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Reuters, last week, decided to rehash stale, old news, in a severely dated story on George Halvorson’s “endorsement” of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to require every Californian to buy health insurance. Is it a coincidence that the Reuters August 17 press release story coincided so perfectly with the August 17 release of George Halvorson’s latest wolf-in-wool book, Health Care Reform Now?

A comment on the Kaiser Permanente Thrive Exposed website has the hilariously sad list of (apparently paid) “reviewers” of George Halvorson’s new book, well, exposed:

Let’s go down the list.

Ian Morrison is regularly paid by Kaiser Permanente and lists them as one of his clients.

Pete Stark’s largest contributors are (coincidentally enough) “health professionals.” KP has contributed thousands to his campaigns.

Alain Enthoven regularly writes for The Permanente Journal and recently cowrote a book with a KP executive (which was coincidentally published by the same firm that’s publishing Halvorson’s book).

Helen Darling works for a firm which is paid thousands of dollars every year by KP.

Jeffrey McGuiness also works for a firm to which KP also pays thousands of dollars every year.

Obviously these people all loved George’s book on its merits, not because he paid them Kaiser member money.

I guess healthcare is a small world, afterall.

In any event, that George Halvorson would endorse a bill requiring every Californian to buy healthcare coverage shouldn’t be too surprising. Imagine how many new members that would potentially mean for Kaiser Permanente. Imagine how much all that new revenue would prop up Mr. Halvorson’s chairmanship?

Perhaps the only issue George Halvorson had to think about before endorsing Mr. Schwarzenegger’s new health plan is the proposed 2% tax on physician revenue. But, unlike Blue Cross of California, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan could easily just add a new “make whole” tax reimbursement payment to the Permanente Medical Groups, to make up for their share of the new tax. Of course, it won’t be called that. It’ll be called “capitation increase for economic environmental changes.” Or something like that.

They say, in Sacramento, money talks. I guess they’ve never been to Oakland. There, well, hell, money walks down the street, has an office in a building named Ordway, and even drives home to Alameda every day in its luxury car.