Cavalcade of Risk; WC and hospital profits; poultry industry expose

July 2nd, 2008 by Julie Ferguson

It’s Cavalcade of Risk day, and Louise Norris has an Independence day edition posted at Colorado Health Insurance Insider. Louise and her husband Jay have an interesting story about how they came to the field of health insurance: literally, through the school of hard knocks after intersecting with the health care industry through personal experience, a series of sports-related injuries. Today, as a locally-owned Colorado brokerage, they are respected health insurance consultants. One nice thing about the web is how an informative site such as theirs can serve as a great equalizer for smaller entrepreneurial firms – if you live in Colorado, they sound like great people to do business with.
Meanwhile, check out today’s edition. There’s a lot of good reading material linked – be sure to catch Nancy Germond’s entry on writing a workplace incident report and Joe Paduda’s entry on the horrors of universal coverage. And while over at Joe’s place, also see his post on workers comp – the hospital profit engine – it’s a real eye opener. Here’s a teaser: “The entire US hospital industry generated profits of roughly $25 billion, workers’ compensation – which you will remember represents only about 1.5% of total hospital revenues – accounts for approximately 16 percent of all the profits for US hospitals.” He follows this post with another on DRGs, Medicare, hospitals, and workers comp, where he delves into further explanation for the costs. If you work in workers comp or managed care, these are must-read posts.
Bill Moyers on the poultry industry and worker safety – We’ve blogged several times about the appalling state of safety in the poultry and meat packing industries. This year, there has been a concerted focus on the poultry industry, largely thanks to the excellent investigative journalism in the Charlotte Observer’s The Cruelest Cuts, a six-part multimedia series – well worth exploration if you missed it first time around. Now, Bill Moyers has picked up the ball, covering the topic in a 22 minute investigative report of the poultry industry (video clip), which shows how official statistics showing a drop in workplace injuries may have been the result of deceptive reporting. See much more information on poultry worker safety at Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS.

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