Day: August 1, 2013

Texas Governor Rules Against Grocery Retailer – Profits Deemed “Excessive”

By William Rusteberg

Texas governor Rick Perry issued an executive order this morning denying HEB’s request to raise the price of milk. HEB’s rate hike request  would have increased the grocery giant’s profit margin to a net 3%. HEB is a large Texas based grocery store chain.

In a statement released this morning, Governor Perry, who switched party affiliation from Republican to Democrat recently, noted  ”HEB’s unfair rate hike request would have hurt struggling fellow Texans who are trying to make ends meet. This has been another example of Big Grocery Store Chains taking advantage of our citizens.”

Governor Perry approved a profit margin of 1%. Texas ACORN Chapter President Sarah Palin applauded the order. “Rick Perry deserves credit for stopping greedy big business from gouging our voter base with higher cost food to be charged through the Lone Star “free food” program funded by people who actually work for a living,”

HEB spokesman, Duane “Dog” Chapman, responded “We cannot survive financially on a 1% profit margin. Next thing you know the state will do the same thing to our group health insurance plan with some sort of MLR restriction! We are considering a move to Communist China where capitalism thrives on supply and demand. We hope our customers will follow.”

Medicare For All Could Save Billions In Wasteful Spending

Americans’ health and well-being would benefit from a complete expansion of Medicare, essentially eliminating the “wasteful” private insurance industry, according to a new study from the Physicians for a National Health Program.

What’s more, expanding Medicare to cover every individual would save billions of dollars each year. Study author Gerald Friedman, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, estimated a Medicare-for-all plan could save $592 billion next year.

“Paradoxically, by expanding Medicare to everyone we’d end up saving billions of dollars annually,” Friedman wrote. “We’d be safeguarding Medicare’s fiscal integrity while enhancing the nation’s health for the long term.”

Friedman concluded if HR 676, a bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) that would establish a national single-payer system by expanding Medicare, became law, it would save $476 billion in administrative waste found within the private insurance industry.

“Nearly five decades after its enactment, here’s what we know: Medicare saves money by eliminating all the waste associated with the for-profit insurance industry,” Conyers and Public Citizen President Robert Weissman wrote in a Huffington Post blog post.

The savings would translate to “truly universal coverage, improved benefits and the elimination of premiums, co-payments and deductibles, which are major barriers to people seeking care,” Friedman said.

Plus, Conyers and Weissman added, “Americans would never have to fight with their insurance company ever again.”

To learn more: – here’s the PNHP study (.pdf) – read the Huffington Post blog post

Editor’s Note: See previous posting http://blog.riskmanagers.us/?p=8474