More on PA Healthcare

Here is an additional link to the Pennsylvania Medical Society concerning the sorry state of affairs with our health care situation. State of Medecine in PA. I don't understand why they bring insurance companies to the table.

Some Links

Does it make you feel weird to see your house on Zillow?
Some times I just enjoy the sound of crickets.
I spend time at the North Museum to be rejuvinated!

Photos on Flickr

I have some photos uploaded at my Flickr account: My Photos. Years ago my wife told me I should stop taking pictures of landscapes and objects, and start taking photos of people, so I did. Now I LOVE taking people pictures! But in today's age, I don't want to post family shots on the internet! So I've come around full circle, and I'm only showing pictures of landscapes and objects. Go figure!

Society

"The success of a society is measured at the base, not the apex."

MORE Health Care Rambles

I'm a small minority in the business community in favor of SB 1085. Too many big insurance companies, brokers and attorneys are bellied up to the feeding trough with the current system. And for businesses, the current system is a known evil – we are afraid of replacing it with something unknown.

Consumer driven health care seems to be the latest attempt to wrestle this situation under control, but it’s a red herring. The whole idea of HSA's and HRA's, for example, just seem to me to be symptoms of a system collapsing under it's own weight. Who else can they find to help prop up the huge inefficient bureaucracy, but sick people!

I even hire a person who spends 75% of her time dealing with our employees and the health plan. She is very efficient and productive, but in reality, she is not producing any goods or services for the economy. She is part of the huge overhead of the system that businesses are expected to pay fund.

We are taught to believe that healthcare is so expensive, the only way to control it is to layer it with a huge mess of insurance plans and lawyers, all trying to save money on their particular piece of the pie and shift costs over to other insurance companies or sick people.

I just wish we could have had a break in the dike that would start the change. I want my healthcare dollar to pay for health care, nothing else.

Universal Health Care

I'm a big proponent of a single payer system for health care. See the link to SB 1085 http://www.pahcsc.org/ to read about some of the benefits.

A single payer system would be good for business in Pennsylvania. The current health care system is full of waste. The Massachusetts system is a sell-out to the insurance industry, which is part of the problem. A single payer system would get rid of all this waste and inefficiency.

I am just tired of paying $700,000 per year to provide health coverage to 200 employees, and an additional $150,000 to cover 700 employees for Workers comp, with a percentage of each being taken by a broker. In return for my $850,000 investment, I get two companies that make their money by denying coverage, and I pay for them to enter into expensive legal battles over who pays. It's the worst possible set-up imaginable. My employees, who are supposed to benefit, are usually the ones who suffer.

If Pennsylvania started a true single payer system, we would have a good 10 or 15 year window of competitive advantage against other states to attract businesses.

First Post

This is my very first post to see how a blog works. My purpose for this blog is just to have place to try out my ideas, to see what they look like in a public place. My guess is this blog will have one reader, and one reader only!