The Bay Citizen: Running for Mayor, but With Her Money Not in Play

How’s this for a Harvard Business School case study: The Bay Area is renowned for its entrepreneurial culture and the fortunes amassed by its technology elite. But leaders from that world have been notably unsuccessful persuading voters that business smarts qualify them for elective office. (Think Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina and Steve Westly.)

Can a member of this tribe win an election here?

As she campaigns to be elected San Francisco’s next mayor, Joanna Rees, a moderately successful venture capitalist and a Columbia M.B.A., is determined to prove that the seemingly immutable laws of local politics do not apply to her.

Ms. Rees, a 49-year-old mother of two, has spent the past two years visiting coffee shops and churches and riding Muni buses (in four-inch Chanel pumps) to chat up voters — employment anxiety dominates the conversations — as she angles to break the business elite’s string of electoral losses.

A formidable networker, Ms. Rees has an impressive list of campaign contributors: Mark Pincus of Zynga, Marc Benioff of Salesforce, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Craig Newmark of Craigslist, assorted Pritzkers and Bronfmans and Coppolas, the wife and the sister of former Mayor Gavin Newsom and the musician Quincy Jones.

As Ms. Rees makes her rounds, with a business-friendly message that puts her well to the right on the San Francisco political spectrum, she is winning some support. “She is as smart as hell, a real person, not political,” said James Ludwig, former head of Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco.

Impressed by her focus on public-education innovation and her business savvy, Mr. Ludwig recently sent out hundreds of letters on Ms. Rees’s behalf. Hilary Newsom, the former mayor’s sister and president of the PlumpJack Group, has done the same.

Yet Ms. Rees remains mostly unknown. The mayoral race has many contenders, with old City Hall hands — David Chiu, Bevan Dufty, Leland Yee, Dennis Herrera, Phil Ting, John Avalos and Michela Alioto-Pier — crowding the field. In a March poll, Ms. Rees’s name did not even register. The powerful San Francisco Labor Council has not included her among the seven candidates invited to speak to 500 union delegates next week.

Ms. Rees’s problem is money. She has it. (She and her husband, her partner in a venture capital firm that is now being dismantled, live in Presidio Terrace, a gated enclave with uniformed guards.) But she has, as yet, refused to spend it.

Though she stands to collect as much as $900,000 in public financing by agreeing to campaign-spending caps, Ms. Rees herself has not yet contributed a single dollar. And under the campaign-spending caps, none of her well-heeled contributors can give more than $500.

“I am an entrepreneur who bootstrapped my way into the old boys’ club of venture capital,” said Ms. Rees, who is not affiliated with a political party but has contributed to Democratic candidates, including the liberal Senator Barbara Boxer. “I have been down in the trenches with entrepreneurs, rolling up my sleeves, to help turn a small idea into something real.? That is why a grass-roots field campaign is so compatible with who I am.”

“I am raising money the old-fashioned way, supporter by supporter,” she said.

Corey Cook, a University of San Francisco professor who organized a candidates’ forum last week, sees promise for “someone who can really claim to reform from the outside, who is effective on the business side.” However, Mr. Cook notes, “that’s not a message that traditionally plays well in San Francisco.”

And, of course, Ms. Rees cannot win if most voters do not know she exists.

“She cannot just go to bus stops and shake hands with strangers,” said Nathan Ballard, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to Mr. Newsom. Mr. Ballard is not involved with any of the mayoral candidates, though he is one of the many local political operatives Ms. Rees has consulted.

“I would advise her to write a big check,” he said. “She needs to help herself.”

And that, even if you didn’t go to business school, is Marketing 101: Under-investing when launching a new product is a recipe for, well, nothing.

View the original article here

Your Money: ID Theft Tool That Sony Isn’t Using

 

And more than a week after the company first warned its customers about the possibility of identity theft, it at last provided details about the protection it was now offering them: a free one-year subscription to a surveillance service that searches for evidence that they may have become victims of identity theft and alerts them if anything turns up. ?

Here’s what Sony is not doing, though: offering to pay for something called a security freeze for any customer who wants one.

A surveillance service is reactive. By the time you get an alert from one, thieves may have already done a lot of damage.

A security freeze, also known as a credit freeze, is proactive. Once you put your credit reports on ice at the three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — no company (other than ones you already do business with) can look at your credit report. Creditors generally won’t open a new account if they don’t have access to the report, so a freeze offers the best protection there is against someone opening an account in your name.

The credit bureaus depict freezes as a last resort, something that will cause consumers great inconvenience because they need to temporarily thaw their accounts whenever they want to apply for new credit. And it gums up the works for the bureaus, that’s for sure.

But as someone who has had his files frozen for several years, I can personally attest to the fact that the inconvenience is fairly mild. Credit freezes are the best defense mechanism available for people whose data may have fallen into the wrong hands, and it’s a shame that Sony executives don’t seem to have realized this.

Sony’s actions are all the more surprising given its various units in California. That is where security freezes first hit the radar more than a decade ago, thanks to a bill sponsored by Debra Bowen, then a state senator.

“Knowing that lenders would not grant credit to people if they were unable to check those peoples’ credit reports, her bill gave consumers the power to freeze access to their reports,” said Shannan Velayas, a spokeswoman for Ms. Bowen, who is now California’s secretary of state.

Eventually, enough states followed suit with their own laws forcing the three credit bureaus to give consumers this option that the bureaus threw up their hands and decided to offer it to everyone.

They didn’t make it easy, though. I have distinct memories of standing in the post office filling out registered mail forms since that was the only way some of the companies would accept a request to freeze a file.

Today, things are less complicated. All three bureaus will let you put an initial freeze in place on their Web sites. I’ve posted links to Equifax’s page, Experian’s site and TransUnion’s starting point in the online version of this column. Still, fewer than 500,000 people have frozen their Experian files; Equifax and TransUnion would not provide numbers but they are probably similar.

Once you’ve put a freeze in place, you can thaw your files temporarily if someone needs to examine your credit report. The bureaus also let you do this on the Web and supply you with personal identification numbers for the purpose. The cost for the initial freeze and the thaw will run anywhere from nothing to $20 or so per bureau, depending on the maximum price, if any, that a law in your state has set and whether you are a recent identity theft victim.

The bureaus’ Web sites offer plenty of reasons for pause, noting that a freeze may interfere with applications for jobs, credit cards, mortgages, insurance, rental apartments and cellphone accounts. And it is true that all sorts of entities want to check your credit before doing business with you or hiring you.

That is what the thawing process is for, though. I’ve refinanced my mortgage twice, changed jobs once and applied for a couple of credit cards since I put security freezes into place, and it’s never taken me more than 10 or 15 minutes total to temporarily thaw all three frozen files. The thaws generally go into effect instantly, so the whole process is really no big deal, as long as you keep those PINs together in one (secure) place where you can find them easily.

One hiccup that’s worth noting here, though. While I was able to get my free Equifax and TransUnion credit reports this week through annualcreditreport.com, Experian would not give it to me. Instead, it served up a form with my Social Security number and other personal information that it wanted me to put in the mail before it would hand over my credit report. Um, no thanks. An Experian spokeswoman was unable to explain why this had happened.

A freeze may also make it harder to take advantage of those instant credit offers at department and other stores or sites. But opening lots of new lines of credit isn’t wise anyway, since that can hurt your credit score.

If you don’t want to deal with any hassle, there is a company, TrustedID, with a product called Credit Lock that will handle the freezing and thawing for you. You’ll pay $14.95 for the initial freeze, plus whatever the bureau charges in your state. Then, you’ll pay $9.95 plus the state charges for each bureau when you want to thaw. You also have to sign a limited power of attorney form for TrustedID to act on your behalf and turn your PINs over to the company as well.

However you set it up, a credit freeze is a no-brainer for people who are no longer applying for much credit. Millions of older adults fall into this category. It’s also a good backstop for any friends or relatives with questionable judgment or impairments that may make them vulnerable to scams.

As for everyone else, it’s hard to see why a small occasional hassle and a bit of expense should get in the way of locking down your credit report. It’s certainly better than having to spend months or years trying to scrub your credit history clean of the work of a rampaging identity thief.

Yes, it is infuriating that this burden should be on you. In an ideal world, a credit freeze would be the default setting and you’d have some kind of supersecure smartphone mobile app that could thaw your credit report. Maybe someday we’ll get to live in that world.

Security freezes are not bulletproof, alas. You’re still vulnerable to a thief taking over an existing credit card account and, say, redirecting e-mails or paper bills to a different address. So you need to keep checking your account statements.

This is a theoretical vulnerability in a situation like Sony’s, where a thief could use a stolen Sony user name and password that a customer also uses on other sites to try to take over, say, a checking account. The company isn’t aware of anything like this happening or use of any credit card numbers from Sony accounts. Even if either one were to happen to you, you might never know whether the thief got your data from Sony or someplace else.

In fact, it is precisely because so much personal data is floating around out there in the ether that security freezes are such a good idea. They are the best tool consumers have to keep crooks out of their credit files, and Sony ought to offer to pay to put the freezes in place for any customer who wants one.

View the original article here

Your Money: ID Theft Tool That Sony Isn’t Using

 

And more than a week after the company first warned its customers about the possibility of identity theft, it at last provided details about the protection it was now offering them: a free one-year subscription to a surveillance service that searches for evidence that they may have become victims of identity theft and alerts them if anything turns up. ?

Here’s what Sony is not doing, though: offering to pay for something called a security freeze for any customer who wants one.

A surveillance service is reactive. By the time you get an alert from one, thieves may have already done a lot of damage.

A security freeze, also known as a credit freeze, is proactive. Once you put your credit reports on ice at the three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — no company (other than ones you already do business with) can look at your credit report. Creditors generally won’t open a new account if they don’t have access to the report, so a freeze offers the best protection there is against someone opening an account in your name.

The credit bureaus depict freezes as a last resort, something that will cause consumers great inconvenience because they need to temporarily thaw their accounts whenever they want to apply for new credit. And it gums up the works for the bureaus, that’s for sure.

But as someone who has had his files frozen for several years, I can personally attest to the fact that the inconvenience is fairly mild. Credit freezes are the best defense mechanism available for people whose data may have fallen into the wrong hands, and it’s a shame that Sony executives don’t seem to have realized this.

Sony’s actions are all the more surprising given its various units in California. That is where security freezes first hit the radar more than a decade ago, thanks to a bill sponsored by Debra Bowen, then a state senator.

“Knowing that lenders would not grant credit to people if they were unable to check those peoples’ credit reports, her bill gave consumers the power to freeze access to their reports,” said Shannan Velayas, a spokeswoman for Ms. Bowen, who is now California’s secretary of state.

Eventually, enough states followed suit with their own laws forcing the three credit bureaus to give consumers this option that the bureaus threw up their hands and decided to offer it to everyone.

They didn’t make it easy, though. I have distinct memories of standing in the post office filling out registered mail forms since that was the only way some of the companies would accept a request to freeze a file.

Today, things are less complicated. All three bureaus will let you put an initial freeze in place on their Web sites. I’ve posted links to Equifax’s page, Experian’s site and TransUnion’s starting point in the online version of this column. Still, fewer than 500,000 people have frozen their Experian files; Equifax and TransUnion would not provide numbers but they are probably similar.

Once you’ve put a freeze in place, you can thaw your files temporarily if someone needs to examine your credit report. The bureaus also let you do this on the Web and supply you with personal identification numbers for the purpose. The cost for the initial freeze and the thaw will run anywhere from nothing to $20 or so per bureau, depending on the maximum price, if any, that a law in your state has set and whether you are a recent identity theft victim.

The bureaus’ Web sites offer plenty of reasons for pause, noting that a freeze may interfere with applications for jobs, credit cards, mortgages, insurance, rental apartments and cellphone accounts. And it is true that all sorts of entities want to check your credit before doing business with you or hiring you.

That is what the thawing process is for, though. I’ve refinanced my mortgage twice, changed jobs once and applied for a couple of credit cards since I put security freezes into place, and it’s never taken me more than 10 or 15 minutes total to temporarily thaw all three frozen files. The thaws generally go into effect instantly, so the whole process is really no big deal, as long as you keep those PINs together in one (secure) place where you can find them easily.

One hiccup that’s worth noting here, though. While I was able to get my free Equifax and TransUnion credit reports this week through annualcreditreport.com, Experian would not give it to me. Instead, it served up a form with my Social Security number and other personal information that it wanted me to put in the mail before it would hand over my credit report. Um, no thanks. An Experian spokeswoman was unable to explain why this had happened.

A freeze may also make it harder to take advantage of those instant credit offers at department and other stores or sites. But opening lots of new lines of credit isn’t wise anyway, since that can hurt your credit score.

If you don’t want to deal with any hassle, there is a company, TrustedID, with a product called Credit Lock that will handle the freezing and thawing for you. You’ll pay $14.95 for the initial freeze, plus whatever the bureau charges in your state. Then, you’ll pay $9.95 plus the state charges for each bureau when you want to thaw. You also have to sign a limited power of attorney form for TrustedID to act on your behalf and turn your PINs over to the company as well.

However you set it up, a credit freeze is a no-brainer for people who are no longer applying for much credit. Millions of older adults fall into this category. It’s also a good backstop for any friends or relatives with questionable judgment or impairments that may make them vulnerable to scams.

As for everyone else, it’s hard to see why a small occasional hassle and a bit of expense should get in the way of locking down your credit report. It’s certainly better than having to spend months or years trying to scrub your credit history clean of the work of a rampaging identity thief.

Yes, it is infuriating that this burden should be on you. In an ideal world, a credit freeze would be the default setting and you’d have some kind of supersecure smartphone mobile app that could thaw your credit report. Maybe someday we’ll get to live in that world.

Security freezes are not bulletproof, alas. You’re still vulnerable to a thief taking over an existing credit card account and, say, redirecting e-mails or paper bills to a different address. So you need to keep checking your account statements.

This is a theoretical vulnerability in a situation like Sony’s, where a thief could use a stolen Sony user name and password that a customer also uses on other sites to try to take over, say, a checking account. The company isn’t aware of anything like this happening or use of any credit card numbers from Sony accounts. Even if either one were to happen to you, you might never know whether the thief got your data from Sony or someplace else.

In fact, it is precisely because so much personal data is floating around out there in the ether that security freezes are such a good idea. They are the best tool consumers have to keep crooks out of their credit files, and Sony ought to offer to pay to put the freezes in place for any customer who wants one.

View the original article here

Bits: PowerReviews Raises Money for E-Commerce Reviews

 

PowerReviews, a company that helps e-commerce sites show product reviews written by other customers, has raised $10 million in venture capital.

When you shop online at REI, RadioShack, Brookstone or 5,000 other Web sites, the reviews you read from other customers warning that the shoes run big or suggesting a digital camera are made possible behind the scenes by PowerReviews. It also sells review software to brands that aren’t retailers, like those in health care, financial services and education, which use it for real-time focus groups.

Shoppers are more likely to make a purchase if they read customer reviews, according to PowerReviews, even if some of the reviews are negative. At Diapers.com, for instance, the percentage of people who made a purchase after shopping on the site increased 14 percent after a month of showing reviews.

E-commerce companies have been slow to adopt social networking tools, even though shoppers say they want to make online shopping a social activity the way it is offline. Product reviews are a small way that Web sites make shopping more social.

Unlike many e-commerce sites, PowerReviews lets people add information about themselves in profiles. A mother reviewing a stroller could say that she has twins and lives in a hilly city, for instance, or a runner could say that he has wide feet. Reviewers can also connect their Facebook accounts to add their profile information.

“It provides a lot more contextual information about that reviewer so the shopper can actually feel more confident and comfortable with who the person is,” said Pehr Luedtke, chief executive of PowerReviews.

People can follow reviewers they relate to and see all their reviews on a site, and future reviews will appear in the shopper’s Facebook newsfeed. Seventy percent of reviews shared to Facebook get comments or likes, according to PowerReviews.

While retailers at first worried about allowing customers to write negative reviews on their sites, they have long since been forced to get over that because customers expect the information, said Cathy Halligan, senior vice president of marketing and sales at PowerReviews and former chief marketing officer at Walmart.com.

PowerReviews, whose biggest competitor is Bazaarvoice, raised the fresh capital from the Four Rivers Group and the Woodside Fund, in addition to previous investors who had already invested $27 million. The company plans to use the money to hire more engineers and salespeople to sell the product to retailers.

View the original article here

Your Money: The Changes to Save a Big Idea

 

In fact, he spent about a decade working on it, finally succeeding when the Class Act, short for Community Living Assistance Services and Support, became law as part of last year’s landmark health insurance package.

The Class Act promises a lot: eligibility for most people, no matter their health status, as long as they are working at least a little; a benefit of at least $50 or so a day that lasts until death if necessary; and a premium structure that will offer big discounts for lower-income people but still won’t require any federal money.

This all turned out to be a bit too optimistic. In recent months, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, has said that it will be difficult to make the offering both affordable and actuarially sound without some alterations.

She and her staff are making some changes, and the law gives them a certain amount of leeway. Their ultimate challenge is to make sure that the premium is not so low that there won’t be enough money to pay claims. But it also cannot be so high that it will scare off the young, healthy people who could subsidize all of the infirm people attracted to the plan’s generous eligibility rules (or frighten the employers of younger adults, who might encourage them to sign up).

Plenty of politicians are furious about the fact that something like this became law without the long-term numbers adding up. The far more interesting question, however, is why Senator Kennedy felt this law was necessary in the first place.

Here’s the blunt truth: Medicare generally won’t pay for as much nursing home or in-home care as many people think it will. Your cash savings may well be insufficient, especially if you want to leave plenty of money for a spouse who may outlive you. Your family may not be willing or able to take care of you. And if you do spend all of your assets to qualify for Medicaid, there’s no guarantee Medicaid will pay for the quality of care you want and do so close to friends or family.

So we better hope that the Class Act works and helps lots of Americans. Because if it doesn’t, plenty of people will be right back in denial-land again.

That said, there are some people who have already purchased long-term care insurance from a commercial company. Limra, a market research firm, figures there are about seven million of them.

Some buy it out of an abundance of caution, while others do it because their employers offer subsidized premiums as a benefit. Many others have seen family members spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on care or struggled to provide care themselves when there was no money left.

Even so, the insurance companies can make this a tough product to love, given their unexpected price jumps or occasional outright abandonment of the business.

How can the federal government possibly hope to do better? There are at least three ways.

First, it can enlist the help of employers, who could each make the government plan available to many thousands of employees.

According to an Aon Hewitt survey of over 1,300 large employers, 50 percent already made long-term care insurance available in 2010. But would those employers really want to replace what they have with a government program that would probably offer a lower level of benefits? Or would they offer it alongside their current plans?

As for the half of employers who do not offer any plan now, will their wary human resources executives really be first in line for a new government program?

The second way to potential success here is through automatic enrollment: getting those employers who do sign on to put every employee in the government plan and let individuals opt out later if they so choose.

The Class Act specifically mentions this possibility, though it does not seem to require it. The idea comes straight from the 401(k) playbook. According to an estimate from David L. Wray, president of the Profit Sharing/401k Council of America, which represents the interests of employers, about 38 percent of employees who have access to 401(k) plans work for employers who automatically enroll new workers.

Nobody, however, currently makes their employees buy long-term care insurance, according to Guy Bertsch, vice president for long-term care operations at Unum, which claims to sell far more policies through the workplace than any other company.

The authors of the Class Act were clearly worried about what would happen if employers did not sign everyone up automatically, though. Indeed, at employers that do not provide long-term care insurance free to everyone but still make it available for employee purchase, voluntary buy-in tends to be below 10 percent, Mr. Bertsch said.

Finally, there’s the possibility of rebranding the product to make it more relevant to young adults. Connie Garner, a former member of Senator Kennedy’s staff who worked closely with him on the Class Act, says she believes long-term care insurance has an image problem. “People think it’s for the lady with the blue hair in a wheelchair,” she said.

Ms. Garner, who is a nurse practitioner and now runs an advocacy group called AdvanceClass, speaks to groups about the fact that young adults who see themselves as invincible are only one dive into shallow water away from needing in-home care for the rest of their lives. That, she said, often moves parents in the audience to volunteer to pay for any premiums for their children, given that they would be discounted in the Class Act’s plan.

 

Patient Money: Containing the Costs of Pet Care

Last year the Nocella family adopted two puppies, a pit bull mix named Pokie and a “puggle” named Browny. Since then, Ms. Nocella estimates, the family has spent as much as $5,000 on veterinarian bills.

The dogs have had routine checkups and shots, of course. But then there were unexpected costs: Pokie arrived with a bad case of worms and kennel cough; some strange bumps on her paws turned out, after $700 worth of tests, to be warts. Browny has severe allergies and requires frequent trips to the vet.

Last November, Pokie swallowed Advil pills, which are toxic to dogs. She went into renal failure and required emergency treatment overnight in a nearby animal hospital. The treatment was successful and Pokie is fine, but the incident set the Nocellas back $2,300.

Pet owners like Ms. Nocella are spending more on veterinarian bills than ever before. The American Pet Products Association estimates that Americans will spend $12.2 billion on veterinary care this year, up from $11 billion last year and $8.2 billion in 2006.

Advances in veterinary medicine mean more extensive, and expensive, treatments are available for animals, but even ordinary costs like flea and tick protection can add up quickly. Here are some ways to curb those costs while still giving your pet the best of care.

LOW-COST ALTERNATIVES Local shelters often offer free or low-cost spaying and neutering for dogs and cats, said Dr. Louise Murray, vice president at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal’s Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital in New York and author of “Vet Confidential.” To find a shelter near you, check the A.S.P.C.A. Web site at www.aspca.org/pet-care/spayneuter.

Shelters where pets can be adopted may offer low-cost vaccinations and checkups. Mobile clinics, usually sponsored by local governments or animal protection agencies, also provide routine pet care for far less than a traditional vet would charge.

Veterinarian schools are another good source of low-cost care. Students are carefully supervised by qualified veterinarians, so pets receive quality care — everything from heartworm tests to major surgery, often for as little as a third of the price at a veterinarian’s office.

THE RIGHT VACCINES Keeping up with a pet’s shots will save money, not to mention misery, in the long run by preventing many serious illnesses. But that does not mean a pet needs every vaccine available.

“A corgi who lives on the Upper East Side doesn’t need the same protocol as a Labrador in Connecticut,” Dr. Murray said. “Your veterinarian should customize a vaccine plan that fits your pet.”

A HEALTHY DIET Many vets sell prescriptions and high-quality pet food, but the same brands are sold for much less at many pet supply stores or Web sites. Still, do not skimp on quality.

“Cats, for example, are carnivores and aren’t meant to eat carbohydrates,” Dr. Murray said. “Feeding them only the cheap dried food can lead to diabetes or blockages that will cost you a lot more in the long run than the price you’ll pay for the right food.”

DRUG DISCOUNTS If a pet needs regular medication, discount chains such as Costco can be cheaper than a regular drug store or the vet’s office, said Dr. Sharon Friedman, a veterinarian at the Berkley Animal Clinic in Berkley, Mich. But consult a veterinarian first, she advised, to be sure to buy the right medicine at the right dosage.

On the other hand, do not assume that tick and flea treatments or heartworm medications are cheaper at the big discount chains. Manufacturers want to distribute these medicines through veterinarians’ offices, so they often offer promotions and discounts there that are not available elsewhere.

“One company recently offered two free tick and flea treatments if you bought six doses. That worked out to be less expensive than PetMeds, a popular online store, or Costco,” Dr. Friedman said. “It often pays to ask.”

Many Web sites sell high-quality pet medications at good prices, but a recent Food and Drug. Administration. investigation caught some sites selling counterfeit, unapproved or expired drugs. Beware of any site that sells medications without requiring a veterinarian’s prescription.

The F.D.A. also recommends that consumers look for sites accredited as a Veterinary-Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Site, part of a voluntary accreditation program.

CONSIDER INSURANCE Pet health insurance is a booming industry, growing more than 20 percent every year, although only an estimated 3 percent of pet owners have bought policies. While Ms. Nocella has never seriously considered buying pet insurance, she does acknowledge it might have come in handy the day Pokie ate the Advil.

But like health insurance for humans, pet insurance can be complicated and highly restricted. Some policies will not cover older pets or genetic conditions that certain breeds are known to have, such as hip dysplasia in retrievers.

Others limit coverage to only one treatment per illness. So if your dog develops asthma, for instance, some policies will cover just the first trip to the vet although treatment will require multiple visits.

Prices for pet insurance can range from $12 to $50 a month, depending on the type and age of the pet and any pre-existing conditions. In almost all cases the pet owner pays up front, then files a claim for reimbursement.

Costs are higher to insure older, sicker pets, or for policies that cover preventive care, such as vaccines and veterinarian office visits.

Many pet owners prefer to save for unexpected vet expenses in an emergency fund instead of paying premiums for coverage they may not use. Dr. Murray suggested putting away a little each week until savings reach $2,000 to $3,000.

“That’s the minimum you’ll need if a serious situation arises and your pet needs lifesaving care,” she said.

 

Patient Money: Containing the Costs of Pet Care

Last year the Nocella family adopted two puppies, a pit bull mix named Pokie and a “puggle” named Browny. Since then, Ms. Nocella estimates, the family has spent as much as $5,000 on veterinarian bills.

The dogs have had routine checkups and shots, of course. But then there were unexpected costs: Pokie arrived with a bad case of worms and kennel cough; some strange bumps on her paws turned out, after $700 worth of tests, to be warts. Browny has severe allergies and requires frequent trips to the vet.

Last November, Pokie swallowed Advil pills, which are toxic to dogs. She went into renal failure and required emergency treatment overnight in a nearby animal hospital. The treatment was successful and Pokie is fine, but the incident set the Nocellas back $2,300.

Pet owners like Ms. Nocella are spending more on veterinarian bills than ever before. The American Pet Products Association estimates that Americans will spend $12.2 billion on veterinary care this year, up from $11 billion last year and $8.2 billion in 2006.

Advances in veterinary medicine mean more extensive, and expensive, treatments are available for animals, but even ordinary costs like flea and tick protection can add up quickly. Here are some ways to curb those costs while still giving your pet the best of care.

LOW-COST ALTERNATIVES Local shelters often offer free or low-cost spaying and neutering for dogs and cats, said Dr. Louise Murray, vice president at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal’s Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital in New York and author of “Vet Confidential.” To find a shelter near you, check the A.S.P.C.A. Web site at www.aspca.org/pet-care/spayneuter.

Shelters where pets can be adopted may offer low-cost vaccinations and checkups. Mobile clinics, usually sponsored by local governments or animal protection agencies, also provide routine pet care for far less than a traditional vet would charge.

Veterinarian schools are another good source of low-cost care. Students are carefully supervised by qualified veterinarians, so pets receive quality care — everything from heartworm tests to major surgery, often for as little as a third of the price at a veterinarian’s office.

THE RIGHT VACCINES Keeping up with a pet’s shots will save money, not to mention misery, in the long run by preventing many serious illnesses. But that does not mean a pet needs every vaccine available.

“A corgi who lives on the Upper East Side doesn’t need the same protocol as a Labrador in Connecticut,” Dr. Murray said. “Your veterinarian should customize a vaccine plan that fits your pet.”

A HEALTHY DIET Many vets sell prescriptions and high-quality pet food, but the same brands are sold for much less at many pet supply stores or Web sites. Still, do not skimp on quality.

“Cats, for example, are carnivores and aren’t meant to eat carbohydrates,” Dr. Murray said. “Feeding them only the cheap dried food can lead to diabetes or blockages that will cost you a lot more in the long run than the price you’ll pay for the right food.”

DRUG DISCOUNTS If a pet needs regular medication, discount chains such as Costco can be cheaper than a regular drug store or the vet’s office, said Dr. Sharon Friedman, a veterinarian at the Berkley Animal Clinic in Berkley, Mich. But consult a veterinarian first, she advised, to be sure to buy the right medicine at the right dosage.

On the other hand, do not assume that tick and flea treatments or heartworm medications are cheaper at the big discount chains. Manufacturers want to distribute these medicines through veterinarians’ offices, so they often offer promotions and discounts there that are not available elsewhere.

“One company recently offered two free tick and flea treatments if you bought six doses. That worked out to be less expensive than PetMeds, a popular online store, or Costco,” Dr. Friedman said. “It often pays to ask.”

Many Web sites sell high-quality pet medications at good prices, but a recent Food and Drug. Administration. investigation caught some sites selling counterfeit, unapproved or expired drugs. Beware of any site that sells medications without requiring a veterinarian’s prescription.

The F.D.A. also recommends that consumers look for sites accredited as a Veterinary-Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Site, part of a voluntary accreditation program.

CONSIDER INSURANCE Pet health insurance is a booming industry, growing more than 20 percent every year, although only an estimated 3 percent of pet owners have bought policies. While Ms. Nocella has never seriously considered buying pet insurance, she does acknowledge it might have come in handy the day Pokie ate the Advil.

But like health insurance for humans, pet insurance can be complicated and highly restricted. Some policies will not cover older pets or genetic conditions that certain breeds are known to have, such as hip dysplasia in retrievers.

Others limit coverage to only one treatment per illness. So if your dog develops asthma, for instance, some policies will cover just the first trip to the vet although treatment will require multiple visits.

Prices for pet insurance can range from $12 to $50 a month, depending on the type and age of the pet and any pre-existing conditions. In almost all cases the pet owner pays up front, then files a claim for reimbursement.

Costs are higher to insure older, sicker pets, or for policies that cover preventive care, such as vaccines and veterinarian office visits.

Many pet owners prefer to save for unexpected vet expenses in an emergency fund instead of paying premiums for coverage they may not use. Dr. Murray suggested putting away a little each week until savings reach $2,000 to $3,000.

“That’s the minimum you’ll need if a serious situation arises and your pet needs lifesaving care,” she said.

 

Patient Money: Containing the Costs of Pet Care

Last year the Nocella family adopted two puppies, a pit bull mix named Pokie and a “puggle” named Browny. Since then, Ms. Nocella estimates, the family has spent as much as $5,000 on veterinarian bills.

The dogs have had routine checkups and shots, of course. But then there were unexpected costs: Pokie arrived with a bad case of worms and kennel cough; some strange bumps on her paws turned out, after $700 worth of tests, to be warts. Browny has severe allergies and requires frequent trips to the vet.

Last November, Pokie swallowed Advil pills, which are toxic to dogs. She went into renal failure and required emergency treatment overnight in a nearby animal hospital. The treatment was successful and Pokie is fine, but the incident set the Nocellas back $2,300.

Pet owners like Ms. Nocella are spending more on veterinarian bills than ever before. The American Pet Products Association estimates that Americans will spend $12.2 billion on veterinary care this year, up from $11 billion last year and $8.2 billion in 2006.

Advances in veterinary medicine mean more extensive, and expensive, treatments are available for animals, but even ordinary costs like flea and tick protection can add up quickly. Here are some ways to curb those costs while still giving your pet the best of care.

LOW-COST ALTERNATIVES Local shelters often offer free or low-cost spaying and neutering for dogs and cats, said Dr. Louise Murray, vice president at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal’s Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital in New York and author of “Vet Confidential.” To find a shelter near you, check the A.S.P.C.A. Web site at www.aspca.org/pet-care/spayneuter.

Shelters where pets can be adopted may offer low-cost vaccinations and checkups. Mobile clinics, usually sponsored by local governments or animal protection agencies, also provide routine pet care for far less than a traditional vet would charge.

Veterinarian schools are another good source of low-cost care. Students are carefully supervised by qualified veterinarians, so pets receive quality care — everything from heartworm tests to major surgery, often for as little as a third of the price at a veterinarian’s office.

THE RIGHT VACCINES Keeping up with a pet’s shots will save money, not to mention misery, in the long run by preventing many serious illnesses. But that does not mean a pet needs every vaccine available.

“A corgi who lives on the Upper East Side doesn’t need the same protocol as a Labrador in Connecticut,” Dr. Murray said. “Your veterinarian should customize a vaccine plan that fits your pet.”

A HEALTHY DIET Many vets sell prescriptions and high-quality pet food, but the same brands are sold for much less at many pet supply stores or Web sites. Still, do not skimp on quality.

“Cats, for example, are carnivores and aren’t meant to eat carbohydrates,” Dr. Murray said. “Feeding them only the cheap dried food can lead to diabetes or blockages that will cost you a lot more in the long run than the price you’ll pay for the right food.”

DRUG DISCOUNTS If a pet needs regular medication, discount chains such as Costco can be cheaper than a regular drug store or the vet’s office, said Dr. Sharon Friedman, a veterinarian at the Berkley Animal Clinic in Berkley, Mich. But consult a veterinarian first, she advised, to be sure to buy the right medicine at the right dosage.

On the other hand, do not assume that tick and flea treatments or heartworm medications are cheaper at the big discount chains. Manufacturers want to distribute these medicines through veterinarians’ offices, so they often offer promotions and discounts there that are not available elsewhere.

“One company recently offered two free tick and flea treatments if you bought six doses. That worked out to be less expensive than PetMeds, a popular online store, or Costco,” Dr. Friedman said. “It often pays to ask.”

Many Web sites sell high-quality pet medications at good prices, but a recent Food and Drug. Administration. investigation caught some sites selling counterfeit, unapproved or expired drugs. Beware of any site that sells medications without requiring a veterinarian’s prescription.

The F.D.A. also recommends that consumers look for sites accredited as a Veterinary-Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Site, part of a voluntary accreditation program.

CONSIDER INSURANCE Pet health insurance is a booming industry, growing more than 20 percent every year, although only an estimated 3 percent of pet owners have bought policies. While Ms. Nocella has never seriously considered buying pet insurance, she does acknowledge it might have come in handy the day Pokie ate the Advil.

But like health insurance for humans, pet insurance can be complicated and highly restricted. Some policies will not cover older pets or genetic conditions that certain breeds are known to have, such as hip dysplasia in retrievers.

Others limit coverage to only one treatment per illness. So if your dog develops asthma, for instance, some policies will cover just the first trip to the vet although treatment will require multiple visits.

Prices for pet insurance can range from $12 to $50 a month, depending on the type and age of the pet and any pre-existing conditions. In almost all cases the pet owner pays up front, then files a claim for reimbursement.

Costs are higher to insure older, sicker pets, or for policies that cover preventive care, such as vaccines and veterinarian office visits.

Many pet owners prefer to save for unexpected vet expenses in an emergency fund instead of paying premiums for coverage they may not use. Dr. Murray suggested putting away a little each week until savings reach $2,000 to $3,000.

“That’s the minimum you’ll need if a serious situation arises and your pet needs lifesaving care,” she said.

 

Your Money: The Changes to Save a Big Idea

 

In fact, he spent about a decade working on it, finally succeeding when the Class Act, short for Community Living Assistance Services and Support, became law as part of last year’s landmark health insurance package.

The Class Act promises a lot: eligibility for most people, no matter their health status, as long as they are working at least a little; a benefit of at least $50 or so a day that lasts until death if necessary; and a premium structure that will offer big discounts for lower-income people but still won’t require any federal money.

This all turned out to be a bit too optimistic. In recent months, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, has said that it will be difficult to make the offering both affordable and actuarially sound without some alterations.

She and her staff are making some changes, and the law gives them a certain amount of leeway. Their ultimate challenge is to make sure that the premium is not so low that there won’t be enough money to pay claims. But it also cannot be so high that it will scare off the young, healthy people who could subsidize all of the infirm people attracted to the plan’s generous eligibility rules (or frighten the employers of younger adults, who might encourage them to sign up).

Plenty of politicians are furious about the fact that something like this became law without the long-term numbers adding up. The far more interesting question, however, is why Senator Kennedy felt this law was necessary in the first place.

Here’s the blunt truth: Medicare generally won’t pay for as much nursing home or in-home care as many people think it will. Your cash savings may well be insufficient, especially if you want to leave plenty of money for a spouse who may outlive you. Your family may not be willing or able to take care of you. And if you do spend all of your assets to qualify for Medicaid, there’s no guarantee Medicaid will pay for the quality of care you want and do so close to friends or family.

So we better hope that the Class Act works and helps lots of Americans. Because if it doesn’t, plenty of people will be right back in denial-land again.

That said, there are some people who have already purchased long-term care insurance from a commercial company. Limra, a market research firm, figures there are about seven million of them.

Some buy it out of an abundance of caution, while others do it because their employers offer subsidized premiums as a benefit. Many others have seen family members spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on care or struggled to provide care themselves when there was no money left.

Even so, the insurance companies can make this a tough product to love, given their unexpected price jumps or occasional outright abandonment of the business.

How can the federal government possibly hope to do better? There are at least three ways.

First, it can enlist the help of employers, who could each make the government plan available to many thousands of employees.

According to an Aon Hewitt survey of over 1,300 large employers, 50 percent already made long-term care insurance available in 2010. But would those employers really want to replace what they have with a government program that would probably offer a lower level of benefits? Or would they offer it alongside their current plans?

As for the half of employers who do not offer any plan now, will their wary human resources executives really be first in line for a new government program?

The second way to potential success here is through automatic enrollment: getting those employers who do sign on to put every employee in the government plan and let individuals opt out later if they so choose.

The Class Act specifically mentions this possibility, though it does not seem to require it. The idea comes straight from the 401(k) playbook. According to an estimate from David L. Wray, president of the Profit Sharing/401k Council of America, which represents the interests of employers, about 38 percent of employees who have access to 401(k) plans work for employers who automatically enroll new workers.

Nobody, however, currently makes their employees buy long-term care insurance, according to Guy Bertsch, vice president for long-term care operations at Unum, which claims to sell far more policies through the workplace than any other company.

The authors of the Class Act were clearly worried about what would happen if employers did not sign everyone up automatically, though. Indeed, at employers that do not provide long-term care insurance free to everyone but still make it available for employee purchase, voluntary buy-in tends to be below 10 percent, Mr. Bertsch said.

Finally, there’s the possibility of rebranding the product to make it more relevant to young adults. Connie Garner, a former member of Senator Kennedy’s staff who worked closely with him on the Class Act, says she believes long-term care insurance has an image problem. “People think it’s for the lady with the blue hair in a wheelchair,” she said.

Ms. Garner, who is a nurse practitioner and now runs an advocacy group called AdvanceClass, speaks to groups about the fact that young adults who see themselves as invincible are only one dive into shallow water away from needing in-home care for the rest of their lives. That, she said, often moves parents in the audience to volunteer to pay for any premiums for their children, given that they would be discounted in the Class Act’s plan.

 

Arts | Westchester: In a Former Bank, Money Still Talks

SINCE the opening of “The Bank & Trust Show,” the current multimedia exhibition at ArtsWestchester’s Arts Exchange, puzzled passers-by have been going into the gallery asking if it is closing. Their concern is provoked by a sign in one of the windows facing Mamaroneck Avenue, a hot-pink poster with bold charcoal lettering proclaiming “Selling out to the bare walls.”

ArtsWestchester, of course, is not going anywhere. The poster, “Bare Walls” by Kim Beck, is one of 85 works that fill both floors of the Arts Exchange with responses to the current economic climate. Pieces by 21 artists address a range of related issues, from corporate greed and the pitfalls of consumerism to the fluctuating art market, redefined notions of trust and identity, and the lure of the quick fix.

“The O’ Woof Woof,” for example, Kambui Olujimi’s mixed-media installation, presents a showy raffle booth complete with gold drum and artist-designed tickets for a raffle that never takes place. “The title is Southern black vernacular meaning ‘something you ain’t gonna get,’?” said Dara Meyers-Kingsley, who curated the show.

Visitors can watch the economy literally melting in Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese’s video of their 2008 work “Main Street Meltdown,” a large-scale ice sculpture of the word “Economy” that was placed in Foley Square in Manhattan. And they can answer Jennifer Dalton’s question, “Are Times of Recession Good for Art?,” by selecting a chocolate coin from one of two gumball machines labeled “Yes” and “No.” The comparative levels of candy left in the machines will measure the public’s opinion.

Actual money appears in various incarnations throughout the show. In Ray Beldner’s “Money Bag,” three moneybags are sewn from paper currency and stuffed with sawdust; Mark Wagner created his intricate collages, “Yield” and “Eeny Meeny Miney Moe,” using finely sliced dollar bills. “That’s one of the subthemes,” Ms. Meyers-Kingsley said. “Art as money, money as art.”

Another theme is the changed role of banks, particularly germane given that the exhibition occupies what was once the People’s National Bank & Trust Company. “We wanted to look at repurposed classical bank buildings like the one we’re in now,” Ms. Meyers-Kingsley said. So Michael Vahrenwald was commissioned by ArtsWestchester to photograph former and current banks in White Plains and New York City. The results — 14 photographs — are hanging in the main upstairs gallery. And among the pieces displayed inside the space’s original vault, which was preserved in the building’s renovation, are Diane Tuft’s “Safely Hidden” photographs of ornate bank vaults in Manhattan.

“There’s a lot to think about in this show,” said Janet T. Langsam, ArtsWestchester’s chief executive. “It’s not just, ‘Oh my God, the economy is terrible.’ It’s about who we are, what we value, what’s important in our lives.”

To further the conversation, and in recognition of April’s recent designation as National Financial Literacy Month, ArtsWestchester is hosting a series of free financial education workshops for adults and children. Families visiting the exhibition can also pick up a self-guided “Art Fun Finder” work sheet, which, among other things, challenges them to find particular images in the show (like Queen Elizabeth II’s face) and design their own currency.

While most of the pieces in “The Bank & Trust Show” reflect the current economic situation, several works were made earlier. Tom Otterness’s sculptures “Last Penny” and “Embezzler and Cop” are from 1999. “They’re not about this moment of crisis,” Ms. Meyers-Kingsley said, “but his work has always commented on the capitalist system.”

Perhaps the most optimistic creation is “Chance City,” Jean Shin’s monumental metropolis constructed with thousands of precariously balanced used lottery tickets. “What holds it together is gravity and friction,” Ms. Shin said, “and desire, and care.”

She noted the dichotomy between society’s work ethic and the impetus for playing the lottery. “You spend a few dollars and you think you’re going to win,” she said.

“?‘Chance City,’?” she continued, “is about negotiating risk. It’s about people’s sense of hope. There something wonderful in that.”

ADVICE IS FREE

“The Bank & Trust Show” runs through June 4 at the Arts Exchange, 31 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains. (914) 428-4220; artswestchester.org. Open Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5 p.m.; admission is free.

WORKSHOPS Free financial literacy sessions for adults include “Loans and Mortgages: What You Need to Know,” 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on May 5, and “Tips for Creating a Spending Plan and Managing Debt,” 2 to 4 p.m. on May 7. “Funny Money Workshop,” for parents and children, is from 2 to 4 p.m. on May 21.

 

Your Money: Consider the Worst Case With Zipcar

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

Paying customers are “members,” and they (mostly) watch out for one another by returning the rent-by-the-hour cars and trucks on time so the next user is not delayed. They clean up their takeout containers and fill the gas tank with Zipcar-paid fuel before dropping off the vehicle. Zipcar encourages members to look out for one another by fining those who don’t embrace this communal spirit.

But so far, it has paid no penalty for leaving customers exposed to enormous legal judgments if they get in a serious accident. It caps the liability insurance coverage it provides for members at $300,000 per incident, no matter how many people they may hurt.

Hertz’s copycat car-sharing service, Connect by Hertz, provides even less insurance: the pathetically low bare minimums that each state requires. And even though Hertz sells better coverage to traditional rental car customers on a daily basis, it does not do so for its Connect customers. Zipcar has no such offering, either.

Last week, Zipcar completed a successful initial public offering. Investors are presumably just fine with the fact that the company keeps its insurance costs down by not making the baseline offering, say, $1 million for everyone.

Zipcar and Hertz car-sharing drivers, however, ought to consider the worst case. That’s what insurance is supposed to be for, after all, and neither company’s coverage protects people from it. Would it be so hard to give customers the option to buy a lot more coverage for a bit more money?

Zipcar has known about this issue for many years. I first wrote about it in a Wall Street Journal column in 2005, when the liability coverage was identical to Hertz’s current offering. Felix Salmon, a blogger for Reuters, has periodically hammered away at Zipcar since that time, too.

In 2007, after merging its operations with those of a rival, Flexcar, Zipcar bolstered its coverage to match what Flexcar had been offering. Today, customers who are 21 or older have $300,000 of liability coverage per accident. That would have to cover mangled limbs, brain damage, pain and suffering and anything else that might befall all the people that a Zipcar vehicle mowed down or plowed into.

Drivers under 21 get much less coverage. Zipcar would have to pay a lot of money to provide $300,000 in coverage to less-experienced college-age drivers, and it figures that most of its users in this age group are covered by their parents’ auto policies anyway. So Zipcar does as little as possible here, offering each state’s minimum requirements and no more.

As for your own bodily injury, Zipcar offers the state-mandated minimum coverage here, too. If you have no health insurance, this could be a big problem.

Zipcar members who do not read the disclosures on the company’s Web site would never know about any of this. And many of them don’t, since the company has persisted with the claim elsewhere on its site that its insurance is “comprehensive.”

Wouldn’t a lawyer for an injured person or the family of an accident victim go after Zipcar first, since that’s where the money is? They could try, but a federal law shields rental car companies in many instances, and Zipcar has already cited it in at least one legal skirmish over someone injured in an accident involving a Zipcar.

Just in case, however, Zipcar still insures itself. In a filing accompanying its initial public offering, the company noted that in the event that it was responsible for an accident, say because it failed to maintain its cars, it had coverage up to $5 million in the United States. That is more than 16 times the maximum protection that it offers its members.

Other Zipcar members may assume that their credit card companies offer insurance coverage for rental cars. And the card issuers’ insurance feature may indeed help pay for damage to a vehicle, though Visa’s excludes car-sharing services like Zipcar. But none of these policies offer any liability coverage.

According to a Zipcar spokeswoman, Colleen McCormick, the $300,000 in coverage has been adequate for every accident since it began operations. She added that more than half of accidents involve only the Zipcar vehicle itself. When another car is involved, 93 percent of the accidents have resulted in claims of less than $10,000, and 99.3 percent result in claims of less than $50,000.

That makes the company pretty lucky. Sure, accidents with injuries are rare, but what happens when they do occur? According to ISO, a data provider to insurance companies, about 2 percent of bodily injury liability insurance claims in the United States are for more than $300,000; in the State of New York, it’s 3 percent.

For brain damage in a vehicular accident, the median jury award in 2008, the most recent year for which data was available, was $289,793, according to Jury Verdict Research, which compiles the data and publishes it. For leg injuries, the median was $192,775.

If you think this sort of thing would never happen to you, keep in mind that if you don’t own a car, you’re probably a bit out of practice as a driver. Even if you’re careful, there are scores of jaywalkers to dodge in New York, where Zipcar has a lot of cars. Many of them are quite well off and would want their salaries replaced if you injured them gravely.

And if you’re in or near Boston, another big Zipcar city, you’re contending with the region’s aggressive drivers, all while navigating a street grid that seems to have been laid out according to the paths made by meandering animals or the American Indian hunters who chased them hundreds of years ago.

So let’s say there’s a million-dollar judgment against you. Will the lawyer for the person you have hurt or the family of someone you have killed settle for the $300,000 that Zipcar covers and then simply go away?

They might if you have no assets and seem unlikely to acquire any. Otherwise, beware. “If you have a young Wall Street stockbroker or someone with a really nice six-figure income or has big future earning potential, it is going to be a different case,” said Steven M. Gursten, a lawyer who has won the largest jury verdict for auto accident victims in Michigan in four of the last eight years. “In 16 years of doing this every single day, I’ve had a handful of doctors and others with multimillion-dollar houses and $50,000 in policy limits.”

Sure, you could declare bankruptcy and hope that keeps a lawyer from garnishing your wages from here to kingdom come. “But at that point, you’ve given up control of the situation and your life is in someone else’s hands,” said David Deehl, a lawyer in Miami who has led American Bar Association seminars for other auto accident specialists. “The bottom line is that it is not safe to assume that people will all go away. Some lawyers are stubborn, zealous advocates.”

If you want more coverage, you can buy something called a nonowner’s auto policy. Campbell Solberg Associates, a New York insurance broker, gave me a $200 quote this week on a Travelers policy that would offer $500,000 of liability coverage. Higher limits from other companies that offer this sort of policy wouldn’t cost too much more.

It would be much simpler, however, if Zipcar and Connect by Hertz would let people buy the insurance on a per-trip basis. Zipcar, in fact, already allows members to pay a little bit extra to avoid the possibility of paying a deductible in the event they damage the vehicle. So why don’t they let members make the same choice to buy better liability coverage?

“Never in 10 million drives has a single person had to come out of pocket” for a liability claim, said Rob Weisberg, Zipcar’s chief marketing officer. “Our coverage is two times our next-largest competitor, and our coverage is greater than most Americans have who insure their personally owned vehicles.”

That doesn’t make those Americans adequately covered. And the logic here strikes me as backward. Insurance is supposed to be for things that would be financially catastrophic. To sell protection against a three-figure fee while leaving members exposed to a seven-figure judgment doesn’t make much sense.

So if you’re a Zipcar member, as I am, now you know what the worst case looks like. Still feeling comfortable with the company’s coverage?

View the original article here

Foreign Money Fuels Faltering Bid to Push Online Poker

Former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, Republican of New York, has been the public face of the effort, which has included charity poker tournaments featuring members of Congress, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to a disparate assortment of lawmakers, including Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader.

But late last week, the United States Justice Department delivered an unexpected thunderbolt to this huge lobbying campaign when it indicted top executives at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, accusing them of fraud and money laundering. In doing so the government has taken on a politically powerful industry that for a while seemed like it might transform gambling around the world.

As evidence of the industry’s shifting fortunes, major gambling operators like Wynn Resorts are already distancing themselves from the three Internet gambling companies, canceling planned business alliances. ESPN has removed poker-related content from its own Internet site.

This is exactly what the industry was trying to prevent when it set out to block enforcement of a law intended to ban Internet games or to get the law repealed. Interviews show that the companies named in the indictment, while foreign-based, have indirectly been paying more than half of the lobbying and operating bills for a nonprofit organization that is championing Internet gambling in the United States.

Mr. Frank, in an interview on Monday, said he had no plan to back down. “It is a bad law,” he said. “How is it possible that a United States attorney in New York does not have anything more to do than indict people for a full house? He should be indicting people for the empty houses we have around,” referring to the troubles in the mortgage industry.

Mr. Frank and Representative John Campbell, Republican of California, in March introduced yet another bill, backed by the Poker Players Alliance, a Washington-based nonprofit group. Its budget is subsidized by a Canadian trade association whose members include the companies that run Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker.

As a senator, Mr. D’Amato played a regular poker game that featured lobbyists. On Friday, he said in a statement, “Online poker is not a crime and should not be treated as such.”

An estimated 10 million online poker players in the United States have turned to these Internet sites, helping generate perhaps as much as $5 billion in annual revenues for the companies.

On Friday the Justice Department said the companies had illegally moved their earnings to corporate headquarters in spots like the Isle of Man in Great Britain and Costa Rica by conspiring with middlemen who disguised them as sales of items like flowers, pet supplies and golf clubs.

John Pappas, the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, pointed out on Monday that the organization is made up of an estimated 1.2 million members in the United States, including both amateur and professional players, who want to be able to bet online. One of the executives indicted, Raymond Bitar, 39, of California and Ireland, is a contributor to the Players Alliance Political Action Committee, donating about $15,000 of the $200,000 the committee has given to members of Congress in the last four years, with Mr. Frank collecting the biggest amounts.

But most of the money the committee gives to politicians here comes from individuals not cited in the indictment. And Mr. Pappas said the power of his group came not from industry giants but from its members.

“It is the 1.2 million members who live and vote in Congressional districts across the country,” he said. He did confirm that more than half of his organization’s budget is supported by industry companies, including those indicted Friday.

But the push in Washington, and much of the fund-raising, is coordinated by Poker Players Alliance, which relies in large part on contributions from the Internet-based operators. The organization spent $1.6 million on lobbying last year, using nine lobbying firms, and lobbyists like former Representative Jon Porter, Republican of Nevada, and Mr. D’Amato.

The Poker Players Alliance is enlisting players around the nation to call or write lawmakers to protest the restrictions. It hosts an annual “fly-in” day, when players fan out across Capitol Hill. And it sent representatives to — and set up a poker tournament at — the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, convinced it could find some recruits to its cause at the popular annual event.

In October 2009, 19 members of Congress signed a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, urging them to impose a one-year delay on enforcing regulations intended to cut off payments to the Internet poker companies.

One of the lead signers of the letter was Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York; he calls Mr. D’Amato a friend and mentor, and Mr. D’Amato has served as one of his top fund-raisers. In total, 15 of the 19 signers of the letter received contributions from the Poker Player Alliance political action committee in the last election cycle.

Mr. Frank has been celebrated as one of the industry’s most important champions in Washington. He worked last year to push legislation through the Financial Services Committee, where he served as chairman until this year, that would legalize Internet poker, although the bill never got taken up by the Senate or the full House.

Mr. Frank, no poker player himself, has said he opposes the ban based on his distaste for government intervention into the private lives of citizens. His advocacy, he said, goes back to 2002, even before the Poker Players Alliance was set up.

Mr. Pappas, the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, delivered $51,200 worth of bundled campaign contributions to Mr. Frank’s re-election campaign in late 2009, according to campaign finance reports. These contributions follow up on at least $30,000 more that Mr. Frank took in from the industry in the prior two years, including contributions from some of the industry’s most famous players, like Annie Duke (“The Duchess Of Poker”), Howard Lederer (“The Professor”) and Andy Bloch (“The Rock”).

For now, the companies that have been indicted — and their Internet site addresses seized by the Justice Department — have stopped taking bets from players in the United States, generating a wave of resentment from the millions of players who turned to the games, many several times a day.

 

Foreign Money Fuels Faltering Bid to Push Online Poker

Former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, Republican of New York, has been the public face of the effort, which has included charity poker tournaments featuring members of Congress, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to a disparate assortment of lawmakers, including Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader.

But late last week, the United States Justice Department delivered an unexpected thunderbolt to this huge lobbying campaign when it indicted top executives at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, accusing them of fraud and money laundering. In doing so the government has taken on a politically powerful industry that for a while seemed like it might transform gambling around the world.

As evidence of the industry’s shifting fortunes, major gambling operators like Wynn Resorts are already distancing themselves from the three Internet gambling companies, canceling planned business alliances. ESPN has removed poker-related content from its own Internet site.

This is exactly what the industry was trying to prevent when it set out to block enforcement of a law intended to ban Internet games or to get the law repealed. Interviews show that the companies named in the indictment, while foreign-based, have indirectly been paying more than half of the lobbying and operating bills for a nonprofit organization that is championing Internet gambling in the United States.

Mr. Frank, in an interview on Monday, said he had no plan to back down. “It is a bad law,” he said. “How is it possible that a United States attorney in New York does not have anything more to do than indict people for a full house? He should be indicting people for the empty houses we have around,” referring to the troubles in the mortgage industry.

Mr. Frank and Representative John Campbell, Republican of California, in March introduced yet another bill, backed by the Poker Players Alliance, a Washington-based nonprofit group. Its budget is subsidized by a Canadian trade association whose members include the companies that run Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker.

As a senator, Mr. D’Amato played a regular poker game that featured lobbyists. On Friday, he said in a statement, “Online poker is not a crime and should not be treated as such.”

An estimated 10 million online poker players in the United States have turned to these Internet sites, helping generate perhaps as much as $5 billion in annual revenues for the companies.

On Friday the Justice Department said the companies had illegally moved their earnings to corporate headquarters in spots like the Isle of Man in Great Britain and Costa Rica by conspiring with middlemen who disguised them as sales of items like flowers, pet supplies and golf clubs.

John Pappas, the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, pointed out on Monday that the organization is made up of an estimated 1.2 million members in the United States, including both amateur and professional players, who want to be able to bet online. One of the executives indicted, Raymond Bitar, 39, of California and Ireland, is a contributor to the Players Alliance Political Action Committee, donating about $15,000 of the $200,000 the committee has given to members of Congress in the last four years, with Mr. Frank collecting the biggest amounts.

But most of the money the committee gives to politicians here comes from individuals not cited in the indictment. And Mr. Pappas said the power of his group came not from industry giants but from its members.

“It is the 1.2 million members who live and vote in Congressional districts across the country,” he said. He did confirm that more than half of his organization’s budget is supported by industry companies, including those indicted Friday.

But the push in Washington, and much of the fund-raising, is coordinated by Poker Players Alliance, which relies in large part on contributions from the Internet-based operators. The organization spent $1.6 million on lobbying last year, using nine lobbying firms, and lobbyists like former Representative Jon Porter, Republican of Nevada, and Mr. D’Amato.

The Poker Players Alliance is enlisting players around the nation to call or write lawmakers to protest the restrictions. It hosts an annual “fly-in” day, when players fan out across Capitol Hill. And it sent representatives to — and set up a poker tournament at — the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, convinced it could find some recruits to its cause at the popular annual event.

In October 2009, 19 members of Congress signed a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, urging them to impose a one-year delay on enforcing regulations intended to cut off payments to the Internet poker companies.

One of the lead signers of the letter was Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York; he calls Mr. D’Amato a friend and mentor, and Mr. D’Amato has served as one of his top fund-raisers. In total, 15 of the 19 signers of the letter received contributions from the Poker Player Alliance political action committee in the last election cycle.

Mr. Frank has been celebrated as one of the industry’s most important champions in Washington. He worked last year to push legislation through the Financial Services Committee, where he served as chairman until this year, that would legalize Internet poker, although the bill never got taken up by the Senate or the full House.

Mr. Frank, no poker player himself, has said he opposes the ban based on his distaste for government intervention into the private lives of citizens. His advocacy, he said, goes back to 2002, even before the Poker Players Alliance was set up.

Mr. Pappas, the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, delivered $51,200 worth of bundled campaign contributions to Mr. Frank’s re-election campaign in late 2009, according to campaign finance reports. These contributions follow up on at least $30,000 more that Mr. Frank took in from the industry in the prior two years, including contributions from some of the industry’s most famous players, like Annie Duke (“The Duchess Of Poker”), Howard Lederer (“The Professor”) and Andy Bloch (“The Rock”).

For now, the companies that have been indicted — and their Internet site addresses seized by the Justice Department — have stopped taking bets from players in the United States, generating a wave of resentment from the millions of players who turned to the games, many several times a day.

 

Foreign Money Fuels Faltering Bid to Push Online Poker

Former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, Republican of New York, has been the public face of the effort, which has included charity poker tournaments featuring members of Congress, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to a disparate assortment of lawmakers, including Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader.

But late last week, the United States Justice Department delivered an unexpected thunderbolt to this huge lobbying campaign when it indicted top executives at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, accusing them of fraud and money laundering. In doing so the government has taken on a politically powerful industry that for a while seemed like it might transform gambling around the world.

As evidence of the industry’s shifting fortunes, major gambling operators like Wynn Resorts are already distancing themselves from the three Internet gambling companies, canceling planned business alliances. ESPN has removed poker-related content from its own Internet site.

This is exactly what the industry was trying to prevent when it set out to block enforcement of a law intended to ban Internet games or to get the law repealed. Interviews show that the companies named in the indictment, while foreign-based, have indirectly been paying more than half of the lobbying and operating bills for a nonprofit organization that is championing Internet gambling in the United States.

Mr. Frank, in an interview on Monday, said he had no plan to back down. “It is a bad law,” he said. “How is it possible that a United States attorney in New York does not have anything more to do than indict people for a full house? He should be indicting people for the empty houses we have around,” referring to the troubles in the mortgage industry.

Mr. Frank and Representative John Campbell, Republican of California, in March introduced yet another bill, backed by the Poker Players Alliance, a Washington-based nonprofit group. Its budget is subsidized by a Canadian trade association whose members include the companies that run Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker.

As a senator, Mr. D’Amato played a regular poker game that featured lobbyists. On Friday, he said in a statement, “Online poker is not a crime and should not be treated as such.”

An estimated 10 million online poker players in the United States have turned to these Internet sites, helping generate perhaps as much as $5 billion in annual revenues for the companies.

On Friday the Justice Department said the companies had illegally moved their earnings to corporate headquarters in spots like the Isle of Man in Great Britain and Costa Rica by conspiring with middlemen who disguised them as sales of items like flowers, pet supplies and golf clubs.

John Pappas, the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, pointed out on Monday that the organization is made up of an estimated 1.2 million members in the United States, including both amateur and professional players, who want to be able to bet online. One of the executives indicted, Raymond Bitar, 39, of California and Ireland, is a contributor to the Players Alliance Political Action Committee, donating about $15,000 of the $200,000 the committee has given to members of Congress in the last four years, with Mr. Frank collecting the biggest amounts.

But most of the money the committee gives to politicians here comes from individuals not cited in the indictment. And Mr. Pappas said the power of his group came not from industry giants but from its members.

“It is the 1.2 million members who live and vote in Congressional districts across the country,” he said. He did confirm that more than half of his organization’s budget is supported by industry companies, including those indicted Friday.

But the push in Washington, and much of the fund-raising, is coordinated by Poker Players Alliance, which relies in large part on contributions from the Internet-based operators. The organization spent $1.6 million on lobbying last year, using nine lobbying firms, and lobbyists like former Representative Jon Porter, Republican of Nevada, and Mr. D’Amato.

The Poker Players Alliance is enlisting players around the nation to call or write lawmakers to protest the restrictions. It hosts an annual “fly-in” day, when players fan out across Capitol Hill. And it sent representatives to — and set up a poker tournament at — the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, convinced it could find some recruits to its cause at the popular annual event.

In October 2009, 19 members of Congress signed a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, urging them to impose a one-year delay on enforcing regulations intended to cut off payments to the Internet poker companies.

One of the lead signers of the letter was Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York; he calls Mr. D’Amato a friend and mentor, and Mr. D’Amato has served as one of his top fund-raisers. In total, 15 of the 19 signers of the letter received contributions from the Poker Player Alliance political action committee in the last election cycle.

Mr. Frank has been celebrated as one of the industry’s most important champions in Washington. He worked last year to push legislation through the Financial Services Committee, where he served as chairman until this year, that would legalize Internet poker, although the bill never got taken up by the Senate or the full House.

Mr. Frank, no poker player himself, has said he opposes the ban based on his distaste for government intervention into the private lives of citizens. His advocacy, he said, goes back to 2002, even before the Poker Players Alliance was set up.

Mr. Pappas, the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, delivered $51,200 worth of bundled campaign contributions to Mr. Frank’s re-election campaign in late 2009, according to campaign finance reports. These contributions follow up on at least $30,000 more that Mr. Frank took in from the industry in the prior two years, including contributions from some of the industry’s most famous players, like Annie Duke (“The Duchess Of Poker”), Howard Lederer (“The Professor”) and Andy Bloch (“The Rock”).

For now, the companies that have been indicted — and their Internet site addresses seized by the Justice Department — have stopped taking bets from players in the United States, generating a wave of resentment from the millions of players who turned to the games, many several times a day.

 

Foreign Money Fuels Faltering Bid to Push Online Poker

Former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, Republican of New York, has been the public face of the effort, which has included charity poker tournaments featuring members of Congress, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to a disparate assortment of lawmakers, including Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader.

But late last week, the United States Justice Department delivered an unexpected thunderbolt to this huge lobbying campaign when it indicted top executives at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, accusing them of fraud and money laundering. In doing so the government has taken on a politically powerful industry that for a while seemed like it might transform gambling around the world.

As evidence of the industry’s shifting fortunes, major gambling operators like Wynn Resorts are already distancing themselves from the three Internet gambling companies, canceling planned business alliances. ESPN has removed poker-related content from its own Internet site.

This is exactly what the industry was trying to prevent when it set out to block enforcement of a law intended to ban Internet games or to get the law repealed. Interviews show that the companies named in the indictment, while foreign-based, have indirectly been paying more than half of the lobbying and operating bills for a nonprofit organization that is championing Internet gambling in the United States.

Mr. Frank, in an interview on Monday, said he had no plan to back down. “It is a bad law,” he said. “How is it possible that a United States attorney in New York does not have anything more to do than indict people for a full house? He should be indicting people for the empty houses we have around,” referring to the troubles in the mortgage industry.

Mr. Frank and Representative John Campbell, Republican of California, in March introduced yet another bill, backed by the Poker Players Alliance, a Washington-based nonprofit group. Its budget is subsidized by a Canadian trade association whose members include the companies that run Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker.

As a senator, Mr. D’Amato played a regular poker game that featured lobbyists. On Friday, he said in a statement, “Online poker is not a crime and should not be treated as such.”

An estimated 10 million online poker players in the United States have turned to these Internet sites, helping generate perhaps as much as $5 billion in annual revenues for the companies.

On Friday the Justice Department said the companies had illegally moved their earnings to corporate headquarters in spots like the Isle of Man in Great Britain and Costa Rica by conspiring with middlemen who disguised them as sales of items like flowers, pet supplies and golf clubs.

John Pappas, the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, pointed out on Monday that the organization is made up of an estimated 1.2 million members in the United States, including both amateur and professional players, who want to be able to bet online. One of the executives indicted, Raymond Bitar, 39, of California and Ireland, is a contributor to the Players Alliance Political Action Committee, donating about $15,000 of the $200,000 the committee has given to members of Congress in the last four years, with Mr. Frank collecting the biggest amounts.

But most of the money the committee gives to politicians here comes from individuals not cited in the indictment. And Mr. Pappas said the power of his group came not from industry giants but from its members.

“It is the 1.2 million members who live and vote in Congressional districts across the country,” he said. He did confirm that more than half of his organization’s budget is supported by industry companies, including those indicted Friday.

But the push in Washington, and much of the fund-raising, is coordinated by Poker Players Alliance, which relies in large part on contributions from the Internet-based operators. The organization spent $1.6 million on lobbying last year, using nine lobbying firms, and lobbyists like former Representative Jon Porter, Republican of Nevada, and Mr. D’Amato.

The Poker Players Alliance is enlisting players around the nation to call or write lawmakers to protest the restrictions. It hosts an annual “fly-in” day, when players fan out across Capitol Hill. And it sent representatives to — and set up a poker tournament at — the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, convinced it could find some recruits to its cause at the popular annual event.

In October 2009, 19 members of Congress signed a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, urging them to impose a one-year delay on enforcing regulations intended to cut off payments to the Internet poker companies.

One of the lead signers of the letter was Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York; he calls Mr. D’Amato a friend and mentor, and Mr. D’Amato has served as one of his top fund-raisers. In total, 15 of the 19 signers of the letter received contributions from the Poker Player Alliance political action committee in the last election cycle.

Mr. Frank has been celebrated as one of the industry’s most important champions in Washington. He worked last year to push legislation through the Financial Services Committee, where he served as chairman until this year, that would legalize Internet poker, although the bill never got taken up by the Senate or the full House.

Mr. Frank, no poker player himself, has said he opposes the ban based on his distaste for government intervention into the private lives of citizens. His advocacy, he said, goes back to 2002, even before the Poker Players Alliance was set up.

Mr. Pappas, the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, delivered $51,200 worth of bundled campaign contributions to Mr. Frank’s re-election campaign in late 2009, according to campaign finance reports. These contributions follow up on at least $30,000 more that Mr. Frank took in from the industry in the prior two years, including contributions from some of the industry’s most famous players, like Annie Duke (“The Duchess Of Poker”), Howard Lederer (“The Professor”) and Andy Bloch (“The Rock”).

For now, the companies that have been indicted — and their Internet site addresses seized by the Justice Department — have stopped taking bets from players in the United States, generating a wave of resentment from the millions of players who turned to the games, many several times a day.

 

Patient Money: Using Hypnosis to Gain More Control Over Your Illness

So the news that she needed brain surgery again was hardly welcome. Determined to make her second operation a better — or at least less traumatic — experience, Ms. Ritchie, an insurance marketing representative in Cleveland, turned to an unusual treatment.

At the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Integrative Medicine, she had four hypnosis sessions in the month before her procedure, during which she addressed her fear of the coming surgery. She also practiced self-hypnosis every day.

Eventually, she said, “I got to a place where I felt a sense of trust instead of fear.”

In February, doctors removed a plum-sized tumor from her brain. But there the similarity to her previous experience ended. Ms. Ritchie woke up from the procedure, she said, feeling “alert and awesome.” She ate a full dinner that night and went home in two days.

“My neurosurgeon was stunned at how little medication I required before and after surgery, and how quickly I bounced back,” she said.

Ms. Ritchie attributes her speedy recovery and calm state to her hypnosis sessions. Used for more than two centuries to treat a host of medical problems, particularly pain management and anxiety, hypnosis is now available to patients at some of the most respected medical institutions in the country, including Stanford Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, Mount Sinai Medical Center and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York.

Some critics find the research into mind-body therapies unconvincing, but their skepticism has not deterred patients like Ms. Ritchie. And there are researchers who say they believe that by helping patients feel in better control of their symptoms, hypnosis can reduce the need for medication and lower costs.

“It is an effective and inexpensive way to manage medical care,” said Dr. David Spiegel, director of the Center on Stress and Health at Stanford University School of Medicine and a leading authority on hypnosis.

A study by radiologists at Harvard Medical School, published in 2000, found that patients who received hypnosis during surgery required less medication, had fewer complications and shorter procedures than patients who did not have hypnosis. In a follow-up study in 2002, the radiologists concluded that if every patient undergoing catheterization were to receive hypnosis, the cost savings would amount to $338 per patient.

“When patients are groggy from anesthesia drugs, it costs more to recover them,” said Dr. Elvira Lang, an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and a lead author of both studies. “Hypnosis calms patients.”

If you have a medical condition for which conventional medicine is not working, or you’d like to try a gentle mind-body alternative, hypnosis may be worth considering. Here are some things to keep in mind.

THE THERAPIST There is no uniformly accepted definition of hypnosis, but most experts generally agree that it is an altered mental state in which a patient becomes highly focused and more receptive to social cues.

During a session, the practitioner guides the subject into a relaxed state and then makes specific suggestions to help change a behavior, a perception or a physiological condition. Someone who is trying to quit smoking, for instance, might be told under hypnosis that cigarettes are poisons and that it’s important to care for and respect his body.

Some patients find that hypnosis is a helpful adjunct to traditional psychotherapy.

“Talk therapy engages the conscious mind, which is overwhelmingly facile at creating blocks to avoid hurtful problems,” said Dr. Tanya Edwards, director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. “In hypnosis, the therapist is dealing with the subconscious mind and can get at core problems more quickly.”

Whatever the approach, it’s important to find a highly skilled practitioner.

“Hypnosis is like a surgeon’s knife,” said Edward Frischholz, a clinical psychologist in Chicago who has written more than 50 papers on clinical and experimental hypnosis. “In the right hands it can be life-saving, but in the wrong it could cause harm.”

There is no universal licensing process for practitioners who do hypnosis, so look for a licensed health professional — for instance, a psychologist, medical doctor or social worker — who has been trained in hypnosis. Ask your doctors and therapists for recommendations, or go to the Societies of Hypnosis Web site, which allows you to search by ZIP code and specialty.

THE SESSION At your first session, the practitioner will discuss your condition and may administer a short test to assess how hypnotizable you are.

Most people are susceptible to hypnosis. But if someone is clearly not, then the therapist or doctor may try another technique or suggest a different approach to the patient’s problem. Most sessions last about 50 minutes.

Specific conditions — like smoking, a fear of dogs or flying or temporary insomnia — may require just one session. In 2008, the personal health columnist Jane E. Brody recalled in this newspaper that her husband was able to stop smoking after just one session of hypnosis.

“For very circumscribed disorders, hypnosis works very quickly or not at all,” said Dr. Frischholz.

If your problem is more complex, like post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, it may require multiple sessions. “I might spend the first two sessions taking a history and learning about someone’s background,” said Carol Ginandes, an assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School who uses hypnosis in her private practice. “Then I would work with the patient in a very individualized way.”

A session costs between $75 and $200, depending on where you live and the credentials of the practitioner. If the therapist or doctor is in your insurance network, then you may pay only a standard co-payment. Insurers do not cover hypnosis itself, however; it will have to be billed as a part of your counseling, or as an office visit.

THE DO-IT-YOURSELF APPROACH If the thought of someone putting you in a trancelike state makes you uncomfortable, hypnosis with tape or CD at home may be a practical alternative.

CDs made for a general audience, available at Web sites like HypnosisNetwork.com or HealthJourneys.com, may not be able to help you with a particular or complicated condition, like a lifelong struggle with depression, but they may help train you to calm down before a big test or surgical procedure.

Some practitioners may send you home with a custom-made CD or tape that you can use on your own.

Your therapist or doctor may also teach you self-hypnosis, as Ms. Ritchie’s therapist did. You learn how to put yourself in a deeply relaxed, receptive state in which you repeat statements such as “My body is strong and can handle this surgery,” or “I feel calm and relaxed.”

“People think hypnosis is about giving up control,” said Dr. Spiegel. “But it’s actually giving control back to the patients.”