The private health insurance industry is unable to provide nearly 40 million Americans with basic health care. Relying on data from a wide range of publications about this secretive industry, Lawrence D. Weiss investigates the causes of the industry's problems and analyzes the social effects of the growing crisis. The causes include excessive overhead costs, widespread inefficiency, and exemptions from antimonopoly regulations; the social effects include small businesses' inabilities to provide adequate coverage for their employees, the reluctance of many carriers to insure certain social groups, and the disproportionate burden on minorities. Addressing these dilemmas, Lawrence D. Weiss offers a timely and important analysis of the health insurance crisis in America.

Employer's Tax Guide (Circular E) - The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), enacted on March 18, 2020, and amended by the COVID-related Tax Relief Act of 2020, provides certain employers with tax credits that reimburse them for the cost of providing paid sick and family leave wages to their employees for leave related to COVID‐19. Qualified sick and family leave wages and the related credits for qualified sick and family leave wages are only reported on employment tax returns with respect to wages paid for leave taken in quarters beginning after March 31, 2020, and before April 1, 2021, unless extended by future legislation. If you paid qualified sick and family leave wages in 2021 for 2020 leave, you will claim the credit on your 2021 employment tax return. Under the FFCRA, certain employers with fewer than 500 employees provide paid sick and fam-ily leave to employees unable to work or telework. The FFCRA required such employers to provide leave to such employees after March 31, 2020, and before January 1, 2021. Publication 15 (For use in 2021)

Understanding risk -- Putting risk in perspective -- Risk charts : a way to get perspective -- Judging the benefit of a health intervention -- Not all benefits are equal : understand the outcome -- Consider the downsides -- Do the benefits outweight the downsides? -- Beware of exaggerated importance -- Beware of exaggerated certainty -- Who's behind the numbers?