Two new stories that caught my eye.... (make that three)

The first is a piece by Newsweek columnist Jane Quinn, ,Health Care's New Lottery, which looks at the growing divide between those with insurance, and those without. The second is a widely reported story on the growing slice of our GDP that is taken up by health care spending. In Analysts: Health Care Costs to Keep Rising , Kevin Freking of the AP points out that the percent of our GDP devoted to health care is expected to rise to 20% in about a decade. THIS IS MY POINT!! By having an inefficient health care system, money is directed at non-value added jobs, like bundling and unbundling health care claims. There are hundreds of thousands of people who's only job is to try and get someone other than their employer to pay for your doctor's visit. This is an insane and inefficient way to run a railroad. There is a lot of talk about "letting market forces drive down costs", but government is doing just the opposite. Seniors buying their prescription drugs from Canada is a classic capitalist market reaction to high drug prices in the U.S. Closing the border to the reimportation of drugs, on the other hand, is an artificial barrier to an otherwise free market. Consumers are expected to "shop around" for health care, looking for the best deal, while the government has made it illegal for Medicare to bargain with drug companies - another artificial government intervention in the free market. In other words, the administration is saying one thing, "free markets", and doing just the opposite.

This just in - WalMart says that we need a "business - government" partnership to fix health care. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Wonder if they have been reading my blog? LOL