Insurance Company Mocks Obamacare Website in New Ads, Yellen Nomination Moves to Full Senate, WordPress.com Joins Lawsuit Over DMCA Abuse: P.M. Links
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Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield is running a series of ads in Iowa and South Dakota mocking the government's healthcare.gov problems and suggesting consumers try the company's website instead. In Colorado, a 14-year-old Yorkie named Baxter was enrolled through Obamacare. California, meanwhile, is looking to dial back the Obamacare rule that will prohibit insurance companies from dropping policy holders before three consecutive months of non-payment. California will continue to apply its own rule, which prohibits companies from dropping policyholders within a one-month grace period.
- The nomination of Janet Yellen passed the Senate Banking Committee 14-8, and is now headed for a full Senate vote.
- Senator Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned that in response to Democrats altering filibuster rules in a party-line vote, Republicans would expand the rollback of the judicial filibuster when they regain power.
- The parent company of blogging website WordPress.com is joining two lawsuits by its users against alleged abusers of the DMCA copyright infringement take-down process.
- A federal indictment unsealed today alleges that a drug dealer in Thailand boasted of being able to exprt to the United States a form of methamphetamine with "Breaking Bad" purity levels, and that the North Korean government was protecting the manufacturing operation in that country.
- The LA Unified School District admitted the software licenses they purchased as part of their iPad acquisition will expire within three years, just six months before most students expected to participate in the program will have the devices. Renewal may cost up to $60 million a year after that.
- A celebration putting San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee in the spotlight when the Make-a-Wish Foundation helped a boy play Batkid for a day means the act of charity will cost the city $105,000.
- The University of Nicosia in Cyprus announced it would accept Bitcoin as payment for tuition and other school fees.
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