editorials

legislators' intelligent handling -- Three words I never thoght I would see in the same sentence.

We are paying these high amounts to private health plans to administer publicly funded health programs. Actually, we do not need to privatize at all and we could avoid these complications and deceptions by returning the administration where it belongs: to the responsible state agency. Our overhead would also diminish to a few percent of revenue. This needless outsourcing was done in the 90's with the promise it would save money and improve efficiency. Under the HMOs, we have experienced the opposite. Further, when the outsourcing was begun, we were promised a study to evaluate the "savings." The study never happened. This experiment of subsidizing the private health plans instead of administering public programs through public agencies has not worked. Let's just end it.

A fairly accurate editorial except that it fails to mention that on February 15 Democrat Representative Carolyn Laine submitted HF 225,1 the bill that will no doubt be passed to remedy this situaion by requiring changes in reporting by these plans and annual audits that are truly third party and completely independent. While Abler and Gottwalt are to be commended for going along, accolades for real leadership on the issue should go to Democrat Representative Carolyn Laine.

To make the state's budget work last year, Minnesota's government took a large sum (30 million dollars) of money from UCare, one of the outfits that are said to be overbilling. In the private sector, that's called a "kickback", and can land a man in jail...last week, the state's Department of Human Services Commissioner cast it as a "donation to the state". Stay tuned. The federal government is investigating.

Julie Brunner's response comments are outrageous. Check out her and others deposition transcripts. Shocking. Why should insurance companies make any money at the cost of Dr's to provide care? There is NO profit, not even covering expenses or any salary to Drs for most procedures. Patients are losing to the salaries and profits of insurance companies by not receiving care or denial of care. When is the public and government going to stop the ...dare I say fraud? Why have a middleman continue to pillage the Drs providing care and the patients?