You may have heard this one before. The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is set to expire again if Congress fails to extend it by the end of May.

Administration officials are once again putting fresh pressure on Congress to take action on the National Flood Insurance Program, whose authorization expires at the end of this month, one day before hurricane season begins.

The NFIP has been a political football in Washington for years, particularly because of the unsustainable debt load it took on in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. There is a broad push to reform the program and put it on a sound financial footing, but competing visions on that reform (including whether to forgive the program's debts) have stalled legislation.

For now the program remains in business with repeated short-term extensions, though in 2010 it was allowed to lapse for a few weeks. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is warning of serious consequences if that happens again. If it does and a major natural disaster strikes, Congress will once again bear the blame.

Details on what real NFIP flood reform might look like

Last year the house passed a bill providing a five-year reauthorization of the NFIP. Reforms included in H.R. 1309 will generate an additional $4.2 billion of revenues over the next 10 years to help shore up the program, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Of course the Senate failed to act, and here we are.

At the time Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus said, "This reform bill protects taxpayers by eliminating Federal subsidies and reducing the program's need to borrow additional funds from the Treasury. This reform would also help bring certainty to the housing market by ensuring potential home buyers can obtain flood insurance.

More than 100 people have been charged and an estimated $450 million in a massive Medicare fraud bust uncovered by federal agents in a nationwide operation that authorities say is the largest bust in recent history.

Law enforcement sources say the charges were lodged in seven metropolitan areas, capping an investigation of several months into efforts to defraud Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health programs through fraudulent billing of services.

It is the largest of four such sweeps announced during the Obama administration.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are expected to announce the operation Wednesday and emphasize their determination to combat phony billing practices in the health care industry.

New job numbers for the insurance industry show a slight increase of 2.7 percent, from 2.21 million workers to 2.27 million workers across all sectors from February 2011 to February 2012, according to a new analysis released by the Insurance Information Institute earlier this month.

Reinsurance jobs and insurance agent positions are leading employment growth in the industry, while numbers for property-casualty, health and medical insurance and claims adjuster jobs dropped, making for a competitive market for those seeking employment within the insurance industry.

Its possible the health and medical insurance jobs being lost are due in part to the medical loss ratio changes under the PPACA. Commissions are down and some agents are changing careers and some insurers are reducing their sales forces.

"The key to successful insurance employment is creating an online presence that puts your name in front of the eyes of employers," said Jay Rollins, president of InsuranceJobs.com, a leading online job board for insurance jobs. "In addition to targeting specific company job boards, setting up an online profile on an industry site like InsuranceJobs.com gets you increased visibility.

The three federal agencies in charge of implementing the federal PPACA want to know how small employers' use of stop-loss programs, or insurance for self-insured health plans, affects the market for fully insured small group coverage.

The agencies -- the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), an arm of the U.S. Treasury Department; the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); and the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), an arm of the U.S. Labor Department -- are preparing to issue a 13-question request for information (RFI) about health plan sponsors' use of stop-loss insurance.

See more information about the RFI related to answers sought by the IRS and others.

The agencies are especially interested in learning about "the prevalence and consequences of stop-loss insurance at low attachment points," agency officials say in a preliminary version of the RFI.