Okay, another *apparently* in here.  From a later report it appears that
the Supreme Court decision prevents suing *at the Federal level* of HMOs
given the current existing legislation.  There can still be suits at the
state level, also HMOs can remain giving physicians bonuses for
reducing health care costs even when it means reducing health care,
and patients can still sue physicians themselves.  The deciding case
had been brought by a woman whose physician long-delayed a medical
test for her acute appendicitis so that it could be done in lab owned
by the HMO and the result was that her appendix burst first.
 
The latest report says that how patients will fair now that they
can't have the option of suing federally will depend on the
individual state -- people's attitudes, state laws, etc.  It also
said that the Supreme Court mentioned that most health care decisions
are state ones, anyway.
 
Now, here's the question: since pet medical care seems to often also be a
state regulated thing, and since too many states are quite bad in that
regard already (examples: the very common lack of pet store standard
regulations in relation to health issues in so many states, the ways that
many vets have their hands tied if a client demands that a pet be destroyed
even when healthy, etc.), does pet health care (including for ferrets which
the plans don't seem to cover now, anyway) even make sense?  At least one
person here had a spouse's health greatly endangered due to human medical
insurance foul-up; how much recourse would anyone have with a pet medical
insurance foul-up?
 
Looks more and more like personal budgeting for any type of health
care at least part of the time may be essential for decent health.
[Posted in FML issue 3081]