life settlement market with some caution. Always know exactly what the insurance company will offer as the surrender value. Then remember it is not a good reason to sell on the secondary market just because you are offered a few thousand more. You should be looking for a substantial improvement over surrender value. Read the rest of this entry »

When that inspired individual invented the wheel in those distant centuries, there was no patent system to protect the novelty of the idea. Everyone else looked on as the first wheels appeared on the streets and, before you could say, Jack Robinson, everyone had wheels. Those were the days when everyone shared the benefits of all the inventions. Times were hard and survival mattered more than commercial intellectual property rights. It took a long time for the world to come round to the view that inventions should be subject to a monopoly protection. We had a fully developed market economy back in Ancient Greece and Rome. There was a universal currency throughout both political groups, but it was not until a few hundred years ago that aggressive merchants began to buy monopoly rights from the political rulers. Now, we seem to take it as given that anyone who creates something new should have protection. Except, that is, when it comes to downloading the odd copyright-protected MP3.

In theory, this should not cause too many problems except the patent system is used to stifle creativity and keep out competing products while the patent holder changes the maximum possible retail price. This penalizes us, the consumers. We either pay the asking price or go without. So welcome to the court of District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith. Note it fell to a woman to decide the fate of men as we all waited for cheaper erectile dysfunction drugs. So here comes an international company with the nerve to threaten the cosy US market with cheap generic drugs. This competition on price would have affected the three current patent holders. Pfizer took the lead and argued it had a patent up to 2019.

Why so long? Well, after patenting the underlying chemistry as a treatment for high blood pressure in the arteries running through the chest and lungs, it registered a second patent for the same drug as a treatment for erectile dysfunction. Check out the history. You’ll find the erectile dysfunction use of the drug was an accidental discovery during the trial for hypertension. The foreigners were bold, arguing this was nothing new. It was obvious from the first research trial. Unfortunately, the judge disagreed and ordered the foreigner to take its cheap generics away and not return until 2019. This means we continue to suffer the price gouging from all three manufacturers with no immediate sign of there being anyone able to introduce a generic into the market. Read the rest of this entry »