Personal finance from around the Web Tuesday:

• The Federal Reserve is proposing new rules to protect gift card consumers from exorbitant fees and and expiration dates.  While the exact date these new rules will go into effect remains unknown, it most likely won't be until next summer — after the upcoming gift-card season. [Federal Reserve, Bucks]

• Online microlending has been all the rave in recent years. One of the most popular is Kiva, which allows you to make loans to low-income entrepreneurs in developing countries. But it is no longer practical for it to be true "person-to-person lending." [My Money Blog]

• With the passing of the health care reform bill comes the passing of a 5.4 % surtax aimed at high-income tax returns. The Tax Foundation has created a map that shows the top tax rates in different states under the new plan. [Tax Policy Blog]

• The number of people taking the standardized Law School Admission Test has skyrocketed. In late September, 60,000  people took the test — a worrisome number, since law jobs are shrinking. [Most Strongly Supported]

• Wondering what has happened to the transportation stimulus package? The California Transportation Department reports it has been allocated $2 billion into federal highway funds. But only 2.5 % of that money has been spent yet.  California is not alone, but sometimes slow and steady wins the race. [Freakonomics]

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By now you’re probably accustomed to your health care costs climbing each year. But brace yourself: 2010 is shaping up to be a doozie — a year that could shake up your opinion about how attractive the current employer-provided health care system really is..

When I reported a story for the November issue of MONEY about selecting 2010 health benefits, I was shocked by the expected rise in health care costs. And while I thought the forecasted increase was alarming, I didn't have enough space in the print edition to fully explore its roots and magnitude. So here's what I couldn't include the first time around:

Next year, according to human resources consultant Hewitt Associates, employees on average will see a whopping 10% jump in their premium, bringing their share of annual premium costs to $2,085. They’ll also see additional out- of-pocket costs — deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance, for example — climb 10%. Adding up all these expenditures, Hewitt says total health care costs next year will be $4,023 — triple where they were a decade ago.

Appropriately enough, this price shock comes as Congress is debating the largest health care overhaul our country has attempted in decades. More

Many workers unfortunate enough to get the ax in this recession at least had one thing working in their favor: subsidized health insurance. This past February Congress threw out a temporary life preserver for workers laid off between September 1, 2008, and December 31, 2009: For up to nine months, Uncle Sam covers 65% of the monthly premium that these newly unemployed people have to pay to stay on their company health care plan. Previously, if you stuck with your company benefits (under the federal program known as COBRA), you had to pay your share of the monthly premium, plus how much your employer covered. For singles, that totaled an average of $400 a month, according to Kaiser Family Foundation; for families, it came to $1,050.

Thanks to this new subsidy, 38% of unemployed workers are opting to remain on the company health plan, double the number that typically stick with it, according to a study from Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm.

But now that lifeline is running out. More

Last month, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) introduced a health-reform-bill amendment that would have prevented the federal government from requiring insurers to offer any particular medical benefits. "I don’t need maternity care," he said. "And so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive."

Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow zinged back: "I think your Mom probably did."

The left side of the blogsphere loved this. Democrats used it as fundraising opportunity.

Politicians are probably best advised to stick to a rigorous pro-motherhood line. But Kyl's point was really just an extension of a view about health insurance that a lot of Americans hold. More

It's Friday — time to catch up on some of the week's most interesting, and sometimes puzzling, news in the world of personal finance.

1. Thought you had health insurance? Hah! The Washington Post ran a great story Monday about how insurance companies have canceled the health insurance policies of thousands of people after those policyholders have filed for claims related to expensive medical problems. The cancellations, known in the trade as "rescissions," are ostensibly justified by policyholders' failure to disclose previously existing medical conditions — think of someone who survives a heart attack who doesn't admit to cardiac problems when applying for health coverage the following year. The problem, according to the Post, is that rescission has become not only a tool for fighting fraud, but an excuse for insurance companies to weasel out of paying claims. One such case: After a woman filed a claim for emergency gallbladder surgery, her attorney alleges, her health insurer canceled coverage for her and her husband because he had failed to mention his high cholesterol. More

Here's my suggestion for solving the nation's healthcare crisis — the one that I would propose at one of those town-meeting shoutfests if I could get in a word edgewise: Make sure that members of Congress are living with the same health benefits that the rest of us are.

As reported recently by the Los Angeles Times, you see, senators and members of the House of Representatives enjoy a health insurance program that insulates them from the costs, problems and worries suffered by millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans. Like other government workers, they have their choice of ten different health plans, while 85% of companies offering a health plan to their employees offer a single option. They pay a modest $300 a month for family coverage, according to the Times. And — in stark contrast to the difficulties faced by cancer survivors or diabetes sufferers who try to get health insurance on the individual market — they don't have to worry that pre-existing medical conditions will prevent them from getting coverage or sorely limit their coverage if they do manage to get a policy.

With such cushy benefits, it's easy for members of Congress to get all passionate about the theoretical issues surrounding health care funding and the social safety net, while ignoring the practical realities what it's like to go broke paying for catastrophic or chronic medical expenses. So let's help them focus their minds and best intentions on the problem at hand.

What we'll do is randomly select senators and representatives to live with a particular quality of health care in the same proportion as the rest of Americans. Forty-six million Americans — 18% of the non-elderly population (in other words, too young to qualify for Medicare) — don't have health insurance at any one time, according to the U.S. Census. So 18% of members of Congress — 18 senators and 78 representatives — will start walking around uninsured. Very quickly, one supposes, they'll be a lot more nervous crossing the street and a lot more worried when a family member starts running a temperature during flu season.

But that wouldn't give Congress a complete taste of the anxiety that Americans feel about their health care — the knowledge that even if you do have affordable health insurance, you could lose it at any moment. All it takes is a job loss or an employer who decides it's just too expensive to provide insurance as a benefit. So, because by one estimate one-third of the non-elderly went without health insurance over 2007 and 2008, we'll make sure that 33 senators and 145 representatives randomly lose their health coverage for a time over each two-year session of Congress. That averages out to roughly a year without health insurance for all those lucky congressmen and congresswomen and their families. Again, let's hope for their sake that they don't choose that year to come down with an expensive medical condition.

Finally, let's make sure that an appropriate number of congressmen feel the financial pain felt by those for whom having health insurance doesn't protect them from financial pain. Seventeen percent of employees with coverage through their employer (see page 7) ended up paying more than 10% of their after-tax income on health expenses such as premiums, co-pays and co-insurance. A whopping 53% of people purchasing non-group private insurance paid more than 10% of their income on health care. So, with the number of people getting health insurance through their employer declining on a regular basis, let's split the difference and dock 10% of the after-tax pay of 35% of congressmen — 35 senators and 152 representatives — and call it a day.

What do we end up with? Two-thirds of elected officials in the legislative branch who either have no health insurance or have reason to be unhappy about it. As the Samuel Johnson quote goes, "(W)hen a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." If congressmen knew that their own physical and financial health were at stake, I'm sure they'd solve the health care problem faster than you can say, "Tea party."

President Obama is a pretty good persuader, but he's been having a hard time selling his health care reform plan. His health care town hall meeting on ABC last Wednesday drew dismal ratings, garnering fewer viewers than a rerun of CSI: New York (and drawing gleeful responses from many of his non-fans). Meanwhile, some of his putative allies in the Democratic party have been sniping away at the plan, and negotiators in the senate have been slashing costs by lopping off some of the plan's most progressive elements, like subsidies for lower-income Americans to help them afford to buy insurance. (Huh? Wasn't helping the uninsured get insurance one of the main reasons for the plan in the first place?)

Cost isn't the only stumbling block for the plan. The other biggie is Obama's advocacy of the "public option" — that is, a Medicare-like public insurance plan that would compete with private insurers. While some have made alarmist claims that such a plan would drive private insurers out of business, others simply complain that it would cost too much. Indeed, some note, when the Congressional Budget Office added up the costs of early versions of the bill, arriving at a total cost of $1.6 trillion, they did so without including the cost of a public plan. Just imagine, critics say, how much Obamacare will cost with the plan included!

These critics are looking at it backwards, say researchers at the liberal Economic Policy Institute: Including a public plan will actually reduce the overall costs of health care:

While a public plan would indeed likely raise the level of federal government health spending, it is just as likely to reduce total national health spending. Independent research evaluating proposals produced by EPI and other sources has consistently found that a public plan would save money and result in better health outcomes by providing all Americans regular access to health care.

Indeed, they point out, one independent analysis found that having a public plan could actually save the US up to $1 trillion over ten years, while providing health care to all. Some of the elements of the plan contributing to that figure include increased competition among health care providers and lower administrative costs.

It's a compelling argument, and one that deserves to have a more central place in this debate, lest we nickel-and-dime ourselves into an anemic health care plan that ends up costing us more in the long run, while abandoning the goal of health care for the currently uninsured.

If there's one regulatory trend that may define 2009, it could be the creation of exchanges. The U.S. Treasury wants to start a type of exchange, or clearinghouse, for the buying and selling of over-the-counter derivatives, those obscure asset-backed contracts that helped bring the financial system to its knees.

Now, Congress is dabbling with the idea of creating a health insurance exchange.

Legislation with more details isn't likely to become available until later this summer. But the House Committee on Ways and Means introduced an outline this week. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, led by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), has also put forward a bill, (though at the moment the bill does not come up online, only the press release). At any rate, the Senate's proposal also calls for a "gateway" through which individuals can shop for insurance.

What's the point of an exchange? Well, it would set some ground rules for how insurance is bought and sold, just as there are rules for how stocks are traded in the market. For example, insurers wouldn't be allowed to sell policies that exclude pre-existing conditions. Individuals could choose between a newly formed public health insurance option and private plans, encouraging competition among insurers. Furthermore, the exchange would make it easier for consumers to comparison-shop policies.

In other words, the exchange would help create a more equitable, controlled health insurance market. At least that's the theory–but one perhaps worth gambling on. Because we've seen what happens when an opaque market, such as OTC derivatives, is allowed to run wild. I certainly don't want to take as much risk with my, your and future generations' health. (Click here to see the White House report, "The Economic Case for Health Care Reform.")

Last summer, when I was writing a story about health insurance options for early retirees, I found an incredibly useful resource for individuals trying to obtain health insurance for themselves and/or their families: a web site run by Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute. The web site, operating under the generic-sounding title healthinsuranceinfo.net, was a collection of 51 exhaustive guides to the rights and options that individuals have for obtaining health insurance in each of the states plus the District of Columbia. I found these guides, formally known as the Consumer Guides to Getting and Keeping Health Insurance, extremely valuable in navigating the patchwork of laws and organizations that serve as the health insurance safety net, such as it is, in the US.

Unfortunately, just as my article started arriving in people's homes, healthinsuranceinfo.net went offline, the victim of a funding loss at HPI. And offline it has sat, unavailable to the public for the past few months, gathering dust in an electronic lockbox somewhere.

Until recently, that is. Just recently, healthinsuranceinfo.net came back online, thanks to an emergency grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. HPI says it has also received funding to update 15 of the consumer guides over the summer. America is sorely in need of a healthcare and health-insurance overhaul; until the day that comes about, this is a great place for learning about your choices in today's system.