Sometimes, in spite of laws designed to prevent it, it feels like the whole of the online gambling industry is tailored completely to the needs and wants of American gamblers.
The websites have very garish, overly colourful appearance to them that is frankly more suited to American tastes than to the, shall we say, more refined European palette. Similarly, even with websites that don’t accept American players, you can sometimes only play in dollars. This naturally is especially true of online poker sites for some reason.
Nevertheless, the great news is gamblers who do actually live on a continent not called North America do have some choices in where they can gamble online. Even better, you can even gamble in your own currency.
Players from the United Kingdom can find reputable uk pound casinos and be reassured that all the big high street brand names, like BetFred and William Hill, are there and operating online. European gamblers get the chance to bet in Euros at casinos like Vegas Red or any of the other casinos using Playtech software.
Now, even South African gamblers can play at rand casinos online, such as the well-established Silver Sands Casino or a comparitive new kid on the block like Superior Casino.
Going even further, these new type of internet casinos are fully multilingual, allowing Spanish players to gamble in Spanish, Germans to play in German…you get the idea. It’s good that finally the online casino business is waking up to the rest of the world. Now, it’s time for the rest of the world to start playing in their own currency and in their own language.
For those who work at small companies, today is a better day to lose that job than yesterday. That’s because today a new state law regarding health insurance benefits takes effect, allowing employees in small business to keep their insurance coverage after losing a job. The legislation is known as “mini-COBRA” because it affects workers for small businesses but covers them for only nine months instead of the typical 18 months of standard COBRA. Seth I. Corbin, an attorney with Fox Rothschild in Pittsburgh, said the new mini-COBRA law would coordinate with the new federal COBRA subsidy, which is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The federal subsidy provides 65 percent of the cost of health insurance for people who qualify for COBRA and now mini-COBRA. COBRA takes its name from the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986, which, in part, called for workers to be able to keep their health insurance if they paid for it. Over the years, as the cost of insurance has risen, keeping insurance through COBRA became unaffordable for most people. A study released in January by Families USA found that COBRA, which costs an average of $1,069, ate up 83.6 percent of the average monthly unemployment compensation. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed by President Barack Obama in February called for 65 percent of COBRA to be federally subsidized. Federal COBRA applies to only those companies with 20 or more employees. Mini-COBRA applies to companies with more than two but less than 20 employees. While large companies are supposed to carry the cost of the subsidy until they can take it as a write-off on federal taxes, for the small companies the law provides that the administration of mini-COBRA will be handled by insurance companies; so the health insurer will manage the account, taking the payments and carrying the cost of the subsidy until it takes the write-off from its tax payments.
