Medical costs are climbing at a rate much higher than most sectors of the economy. This trend has a serious effect on the U.S. economy—businesses find it difficult to provide medical coverage to their employees, much less offer them raises. to

Dennis Barts, CEO at Valley Hospital & Medical Center: In January, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released their Hospital Inpatient Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) proposal. The proposal outlines the agency's first large scale a to

The role of government in housing finance should be reduced dramatically from its current level, American Bankers Association President and CEO Frank Keating said in a letter sent to federal officials earlier this month.The letter focused on

Effective Feb. 15, lenders who participate in the U.S. Small Business Administration's Preferred Lender Program can approve loans through the agency's new Small Loan Advantage program, the federal agency says. At the same time, the agency will from

ComplianceTech, an Arlington, Va.-based provider of technology and mortgage data analysis, has released results of a study that it says shows a significant decrease in home mortgages to blacks and Latinos in comparison to non-Hispanic whites since

Four years after widespread subprime mortgage defaults touched off an international financial crisis, getting a mortgage today is so difficult that two out of three Americans believe access to affordable mortgages is a serious problem, says recent

One factor, little known by borrowers, can play a large role in whether banks are willing to renegotiate mortgages with homeowners who are struggling to meet payments.Unfortunately, it is a factor that homeowners have no control found that owned

RiverBank, which opened for business here in 2006 and notched its first profitable calendar year in 2009, slid back last year to a net loss of slightly over $1 million, according to data it has filed with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.That

Northwest Bancorporation Inc., the Spokane-based parent of Inland Northwest Bank, has reported net income of $267,000, or 10 cents a diluted share, for all of last year, compared with a net loss of $3.9 million, or $1.63 a share, for all of the the