Transportation Network Companies like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar should bear the insurance burden when they encourage drivers to use their personal vehicles to transport passengers for a profit, according to recommendations made Wednesday from California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones.

Jones’ recommendations were made to the California Public Utilities Commission, which oversees TNCs in California. His recommendations stem from a recent Department of Insurance investigative hearing in which insurers and TNC operators squared off over how auto insurance should be handled.

Still, study suggests, efforts needed to reduce errors that lead to claimsEfforts to lower health care costs in the United States have focused at times on demands to reform the medical malpractice system, with some researchers asserting that large, headline-grabbing and “frivolous” payouts are among the heaviest drains on health care resources. But a new review of malpractice claims by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests such assertions are wrong.

In their review of malpractice payouts over $1 million, the researchers say those payments added up to roughly $1.4 billion a year, making up far less than 1 percent of national medical expenditures in the United States.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The first draft was as mind-numbing as a tax form. Tuesday the Obama administration unveiled simplified application forms for health insurance benefits coming next year under the federal health care overhaul.

The biggest change: a five-page short form that single people can fill out. That total includes a cover page with instructions, and an extra page to fill out if you want to designate someone to help you through the process.

But the application form for families still runs to 12 pages, although most households will not have to fill out each and every page.

Even as you finish with this year's taxes, if you're a small-business owner experts say it's time to look ahead to 2014, when the tax implications of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) begin to kick in.

"Just now, things are really sinking in that there is this employer responsibility," said Amanda Austin, of the National Federation of Independent Business.

Under ACA, often called Obamacare, employers with 50 or more full-time workers face a mandate to provide insurance. It's known formally as shared responsibility.

Millions of people who take advantage of government subsidies to help buy health insurance next year could get stung by surprise tax bills if they don’t accurately project their income.

President Barack Obama’s new health care law will offer subsidies to help people buy private health insurance on state-based exchanges, if they don’t already get coverage through their employers. The subsidies are based on income. The lower your income, the bigger the subsidy.

But the government doesn’t know how much money you’re going to make next year. And when you apply for the subsidy, this fall, it won’t even know how much you’re making this year. So, unless you tell the government otherwise, it will rely on the best information it has: your 2012 tax return, filed this spring.

Most large employers don’t expect to send their full-time employees to government health exchanges for insurance during the next five years, but some retirees and part-time workers will end up there, a new survey has found.

The outlook for corporate insurance in the long term is less certain.

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