So on August 1, Doba is switching from Blue Cross (who we’ve been with since starting the company in 2002) to IHC. Blue Cross wanted to raise our plan costs up 17%. It’s been about that much each year since we started. By switching to IHC, we get some better covereage in Utah County with hospitals for the majority of our employees, and we only increase our rates from last year 7%.

Do you know of any other part of business where your costs can consistently go up by double-digit rates year over year? It’s actually pretty crazy.

Fresh off of our insurance meeting with IHC and our broker this past Tuesday I came across this article today: U.S. still flunks health care test, report finds

The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation, created a 100-point scorecard using 37 indicators such as health outcomes, quality, access and efficiency. We scored dead last out of 19 industrialized nations. Dead last. If this were the olympics it’d be like we won no medals. There’d be a national outrage. But it’s only heathcare, something that affects every man/woman/child in this country. So most of us will only hear politicians talking about garbage and doing nothing.

We spend more on health care than any of these countries. 7.5% of our total costs in the health care system are administrative costs. Places like Finland spend 1.9% on administration. Yet they beat us badly on over 37 indicators. Think having a baby in the U.S. is a good idea? We have 7 infant deaths out of 1000 compared to 2.8 in Japan and 3.1 in Sweden. Yet again, we spend more on health care proportionate to our population than all these countries.

Hum, we spend more and are dead last in the rankings. Sounds like to me we ought to put some people in the room with a whiteboard and write down all the ways these countries provide/manage health care (all 18 of them that beat us) and ‘borrow’ some ideas from them. Shoot, just plain lift their systems and make the switch.

This is government and buracrecy AND private enterprise all gone wrong and awry and failing the American public.

We’re dead last and Doba and our employees pay 17% more each year. Ridiculous.

Am I the only one that is sitting here wondering if our elected officials don’t have larger problems to worry about?

Clemens, McNamee get grilled by Congress

Sen. Specter to expand ‘Spygate’ investigation

You’ve got to be kidding me. Steroids in baseball and spying on plays called in the NFL need politicians to worry about? More important than wars and possible bankruptcy of the country and immigration and about 10,000 other issues?

Sorry for the crassness , but good holy flying f***, you have got to be kidding me.

I’m at a complete loss. I literally cannot comprehend this. I’m one of the smartest guys I know, and I’m sitting here at the end of this week looking at my monitor typing this post, and I cannot comprehend this. It is incomprehensible. It’s asdiculous (asinine and ridiculous all in one). It’s ludicrous. It makes no sense. Really. No sense at all. No way I can think it through to find out why this is an issue worth spending government time on.

Let the organizations it affects fix it. What a giant crock. Absolute and utter waste of time. Hell, have congress go watch the grass grow. Maybe even watch the paint dry just for kicks and giggles. Those 2 things are a better use of their time if this is the kind of crap they’re going to waste time on.

I honestly wonder if any of these guys have any brain cells. Wait, they do. Their brain is hard wired to say: What can I do today so that I get some publicity and have to make no hard decisions or accomplish really any problem solving and promise the world to every single man, woman, child, and animal so that I can get reelected and continue wasting the oxygen I breathe. I guess this week that spending time on sports scandals was the answer.

You know, on a daily basis I receive affirmation that the sooner I find a way to get out of this country, the better. Anyone want to move to the Bahamas with me?

And on that lovely note, have a great weekend!

I listen to this guy and I just get pissed off. Why isn’t this THE ONLY thing the current candidates are talking about? Why doesn’t Congress address this issue until there is a clear solution in place? Every American needs to listen to David Walker and realized our sense of entitlement is way off base, we need to realign our expectations of what our government can and should provide for us, and then we should all march on Washington until our dillweed Politicians pull their heads out and figure something out.

I sort of like his idea of putting them all in jail.

Thanks to Josh for pointing this out.

I’ve tried to not talk much about politics on my blog. Politics are polarizing. And in my role as CEO of Doba, I’ve tried to stick to ’safer’ topics because I know that many Doba customers read what I write.

But I’m going to change that. There are serious problems in America, and when I come across something that needs to be looked at, needs to be considered, needs to be understood by all of us, I’ll put it up here. I’m not going to say that I necessarily will try to propose solutions to these problems. I consider myself a pretty smart guy and I know my entrepreneurial mind is pretty good at finding ideas to solve problems. But at a minimum, I’m going to do my small part to help increase the visibility and exposure to legitimate major problems that are facing our country. Legitimate major problems that we need courageous leaders and visionaries to solve. Legitimate major problems that for damn sure we don’t need poser politicians to solve. Poser politicians that are unwilling to act–unwilling make the tough calls and decisions–towards solving these problems.

Anyway, my good friend Chris Knudsen posted some things that I’m going to re-post here. I hope others take them and post them wherever they can. Americans need to wake up and understand that our so-called leadership in this country are going to ruin this great experiment that is America.

David Walker is the Comptroller General of the United States. The Comptroller General of the United States is the director of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a legislative branch agency founded by Congress in 1921 to ensure the accountability of the federal government.

This guy knows what he’s talking about. Anyway, you NEED to go read this article from CBS News: U.S. Heading For Financial Trouble? (watch the embedded video on the right as well) And then you need to go read this article from Financial Times: Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned. And then you nned to watch these videos:

And then you might ask: so what should I do about it? I have to believe in the system we have, it’s the only one we’ve got. So our system of government is based on the fact that we all have the right as citizens to find the leaders who will address these problems. Let’s find the leaders. Let’s demand action from them. Let’s let them know that we will be OK with them if they make tough choices that aren’t in their short-term interests as a poser politician but are in the long-term interests of America.

More to come…

I’m the first to admit that I hold no affinity towards politicians. I get frustrated by what I see as the government’s inability to get things done. To solve problems. To make the lives of the governed better.

Anyway, I think I maybe be suffering from overexposure of politicians. A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a Governor’s Roundtable with Governor Huntsman that was facilitated by the Utah Technology Council (UTC). This past Monday, I attended the UTC’s Public Policy Committee meeting in Salt Lake. Several members of Utah’s Legislature were in attendance, including Senate President John Valentine, Senate Majority Leader Curtis Bramble, House Majority Leader David Clark, Representative John Dougall, and Representative Bradley Daw.

The purpose of this meeting was to discussion legislation impacting the technology industry from this past legislative session and to also look ahead.

Some interesting tidbits from my notes on Monday’s meeting:

• The Legislature looked at 800 bills and enacted 400 of them this past legislative session.
• They approved a $12 Billion dollar state budget.
• They cut Utah’s top tax rate from 6.98 to 5 percent. That will save Utah citizens $100 million and was the centerpiece of nearly $220 million in tax cuts.
• Utah’s #1 challenge is to provide education that enables knowledge that supports a livable wage environment for its citizens.
• House Majority Leader Clark referenced an MIT report he came across that found the following: Starting at the time of Christ’s birth, it took 1500 years for all of mankind’s knowledge to double. Doubled again by the year 1800. Again by 1900. Again by 1950. Again by 1975. It’s now doubling every 18 months.
• Excluding Alaska and Hawaii (I guess their numbers are always excluded since they are always weird outliers), there has never been a lower 5 month unemployment rate in the 48 states (as in the entire history of America), than Utah experienced in the past 5 months.

All in all is was a GREAT discussion, and I came away (just as I did with Governor Huntsman) thinking: these guys are really delivering solutions to problems here in Utah, and they work very hard to do so.

Now maybe we can get all politicians (including our friends in Washington) to make the progress that my ‘overexposure’ in the past 3 weeks to Utah politicians has shown me we’re making in Utah.