Comments on: Monday Morning Update 11/2/09

By: Not so holy cow

Not so holy cow — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:09:25 +0000

“The Sowell stuff is more of convervative agenda piece”

Aren’t most HIT vendor executives Republicans?

By: DrM

DrM — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:27:32 +0000

The Sowell stuff is more of convervative agenda piece, masked as a neutral economic discussion, but using a specific, limited, set of economic arguments. For instance, in the first article he trots out wait times for procedures as a measure of quality, but makes no mention of the multitude of ways our healthcare system is worse in international comparisons, all of which are much more valid measures. In the 2nd section he characterizes all the additional care provided by a gov’t-run program as wasteful, and will probably lead to a drop in services and people gaming the system, but makes no mention of how lack of access kills tens of thousands per year in this country. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, he’s a very well-known conservative columnist.

Sadly, he probably has some good points to make on some items, and if he’d had a solid economic discussion without all the misinformation it could have been an interesting read. I’d be especially curious to read an economic discussion about the dynamic of decreasing payment to physicians and the resultant supply/demand impacts on physician shortages, wait times, quality care, etc., but unfortunately I’m not finding that here.

By: Lazlo Hollyfeld

Lazlo Hollyfeld — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:21:16 +0000

The “golden coffin” benefit for Hammergen is just the tip of the iceberg in the amount of insane and completely ridiculous extra compensation benefits that CEOs receive after THEY LEAVE THE COMPANY. There isn’t remotely a “capitalistic” or free market practice yet where is the moral outrage and anger from both the left and especially the right on this issue?

By: matthew holt

matthew holt — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:08:23 +0000

I can’t understand your Marxist outburst Mr H.

Surely John Hammergen’s wife, kids, grand kids, great grand kids and on have all directly helped in rocketing the McKesson share price back, high high above where it was before the mess that Hammergen came in to clean up. Therefore they must deserve the money!

(OK so the stock was 27 when he took over and its 60 now. Which is only $5 less than the day they announced the HBOC fraud and only $25 or so less than it was before the HBOC acquisition. SO I guess for $29m a year plus the golden coffin benefit the shareholders might expect a touch more….)

By: Not so holy cow

Not so holy cow — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:47:48 +0000

“British parliament member Richard Bacon gets his answer on how many people actually use NHS’s Lorenzo system in the five early adopter trusts: 174 total, with a peak concurrent user count of 19, according to NPfIT. Bacon’s cost estimate of up to a million pounds per user may not be far off.”

You must be joking. This has to be the biggest government and IT producer waste, ever. Even $500 toilet seats are cheap by comparison.

This would be material for standup comedy…except it’s not funny at all when healthcare money is wasted due to foolishness and fraud.