Text 18071, 106 rader
Skriven 2014-10-13 19:26:00 av NANCY BACKUS (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av MICHAEL LOO
Ärende: Re: health biz 91
=========================
-=> Quoting Michael Loo to Nancy Backus on 10-09-14  14:54 <=-

 NB>> I knew the first two were in auto, home and life insurance, are they
 NB>> in health as well, now...?! 
 ML> Liberty Mutual always has had a big health business, possibly
 ML> in part through partners and subsidiaries; last I checked the
 ML> policies were in that name. Travelers does or did under its
 ML> St. Paul division and perhaps other entities.

Ah... just wasn't aware of those, I guess...  
 
 ML>> Re, and when your doctor screws up s/he is covered by BH
 ML>> Specialty.
 NB>> And you'd never even guess, seeing as they all have different names...
 NB>> what lizards...  ;0
 ML> The whole business of insurance is to get the best possible
 ML> return for the least possible exposure, which means hiding
 ML> behind every rock in the desert, especially the luxurious
 ML> ones put up by the legislatures.

Sad, ain't it...
 
 ML>> That sounds like a utopian view such as a child of the
 ML>> '60s or '70s might espouse.
 NB>> Hah.  Of course, the hospital administrators now are mostly children
 NB>> of the '60s and '70s...
 ML> True, but hospital administrators are a lizard of a different
 ML> feather.

I suppose.

 NB>> and watching the hospitals in our region.  There's lots of
 NB>> competition, true, but also a lot of cooperation/interaction.
 NB>> And, of course, mergers....
 ML> Out here, even the mergers are troublesome. When I had my
 ML> latest heart procedure, the surgeon gleefully opined that
 ML> the reason it was necessary was because the previous one
 ML> had been botched - by another world-famous hospital owned
 ML> by the same group. 

I wouldn't say there was none of that here, but it seems to be more
doctor to doctor, and sometimes justifiably...  But personally, I seem
to have collected doctors that appreciate each other... even when they
end up being in what end up, at least for a while, competing hospital
systems... at least until the next merger, perhaps... ;)  I could tell
stories of how things evolved...  ;)

 NB>> Every time there's been any sort of issue, whether
 NB>> doctor or insurance or store caused, they've gone over backwards
 NB>> to get it resolved, and my usual reaction is, I DO love working
 NB>> with Wegmans. Regularly good service, too, and some clerks that
 NB>> know you by name,
 ML> It's the airline clerks who know me by name, not the
 ML> drugstore personnel!

Well, you may fly more than I use the pharmacy... ;)  Although, for a
while there, I was picking up stuff for MJ weekly, as well as for Gwen,
a couple of times a month, and for myself once a month generally... But,
part of the point was that they seem to pay attention to the people they
serve... :)
 
 ML>> Turns out the competitor is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the
 ML>> manufacturer. But the specter of Ranbaxy is looking over the
 ML>> chummy shoulders of those two; we'll see how that plays out.
 NB>> Could be interesting..  ;)
 ML> More than ever, as Ranbaxy is being eaten up by Sun Pharma,
 ML> and Par Pharma (also with Indian and New Jersey facilities)
 ML> taking up some of the slack. Wait, there's more! The research
 ML> that was used to justify a patent on Exforge, a combination
 ML> of my medicine and amlodipine has been debunked, and I guess
 ML> I might have mentioned that Novartis is pushing yet another
 ML> cocktail with sacubitril with suspiciously similar research.

Continuingly interesting...  :)   Some of the alternatives to my
Prilosec have been interesting combos that didn't work at all for me,
in fact most have been worse... I've wondered sometimes about what
that research had been about.... ;)

 ML> And now Novartis has announced that layoffs at the plant that
 ML> produces both Diovan and the generic version I buy will start
 ML> on December 1, with the plant to close altogether around the
 ML> end of 2016.

That doesn't sound like a particularly good development... I suppose
they could manufacture them elsewhere...

 ML>> Quick Harvard Beets
 ML>> cat: vegetable, Communist
 NB>> And what made those communist...?  Being red...?  ;)
 ML> Joe McCarthy's "Kremlin on the Charles" remains the
 ML> most distinctive (if not particularly accurate) of
 ML> the monickers given that institution. That and the
 ML> school color, sports teams, and newspaper being
 ML> Crimson, of course.

True.  Hadn't actually connected the Harvard crimson with the redness of
the beets, but it does make a certain sense now... :)  Allus wondered
'bout them, why called Harvard...  ;)

ttyl               neb

... Humor is an acronym for "HUman Management Of Reality"

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