Here's a surprise

The administration is planning to change the Medicare reimbursement system to better reflect hospital costs, rather than charges. They will be using a software product developed by 3M to implement the changed system. Sounds reasonable, right. Here's the rub (from the NY Times):

In July 2005, the Bush administration awarded a “sole source contract” to 3M, to analyze whether it was feasible for Medicare to use a payment system modeled on the 3M product. The company said yes.