HTX

So I'm leaving Seabrook around 1p today and go by the property they just recently put up for sale. They knocked the Beach Club and the apartment complex next to it a couple of months ago and piled all the debris up into neat little piles, well not really little. All of that stuff is on the verge of floating through Seabrook and El Lago. Who is responsible for cleaning up their mess?

From ground zero,or Seabrook, take your pick, it's been beer while taking the mast down, vodka tonic while watching TWC and checking out Jeff Masters on weather underground.

Damn, it's back to the drawing board for me.

"The insurance companies may be wonderfully efficient but the hospitals and doctor's offices who deal with these companies are forced to waste huge amounts of time and money conforming to differing requirements of HUNDREDS of different insurance carriers. It wouldn't be a bad idea for the government to step in and make all the insurance carriers and all the providers adopt a single standard. That would eliminate a lot of waste right there." To a large degree the Government has already standardized health care through the use of DRG and CPT coding. Initially designed to reign in Medicare and Medicad's soaring costs the system is now used by the entire industry to determine reimbursement for any diagnostic and or treatment. The problem is with the bewildering number of insurance companies and plans. Think HMO/PPO, in network out of network, as examples. A few years ago there was an effort to pass "any willing provider" laws. If for instance Humana had a negotiated deal to pay all of the doctors in their network $500.00 for a heart transplant or wart removal and a doctor not in the network was willing to do it for that price they would pay the claim. The insurance companies were dead set against it and used their lobby to quash it. It's that carving up of the providers by the insurance companies that create the headaches in physicians offices but simplify the paperwork for the insurance company. It's is really pretty much the same at the hospital level.

I use Pierce and St. Joe from Brazos/Smith to 45S/N all the time and I have noticed an improvement in the timing over the past couple of months. The change has been so significant that I have wondered about it. I'll vote to leave it as is.

I've wondered more about the quality, value part of the equation. Does anyone have expereince with them? PS. Lurking for a bit trying to catch up on the forums, and looking forward to getting a lot of questions answered and learning what I can about Houston Thanks for letting me join Htx