The Institute of Medicine (IOM) will be making recommendations to HHS on the definition of required essential benefits for the health plans that are to be offered through the state insurance exchanges. Several experts testifying before IOM’s Committee have called for flexibility in the definition (testimonies provided at IOM link above).

So many noted policy experts have trumpeted the supposed fact that the health reform law contains essentially all of the cost containment ideas known that now this concept is being accepted unchallenged. This ignores the fact that the most effective model of cost containment was rejected at the very beginning of the reform process.

“Health care bills are going to bankrupt the government.” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is but the latest of conservative politicians to sound this alarm. You would think that they would recommend truly effective policies to bring escalating health care costs under control. But no. They merely wish to shift health care costs from the government, in this case, to their own public employees.

Austin Frakt’s voice is now added to those of Jonathan Gruber , Henry Aaron and others who claim that every cost control measure is in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Yet they left out the most effective measure of all – single payer – the one that wasn’t even granted a seat at the table.

California’s budget crisis is a disaster. The draconian budget cuts will especially impact the state’s health and human services programs, including Medi-Cal and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The good news is that California’s health professional students are not going to put up with it. They showed up by the hundreds to demand the enactment of a single payer system.

Above are yet two more examples of a common theme. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and liberal Berkeley Professor Robert Reich both imply that the opposition to the government mandate to purchase expensive private health plans may drive us to a much more logical and effective solution for financing health care: single payer (public insurance financed by taxes).

Instead of contemplating a health care Quote of the Day today, let’s take a moment to consider what each of us might do to harness the energy behind the forces that would destroy social solidarity, and bring us all together in efforts to heal our social problems such as our sick health care system that leaves so many suffering and dying.

Last year California’s for-profit Anthem Blue Cross, a division of WellPoint, enraged everyone when they attempted to raise premiums as much as 39 percent. In contrast, Blue Shield of California is a non-profit insurer attempting to compete in a market in which the rules are established by investor-owned insurers, yet they are now calling for premium increases as high as 59 percent. As a provider or a patient, it is difficult to tell the California Blues apart.

Although the title of this article and the news reports stemming from it tout the fact that this is the slowest increase in health care spending in five decades, the 4.0 percent increase is well in excess of inflation and remarkably high considering that it occurred during the Great Recession.

We hear much about the private health insurance industry from Health and Human Services (HHS) and from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the private insurers themselves. This report is of interest because it provides a perspective on for-profit health insurers from a consulting firm for investors.