Tag: insurance (page 3)

As you may recall Last month I mentioned one of those little reforms that was floating around in Lansing that actually stood to make this state a better, more efficient place?

Back in June, state Senators Jim Marleau and Tonya Schuitmaker introduced legislation to cut red tape and bureaucracy in the delivery of health care by asking the insurance commissioner to work with the insurance companies to create a single "universal prior authorization" form for doctors who prescribe medicine for their patients.

Truth be told, I am proud of Junior, in the way he has stepped up to the plate and handled the ENTIRE expense for his education for the last three years through his military program and equally happy that he is not starving, has a roof over his head while in school, and has truly owned up to the responsibilities he has taken on..

..just getting older.

Maybe that's why I have happily paid the insurance policy for him during his schooling. It has been relatively inexpensive to have piece of mind these last few years. To the age of 25, the policy we hold on him has cost us less than $100 a month.. Not too bad.  Its been worth it.

Our poor men and women in Congress have a tough life. Flitting from fundraiser to fundraiser, they can hardly be expected to sit down and actually read the laws they're voting to impose on the rest of us, especially 1000-page monstrosities like the stimulus package or the current health care proposal. Like John Conyers said, you'd need two days with two lawyers to understand it, and who wants to spend that much time in the company of lawyers?

At the state level, things might at first seem a little more sedate. Given the smaller size and scope of state government, you would think that our representatives would read the bills that come before them. Even more basic, you'd think they would read the bills they sponsor.

Gretchen Whitmer must be an exception. Perhaps she is too busy organizing her nascent attorney general campaign. Perhaps she is too busy promoting voter fraud. Whatever the reason, it's obvious she hasn't read Senate Bill No. 83, which she (alone) sponsored and introduced on January 27, 2009.

Here are the facts of the case: Daniel Migdal suffered catastrophic injuries in a 1981 car accident. Due to the nature and extent of his injuries, he required 24-hour nursing care. Daniel's father sued USF&G to recover the costs of the attendant care, and they agreed that USF&G would pay $54.84 an hour for the care. USF&G then applied to the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association for reimbursement.

The Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association (MCCA) was created by statute in 1978. Michigan's no-fault law provides unlimited lifetime coverage for medical expenses which result from auto accidents. The MCCA reimburses insurance companies for every claim paid in excess of a threshold amount. The insurance company initially pays the entire claim, but is reimbursed by the MCCA for the excess medical costs.

All auto insurance companies operating in Michigan are assessed to cover catastrophic medical claims occurring in Michigan. Those assessments are generally passed on to auto insurance policyholders. The 2009-2010 assessment is $124.89 per vehicle.

Read on...

Decepticons working with autobots. Vorlons with shadows. Harkonnen with Atreides. Romulans with Klingons. Cats with dogs. I don't know - doesn't sound right. But such is the suggestion from the Macomb Daily. In the opinion piece, the MD says

Granholm outlined some very bold and aggressive projects she would like the state to embark on as she painted a bright future for Michigan in her recent State of the State speech.

Aunt Jenny, working harder than she's ever worked to balance the budget, announces cuts to her beloved education system. Then, shazaam! President B. Hussein Obama's stimulus plan forbid cuts to education.

If I were a distrusting kind of guy, I would say that Aunt Jenny knew she was getting this money from the feds all along so she could act like the tough-minded budget cutter. It makes her look like she's actually working, and yet her lackeys at the MEA don't suffer any consequences.

If I were not the trusting sort, of course.

Insurance rates have been a hot topic in the Detroit metro area for as long as I can remember. Not long ago was this post in the freep which had this snippet, amongst others:

Other proposals, including one that would bar insurers from making credit scores a factor in rate-setting, deserve closer study. It would seem a move toward more fairness. But without other measures, it wouldn't necessarily erase the horrible imbalance in rates being paid in cities like Detroit, where even responsible policyholders can't catch a break. (emphasis mine)

But if I took two things away from the speech, the second would be that the Gov's fancy new programs each have disaster written all over them.  Now, a day or two after delivering the critically panned performance she's back to the drawing board offering even more suggestions the people of Michigan would be better off ignoring.

Lets start, though, with the originals and head over to the Ivory Tower which investigates the woman's populist assertion that universities should freeze tuition, lest they incur her unending wrath.  Turns out, those kinds of threats really won't do much to help the relatively few Michigan students sticking around after high school.

...Beware, say national experts and Michigan university officials. Granholm's plan is certain to trigger resistance from the universities, and it's not clear how much it would really save students.

A short-term freeze, they also note, would not address long-term problems such as rising health care costs that fuel the rising cost of a degree.

"The reality is that tuition freezes are not permanent," said Sandy Baum, a senior economist with the College Board, a national group that manages standardized testing and analyzes issues related to higher education. "If tuition is frozen one year, you're going to have to make up for it two or three years later."

In other words, the woman is passing the buck.  If you sit down and think about it for a moment, it's a masterful move and makes perfect sense based on her track record.  The woman has made a career, literally, out of criticizing John Engler and moves that created the top economy in the United States for much of the 1990s.  Somehow every problem she encountered for the first six years in office were THAT man's fault, not hers.

It was always HIS administration.  HIS policies.  HIS legacy.  She was just fighting upstream and incapable of overcoming what he'd done.  Never mind the tacit admission that one Governor, Engler, was somehow powerful and able enough to create policy that altered the state of the economy for decades while another, Granholm herself, remains entirely devoid of any skill, power or ability to do so much as dent her predecessor's momentum... that's beside the point and far too nuanced for the random political observer.  It was HIS fault.  That's all that matters.

Now, with fewer than two years left before riding off into that Hollywood / Lobbyist sunset that so clearly calls to her, she's attempting to plant legislative landmines that will only be tripped after she leaves office.  Try to make things a little less ugly while she's stuck with us and then wait for the next guy to blow himself up on her hidden time bombs.  HIS fault, not hers.

Read on...

We enter a new year and a new cycle and all of a sudden records of achievement and failure (especially) are a little less important.

No.  That's not fair.  It isn't always that rotten records aren't important... sometimes they're actively embraced.  But let's start with the former.  Senator Carl Levin told the Kalamazoo Gazette that he plans on voting to approve President Obama's pick for Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, despite his record as a multiple-year tax evader.  In fact, Levin tells us, he really couldn't care less that the man who'll be helming tax policy couldn't be bothered to pay his own taxes on time.

Michigan's senior senator said he is more concerned about Geithner's close connections to Wall Street insiders than his failure to pay his income taxes...

Geithner initially failed to pay more than $35,000 in 2001 to 2004 income taxes.

See, it was an error, not an intentional tax dodge.  He just screwed up is all.  And that is supposed to be reassuring somehow.  Seriously?  The cat couldn't get his own personal taxes right for three years but he's going to adequately handle the entire nation's taxes during four of the most critical years in the history of the American economy?  

Why don't I feel any better about this?

Frankly, it's just a matter of perspective.  The best way for any of us to get over Levin's legendary partisanship may just be to remind ourselves how much worse the state of the Michigan Democratic Party is back here IN Michigan.  In DC they ignore foibles and failures of their own.  At home in Lansing they actively embrace them.

Read on...