On Mar 28, 2004, at 13:20, Paul Double wrote:
[Winona Online Democracy]
The St. Paul Pioneer Press had, in my opinion, an excellent article by Jean E. Schauer which is linked below. I quote several points from her article.
[snip]
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/opinion/8287743.htm
Her article is right on the mark when she says “I’m still waiting to see practical suggestions for real people.” I would add so are the rest of us!
An Apple Computer for health care... What a concept!
Are their others out there who are willing to start the fire to put healthcare costs/real solutions back on the table for November elections? We need to get people, providers and employers at the same table.
I believe the tools “a web site, host server and SQL data base software” are available in Winona free” what is needed are volunteers to set it up, get it going and keep it maintained. Corporate, University and Citizen Programmers, server and data base managers are the critical first group to get it going. Jean’s revolution can start in Winona if we have willing citizens who are willing to roll up their sleeves, share their talent and create a data base to build the first area wide price list for healthcare services to enable consumer knowledge as the foundation to inform buyers and reduce costs
As Jean says “The fact is, until we “inform” consumers through their pocketbooks about the true cost of health care, we will make no headway.”
Paul Double
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
I read the source article and found it noteworthy.
However, the information even if made more readily available may go nowhere fast. I like the concept. It sounds good, however, to play devils advocate...
Getting access to a corporate 10-k or 10-q form from a public company is a simple matter of going to that company's website /investor (e.g. http://www.apple.com/investor/ ) After loading the website, usually the next step is filling out a form; others will direct you to take other actions.
All the information that would have made it obvious that something was wrong at Enron was in plain site. The entire scandal was not documented; however, the information that was made available made it clear that something was wrong, very wrong. Yet, very few persons did take advantage of the information that was available to them.
*** I did not read an Enron 10-k or a 10-q before the scandal nor have I ever read one, but CNBC showed enough snippets to prove my claim above. Further, I had no interest in looking into Enron, because I felt that something was wrong with the concept of a utility company growing at a rate that rivalled many tech companies that I owned. (Caveat Emptor)
One can put the information out there, but do people read it? The Internet has hundreds of sources of news, but I would suspect most people do not collect news from sources other than the major networks and local newspaper websites.
********************************************
David Dittmann
In 2002, less than one thousand persons, worldwide, died because of terrorism; while in India, ten thousand persons died from venomous snakes.
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