Two variations on the Public Option for Healthcare Reform were killed by MaxBaucus' Senate Finance Committee. The first proposal, by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, was rejected 15 to 8, as five Democrats joined all Republicans on the panel in voting no. The second proposal, by Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, was defeated 13 to 10, with three Democrats voting no.

Michael Lewis on the ridiculousness of the Greek economy and Sovereign Debt. (more)

Bassett Healthcare uses Salaried Physician-s in its hospital and clinics. Barack Obama sees this as a key technique in Healthcare Reform. But for some, wages are not enough. Dr. J. Turner Stauffer, a gastroenterologist in Thomasville, Ga., left Bassett 10 years ago. He has four children, including two of college age. "To provide for my family, I felt I needed to be reimbursed on a fee-for-service model," Dr. Stauffer said. "I make three to four times what I was making there, although I don't know what my salary at Bassett would be now." Dr. Stauffer would not reveal his pay. A recent national survey found that gastroenterologists earned $457,000 on average, with the top 10 percent making $715,600... The share of doctors in one- or two-physician Small Practice-s dropped to 33 percent in 2005, from 41 percent in 1997, according to the Center for Studying Health System Change. Just 10 percent of doctors in their early 40s work in one- or two-doctor practices, compared with 38 percent of those 60 and older.

John Mackey wrote an Op Ed arguing against Healthcare Reform. (more)

Matt Taibbi thinks that Healthcare Reform is impossible given the breakage in the US political system. (more)

A restriction on Abortion coverage, added late Saturday to the Healthcare Reform bill passed by the House, has energized abortion opponents with their biggest victory in years - emboldening them for a pitched battle in the Senate. The provision would block the use of federal subsidies for insurance that covers elective abortions.... Both sides credited a forceful lobbying effort by Roman Catholic bishops with the success of the provision, inserted in the bill under pressure from conservative Democrats... Abortion rights advocates charged Sunday that the provision threatened to deprive women of abortion coverage because insurers would drop the procedure from their plans in order to sell them in the newly expanded market of people receiving subsidies... Not many women who undergo abortions file private insurance claims, perhaps to avoid leaving a record. A 2003 study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute found that 13 percent of abortions were billed directly to insurance companies. (more)

Eliot Spitzer is proposing the next New York State budget. After talking for months about the need to rein in spending, the governor had to reconcile his campaign promises to substantially increase funds for education and lower property taxes, while also moving to make Health Insurance available to all of the state's children and increase aid to distressed municipalities. (more)

Robin Hanson identifies some specific HealthCare Market Failure-s and possible Public Policy responses, none of which require major Healthcare Reform... If private producers under-provide info on the quality of medical procedures, professionals, or providers, because they have insufficient property rights to the info they create, governments might subsidize such info products. This includes research.

Tim Harford [on](http://www.timharford.com/favourites/Free Lunches.htm) the Side Effect-s of Government Free Lunch policies. Free roads make Street Traffic problems, Free Public Schools raise Real Estate prices in areas where those schools are actually decent. Government policies to subsidise important services such as roads and education usually make no more sense than IKEA inadvertently organising an opening-night riot. Sometimes the benefits are dispersed by overcrowding, as happens in the case of the roads. In other cases, as with education, the benefits are simply misdirected, going not to poor parents but to homeowners selling property close to good schools. This is not to say that subsidies must be abolished. With real political leadership, it is possible to direct them fairly accurately at the poor. In many instances, the right way to do this would be for the government to let competing companies charge what the market will bear, and give cash or vouchers only to those who cannot afford the fees. (School Vouchers, Healthcare Reform)

Article about David Cutler's thoughts on Healthcare Reform. He thinks there's not much "waste" since people get good value for the cost, but of course it's hard to tell for sure when nobody's spending their own money. Some encouraging bits about Medicare taking a lead in experimentation for new payment policies to improve quality and prevention. (more)

Merlin Mann wants a PIM/Universal Toolbox/etc. * If I have a repeatable system for tagging the information on just my Mac and it’s working for me, that’s really all that matters. I would definitley love that tagging ability for the most atomic piece of any work and personal information I touch.... Personally, I want my important information stored on a secure server, but I want the data and its structure seamlessly Data Synch-able to applications on the web, via wireless (Mobile) devices, and yeah, in my most important desktop apps.*

David Goldhill wants real Healthcare Reform based on Medical Error (sepsis) killing his father last year. All of the actors in health care--from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies--work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also all behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results... The problems I've explored in the past year hardly count as breakthrough discoveries--health-care experts undoubtedly view all of them as old news. But some experts, it seems, have come to see many of these problems as inevitable in any health-care system--as conditions to be patched up, papered over, or worked around, but not problems to be solved. That's the premise behind today's incremental approach to Healthcare Reform... I'm a Democrat, and have long been concerned about America's lack of a health safety net. But based on my own work experience, I also believe that unless we fix the problems at the foundation of our health system--largely problems of incentives--our reforms won't do much good, and may do harm. (more)

motivational trainer/Coaching/Self Improvement (more)

Public Policy process of changing the structure/incentives of the HealthCare industry, in hopes of better outcomes at lower cost. (more)

"43 Folders" Self Improvement blog creator/writer (started Sept'2004, ended ~early 2011) (more)

aka Accountable Care Organization (more)

Congressional Budget Office (more)

aka Office Of Management And Budget (more)

AdamDachis on creating a Personal Hand Book (Operating Manual, CheckList, NoteBook) to build/retain learnings about what Works for you in Self Improvement (esp getting through a Bad Day). Sometimes the worst thing about having a bad day is that it seems to just get worse since you can't motivate yourself to do anything. Chances are you can motivate yourself to eat, sleep, listen to music, play a game, watch TV, or do one of the many things that could shift you into a better State Of Mind (Engagement). If you don't succeed, then you've learned something about what works with that particular situation. With a little work and some patience, you'll eventually have an entire personal handbook full of answers to all your problems.

Atul Gawande on the small number of patients who generate the bulk of HealthCare costs. The critical flaw in our health-care system that people like Gunn and Brenner are finding is that it was never designed for the kind of patients who incur the highest costs. Medicine’s primary mechanism of service is the doctor visit and the ER visit... Verisk reports that most of its clients can slow the rate at which their health costs rise (via Case Management contractors - ACO?), at least to some extent. But few have seen decreases, and it’s not obvious that the improvements can be sustained.