Insurance

They use vertical integration to control medical care, pharmacy benefits management, and reimbursement to create excessively profitable programs. Based on public support, a universal health insurance program might be a viable alternative to current insurance programs.

Brokerage firms help employers to choose insurance products for their employees, while receiving compensations for their guidance derived from the cost of the insurance they recommend.

The Medicalization of Health

April 10, 2026

The way the human body is constructed, pairs of body parts are obvious. If you start at the top, we have two of most everything down to our two feet. The relationship between the pairs is also well documented. If you break a leg, the other one does double duty but both legs will need to heal – one from the break, the other from the overtime. These supportive relationships – shoulders, hands...

A Different Deadly Species

February 19, 2026

The “murder hornet,” the world’s biggest species of wasp, has an MO that reminds me of a particular human species. The murder hornet feeds on other insects and kills off the worker bees until the workforce is severely depleted. Sounds like the MO of the U.S. health insurance industry. Here is a recent photo and clip of the “profit over people” gang before the U.S. House Ways and Means...

Let’s Make a Deal

October 28, 2025

I believe that saying what you think without self-censoring in order not to offend someone has never advanced a person’s sense of self. I also believe that people can respectfully disagree on important topics and remain colleagues and friends. Maybe one way to do this is to find commonality before simply discarding the other person. But, these days, that has been lost to righteously choosing a s...

“Sharing” Patient Data Or We’ll Do Anything To Make Money

July 15, 2024

Received May 14, 2024 (via email) NOTICE OF DATA BREACH Dear BARBARA, On behalf of Kaiser Permanente, I am writing to inform you about a privacy matter that may have affected you. What Happened?On October 25, 2023, Kaiser Permanente determined that certain online technologies (commonly known as cookies or pixels) installed on our websites and mobile applications may have transmitted personal inf...

100 Million People

July 15, 2022

I thought I’d read it wrong when I saw this heading in a recent posting from Kaiser Health News (KHN). I looked again and saw that the full title of the well-researched article was as follows: “100 Million People in America Are Saddled with Health Care Debt.” This is slightly less than one-third the estimated population in 2022. This 100 million includes 41% of adults “beset by a health ca...

Working for Something Better

December 15, 2024

Imagine kicking over a rotting log and finding all manner of centipedes running to escape the sunlight when darkness is their life. This is how I have come to view the healthcare industry we’re living with today. Just that, it’s become an industry rather than one of the elements committed to creating good health and promoting wellbeing. For more than a dozen years, beginning in 1982, I work...

The New Canaries?

July 1, 2023

I couldn’t stop thinking about a short notice I read in my local newspaper and wanted to share this in a post. “Runaway youth in Washington State will now have the option to defer shelters and host homes from contacting their parents if they leave home to seek gender affirming or reproductive health care under Senate Bill 5599.” The state’s House and Senate passed the bill and sent it on ...

How Was Justice Served?

March 15, 2023

In 2008, I had one of those I wonder whatever happened to moments and googled my blind-from-birth, mentor and former boss, Barry Scheur. My jaw dropped when I saw the headline in Modern Healthcare, dated December 05, 2005: “HMO dreams end in court. Barry Scheur began the Oath of Louisiana with big plans; now he stands accused of fraud after the HMO’s collapse.” Barry and several members of h...

The Catch-22 of US Healthcare

September 5, 2021

I worked in the health insurance industry from 1982 to 1989, with one regrettable relapse. My first job was with an HMO. I actually believed if we provided more preventive services and made care affordable, the health of all Americans would improve. Those were innocent days, before doctors’ practices were owned by venture capitalists, before medicine became Big Pharma, before insurance companies...

Moral Injury

August 29, 2020

If I ever find an agent and/or publisher for a book I’m working on, this is how it will open: Imagine kicking over a rotting log and finding all manner of centipedes running to escape the sunlight when darkness is their life. This is how I view the healthcare industry we’re living with today. Photo by Viktor Talashuk For more than a dozen years, beginning in 1982, I was a sales and marketing ...

The Medicalization of Health

A Different Deadly Species

Let’s Make a Deal

“Sharing” Patient Data Or We’ll Do Anything To Make Money

100 Million People

Working for Something Better

The New Canaries?

How Was Justice Served?

The Catch-22 of US Healthcare

Moral Injury

Business

Government

Health

The Medicalization of Health

A Different Deadly Species

Let’s Make a Deal

“Sharing” Patient Data Or We’ll Do Anything To Make Money

100 Million People

Working for Something Better

The New Canaries?

How Was Justice Served?

The Catch-22 of US Healthcare

Moral Injury

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