Healthcare Deform

Politics
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Back in December I talked about me screwing up my taxes and being denied a subsidy.

I appealed it and was denied, my final chance was an actual hearing in front of an actual official.

They scheduled the hearing. Once the hearing was scheduled someone contacted me and informed me I could get a temporary subsidy while the process played out but I had to agree to pay it back if my appeal failed.

I had the hearing a couple weeks ago, after the hearing someone contacted me at the request of the person who ran the hearing to answer more questions. Then we waited.

The hearing required affidavits and swearing under oath, very formal stuff.

A few days ago I got the decision, I got the subsidy retro active to January 1st and I was eligible for cost sharing with my deductible and maximum out of pocket.

I tell that story because it was totally my fault and talked to no less then 10 different people over the last 2 months.

Every single one of them was kind, empathetic, compassionate, and never made me feel bad.

I also told every one of them how kind they were and made me feel at ease.

An extremely stressful 2 months trying to figure out what to do if we lost health insurance was made easier by those kind people.

I like to think that the majority of our country is like them and not like the monsters making all the decisions right now.

Our health care still sucks in this country but the ACA people hired to help us wade through the system are awesome.

I hope they stay away from those people but I did read the orange guy was looking at shortening the open enrollment period because that would make it easier for people to get insurance, you know, giving them less time to figure out life changing decision for health care.

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Funny, I have had a very similar experience. I managed to have two separate problems with both State and Federal tax issues - one my fault, one theirs. And while it took a long time and was sometimes frustrating, both were characterized by kind and genuinely helpful people, and both were eventually resolved in my favor.

What the MAGA idiots fail to realize is that this is what will go missing if they destroy government agencies - the labyrinthine laws and difficult systems will remain but without the experienced, kind people there to help us navigate it.

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Can confirm.

My daughters are under strict orders to never trust what the insurance company says, but to always go through the ACA Marketplace. Our situation wasn’t as harrowing as yours, but with two seriously disabled people in the family it was scary enough. The Marketplace CSRs are professional, knowledgeable, and kind. Such support.

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Kennedy has made various statements against vaccines generally, as well as mRNA vaccines specifically. He falsely claimed the vaccine causes severe harms, including causing neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s. In 2021, during the height of the pandemic, Kennedy petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the authorization of COVID-19 vaccines and refrain from approving any future COVID-19 vaccines. A study in 2022, meanwhile, estimated that the vaccines had saved more than 3 million lives and prevented more than 18 million hospitalizations.

He believes this bullshit, and that is that. No facts needed.

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It’s the most visible sign of AI’s inroads into health care, where hundreds of hospitals are using increasingly sophisticated computer programs to monitor patients’ vital signs, flag emergency situations and trigger step-by-step action plans for care — jobs that were all previously handled by nurses and other health professionals.

Well, it was a nice gig while it lasted. I’m close enough to retirement that this won’t directly affect me, but I really do not like where I see our profession going. AI teledoc visits are just around the corner, and I do not want to be part of that.

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As a patient, I do not want to be part of that.

[Rant] There are certain things I’d do if I had access to time travel, but near the top of the list is to eliminate the person who first decided to call what we have now “AI.” It’s not. But as soon as the first person did that, instead of mocking that person, everybody decided they needed to call their shitty code “AI” too. NO CURRENT TECHNOLOGY IS AI!!![/Rant]

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The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) told ABC News that the patient underwent an organ transplant at an Ohio hospital in December 2024.
The resident died in January 2025 and “a public health investigation determined they contracted rabies through the transplanted organ,” MDHHS said.

I have questions! How the hell did they get a rabid organ donor?!? I guess rabies is not one of the things screened for, and I understand why, but holy shit! They are not releasing any more info on either donor or recipient, but I am left with the picture of some person dying of rabies and family donating organs. And, just, wow…

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Yeah, that’s bizarre. I could see where a sub clinical case of rabies would explode in an organ recipient, due to all the immune suppressors they pump into them to prevent organ rejection, but the odds are staggeringly small given the rarity of rabies.

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I never heard of this before, or the name at least, but seeing it spelled out like that makes some sense.

And yeah this I guess will further people leaning on ai.

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I don’t understand.

I had to stop early due to parallax painimation, but I don’t expect it to address my confusion in what’s left.

Let’s begin by assuming more-or-less rational markets.

As the cost to produce each widget decreases, and eventually prices fall too. And people move from using widgets where they’re the only tool for the job, to where they’re good tools, to where they’re increasingly bad tools, to where they’re worse than useless.

Okay, if we get there, we’re dealing with not-so-rational markets. cough bullshit machines /cough.

And the marginal use-value of a widget where it’s the only tool for the job is great, and where it’s worse than useless it’s not so great.

And the marginal use-value of the labor involved increases as the labor required per widget declines, and decreases as the marginal use-value of the widget declines. It’s not going to exponentially increase.

And in any case, in the long run, the pay depends on how powerful the workers are, not on how profitable the bosses are.

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As someone who’s sat in on deep finance discussions within Fortune 500 companies and angel investment fund discussions of startups, this NAILS it. How much the company pays its employees has zero correlation to the value of the product. The difference between the lowest payroll they can get away with plus the material and sales costs of the product equals the profit, and that is earmarked for investors - which includes high level executives.

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Feds drop bomb on Multiplan in legal war over healthcare ‘price-fixing’ algorithms

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I have to wonder if this will survive the new DoJ leadership. Or if they are waiting for the “big players” to make a “significant donation” to the Republican Fascist cause?

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Everything old is new again.

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FTA:

"Courts have recognized that sharing information through an algorithm provider can create the same anticompetitive effects as a direct exchange between competitors.

Does anyone know how much competitors exchange data directly? It seems to me they can do it easily through secure computer communications. Or meeting privately at industry meetings.

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It can be a bit of a prisoners’ dilemma when it is direct. A competitor can use the same information that allows collusion as a competitive advantage instead. They could be recording everything to report the illegal collusion.

The advantage of an aggregator algorithm is that it insulates participants from those direct competitive threats.

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Good points. Thnx!

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Good luck with that. He’s not the first to take on Oliver (and will definitely lose) and he’s not going to be the last.

ETA: And reading up on the details, yeah, the context doesn’t change the shittiness (pun intended) of this bean-counter-masquerading-as-a-doctor’s statements. If anything, it makes them worse. He’s totally going to lose.

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