Show Me the Money would be an appropriate message to deliver to Washington and the healthcare industry when it comes to unmasking the clues to the runaway cost of health insurance and the money-leak that holds America's health hostage and brought the whole system to critical mass.

"The runaway cost of health insurance in America requires that two major issues be honestly and urgently addressed: the untenable pricing of network-wide healthcare services that is the result of too much provider-milking of the proverbial health insurance "cash cow" and the cost driving nightmare of having to purchase and manage health plans through an entangled mess of no less than 50 various state-imposed insurance code packages."

Somewhere in the critically entangled mess of state controlled, no-fly-zone, consumer choice-absent, gravy train riding, health insurance model; somewhere, purloining in the dimly lit, cigar-smoking back room of secrets and lies, where politics and provider imprudence have crafted policy that has resulted in dropping the American healthcare consumer on his knees, lay the clues. "SHOW ME THE MONEY"!!!

globalEyeNews: health insurance in the globalEye

LA Daily News - Health care plan recipe for disaster
BY JON COUPAL, Guest Columnist
Article Last Updated: 12/19/2006 06:52:12 PM PST

STATE Senate President Don Perata has a plan to provide all uninsured working Californians with health insurance at an estimated cost of $5 billion to $7 billion without a tax increase. OK?

The Perata plan would force businesses that do not provide health insurance and their employees, through a payroll deduction, to pay into a state agency that would attempt to negotiate for 'affordable' coverage. When paying taxes, workers would have to show proof of medical insurance.

This is just plain wrong on so many levels. Let me count the ways.

A plan that is estimated to cost $5 billion to $7 billion will, if past government program estimates are any guide, cost a lot more than first advertised. One only has to look at the Bush prescription benefit plan as a reminder.

Apparently our state's second-most-powerful elected official believes there is such a thing as a free lunch. He should know that a plan that compels businesses to lay out more for labor than its market value is a tax on those businesses. It will cost businesses and, as the increased costs are passed on, it will also cost consumers, too.

Employees, many working at low-wage jobs, will see a reduction in their paychecks. Just like the other taxes they pay, this health insurance charge will translate into less take-home pay.

As the cost of employment goes up, workers are likely to face a second problem: fewer jobs. What is worse than no health insurance? No health insurance and no job.

And proof of insurance to pay taxes? This would only force one more nuisance, clerical mandate on a public already overwhelmed with nuisance mandates.....More"

When it comes to health care: The more things change, the more they stay the same, more than ever.
globalEyeNews: health insurance in the globalEye


HOW THE POOR DIE - George Orwell (1946)

In the year 1929 I spent several weeks in the Hôpital X, in the fifteenth ARRONDISSEMENT of Paris. The clerks put me through the usual third-degree at the reception desk, and indeed I was kept answering questions for some twenty minutes before they would let me in. If you have ever had to fill up forms in a Latin country you will know the kind of questions I mean. For some days past I had been unequal to translating Reaumur into Fahrenheit, but I know that my temperature was round about 103, and by the end of the interview I had some difficulty in standing on my feet. At my back a resigned little knot of patients, carrying bundles done up in coloured handkerchiefs, waited their turn to be questioned.

After the questioning came the bath—a compulsory routine for all newcomers, apparently, just as in prison or the workhouse. My clothes were taken away from me, and after I had sat shivering for some minutes in five inches of warm water I was given a linen nightshirt and a short blue flannel dressing-gown—no slippers, they had none big enough for me, they said—and led out into the open air. This was a night in February and I was suffering from pneumonia. The ward we were going to was 200 yards away and it seemed that to get to it you had to cross the hospital grounds. Someone stumbled in front of me with a lantern. The gravel path was frosty underfoot, and the wind whipped the nightshirt round my bare calves. When we got into the ward I was aware of a strange feeling of familiarity whose origin I did not succeed in pinning down till later in the night. It was a long, rather low, ill-lit room, full of murmuring voices and with three rows of beds surprisingly close together. There was a foul smell, faecal and yet sweetish. As I lay down I saw on a bed nearly opposite me a small, round-shouldered, sandy-haired man sitting half naked while a doctor and a student performed some strange operation on him........More