Weekend News

The New York Times

The top story, above the fold, to the right: patients' costs skyrocket; specialists' incomes soar.
the article makes three points:

• physicians have become entrepreneurs running multi-million-dollar businesses
• health insurers pay "way more" for procedures that listening and prescribing
• physicians have learned from lawyers

That last bullet. Years and years ago I opined that physicians would do better if they charged "billable hours" like the lawyers do. The insurers never played along. Physician-entrepreneurs have done one better:

The high earning in many fields relates mostly to how well they’ve managed to monetize treatment — if you freeze off 18 lesions and bill separately for surgery for each, it can be very lucrative,” said Dr. Steven Schroeder, a professor at the University of California and the chairman of the National Commission on Physician Payment Reform.

I may have missed it but it does not appear that ObamaCare or "the Affordable HealthCare Act" was mentioned anywhere in the article. There were no efforts to control costs in that trainwreck of a bill. Oh, there it is, well into the article, but The Times suggests ObamaCare will only make things worse.

The Wall Street Journal

This was linked yesterday, but it shows up today as the lead story in Saturday's edition of The WSJ: health exchanges see little progress on uninsured. It appears that most folks who signed up for ObamaCare were the ones that had their previous insurance canceled by ObamaCare. One big shell game.

EU climate targets to stop short of ambitions. Canada withdrew from the Kyoto agreement. The EU is backpedaling. And President Obama pulled miracle-worker John Podesta off "climate" to save the NSA spy network. The good news for the EU, and I cannot make this up, "the EU is on track ot meet its target of cutting CO2 emissions by 2020 -- thanks partly to an economic downturn."

Putin says gay visitors are welcome in Russia -- just "leave the children in peace."

The Los Angeles Times

My wife visited Santa Monica yesterday. She reports that it has become an incredibly beautiful area rivaling much of the other "hot spots" in Los Angeles. Santa Monica is where the famed "Route 66" (not I-10, in that area) ended, at the Pacific Ocean. One can drive that I-10 to the end, right into the ocean (almost).

If you want to read about sports and entertainment, The LA Times is the place to go. That's about all they feature. Along with wildfires due to the drought.

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This business story: does the rule for saving 10% of one's income for retirement still apply? The answer:

Depending on when you start saving for retirement, you may need to be saving 40% or more to help you get by when you stop working.

LOL.

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A pretty slow news day. And we have one more day of this long weekend. Bah! Humbug! I'm off to see the granddaughters: we have a huge day planned.