In California, the governor and the legislature are currently working on a health plan to get everyone insured. This initiative is about getting insurers to pay.  This was written with California in mind, but could just as well apply to any other state.

Granted that private health insurance is not the best way to finance the provision of health services.  Unfortunately, it appears that in the U.S., many of us are stuck with it, at least for now.  This proposed law would fix the worst abuses of the insurers.

more below the fold....

GDP - that's Gross Domestic Product, the key measurement of economic growth. Seems that the old numbers were inaccurate for some reason. Of the 13 quarters of data, 11 were revised downward and 2 upward. No doubt a coincidence that these numbers made "reality" look rosier than it actually was.

-------Old----New
Q1-04 3.85% 2.96%
Q2-04 4.04% 3.48%
Q3-04 3.10% 3.60%
Q4-04 2.61% 2.55%
Q1-05 3.40% 3.07%
Q2-05 3.26% 2.81%
Q3-05 4.18% 4.46%
Q4-05 1.76% 1.19%
Q1-06 5.58% 4.82%
Q2-06 2.56% 2.44%
Q3-06 1.96% 1.07%
Q4-06 2.45% 2.09%
Q1-07 0.69% 0.60%
Q2-07 3.38%

numbers courtesy of realmoney.com

As is well documented in Sicko, health insurers routinely screw both the patients and the healthcare providers. Your job as a consumer is to disintermediate these sharks as much as possible.

The purpose of insurance is to protect you against disasters you cannot afford. There is no sense in having the insurer paying for ordinary office visits and prescriptions.  Every time they do that they first take a 30-40% cut out of your premium to pay their high priced executives and make profits for their shareholders. Perhaps you may not realize it so much because you are not paying that insurance premium directly.  But you are paying!  You are paying through having a big chunk of what might otherwise be your salary going to those premiums, lower profits if you own a business, and lousy health care.  Your job is to prevent that. If you are paying for your own medical insurance, opt out of that expensive policy and get a $5000 deductible policy instead.  If you are involved in a small business consider having your employer do the same and using the resulting savings to fill the gap, through health savings accounts or some other means.  Very large organizations should be self-insured.

Impeachment is absolutely essential to restore our constitutional form of government.

Kathryn Johnston, was a sharp, opinionated woman who led a happy, healthy life. She worked out on a stair machine, and watched City Council meetings. She was sharp for 88, and deeply spiritual.

 She was also black, lived in a rough neighborhood, and kept a gun.  The night of Nov. 21, several men broke into her house.  She shot and wounded 3 of them before they gunned her down.

Turns out they were plainclothes police who had obtained a "no-knock" warrant.  They claimed an informant had purchased drugs there.  Here is what the informant had to say:

"They were going to pay me just to cover it up," said the unidentified man. "They called me immediately after the shooting to ask me, I mean to tell me, here's what you need to do. You need to cover our ass and that's exactly how he said it, you know? It's all on you man."

Note to Antonin Scalia: The need for police to knock amounts to something more than not being disturbed in your bedclothes.

Full story:
http://www.latimes.com/...