It’s the 21st Century, Stupid!

The New York Times reports on an investigation by New York state AG Andrew Cuomo that has uncovered what appears to be a rigged system to determine the “reasonable and customary” rates charged by health care providers. The determination is made by a company named Ingenix and is used by insurers to determine payments made by insurance companies when customers have to see doctors outside of the insurers’ networks. The problem is that Ingenix is owned wholely by UnitedHealth Group. Golly gee, there’s no room for a possibility of abuse, is there? Cuomo not only thinks there is but has done investigations that seem to show that abuse has been taking place. What a shock.

Snow day today, so to speak. Sipping coffee and reading the February issue of Popular Science. It has lots of stuff about airline fuel consumption and the search for more fuel efficiency and alternative fuels that would work for aircraft, an entirely different proposition than fuel for cars. One thing that struck me is a sidebar about the Boeing X-48B blended wing aircraft design that can be 23% more fuel efficient and why it won’t ever be a commercial passenger liner. Simply put, no one wants to fly in a passenger plane that doesn’t have windows in the passenger compartment and readily available emergency exits. Sort of reasonable. So current plans call for only military versions of the plane. But then I wondered just how many planes UPS, FedEx and other dedicated air freight carriers use. Aren’t there enough of them to form a fairly hefty niche by themselves? And if you’re building the craft for the military you should have the capability in place to build a civilian version even if it’s not going to the passenger carriers, shouldn’t you?

You’ll notice that Dispatches from the Culture Wars is on my small blog roll. How can you not love someone who starts out this article on a Circuit Court decision like Ed Brayton starts this one?