Let patients shop for their health care

There's quite a spat emerging in the nation between doctors groups and health-care insurers, but at its heart is a concept that could prove immensely valuable to patients.

It involves initiatives to rate doctors, based on cost and quality of care, giving consumers important information to shop and compare for the most cost-efficient service from a medical provider -- the same kind of information a consumer would want when purchasing almost any other goods or services.

Doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies should all operate on a much more transparent basis. They should be more open about their qualifications, performance record and what they charge for services.

The day should come when people shop for health care the same way they shop for any other service, with loads of information at their fingertips. There is nothing remotely reflecting that goal in place now.

But just as everyone can agree patients deserve more information, there should be universal agreement that the data is compiled fairly, accurately and without a hidden motive.

Insurers should know that patients are suspicious about their motives already. They don't need to feed that suspicion.

Antiquated pennies

A house bill that would cut the U.S. Mint's cost of making pennies, a bothersome form of exchange, also would allow an Ohio company to resume melting down older pennies for their increasingly valuable copper content.

The very existence of this bill is a testament to the idiotic frittering away of taxpayers' money just to feed what seems a national obsession with minting and printing coins and currency that have outlived their usefulness. How else to explain legislation designed to change the metal content of coins in order to cut costs of production?

Making the lowest-denomination coins costs far more than they are worth: about 1.6 cents per penny and 10 cents per nickel.

The United States should phase out coins that are a strain on the federal budget, along with the paper $1.