The Rake Magazine

It's not any surprise to those who've followed the sordid history of UnitedHealth Group to see that the company is being sued by the Attorney General of New York for manipulating the reimbursement rates for their insured who go outside of the network for their care.

It seems United reimburses its customers based on a formula which calculates the "customary" charges for services in the New York area. Of course, the "customary" charges are calculated by a third party. In this case a company called Ingenix, which happens to be owned by UnitedHealth.

An investigation by the state showed that a "customary" charge for a doctor visit in New York City was $200. Ingenix said it was $77. I don't know if any of you have been to the doctor lately, but the charge in Minneapolis passed $77 quite some time ago. I'm fairly certain that I read somewhere that New York is more expensive to live in than Minneapolis.

As NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said, “We believe there was an industrywide scheme perpetuated by some of the nation’s largest health insurers to deceive and defraud consumers.”

Ya think?

Here's the headline from yesterday's Strib: "Girl, 6, is grazed by bullet, leaving community hurt, too."

It's tempting just to let that stand as one more blob in the insipid lump of goo that is the Star Tribune. OK, I will, but with just one comment: Doesn't every bullet that hits a six-year-old hurt our community?

I wish I had such an overstaffed news room that I could send a reporter out to the scene of a shooting to ask everyone who lives near the incident what they think of a little girl getting shot. What do they expect people to say? "Hey, no big deal. People get shot here all the time. What really makes me mad is the Twins letting Johan Santana get away."

Actually, there was one detail of the Strib story that's kind of funny. The assailant's gun went off because his pants were so loose that the gun slipped down his pants leg and discharged when it hit the floor. How much funnier would the headline have been if the gun had hit with the muzzle pointed straight up?

"Man, 20 or so, grazed by bullet, leaving future generations hurt, too."

I hope you all noticed the bold initiative of the Star Tribune, as expressed on their editorial page on Sunday. Yup, they put their heads together, snorted and wheezed with the Herculean effort, pressed hard on their temples to concentrate the intellect, and made their endorsement regarding tomorrow's "Super Tuesday" nationwide primaries and caucuses.

And you thought they were too timid to actually make an endorsement without doing a focus group first of what they could get away with without offending their ever shrinking base of readers and advertisers.

Well, the joke's on you. The Strib editorial board ain't afraid of nobody or no thing. Not nobody. Not nohow.

And just to prove that, they threw caution to the wind, damned the torpedoes, hurled themselves once more into the breach and endorsed...voting.

As they put it, "Super Tuesday, Too important to miss." If that weren't endorsement enough, they even said,"It could be a transformative moment in American politics."

That's some bold talkin' there.

So whatever you do, don't miss Super Tuesday. It's too important AND it could be transformative.

And speaking of "Super", how 'bout them Giants? They made the top of the Strib's front page today, right above the coverage of the candidates.