Good News!

“Missouri ranks third in the nation for new wind power generating capacity, an industry report says.

The state doubled its wind capacity in the second quarter, adding 146 megawatts for a total of 300 megawatts, according to a report released Tuesday by the American Wind Energy Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group.

Texas ranked first.

Missouri topped the list at No. 1 for the state posting the fastest growth in the second quarter, with wind power installations expanded by 90 percent.”

St. Louis Business Journal
Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 4:18pm CDT

Today on C-Span’s Washington Journal, a caller told a story of how he was forced to see numerous doctors at different hospitals in the area in where he lives, some as far as 100 miles away, to get a diagnosis. The caller then faulted health insurance companies for preventing the practice of having “diagnostic tests done under one roof.” “So in essence,” the caller noted, “the insurance companies are the ones controlling what tests you can get, when you get them, how you get them and if they’re accepted or not.”

In a remarkable moment of candor, C-Span’s guest — Republican Congressman Tim Murphy (PA) — agreed:
MURPHY: Yeah and that brings up the point here that with regard to one of our big frustrations with insurance companies is they control the market place, they control what’s done, a lot of times doctors not making the decisions here. And you recognize the frustration.

Watch here:

From ThinkProgress.org

According to this Information Week article (full text below), IT jobs are down, but the unemployment rate is much lower that the overall national rate whoch last week was said to be 9.5%. Good news and bad, I suppose.

The job picture shows IT jobs suffering along with the rest of the economy, but the hemorrhaging appears to have stopped in 2Q.

By Chris Murphy
InformationWeek
July 6, 2009 08:07 AM

The hemorrhaging of IT jobs stopped in the second quarter, as the IT sector added about 44,000 jobs amid a moribund white-collar job market, the latest government surveys show. However, the IT unemployment rate, at 5.5%, remains at its worst mark in five years.
The economy employs about 8% fewer IT professionals than one year ago, a 343,000 job decline, with just under 3.8 million employed today. The analysis is based on Bureau of Labor Statistics household surveys, in which people classify themselves into job types. The BLS recognizes eight IT job categories.

The IT unemployment rate continued to rise, reaching 5.5%, even as the sector added jobs because more people entered the IT workforce, which includes both the employed and the unemployed.

The IT workforce is just over 4 million, including 221,000 unemployed. For management and professional occupations, the unemployment rate is 4.4%. For the economy overall, unemployment rose to 9.5% last month.

IT employment had held up well for the first half of 2008 as the recession began, holding above 4 million jobs, but then starting losing jobs in the third quarter of last year before sinking 6% in the fourth quarter.

The job segments with the biggest second quarter declines compared with a year ago are the two largest IT job segments, computer scientists and system analysts (down 17% from a year ago), and software engineers (down 12%). Programmer jobs are down 5%, and IT managers down 3%.
Broadly, the employment picture suggests IT jobs are suffering along with the rest of the economy, but there doesn’t appear to be the kind of fundamental restructuring that happened in the last recession, when a number of factors including the growth of offshore outsourcing led to the U.S. losing a quarter of programmer jobs.

A public insurance plan will help heal a broken health care system
BY MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

The principles that President Obama has outlined for national health care reform are driven by a goal that I share: universal access to affordable health care. Last week, I went to Washington to speak with members of Congress about an idea that can help make that goal a reality: a public health insurance option.

Today, most Americans get their health coverage from private insurers. A public health insurance option would create a competitor to private insurers that could potentially drive down costs across the board. I support the concept of a public plan, because if it’s done right, it means introducing exactly the kind of competition our system needs.

Choice and competition are almost always in the best interests of our economy. When I started a small business 28 years ago, there were other companies that offered financial information to banks and businesses. But we found a way to do it better. That gave our customers more options, and it strengthened the marketplace of financial information.

The public option in health care – which President Obama is supporting as a central part of his proposed reforms – grows out of the same idea. If you like the coverage you have, you keep it. But if you don’t have coverage – or if you lose your coverage – you’d have another option. And virtually everyone agrees that a well-managed public option has real potential to provide – for less money – the same benefits that private insurers provide.

There are two reasons for this. First, the public option is likely to have lower administrative costs than private insurance plans. We know this based on our experience with Medicare, which spends a lower percentage of every dollar on overhead than private insurance plans do, on average. And second, if the public plan proves popular, it will be able to use its market share to negotiate lower prices for consumers. These two steps would also positively affect the rest of the health insurance market, making it more efficient, innovative and customer-oriented, which is exactly what we need.

A public option would be particularly beneficial to areas where just a few insurance companies control most of the market. This is especially true of cities. According to the American Medical Association, 94% of metropolitan areas in the United States are dominated by one company or a small group of companies. This kind of anti-competitive concentration protects private insurers from ever having to feel the urgency to provide more for less. When you don’t have to find ways to cut costs and produce a better product, you tend not to do it. The public option offers the opportunity to force the system to innovate, evolve and improve.

To create and sustain a more competitive market, it is critical that the public option operate under the same rules that private plans follow. That means it could not be unfairly subsidized by the government. Working through the details of these rules will not be easy, but it is critical that Congress not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need a reasonable solution to a fundamental problem that is hurting millions of Americans and weighing down our economy.

Creating more competition – which has produced major cost savings in other industries – makes the most sense.
Nearly everyone agrees that the status quo is not acceptable. Not only are costs crippling many family budgets, but nearly 50 million Americans do not have insurance – and yet we pay more for health care than any other nation.

If an effective public option is put forth that makes health care more affordable and accessible for New Yorkers and all Americans, I’ll do everything I can to help it become a reality.

New York Times
Thursday, July 2nd 2009, 4:00 AM