Friday, July 04, 2003
Citizen's Intelligence Agency on the web. Dossiers on government officials.
The Boston Globe has the story
""It's sort of a citizen's intelligence agency," said Chris Csikszentmihalyi, assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab.
He and graduate student Ryan McKinley created the Government Information Awareness (GIA) project as a response to the US government's Total Information Awareness program (TIA)."
Here's the qoute above the mission statement at the Government Information Awareness web site.
The Boston Globe has the story
""It's sort of a citizen's intelligence agency," said Chris Csikszentmihalyi, assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab.
He and graduate student Ryan McKinley created the Government Information Awareness (GIA) project as a response to the US government's Total Information Awareness program (TIA)."
Here's the qoute above the mission statement at the Government Information Awareness web site.
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both."
- James Madison (Fourth President of the United States)
Sunday, June 29, 2003
Hospital Price Inequity
The need for a new economic and political philosophy is clearly illustrated in a Thursday, June 19, 2003 article in the Wall Street Journal.
By RHONDA L. RUNDLE, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
According to her article there is a "widespread practice among hospitals of billing their poorest patients -- the ones who can't afford insurance -- at prices many times higher than what insured people are charged for the same treatment."
And she says: "Hospitals routinely put very high list prices on their services, but turn around and negotiate deep discounts with insurance companies and managed-care providers. The upshot: Almost no one except the uninsured gets billed the full price."
Clearly there is a problem here. First the inequitable situation is clearly offensive to those who have the slightest sense of justice. Second, it is simply impractical to put the highest economic burden on those least able to bear it.
Where is the solution?
Not with the left and the Democrats who would send all medical bills to "The Government", as if the government had an infinite fount of money
which it didn't have to wring out of taxpayers in the first place.
Not with the right and the Republicans who see the inequity and privilege and advantages of the well-to-do and the immodestly wealthy to be in the natural order of things, and "Why shouldn't the poor pay more, they're not us, God bless us."
How about just taking the inequity out of the pricing system? What would happen if, by law, the hospitals had to offer those of modest resources the same price as
that negotiated by the immodestly resourced insurance companies and their clients? Harnessing the interests of the modest to the engine of the powerful? Would
the hospitals continue to set artificially high list prices? Would the insurance companies lose the incentive to negotiate lower prices? Would those of modest resources be able to pay the lowered prices? What other problems might arise?
Feedback welcome. Hit "contact" above.
The need for a new economic and political philosophy is clearly illustrated in a Thursday, June 19, 2003 article in the Wall Street Journal.
By RHONDA L. RUNDLE, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
According to her article there is a "widespread practice among hospitals of billing their poorest patients -- the ones who can't afford insurance -- at prices many times higher than what insured people are charged for the same treatment."
And she says: "Hospitals routinely put very high list prices on their services, but turn around and negotiate deep discounts with insurance companies and managed-care providers. The upshot: Almost no one except the uninsured gets billed the full price."
Clearly there is a problem here. First the inequitable situation is clearly offensive to those who have the slightest sense of justice. Second, it is simply impractical to put the highest economic burden on those least able to bear it.
Where is the solution?
Not with the left and the Democrats who would send all medical bills to "The Government", as if the government had an infinite fount of money
which it didn't have to wring out of taxpayers in the first place.
Not with the right and the Republicans who see the inequity and privilege and advantages of the well-to-do and the immodestly wealthy to be in the natural order of things, and "Why shouldn't the poor pay more, they're not us, God bless us."
How about just taking the inequity out of the pricing system? What would happen if, by law, the hospitals had to offer those of modest resources the same price as
that negotiated by the immodestly resourced insurance companies and their clients? Harnessing the interests of the modest to the engine of the powerful? Would
the hospitals continue to set artificially high list prices? Would the insurance companies lose the incentive to negotiate lower prices? Would those of modest resources be able to pay the lowered prices? What other problems might arise?
Feedback welcome. Hit "contact" above.
