Baltbear on Finance markets are like marshmallows

Among the reforms suggested for health care in the near future is electronic filing of medicalrecords combined with standardised coding of treatments.
 That’s the good news. The bad news is that this statement could have been made any year after 1983, when the GRace Commission noted it. It was made in ‘91 when it was observed that with all the compiuterisation in place 12% or so of heath care costs wdre not in paperwork–but in the variances of paperwork. That is, 11% could have been knocked off health care costs by a presidential order that all health care insurers, providers, etc, use the same code sheets as medicare.
  If an I-phone can take pictures of an infimite number of drunken tongus sticking out of or into an endless number of mouths, can it take pictures of care being provided, with date/time stamps so that audit records can be digitised?
  If FaceBook can let someone throw a virtual beer bottle 12k miles, can aetna or BlueCross get a scrip sent by email the th standard cost of an email?
  About 10 years ago there was a ticker–pill–that said yes.
 http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=PILLQ.PK

as a nasd stock it used to float the 8 mark….
  what does this tell us?
 That the profit margin oputweighs any attempt at patient care. The margins for hospital admins to markup make honest answers unlikely, espcecially when th burden of "cost" could be shifted to government.

How serious is this problem?
The Physicians’ Foundation, founded in 2003 as part of a settlement in an anti-racketeering lawsuit among physicians, medical societies, and insurer Aetna, Inc., mailed surveys to 270,000 primary care doctors and 50,000 practicing specialists.

The 12,000 answers are considered representative of doctors as a whole, the group said, with a margin of error of about 1 percent. It found that 78 percent of those who answered believe there is a shortage of primary care doctors.

More than 90 percent said the time they devote to non-clinical paperwork has increased in the last three years and 63 percent said this has caused them to spend less time with each patient.

Eleven percent said they plan to retire and 13 percent said they plan to seek a job that removes them from active patient care. Twenty percent said they will cut back on patients seen and 10 percent plan to move to part-time work.

 What do you think about the chances that such an elegant reform: one code book, ssl2 encrypted pda with camera, transportable records on the fly will get thru the feeing trough of congress? Leave a comment, and let’s discuss. 

Posted under business

The "venerable" new york times occasionally says something intelligent.
  Here’s an op ed piece:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/opinion/16cohan.html?pagewanted=2
 that points to an idea suggested as "relief" or moderation in many an industry, including running the federal government.
   Further, the article points to getting rid of a real threat to the American economy, and thus th world economy, a small group (2-6,000 people)
coninutlaly looking out for each other and building the "uberlords"–
or rather, re-creating them, since that’s how europe ran for 700 years or so, regardless of what is done to the asset base.
   the NYSE was founded on that principle…"hurray for us, heck with them" is enshrined in its original charter, signed under the tree…
but it is time for it to be gone.
 there is no "them". there is only us. that’s the good news. the bad news is,
as was announced in pogo a long time ago, "we have met the enemy and he is us."
 

Posted under business

today gm announced it can see the end of its cash reserves.
conbress has already told gm to go take a hike.
is this a poker game, gm bluffing to see if congress folds?
probably, becuase neithr side wishes to deal with the issues:
the roads are filled with cars that people value, becuase thy have no choice.
while oil is “cheap” and to kep it that way, a 10 cent fuel tax,
with the proceeds to go to buying cars made before 89 off the roads,
cars turned into tuna cans, not “recycled” as cars,
buying the cars at their original retail price with vouchers usable
only for buying cars made after 2002 that meet forward looking cafe goals
would get assembly lines moving again, provide locked base leverage for
extending credit, reduce health care costs, reduce oil dependence.
directing such vouchers back to the car “makers” as tax offsets, or
to be exchanged rirectly for r&d money maintains the forward motion,
and the delivery channels already exist between dealers and makers.
used car lots can use the vouchers as payment for floor plan with banks.
banks can hold the vouchers as capital for loss reserves,
and a clear, fast, utterly trsanparent market can immediately appear
for moving the “cash” value of thse vouchers, in th same way that a dtc
can keep track of “street name” equities.
ten cent a gallon equals about $18 billion dollars.
cars being taken of the road, let’s call it $8000 each,
thereby retiring 2.25 million cars, without “debt”.
invoke debt against tax revenues as a model, and double to 4.5 million cars a year.
let’s pretend there is shrinking dependence on a dead car in the driveway,
and say a demand for an additional 4 million vehicle units a year is created.
is that enough to bail out gm?
ask your congressman why it isn’t being done.
and pass this post along to anyone you know
who pretends to be “looking for solutions.”

Posted under business, finance, investing