Niko Karvounis has written a terrific summary of the evolution of the Chinese health care system over at The Century Foundation’s blog.
Of particular interest is this – health care inflation in China is in the 16% range, a full seven points higher than GDP growth. This inflation is primarily driven by physicians overprescribing drugs and imaging – the only two types of care that they can price high enough to generate a profit.
Yes, communist physicians are making money the old-fashioned way, by over-utilizing.

regulators and legislators take charge. Legislators in California are well on the way to passing a law that would severely restrict health plans’ ability to cancel members’ coverage, a law that would supersede internal guidelines and policies.
Over the last five years, about 700 individual policies have been canceled under these internal guidelines, with members having little in the way of formal recourse. The press has publicized some of the more egregious cancellations, where individuals with serious health problems had policies cancelled because they did not document minor health issues that occurred years before the application was filed (conditions unrelated to the member’s current health problems) .
Even more egregious, at least one payer evaluated, and bonused, a manager in part on her ability to find policies to cancel.
There are actually two bills (which may be merged), one that requires all cancelations be approved by a third party; the other would give health plans a maximum of six months from the date of issue to review patients’ policy applications. While many bills are offered, few are passed – but that doesn’t look to be the case here; one of the bills has already passed out of the Health Committee on a unanimous vote.
If these bills, or something like them, are passed and signed into law, it may well make it more difficult and expensive to underwrite individual health insurance in the state. It may make it harder to obtain health insurance.
But these bills never would have come about if certain insurers hadn’t crossed the stupid line. Here’s hoping other insurers in other states watch and learn.

The sleazy world of surgical implants has been exposed recently, with reports of doctors receiving kickbacks, huge settlements by manufacturers, and outrageous pricing.
Just when you thought “finally, a company gets hammered“, we find out that the corruption doesn’t stop with the implant manufacturers, but infects the regulators themselves.
The US Attorney who settled the case against Zimmer for $311 million forced Zimmer to pay his former boss, John Ashcroft, between $28 and $52 million over 18 months (on a no-bid contract) to oversee the settlement. According to Ashcroft’s firm, the fees are justified because they have hired an additional 30 employees and outside consultants for this project, and Ashcroft himself has actually traveled to Indiana several times (several times!!) to oversee the work.
Ashcroft, the former Attorney General, was US Attorney Chris Christie’s boss.
Among the terms of the Ashcroft deal are:
–$150,000 to $250,000 per month for travel and incidentals
–$750,000 as a monthly retainer
–hourly fees up to $895
No wonder Ashcroft’s spokesman said the firm “was pleased about the deal”.
And no wonder implant prices are so high – they have to be to afford the payoffs, both legitimate and illegal.
This is disgusting.

I’ve successfully escaped the second nor’easter of the season, and won’t be heard from again until next year (unless I get really bored on vacation).
It has been a good year. Thanks for reading.

Wellpoint, the for-profit owner of Blues plans in fourteen plus states, is doing well in California. United Healthcare is most definitely not. The whys and wherefores are both instructive and predictive.

Continue reading A tale of two health plans