Cost of HealthCare in the United States... Why does healthcare cost so much compared to the rest of the world?

Getting healthcare in the US is expensive.  It is expensive if you have insurance, I continue to see my co-pay's go up and my coverage go down.  My out of pocket expenses continue to go up as well as the number of items that are now non-covered or only partially covered by insurance continues to increase.

How do we get out of this healthcare dilemma?  How can I make my own costs go down?  In my opinion, the only way that we are going to be able to start making healthcare costs go down is to have the ability to easily find out what a medical procedure will cost from nearby hospitals and clinics before making the decision to have a procedure performed. 

We (by we I mean the entire US healthcare system) need to make finding and comparing healthcare costs easier to perform for average US citizens.  This one action would drive some of the costs for healthcare down. 

The following are realities of our current healthcare:

• Each healthcare insurance company negotiates rates independently of each other.
• Usually the reimbursement rate for private insurance is a bit less than what medicare\medicaid pay
• The costs to a person without healthcare coverage is much more expensive then the same procedure performed on a person with healthcare coverage.
• Costs for a procedure at one facility vs costs for the same procedure at another facility vary widely.

I found the following useful websites in my attempt to a solution to compare healthcare costs Minnesota.  

Minnesota HealthScores has a decent attempt at comparing costs:  http://www.mnhealthscores.org/index.php?p=cost_landing&category=all&sf=group

HealthCare BlueBook has a decent approach to this as well:  http://www.healthcarebluebook.com/page_Default.aspx

I have not seen the issue of comparing costs come up at either major political party.  I wonder if any one else has?

Lance

Laptop destruction stories

A photo from an Intel tweet landed on my twitter page this morning. Laptop

This photo brought to mind some of the best stories I have heard from people about how their computer was destroyed. 

These are in no particular order: (almost all of them have something to due with travel)

1. "The TSA agent dropped it when testing it for bomb residue."  This is a real thing that happens often...
2. "The child sitting next to me on the airplane spilled his Coke on it."  The laptop booted up one time, all data was lost... (no backup either).
3. "The airline attendant spilled orange juice on the me and the laptop."  I have seen something similar while on a flight, the laptop data was recovered. 
4. "I forgot that my briefcase was on the roof."  the laptop screen was shattered, it was cheaper to replace the laptop then fix the screen.  No data loss. 
5. "I took my laptop bag out of the trunk, then got into the car to move it, and backed over it (laptop bag)."  Surprisingly the laptop actually booted up, the screen was shattered and the chassis was bent.  The hardware manufacturer didn't cover the damage and a replacement laptop was issued.  
6. "I stopped at Como Park (a free park and zoo in St. Paul, MN) put my laptop in the trunk of the car.  When I came back someone had used sheet metal cutters to open the trunk and steal the laptop"  - Laptop gone, data gone...
7. My favorite, since this was a laptop that I owned...  "My son watched a movie at a hotel and put the laptop on the bed with all venting blocked off by a blanket, it eventually overheated turned off and never turned on again."  I didn't have a backup, but didn't have too much data on it that I didn't have elsewhere.  

Not a single person had their data backed up.  I can fix and replace a lot, but I cannot retrieve lost or stolen data.  The best way to insure yourself against this kind of destruction is to have the data backed up in the cloud.  It just so happens that the company I now work for has a great cloud backup solution for SOHO, small business and medium size businesses.  Check them out here  

Lance