Updated November 10, 2012, 1:28 pm
On Nov. 11, 1918, fighting in World War I came to an end with the signing of an armistice between the Allies and Germany.
On Nov. 11, 1885, George Patton, the famous World War II American military officer, was born. Following his death on Dec. 21, 1945, his obituary appeared in The Times.
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On This Date
By The Associated Press
1620 Forty-one Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchored off Massachusetts, signed a compact calling for a “body politick.” 1831 Former slave Nat Turner, who had led a violent insurrection, was executed in Jerusalem, Va. 1889 Washington became the 42nd state. 1921 President Warren G. Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. 1965 Rhodesia proclaimed its independence from Britain. 1972 The U.S. Army turned over its base at Long Binh to the South Vietnamese army, symbolizing the end of direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. 1992 The Church of England voted to ordain women as priests. 1998 Israel’s Cabinet narrowly ratified a land-for-peace agreement with the Palestinians. 2000 Republicans went to court seeking an order to block manual recounts from continuing in Florida’s presidential election. 2000 A cable car crammed with skiers and snowboarders caught fire while being pulled through an Alpine tunnel in Austria, killing 155 people. 2004 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died in Paris at age 75. 2008 Country singer Taylor Swift’s album “Fearless” was released. Current Birthdays
By The Associated Press
New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez turns 26 years old today.
AP Photo/Bill Kostroun
Actor Stanley Tucci turns 52 years old today.
AP Photo/Peter Kramer
1925 Jonathan Winters, Comedian, turns 87 1940 Barbara Boxer, U.S. senator, D-Calif., turns 72 1951 Fuzzy Zoeller, Golfer, turns 61 1953 Marshall Crenshaw, Rock singer, turns 59 1962 Demi Moore, Actress, turns 50 1964 Calista Flockhart, Actress (“Ally McBeal”), turns 48 1969 Carson Kressley, TV personality (“Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”), turns 43 1974 Leonardo DiCaprio, Actor, turns 38 Historic Birthdays
George Patton 11/11/1885 – 12/21/1945 American army officer.Go to obituary »
47 Paracelsus 11/11/1493 – 9/24/1541
German-Swiss physician61 George Savile Halifax 11/11/1633 – 4/5/1695
British statesman67 Johann Albert Fabricius 11/11/1668 – 4/30/1736
German bibliographer71 Philip John Schuyler 11/11/1733 – 11/18/1804
American soldier and politician71 Paul Signac 11/11/1863 – 8/15/1935
French painter78 Victor Emmanuel III 11/11/1869 – 12/28/1947
Italian king (1900-47)80 Maude Adams 11/11/1872 – 7/17/1953
American actress62 Rabbit Maranville 11/11/1891 – 1/5/1954
American professional baseball player65 Lucky Luciano 11/11/1896 – 1/26/1962
Italian-born American gangster82 Rene Clair 11/11/1898 – 3/15/1981
French film director84 Sam Spiegel 11/11/1901 – 12/31/1985
Austrian-born American film producer92 Alger Hiss 11/11/1904 – 11/15/1996
American official accused of Communist affiliation (1948); convicted of perjury
Month: November 2012
Cafe Marie's: Great for a Weekend Brunch
On This Day: November 10
Updated November 9, 2012, 1:28 pm
On Nov. 10, 1982, the newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened to its first visitors in Washington, D.C.
On Nov. 10, 1925, Richard Burton, British stage and film actor, was born. Following his death on Aug. 5, 1984, his obituary appeared in The Times.
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On This Date
By The Associated Press
1483 Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation, was born in Eisleben, Germany. 1775 The U.S. Marines were organized under authority of the Continental Congress. 1871 Journalist-explorer Henry M. Stanley found missing Scottish missionary David Livingstone in central Africa and delivered his famous greeting: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” 1928 Hirohito was enthroned as Emperor of Japan. 1938 Kate Smith first sang Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” on network radio. 1942 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, discussing the recent victory over Rommel at El Alamein, Egypt, said “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” 1951 Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began with a call between the mayors of Englewood, N.J., and Alameda, Calif. 1954 The U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, depicting the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, was dedicated in Arlington, Va. 1961 The satirical anti-war novel “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller was published. 1969 “Sesame Street” debuted on PBS. 1975 The U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution equating Zionism with racism. 1982 Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died at age 75. 1997 A judge in Cambridge, Mass., reduced Louise Woodward’s murder conviction to manslaughter and sentenced the English au pair to time served in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen. 1997 WorldCom Inc. and MCI Communications Corp. agreed to a $37 billion merger. 2001 The World Trade Organization approved China’s membership. 2007 Author Norman Mailer died at age 84. 2009 John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks that killed 10 in the Washington, D.C. region, was executed. Current Birthdays
By The Associated Press
Rapper-actress Eve turns 34 years old today.
AP Photo/Peter Kramer
Country singer Miranda Lambert turns 29 years old today.
AP Photo/Matt Sayles
1924 Russell Johnson, Actor (“Gilligan’s Island”), turns 88 1943 Saxby Chambliss, U.S. senator, R-Ga., turns 69 1944 Tim Rice, Lyricist, turns 68 1947 Greg Lake, Rock singer, musician (Emerson, Lake and Palmer), turns 65 1949 Ann Reinking, Actress, dancer, turns 63 1956 Sinbad, Actor, comedian, turns 56 1959 Mackenzie Phillips, Actress (“One Day at a Time”), turns 53 1963 Hugh Bonneville, Actor (“Downton Abbey”), turns 49 1963 Mike McCarthy, Football coach, turns 49 1964 Kenny Rogers, Baseball player, turns 48 1968 Tracy Morgan, Actor (“30 Rock,” “Saturday Night Live”), turns 44 1969 Ellen Pompeo, Actress (“Grey’s Anatomy”), turns 43 1982 Heather Matarazzo, Actress, turns 30 1999 Kiernan Shipka, Actress (“Mad Men”), turns 13 Historic Birthdays
Richard Burton 11/10/1925 – 8/5/1984 British stage and film actor.Go to obituary »
66 Henry Percy Northumberland 11/10/1341 – 2/20/1408
English statesman62 Martin Luther 11/10/1483 – 2/18/1546
German religious leader and reformer33 Robert Devereux Essex 11/10/1567 – 2/25/1601
English soldier64 Francois Couperin 11/10/1668 – 9/12/1733
French composer66 William Hogarth 11/10/1697 – 10/26/1764
English artist43 Oliver Goldsmith 11/10/1730 – 4/4/1774
Irish-born English writer74 Samuel Gridley Howe 11/10/1801 – 1/9/1876
American educator and social reformer30 Francis Maitland Balfour 11/10/1851 – 7/19/1882
British zoologist and embryologist52 Vachel Lindsay 11/10/1879 – 12/5/1931
American poet51 El Lissitzky 11/10/1890 – 12/30/1941
American artist66 John Phillips Marquand 11/10/1893 – 7/16/1960
American novelist85 John Knudsen Northrop 11/10/1895 – 2/18/1981
American aircraft designer
"Some nights, I call it a draw!"
Bangkok Cuisine Express: Our Neighborhood Thai Place
What is the Fiscal Cliff?
On This Day: November 9
Updated November 8, 2012, 1:28 pm
On Nov. 9, 1965, the great Northeast blackout occurred as several states and parts of Canada were hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours.
On Nov. 9, 1934, Carl Sagan, the astronomer whose books and television show informed millions of Americans, was born. Following his death on Dec. 20, 1996, his obituary appeared in The Times.
Go to obituary » | Other birthdays »
On This Date
By The Associated Press
1918 Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II announced that he would abdicate. 1935 United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization. 1938 Nazis looted and burned synagogues and Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria on Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass.” 1965 Several northeastern states and parts of Canada were hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours. 1970 Former French president Charles De Gaulle died at age 79. 1976 The United Nations General Assembly approved 10 resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa. 2001 The northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif fell to the northern alliance in the first major territorial advance for the rebels against the ruling Taliban. 2004 Houston Astros pitcher Roger Clemens won his record seventh Cy Young award. 2005 Three suicide bombers carried out nearly simultaneous attacks on three U.S.-based hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing 60 victims and wounding hundreds. 2011 Penn State fired longtime head football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier over their handling of child sex abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.. Current Birthdays
By The Associated Press
Actor Eric Dane (“Grey’s Anatomy”) turns 40 years old today.
AP Photo/Dan Steinberg
Actress Nikki Blonsky (“Hairspray”) turns 24 years old today.
AP Photo/Evan Agostini
1931 Whitey Herzog, Hall of Fame baseball manager, turns 81 1935 Bob Gibson, Baseball Hall of Famer, turns 77 1936 Bob Graham, Former U.S. senator, D-Fla., turns 76 1948 Robert David Hall, Actor (“CSI”), turns 64 1951 Lou Ferrigno, Actor (“The Incredible Hulk”), turns 61 1952 Sherrod Brown, U.S. senator, D-Ohio, turns 60 1969 Pepa, Rapper (Salt-N-Pepa), turns 43 1973 Nick Lachey, Singer (98 Degrees), turns 39 Historic Birthdays
Carl Sagan 11/9/1934 – 12/20/1996 American astronomer.Go to obituary »
74 Benjamin Banneker 11/9/1731 – 10/25/1806
American mathematician, astronomer, inventor and writer72 Gail Borden 11/9/1801 – 1/11/1874
American businessman34 Elijah Lovejoy 11/9/1802 – 11/7/1837
American abolitionist52 Stanford White 11/9/1853 – 6/25/1906
American architect64 Marie Dressler 11/9/1869 – 7/28/1934
Canadian-born American actress81 Florence Sabin 11/9/1871 – 10/3/1953
American anatomist79 Ed Wynn 11/9/1886 – 6/19/1966
American actor37 Mabel Normand 11/9/1892 – 2/23/1930
American actress77 Spiro Agnew 11/9/1918 – 9/17/1996
American politician; 39th vice president of the United States (1969-73)67 James Schuyler 11/9/1923 – 4/12/1991
American poet, playwright and novelist42 Dorothy Dandridge 11/9/1922 – 9/8/1965
American actress45 Anne Sexton 11/9/1928 – 10/4/1974
American poet
Health Care Reform Lives: What Obama Must Do To Ensure It Thrives
President Barack Obama’s reelection removes questions about the survival of the health care reform law bearing his name, meaning that over the next two years medical insurance will all but certainly be extended to as many as 30 million Americans who now lack coverage.
But even as the endurance of Obamacare no longer appears in doubt, the breadth and impact of the president’s signature health care expansion remains subject to the vagaries of Washington bureaucracy, the inclinations of private employers opposed to extending health care benefits, and the political calculations of elected officials in individual states. Republican governors in six states have vowed to oppose one of health care reform’s central components — a dramatic expansion of Medicaid, the joint federal-state insurance program for poor people.
In essence, Tuesday night’s election result replaced one giant threat to Obamacare — the prospect that the president’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, would seek to repeal it — with myriad smaller questions: Will the federal agencies tasked with writing the rules to implement it do their work quickly enough, and despite the lobbying by affected industries seeking favored treatment? Will states opposed to Obamacare limit its reach by refusing federal money that is supposed to finance the Medicaid expansion?
With his reelection secured, it’s now up to Obama to turn those question marks into periods. Failure to do so could jeopardize the entirety of his project, leaving Americans still clamoring for stable and affordable health care disappointed and angry. Success might enshrine him as the president who delivered largest expansion of the social safety net since the Great Society.
“There are going to be some glitches,” said Timothy Jost, a professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law who advises state and federal officials as a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. “The implementation of massive programs is always problematic,” he said. “I’m fairly optimistic that this is going to happen. I’m also very optimistic that once it’s been in place a year or two, a lot of people are going to say, ‘How did we ever live without this?'”
In simplest terms, Obamacare amounts to a package of measures that significantly expands options for Americans who now lack health care coverage. The law guarantees health benefits for the poorest Americans by expanding Medicaid to anyone who earns up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $14,856 this year. Currently, states determine their own Medicaid eligibility levels — though federal minimums apply –and many exclude people once incomes reach as little as half the federal poverty line.
Among those with incomes reaching up to 400 percent of poverty — or $44,680 in 2012 — the federal government will extend tax credits aimed at enabling people to buy their own health insurance policies from providers, shopping for their plans on so-called exchanges that allow them to compare prices and benefits.
Not least, Obamacare prohibits some of the health insurance industry’s most notorious practices, such as denying coverage to people who have pre-existing conditions, charging women higher premiums than men, and cutting customers off when their medical bills pile up.
In the nearly three years since his proposed legislation became law, Obamacare has already survived unanimous opposition from Republicans, a Supreme Court challenge, and finally Romney’s vow to undo the law if elected.
With these threats duly vanquished, the health care reform law now confronts a diffuse state-by-state, bureaucrat-by-bureaucrat battle to reach the ordinary Americans hoping for health care coverage.
Some of its measures have already been implemented, such as a requirement that insurance plans allow parents to cover adult children up to 26 years old on their policies. A prohibition against rejecting children with pre-existing conditions is also in place.
But the Obama administration has yet to publish a slew of crucial regulations that will define how health insurance is sold and what it must cover.
Health insurance companies must rush to adapt to a new market and employers will weigh covering workers or dropping health benefits to save money.
And as the Obama administration seeks to navigate this thicket of challenges, it still finds itself grappling with a public that is far from unified and not fully sold on the merits of his reform scheme, as Election Day exit polls revealed.
The biggest obstacle facing successful implementation of Obama’s Affordable Care Act is the law’s reliance on states to carry out one vital component of the law, the Medicaid expansion. While the Supreme Court upheld the broad challenge to Obamacare, finding that the federal government has the power to require people to purchase insurance, it also struck down a provision that obligated states to particpate in adding millions of people to their Medicaid rolls. That means the administration will need to cajole individual governors to go along to have any hope of achieving its goal of near-universal coverage by expanding health insurance to an estimated 30 million uninsured people by 2022.
“The major implementation tasks associated with the law are carried out by the states, especially when it comes to extending health insurance coverage,” said Alan Weil, the executive director of th
e National Academy for State Health Policy.Republican governors like Florida’s Rick Scott and Texas’ Rick Perry have adamantly refused to extend health coverage to poor residents in their states, which will limit health care reform’s impact on the neediest people.
The stakes are considerable: The Congressional Budget Office calculated that allowing states to opt out of the planned Medicaid expansion could leave some 3 million people uninsured.
Republican recalcitrance and uncertainty about the federal rules have limited states’ readiness to carry out the law. As evidence of the intensity of opposition to Obamacare in some quarters, Alabama, Missouri, Montana and Wyoming voters all backed ballot initiatives Tuesday aiming to limit their states’ ability to comply with the law. A similar measure failed in Florida.
The decisions states make will go a long way toward determining how many poor people gain health coverage because they also have the option of creating their own health insurance exchanges under federal guidelines and have broad leeway to set regulations on health insurance benefits and premiums.
A deadline looms just 10 days away for states to present the administration with their plans for building the health insurance exchanges. According to the consulting company Avalere Health, 20 states are likely to run their own exchanges and 13 are likely to partner with the federal government, leaving federal authorities to manage the remainder.
Private sector interests that opposed health care reform, in whole or in part, will have to set aside their objections and adjust to the new reality if the law is to reach as many uninsured people as Obama aims.
Health insurance companies stand to gain tens of millions of new customers, but face new regulations and a new tax on their sales that will cut into their profits. A statement issued Wednesday by Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group, underscores insurers’ mixed view of Obamacare.
“As the health care reform law is implemented, policymakers must prioritize affordability for consumers and employers. Several provisions in the law, such as the new premium tax, minimum coverage requirements, and age rating restrictions, need to be addressed to keep coverage as affordable as possible and ensure broad participation in the system,” Ignagni said.
Possibly the biggest source of potential disruption in the health insurance market could occur in plans offered to workers by their employers. More about 150 million Americans are enrolled in job-based health benefits, making it the most common source of coverage. That won’t change, said Tracy Watts, the national health care reform leader for the consulting firm Mercer.
“Over 90 percent of employers are committed to continuing to offer coverage in 2014,” Watts said, citing the company’s surveys, which are consistent with projections from the Congressional Budget Office and others, and the real-word experience from Romney’s similar 2006 Massachusetts health care law.
Under health care reform, companies with at least 50 employees must provide coverage or face penalties. For smaller companies, paying a penalty and letting workers buy their own coverage on the exchanges might make more sense, Watts said. The biggest cost increases will hit retailers and other companies that typically don’t cover their workers, she said.
