Photo: Center for Medicare Advocacy
Healthcare in America is out of control and expensive. Aside from cost, coverage could be better, and understanding benefits and coverage can seem like a dark, circuitous tunnel with no end in sight.
A CNN interview with Wendell Potter of the Center for Health and Democracy is shown below. Wendell Potter is a former Healthcare industry executive with insider knowledge of the complicated system:
Photo: Fortune
Why is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of United Healthcare dead? He was shot out in public on the streets of New York in the daylight. Part of the answer lies in the public's image of the corporate executives. A fair number of the public hold the position that these corporate titans believe that each person is reduced to a number. Are numbers run by bean counters (risk management) to get the numbers to increase shareholder profits? Sound familiar? Even though the CEO is human, he does not deserve to die because he holds that high corporate position.
Again, the common perspective is that these corporate titans will try to increase shareholder value at the expense of the customer, in this case, the insurance policyholder. What I wanted to share with the reader of this site is the letter that the iconic activist Ralph Nader wrote recently about the United Healthcare shooting and corporations - shown below:
The “Silent Violence” of Corporate Greed and Power
By Ralph Nader
December 6, 2024
For decades consumer groups have been sounding clarion calls for action against the “silent violence” causing massive casualties that arise from the unbridled power of corporate greed, criminal negligence or indifference. They cite statistical and case studies that the media and lawmakers mostly ignored or relegated to low levels of enforcement.
Corporate bosses just have their corporate lawyers and public relations hacks brush away such warnings and pleas. One day stories they knew would not have legs if they just kept quiet or mumbled some general words of regret, promising some vague improvements to their products and services.
But year after year, the deadly toll goes up, not down, and the horrors continue. For example, at least 5000 people A WEEK die in hospitals in the U.S. due to “preventable problems,” concluded a peer-reviewed study by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine physicians in 2016. This is just one of numerous such studies of hospital-induced infections, overuse of antibiotics, medical malpractice or what is called “medical error,” prescribing bundles of drugs that backfire, “accidents,” deskilling and understaffing.
There has been no mass mobilization by either government officials or industry executives to address this staggering toll of at least 250,000 fatalities a year!
Behind these figures are real people with families, friends and coworkers shocked, incensed or despondent over avoidable losses of life and preventable harms. Some of them undoubtedly knew the specific causes and demanded correction and compensation, to no avail.
Avoidable casualties also arise from the sweeping denial of insurance coverage for ill or injured patients by greedy unregulated or underregulated health insurance companies maximizing profits and bonuses for CEOs. Many insurance companies are now using AI to help wear down consumers.
About two thousand Americans a week lose their lives because they cannot afford health insurance to cover prompt diagnosis and treatment costs. System-driven patterns of denial of benefits by health insurers also cause deaths and injuries. The companies have algorithms that automatically delay or deny needed procedures without even seeing a patient’s medical records or speaking with the patient’s physician.
Insurance policies are full of fine print deductibles, co-pays, waivers and exclusions that drive consumers and their doctors up the wall. Insurance premiums are paid by patients or employers ahead of time with advertised assurances.
In the past two months, consumers have been overwhelmed by a blizzard of television ads by giant insurers e.g., Aetna, Cigna, and Humana for their Medicare (dis)Advantage plans aimed at elderly beneficiaries. The ads are loaded with “freebies” that paint the companies as charities instead of cunning commercial marketers. In reality, denial of benefits is higher for these plans than for traditional Medicare. Moreover, these plans push patients into narrow networks of physicians and hospitals and subject them to dreadful over-use of “prior authorization.” The latter means some remote company doctor or medical professional decides whether a physician with a patient can be reimbursed for a specific treatment. This results in overwhelming paperwork for the doctors, immense profits for the companies and degraded treatment for patients.
An October 31, 2023 NBC investigation titled “‘Deny, deny, deny’: By rejecting claims, Medicare Advantage plans threaten rural hospitals and patients,” by star reporter Gretchen Morgenson exposed another deadly impact of Medicare (dis)Advantage programs on rural hospitals in America.
These companies are so entrenched that they have become largely immune to exposés. They have gamed the system to straitjacket both patients and healthcare workers. The healthcare industry gets away with about $360 billion in computerized billing fraud and abuses every year. (https://scholar.harvard.edu/msparrow/license-to-steal). Prosecutions are minimal, and lawmakers are mostly indifferent as they count their campaign cash donations. Did you see any of the major party politicians in this year’s election campaigns even mention the devastating impact of the medical industry’s greed on innocent people or the taxpayers?
Just under the surface is a seething whirlpool of resentment, anger, frustration and bitterness about corporate abuses. Such reactions are often most pronounced in poor areas or workplaces, where people are subjected to choking pollution or exposure to carcinogenic toxins leading to cancer, heart disease and other organ ailments.
The corporate perpetrators, however, are remote from the impacts of their operations and policies. Their hugely overpaid bosses rule from elaborate suites and enjoy unimaginable luxuries. Very few people know the names, even of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies like ExxonMobil, Aetna, Humana, Duke Energy, Bank of America, and so on. The lethality, the theft, the domination, and the escape from the rule of law are rendered impersonally by the corporatists who are now investing huge sums to go even more abstract and remote with tyrannical generative AI algorithms.
This week, a man, still on the run, made his anger very personal. Around 7:00 AM he singled out, in front of a busy midtown Manhattan hotel, the chief executive of the giant UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, and shot him. The assassin fled on an electric bike. Police collected the bullet casings from his pistol. On these casings were the words, “deny,” “delay” and “depose.”
As news of this fatal shooting spread over social media, a torrent of angry or morbid comments flooded the Internet. The New York Times reported a few, to wit:
“I’m an ER nurse and the things I’ve seen dying patients get denied for by insurance makes me physically sick. I just can’t feel sympathy for him because of all of those patients and their families.”
“Thoughts and deductibles to the family,” read one observer underneath a video of a CNN picture. “Unfortunately, my condolences are out of network.”
Tragically, Mr. Thompson, according to a company employee, was one of the few executives who spoke of changing the culture of the company.
But corporate culture, marinated to the core with endless cravings for ever-growing easy profits, is very hard to change – especially when it is so easy to extract more and more premium dollars from powerless consumers who lack adequate regulatory protections.
And so, the social media explosion included this typical comment on TikTok: “I pay $1,300 a month for health insurance with an $8,000 deductible. ($23,000 yearly) When I finally reached that deductible, they denied my claims. He was making a million dollars a month.”
The New York Times described a “wrenching outpouring from patients and family members who posted horror stories of insurance claim reimbursement stagnation and denials.” The ugly reality will continue to exponentially pour out with volcanic fury as the media receives more public reactions.
One wonders about the reaction if this were to have happened four months before the November election. Could the uproar have transformed the slimy rhythms of the Harris campaign, orchestrated by the Democrats’ corporate-conflicted political consultants who manage the candidate messages and who definitely don’t listen to the warnings and popular proposals by Senator Bernie Sanders?
Photo: Visual Capitalist
I don't know how to fix the tax problem in America. But I do know how to listen to ideas on any solution that would fix the tax system in America. Recently, on a podcast produced by Anthony Scaramucci (President Trump's Communication guy for a few days during his first administration), the previous Governor of New York - Andrew Cuomo, was on to speak on this topic. Below is an excerpt worth listening to:
Photo: LinkedIn
The inclusion of Artificial Intelligence will greatly transform modern medicine. Prior to the inclusion of AI, the most progressive move to modernize medicine has been to switch to EHRs - Electronic Health Records. Next, incorporating modern tools - PCs, iPads, etc. - into the exam room ensures safe record keeping and possibly global examination.
What do I mean by 'global examination'?
I invented the term global examination. It means, in short, the ability to share medical records worldwide by electronic means (e.g., the Internet). Sharing knowledge would significantly improve medicine as we know it. Academic conferences held throughout the year provide a means or avenue of communication for top specialists by gathering to discuss big changes and improvements.
What if the same was true for sharing medical records worldwide? I will not get ahead of myself just yet. In a recent brief by Politico Future Pulse (which focuses on healthcare technology/improvements), the following was reported regarding the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence into medicine:
Academics, patient advocates and health tech executives have some ideas on how the new regime in Washington should handle artificial intelligence.
At an event presented by the National Academy of Medicine and the University of California, San Diego, last week, they suggested:
— Standardizing data safeguards and their use in AI
— Developing a research strategy to understand AI in health care
— Designing open-source frameworks to locally test AI inside of health systems
— Creating a mode for patients to report harms
— Certifying AI products through assurance labs
Attendees noted that AI in medicine is a double-edged sword capable of helping and hurting patients. For example, AI scribes could help doctors reduce administrative burdens like notetaking, allowing them to spend more time with patients, or just accommodate more rushed appointments.
Why it matters: So far, health systems and insurers largely adopt AI to boost profitability by automating the billing and claims process. But patients are suing insurers, alleging they use AI to deny care.
Some rules exist. The Food and Drug Administration regulates AI medical devices and AI software that assists in clinical decisionmaking, but the agency doesn’t oversee more advanced tools, like chatbots. FDA Commissioner Robert Califf has said he would need a bigger budget and a larger staff to do more.
HHS’ assistant secretary for technology policy regulates AI in electronic medical records, and the Office for Civil Rights tries to ensure that health AI doesn’t discriminate.
But health AI specialists at the San Diego event were concerned that layering AI on top of a flawed health care system risks amplifying existing problems instead of providing solutions. The success of AI in health care settings hinges on how it’s standardized and implemented, they said.
Even so: Most health systems operate on thin margins — between 2 and 5 percent monthly in the last year, according to health care consultant Kauffman Hall. That means health systems don’t have much money to invest in artificial intelligence, and some in health care finance, along with patient advocates, are concerned that the cost of implementing this technology will fall on patients.
The future of modern medicine with artificial intelligence incorporated into daily practice is super exciting. What stands between then and now? Is the ability to spend money on investments that have do not necessarily have a high ROI - Return On Investment from a monetary perspective. But that result in a better society that heals and shares knowledge among its members. Stay tuned!
Photo: Wikipedia
In this torn nation of a myriad of ideologies among both political parties, some clarity would be nice. Who might have some? Who knows? Misinformation is everywhere. Although, retired Generals have a pretty good assessment of the current battlefield situation. Ukraine is a perfect example.
While the Republicans have been whining about bringing jobs back to America, Democrats have been showing that American jobs are responsible for helping solve the world's problems. In the following video by CNN, General Hodges, retired, explains how helpin Ukraine is possible while stimulating job growth in America:
And he is correct!
Photo: Citizen Times
Amidst the devastation that Hurricane Helene has brought to the East Coast of the United States, former President Trump is spreading lies which is harming Americans. Yes, harming Americans by spreading disinformation. Don't believe me?
The video below makes the case simply. The video by MSNBC, shows the transcript of a caller to a radio station complaining that a family member is listening to Trump which is going to cost him his life. Why? Because the resident refuses funding from FEMA because President Trump has indoctrinated the belief that FEMA will take your house if money is accepted. What horse shit. President Trump will have to answer for these and thousands of other lies - hopefully. Watch the video - which is simply shocking:
Crazy!
Photo: CNN
One of the best interviews I have seen lately regarding politics and our current political landscape is with former Navy Seal and former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura.
In the video below by CNN, the former Governor of Minesota (and former Navy Seal) expresses criticism over the current Vice Presidential Candidate (Republican) JD Vance for his remarks of his opponent Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Walz:
Wow! I love Jesse's remarks about JD Vance. The former Governor (and Navy Seal) makes his case with simple arguments that are traditional values held tightly among veterans who have served. The evidence offered is indisputable and needs to be presented to the public. Who better than a former Navy Seal? Jesse Ventura has had an astounding career in military, politics, and television entertainment over the decades. We should pay attention to his advice.
Photo: Reuters
We have two candidates running for President in 2024. One is the current presiding office holder, President Biden, while the other is a grieving former President, President Trump. Every speech by Trump is a grievance of the past or a continuation of the threat of implementing sustainable practices throughout society.
The former President loves to scare U.S. citizens about sustainable energy and forward-thinking practices. With his large head of hair, President Trump is threatened by a reduced amount of water found in new homes and hotels. Why? I don't know. Each hotel that I have visited lately has had new Rainfall shower heads that deliver large volumes of water to the top of my head. But what do I know?
The Meidas Touch network put together a brief about Fox News cutting the former President's speech off last week. Watch for yourself:
Something is not right with this man.
Photo: ABC News
The Republican-led House of Congress has decided to call Dr. Anthony Fauci regarding the U.S. response to Covid-19. For hours, the Republican party tried their most strenuous effort to discredit Dr. Fauci. Below are some highlights of the falsehoods and misinformation that the Republicans are peddling to discredit a mercurial scientific figure:
What is wrong with this party? Have the Republicans ever held a productive hearing for the American people in the last 4 years? I find it difficult to find any.
Photo: Our World
Is there any good that can result from the spread of Climate Change across the globe? I am sure that people are walking the Earth that could find a few suggestions. But seriously, are there?
In a recent post on Politico, turns out that the effects of Climate Change have been beneficial in the fight against the spread of malaria:
Climate change could reduce the number of Africans at risk of malaria, according to a new study that examined how water supplies could affect the breeding grounds of the mosquitoes that carry the disease.
That might sound like good news since Africa accounts for the vast majority of the world’s malaria cases and deaths — but it might foreshadow other threats, one of the study authors told Carmen.
How’s that? In the study published in Science, researchers in the U.K. and Namibia created models to predict how climate change will affect where malaria is transmitted in Africa. The models considered surface water and rainfall coupled with low or high levels of the greenhouse gas emissions that warm the Earth.
Unlike previous studies that considered mostly rainfall, the new research predicts that some areas of Africa — starting in the west and moving east to South Sudan — will become too hot and dry for malaria-carrying mosquitoes to breed. Malaria causes flu-like symptoms and kills more than half a million people a year worldwide.
But Mark Smith, associate professor in water research at the University of Leeds in the U.K. and part of the team leading the study, told Carmen that a dwindling water supply would have worse effects than a good supply would.
While a dwindling water supply would be helpful to reduce malaria, it won’t decrease dengue, another mosquito-borne disease. In fact, it would increase it, since dengue is caused by a virus that can withstand higher temperatures.
The models also predicted potential changes in the malaria season across different parts of the continent: a decrease in Botswana, for instance, while some parts of South Africa would see an increase.
This is not the 'great news' regarding climate change that we would like to read about. There have to be workable and sustainable solutions that do not wipe out people or precious resources.
Photo: Yahoo Finance
Have you watched from the sidelines as investors (neighbors, friends, family, etc.) invest money into the stock market and brag about their returns? How does a person invest? Which stocks do you choose? How do you avoid paying all your returns to the broker as fees? I will tell you a simple method to start with.
Acorn investing services are a great way to start investing in the stock market. I was super skeptical of the process at first. However, then a fellow staff member at my work convinced me to just start with the basic process of the service. Which is?
Investing made easy!
To start with, follow the link to Acorns here:
Note: I do get credit for referring you.
But more importantly, connecting your checking account to the Acorns account will allow the service to withdraw small amounts of money. I mean small donations - rounding up your purchases to a $1. That means, say, you spend $0.75 on a purchase. Then Acorns will invest $0.25 into the stock market in your Acorns account.
Small Amounts Add Up Quickly - well relatively so
Don't expect to get rich overnight. But I have been with the service for 4 years and looked at my account the other day. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had a balance of $4,000. Wow! An average return of 20-30% on my deposits.
You don't have to believe me. But I will continue to use the service to build money without having to look at the account. I have not looked at the account for 4 years.
Note: If you withdraw money from the account, you will pay taxes on capital gains as profits.
I suggest that you take advantage of this service. It is cheap as far as fees are concerned. Plus, compare the returns (profits) to your brokerage accounts (retirement, 401K, etc.). Acorns will outperform some of these with computerized (AI) investing.
Note: I set my risk level on Acorns to 'Aggressive' = I want the largest return. I am willing to risk some change.
Photo: NY Times
Listen to the news at any hour of the day, and discussion of the Supreme Court will undoubtedly arise. For many reasons (i.e., cases), the Court has found itself at the center of the debate stage. From questioning Justice Clarence Thomas's ethics to the secret release of Dobb's decision, which was written by Justice Alito last summer, controversy has sunken the nation's Highest Court to new lows.
In the following interview, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC Morning Joe interviews Justice Breyer about the current state of the U.S. Supreme Court:
I like the analogy describing the complexity of cases Justice Breyer used. In describing the complexity of cases, he tells a story he read in a French newspaper about a railroad passenger traveling with a basket of snails. The conductor asked the passenger to pay for the '1/2 fare' for each snail as the train system requires 'all animals' in baskets to be paid for. An argument ensues whether the snails are pets, animals, or the exception. That describes the complexity of cases entertained by the Supreme Court.
Photo: Time Magazine
Despite no longer being the President, Donald Trump is still making headlines as the 2024 election cycle approaches. Many people are speaking out against him, particularly in regard to his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Meidas Touch has shared a video featuring the opinions of several world leaders on former President Trump:
As we are currently in an election year, it is crucial that we spread this video to those around us. The national security risks posed by Donald Trump should not be underestimated.
Photo: NBC news
Wall Street loves to hear presidents discuss lowering taxes. Who among the rich doesn't? Does the Street (i.e., Wall Street) really care about President Donald Trump? The former president experienced the highest price on the S&P 500 during his 4 years in office. And he also experienced an unprecedented drop in the market with the onset of COVID. What are the current thoughts among investors?
In the following video by CNN, former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci discusses the former president's current situation and how Wall Street fits into it:
One remark I agree with from Anthony Scaramucci is the question asked in return to the CNN news anchors in the video above. Mainly, does the former president have numbers that are better than 2016? How about 2020? President Trump is flaming out as a candidate.
Further, if the former president is chosen as the Republican nominee, the party is looking for a reset for 2028. I can definitely be on board with candidate Trump losing in 2024 and a reset for the republican party for 2028.
Photo: New York Times
The events of January 6th, 2021, still haunt those of us who actually care about democracy. No, that day was not a peaceful protest. No, that was not a peaceful march to the Capitol. Yes, Capitol police did endure PTSD, among other life-lasting injuries, to the remaining days of their lives. One Capitol police officer died that day - by suffocation. Other police officers were brutally assaulted with their own weapons. The events of that day were terrible not peaceful.
Question: When was the last time that the reader decided to go and assault police officers outside a courtroom? Or any police officer standing guard outside of a building?
Did those participants forget that bringing weapons into a courthouse is illegal?
In the video below by CNN, a grandmother is facing 5 years in prison starting this week for her participation on January 6th, 2021.
What made me cringe while watching the video above was multifold:
1) She believes that the election was stolen after conviction.
2) She believes that President Trump will pardon her.
3) She believes that, basically, she did nothing wrong.
4) She has been on house arrest the entire time until recently.
I would like to see a follow-up interview with here every 6 months starting now. I think that she might change her tune after a few months to years in jail. Additionally, I wonder what her response will be when Trump cannot pardon her?
The sad day of January 6th, 2021, will be forever tied to the dictator, former President Trump. He has been charged with coordinating the attack indirectly. The court will show us this soon. It is time for the former president to reap the consequences of this giant threat to our democracy.
