Cavalcade of Risk – the Paduda edition

After a year of badgering other bloggers to host an edition of Health Wonk Review, I’ve been guilted into hosting the Cavalcade of Risk, a related-but-different grand rounds of things insurance- and risk-management related.
I’m doing this from a beach-side hammock in Puerto Morelos, MX, so if there are garbled sections, blame it on the cervezas.

CoR founder Hank Stern has always used a broad definition of the term “risk” when considering entries, ranging from the personal and limited to the really big broad and national. We’re sticking with Hank on this, and to start, we’ll explore the meaning and assessment of risk.
JLP at All Financial Matters has a useful quiz to help you assess your own risk taking comfort level. As a kind of/sort of counter point, blogger rmogull’s Securosis has insights on how “risk management” has become too nebulous a subject, and some suggestions on how to fix that.
Never heard of Relational Risk? Well, the Burton Group Identity Blog explains what it is, and why it’s important. Make sure you have a quiet room and a good dose of focus – this is both entertaining and deep stuff.
Health insurance and related matters
For those who are stuck at home due to a recent layoff or job loss, a most timely post has arrived providing insight and direction into signing up for unemployment benefits.
There were several entries about the State of the Union address and particularly the health care reform proposal from Pres. Bush.
Over at Managed Care Matters, I take issue with the characterization of Bush’s proposal as “health care reform”, as it does nothing to address the underlying problem – the supply of health insurance is limited.
Jason Shafrin does his typically excellent work analyzing the likely impact, or, more accurately, non-impact, of the new Bush health reform package on the ranks of the uninsured.
Joe Kristan also has something to say about the SOTU speech, opining that the Bush health care proposal is a good first step that we won’t be taking soon.
Richard Eskow, one of the smarter folks in the managed care business, notes that the last Congress cut funding for research on traumatic brain injuries in half, despite a flood of soldiers with TBIs coming back from Iraq. Find Richard’s perspective at “Veterans Health Issues: Catastrophic and Brain Injuries”.
The libertarians at Cato sent in a slew of entries to this edition; here are two of their contributions. Michael Cannon thinks that mandating individual coverage is a bad way to solve a “very small problem” . Being one of those “leftish policy wonks” at whom Mr. Cannon slings a few verbal arrows, albeit one who has spent 20+ years actually working in the real world of health insurance and managed care, I note that one of Mr. Cannon’s criticisms is based on the statistic that 30% of all uncompensated care is delivered to folks with insurance; therefore increasing the number of folks with insurance won’t help much(?!). There may be a bit of confusion here, as many providers count the difference between what they bill and what they collect as “uncompensated care”; just because they did not get 100% of what they billed does not mean they were not compensated.
Mr. Cannon continues his assault on the “left” with a post on one person’s definition of adverse selection and its influence on insurance costs and people’s self-interest. Note – the definition is partially accurate, but the end result of Mr. Cannon’s prescription is full self-insurance for all health care costs.
Back to the real world. New York’s workers comp system is long overdue for reform, and adding to the state’s woes is a mammoth fraud problem. Jon Coppelman discusses the urgent need to address the system’s unfairness, inefficiency and wastefulness – all of which are imposing a huge burden on the state’s honest employers. (I’ve just finished audits for two WC clients, and Jon’s dead on – NY is a WC mess).
Risk Management
The Kinaxis blog points out that “there are risks that you can plan for and there are those that you can’t.” Self-evident? Maybe. Read about how having a Response Management strategy can help.
It’s serendipitous (I’ve been looking for a spot for that word for ages) when two posts on a subject appear simultaneously, as happens in this instance.Rose Without Thorns explains that risk management doesn’t mean risk elimination, and warns about letting risk become a paralyzing force.
Bruce Greig runs an English blog (that’s a blog that is not only written in English but also by an Englishman), and has an interesting story of how he turned a 100 page risk management manual into a workable 11 pages.
Perhaps Mr. Greig should host the next edition of CoR???
Over at Securosis, blogger rmogull has some insights on how risk management has become too nebulous a subject, and some suggestions on how to fix that.
For those not yet in the Fortune 1000, Vahid Chaychi recommends you buy a Business Insurance Policy For Your Home-Based Business posted at Work at Home Entrepreneurs.
Lest you, dear reader, think I’m pushing just a bit too hard on the virtues of insurance, click through to The Kinds Of Insurance You Probably Do Not Need posted at My Two Dollars.
Continuing the segue from big biz to small and personal biz, Matthew Paulson thinks Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki Gets it Wrong With Money posted at Getting Green. Matthew has a really good point…
Silicon Valley Blogger hates dealing with medical insurance, bills, and voice mail – hear him roar at The Financial Task I Dread The Most posted at The Digerati Life.
Beware of insurance scams following a major home fire posted at Clever Dude. I can’t believe people fall for this; read it and weep.
Henry Stern, founder of CoR, focuses his entry on our northern neighbor’s health care system. Saving the integrity of the Ontario health care system InsureBlog’s Mike Feehan has a cautionary tale about the risks one Canadian patient faced when in need of a life-saving liver transplant. After traveling to England (of all places) for the procedure, he still faced financial problems with our Neighbor to the North.”
David Williams knows the pharma business quite well; he’s thinking there may soon be a big pharma LBO posted at his Health Business Blog. David’s answer to the question “Is the time ripe to alter the conservative business structure and balance sheets of big pharma?” is intriguing.
Leon Gettler of SoxFirst opines that ecological decline “a greater threat than international terrorism”: “The world’s CEOs are in an upbeat mood as they meet in Davos, and in his State of the Union address, President Bush pleads with Congress to give war a chance. But European and British business leaders say that protecting the environment is a bigger risk than world poverty, wars, terrorism and future energy supplies.”
From global warming to local damming, a real-life and current example of environmental risk is discussed at , where a river keeper laments the fate of his much-loved waterway.
Leaving us with something to ponder, Rita Schwab asks an Excellent Question at her MSSPNexus Blog, saying, “A single powerful question can reveal a great deal about an organization’s culture of safety.”