Watch the official trailer for #Harriet, the true story of Harriet Tubman: https://t.co/3zDvSIIW1t pic.twitter.com/bDYQ6vD983
— IMDb (@IMDb) July 23, 2019
Gonna watch this trailer again, maybe three or four times, and then go to bed. By the time I get up, it’ll all be over but the (endless) grousing…
NEW: Mueller notches a pre-testimony courtroom victory as a jury convicts Trump transition adviser and Michael Flynn ex-business partner Bijan Rafiekian on foreign-agent charges after just 4 hours of deliberations. Case was an outrgrowth of Mueller probe https://t.co/x8FY80fAOy
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) July 23, 2019
Cannot stress this enough, as we await Mueller's testimony, Nader may have never been caught absent the scrutiny of the Russia probe. The secondary corruption and crimes uncovered by the investigation are insane in both nature and volume. https://t.co/deFcKwQwL0
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) July 23, 2019
Adam Schiff today: “People are pretty dug in on not just Trump and Russia, but they’re just dug in on this president. If that appalling display of racism over the last two weeks wasn’t enough to move people is there anything that Bob Mueller can say that will? “
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 23, 2019
For those of you hoping for an early look at what former special counsel Robert Mueller plans to say tomorrow, no such luck: His spox says they won't be sending out his opening remarks tonight, and they aren't giving anything to Congress either
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) July 23, 2019
Fact that Jim Jordan & Mark Meadows are so confident they’re going to trip up Mueller has me feeling cautiously optimistic about tomorrow.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) July 23, 2019
I literally will be fine with it if he just reads from the report.
For every person who's actually read every A Song of Ice & Fire book there's a thousand who've binged Game of Thrones. https://t.co/Q57y9OvHFA
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) July 24, 2019
you can say that 10 times or 10 million, it won’t change the fact that those were not Bob Mueller’s conclusions https://t.co/elBaOcsID2
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) July 23, 2019
— Patricia (@Lola_Pat) July 24, 2019
The GOP's quantum theory of Mueller: he simultaneously fully exonerates Trump yet is running an elaborately biased campaign against him that must be stopped https://t.co/lUDlRnuopX
— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) July 24, 2019
Uh oh. Grandpa Ranty is in the cooking sherry AGAIN. https://t.co/RwevHEYOUS
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) July 24, 2019
I think one underrated feature of #MuellerHearing is the ferocity with which Republicans on the committees will step on their own dicks.
— Tommy X-TrumpIsARacist-opher (@tommyxtopher) July 24, 2019
On the Road and In Your Backyard
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ? ??
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
OzarkHillbilly
I doubt he’ll say much if anything beyond it. Any entertainment from what I expect will be mostly a non-event will come from
Baud
Agreed. This is trench warfare, not shock and awe.
NotMax
Shan’t regale you with the stupendous string of SNAFUs which resulted in it taking 18 hours to travel from my house to Mom’s, except for one baut.
Ended up with one replacement boarding pass which read I was flying on a plane from Bozeman, Montana to Newark, New Jersey, dated the day before I was actually flying. Yup, had to land in Newark instead of LaGuardia, then lug bags on the train to Manhattan and from there the LIRR to her town.
Kay
Medicare for All Who Want It is WILDLY popular. If they let employers cover the payroll deduction for employees the employer could still offer health insurance and not have to worry about it AT ALL. That’s pretty easy!
NotMax
That leg of the flight, BTW, was on a small Airbus A-319, from Chicago to Newark. My record of never having been to Bozeman remains intact.
:)
Baud
@Kay:
Language of choice is always powerful, even when it’s the wrong thing to do. Republicans always go to that when they try to privatize social security.
I wish Kamala had staked out some middle ground. I don’t think Warren could have.
Baud
@NotMax:
That’s what you get for living in an exotic state.
Patricia Kayden
Dang, that movie looks so good!! Can’t wait to watch it. I hope it revives the movement to put Ms. Tubman on our currency.
I grew up with Cecile Tyson as Tubman but this film looks like it’s going to be a hit.
OzarkHillbilly
Cesar Sayoc’s defense attorneys:
Kay
@Baud:
Oh, I think Harris and Warren both could have. I was disappointed Warren signed onto Bernie’s plan. Her whole reason for being is “I can explain things”
It was dumb of Bernie to add the language about private insurance. He took a really popular idea and made it unpopular. He took it from 70% to 40% in one fell swoop. It’s insane. They can say whatever they want. He managed to make Medicare- something everyone loves- into a mechanism to take something away. This was a blunder- if not at the outset then in the result. I wonder if it was pure ideology or if they were afraid the new Medicare entrants would be older and sicker so they wanted to ensure younger and healthier entrants.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
It would be nice if he read what was behind those black bars, however.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
He read Balloon Juice?
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: Pretty sure he can only do that in a closed hearing.
Baud
@Kay:
A lot of his people just hate insurance companies. That’s what Kill The Bill was about.
Kay
As a person who follows news about Jim Jordan I am here to tell you he’s not smart. Not a smart man. I don’t think the Mueller testimony will be riveting- I would bet my house he’ll stick to the report- but I feel confident Jim Jordan won’t be coming up with anything brilliant either.
I’m one who thinks the testimony is worthwhile no matter if it’s new. People should have to appear when they’re called and they should have to follow the rules. I think this was generally understood prior to Trump (Clinton’s 50 hours of testimony, or whatever that was) and I would like to go back to having everyone follow the same rules. Mueller was a public servant in this role. He has to appear. He knows this, so is appearing.
debbie
@Kay:
If Gym does contribute anything, it will be Bernie-style yelling about nothing.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: You never know where RW terrorists will get their inspiration.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s funny (well, not funny- it’s tragic) but we might be seeing the edges of the Overton Window. Where you can take a popular liberal policy- Medicare- and lard it up with so much ideological garbage you then push it all the way to unpopular. It’s really quite an achievement. “Medicare” was bullet-proof popular for decades until Bernie’s crack team managed to sink it 30 points. That took real effort. They somehow managed to put Medicare into a scarcity frame and threaten people with losing something they have.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I think most people hate insurance companies. Unless they work for one, in which case they really really hate insurance companies.
Kay
@debbie:
He will say Clinton wasn’t prosecuted or that some of the people who used to work for various government agencies were friends or romantically involved. That’s what he says. It’s not a plan. He just really doesn’t understand what happened- what this was about. Who did what. Why. That sort of thing. I’m not sure preparation would help. This is just beyond his skill set. His skill set is pretty much limited to not wearing a jacket to show us how fit he is. His defense on the wrestling scandal is “I don’t know anything about what was happening around me, even after people told me” which is his case people found credible.
germy
I’m just curious how Mueller will react when Gym Jordan and Gohmert et al. start hurling verbal abuse at him. I can’t imagine him losing his temper.
germy
@OzarkHillbilly: Everyone loves their insurance company until they have to deal in any way with their insurance company.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: He’s dumber than a sack of hammers. At least the hammers hit the nail on the head from time to time.
germy
rikyrah
@Kay:
But, is Biden selling what the tweet says he is? I have only read about his attacks on MFA
guachi
@Kay: As I recall, Buttigieg also supports Medicare Buy In. I’m down with it, too, as I think it’s far easier to implement and pass. If companies can buy in to Medicare it should be largely transparent to the employees.
germy
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
They’re terrible. People don’t want to sue insurance companies. It’s a pain in the ass and people have enough misery on their plates and would be happy to skip that. But companies won’t pay claims, so people have to threaten to sue them. And it is “threaten” mostly. They’ll eventually pay a valid claim and no one gets to court. So why put people thru this? Because they’re terrible and not paying claims is part of the business model. They hope you go away. A lot of people DO go away.
rikyrah
@Kay:
LOL
He is not a smart man ????
Baud
@Kay:
The Overton Window reminds me of the window Putin pushes his critics through. It will kill us all.
Kay
@rikyrah:
He has a public option but I haven’t seen the specifics, so you may be right.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Media and social media lie.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
Nobody wants to tell me where those who work for insurance companies will go. Those are real people with real jobs.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: I hate my insurance company every time I cut them a check, I hate them even more when they don’t cover what they are supposed to cover and I have to get a lawyer to get them to do what they were supposed to do to begin with. And if they DO do what they are supposed to, they chisel the amount and I have to make up the difference because, as the lawyer tells me, “It’ll be cheaper to just pay it.” which doesn’t do much for my opinion of lawyers either. ;-)
germy
She works with special education kids. I feel so sorry for those kids, and their parents.
germy
@OzarkHillbilly: This is why I’m suspicious of pundits who assert Democrats are “shooting themselves in their foot” by attacking private insurance, something that “most Americans” absolutely love.
debbie
@Kay:
Right. He only knows to yell and be angry. Like the ineffective bully he is.
Elizabelle
Mueller Time. Have been waiting for this day. Good morning, jackals.
@Kay:
Despite all appearances to the contrary, hmmm?
Kay
@Baud:
Well, Baud, love them or hate they are part of our base so I just accept that. To me they’re as much a part of our base as the 10% or of Democrats who are to the Right of most Democrats and I see and hear from them a lot, where I live. They love guns or they hate abortion or they love police or they say “political correctness” unironically when they’re whining about people objecting to them saying awful things- I hear all these complaints. From the Right of the Party.
But this was a blunder. To take the “Medicare brand” and make it less popular cannot have been anyone’s goal. That Warren and then Harris willingly adopted the blunder is mind-blowing. A mistake.
germy
@rikyrah: I’ve been working for 35 years. Many of my jobs disappeared, became obsolete. I retrained.
I’m sure those good folks in insurance companies can transfer their skills to other professions. Maybe they can even get good jobs administering Medicare and Medicaid, as long as they throw away their “DENIED” rubber stamps.
We have no trouble telling coal industry employees to retrain, but we’re supposed to subsidize insurance co. employees?
HeartlandLiberal
After watching the “Harriet” trailer, I have concluded that Trump is already probably eagerly asking for a screening in the White House. What do the rest of you think?
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I had an accident with an uninsured driver. I filed a claim. They said I wasn’t covered. I looked at my insurance card. It said right there on the face of it: “Uninsured Motorist”. A year later they paid out triple the claim they would have if they had just covered it to begin with because as the lawyer told me from the start,
“The way it works is I get a third, the doctor gets a third, and you get a third. It’s their game and that’s their rule, so go the doctor, early and often. Here’s his #.”
rikyrah
Re Biden:
jen (@jennieeez) Tweeted:
Maybe just apologize for the Crime Bill first, dude. Until he recognizes that failure, all of this comes across as desperate pandering as he tries to hold onto his lead with black voters. https://t.co/QLiHqyx6e2 https://twitter.com/jennieeez/status/1153610474023477248?s=17
Elizabelle
I have the theme from “High Noon” in my head this morning.
If they made this movie with an eternal cast, Jimmy Stewart would play Robert Mueller. For Trump, I am just not awake enough to cast any better than thinking of Tony Curtis (older, heavy Tony Curtis, mind you), looking frowsy.
Baud
@Kay:
Right, but we hate those guys. I’m just being consistent.
I think the big difference between the left and right flanks is that the left make more noise about running away when they don’t get what they want. The right flank just does it quietly.
Kay
@Baud:
They’re not online so you don’t hear from them as much but like there’s a Left of the Party there is a Right of the Party and they can be just as awful. I was sitting at a D meeting a coupla months ago and a hand raises and this seemingly nice man says “can we get a MAN this time?” Incredibly whiny. “This time”. Unfuckingbelievable. I didn’t shun him so I’m not shunning the Left of the Party either. It’s a coalition. We’re stuck with one another. We hang separately or together. The goal could be not to hang at all. A win/win.
germy
@Elizabelle: Apocalypse Now era Marlon Brando can play trump.
Kay
@Baud:
THanks. That’s what I meant :)
germy
@Kay: Republicans and Right Of The Party Democrats are why we can’t have nice things.
Elizabelle
Glad to see this headline and blurb on the WaPost website “front page”:
Juicers could have written that story. The other story we could have written (posting this again, just in event link is helpful for sharing):
The psychological phenomenon that blinds Trump supporters to his racism
People sometimes do mental gymnastics to preserve their preferred view of reality.
Yes, the two words are “cognitive dissonance.”
Elizabelle
@germy: Brando for the win. No doubt.
Bunch of character actors for all the weasels Trump surrounds himself with.
low-tech cyclist
My only hope is that it will get more House Democrats on board with beginning an impeachment inquiry. As of last night, 92 House Dems had come out in favor of an inquiry. If another three or four dozen jumped on board over the next few days, Pelosi might actually have to do something. If a good deal more than half her caucus supports an inquiry, it’ll be hard for her to pretend it’s just ‘the squad’ and a few other firebrands.
Baud
@Kay:
We still depend on too many people who prefer to be hanged rather than support a less than perfect candidate.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I have seen pleading, carefully written letters to insurance companies written by people who don’t want to sue them. Ignored. This idea that regular people want to sue huge companies is nonsense. It’s horrible and they would rather not do it. That isn’t part of your ordinary claims process- threatening to sue them. That wasn’t the deal. They can’t add this whole other layer of misery outside the contract.
Another Scott
@Kay: Wlmer’s all about showing he’s Pure while everyone against him is Corrupt™ and a tool of
Millionaires andBillionaires. His 2016 economic plan depended on wildly implausible growth and productivity numbers, etc., that were in the realm of “because I say so” rather than history or plausibility.Wilmer’s all about the brand and the narrative. Not reality.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Baud:
It feels bad to me right now. Like it’s cracking. It’s a fragile coalition under the best circumstances and this is unprecedented stress. Trump tests the seams. I don’t know if they’ll hold. We really could blow this. I hope it smooths out. Sometimes it does. I don’t feel like I can affect it any real way so I’m trying not to fret about it. We’ve had so many institutions fail. It makes it that much more important that the opposition Party holds. I picture it as a series of safety nets we have fallen thru. There’s precious few left.
low-tech cyclist
@Elizabelle:
What it really needs to say upfront is that the GOP has a 40-year record of only caring about deficits when Democrats are in power, and cheerfully passes deficit-busting tax cuts (Reagan, 1981; Bush, 2001 and 2003; Trump/Mitch, 2017) when they’re in power.
MomSense
@Baud:
Actually those people are ok with other people getting hanged so they don’t have to support a less than perfect candidate.
Baud
@Kay:
Failure is always possible. Too many factions believe that they are entitled to be king of the post-Trump hill. The economy is still pretty good, and most Dems aren’t having their children kidnapped, so why should anyone settle?
Amir Khalid
@germy:
Brando doesn’t look stupid enough to pass for Donald Trump.
rikyrah
David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) Tweeted:
BREAKING: @ElNuevoDia is reporting that the resignation of Puerto Rico’s Governor is imminent – CBS News has not confirmed this. The newspaper reports that the Governor has already taped a farewell message, & that he’ll be replaced by the Justice Secretary Wanda Vasquez https://twitter.com/DavidBegnaud/status/1153859677505163266?s=17
Another Scott
@Amir Khalid: I think Alec Baldwin would work better as Donnie than Brando, myself. He was a soap opera actor – he can play stupid very, very well.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@MomSense:
Yes. Absolutely.
Immanentize
@Elizabelle:
Trump played by Jackie Gleason
Another Scott
16 minutes until MuellerTime. YouTube live feed – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g58MjV528Ws
[eta] Hmm… YouTube link.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sab
@Kay: What irks me is what Bernie described as medicare for all doesn’t even remotely resemble actual Medicare. I am on old fashioned Medicare. My husband is on a Medicare Advantage plan. We both have to pay insurance premiums to Medicare. We both have to pay copays. I also chose to get a supplemental plan from an actual insurance company. I have to pay extra for things not covered.
Bernie was describing something sort of like UK or Canadian single payer, and then he stuck the Medicare label on it, and absolutely nobody challenged him.
Another Scott
@Immanentize: “To the Moon, Hillary!!11”
hehe.
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
@Kay:
I don’t think Harris is solid on Bernie’s version. We know she signed on to the bill, etc. But I don’t think she is stuck in stone in the public’s eye yet. She may get “flip flipped” but so will Every. Dem. Candidate.
And I think Warren is smart enough to bring back half of the 30% Bernie lost with Ozark’s arguments (and others). We will see….
Dorothy A. Winsor
Is Marlon Brando still alive? I did not know that.
Jordan and Meadows make fools of themselves because they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid and believe their own nonsense.
Elizabelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor: No. Brando is quite dead. It’s eternal cinema.
Not today, where every other character is played by Emma Stone or Scarlett Johansen, etc.
SiubhanDuinne
Brando is dead.
Curtis is dead.
Gleason is dead.
Baldwin it is.
Kay
@Immanentize:
Oh, I agree. And let’s face it- Biden’s plan is as pipedream as Bernie’s without the senate. Even then. There’s an effective veto caucus of Right-leaning Dems in the senate.
But I think tying Medicare to something unpopular – something unpopular that was guaranteed to be the singular focus of media – was very dumb and there’s no honest way to spin that otherwise. Bernie shoulda quit while he was ahead. He got stupid. He wouldn’t take 70% so he got 40%. There’s no excuse for that.
MomSense
@Sab:
He could have called it Medicaid for all but that implies icky poor people insurance.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Thank you for pointing out that the right flank of the Democratic Party is just as troublesome as the left. I suspect they’re more responsible for Trump than the left, which gets 90% of the blame (on this blog, at least).
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
And we all know you can’t fix stupid.
Kay
@Immanentize:
I think a lot of Bernie’s problems come down to hiring bad people and I think he hires bad people because he’s the worst kind of self-conscious Lefty who processes everything thru a purity filter. He’s not brave enough to be president. I thought his attacks on Clinton were cowardly and his inability to manage his people is also cowardly. He’s not strong at all. He’s weak so he hires loudmouths because he thinks that’s strength.
Immanentize
@low-tech cyclist:
Pelosi needs 217 votes for impeachment in the House. Not 92. 217 is 125 more than 92. Math is hard, but it does provide clarity.
Just One More Canuck
@NotMax: so you were never a Bozo?
opiejeanne
@HeartlandLiberal: Are you usually this funny so early in the morning?
Immanentize
@Kay: He is an awful manager! He can’t even manage his own campaign team. And he wants to run the country? Who is going to be his Secretary of State? Matt Stoller? And what about Homeland Security? Zephyr Teachout?
ETA I don’t think Teachout is all that bad, just not experienced. And I love to see her name. Almost as much as “Reality Winner.”
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
In some ways they’re more annoying than the Left because they assume they’re The Standard Voter. Which is arrogant. At least Lefties are like “we’re the vanguard!” Righties believe they’re entitled to run everything.
Immanentize
@Another Scott:
It is really funny (pathetic) that Sanders is now reduced to saying, “I am the only one who says, ‘revolution!’; Me! The only one.”
OzarkHillbilly
ANd right on time for this thread: Health Insurers Make It Easy for Scammers to Steal Millions. Who Pays? You.
I’m only surprised my ex never tried this scam.
Elizabelle
@Immanentize: Well. Him and whoever is marketing that pharmaceutical for cats. (They have something called “Revolution” that sounds a little hard to live up to.)
Happy post-birthday morning. All the best to Immp.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
That may depend on how you classify the proverbial white working class Bernie voter.
I am less certain than you about who is more responsible for 2016. But if the left doesn’t want the blame, they shouldn’t have been so vocal about what they were doing in 2016.
Dog Mom
Anticipated, but not expecting more than we know to come out. Hoping it makes some waves with a larger audience.
As for me, I have to turn off the TV, close this tab and prep for an interview for a much needed and desired job. If you need a breather around 11:30 EST, please clear your head and send some positive energy/prayers/goodness for my success.
I hope that those of you that are able to watch, please take breaks if needed to keep your blood pressure down and your psyche safe.
satby
Good morning everyone!
@Dog Mom: all the best luck!
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly:
That you know about….
rikyrah
@low-tech cyclist:
Reagan took the deficit from 70 billion to 175 billion.
Bush 41 took it to 300 billion.
Clinton got it to zero.
Bush 43 took it from 0 to 1.2 trillion.
Obama halved it to 600 billion.
Trump’s got it back to a trillion.
Morons: “Democrats cause deficits.”
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 23, 2019
Immanentize
@Dog Mom:
Good luck, Dog Mom.
And thank you for all your kind words and helpful insights. You are great.
Go slay ’em.
OzarkHillbilly
@OzarkHillbilly: And it gets better:
Or worse, depending on how you look at it.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I expressed no certainty at all. But the data suggests that a much higher percentage of Bernie voters fell in line in 2016 than Clinton voters did for Obama in 2008. Overall Democratic voter turnout dropped, and it seems like that was as much of a killer if not more so than relatively small numbers of pouty Jill Stein protest voters.
Some of that turnout drop was due to suppression efforts for sure, but I suspect misogyny and racism among Democrats played just as large if not a larger role. Maybe it’s a function of where I live, but I run into a lot more whiny conservadems of the type Kay describes at #41 than the lefty troublemakers who are the popular punching bags at this blog.
And for all their faults and grandstanding, at least the lefties are trying to move us in a direction I want to go. The conservadems want BLM to shut up and women to know their place. They’re more tenuous allies than the loudmouthed Berniac who bothers to attend county-level party meetings, at least in my experience.
rikyrah
@Kay:
But, he got to be pure, Kay…which is all that matters.
rikyrah
@Dog Mom:
Sending you positive thoughts :)
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: I watched her for years, reported a couple of her frauds. I know plenty. I also know that she “got away” with those frauds. I also know what she didn’t get away with. You see, I know Casenet. ;-)
Amir Khalid
@Immanentize:
When I finally get down to writing my worldwide bestselling novel, I have decided that the main female charcter shall not be named Klara Belkau.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker:
I have long felt that the GOP’s anti Hillary campaign was a lot more effective than DEMs want to admit. It played heavily on misogyny starting at a time when misogyny was just the way things were. So those negative feelings found a nice warm space to nestle into it that people didn’t even know was there. How many times did you hear, “I just don’t like her.” without any explanation as to why?
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: Hillary Clinton was the subject of a multi-decade defamation of character project, and I agree it bore fruit on our side as well as among Republicans and independents, so that’s one factor. Also, I can’t tell you how many times I heard (mostly) fellow white folks who aren’t Republicans and should theoretically know better complain about football players “disrespecting” the flag, express dismay that Democrats were making the election “all about bathrooms,” and whine about “political correctness.” It was definitely a thing. I don’t know that there’s much we can do about it either, aside from push back against nonsense when it comes up within earshot.
Immanentize
@Amir Khalid: @Amir Khalid:
Im Belkau alles klar
Chris Johnson
@germy: Come sit by me.
joel hanes
@Baud:
A lot of his people just hate insurance companies
To be scrupulously fair: who doesn’t?
Many of the Mayhew posts about the logic and machinery of for-profit health insurance turn my moral stomach. I guess I’m just not hardened enough to be an actuary.
joel hanes
@germy:
I’m suspicious of pundits who assert Democrats are “shooting themselves in their foot” by attacking private insurance, something that “most Americans” absolutely love.
Americans with good employer-provided insurance used to get it “for free”, and even now, when a substantial fraction of the cost is visibly deducted from their paychecks, regard it as a major part of their compensation.
It’s that “for free” part that Americans love and are afraid of “losing”.
And, given that Republicans will be involved somehow in whatever legislation ensues, their fears have some foundation.
tokyokie
@Amir Khalid:
I think John Candy could have nailed the stupid part better than Brando. My first thought was Zero Mostel, my second Sidney Greenstreet, but neither of them could do the stupid as well as Candy, who even had the same color hair.
Chris Johnson
@joel hanes: In fairness you can blame late stage capitalism for these sins.
If you had a sort of GI insurance arrangement where they took money and paid claims and worked in their actuarial way, there would be nothing to hate. It’d even work (though you could do the same just by collecting taxes and doing stuff with the money)
But this is 2019 capitalism and those insurance companies have to be a profit center. More, they have to compete against each other and against industries like banking and real estate to be THE BIGGEST profit center, and all their employees have to compete against each other to fulfil the needs of the competing insurance company better. It might not be quite on a Sears Corporation level, but that’s how things are done today.
So, in order to become a bulwark of the economy and be too big to fail, the insurance industry has to turn evil as hell, lest it be eclipsed by other industries that have a head start on their evil. In the absence of civilization, evil beats amoral.
Ruckus
@Kay:
It’s that same business model that hospitals and docs use for their bills. They don’t expect to get paid for a lot of it but if they charge $3500 for 15 minutes of their time that means their hourly rate to cover the costs and a reasonable profit is $14,000. Which is of course bullshit. But they know that most people wouldn’t have the maybe $500 they should charge so they charge the extra $3000 for write off. At the end of the year they can show they are losing money and pay no or very little tax. If you had insurance the insurance company would never get a bill for $3500. Maybe $500 or $750 which would be negotiated down. If this was a valid process you wouldn’t get a doctors bill for $1, or bills from 4 or 5 docs for reading an x-ray. But that’s what happens, well other than the lawyers hounding you for 6-12 months after which it all mysteriously just ends as they take the tax write off.
The over billing is a tax process.
StringOnAStick
@joel hanes: “Good” health insurance is becoming increasingly rare as companies cut expenses. The insurance I get through my husband provided me with two knee replacement this year at the top notch practice that is also the U.S. Olympic medical center for orthopedics. I expect that thanks to me this provider will be dropped at the next contract negotiations.
My sister is a state employee in NV. As part of the previously solid R legislature her salary has been reduced, furloughs required, and now $500/month comes out of her salary to pay her share for health insurance, it used to be less than $100 for her contribution. It used to be a good job; the pension was a lure but the same set of R’s have changed the rules retroactively so that there is no way to ever get more than 67% of what you were originally promised. At just 5 years from retirement, she has to stay because leaving before you are fully vested means you get nearly nothing. She handles EEOC cases and has never lost one, but you know how gubmint employees are just useless takers. How her job has become so parsimonious in an area with skyrocketing housing costs irritates the shit out of me and the fact that our RW father can’t put these facts together is just the cherry on top. Thanks, Fox news!
Sab
@Ruckus: Doctors work on cash not accrual basis. They only report income they actually collect, and they only report expenses they actually pay. So overbilling has no tax impact. Agree with you otherwise on impact on negotiations on collections from patients and insurance companies.
Ruckus
@Sab:
Sorry, a lot of docs do business as LLC’s or work for corps and don’t work on a cash basis. And why would they? What’s the advantage for them?
Original Lee
@OzarkHillbilly: I recently found out a friend had her health insurance number stolen by someone who used it to get $48K of plastic surgery(!). Sallie Mae told her that she wasn’t eligible to co-sign her kid’s loan this year because of that.