Time for some new new math
No, not to replace Common Core. We need new math to try to understand just how in the year 2012, one ophthalmologist treated 900 patients resulting in $26 million in billings to Medicare. In theory, one physician seeing four patients per hour, eight hours per day, five days per week, 50 weeks per year could bill for 8,000 treatments. Hold on to that number for a second.
Let's do something simpler. Divide 900 patients into $26 million and we get an average bill per patient of $28,888.89. Now if we divide $26 million by 8,000 potential office visit billings, it comes out to $3,250 billed per visit. It just don't add up.
Doctors are saying don't jump to conclusions. What if we add in the fact that this particular ophthalmologist was already under investigation for "questionable" billing practices? What if then add in the fact that 2% of the nation's Medicare doctors are responsible for 23% of the total Medicare billing in 2012?
The American Medical Association has been fighting against the release of this kind of data for a long time. I think I've figured out why.
* * *
By the way, apologies for the extended time between blog entries of late. I promise this is temporary and will go away after 4/15/2014.
* * *
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has announced that Bank of American is refunding $727 million to its credit card customers and will pay $45 million in fines for illegal practices. What did the bank do? It billed customers for add-on services that they hadn't authorized, or misled those customers about the benefits of those services.
These practices date back to the year 2000. For how many years did the bank have the money that belonged to these customers and the ability to earn money on those funds? What's really upsetting is that had federal regulators not uncovered these practices, BofA and the other four banks who've been fined thus far would probably still be doing that which they knew to be illegal.
This is from BofA's corporate website regarding how they run their business. "Fundamentally, our conduct is guided by our values, our code of ethics and a commitment to openness and transparency. Corporate governance is ultimately overseen by our board of directors, which is composed largely of directors who are independent of management."
Apparently there is a disconnect somewhere between those 15 people (including the COB, CEO and former COB) and the people who are really running things. Or else they say one thing and do another.
* * *
Kelly Wallace is a digital correspondent and editor-at-large for CNN. She has an interesting piece up on the network's website at the moment about the public school versus private school issue. She says she gets the "look" when people learn her daughters attend public school.
I've never been a parent. But I have seen both sides of this issue and have my own perspective. I attended both public and private schools during my years of K-12 education. I spent 17 years working at one of the finest private schools in the nation.
The nuts and bolts of the equation are easy to quantify. Private schools have better teacher to student ratios. Teachers in a public high school may have 25 to 40 (or more) students in one class. Private schools are more like 12 to 1, 16 to 1 or thereabouts. Public schools can realize some economies of scale in providing benefits to the employees. Private schools have an advantage in that they don't have to educate every student that tries to walk through their doorways. So when a private school is compared to a public school and boasts of a perfect college acceptance rate, or the achievements of their students, we must recognize these factors.
I attended a public high school. There were at least three perfect 1600 SAT scores among my fellow members of the class of 1977. Two other students scored 1590. Then again, I attended public schools prior to the gutting of the California public school system by Proposition 13.
In my view, it isn't about which type of school a student attends. It's all about who the student is. About the kind of person their parents raised them to be. Most importantly, it is all about the role the parents play in their child's education. The one consistent factor among the majority of the students in either private or public schools who do not do well is a lack of parental involvement. Rich parents and poor parents are equally able to be completely uninvolved in how their child is raised and educated. A student who was taught at home to value their education will do much better than one who wasn't.
There are two areas where students from private schools are almost always going to be ahead of the public school students. Critical thinking skills and the ability to write and re-write papers for college courses. I've heard this over and over again from the former students I stay in touch with. The better teacher/student ratios allow private school teachers to do more than inculcate their students in the "how" to do whatever they are teaching. They get to teach them to ask why.
If I'd ever fathered children, I might or might not have sent them to a private school. They would have done equally well in private or public education, because I would make sure they were ready for school long before their first day in kindergarten.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Is sending planes to search for a missing plane akin to sending one dog out to search for the other dog missing from the household? I heard that on television today and it got me to thinking.
Vance McAllister is a member of the U. S. Congress from Louisiana. He's a "family values" Republican who was caught on video passionately kissing a staffer in his office. The staffer resigned and her husband says they will divorce. McAllister is planning to run for reelection unless "...there is an outcry for me not to serve..." Let me start that outcry now. I don't really like infidelity but ultimately that's between spouses. However, I can't abide the hypocrisy.
After watching her do rap songs Broadway style, I'm thinking Anne Hathaway has something to fall back on in case the acting thing dries up for her.
If President Obama really wants to honor the victims of the first shooting at Fort Hood, back in 2009, he'll reverse position and designate the actions of Major Nidal Malik Hasan as a terrorist act.
Hilary Clinton is "thinking" about running for President in 2016? https://www.shockwave-sound.com/sound-effects/laugh-sounds/peoplelaugh.wav
Houston Astros games are once again generating ratings of 0.0, but now it is April, not September. Bad news for Houston.
At first glance, Mickey Rooney disinheriting all but one of his kids sounds really bad. Then again, the value of his estate was only $18,000. Seven divorces was definitely expensive.
Should a college degree be a requirement to be a state governor, or U. S. senator? Not sure about this one.
Katharine Heigl is a prima-donna and has no business touting her "success" in a lawsuit, but she's totally in the right that Duane Reade Drug Stores should NOT be using her likeness without permission.
The nursing home where male strippers entertained female residents apparently also took some of the male residents on a field trip to Hooters for some hot wings. Long as they weren't laced with Viagra, what's the problem?
* * *
April 10th in History:
428 – Nestorius becomes Patriarch of Constantinople.
837 – Halley's Comet makes its closest approach to Earth at a distance equal to 0.0342 AU (5.1 million kilometres/3.2 million miles).
879 – Louis III and Carloman II become joint Kings of the Western Franks.
1407 – The lama Deshin Shekpa visits the Ming Dynasty capital at Nanjing. He is awarded the title "Great Treasure Prince of Dharma".
1500 – Ludovico Sforza is captured by Swiss troops at Novara and is handed over to the French.
1606 – The Virginia Company of London is established by royal charter by James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.
1710 – The Statute of Anne, the first law regulating copyright, comes into force in Great Britain.
1741 – War of the Austrian Succession: Prussia defeats Austria at the Battle of Mollwitz.
1809 – Napoleonic Wars: The War of the Fifth Coalition begins when forces of the Austrian Empire invade Bavaria.
1815 – The Mount Tambora volcano begins a three-month-long eruption, lasting until July 15. The eruption ultimately kills 71,000 people and affects Earth's climate for the next two years.
1816 – The Federal government of the United States approves the creation of the Second Bank of the United States.
1821 – Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople is hanged by the Ottoman government from the main gate of the Patriarchate and his body is thrown into the Bosphorus.
1826 – The 10,500 inhabitants of the Greek town of Missolonghi begin leaving the town after a year's siege by Turkish forces. Very few of them survive.
1856 – The Theta Chi fraternity is founded at Norwich University in Vermont.
1858 – After the original Big Ben, a 14.5 tonnes (32,000 lb) bell for the Palace of Westminster had cracked during testing, it is recast into the current 13.76 tonnes (30,300 lb) bell by Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
1864 – Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg is proclaimed emperor of Mexico during the French intervention in Mexico.
1865 – American Civil War: A day after his surrender to Union forces, Confederate General Robert E. Lee addresses his troops for the last time.
1866 – The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by Henry Bergh.
1868 – At Arogee in Abyssinia, British and Indian forces defeat an army of Emperor Tewodros II. While 700 Ethiopians are killed and many more injured, only two British/Indian troops die.
1872 – The first Arbor Day is celebrated in Nebraska.
1887 – On Easter Sunday, Pope Leo XIII authorizes the establishment of The Catholic University of America.
1904 – British mystic Aleister Crowley transcribes the third and final chapter of The Book of the Law.
1912 – RMS Titanic sets sail from Southampton, England on her maiden and only voyage.
1916 – The Professional Golfers' Association of America (PGA) is created in New York City.
1919 – Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata is ambushed and shot dead by government forces in Morelos.
1925 – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is first published in New York City, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
1941 – World War II: The Axis powers in Europe establish the Independent State of Croatia from occupied Yugoslavia with Ante Pavelić's Ustaše fascist insurgents in power.
1944 – Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler escape from the Birkenau death camp.
1953 – Warner Bros. premieres the first 3-D film from a major American studio, entitled House of Wax.
1957 – The Suez Canal is reopened for all shipping after being closed for three months.
1959 – Akihito, future Emperor of Japan, marries Michiko.
1963 – One hundred twenty-nine American sailors die when the submarine USS Thresher sinks at sea.
1968 – New Zealand inter-island ferry TEV Wahine founders and sinks at the mouth of Wellington Harbour.
1970 – Paul McCartney announces that he is leaving The Beatles for personal and professional reasons.
1971 – Ping-pong diplomacy: In an attempt to thaw relations with the United States, the People's Republic of China hosts the U.S. table tennis team for a week-long visit.
1972 – Twenty days after he is kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Oberdan Sallustro is murdered by communist guerrillas.
1972 – Tombs containing bamboo slips, among them Sun Tzu's Art of War and Sun Bin's lost military treatise, are accidentally discovered by construction workers in Shandong.
1972 – Vietnam War: For the first time since November 1967, American B-52 bombers reportedly begin bombing North Vietnam.
1972 – Seventy-four nations sign the Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of biological weapons.
1973 – A British Vickers Vanguard turboprop aircraft crashes in a snowstorm at Basel, Switzerland killing 104 people.
1979 – Red River Valley tornado outbreak: A tornado lands in Wichita Falls, Texas killing 42 people.
1988 – The Ojhri Camp disaster: Killing more than 1,000 people in Rawalpindi and Islamabad as a result of rockets and other munitions expelled by the blast.
1991 – Italian ferry MS Moby Prince collides with an oil tanker in dense fog off Livorno, Italy killing 140.
1991 – A rare tropical storm develops in the South Atlantic Ocean near Angola; the first to be documented by satellites.
1998 – Northern Ireland peace deal reached (Good Friday Agreement).
2009 – President of Fiji Ratu Josefa Iloilo announces he will suspend the constitution and assume all governance in the country, creating a constitutional crisis.
2010 – Polish Air Force Tu-154M crashes near Smolensk, Russia, killing 96 people, including Polish President Lech Kaczyński and dozens of other senior officials
Famous Folk Born on April 10th:
James V of Scotland
Matthew C. Perry
Joseph Pulitzer
Clare Booth Luce
Harry Morgan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7PzZJXbi8)
Chuck Connors (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM-URFKIZU4)
Sheb Wooley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9H_cI_WCnE)
Linda Goodman
Junior Samples (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xhTomqDTzE)
Max Von Sydow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzFwECV8Kkk)
Dolores Huerta
Lee Weaver
Omar Sharif (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud1zpHW3ito)
David Halberstam
John Madden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_fI75ulylQ)
Don Meredith (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saMUmG4HU1E)
David Angell
Ken Griffey, Sr. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saMUmG4HU1E)
Steven Seagal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zu1YIukylw)
Brian Setzer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MReYc0EOsaI)
Mandy Moore (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaGPN7hsRIU)
Let's do something simpler. Divide 900 patients into $26 million and we get an average bill per patient of $28,888.89. Now if we divide $26 million by 8,000 potential office visit billings, it comes out to $3,250 billed per visit. It just don't add up.
Doctors are saying don't jump to conclusions. What if we add in the fact that this particular ophthalmologist was already under investigation for "questionable" billing practices? What if then add in the fact that 2% of the nation's Medicare doctors are responsible for 23% of the total Medicare billing in 2012?
The American Medical Association has been fighting against the release of this kind of data for a long time. I think I've figured out why.
* * *
By the way, apologies for the extended time between blog entries of late. I promise this is temporary and will go away after 4/15/2014.
* * *
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has announced that Bank of American is refunding $727 million to its credit card customers and will pay $45 million in fines for illegal practices. What did the bank do? It billed customers for add-on services that they hadn't authorized, or misled those customers about the benefits of those services.
These practices date back to the year 2000. For how many years did the bank have the money that belonged to these customers and the ability to earn money on those funds? What's really upsetting is that had federal regulators not uncovered these practices, BofA and the other four banks who've been fined thus far would probably still be doing that which they knew to be illegal.
This is from BofA's corporate website regarding how they run their business. "Fundamentally, our conduct is guided by our values, our code of ethics and a commitment to openness and transparency. Corporate governance is ultimately overseen by our board of directors, which is composed largely of directors who are independent of management."
Apparently there is a disconnect somewhere between those 15 people (including the COB, CEO and former COB) and the people who are really running things. Or else they say one thing and do another.
* * *
Kelly Wallace is a digital correspondent and editor-at-large for CNN. She has an interesting piece up on the network's website at the moment about the public school versus private school issue. She says she gets the "look" when people learn her daughters attend public school.
I've never been a parent. But I have seen both sides of this issue and have my own perspective. I attended both public and private schools during my years of K-12 education. I spent 17 years working at one of the finest private schools in the nation.
The nuts and bolts of the equation are easy to quantify. Private schools have better teacher to student ratios. Teachers in a public high school may have 25 to 40 (or more) students in one class. Private schools are more like 12 to 1, 16 to 1 or thereabouts. Public schools can realize some economies of scale in providing benefits to the employees. Private schools have an advantage in that they don't have to educate every student that tries to walk through their doorways. So when a private school is compared to a public school and boasts of a perfect college acceptance rate, or the achievements of their students, we must recognize these factors.
I attended a public high school. There were at least three perfect 1600 SAT scores among my fellow members of the class of 1977. Two other students scored 1590. Then again, I attended public schools prior to the gutting of the California public school system by Proposition 13.
In my view, it isn't about which type of school a student attends. It's all about who the student is. About the kind of person their parents raised them to be. Most importantly, it is all about the role the parents play in their child's education. The one consistent factor among the majority of the students in either private or public schools who do not do well is a lack of parental involvement. Rich parents and poor parents are equally able to be completely uninvolved in how their child is raised and educated. A student who was taught at home to value their education will do much better than one who wasn't.
There are two areas where students from private schools are almost always going to be ahead of the public school students. Critical thinking skills and the ability to write and re-write papers for college courses. I've heard this over and over again from the former students I stay in touch with. The better teacher/student ratios allow private school teachers to do more than inculcate their students in the "how" to do whatever they are teaching. They get to teach them to ask why.
If I'd ever fathered children, I might or might not have sent them to a private school. They would have done equally well in private or public education, because I would make sure they were ready for school long before their first day in kindergarten.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Is sending planes to search for a missing plane akin to sending one dog out to search for the other dog missing from the household? I heard that on television today and it got me to thinking.
Vance McAllister is a member of the U. S. Congress from Louisiana. He's a "family values" Republican who was caught on video passionately kissing a staffer in his office. The staffer resigned and her husband says they will divorce. McAllister is planning to run for reelection unless "...there is an outcry for me not to serve..." Let me start that outcry now. I don't really like infidelity but ultimately that's between spouses. However, I can't abide the hypocrisy.
After watching her do rap songs Broadway style, I'm thinking Anne Hathaway has something to fall back on in case the acting thing dries up for her.
If President Obama really wants to honor the victims of the first shooting at Fort Hood, back in 2009, he'll reverse position and designate the actions of Major Nidal Malik Hasan as a terrorist act.
Hilary Clinton is "thinking" about running for President in 2016? https://www.shockwave-sound.com/sound-effects/laugh-sounds/peoplelaugh.wav
Houston Astros games are once again generating ratings of 0.0, but now it is April, not September. Bad news for Houston.
At first glance, Mickey Rooney disinheriting all but one of his kids sounds really bad. Then again, the value of his estate was only $18,000. Seven divorces was definitely expensive.
Should a college degree be a requirement to be a state governor, or U. S. senator? Not sure about this one.
Katharine Heigl is a prima-donna and has no business touting her "success" in a lawsuit, but she's totally in the right that Duane Reade Drug Stores should NOT be using her likeness without permission.
The nursing home where male strippers entertained female residents apparently also took some of the male residents on a field trip to Hooters for some hot wings. Long as they weren't laced with Viagra, what's the problem?
* * *
April 10th in History:
428 – Nestorius becomes Patriarch of Constantinople.
837 – Halley's Comet makes its closest approach to Earth at a distance equal to 0.0342 AU (5.1 million kilometres/3.2 million miles).
879 – Louis III and Carloman II become joint Kings of the Western Franks.
1407 – The lama Deshin Shekpa visits the Ming Dynasty capital at Nanjing. He is awarded the title "Great Treasure Prince of Dharma".
1500 – Ludovico Sforza is captured by Swiss troops at Novara and is handed over to the French.
1606 – The Virginia Company of London is established by royal charter by James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.
1710 – The Statute of Anne, the first law regulating copyright, comes into force in Great Britain.
1741 – War of the Austrian Succession: Prussia defeats Austria at the Battle of Mollwitz.
1809 – Napoleonic Wars: The War of the Fifth Coalition begins when forces of the Austrian Empire invade Bavaria.
1815 – The Mount Tambora volcano begins a three-month-long eruption, lasting until July 15. The eruption ultimately kills 71,000 people and affects Earth's climate for the next two years.
1816 – The Federal government of the United States approves the creation of the Second Bank of the United States.
1821 – Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople is hanged by the Ottoman government from the main gate of the Patriarchate and his body is thrown into the Bosphorus.
1826 – The 10,500 inhabitants of the Greek town of Missolonghi begin leaving the town after a year's siege by Turkish forces. Very few of them survive.
1856 – The Theta Chi fraternity is founded at Norwich University in Vermont.
1858 – After the original Big Ben, a 14.5 tonnes (32,000 lb) bell for the Palace of Westminster had cracked during testing, it is recast into the current 13.76 tonnes (30,300 lb) bell by Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
1864 – Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg is proclaimed emperor of Mexico during the French intervention in Mexico.
1865 – American Civil War: A day after his surrender to Union forces, Confederate General Robert E. Lee addresses his troops for the last time.
1866 – The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by Henry Bergh.
1868 – At Arogee in Abyssinia, British and Indian forces defeat an army of Emperor Tewodros II. While 700 Ethiopians are killed and many more injured, only two British/Indian troops die.
1872 – The first Arbor Day is celebrated in Nebraska.
1887 – On Easter Sunday, Pope Leo XIII authorizes the establishment of The Catholic University of America.
1904 – British mystic Aleister Crowley transcribes the third and final chapter of The Book of the Law.
1912 – RMS Titanic sets sail from Southampton, England on her maiden and only voyage.
1916 – The Professional Golfers' Association of America (PGA) is created in New York City.
1919 – Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata is ambushed and shot dead by government forces in Morelos.
1925 – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is first published in New York City, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
1941 – World War II: The Axis powers in Europe establish the Independent State of Croatia from occupied Yugoslavia with Ante Pavelić's Ustaše fascist insurgents in power.
1944 – Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler escape from the Birkenau death camp.
1953 – Warner Bros. premieres the first 3-D film from a major American studio, entitled House of Wax.
1957 – The Suez Canal is reopened for all shipping after being closed for three months.
1959 – Akihito, future Emperor of Japan, marries Michiko.
1963 – One hundred twenty-nine American sailors die when the submarine USS Thresher sinks at sea.
1968 – New Zealand inter-island ferry TEV Wahine founders and sinks at the mouth of Wellington Harbour.
1970 – Paul McCartney announces that he is leaving The Beatles for personal and professional reasons.
1971 – Ping-pong diplomacy: In an attempt to thaw relations with the United States, the People's Republic of China hosts the U.S. table tennis team for a week-long visit.
1972 – Twenty days after he is kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Oberdan Sallustro is murdered by communist guerrillas.
1972 – Tombs containing bamboo slips, among them Sun Tzu's Art of War and Sun Bin's lost military treatise, are accidentally discovered by construction workers in Shandong.
1972 – Vietnam War: For the first time since November 1967, American B-52 bombers reportedly begin bombing North Vietnam.
1972 – Seventy-four nations sign the Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of biological weapons.
1973 – A British Vickers Vanguard turboprop aircraft crashes in a snowstorm at Basel, Switzerland killing 104 people.
1979 – Red River Valley tornado outbreak: A tornado lands in Wichita Falls, Texas killing 42 people.
1988 – The Ojhri Camp disaster: Killing more than 1,000 people in Rawalpindi and Islamabad as a result of rockets and other munitions expelled by the blast.
1991 – Italian ferry MS Moby Prince collides with an oil tanker in dense fog off Livorno, Italy killing 140.
1991 – A rare tropical storm develops in the South Atlantic Ocean near Angola; the first to be documented by satellites.
1998 – Northern Ireland peace deal reached (Good Friday Agreement).
2009 – President of Fiji Ratu Josefa Iloilo announces he will suspend the constitution and assume all governance in the country, creating a constitutional crisis.
2010 – Polish Air Force Tu-154M crashes near Smolensk, Russia, killing 96 people, including Polish President Lech Kaczyński and dozens of other senior officials
Famous Folk Born on April 10th:
James V of Scotland
Matthew C. Perry
Joseph Pulitzer
Clare Booth Luce
Harry Morgan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7PzZJXbi8)
Chuck Connors (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM-URFKIZU4)
Sheb Wooley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9H_cI_WCnE)
Linda Goodman
Junior Samples (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xhTomqDTzE)
Max Von Sydow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzFwECV8Kkk)
Dolores Huerta
Lee Weaver
Omar Sharif (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud1zpHW3ito)
David Halberstam
John Madden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_fI75ulylQ)
Don Meredith (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saMUmG4HU1E)
David Angell
Ken Griffey, Sr. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saMUmG4HU1E)
Steven Seagal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zu1YIukylw)
Brian Setzer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MReYc0EOsaI)
Mandy Moore (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaGPN7hsRIU)
posted by me at 10:21 PM
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