The sticking point is whether patients should have broader rights to sue their health plan, one of President Clinton's requirements for signing a bill. But state laws don't apply to at least 40 million people covered by certain employer-sponsored health plans. Far from open and shut. Congress missed its deadline for enacting federal rules to protect the confidentiality of medical records. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala will propose her own regulations this fall, but they will apply only to electronic records.
Divorce is thought to be harder on moms in part because they generally earn less.
Dads, however, have lost the exclusions but are still paying for the kids. But it's still unclear whether the tax breaks mothers receive are enough to offset caring for the kids most of the time. If you waited till now to buy a fund outside of a tax-deferred account, goes the rap, you'll be stuck with a tax bill on the distribution, but you won't have benefited from the fund's previous appreciation. Tune out the refrain. It doesn't always make sense to avoid a fund just because of pending capital-gains distributions, which are usually modest in size.