Ken Nelson

I don’t understand how business works.
I do know how to write moronic letters.

Lets start with three facts:

• an insurance company spent $9.5 lobbying
• the CEO of that company earned $10 million
• the same company raised rates 39% on those it insured in California

The letter writer, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, bitched to its CEO:

Your company’s strong financial position makes these rate increases even more difficult to understand. As you know, your parent company, WellPoint Incorporated, has seen its profits soar, earning $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009 alone.

Highlighting that she is a complete moron lacking, like most Obama administration members, any understanding of business and the purpose of profit.

Ms. Sebelius, profits are not earned to reward customers. Profits are earned to reward shareholders. If more Obama administration members understood this FUNDAMENTAL principal of business they might actually craft “jobs” bills that would help jobs, or at least not hurt them.

Insurance companies that do not rate customer pools based on their risks do not remain insurance companies for long. Instead, they end up like AIG, Freddie Mac, and other government bailed out failures.  Companies that waste profits do not remain profitable long, nor do their shareholders value them.

Anthem Blue Cross should be congratulated on its performance, not chastised.  Its customers can choose to punish the company if they don’t like the new prices and the Department of HHS has no business threatening a private company.

As to the writer of this “news report”… he exemplifies the liberal bias of the modern journalist.

Not a heart doctor in sight

A rich dude from Canada, and also the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador Province, needed a heart surgery.  In the entire province, nobody does heart surgeries. Rather than wait it out elsewhere in Canada, he went to the U.S.

On February 1, 2010, Williams’ office confirmed that he would be undergoing heart surgery, and had already left the province for an undisclosed location in the United States for the procedure. According to his Deputy Premier, Kathy Dunderdale, Williams decided to go to the U.S. for surgery after weeks of consultation with his doctors. She said, "Having the surgery done in the province was never an option." She said she couldn’t comment on whether the type of surgery Williams is having was available elsewhere in the country. “Ultimately we have to be the gatekeepers of our own health and he has taken medical advice from a number of different sources,” she said. “He is doing what’s best for him.”

I agree, he should do what’s best for him.  But I betcha he could have his choice of doctors in Newfoundland if they didn’t have socialized medicine in Canada.

All 50 of our states have such capabilities.

A urology practice opted out of the insurance racket a few years back. They love it!

I can imagine how the old guys must have felt. This is what doctoring is all about…. it is like being free for the first time.

I’d like to see more of this. Even though procedures can cost larger money than most people can pay out of pocket, financing them over time could be cheaper than paying insurance ongoing.

Combining high deductible catastrophic insurance with this approach seems the only realistic way to cut healthcare costs while letting patients decide what they will do without.

I just had a back procedure disapproved by my insurance company. I’m not mad at them, they have a job to do, and they’ve certainly done right by me in the last three years. But as I imagine a government person denying me, and how little I could do about it, I’m glad that, for now, health care single payer isn’t happening.

H/T: Carpe Diem

We don’t need laws like this.             This is better.

Our government insists on “comprehensive” bills that cost a lot, do not work, permit pork, and are largely special interest buys offs.  This happens in Republican and Democratic governments, but is worse in Democratic ones because they do not have a philosophy as much as a group of constituencies allied to hose those not in the alliance.

Take, for instance, health care spending. Yes, all can agree the rise in healthcare costs will be a problem. I don’t think most agree that access to healthcare is a problem. Most people have access to great healthcare.  And it makes no sense to argue that $260 billion or so we spend a year on medical drugs isn’t money well spent. It is far less than we spend on professional sports ($400 billion) and public education ($560 billion) but with much better results. I’d rather demonize the hapless Dallas Cowboys and ineffectual public schools than the drug companies that keep me alive every day.

A reasoned look at health care expenses would look for inefficiencies and it would look at at where most spending goes.  It would look for levers.

The simplest way to reduce inefficiency is to have people pay directly for health care. There are any number of ways to do that, I favor tax free savings accounts for medical expenses combined with high deductible insurance.

Another way to reduce inefficiency is to permit health insurance to be sold nationally.

I go to a Physicians Assistant for most of my medical needs. They cost less and deliver excellent, timely, care.  Maybe we should have a lot more of this type of provider?

Did you know that diabetes accounts for 30% of federal spending on healthcare?  Might it be smart to focus on a cure for diabetes? Yes it would be.

So instead of one crazy take over of 1/5th the US economy “to fix” healthcare, why not a series of focused bills that we can read and understand. 

I’d like Republicans, and sane Democrats (if they remain) to come together to pass laws like these:

• Cut Defensive Medicine Costs Act – A one page law eliminating most malpractice lawsuits.  Here I defy my Libertarian roots… I’m not sure of the mechanism implementing this law, but I’m pretty sure 100% taxation would do it.
• Insurance Competition Act… A one page law permitting national insurance and denying any federal funds to any state that regulates national plans.
• Healthcare Personal Responsibility Act…short law that rewards those who have high deductible plans.
• More HealthCare Providers Act…. Deny all federal funds to states that do not simplify PA / NP requirements for work and schooling. Do not directly fund PA or NP education, the schools will just raise prices.
• Manhattan Project for Diabetes… focus federal R&D on short term plan to dramatically stem diabetes.

You get the idea…. simple, market based, one lever laws. No pork permitted. No earmarks. No “horse-trading” with Nebraska or Louisiana.  Identify a high impact, simple, “lever” solution, and do just that.

Republicans/Independents/Libertarians can take back the country if the combine resistance to Democratic craziness with proposals that the citizenry can understand and believes will help EVERYBODY.

I guess we are all scabs now

I’m not surprised that I get to pay a tax on my healthcare plan, but a union fellow with a better plan that he doesn’t pay for, doesn’t have to pay the tax.

And so it looks like they may have reached a deal sooner than otherwise expected: unions get a special two-year exclusion from the tax.

So not only does the healthcare bill kill our medical system it also kills any pretense that this government is of the people, for the people.

The Obama Administration really is the best money can buy.

Last night as I shut down the house for bedtime, some moron came on the TV saying he was disappointed with the current health care reform because “it didn’t provide free healthcare to everybody”.

What an awful last thing to hear before attempting sleep. The guy owns a coffee shop, gets hit with outrageous taxes at all levels of government, and still thinks healthcare can be “free”.

What a moron… yet, he votes. It certainly is depressing knowing idiots like that are out there offsetting my vote.

What is really depressing about it is that he isn’t a moron because he disagrees with me. He is a moron because he IS A MORON who doesn’t recognize a rape even when its happening to him.

We got George, an 8 to 9 year old Black Lab, from Best Friends a couple of years ago. He was overweight when we got him.  We got some off, but it was hard because he just was having trouble exercising.   I’d actually given up taking him on walks because he couldn’t go very far, maybe 1/2 a mile. He looked to be in such pain, I didn’t think it was really doable. The Vet gave us medicine for him, but it seemed to do little good.

But this school break I decided to walk him, and me, twice a day. Going as far as either of us could manage. I’ve got lower back problems, walking hurts. And I’m  taking medicine for pre-diabetes, rapid heart rate, and high blood pressure. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m a wreck (largely due to an accident a couple years back).

But, I figured,  we will just see what either of us can do.  I had two goals… get George “frisky” again, and get me off my meds through diet and exercise.

This was George, this morning, about 3.5 miles into a river walk:

And once I took him off the leash, he led the way, ranging here and there. Like a dog. Two weeks ago, he would be on leash, 30’ behind, struggling just to move one foot in front of the other.

Congratulations George!

As to me…. well, the resting heart rate just before I wrote this was 101, the BP 190/87, and well… I’ve got a ways to go. I suspect, due to a broken pituitary gland (courtesy the afore mentioned accident) that my body chemistry is just screwed up and though I may be 45 years old,  6’, 180lbs, 13% body fat, my innards will not function well no matter what I do. 

C’est le vie!  I enjoy the walks and will continue to do them as long as I can.  I think this afternoon we will strap on the leash again and walk to Chili’s (about 2 miles) for dinner.

BTW: Fritz, our 2 year old dauschund, easily ranges 3 miles for every mile we walk. His legs may be little, but he has abundant energy.

My own Christmas miracle was that I wasn’t sick this Christmas, making this Christmas markedly different from the past 40 or so Christmases.  But on to a truly amazing story and actual Christmas Miracle…

A woman dies of cardiac arrest during labor. An emergency C-section, with no anesthesia, brings out a dead baby as well. At this point:

"Half of my family was laying there in front of me, there’s no other way to say it, but dead," said Mike.

But then the miracles happened, his wife revived after being dead for minutes, and:

After the delivery, doctors rushed Tracey to the operating room to complete the surgery. In the meantime, Coltyn’s tiny, lifeless, body was handed to his father Mike. Doctors still worked to get the baby breathing. "They actually got him started right in my hands. That is an amazing feeling," said Mike.

Pretty scary but a great result. I’m glad for their family.

Alas the comment sections descend into rants about if God is real or not, proving that even the stupid can figure out how to get on the internet these days.

Harry Reid, after the big vote 

Eliminating the guild of doctors, permitting insurance competition, and reducing the litigation that drives defensive medicine costs, would have cost the government nothing to implement, have saved them billions, and improved all our health.

So why didn’t we get that for Christmas?  Is it tacky for me to regift this to another country – say Canada?

From Britain comes encouraging news that scientists have fully decoded the cancer genome. This means:

Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Wellcome Trust team.

That is terrific news – and keep it coming please!

But congratulations aren’t the purpose of this post. Scolding and reality check is.

Currently there are NO solutions to our healthcare cost dilemma.

Democrats try to play sleight of hand by sticking young people with more of the bill, and trying to hide cost cuts imposed on seniors, while using the huge bills to hide payoffs to constituency groups like the SEIU.

Republicans do a little better. Their market based proposals actually would defer health care “judgment day”  a bit.

But even sound proposals, like tort reform, and moving away from third party payment systems, can only push back, not defeat the aging population soon to swamp our healthcare delivery and finance systems.

The ONLY way forward is to fund science, reform drug and medical procedure approval systems with an eye towards SPEED, and hope it works.

Where to focus?  Diabetes currently takes up something like 40% of our healthcare system costs. Amazing isn’t it…. a War on Diabetes might be the best war we ever fought.

Right now, only science can save us, and the best thing we can do is give it the time it may need. The Democratic proposals hasten the end.  Republican plans help, moderately, and should be enacted.

Today’s health care “reform” plan is brought to you by the letter “F”

The Dean of the Harvard Medical school gives all the proposed healthcare reforms in Congress a failing grade:

Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

Read the whole thing. He speaks from recent experience with Massachusetts going down a similar path.  

Summary:  It won’t cut costs. It will hurt care. It is a lie by politicians who know other steps are needed.

I doubt cool stuff like restoring sight to the congenitally blind would happen in a rationed health care system:

Born with a retinal disease that made him legally blind, and would eventually leave him totally sightless, the nine-year-old boy used to sit in the back of the classroom, relying on the large print on an electronic screen and assisted by teacher aides. Now, after a single injection of genes that produce light-sensitive pigments in the back of his eye, he sits in front with classmates and participates in class without extra help. In the playground, he joins his classmates in playing his first game of softball.

I’m glad smart people have still have incentive to work on cool stuff like this.

H/T/ Instapundit

The government wants to expand into health care.  They already have one job that could be commercially done, but that they are Constitutionally required to do – the post office. How is that going?

2009 saw unprecedented mail volume decline

* Agency cut $6 bln in costs, 115 mln work hours

* Seeks shorter delivery week, further benefits relief

* Without changes, sees 2010 loss of $7.8 billion

Note the “Seeks shorter delivery week”…. it is like a mail “death panel” and Saturday lost….

The Post Office’s problems is that politics drives their business model and they have a large, unwieldy, unproductive, and expensive union work force. 

When the government brings those kind of mad skills to healthcare, they will screw up the best healthcare system in the world.

Gosh.. wonder if he had any other risk factors?

A study of 690,000 patients from 2002 to 2006 found that uninsured trauma and gunshot patients getting emergency died at almost twice the rate of those that are insured.

Some say this is why we should give everybody insurance. But I say this means people are stupid who don’t buy insurance.

Besides the fine print says it all:

In the study, the overall death rate was 4.7 percent, so most emergency room patients survived their injuries. The commercially insured patients had a death rate of 3.3 percent. The uninsured patients’ death rate was 5.7 percent. Those rates were before the adjustments for other risk factors.

The headline and story are based on rates BEFORE adjustment for other risk factors…. and we aren’t told the rates after adjustment.  Do uninsured fare BETTER than insured, after adjusting for risk factors?

We don’t know. I presume we don’t know because the raw data fits the AP goal of pushing healthcare insurance.

I suspect the “risk factors” of with the population of uninsured matter at lot more than the AP wants publish.

Another bothersome nit they don’t think through is blaming the death rate on lack of resources of hospitals more likely to see uninsured patients:

The hospitals that treat them also could have fewer resources.

"Those hospitals tend to be financially strapped, not have the same level of staffing, not have the same level of surgeons and testing and equipment," Gawande said. "That also is likely a major contributor."

Uhmmm… you mean like what ALL of us will have when you ruin the US healthcare system?

The video above compares what union thugs and Marxist protestors say employees of Whole Foods think of their employer versus what they actually say.

Do you think the Marxist protestors want to help Whole Food Workers?  What, really, does the union organizer want?  What about John Mackey, Whole Foods CEO?