Archive for November 25th, 2009

Rationing? What rationing ?

November 25, 2009

TakeAway: The flap over breast cancer screening has provided a fascinating insight into life under ObamaCare.

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Excerpt from WSJ: Liberals and Mammography, Nov.24, 2009

The political left supports medical rationing even as it disavows that any such thing is happening.

No sooner had the Health and Human Services Department’s U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommended against mammography for women under 50 than Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rushed to say don’t worry.

The New York Times, ran at least four much-ado-about-nothing items even as it endorsed the reduced screening.

What’s really going on here is that the left knows its designs will require political rationing of care, but it doesn’t want the public to

Americans will simply have to accept that the price of government-run health care in the name of redistributive justice is that patients and their doctors must bow to the superior wisdom of HHS task forces.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704779704574552320222125990.html

Posted in Health Care / Medical Insurance | Leave a Comment »

Just in case you thought the housing crisis was behind us …

November 25, 2009

Just in case you thought the housing crisis was behind us … some factoids:

Underwater Mortgages

Most U.S. homeowners still have some equity, and nearly 24 million owner-occupied homes don’t have any mortgage.

But, the proportion of U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth has swelled to about 23%.

Nearly 10.7 million households had negative equity in their homes.

5.3 million U.S. households are tied to mortgages that are at least 20% higher than their home’s value.

Homeowners in Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California are more likely to be deeply under water. In Nevada, for example, nearly 30% of borrowers owe 50% or more on their mortgage than their home is worth.

More than 40% of borrowers who took out a mortgage in 2006 — when home prices peaked — are under water.

Even recent bargain hunters have been hit: 11% of borrowers who took out mortgages in 2009 already owe more than their home’s value.

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Mortgage Delinquencies

About 7.5 million households were 30 days or more behind on their mortgage payments or in foreclosure.

Mortgage troubles are not limited to the unemployed. About 588,000 borrowers defaulted on mortgages last year even though they could afford to pay — more than double the number in 2007.

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House Sales & Starts

Sales of previously occupied homes in October jumped 10.1% from September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.1 million, the highest since February 2007.

Realtors reported that home sales in October were up 24% from a year earlier.

The number of homes listed for sale nationwide was 3.57 million at the end of October, down 3.7% from a month earlier.

Jittery home builders and bad weather led to a 10.6% drop in new home starts in October.

Excerpt from WSJ: One in Four Borrowers Is Under Water, Nov. 24, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125903489722661849.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEADNewsCollection

Posted in Home Ownership, Mortgage Crisis | Leave a Comment »

Why doesn’t Pro-Choice extend to mammograms and pap smears?

November 25, 2009

I don’t get it.

Liberal Dems (think Rep. Wasserman-Schultz from Florida) assert that women have the “right” to a tax payer funded elective abortion.  

I disagree with her, but that’s not my point.

Last week, guidelines were announced (and pulled back) that would limit government reimbursements for mammograms and pap smears.

If a women has a right to choose what happens to her body when it comes to abortions, shouldn’t she have the right to choose a potentially life saving diagnostic test? 

Why should the government say yes to the former, and no or maybe to the latter?

Anybody else notice the irony ?

Posted in Health Care / Medical Insurance | Leave a Comment »

Wanna double shareholder returns? … Try "organic" growth through focused innovation.

November 25, 2009

HBR: Focus Intensely on a Few Great Innovation Ideas, by Georg von Krogh and Sebastian Raisch, Oct 2009

The global companies that are the most successful at achieving growth through innovation (as opposed to acquisitions) tend to devote their energies to a small number of breakthrough ideas. They select the initiatives with the greatest market potential and marshal their resources to develop them.

The organic-growth champions do more than focus on breakthrough ideas. They also put innovation at the top of the agenda, work across functional and divisional boundaries, and empower employees with an entrepreneurial mind-set.

Obviously, pursuing dozens of innovations is less expensive than developing thousands. But it also requires an intense focus on picking winners and commercializing them.

In a study of organic-growth champions— including GE, BMW, Nestlé, and Samsung— researchers at the Center for Organizational Excellence in Switzerland found that the firms’ shareholder returns were almost double those of the other Global 500 companies (which had lower rates of organic growth).

Procter & Gamble focuses its R&D on just eight to 10 core technologies, and Nestlé  … allocates large budgets to the 10 most promising innovations.

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Posted in Corporate Strategy, Innovation - Creativity, Mktg - Product & Innovation | Leave a Comment »