Risk Pools and Healthcare Reform
The fundamental challenge the health insurance, or any insurance business for that matter, faces is how to blend risk pools so that the customers who consume few services pay for those who consume many services.
In other words, my premiums will go down because healthy young people who currently get by without insurance will [...]
IT Expansion in China
Last week I wrote a post that covered many of the observation I made on my recent trip to mainland China. Given my background in IT, a natural area of interest for me was the build out of IT in China businesses that are not directly aligned with U.S. or European counterparts… in other words, [...]
The Business Climate in China
I just spent a week and a half in southern China visiting a range of manufacturing facilities and meeting with senior executives, and the learnings were significant, some of which I want to share with you today. This is the kind of information that is really challenging to get from analysts and journalists simply because [...]
PA School Webcam Lawsuit
The Pennsylvania case shows how even well-intentioned plans can go awry if officials fail to understand the technology and its potential consequences, privacy experts said. Compromising images from inside a student’s bedroom could fall into the hands of rogue school staff or otherwise be spread across the Internet, they said.[From Pa. school official [...]
People Putting an Extra 50k Miles Or More On Their Cars
Read this an it immediately resonated with me.
According to a study by Auto MD, which is owned by the US Auto Parts Network, Inc. (i.e. people who have a vested interest in making parts for used cars) 77% of people are, on average, planning on driving their current cars at least 50,000 miles [...]
Links
- UK newspapers lash out against the BBC iPhone app, saying it undermines the commercial sector. I totally agree, when will people accept that a taxpayer financed entity providing a service that competes with the private sector is unfair? It’s be like the U.S. government, which owns GM, launching a series of safety investigations against [...]
Air Refueling
this is a pretty cool video, air refueling an F-18 over Iraq:
Wind Power Does Not Equal Job Power
“Most of the jobs are going overseas,” said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He analyzed which foreign firms had accepted the most stimulus money. “According to our estimates, about 6,000 jobs have been created overseas, and maybe a couple hundred have been created in the U.S.”[From Wind Power Does Not Equal [...]
Irrational Populism
I’ve been reading about some of the troubles that the Las Vegas hospitality industry is going through (as well as getting a lot of promo email for $40 a night suites at Mandalay Bay) and it again reminds me that populist uproar is neither rational nor constructive.
Luxury hotels have also suffered from the [...]
Buyers Remorse
In 2008 the sight of a Toyota Prius sporting an Obama hopey changey bumper sticker rose to the level of being a cliche and the Prius itself became a social statement, outselling other hybrids based on existing gasoline powered models. Well the former hasn’t exactly turned out like everyone thought and now Toyota is launching [...]



