Does The Health Care Industry Need a GIPS?

The referenced article shows the ways one industry cries out to be regulated - even if it doesn't realize that is what it is doing. GIPS performance standards fill that void for the investment community by providing a standard way to calculate and present performance.

One can't simply eliminate an account or two from a composite because its return was deemed an "outlier" (read: makes performance look bad) without justifiable, documented policies that are applied the same way to all accounts.

Senate Panel Says Health Insurers Underpay Claims - WSJ.com:

"Committee investigators found that Ingenix developed its payment models based on claims data provided by its customers, the insurance companies.

A committee aide said those companies sometimes would “scrub” the data sent to Ingenix—throwing out outlying high costs. Ingenix then would use questionable statistical models to come to its own rate estimates."