Utah Owl's Recommended Web Sites for Info

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There is no suggested book to read for this month.

However for extra credit, you can skim the last four items posted in this section (they were posted as "replies" to Bill's proposal by two of our participants before Bill’s proposal was adopted) -

(1) An Op-Ed Article by the CEO of Safeway Inc. describing how they have lowered their health-care costs by 38% by charging employees for the extra actuarial cost of smoking and obesity (which is reminiscent of the "U.K. Fat Tax" Proposal by Oxford University posted on our web site for our discussion 24 months ago);

(2) An Op-Ed Article by a Wharton Professor of Health-Care Management and Insurance/Risk Management about incenting good behavior in general;

(3) A Washington Post news report on the July 16 Congressional Budget Office Report on how none of the health-care bills in Congress control costs - touching off the firestorm of opposition that is still raging; and

(4) Utah Owl's recommended web sites for info about the issue.

Also of pivotal interest in understanding the debate about so-called “death panels” is the Wikipedia article on “Quality-Adjusted Life Years” (or “QALY”) which explains how insurance policies (both employer-provided and individual policies) determine what procedures will be covered. And the article by Harvard Econ Prof Marty Feldstein (former Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers) mentions, among other interesting points, that Britain’s National Health Service will only cover procedures that cost less than £ 30,000 (or $49,685) per QALY. It should be noted that so-called “gold-plated” employer-provided health-insurance plans range as high as $500,000 per QALY.

And for anyone interested in additional background material to supplement current news reports, there is quite a bit of interesting material posted on this bulletin board for the last two times we discussed health care - 24 months ago and 5 months ago.

THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE OUR DISCUSSION WILL RESULT IN ONE OF OUR "SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION" APPEALS FOR EVERYONE TO E-MAIL PRESIDENT OBAMA WITH RESPECT TO A PARTICULAR OPPORTUNITY, AND FOR EVERYONE TO REQUEST THEIR FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES TO DO THE SAME IN AN UNENDING CHAIN.
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UtahOwl
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Utah Owl's Recommended Web Sites for Info

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The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has put up a great public-access website:http://healthcarereform.nejm.org/ where you can find great info on healthcare and health insurance reform, such as

(1) "Understanding How Americans View Health Care Reform"
(2) "The Individual Mandate — An Affordable and Fair Approach to Achieving Universal Coverage"
(3) "Going Dutch — Managed-Competition Health Insurance in the Netherlands"

And also the NEJM site has links to other excellent sites

(1) The Congressional Budget Office Report on Healthcare Reform and the Budget
(2) H.R.3200, current form of the Healthcare reform bill now in the House of Representatives
(3) Dartmouth Atlas of Healthcare, which has been tracking healthcare spending
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