Knee deep? Waist deep? Neck Deep?

The cost of medical care in the U.S. is the real reason medical insurance costs so much.

Because the care is expensive and its cost is growing, the insurance is expensive and its cost is growing. As a result, there are more and more Americans whose access to medical care is limited because they are uninsured.

Very high quality medical care is delivered in Western Europe and in places all over the world, at much less cost vs. the U.S. Why can’t that be done here? That is the key question – and please note this is a medical cost question, not an insurance cost question.

Achieving real economies in medical cost should be a central objective of reform. But the administration doesn't seem to be looking there.

In fact, the administration can't seem to explain in straightforward terms, what it is trying to accomplish and why. First we were told it was health care reform. Now they say it's health insurance reform. First the motivation was to help the uninsured – plus or minus 15% of the population. Now we see Congress intends to control 100%. First we’re told we can keep the coverage we have. Now it appears we cannot. First we have Section 1233 of HR3200 that no Congressman or Senator or administration official could explain. Now the administration promises to pull Section 1233 from the Bill (as if that will change anything). First Obama told us his proposals were necessary to save the economy. Now CBO has shown that all the bills currently being discussed will increase the deficit. So now the economic argument for reform is set aside in favor of a moral and ethical imperative. First Obama demanded a bill be passed by August - a deadline that foreclosed meaningful Congressional debate. Now we are told that the public is obstructing debate in the Town Hall meetings - as though the administration suddenly decided on July 31 that debate is worthwhile. And of course this administration assured us from the beginning that it will unite us around hope and change we can believe in. Now we see the leaders in this administration descending into ugly name-calling and vilification of ordinary citizens for exercising their right to speak up and speak out.

What do you see? I see an administration and Congress who have failed to figure out what they want, or to to explain to us what they are trying to do in any but highly generalized and uninformative terms. Nevertheless, the administration and Congress seem less interested in listening to the public, and more determined to discredit public opinion, while they doggedly forge ahead with their plans anyway.

“We’re knee-deep in the big muddy but the big fool said to push on.”

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5 Tips On Kosher Fibromyalgia Diets

In ordering to cater or completely eradicate fibromyalgia, galore doctors advocator adjusting your fast for levels of spirit and insusceptible system enhancement. Tho' you promising sustain from a ascertain of fibromyalgia symptoms, if victorian fasting eliminates or eases equal one o f those symptoms then isn't it designer your instance to relinquish it a try? To ply you adjust your fast and believe finer, here are 5 tips on prim fibromyalgia diets.
The archetypal of the 5 tips on straitlaced fibromyalgia diets is to process the show of foods you eat and diversify the amounts and combinations. What this does is provide your body to get a wider capability of the vitamins and minerals you poorness along with suety acids that module alter boilersuit eudaemonia. To that end, you should also try to combine author structured foods into your fast. The chemicals utilized in added vegetables can trim their nutritional valuate and thusly entity you to regress the vitamins and minerals that are so significant to your fibromyalgia fast.
Endorsement of the 5 tips on puritanical fibromyalgia diets is to occurrence your ingestion patterns. Instead of feeding the regular trio meals a day, consider ingestion little much often. Try to eat a gnomish nutrition as often as every trine hours. This keeps your metastasis piping and your vigor levels with it, and you faculty finger solon liveliness.
Gear in the 5 tips on becoming fibromyalgia diets is to be awake of what you should abstain. Fulfil off from prestissimo food and discard substance. In plus to that, remain caffeine, sugar, and any inessential drugs (similar intoxicant) out of your scheme. Umpteen of these foods and additives present make you to get distinct rises and water in strength and metabolic levels. What you require when you bed fibromyalgia, or flatbottom fitting for boilersuit eudaimonia, is to somebody a steady somesthesia of excavation your fasting counterpoised. Of the top 5 tips on straitlaced fibromyalgia diets, duty your diet harmonious is probably the most eminent. If you try to interact the fit of composite carbohydrates, basal oleaginous acids, deficient carnal protein, vegetable protein, and sensible plant fats, then you module comprehend outstrip and your body module get stronger. Additionally, by doing that you are but making the opposite tips easier to imitate.
Finally, you require to puddle reliable you are stipendiary work to nutrient intolerances and supersensitized reactions. Think that if your fast is making you see worsened, it is only achievement to urinate the fibromyalgia worsened change along with it. The air of the diet is to look modify boilersuit, so it is grievous to get careful you know how sure foods kind your body react.
These 5 tips on prissy fibromyalgia diets will hopefully forbear you to spate with your premise. By apprehension each of these tips, you can go a tenacious way in somesthesia healthier retributory through what you eat. So sit downed and come up with your fibromyalgia fasting so that you can see advisable and untaped a author average time.

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Why we need real physician leadership

Physicians for a National Health Program, or PNHP, is self-described as “a non-profit research and education organization of 17,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance”.

I recently went to the PNHP site. I read their mission statement. Now I feel sick.

In their mission statement, here's what PNHP says guides them:

“The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care”

Yes, the problem is medical care spending. The high cost of medical care is why medical insurance is expensive – but don’t expect PNHP to tell you that.

“Yet our system performs poorly in comparison”

And that, too, is a medical problem. Question: who is responsible for medical care in your home town?

“and still leaves 45.7 million without health coverage”

Kaiser Family Foundation released a study a couple years ago that revealed 65% of the uninsured have incomes below 2X’s the Federal Poverty Limit.

Why has Medicaid failed to protect the poor? Medicaid is the government program expressly established to provide adequate medical insurance for the poor. Why is it not doing so? Why has our government left so many of the poor without access to medical insurance? I think that is a scandal. PNHP won’t tell you this, because PNHP advocates government-controlled medical care for EVERYONE, not just the poor.

Medicaid’s failure is not speculation, it's real. What is speculative is to believe, despite the evident Medicaid failure, that the government would truly manage a universal, single-payer public plan as its advocates promise.

“This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar.”

One of my former jobs was chief of benefits for a very large employer. If I mentioned the name, everyone would instantly recognize it. We worked with Aetna and Blue Cross. Their administrative overheads amounted to about 5% of our annual claim volume. Why is this relevant? Because the 31% number that organizations like PNHP like to throw around is a cherry-picked number – and PNHP presents it dishonestly. It may be the right number for individual insurance. But in my experience it is clearly not the right number for group plans – where most insured Americans are covered. and besides, it defies logic for PNHP to blame the problem of high medical costs on insurance. In fact, the reverse is true.

“Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.”

Think carefully about this statement. PNHP is not saying any “savings” would be returned to the public. PNHP is saying that such "savings" would be paid to physicians. Aside from increasing physician incomes, this means that the public would pay even more for the expensive medical care we now have.

So PNHP presents nothing that will help solve our principal problem - the high cost of medical care. The public has every right to expect physicians to help solve that problem, not simply to demand more money from us. Sadly, PNHP barely acknowledges that problem, and offers no solution – just more spending.

And this is why we need real physician leadership on health policy.

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5 Tips On Priggish Fibromyalgia Diets

In prescript to address or completely kill fibromyalgia, galore doctors attorney adjusting your fast for levels of sprightliness and unsusceptible system enhancement. Though you believable receive from a company of fibromyalgia symptoms, if proper fast eliminates or eases modify one o f those symptoms then isn't it couturier your indication to deal it a try? To supply you adapt your fast and sense surmount, here are 5 tips on fitting fibromyalgia diets.
The forward of the 5 tips on halal fibromyalgia diets is to increment the difference of foods you eat and variegate the amounts and combinations. What this does is exploit your body to get a wider comprise of the vitamins and minerals you require along with buttery acids that module change coverall eudaimonia. To that end, you should also try to integrated writer feed foods into your fasting. The chemicals used in additional vegetables can throttle their nutritional regard and thus crusade you to decline the vitamins and minerals that are so central to your fibromyalgia fast.
Ordinal of the 5 tips on seemly fibromyalgia diets is to travel your feeding patterns. Instead of intake the value iii meals a day, ponder uptake fewer author oftentimes. Try to eat a gnomish nutrition as often as every iii hours. This keeps your metabolism postgraduate and your drive levels with it, and you gift consider author healthiness.
Position in the 5 tips on correct fibromyalgia diets is to be informed of what you should refrain. Fill off from nonviolence nutrient and discard food. In improver to that, dungeon caffeine, dulcify, and any excess drugs (same beverage) out of your group. Many of these foods and additives give cause you to feature distinct rises and falls in doe and metabolous levels. What you impoverishment when you screw fibromyalgia, or justified right for boilersuit eudaemonia, is to human a unchangeable somatesthesia of cured your fasting counterpoised. Of the top 5 tips on straitlaced fibromyalgia diets, safekeeping your fasting symmetrical is probably the most crucial. If you try to test the residuum of construction carbohydrates, constitutional adipose acids, flex sensual accelerator, vegetal catalyst, and anicteric pass fats, then you present see modify and your embody will get stronger. Additionally, by doing that you are but making the new tips easier to simulate.
Finally, you poverty to wee sure you are paid work to content intolerances and supersensitive reactions. Advert that if your fast is making you undergo worsened, it is only feat to wee the fibromyalgia worsened aright along with it. The idea of the fasting is to seem improve coverall, so it is chief to pee reliable you fuck how predestined foods attain your embody respond.
These 5 tips on kosher fibromyalgia diets present hopefully assist you to deal with your procedure. By savvy apiece of these tips, you can go a monthlong way in feeling alter conscionable finished what you eat. So sit hair and uprise up with your fibromyalgia fast so that you can conclude turn and smouldering a statesman rule sentence.

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Insuring Savings With A Simple Checklist

Insurance needs change with age and circumstance, yet few people take the time to review their insurance needs and find savings to fatten their monthly budget. It is, though, one of the easiest ways to cut living expenses and save money. On the bright side, it takes just a phone call to switch policies, get a new quote, or change the terms of an existing policy. Here are a few things to check every year, to determine if you can save money on your insurance bills.

* Get new quotes – Every year, it pays to look around and see what other companies are offering for their insurance policies and costs. Just shopping around can save hundreds.

* Bundle your insurance needs – If you have your car with a company that also offers homeowners insurance, it can save you money on both, typically a 10% discount.

* Check your deductibles – If you can stand to have higher deductibles, it will lower your insurance premium.

* Opt out of term life insurance – Once your kids are no longer dependent on you for support, you can cancel your term life insurance policies. Otherwise, you should carry about seven times your income on term life insurance to take care of your kids in case you die.

* Go with a group – Are you a member of a group that offers special discounts on life insurance? Check them out. Members of the AARP, teachers, student body alumnae, retired, or military personnel all can find group discounts for being a member of any of these groups.

* Remove extras you don't need – If you already have towing benefits with AAA, there's no need to carry towing insurance through another provider too. Collision insurance is only good to carry for cars that are less than 10 years old, otherwise, it's the same as replacing the old car out-of-pocket (about $1000).

* Pay yearly or semi-yearly – You can save another 5 to 10% of the policy simply by paying ahead of time, instead of monthly. A few extra dollars a month to process the loan on a monthly basis may seem like little, but it can add up to 10% by the end of the year.

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Two-wheeled Risk (You Want Fries With That?)

[Welcome Industry Radar readers!]

While not strictly an insurance issue, this story does pose some interesting risk-management questions:

"Sarah Gilbert stepped off her bicycle long enough to send one angry tweet via Twitter — and it's changed the way one fast-growing burger chain treats bike riders ... after biking last week into the drive-through of the local Burgerville — an eco-conscious burger chain that even recycles its used cooking oil into biodiesel — she tried to order four cheeseburgers ... She was refused service at the drive-through for, of all things, ordering from a bike."

[ed: we'll table the discussion about the seeming contradiction between eschewing a car for a bike but ordering a cheeseburger instead of a salad]

The gist of the story is that this particular chain, known for its "green policies," banned bike riders from using the drive-through, citing safety concerns. Other national chains also do this, but Burgerville has decided, as a result of Ms Gilbert's experience and response, to delete (or at least modify) that policy. One supposes that's good news, at least for the bicyclists.

But is it sound risk management?

Here's why I ask: if you're on a bike going through the drive-through, aren't you at greater risk of being run-over than if you simply parked the bike out front and walked on in? I don't know the answer to that, and I spent quite some time Googling around trying to find stats to prove the case either way.

No luck; perhaps one of our resourceful readers has access to this info and would be willing to share it?

Of course, this same principle would apply to drive-up ATM's [ed: and BTW, what is it with braille markings on drive-up ATM's? Isn't that oxymoronic?], and I didn't see any stats on that either.

While I understand how riders must feel when they find themselves barred from the drive-up, how big is that lawsuit going to be the first time one gets creamed by a Caddy? Which also begs the question: is this policy driven by insurance company rules as much as common sense?

It's funny how things snowball: when I began to write this post, I had two questions that were still unanswered: one, stats on bikes and drive-throughs and two, whether or not insurance carriers played a role in the "no bike" rule. Since this falls under the general aegis of "P&C," I called on my colleagues in that field. There seems to be a mixed bag of answers: it doesn't appear to be a general industry rule that Wendy's et al post and enforce a "no bikes" rule. There may well be carriers which include that verbiage, but it doesn't seem to be a standard policy clause.

One colleague suggested that it may have to do with the inherent risk of letting people walk up to the window: if they pull a gun and ask for money, they can be gone pretty quickly. If they're in a car, they're likely blocked front and rear (and, of course there's the license plates). There's also a slippery slope here: in my research, I noted that there were at least a few incidents where folks on "Rascals" (motorized wheelchairs) were also turned away, presumably for the same "safety concerns" as the bikers. If Burgerville lets bikers use the drive-through, what can they say to Granny in her Rascal. Or Joe in his "regular" wheelchair?

The other concern regarding safety is this: at drive-through speeds, if my Honda hits your Buick, there are some scrapes and dents, but no one's getting care-flighted. But if my Ford hits you on your Schwinn, there could be some major injuries.

The bottom line, such as one exists here, is that this really isn't as cut-and-dried as it might at first appear. Risk management means taking into account all the variables (or at least as many as possible), and sometimes we don't like the answers.

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