Blue Book Information

The Healthcare Blue Book is provided free to consumers. The Healthcare Blue Book price represents a fair price to pay for a service or product when the patient is paying cash at the time of treatment. It represents a payment amount that many high-quality providers accept from insurance companies as payment in full, and it is usually less than the stated “billed charges” amount.

Unfortunately, it is difficult for consumers to determine fair pricing for healthcare. Prices are not generally published and the list prices (or billed charges) are higher than providers typically charge most of their patients with insurance. The Healthcare Blue Book is a free resource that shows a fair price for healthcare products and services to consumers.

Consumers with traditional health insurance frequently need to know how much healthcare services will cost. Average deductibles are increasing and can be $1000 or higher. Coinsurance rates, which are the percentage of the bill that the consumer must pay, range from 20 to 40%. Many consumers would prefer to use the doctor of their choice, instead of the one selected as “in-network” by their insurance company, as long as they knew they wouldn’t have to pay higher prices. There are also “non-covered services” that may not be covered by insurance. As health insurance companies shift more of the cost to consumers, consumers need to be able to choose healthcare services at fair prices.

About the Company

The Healthcare Blue Book has a single mission: fair, upfront pricing in healthcare.

In America, there are 47 million people without health insurance and 4.5 million with Health Savings Accounts (HSA). For those with health insurance, their deductibles and co-payments continue to increase each year. The result is that many people are directly paying for a large part of their healthcare. Unfortunately while consumers have to pay for healthcare services, it is difficult for them to find out what healthcare costs and, more importantly, what it should cost.

The Healthcare Blue Book was established to provide consumers with the knowledge they need to get fair prices for their healthcare. We invite all consumers to become members for free and to contribute to our project. We have created a cooperative environment where consumers can help each other find quality care at fair prices. While we work with many employers, providers and healthcare groups, the Healthcare Blue Book is a private and independently owned resource.

]]> http://www.pissd.com/2010/09/featured-link-healthcare-blue-book/feed/ 1 http://www.pissd.com/2010/08/toyota-recalls-corolla-and-matrix-models-as-nhtsa-investigates-engine-stalls/ http://www.pissd.com/2010/08/toyota-recalls-corolla-and-matrix-models-as-nhtsa-investigates-engine-stalls/#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:03:09 +0000 Bob Kraft http://www.pissd.com/?p=5993 The AP reports, “Toyota recalled 1.33 million Corolla sedans and Matrix hatchbacks in the US and Canada Thursday because their engines may stall,” noting that this is one of the largest Toyota recalls since its safety crisis began last year. Meanwhile, GM “is recalling 200,000 Pontiac Vibes in North America due to the same problem, GM spokesman Alan Adler said. The Vibe is similar to the Matrix and was built under a joint venture between Toyota and GM at a now-closed factory in Fremont, Calif.” The AP adds that NHTSA “has been investigating the possibility of engine stalling in the Corolla and Matrix models since late November.”

Bloomberg News reports that NHTSA has said that the defect “could cause stalling ‘at any speed without warning.’” The recall covers model years 2005 to 2008, and follows “at least three reported accidents linked to the defect. The action adds to record recalls in the past year by Toyota City, Japan-based Toyota, including more than 8 million vehicles worldwide for flaws related to unintended acceleration.” Bloomberg notes that NHTSA “upgraded its investigation of the defect to an engineering analysis,” last week, “a step that can lead the agency to demand a recall. The regulator said cracks in engine control units could occur if improperly cured coating was applied to circuit boards.”

The New York Times notes that this is Toyota’s 15th recall this year, adding that NHTSA opened its investigation into the issue in December. “On Thursday, Toyota attributed the problem to improper manufacturing of the vehicles’ engine control modules, which allowed cracks to develop at certain solder points or in a protective coating on the circuit board. Dealers will replace the control modules, which were made by the Delphi Corporation, a process expected to take about 40 minutes for each vehicle, Toyota said.”

From the American Association for Justice news release.

(In an unrelated note, I read that in Afghanistan, 90% of all automobiles are Toyota Corollas! There is a long explanation having to do with a reluctance to be seen in U.S. or European vehicles, and with the endurance of Corollas. Whatever the reason, that’s an astonishingly high percentage for one model from one manufacturer.)

The Dallas Morning News reports on “Federal Pacific Stab-Lok, a type of circuit breaker in thousands of North Texas homes that is now widely thought by engineers, electricians and house inspectors to be defective – and dangerous.” Concerns began to surface about the circuit breakers thirty years ago, but “after testing the devices for about two years, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said the government lacked sufficient data to warrant a recall.” More recently, however, “engineers studying them independently have found that the circuit breakers can overload and cause fires.” According to one expert, there may be as many as “20 million homes nationwide” that still use the Stab-Lok circuit breaker. “If your house was built during the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s, it probably has one of these breakers. About 90 percent of houses we see from that time have them,” said one inspector.

However, the AP reports that the FDA said the drug “effectively treated pain from fibromyalgia in two company-run studies,” though “regulators have concerns about the misuse and abuse of the drug, which has been used as an illegal stimulant and a date rape drug.” FDA reviewers also “cautioned that an approval for fibromyalgia would greatly expand the drug’s patient population, making it harder to control.”

Bloomberg News adds that according to a Jazz-sponsored study published last year in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, “Ten cases of abuse occurred among the 26,000 narcolepsy patients worldwide who received Xyrem from 2002 to 2008,” and the drug “also was linked to one death and two cases of sexual assault.” Reuters and NPR also cover the story.

From the American Association for Justice news release.

ABC World News (8/10, story 8, 0:20, Stephanopoulos) reported, “Some rare good news for Toyota tonight. Safety experts at the Transportation Department say that so far they have not found any new defects with the electronic systems and no problems beyond the floor mats and sticky accelerator pedals.” The CBS Evening News (8/10, story 8, :30, Couric) reported, “A preliminary Federal report out today suggests that in many cases drivers, not the cars, are to blame. The drivers may have hit the accelerator instead of the brake.”

USA Today (8/11, Woodyard, O’Donnell) reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said “the only causes of ‘unintended acceleration’ continue to be those already identified – sticky gas pedals or floor mats that can become trapped under accelerators.” This is “significant because Toyota critics have alleged that electronics might be at fault in cases of unexplained acceleration,” and “Toyota seized on the report as further proof of what it has contended all along – that engine electronics are not to blame for runaway cars.” In fact, of the 58 data recorders investigators examined, in 35 cases drivers had not braked at all .

The Washington Post /AP (8/11, Thomas) reports, “Olivia Alair, a Transportation Department spokeswoman, said the review of the black boxes was ‘one small part’ of the investigation, which is expected to be completed later in the fall.” She added “that experts with NASA and NHTSA were ‘conducting research at labs across the United States to determine whether there are potential electronic or software defects in Toyotas that can cause unintended acceleration.’” Meanwhile, “Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and NHTSA Administrator David L. Strickland briefed members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the findings of the government review.”

The Los Angeles Times (8/11, Bensinger) reports that LaHood and Strickland “told three members of Congress in the briefing that the agencies had drawn ‘no conclusion’ on the causes of sudden acceleration and noted that investigations by NHTSA, NASA, and the National Academy of Sciences were ongoing, with final results a year or more away.” Additionally, “the reliability of black box data has been questioned by automotive experts and even Toyota itself, and the officials were careful to point out that it is only a piece of the puzzle when it comes to analyzing sudden acceleration.”

In a front-page article, the New York Times (8/11, A1, Bunkley) reports that investigators studied data recorders from just 58 vehicles. Also, Sean Kane, a Massachusetts safety consultant working on behalf of plaintiffs in lawsuits against the carmaker, “said many of the reported crashes happened at low speeds, often in parking lots, and would not activate the data recorders.”

From the American Association for Justice press release.

This recall by Honda is troubling, because most auto makers use a similar system for ignition interlocks, and the concern is that other manufacturers might have similar problems.

We Americans do love our dietary supplements,” says the watchdog publication Consumer Reports in its latest issue. And indeed we do: The craving for pills, potions and powders as a quick fix for myriad concerns about health and well-being has created a $27 billion industry. That’s roughly as much as the nation spends each year on shoes.

And, as Consumer Reports points out, while many users believe that sale of unsafe or ineffective supplements must be illegal, it is not. The public has little protection from useless, fraudulent, dangerous or even deadly products, thanks to special protection Congress gave the industry in 1994.

Want to ease your aches and pains? Lose weight? Improve your prowess on the athletic field or in the bedroom? The supplements industry has something for you, even if it has never been subjected to any credible scientific testing, even if tests that have been conducted show it to be useless, even if it has ingredients that might come from tainted sources or uninspected factories in China, even if it’s touted as “natural” but in fact includes undisclosed chemical ingredients, including some that have been banned by law because they are dangerous and others that could mix badly with other medications you’re taking.

The Consumer Reports analysis spotlights a list of 12 widely used supplement ingredients linked to serious health risks, including cardiovascular, liver and kidney problems

Little of this is new. Congress’ Government Accountability Office and studies ordered by congressional committees and various private organizations have shown repeatedly that ingesting supplements can be a game of chance. Though in some cases, a supplement could help, in others its only visible impact will be on your wallet, and in a few instances it might have dire consequences.

Spokesmen for the self-described “responsible” part of the industry claim that the limited powers given the Food and Drug Administration are adequate to protect the public. But the record says otherwise. It’s so hard for FDA to ban a product that only one such case has ever succeeded. That effort, involving ephedrine alkaloids, dragged on for years while weight-loss products that included ephedra were implicated in thousands of illnesses and some deaths.

Unfortunately, in the present anti-government climate, there’s little stomach in Congress for improving consumer protection. Thus Consumer Reports advises the public to be skeptical of claims made for supplements in ads, on TV and by pill-store sales staff. But people will always yearn for a magic elixer, which is why supplements, like drugs, shouldn’t be allowed on store shelves till they’ve been proven safe and effective.

Until three years ago, Kenneth Maxwell enjoyed Banquet chicken and turkey pot pies so much he ate them three or four times a week. They were easy to prepare, and Maxwell could eat one for lunch and quickly return to work as an electrician.

When cases of salmonella poisoning led the pies’ manufacturer, ConAgra Foods, to issue a product recall in the fall of 2007, Maxwell did not hear about it and continued to eat them. He bought several pot pies about two weeks after the recall was launched, when they should have been pulled from store shelves, and became violently ill, he said.

Maxwell’s experience reflects common problems with food recalls: They routinely fail to recover all of the product they seek and, according to experts, sometimes even leave tainted foods in stores, putting consumers at risk of becoming ill from potentially deadly food-borne pathogens.

In 2009, for instance, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture was involved in 59 recalls in which the amount of food sought and recovered was known, 56 came up short of the amount they identified as potentially tainted or produced at a time when factory controls were lax.

Two of those efforts highlight how far short recalls can fall. Last July a Denver processor announced a recall of more than 460,000 pounds of ground beef tied to a salmonella outbreak but recovered only 119,000 pounds. In October a New York processor announced a recall of 545,000 pounds of ground beef tied to an outbreak of E. coli; it recovered 795 pounds, according to the USDA.

Because recalls are described as voluntary, some experts say the owners of supermarkets, especially smaller stores, can mistakenly believe it is acceptable to leave recalled products on the shelves.

And while the federal government publishes notices about recalls, it depends on the news media, manufacturers and retailers to spread the news. Many consumers are unaware a product has been recalled.

The USDA, researchers and food safety advocates say the urgency and the reach of recalls must be improved if recalls are to be more effective and the number of Americans sickened by food-borne pathogens is to decline.

An important step in evaluating whether an attorney is right for you is investigating whether he or she has ever been disciplined.

All states have a disciplinary organization that closely monitors attorneys. If a complaint is made against an attorney, the state’s organization will investigate the claim and determine whether or not the attorney has violated any ethical rules. If so, the organization will discipline the attorney as appropriate.

Attorneys can be disciplined for various reasons – from failing to pay their bar dues to misappropriating client funds to gross ethical violations. Some attorneys who have been disciplined are no longer eligible to practice law. You should never hire an attorney who is not currently eligible to practice law.

It is to your benefit to thoroughly research an attorney’s disciplinary history. You should take into account any previous discipline taken and the circumstances surrounding the discipline.

The following state links will help you learn whether an attorney is currently eligible to practice law or has been disciplined in the past. If you need additional information regarding an attorney, follow up with the appropriate disciplinary committee.