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Interesting Things Around the Internet

• An explosion at a natural gas plant killed five workers just days after new safety recommendations were released on how to prevent explosions at natural gas plants.
• Valuable advice from the New York Times on how to appeal if your health insurance company denies a claim.
  

  The Department of Labor estimates that each year about 1.4 billion claims are filed with the employer-based health plans the department oversees.

  Of those, according to data collected from health insurance industry sources, 100 million are initially denied. In simpler numbers, that is one of every 14 claims.

  If you’re denied, be prepared for a fight, but in some cases it can be won. The article has tips for how to prepare.

• Hospitals need health care reform for some of the same reasons the rest of us do.
  

  “If nothing happens, it’s more of the same, and it will continue to be harder and harder in terms of financial viability,” said Nickolas A. Vitale, the senior vice president for financial operations for Beaumont Hospitals, a hospital system based in Royal Oak, Mich., whose uncompensated care has increased by 20 percent a year since 2005.

• Nebraska Democratic Senator Ben Nelson will be joining a filibuster against Craig Becker, President Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board. Basically, Becker isn’t anti-worker enough.
• Paul Krugman:
  

  Today, by contrast, the Republican leaders refuse to offer any specific proposals. They inveigh against the deficit — and last month their senators voted in lockstep against any increase in the federal debt limit, a move that would have precipitated another government shutdown if Democrats hadn’t had 60 votes. But they also denounce anything that might actually reduce the deficit, including, ironically, any effort to spend Medicare funds more wisely.

  And with the national G.O.P. having abdicated any responsibility for making things work, it’s only natural that individual senators should feel free to take the nation hostage until they get their pet projects funded.