Here's a challenge for Karin Weldin Stewart: MedExpress is Highmark, and that's a problem for both Delaware consumers and business people

See? MedExpress even has a guy
in a Blue Hen costume to go along
with bazillions in advertising.

So by now you have seen or heard all the advertisements for MedExpress, the "neighborly place" to get urgent medical care.

And as I have said elsewhere about them,

Whenever you hear a corporation (banks also come to mind here) talking about being a good neighbor, you know you need to hold onto your wallet.

But that's not specifically germane to the question of why our Insurance Commissioner should be interested in them.

What's germane is that MedExpress is a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield Highmark, the good folks who just bought out the BCBS franchise for Delaware. So for many of us, if we go to a MedExpress, no matter how friendly and how neighborly they may appear to be, we are really going to a subsidiary of our own insurance company for treatment.

This has some interesting implications, not just for patients, but also for other (some locally owned) urgent care centers around the state.

You see, among other things, according to what local physicians have told me, Highmark compensates other urgent care facilities seeing their patients at $120/visit, but gives preferential reimbursement to their own facilities at $150/visit.

Moreover, MedExpress seems to be strangely immune to some of the technical legal niceties regarding whether or not you can own the lab attached to your own urgent care facility, and similar arrangements.

To the owners of other urgent care facilities (which includes Christiana Care, owning four in the area), MedExpress has made no bones about the fact that these clinics are coming into Delaware to do "Wal-Mart" on them--to use their incestuous corporate edge to drive their own prices down (temporarily) and drive everybody else out of business.

Of course, you can make your own estimate of where prices will thereafter go.

I wonder where the insurance commissioner is when the major carrier in the state slops over into providing medical care and then gives itself preferential compensation rates?

Oh, wait. I forgot who the insurance commissioner is. Never mind.

A note to forestall certain comments: this is not a Libertarian whining for government intervention to correct the free market. There is no free market here, there is a government-regulated market. That's the only game in town. This is a Libertarian pointing out that the government regulators appearing to be failing miserably at their jobs, and--as a result (no surprise!)--are privileging large corporations over local business people and entrepreneurs.

You claim to be able to run these markets in the public interest? Then let's see you do it?

(And while you are at it, ask yourself whether the fact that Highmark/MedExpress is paying for massive advertising in the WNJ and on local radio has anything to do with why our dauntless media is not investigating this story.)

Final note: if you want to find out about a true good neighbor urgent care facility in Delaware, check out Dr. Vince Schaller's Hockessin Walk-in. Take five minutes to read about his operation and you will, frankly, drive right past the MedExpress the next time you need urgent care.

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba

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