Some of the work has been done by the website, http://www.discounthealthinsuranceplans.net. The owners of the site offer several ideas on how to save, not only on health insurance, but alternatives to high rates on life, auto and retirement insurance. Set up in an easy to navigate manner, you can easily tab from one page to another and see some of the options available with various opportunities to check insurance rates.

Considering the huge profits that insurance companies generate year after year, it is not strange that you would think that rates could be lower if shopped properly and that there are discount health insurance plans available.

The 2 main most common terms in referring to health care insurance are usually premium, that is the amount paid for the insurance coverage, and deductible, that is your out-of-pocket charge prior to the insurance pays your provider. For instance, perhaps you may pay $300 premium each month for family members insurance plan, and your deductible could be $250 per person, which means if you fell and broke your ankle and went to the hospital emergency room, you would probably be forced to pay for the first $250 of the bill.

You can purchase very basic catastrophic insurance policy coverage, that would likely have an extremely high deductible and the premium would be less than comprehensive coverage which in turn can have a more expensive premium and lower deductible. It can be profitable to invest enough time to investigate a variety of insurance plan alternatives, taking under consideration how old you are, your basic overall health as well as the overall health of your family members.

Your employer may provide you with group health insurance, which often is most likely the least pricey choice for you personally, and normally the premium is subtracted from your pay check. If that is the case, you may not need the services and information on the site but it can’t hurt to check it out anyway.

New Yorkers will get a sneak peek at Target’s latest collaboration Wednesday.

And considering Liberty of London has crossed the pond to be here, it should be quite an event.

Target will launch a pop-up store of flowery goods, and this one has everyone covered: Men, women, children and even home goods go on sale starting at 11 a.m. Wednesday at 1095 Sixth Ave., next to Bryant Park.

The pop-up preview store will house the collection, which includes piggy banks, lamps, ties, bathing suits and even a bike ($199.99) decked out in the British brand’s signature prints.

Liberty, which started in 1875, collaborates with an international array of upscale brands that are carried in its stately London flagship store. But what they’re best known for are the prints - their archive holds over 43,000 designs.

Check out the pop-up Wednesday (11 a.m.-8 p.m.),  Thursday through Saturday (9 a.m.-8 p.m.), or in Target Stores this Sunday.

This could be a nice long term collaboration with a couple of heavy hitters in the retail world and could offer employment opportunities due to this expansion.

Instead of the Wall Street analysis number being 455,000 claims rose by 22,000 to the 468,000 number. I guess there is no accounting in down town New York for the weather. Construction companies all along the middle and upper east coast were halted by the weather as well as other weather sensitive related companies.

In addition to the new found additional 22,000, the four week average, used to maintain some semblance of lack of volatility, rose by 6,000 making the total out of work an additional 30,000. That’s a bad figure as it appears that companies are continuing to cut back on their employees.

Among the states, North Carolina had biggest increase in claims, with 5,897, which it attributed to layoffs in the construction, furniture and mining industries. Pennsylvania and Kentucky also reported large increases. The state data lags initial claims by one week.

California reported the largest drop in claims, with 5,540, which it attributed to fewer layoffs in services. Illinois, New York, Texas and Missouri recorded the next largest decreases.

There is increased hope that the new jobs bill will begin to level out the unemployment numbers and make some progress towards the positive as opposed to the increased unemployment numbers that are still trending the wrong way.

The aid will help those that are in foreclosure, upside down on their homes and for those that are unemployed and unable to make their house payments. The funding will come from the TARP funds that were used to bail out the big banks. Presenting this with the President will be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who represents the state of Nevada which is in the worst condition of the five states.

Behind on Your Mortgage? LOAN MODIFICATION experts are standing by to re-do your existing loan.

Although the 1.5 billion can help many people, the Obama administration is saying that this is just one arrow in their quiver of housing aid and is a part of the struggling Home Affordable Modification Program which has done very little to aid those in need over the past year.

This announcement will also shift the responsibility to the state housing agencies of coming up with actual solutions for their particular state. They could develop programs that assist the unemployed until they find jobs, help the underwater negotiate principal reductions with their loan servicers and pay incentives to second-lien holders to get them to agree to loan modifications, according to the White House.

If implemented, this could give the states the opportunity to get homeowners’ loans modified and offer help to the unemployed. The programs that the state agencies come up with will still have to be approved by the Treasury Department.

This move is sure to go over big with franchise owners as they were less than thrilled when corporate decided that the price for the burger should be only 1 dollar. The price has since increased to 1.19 making it more palatable to the owners of this well know fast food restaurant uses the dollar menu to drive in traffic even though it hurts their profits.

Although the concept of the loss leader to generate activity is not new, in this economy the profits are even tighter because the dollar menu items are all the rage with those affected by job losses and job cuts. With an increase in the percentage of dollar menu items sold, Burger King had to look at ways to to keep the franchises profitable and the slice of cheese being removed was one of them.

Burger King is also promising to add more items to the dollar menu which could include new items altogether and perhaps some items that would actually be profitable. Expect to see the change in the cheese volume April 26th of this year.

There are talks that BK will also remove the Whopper Jr from the dollar menu as well as that is also an under performing item in terms of profit margin.

You be the judge based on the following:

The Department of Transportation has approved over 10,000 state highway projects for a total of 34 billion dollars… only about 8 billion has been disbursed as of now.  That seems like reasonable figures for a year to me.

Eight billion went to food stamps… although that is noble, it did not stimulate the economy. Fail.

The plan has made it possible for extended unemployment benefits.  Again a noble cause but not in line with “stimulus”. Fail

Forty-Eight billion to states to stabilize and help balance their budgets.  Is that stimulus?  Perhaps if the trickle down caused new jobs, new businesses, businesses to grow or perhaps new construction.

Somewhere between 595,263 jobs were created or saved by the plan in the final three months of 2009, the White House said in late January. A previous report, which had used a different method of calculation, said it had saved 640,239 jobs in the prior quarter.  Pass.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates that there would have been 1.5 million to 2 million fewer jobs in 2009 if not for the stimulus funds.  I’m not a huge fan of self grading when it comes to a bunch of politicos.  Pass if true.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the package is responsible for employing up to 2.4 million people.  Where did they get those figures but if accurate – Pass.

US unemployment figures were 7.7% last year at this time and now they stand at 9.7% nationally.  Double Fail!

The GDP grew 5.7% in the last quarter of 2009 which is two consecutive quarters of growth consecutively.  That is huge as a recession buster. Double Pass!

So, we spent some 800 billion dollars on this stimulus plan and in all reality the difference over a year is close to insignificant with the exception of the GDP.  I give the stimulus plan a 78 on a scale of 100.  Where I went to school, that was passing but you sure didn’t want to show that score to your parents who were shelling out significant amounts of money for a private school education.

We’ll never see a complete end to the home office but this expansion into the cafe world has taken hold and is even lauded and applauded by the fact food chains.  McDonalds offers free internet in over 11,000 of their restaurants and the Chick-fil-A cahin is also offering free internet. Those well know fast food restaurants are seeing the trend and want to capture the internet savvy clientele that is now permeating the highways and byways of America.

McDonald’s move is particularly interesting because they had charged a 2.95 fee to use their internet service which was powered by the AT&T network and gave up a source of revenue to attract those customers.  I would be hard pressed to believe they made that move without some intense and serious market research.

You can’t walk in to a Panera Bread restaurant without seeing a bevy of people sitting and working on their laptops, interviewing prospective employees, selling an insurance program using the internet access to get the latest rates or just tapping away on their keyboard writing for their latest project. The ability to be able to just plop down almost anywhere and access the internet plays right into the fact that we are a mobile society dependent on the world wide web.

One man I know makes over 10,000 monthly without an office, home or otherwise, just accessing the free internet portals offered by the various restaurants with his internet marketing business.  Spending about 5 dollars a day on fuel and another 5 on coffee or drinks, he hits no less than 5 restaurants daily cruising around in a Mercedes SUV while dressing casually.

So, next time you see a guy wearing shorts and a golf cap, tapping away on a Toshiba laptop sitting at your local eatery, realize he isn’t some local bum but a businessman working in his office.

Sales of the Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Grand Caravan minivans fell 28% in the U.S. last year as many previous customers worried about Chrysler’s financial troubles and the powers that be at Chrysler believe that getting you behind the wheel of a Caravan or Town and Country will aid in getting consumer confidence back.

Of course there are caveats in this whole deal… you must drive the van for 30 days, you can’t drive it over 4,000 miles, you have to trade in a competitors car and if you do return the van you will not get the trade in back. That last contingency may chase away some folks from this offer but if you have a real old beater, it won’t matter if you do not get it back.

This offer is one that I call “Smoke and Mirrors” as they are not interested in whether you bring the van back or not… it is all about changing the consumer’s perception of the automaker. It is not unlike the 100,000 mile warranties that Hyundai was offering for a time… you’ll almost never keep a car for 100,000 miles but the public was seeing the automaker stand behind the car for 100K so they automatically assume that the car is strong like bull.

If this program works as well as GM’s recent promotion (GM said customers returned 505 vehicles out of 439,000 sold on a similar deal which ran from September 2009 until last month) Chrysler executives will be thrilled and so will the stockholders.

Ok, this isn’t business news but it is worth taking up some space on this blog as we are proud Americans and the efforts by NASA is something to laud and applaud.

Shuttle Endeavour Launch Time Scrubbed, Space Shuttle Endeavour is one of three currently operational orbiters in the Space Shuttle fleet of NASA, the space agency of the United States. Before being decommissioned NASA expects to use Endeavour for the STS-130 and STS-134 missions. Shuttle Endeavour launch time was scrubbed in the last moments due to unfavorable weather. NASA launch director Mike Leinbach called an official scrub at 4:30 a.m. EST Sunday.

NASA shuttle launch and mission managers would analyze forecast conditions for a Monday or Tuesday pre-dawn launch attempt. If Endeavour launches Monday morning, the launch time would be 4:14 a.m. Eastern Time. NASA was in violation of safety rules for Sunday morning, due to clouds that were too low and too thick over the launch and emergency landing sites at the Kennedy Space Center. Endeavour is set to ferry the last of the heavy living-quarter and interior space elements to the International Space Station.

Barney Frank, the nutjob Democrat from MA, now wants to abolish Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. This is the same guy that has been lauding and applauding the merits of these two psuedo-government entities. He is the same guy that was counting Fannie and Freddie as “fundamentally sound” in July of 2008 after the subprime mortgage market went away.

In 2003, he also called them fundamentally sound and wanted little government oversite because he stated that they were providing easy and affordable financing for Americans. Sure, it was easy financing, as you could get anyone financed as long as they could fog a mirror but was it sound financing.

Of course not but what does the poster boy for poor business care… he was happy playing with pages and such when the subprime market was fueling the latest real estate rush. His lack of oversite is in part why the real estate industry crashed, why tens of thousands lost their homes and why there was an overabundance of mortgage fraud during the period of 2003 – 2008.

Fannie and Freddie could be what will keep this country from calling it a day financially with the proper oversite and the proper guidelines for mortgages and in point of fact, we need them now more than ever.