Health care costs out of control: Reason 1.

I plan on listing some things that cause health care costs to be out of control.

This first one is just a minor thing, but I'm sure it happens a lot; adding up to significant waste. I ordered a refill for a prescription through the mail-order pharmacy my company has contracted with. I printed off the order number. A few days later, the refill order disappeared. So I had to call them, and they resubmitted the refill. So what's the waste?

Only problem is, is that I will run out of medicine before the refill arrives. The pharmacy phone rep's solution? Call the doctor and ask for a prescription for a temporary supply! So I will

• Have to call the doctor's office, tie up the receptionist for 5 minutes
• Then the doctor has to take 10 minutes to pull the chart, and possibly call me, to ask why I need a temporary supply, assuming the receptionist didn't bother to write down why I need the prescription.
  
• Then the doctor's office staff has to fax the prescription to the local pharmacy.
  
• The local pharmacy will probably need to call the mail-order pharmacy for an override code, since I've had the mail-order refill order placed.
  
• The local pharmacy files an on-line claim
• The local pharmacy fills the prescription
• I have to drive to the pharmacy, burning fossil fuel on the way

Turn-by-turn photos - Airport Terminals?

One nice thing Google did with their driving directions lately, was to integrate their street-level images with the driving directions, so that if you aren't familiar with an intersection, you can just click on the Camera icon and see a picture of the intersection. Sweet!

Now what would be nice, if there was such a thing for airport terminals: If I arrive in Concourse C in BWI airport, and want to see how to get to baggage claim. Sure, there is a terminal map available, but there are two maps; upper and lower level. It doesn't show where the escalators are; just the elevators. What do the carosels look like? Do they have digital signs listing the flights?

I'd be grateful if someone happens to travel that way could snap some pictures!

The local WalMart Neighborhood Store (the smaller 42,000 square foot mini-grocery/walmart units) near me recently got rid of their 30 minute photo lab and replaced it with ... books and magazines! They retained the kiosks for ordering prints from digital memory sticks and Photo CDs. Getting rid of film processing and replacing it with another medium that is going to a certain death is kinda bizarre. I wonder what they'll replace the book section with when books stop selling; maybe a VHS video rental?

U.S. Government ads promoting Marriage on Facebook

Well $5 million of our U.S. taxpayer dollars are going to ads promoting marriage. I think that's a good thing–marriage, that is. I'm wondering whether that is the best advertising angle. I can just see a twenty-something web surfer saying:

Hmmm, there's an ad saying to get married, maybe I will!

The web site http://www.thetwoofus.org that is part of the campaign is really quite a good resource, including articles such as 5 Ways To Find Time For Your Spouse.

Foreclosure Follies

I heard on the radio today an interview with a couple in Arizona that was glad there was going to be government help to help them and others avoid foreclosure. They said they owed $200,000 more their house was worth! Well, there is a prime example of a house that should be foreclosed, and the bank and the people should have to pay the penalty for their excesses, not the government, and we taxpayers that honor our obligations and rein in our expenditures.

In order for that couple to have a loan so much higher than the value, let's assume they lost 40% of their home's value, and also assume they just recently bought the house with nothing down, to make the math easy. So they bought a one-half million dollar house probably. Seems like that is a lot more house than anyone would need; I'd hate to see what the monthly payments are. Surely the bank should shoulder part of the responsibility to allow consumers to take on such a horrendous debt load.

Economic Stimulus Debacle

I'm worried about this economy stimulus bill that appears ready to pass - too much spending on "this might help" projects (schools, health care, alternative fuels), and not enough on more certain items. I felt pretty comfortable with the first financial industry bailout but seems that those steps didn't help. And those banks that got the money basically told us taxpayers that they didn't have to account for how they spent the money! At least President Obama put a reasonable cap on executive pay.

I would've thought that we learned our lesson on investing huge sums of money on alternative fuels with the corn to ethanol fiasco. Scientists kept saying it wasn't economical, but the politicians wouldn't listen, and we saw food prices rise dramatically, since corn was being diverted from the food supply to ethanol production. It got so bad that some hog farmers had to start including stale twinkies and other snack food in the hog food as corn was too expensive. So why risk more billions poured down the drain? Alternative energy research is important, but not at such a huge amount.

Runaway government spending is just as responsible for the current meltdown as the financial sector's shenanigans. I keep hearing about all the different companies and lobbyists heading to Washington D.C. to get their "fair share" of the handouts.

I love the IRS

What? The agency that many Americans fear? And it is not because I expect a big refund like some do. In fact, I know the smaller your refund, the better, since you didn't loan the government (through payroll deductions that are too high) interest free.

The Internal Revenue Service does a great job, especially with the byzantine rules that congress enacts. Have you noticed if you download a 1040 tax form in PDF format, you can not only type your information into the forms, but you can save the data? Usually a person would have to have the professional version of Acrobat to save data in the form, but the IRS has appeared to license that ability for its forms.

And new this year, you can file your return electronically for free regardless of income level, if you feel comfortable not having a software program walk you through each step. It's called Free File Fillable Tax Forms. Just fill out the forms on-line, and it will do the math too. You need to look up the tax on the tax table, but it is pretty slick. The actual site is not an IRS site. I've used the old style free file sites in past years and I hated the nagging they did to try to sign me up for the "premier" version.

One tax year I had a pretty complex return, and I ended up with a $1 (one dollar!) refund. I saved the check just for fun to show off; suitable for framing. Well, the IRS noticed I didn't cash my refund check, so they increased my refund check the next year by that $1!