Interesting that everybody was so excited and willing to read 25,000 pages of Sarah Palin’s e-mails, but nobody could find the time to read 2,500 pages of the healthcare reform bill.
BAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
Overheard.
Applauding.
eHealth Announces Partnership with Healthcare Blue Book to Bring Health Insurance and Healthcare Price Transparency to Consumers
Mountain View, CA, April 13, 2010 – eHealth, Inc., parent company of eHealthInsurance.com, the leading online source of health insurance for individuals, families, and small businesses, today announced a partnership with Healthcare Blue Book, the leading online provider of fair healthcare pricing information for consumers in their markets.
The Healthcare Blue Book was established to provide consumers with the knowledge they need to get fair prices for their healthcare and is used by consumers who pay for their own healthcare, have high deductible health insurance plans, or need services that their insurance company does not fully cover. The consumer pricing guide helps consumers find fair prices for surgeries, hospital stays, doctor visits, medical tests and much more.
The eHealth and Healthcare Blue Book partnership will combine the two companies’ core strengths to deliver a one-stop shop for purchasing fairly priced health insurance along with unbiased healthcare pricing information. The free online platform will help consumers get the most value from the plans they purchase by enabling them to:
- Compare, research and purchase online over 10,000 health insurance products from over 180 carriers;
- Obtain personal assistance from the eHealthInsurance customer care center, staffed 24/7 with licensed health insurance agents; and
- Get fair, upfront pricing data for hundreds of healthcare services and products throughout the nation.
Bit of a game changer.
Read the full release here.
![upstairsbedroom:
robot-heart-politics:soupsoup:colinashe:
National Geographic compares health care costs: on the left is health care spending per person, and on the right, average life expectancy. A line that slopes down from left to right indicates relative inefficiency, while a line sloping up from left to right indicates a relatively efficient system.
FALLACY OF CAUSATION ALERT! FALLACY OF CAUSATION ALERT!
Factors not considered: environment, cultural behaviors or trends like diet and lifestyle. How much does the popularity/presence/lack thereof of junk food, outdoor activities, traffic, industry, smokers, poverty, hygiene standards, infrastructure, tanning, vaccinations, overpopulation, et fucking cetera influence the health of a nation?
Sigh. Exactly. This is exhausting…
Attention Tumblr-sphere: This “truth’s” been debunked ad-nauseam already. You would do well to stop citing it in debate.
The above comparison judged a country’s quality of health on life expectancy.
John Stossel:
But that’s a lousy measure of a health-care system. Many things that cause premature death have nothing to do with medical care.
Now, nothing to be proud of, but still true:
We have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. That’s not a health-care problem.
Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada.
When you remove/adjust for these other fatal and accidental injury rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation.
Diet and lack of exercise also bring down average life expectancy.
More:
Michael Moore, in his movie Sicko, claims Cubans live longer than Americans. It’s true that a U.N. report claims that. But the United Nations didn’t gather any data. “The United Nations simply reports whatever the government in Cuba reports, so we have no objective way to know what the real statistics are,” says Cuban-born Dr. Jose Carro.
Exactly. Communist countries are famous for hiding the truth. Twenty years ago, when I reported from the Soviet Union, officials insisted there were no poor people in Russia, but they refused to let me look for myself.
Why would we believe the Cuban government’s health statistics?
Cuba claims it has low infant mortality, but doctors tell us that Cuban obstetricians abort a fetus when they think there might be a problem. Dr. Julio Alfonso told us he used to do 70-80 abortions a day. And here’s an even more devious way of distorting infant-mortality data: Some doctors tell us that if a baby dies within a few hours of birth, Cuban doctors don’t count him or her as ever having lived.
And, a pragmatic finish:
Let’s [of course] acknowledge that the U.S. medical system has serious problems. But the problems stem from departures from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference. Most important, six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties, which means that most consumers exercise no cost-consciousness. As Milton Friedman always pointed out, no one spends other people’s money as carefully as he spends his own.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kva6mzE7Rv1qz7mu5o1_500.jpg)
National Geographic compares health care costs: on the left is health care spending per person, and on the right, average life expectancy. A line that slopes down from left to right indicates relative inefficiency, while a line sloping up from left to right indicates a relatively efficient system.
FALLACY OF CAUSATION ALERT! FALLACY OF CAUSATION ALERT!
Factors not considered: environment, cultural behaviors or trends like diet and lifestyle. How much does the popularity/presence/lack thereof of junk food, outdoor activities, traffic, industry, smokers, poverty, hygiene standards, infrastructure, tanning, vaccinations, overpopulation, et fucking cetera influence the health of a nation?
Sigh. Exactly. This is exhausting…
Attention Tumblr-sphere: This “truth’s” been debunked ad-nauseam already. You would do well to stop citing it in debate.
The above comparison judged a country’s quality of health on life expectancy.
But that’s a lousy measure of a health-care system. Many things that cause premature death have nothing to do with medical care.
Now, nothing to be proud of, but still true:
We have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. That’s not a health-care problem.
Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada.
When you remove/adjust for these other fatal and accidental injury rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation.
Diet and lack of exercise also bring down average life expectancy.
More:
Michael Moore, in his movie Sicko, claims Cubans live longer than Americans. It’s true that a U.N. report claims that. But the United Nations didn’t gather any data. “The United Nations simply reports whatever the government in Cuba reports, so we have no objective way to know what the real statistics are,” says Cuban-born Dr. Jose Carro.
Exactly. Communist countries are famous for hiding the truth. Twenty years ago, when I reported from the Soviet Union, officials insisted there were no poor people in Russia, but they refused to let me look for myself.
Why would we believe the Cuban government’s health statistics?
Cuba claims it has low infant mortality, but doctors tell us that Cuban obstetricians abort a fetus when they think there might be a problem. Dr. Julio Alfonso told us he used to do 70-80 abortions a day. And here’s an even more devious way of distorting infant-mortality data: Some doctors tell us that if a baby dies within a few hours of birth, Cuban doctors don’t count him or her as ever having lived.
And, a pragmatic finish:
Let’s [of course] acknowledge that the U.S. medical system has serious problems. But the problems stem from departures from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference. Most important, six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties, which means that most consumers exercise no cost-consciousness. As Milton Friedman always pointed out, no one spends other people’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
