House says no to mandating balanced federal budget (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Rejecting the idea Congress can't control its spending impulses, the House turned back a Republican proposal Friday to amend the Constitution to dam the rising flood of federal red ink. Democrats ? and a few GOP lawmakers ? said damage from the balanced-budget mandate would outweigh any benefits.

The first House vote in 16 years on making federal deficits unconstitutional came as the separate bipartisan "supercommittee" appeared to be sputtering in its attempt to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions to head off major automatic cuts. The lead Republican on that panel said members were "painfully, painfully aware" of its Wednesday deadline for action and would work through the weekend.

The House voted 261-165 in favor of the measure to require annual balanced budgets, but that was 23 short of the two-thirds majority needed to advance a constitutional amendment.

Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the proposal, arguing that such a requirement would force Congress to make devastating cuts to social programs.

Most Republicans favored the measure, but there were prominent exceptions.

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the party's point man on budgetary matters, agreed with GOP colleagues that "spending is the problem." But he added that "this version of the balanced budget amendment makes it more likely taxes will be raised, government will grow and economic freedom will be diminished."

Likewise, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., said lawmakers should be able to find common ground without changing the Constitution, and he expressed concern that lawsuits filed if Congress failed to balance the budget could result in courts making decisions on cutting spending or raising taxes.

In all, 235 Republicans and 25 Democrats voted for the amendment, four Republicans and 161 Democrats opposed it. The other two Republicans voting no were Justin Amash of Michigan and Louie Gohmert of Texas.

Later in the day, the top Republican on the deficit-reduction supercommittee indicated no deal was near but efforts would continue through the last weekend before Wednesday's deadline.

"We are painfully, painfully aware of the deadline that is staring us in the face," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas. "When we have something more to report, we will report."

With the national debt now topping $15 trillion and the deficit for the just-ended fiscal year passing $1 trillion, supporters of the constitutional amendment declared it the only way to stop out-of-control spending. The government now must borrow 36 cents for every dollar it spends.

"It is our last line of defense against Congress' unending desire to overspend and overtax," Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said as the House debated the measure.

But Democratic leaders worked aggressively to defeat it, saying that such a requirement could force Congress to cut billions from social programs during times of economic downturn and that disputes over what to cut could result in Congress ceding its power of the purse to the courts.

Even had it passed, the measure would have faced an uphill fight in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The House passed a similar measure in 1995, with the help of 72 Democrats. That year, the measure fell one vote short of passing the Senate.

Constitutional amendments must get two-thirds majorities in both houses and be ratified by three-fourths of the states to take effect. The last constitutional amendment ratified, in 1992, concerned lawmaker pay increases.

The second-ranking Democrat, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, voted for the amendment in 1995 but said the situation has vastly changed since then. "Republicans have been fiscally reckless," he asserted, saying the George W. Bush administration would not cut spending elsewhere to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, major tax cuts and a Medicare prescription drug benefit.

"A constitutional amendment is not a path to a balanced budget," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas. "It is only an excuse for members of this body failing to cast votes to achieve one."

The measure on the floor Friday, sponsored by Rep. Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., mirrored the 1995 resolution in stating that federal spending could not exceed revenues in any one year. It would have required a three-fifths majority to raise the debt ceiling or waive the balanced budget requirement in any year. But Congress would be able to let the budget go into deficit with a simple majority if there was a serious military conflict.

The Republicans' hope was that the Goodlatte version would attract more Democratic supporters, and the "Blue Dogs," a group of fiscally conservative Democrats, said they were on board. But there are now only 25 Blue Dogs, half the number of several years ago when there were more moderate Democrats, mainly from rural areas, in the House.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who is not a Blue Dog member, said he was supporting the amendment because "there's an infinite capacity in this Congress to kick the can down the road. ... We are going to have to force people to make tough decisions."

But other Democrats pointed to a letter from some 275 labor and other mostly liberal groups saying that forcing spending cuts or higher taxes to balance the budget when the economy was slow "would risk tipping a faltering economy into recession or worsening an ongoing downturn, costing large numbers of jobs."

Democrats also cited a report by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimating that, if there is not an increase in revenues, the amendment could force Congress to cut all programs by an average of 17.3 percent by 2018.

The amendment would not have gone into effect until 2017, or two years after it was ratified, and supporters said that would give Congress time to avoid dramatic spending cuts.

Forty-nine states have some sort of balanced budget requirement, although opponents note that states do not have national security and defense costs. States also can still borrow for their capital-spending budgets for long-term infrastructure projects.

The federal government has balanced its budget only six times in the past half-century, four times during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/uscongress/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111119/ap_on_go_co/us_balanced_budget_amendment

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Why Syria?s revolution needs a Benghazi

- / AFP - Getty Images

An image aken from a video uploaded on YouTube shows Syrian anti-government protesters waving the former Syrian flag during a demonstration in Khirbet al-Ghazaleh in Daraa province on November 18, 2011.

By Ayman Mohyeldin, NBC News Correspondent

Ayman Mohyeldin covered the Middle East for several years as a correspondent for Al Jazeera?s English language channel. He reported extensively on the revolution in Egypt earlier this year, as well as on Tunisia?s fall. He recently became an NBC News Correspondent.

ANALYSIS

This Friday marks the end of another week of political upheaval across the Arab world with the international spotlight honing in Syria.
In the past week, the often-impotent League of Arab States took a stand against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The decision by the Arab League is a positive step, albeit late.

After Assad?s failure to meet a deadline to withdraw the Syrian military off the streets and talk to his political foes, the Arab League suspended Syria?s membership.

The move came after the organization assumed that Assad?s regime was genuinely engaged with it to end the Syrian uprisings through a brokered or negotiated settlement. This proved to be a false assumption. Force was the ultimate weapon of choice for the regime ? reforms and negotiations were simply diplomatic covers to give the government the time to deal with the issue militarily.

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The ?Arab? decision
Beyond the somewhat symbolic gesture of isolating Syria from the Arab world, the Arab League decision could potentially have an impact on the ground. It?s not so much that it will deter the Syrian regime from continuing its military operations against protesters as it will likely embolden the opposition.

The Arab League?s decision has effectively told the opposition, both internally and externally, that the Arab world no longer wants to do business with Assad ? and new alternatives are welcomed.

This is also a call being echoed individually by Arab leaders, such as Jordan?s King Abdullah, who earlier this week was the first Arab leader to openly call for Assad to step down. "If Bashar [Assad] has the interest of his country [at heart] he would step down, but he would also create an ability to reach out and start a new phase of Syrian political life," Abdullah told the BBC.

Neighboring and regional countries from Iran to Turkey to Qatar, as well as non-state players like Hezbollah, will now have a choice to make.? Come to the strategic defense of the embattled Assad regime and risk a similar public wrath and condemnation or work against the regime by recognizing, aiding, funding and even arming the opposition in accordance with the collective regional will.

Qatar is one country that was instrumental in arming and funding the Libyan opposition. It would not come as a surprise if Qatari funds and weapons ended up in the hands of Syrian opposition by way of Turkey or Jordan.

Internationalizing the conflict
But the Arab Leagues decision, also poses a dilemma for the international community. With no military capabilities, no standing military force or technical capabilities, the Arab League can do very little to actually stop the regime and protect civilians.

In Libya, the League essentially kicked the issue up to the international arena, first to the U.N. and then NATO, which imposed the no-fly zone and carried out subsequent airstrikes that ultimately turned the tide against Moammar Gadhafi?s forces.

By condemning Syria and suspending its membership, the Arab League has played pretty much all the cards it has. Yes, it can try to further isolate and sanction the regime, but member states have already begun doing that unilaterally but withdrawing ambassadors and suspending bilateral trade and investments with Damascus.

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Unlike its mantra when it comes to Iran?s nuclear program and a possible military strike, the U.S. has maintained that, ?it?s keeping its options on the table? in terms of Syria. But the U.S. and other Western powers have also made it clear that any Libyan-style NATO operations are off the table.

In remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Nov. 9, Jeffrey Feltman, the State Department?s Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, said: ?Overall, the [Obama] administration is following a careful but deliberate and principled course. This is necessary given Syria?s complex and unique circumstances. We do not seek further militarization of this conflict. Syria is not Libya.?

This has given Assad a lifeline ? he knows that his use of force will not be countered by any international use of force, no matter how bad it gets.

Assad?s options
With the international community unwilling to act militarily and the Arab League having exhausted their options, Assad can now shift his focus from the international diplomatic arena to his immediate existential threat ? his own people.

He has demonstrated his willingness to use force to suppress those he has labeled as terrorists and militants. He has also rejected any notion of stepping down, seeking refuge in another Arab country or transitioning power to alternative forces.

And at this point, it?s unlikely that Assad will reach full international isolation so long as Russia, a longtime ally, and China continue to drag their feet on taking a firm stance.

Even if it were fully isolated, it does not mean the Syrian regime would crumble. Assad?s legitimacy may have eroded but his capabilities to rule can remain in place for the foreseeable future so long as he does not lose physical territory in his own country or key supply routes that can be used by the opposition to smuggle in weapons, cash and resources from neighboring countries.

In addition, Assad has been a close ally of Iran and Hezbollah and may be inclined to cash in favors for the years of support he provided both of them in the wake of their own regional political isolation and diplomatic hardships.

Free Syrian Army
Although it is in its nascent stages, the Free Syria Army ? a growing group of army defectors carrying out attacks against regime elements inside Syria ? could prove to be the tipping balance in this conflict. But the Free Syria Army has a long way to go before it can succeed operationally and politically.

Complete with its own Facebook page, the FSA says it has tens of thousands of soldiers all across the country ?capable of targeting the regime in its most strategic locations,? as it demonstrated with their high-profile attack on the Air Force Intelligence complex on the edge of Damascus earlier this week.?

For now, the leader of the FSA, Col. Riad al Asaad, is operating along the Syria-Turkey border (which has significant ramifications on Turkey?s role inside Syria). In a phone interview posted on the Facebook page, Asaad said the FSA is drawing its financial and military support from within the ranks of the regime?s military and the people of Syria, an indication that members of the regime?s security apparatus are defecting in large numbers.

While this may be the case, these forces have yet to prove they can act as a military deterrent to the regime. More important, for the FSA to succeed, it must capture and secure a base of operations within the country that can become the ?liberated? capital of the opposition, similar to the way Libyan rebels held Benghazi, that nation?s second-largest city. This city would then allow a political and military opposition council to form and operate directly against the regime within the country. When the Libyan opposition managed to ?liberate? Benghazi and make it a safe haven from which it could operate, the countdown on the Gadhafi regime began.

To do so, the FSA must also secure a border with a neighboring country that can serve as a conduit for supplies, medical assistance and safe travel.

But for now the Syrian opposition, both politically and militarily, are not functioning as a single cohesive unit with a base of operation and coordinated messaging. This can improve with time, especially with the help of countries such as Turkey, which is clearly allowing the FSA to operate from within its own borders.

Mustafa Ozer / AFP - Getty Images

Syrians living in Turkey chant slogans as they wave Turkish and Syrian flags protesting against the government of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad after Friday prayers during a demonstration in front of the Syrian consulate in Istanbul, on Nov. 18.

Turkey?s backyard
Throughout the Arab Awakening, Turkey has been involved in almost every revolution. For the most part, it has been involved politically in calling on previous leaders to step down ? often times ahead of other Arab or European leaders. Sometimes its positions faltered early, as was the case in Libya. But now the Arab revolutions have reached Turkey?s doorstep and there is no ambiguity about its role.

On one hand, it has been among the most critical of the Assad regime. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had invested a lot of political and diplomatic effort in working with Syria ? increasing trade, attempting to negotiate a final peace deal with Israel and bolstering bilateral Turkish-Syrian relations.

But once the uprisings began, the Syrian regime shunned Turkish mediation efforts ? at times brazenly in the public eye. At one point, Syrian tanks reportedly entered Turkish territory in July as thousands were fleeing the fighting.

Turkey in return has made its position clear with its actions: It has given safe refuge to thousands of Syrian refugees; it has allowed the leadership of the FSA to reside in Turkey along its border with Syria; and Turkey has reportedly intercepted arms shipments making their way into Syria.

As a NATO member and a powerful regional player, Turkey may attempt to assume more of the strategic role in facilitating assistance to the Syrian opposition if the FSA can manage to secure a base of operations and safe routes to Turkey from within Syria.

Civil war?
With the stage set, regionally and domestically, there is one inevitability: The conflict in Syria is certain to escalate.

Unlike other Arab revolutions, each with it own challenges and strategic significance, Syria takes it to a whole new level.

Like every other Arab leader who has fled, or has been deposed or has been killed by his own people, Assad has warned that after him there will be chaos and that the region would be engulfed in violence.

Because of its strategic location ? Syria is a country that borders?Israel and is a close ally of Iran, has porous borders with Iraq and Lebanon and has an internal ethnic composition rife with disparities and historical differences ? many are worried about the effects of the fall of the Assad regime on the region. That has paralyzed the international community. The lessons of Iraq are still fresh in everyone?s mind and few dare to deconstruct a regime if it means opening a Pandora?s box inside Syria.

Even Russia?s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned this week that the attacks by the FSA could mark the beginning of ?real civil war? in Syria.

But those who believe Syria is on the verge of civil war fail to recognize what these Arab revolutions are about. It?s precisely for this reason, I dislike the term, the Arab Spring.

I disagree with the term primarily because spring is a season with a beginning and an end and it that ultimately passes. But what is happening across the Arab world is much more of an ?Arab Awakening? -- and awakenings can be painful and groggy, even on a good morning.

More important, the people who are protesting on the streets in Syria and who have been for the past eight months did so not to impose an ideology but to get rid of one ? an ideology of oppression.

It?s for this reason I don?t believe the uprising in Syria is on the verge of a civil war. Nor was the Libya conflict a civil war. In revolutions, those fighting to change the regimes and those fighting to preserve regimes are not fighting ideological wars competing for the hearts and minds of citizens.

Those fighting for change are fighting for a cause ? freedom. Those fighting to save the regimes are struggling to maintain power and those that are doing the fighting on their behalf are mostly doing it out of fear ? not out of loyalty.

I think a real civil war, as we have seen around the world time and time, is when competing forces are fighting to advance ideologies and consolidate power. I don?t believe that is what the people in the Arab world who are facing down tanks, guns and bullets are fighting for today.

But then again, this is Friday and Fridays always mark the beginning of a new week of opportunity across the Arab world.

Source: http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/18/8883853-why-syrias-revolution-needs-a-benghazi

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New Finding Ups the Chances of Life on Jupiter's Moon Europa (SPACE.com)

Europa, Jupiter's icy moon, meets not one but two of the critical requirements for life, scientists say.

For decades, experts have known about the moon's?vast underground ocean?? a possible home for living organisms ? and now a study shows that the ocean regularly receives influxes of the energy required for life via chaotic processes near the moon's surface.

Scientists discussed the implications of the new study, which appeared online Wednesday (Nov. 16) in the journal Nature, at an afternoon press briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington.

Lead author Britney Schmidt, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin, explained that her team studied ice shelves and underground volcanoes on Earth in order to model the formation of odd features called "chaos terrains" that appear all over Europa. The researchers determined that it was heat rising from the moon's deep subterranean ocean and melting ice near the surface, creating briny lakes inside the moon's thick ice shell, that may have caused the collapse of these roughly circular structures above them.

These dynamic lakes, which melt and refreeze over the course of hundreds of thousands or millions of years, lie beneath as much as 50 percent of Europa's surface, the scientists said. [Jupiter Moon's Buried Lakes Evoke Antarctica]

Astrobiologist Tori Hoehler, a senior research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., who was not involved in the new study, provided an outside perspective on its implications for life.

Europa's liquid water ocean "meets one of the critical requirements for life," Hoehler said, noting that its ocean chemistry is believed to be suitable for sustaining living things. "And what you're hearing about today from Britney bears on a second crucial requirement, and that is the requirement for energy."

The?genesis of life on Earth?is thought to have required some sort of injection of energy into the ocean ? perhaps from a lightning strike. And during the 3.8 billion years since then, life's existence has depended on the continuous influx of energy from the sun.

Cut off from the sun, Europa's subterranean ocean would need some other energy source to sustain life. Hoehler said spacecraft observations show that there is a huge amount of stored energy in Europa's mineral-rich crust, but it is separated from the liquid ocean below by at least 6?miles?(10 km) of ice. Like the two terminals of a battery, energy can flow from the surface material to the ocean only if the two are somehow connected, he said.

"What you're hearing about here today would be a way to take this surface material, transport it potentially down into the ocean and in essence tap Europa's battery. When you tap that battery, you move from a system which checks one of the requirements for life to a system that checks a second critical requirement for life, and I think this really impacts the way we consider habitability on Europa."

Europan life isn't a done deal just yet, though. Water and energy aren't the only?ingredients on the checklist for life, and scientists aren't sure whether Europa has the others, such as the necessary organic?chemicals.

Louise Prockter, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., said Europa's chaos regions "are going to be extremely important and possible future targets of exploration."

Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover.?Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on?Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/space/20111117/sc_space/newfindingupsthechancesoflifeonjupitersmooneuropa

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Meg Ryan, America's sweetheart, turns 50

By Kurt Schlosser

America's sweetheart is 50 years old today.

Meg Ryan, the bubbly blond actress from all those?Nora Ephron movies that show up in multiple VHS copies at the thrift store, is 50.

That makes this as good a?time as any to share our appreciation for the work that earned Ryan that sweetheart label. "When Harry Met Sally" comes to mind, particularly for this bit of cinematic gold:

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I remember seeing "Sleepless in Seattle" before I moved to Seattle and thinking how lovely it might be to move to the Emerald City and live on a houseboat. Now I just wish I could go through the local airport and not see the film's title printed on oversized nightshirts in the bookstore. Let's all have a good cry:

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And here's Ryan and "Sleepless" star Tom Hanks reunited in "You've Got Mail." In 1998 the Internet was a little less creepy. You can thank Meg:

None of these films should be confused with the critical greats of our time. But?no doubt they hold a dear spot in the hearts of romantic comedy lovers, and Ryan gets the credit for that today. (Sorry, Hanks, it's not your birthday.)

We just spent a few minutes here trying to figure out who America's sweetheart actress is nowadays. We really couldn't come up with anyone who fits the bill the way Ryan did in the '90s. There are loveable actresses doing plenty of rom coms -- Anne Hathaway, Emma Stone, Ellen Page, Kate Hudson, Emma Roberts, Amy Adams -- but are they sweetheart material? Don't think so.

So, happy birthday, Meg Ryan. For those of you who have never used this "Top Gun" line, today would be a good day to start.

Source: http://entertainment.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/19/8862929-meg-ryan-americas-sweetheart-turns-50

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Scientists: Faster-than-light finding still holds

GENEVA (AP) ? The chances have risen that Einstein was wrong about a fundamental law of the universe.

Scientists at the world's biggest physics lab said Friday they have ruled out one possible error that could have distorted their startling measurements that appeared to show particles traveling faster than light.

Many physicists reacted with skepticism in September when measurements by French and Italian researchers seemed to show subatomic neutrino particles breaking what Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein considered the ultimate speed barrier.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research said more precise testing has now confirmed the accuracy of at least one part of the experiment.

"One key test was to repeat the measurement with very short beam pulses," the Geneva-based organization, known by its French acronym CERN, said in a statement.

The test allowed scientists to check if the starting time for the neutrinos was being measured correctly before they were fired 454 miles (730 kilometers) underground from Geneva to a lab in Italy.

The results matched those from the previous test, "ruling out one potential source of systematic error," said CERN.

Still, scientists stressed that only independent measurements by labs elsewhere would allow them to declare that the results of their experiment were a genuine finding.

"A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication on physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny," said Fernando Ferroni, president of Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics. "The positive outcome of the test makes us more confident in the result, although a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world."

According to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity, nothing is meant to be able to go faster than the speed of light ? 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second).

But the researchers said in September that their neutrinos traveled 60 nanoseconds faster, when the margin of error in their experiment allowed for just 10 nanoseconds. A nanosecond is one-billionth of a second.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2011-11-18-EU-Switzerland-Breaking-Light-Speed/id-77b3072e856d45faa35163b566776d87

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What Is a Health Savings Account and Should I Use One? [Ask Lifehacker]

Dear Lifehacker,
The HR people are telling me I have to decide on my health benefits before the end of the year. Thanks to your article about Flexible Savings Accounts, I understand how FSAs help with healthcare costs, but what about the similar-sounding HSA (Health Savings Account)? What's that all about and is it better than the FSA?

Signed,
Savings Account Seeker

Dear SAS,
Now's the perfect time to be thinking about the Health Savings Account, because as you mentioned, it is open enrollment season. (Exact dates may differ, but, generally, open enrollment is this mid-November to mid-December period.) Most people don't sign up for the HSA, perhaps because HSAs and HSA-compatible health insurance plans can be more confusing than traditional health insurance. But, don't worry, we can help you sort it out and take advantage of an HSA.

Health Savings Accounts: A Way to Get Tax Savings on Medical Expenses

HSAs are savings accounts that you can put money into for medical expenses. As with FSAs, HSAs have tax advantages: you can deduct the amount you contribute to your HSA from your taxes in an "above-the-line" deduction (you don't have to itemize your deductions on your tax return to benefit and the deduction reduces your taxable income) or, depending on your employer's plan, contributions are taken directly from your paycheck before taxes are taken out. Either way, you'll pay less in taxes every year (and everyone likes paying less taxes).

You can check out a HSA savings calculator to see the tax advantages for yourself. As an example, if you contribute $3,000 a year to the HSA and have a federal tax rate of 15% and state tax rate of 10%, you can save $750 a year using an HSA, thanks to the reduced taxes. Increase your contribution to $5,800 and you save $1,450 on your tax bill.

There are several other advantages to an HSA:

• Any money in your HSA you don't use stays in the account and can earn interest every year tax-free. This is unlike the "use it or lose it" policy of FSAs. Depending on the type of HSA, you'll be able to invest your HSA money in a regular savings account, money market funds, CDs or mutual funds.
• You can take your HSA with you when you switch jobs; the account belongs to you, not your employer.
• Your employer can make contributions to the HSA on your behalf. Free money!
• You can use an HSA as a kind of retirement plan: Once you've reached the age of 65, you can withdraw money from the HSA without penalty for non-medical expenses. From the time you open the HSA to when you retire, interest is compounding in your account. (If you take the money out before age 65 for anything other than a qualified medical expense, you'll be hit with a 20% tax penalty, unless you're disabled. So don't think about it.)

Sounds great, right? Well, here's the catch:

What you need to be eligible for an HSA: A high deductible health plan: To qualify for an HSA, you must have a specific type of health insurance: a high deductible health plan (HDHP) and, generally, no other health coverage.

The high deductible health plan is sometimes what scares people away from HSAs. As the name implies, there's a higher yearly deductible than typical health plans?at least $1,200 for individual coverage and $2,400 for family coverage (the deductible is determined by individual health plan, Aetna, for example, but the IRS set those minimums). The deductible means you have to cover a certain amount of your health care expenses out-of-pocket before the HDHP reimburses you. The insurance premiums for your HDHP don't count (although payments for separate long-term care insurance do count towards the deductible).

What counts towards the deductible and qualified medical expenses: A great many types of medical expenses can be paid for with the HSA, including: Dental services, prescriptions, eyeglasses and LASIK, and doctor office visits. The IRS's Publication 502 has a comprehensive list of medical and dental expenses that may qualify.

Another advantage of an HSA: You can also use the HSA to pay for qualified medical expenses for your spouse or a dependent, without tax penalty.

Why Choose an HSA over an FSA

We've already talked about some differences between the HSA and an FSA (yearly rollover, transfer to another job, etc.). (You could have both types of accounts, but only in certain situations, such as if your employer offers a very limited kind of FSA then you can have the HSA.) The biggest difference is that the money in the account earns interest and is yours to use forever for medical expenses or, after you're 65 years old, anything else.

One big difference when it comes to HSA is the premiums. High deductible health plans generally have lower premiums, as much as 50-60% lower than traditional plans. One HDHP I looked at, for example, on my husband's benefits options has a $69.55 bi-weekly deductible, whereas the traditional plan we were using before has a $86.95 bi-weekly deductible, which comes out to roughly $400/year saved with the HSA. However, there are other health insurance plan options that go as high as $258.80 (in my personal example), which is a difference of about $4,542 a year in premium savings.

Using your HSA is easy. Usually, you'll get a debit card or checkbook to pay for expenses, without having to get approval from the HSA administrator.

Finally, many plans have what's called a "premium pass through," where a portion of your HDHC premiums are automatically contributed to the HSA. So, unlike traditional health plans where all of your premium is just insurance and doesn't really add up, with the pass through, at least part of your health insurance premiums are going to your savings.

Why You Might Not Want a HSA

HSAs so far sound like the best option, right? There are, however, a few things that might make you reconsider:

• You have to pay for expenses until all of the deductible is met, which means if you have a major medical expense at the beginning of the year (before your HSA contributions and pass through are deposited), you won't get reimbursed until much later in the year. With an FSA, you can get reimbursed whenever, even in January before all your FSA contributions have accumulated.
• There's also a limit to the amount you can contribute each year to the HSA. For 2011, this is $3,050 for individual coverage or $6,150 for family coverage. For individual coverage, you can typically put away more (up to $5,000) in the FSA.
• Lifehacker reader dilbert69 also noted in the FSA article that HSA funds might be subject to state income tax (e.g., in California), so you should also take that added expense into consideration.

Those are the basics of HSAs. For more information, check out the HSA Manager FAQs or IRS Publication 969 for the official word. Also be sure to compare HDHC plan benefits with traditional health insurance benefits to make sure which meets your needs best.

Good luck!

Love,
Lifehacker

Photo remixed from an original by zimmytws / Shutterstock.

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You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter or Google+.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/qH20yQKL1XA/what-is-a-health-savings-account-and-should-i-use-one

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A New Creation Story

The God of the Gaps must be feeling mightily squeezed these days. Is it any surprise that someone wants to give him/her/it a whole new universe in which to hang out?

Clay Farris Naff tries to do just that in a post today on the Scientific American guest blog titled, ?A Secular Case for Intentional Creation.? The post isn?t about the creation of Earth or humanity, which Naff kindly considers settled, but about the creation of our universe itself. It?s one of those happy-middle arguments that insists that both extremes must be wrong.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with these arguments, the position of one side is pushed a bit further in order to make room in that middle.

In this case, Naff is unhappy with the usual suspects, the New Atheists. (In the interests of disclosure, I consider myself a New Atheist and derive a small income from blogging as one.) Where are the New Atheists wrong about the origin of the universe?

The ?New Atheist? position, by contrast, demands serious consideration. It has every advantage that science can provide, yet it overreaches for its conclusion. The trouble with the ?New Atheist? position, as defined above, is this: it commits the fallacy of the excluded middle. I will explain.

After presenting his credentials as a nonreligious person in the hopes that he will be taken more seriously, Naff does so.

Science indeed excludes many possibilities. The conservation laws rule out ghosts who deploy photons to be visible, electromagnetic force to hurl objects, and kinetic wave energy to moan. Miracles are bunk. Like LaPlace, we?ve no need for a Creator to explain how the world works. But we might in searching for our ultimate origins.

The claim I aim to rebut is that science forces us to conclude that life is accidental, purposeless, and doomed. It?s a stance with quite a claque.

There, in the ?might,? is that pesky God of the Gaps. It?s there, too, in the idea that science is a process of exclusion.

Excluding possibilities that don?t fit our observations is, of course, part of science. Just as critical, however, is making the observations to begin with, so that our hypotheses and our tests are based in the best approximation of reality we have. Science is a finite enterprise; it behooves us to manage it well. We do not have so many scientists and so much funding that anyone is writing grant proposals aimed at finding the orbit of Russell?s china teapot.

Note that we don?t say the teapot has been proven to not exist. We simply say that without evidence, we are comfortable dismissing it as one person?s fantasy, unworthy of the time and attention of scientists as they work to uncover the reality behind those events we can and do observe.

So what observations does Naff make or cite that would require us to spend time and attention on the idea of intentional creation? Well, actually, none at all. What we are presented with instead is a story about one possible creation scenario.

Darwinian evolution compels most of us to act as if the persistence of life into the future is good. In fact, for those of us in advanced nations, life has become really good in just the last few generations. (Consider how few of us starve to death, lose a child to infectious disease, or risk enslavement.) Assuming that civilization persists, it is reasonable to infer that life will be even better in the future, and that our descendants will want to keep it going.

In the long run, that will require moving beyond Earth (Brace yourselves, Trekkies!), and eventually into the kind of galactic colonization whose absence Fermi famously noted. (?Where are they??/a>)

But in the very long run, as John Maynard Keynes wryly observed, we are all dead. Everything we know about the Universe, with its dark energy and its goshdarn Second Law, tells us so.

Faced with this inevitability, what will our descendants do? If possible, they will follow the Darwinian imperative: Keep life alive! They will attempt to create a Baby Universe capable of giving rise to life like us.

That?s it. A little science fictional story is the reason we shouldn?t dismiss the idea of a creator for our universe as a fantasy. Sadly, it isn?t even a story based in good science. Evolution doesn?t ?compel? us to do anything. Standards of life in modern industrial nations rely on a use of resources that appears to be unsustainable. Stories of galactic travel rely on hand-waving to get around the problems of moving astronomical distances with only the resources we can carry. Similar hand-waving is required to move from the need for a new universe to the possibility of creating one.

All that is fine for a science fiction story, but Nash isn?t asking us simply to be entertained. For making a compelling case that an intelligent creator may be more than fiction? Well, like Russell?s teapot, there just isn?t much here to go chasing after. It?s just a story.

I could write you a story about accidental creation of the universe, rather than intentional. I could posit a grand orgy of energy beings creating so much tension that its release cannot be contained in a single universe and creates a new one. I could also write you a story about a universe that is collapsing, with a single strain of life that tragically views events backward and doesn?t understand that it?s actually in decline. I could write about a petulant child who creates a universe because no one else wants to spend time with it.

I can write all the stories I want (though they?re not likely to get published, as creation is a hoary old science fiction trope). That doesn?t make any of them true. It doesn?t make any of them worth paying particular attention to, except as artistic endeavors that tell us more about us than about the nature of the world. It doesn?t give us any means to choose between them. The only thing that can do that is our observations of the real world, which is where we come back to Naff?s irritation with us New Atheists.

Naff can?t seem to understand why more scientists don?t entertain the possibilities he mentions, unless it is because they fear ridicule. He?s particularly unhappy with Dawkins on this score:

Indeed, any talk of teleology seems to infuriate Dawkins: ?What is the purpose of a mountain? What is the purpose of a tsunami? What is the purpose of bubonic plague? Surely you can see that these are just silly questions? Same with the universe.?

Even granting for the sake of argument that this typed text is Dawkins being infuriated, Naff is mischaracterizing this as ?any talk of teleology.? The question to which Dawkins was responding was, ?Richard, one might as well ask, equally, why assume there is no purpose?? That question is central to the debate in which Naff is inserting himself. It is, in fact, the question on which his entire post hinges. Why not assume there is a purpose instead of none?

Naff?s answer is, in essence, that we can imagine a purpose. So why not assume a purpose exists and study it?

The best reason not to go chasing about after a purpose for the universe is simple. It?s already there in Dawkins? answer, if you read it for content instead of simply as an emotional outburst.

The universe is, according to everything we have already observed and tested, a natural phenomenon, like a mountain or a tsunami or Yersinia pestis. At one time, we considered mountains to be gods or the abodes of gods. Tsunamis and plague were considered the visitations of unhappy spirits. We imagined many things about these natural phenomena. It was then, as it is now, easy to do.

What we did not do was learn much. Knowledge didn?t come until we began to treat all these things as natural occurrences. Until then, all we had was imagination.

Don?t get me wrong. Imagination is a very powerful tool of science, but science puts constraints on imagination, requires it to work within the bounds of observation. And like many an artist, science does its best work under constraint.

We could, as Naff does, create stories about the origin of our universe, because we hope that we have a purpose, or in order to get along better with those who are certain that we do. However, if we want to know how the natural phenomenon of the universe came into being?to understand those origins rather than to gaze at them wistfully or chat about them free of conflict?then we are better off doing what we do when we study all natural phenomena and reining in our imagination. We are better off treating other stories as fantasies until they are supported by observation.

Even if someone thinks we?re overreaching when we do so.

Related:

A Secular Case for Intentional Creation.
Physics and the Immortality of the Soul
Forgotten dreams? A call to investigate the mysteries of humanity
What does it mean that a nation is ?Unscientific??
Dubitable Darwin? Why Some Smart, Nonreligious People Doubt the Theory of Evolution
The deity by any other name: Army resilience program gets a thumbs down from atheists

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=e74cbf0176fff5463340f629367970b5

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