Sunday Open Thread [6.2.13]
This Sunday’s NYT provides a must-read for those of us interested in resolving the long-term problem of reducing health care costs. This piece take a look at how colonoscopies are performed and charged to demonstrate the scope of the problem. And basically the scope of the problem comes down to Profit incentives, rather than health incentives. It also shows how hard it is to even get cost data for procedures — even by a physician doing the procedure. Certainly our health care system pays dearly for heroic end-of-life care, but it certainly looks as though basic procedures done by our physicians in their offices or their physician centers are ripe for cost review.
Google has to hand over requested information to he FBI. Good for them for at least pushing back:
In the latest case, [Judge] Illston sided with the FBI after Google contested the constitutionality and necessity of the letters but again put her ruling on hold until the 9th Circuit rules. After receiving sworn statements from two top-ranking FBI officials, Illston said she was satisfied that 17 of the 19 letters were issued properly. She wanted more information on two other letters.
It was unclear from the judge’s ruling what type of information the government sought to obtain with the letters. It was also unclear who the government was targeting.
If the news outlets I listen to all day are any indication, there is certainly no mass media freakout over this completely opaque intrusion to someone’s online data. Wonder why that is?
I was a liberal mole at Fox News — From Salon and is excerpted from “An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal’s Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media”:
Case in point: In summer 2011, a story surfaced on the right-wing blogs that an auditor for the Justice Department had found out some DOJ employees attending a meeting at the Capital Hilton in Washington, DC, had been served refreshments, including muffins for which the hotel charged sixteen dollars apiece.
It’s no surprise that the story spread like wildfire on the blogs and was soon picked up by cable news. It was a great story for the right, reinforcing preexisting notions of government excess and willingness to waste taxpayer money, the incompetence of the Obama Justice Department, etc.
One problem: It wasn’t true.
A few days after the story broke, a representative from Hilton Hotels came out and said that the auditor had misread the bill, that the sixteen dollars referred to a full breakfast—coffee, tea, fruit, muffins, plus tax and gratuity. Not a bargain by any means, but also not too bad for a hotel continental breakfast.
A producer named Steiner Rudolf was line producing — assembling the stories in the rundown and making sure they all timed out correctly — on the day that Bill wanted to include the muffin anecdote in a Talking Points Memo. “Actually, Bill, the muffin thing got debunked,” Steiner started to tell him. “A guy from the hotel came out and said —”
“I don’t give a shit what the guy said,” Bill interrupted, suddenly angry. “It’s the same old thing. They come out and deny it, but the story is there. We know it’s true. We have the proof.”
HAHAHAHAHAHA! How conservative “news” works.
What interests you today?
Read the colonoscopy story, all too true, healthcare in America will never be fixed until the profit motive is removed. Just like the rest of the world.
That was a great article. Thank you for posting it today… Using this chart I figure my family’s health expense “could have been” 1/3 of what I paid out of pocket here for our health insurance, for deductibles, and for our uncovered portion of out of pocket expenses. It was an average year. Not too expensive and certainly not cheap. Still, it would have been nice to have spent that other 2/3rds back into the economy.
Fee for service is such a bad system. When I had cancer each doctor was pushing their own method. It was like shopping for a car.