Bloomberg BusinessWeek, July 31, 2015 (I)

choi

(1) Noah Buhayar and Peter Robison with Elizabeth Dexheimer, Can the Insurance Industry Survive Driverless Cars?
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... ve-driverless-cars-

Quote:

"Auto insurance has long been a lucrative business. The industry collected about $195 billion in premiums last year from U.S. drivers. New customers are the source of so much profit that Geico alone spends more than $1 billion a year on ads to pitch its policies with a talking lizard

"a system introduced on the 2013 Honda Accord beeps when cars get too close to traffic ahead or leave their lane without signaling. It has had a measurable effect on the frequency of some types of claims: Bodily injury liability losses dropped 40 percent and medical payments decreased 27 percent, according to a 2014 study of insurance claims data by the Highway Loss Data Institute, IIHS’s sister organization.

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Insurers brace for a time when automation reduces accidents—and premiums
(b) About the Institutes. IIHS HLDI, undated.
www.iihs.org/iihs/about-us
(c) Allstate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allstate
(founded in 1931 as part of Sears, Roebuck and Co, and was spun off in 1993; Headquarters  Northfield Township, Illinois; section 1 History)
(d) There is no need to red the rest.

choi

(2) Karen Weise,    (cover story)
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... -control-revolution

Quote:

"IUDs can retail for more than $800 each * * * there’s now a lower-cost alternative[:]. This summer, the clinic got its first shipment of an IUD named Liletta that hit the market in April. Liletta is manufactured and sold by Allergan but was developed by a nonprofit, Medicines360, whose entire seed funding—$74 million—also came from an anonymous donor [Buffet].

"A decade ago, almost no one in the US had IUDs * * * By 2013, however, as women learned about superior, safer designs, IUDs had become the method of choice for more than 10 percent of women using contraceptives

"The US contraceptive market, including pills and IUDs, totaled more than $6 billion in 2013, according to Transparency Market Research.

"Named for Buffett’s first wife [second wife is Astrid Menks], the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation is the third-largest family foundation in the country, behind only the Bill & Melinda Gates and Ford foundations. In 2013, the most recent year for which tax filings are available, it gave away almost half a billion dollars, largely to organizations dedicated to reproductive health.


Note:
(a) Dalkon Shield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalkon_Shield
("In 1970 the AH Robins Company acquired the Dalkon Shield from the Dalkon Corporation, founded by Hugh J Davis, MD")
(i) E Claiborne Robins. In University History. University of Richmond, undated
urhistory.richmond.edu/people/Robins.html
(AH Robins)
(ii) Michael Ollove, Hugh Davis. Baltimore Sun, Oct 25, 1998
http://articles.baltimoresun.com ... hield-bruce-davis/4
("Anticipating huge commercial success, Lerner incorporated in 1969 the Dalkon Corporation (from the names DAvis, Lerner, and Robert COHN, Lerner's attorney")

He died exactly two years before (in 1996).