Delivering Exceptional Insurance Programs to Clients Throughout North America

"The other key thing to pay attention to is who this marketing campaign was targeted at: key decisionmakers at providers and insurance companies. Those are the people who decide whether medical procedures get ordered. It’s not patients. Patients aren’t going to experience a loss of freedom or satisfaction because an expert reviewer at the Independant Payment Advisory Board makes the call as to whether a procedure is medically beneficial, rather than the corresponding bureaucrat at their insurance provider or at the for-profit clinic they’re attending."

"But health care is not zero-sum villainy. This post is not arguing that insurers are better than you think and providers worse. This post is arguing that nature of both groups is beside the point. They work within the market the government constructs. And both the market for insurance and the market for health care need reform. But we're comfortable reforming only the market for insurance, and so we are leaving half -- or maybe more than half -- the job undone."

"In case you wondered about what we in the US pay for health care compared with those unfree unfortunates who suffer under various forms of socialized medicine, here are some graphs showing the advantages of what Republicans here tell us is “the best health care system in the world.”"

"By AHIP's own admission, they have to be stopped or they'll kill again. The report is a taunt, a thug-level threat, terrorism, if you will. With no government alternative to corporate health insurance, it's like asking captured bank robbers if they'd mind not robbing banks anymore. When they say, "Yes, we mind," you ask if they'd stop shooting hostages. And when they say, "We'll think about it," you thank them for accepting their punishment so gracefully and release them."

"So you suspect your health/auto/home insurer is run by the devil, but you're not sure whether the alternative you're considering is any better. Kiplinger Finance has posted a helpful article on how to find the complaint ratio of an insurer via the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' website. Update: here's how to file your own complaint."

Nice summary of misleading (but legal) manipulative practices in covering claims.

"John McCain’s health care plan is rubbish. So says everyone. Most of the summaries I’ve seen have focused on the fact that twenty million will likely lose their employer-cushioned coverage, and that the individual market is horrible to those who have been ill, or for those who are obese.

The plan is rubbish, for all the reasons cited. But it’s rubbish for more reasons. It’s rubbish because it’s made of rubbish."

"That study was denounced by many orthopedic surgeons, but Medicare decided in 2003 to stop paying for the operation. Still, because doctors can be reimbursed for the procedure by modifying what they say is the patient’s problem, it is not clear whether most doctors stopped doing the operation, or how many such operations are being done. There is no national system for keeping track."

the most inaccessible site I've ever seen; menus are graphics, everything is pale. Crap.