Word: shield
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...forget about cost controls as part of a bargain to keep the medical profession from opposing the program. Instead, one of the ways the Government reimburses hospitals for the care of Medicare-Medicaid patients is on a "cost plus" basis, and it asks few questions about the cost. Blue Shield and commercial insurers generally pay "usual, customary and reasonable" physicians' fees (U.C.R. in medical jargon). That gives doctors an incentive to charge all patients top dollar, so that they can establish those fees as U.C.R...
...fumbling attempts to contain costs have not worked. In Massachusetts, for example, Blue Shield has established maximum fees for various medical procedures but so far has refused to tell doctors what the maximums are, lest everybody charge them. Many doctors do anyway. A Boston specialist's secretary explains: "Suppose we charge $45 for a service and then we learn that another doctor is being paid $65 for the same service. We then cannot ask $65 even though we may be as good or perhaps better. Blue Shield permits us to raise our prices by a small percentage from time...
...Revenue Service from profits earned in other countries, where the rate is lower than 46%. Income taxes in some OPEC states not only are much higher than 46% but are sometimes based on the price of the oil. That gives the companies large credits that they can use to "shield" profits from, say, refineries in Caribbean tax havens where there are low or even no taxes at all. Complains Washington Attorney Jack Blum, for eleven years a staff member of the Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee and the Foreign Relations Committee, and now a frequent critic of the Oil Game...
...owner of the program. Broadcasters are sure to make an angry challenge of this aspect of the proposed FCC ruling in Congress. Quite as important as the effect of the proposed ruling is the shift in FCC philosophy that it indicates. The FCC had always been eager to shield local broadcasters from cable competition. But Philip Verveer, director of the FCC cable bureau, now justifies the proposed new ruling with a rhetorical question: "Why interfere with consumer preference...
...your part is hardly as disturbing to me as Maurice Lazarus' contention that FDS is uninvolved with the boycott. His error is not just factual but runs to the heart of the corporate responsibility issue. Mr. Lazarus, Prof. Milton Brown (Allied Stores) and other retailers erect the same false shield ofhneutrality whenever pressed on the boycott "We're just pawns in the hands of consumers," the argument runs...