But it was a really mavericky party vote he cast followed by some real straight talk.
Anyone for some tire swinging?
Fuck that worthless scumbag.
Oh, and Capito decided to screw her state. As did Heller and Portman.
This post is in: Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush
But it was a really mavericky party vote he cast followed by some real straight talk.
Anyone for some tire swinging?
Fuck that worthless scumbag.
Oh, and Capito decided to screw her state. As did Heller and Portman.
by Betty Cracker| 341 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, General Stupidity
The Senatortoise from Kentucky shamelessly played the McCain card, and The Washington Post says Republicans are close to moving forward on renewing the wealthcare debate:
Senate Republican leaders appeared close to securing the support they needed Tuesday to begin debate on their plan to rewrite the Affordable Care Act, according to lawmakers and aides, though the proposal they would consider could change dramatically once senators begin voting.
Republican leaders now see a scaled-down version of the bill as perhaps their best chance of winning final passage on some kind of measure to overhaul Obamacare. If senators passed this stripped-down version — which some Republicans refer to as “skinny repeal” — they would set up a House-Senate conference to resolve the differences between the two proposals, buying Republicans more time.
The new strategy will allow Republicans to sustain their years-long effort to unwind the 2010 health-care law, though they have yet settle on a replacement for it. But it is also is a tacit acknowledgment that more sweeping efforts to revise or even simply repeal the law cannot succeed, even as Republicans control both Congress and the White House.
They’ll probably pass the motion to begin debate — and hail it as a great victory. Celebrating truly basic shit is what they do now that President Poopy-Star is on the Golden Throne. But as the article above notes, agreeing to debate a face-saving compromise is a far cry from the grandiose promises the pack of lying grifters, including Donald “I’ll Repeal Obamacare on Day One” Trump made to the donor class.
Every day we thwart these greedy, mendacious pricks is a victory — never forget that. Infighting is on the rise, the Purge has begun, and cracks are appearing in the facade. I’m willing to talk to the bored shitheads at Rubio’s office every weekday for the rest of my life to keep that going.
by Alain Chamot (1971-2020)| 44 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
Just a quick update and test. This post will appear and then disappear, and then reappear again. Kind of like the health care travesty in the Senate.
Last night, our hosting company updated a lot of the back-end server stuff and that was why the site was a bit twitchy. It should be fine now.
I’m testing this theory by posting a picture to see if it errors out.
And the errors didn’t happen!
This was on a Reservation, forget which one thanks to Adam, I’ve determined that it’s from my visit to the Taos Pueblo – thanks! I’ve visited a few out West over the years, but never stepped foot into a casino. Should you ever have the chance, visit a Reservation, tour and ask questions, and spend some money in non-casino settings, they can use it.
Open Thread
This post is in: Open Threads
Been busy with real life stuff for the last 48 hours so I haven’t been able to check the news, and the amazing thing is that I have exactly the same amount of information about what the Senate will be voting on today in regards to health care as do the members of the Senate. What a way to run a country!
Drove down from CT with ABC and the kids on Sunday, got in around midnight, and yesterday a colleague came up for a couple day visit with her three kids, so it has been a flurry of energy and activity. We went to the Good Zoo at Oglebay yesterday, and apparently Mondays are as hard on the animals as they are on the adults:
At the zoo. Got a man down in the tortoise cage. pic.twitter.com/Yw5RbXgvgb
— I'm So Over This (@Johngcole) July 24, 2017
After that, there was swimming, then spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread, not one but TWO Men in Black movies, and then brownies and ice cream. I was in bed at 9:45. I don’t know about the kids.
Made some waffles and am now checking up on the news before unstickifying the downstairs and then we are all headed to heaven on earth, aka Barn With Inn for some quality time at the pool and pond and with the animals. We were supposed to go fishing but there has been a lot of flash flooding so I don’t want to take the risk- the creek is high and angry looking and it’s not worth it.
Also, fuck John McCain.
by David Anderson| 25 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
Consumerism and patient directed insurance design is predicated on the assumption that pricing is transparent enough and choices are clear enough that patients can make reasonable decisions about cost effective treatment. There are a number of problems with that assumption, but I want to look at one today regarding the Pathology, Emergency Medicine, Anesthesiology and Radiology specialties.
These PEAR specialties are known as “invisible” providers. Invisible providers are seldom chosen by the patient. Invisible providers were intermittently listed in provider directories when I maintained the provider directory at UPMC. Invisible providers are part of the care team but they may not be employed by the same group that employs the visible providers.
Visible providers are the doctors that a patient can choose. My primary care provider is a visible provider. My wife’s Ob-Gyn is a visible provider. My former orthopedist is a visible provider. My mom’s neurologist is a visible provider. The hospital down the street with an ER is a visible provider. These are the providers where clear in and out of network designations occur.
The New York Times had a great article a study that examined the deliberate business strategy of a PEAR staffing agency to increase the number of out of network ER bills:
the new Yale research, released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found those bills aren’t randomly sprinkled throughout the nation’s hospitals. They come mostly from a select group of E.R. doctors at particular hospitals. At about 15 percent of the hospitals, out-of-network rates were over 80 percent, the study found. Many of the emergency rooms in that fraction of hospitals were run by EmCare.
It is a deliberate business strategy to exploit the rottenness of the PEAR billing arrangements for profitability. Patients don’t know that the hospital is in network and most of the docs who work there are in network but the ER doctors or anethesologists are not.
The thing that leaped out at me was the deliberateness of the business strategy:
n addition to its work in emergency rooms, EmCare has been buying up groups of anesthesiologists and radiologists.
This is an exploit of the inability of people to make informed decisions in order to jack up rates.
What is a solution?
There are two common solutions. The first is to have states adapt out of network pricing limitations and dispute resolution systems. If out of network charges are capped at a multiplier of Medicare or a multiplier of usual and customary, the incentive to exploit a crack like this goes down dramatically. The other solution is to adapt a general contractor model for all emergency room services where the hospitals’ contractual obligations cover all service providers working under that roof. If someone presents to the emergency room with a broken arm, anyone who treats that patient, under this model, is assumed to be in-network if the hospital is in network.
As we move to a shopping model of health care, we need to get rid of the amazingly and glaringly obvious exploits and hacks to the system that do nothing for patient care but add significant expense and frustration.
by David Anderson| 65 Comments
This post is in: Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
And that is call the Senate.
I don’t know if it will help beyond not not doing nothing.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Excellent Links, Open Threads, Trump Crime Cartel
Oh, how I would love to see Catherine Rampell’s Washington Post suggestion in action! “Jared Kushner ‘forgets’ to disclose his assets? Seize them.:
… For the 39th time, top presidential adviser (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner has revised his financial disclosure forms. Kushner disclosed 77 additional assets, collectively worth millions of dollars. These items were “inadvertently omitted” from previous versions of his federal forms, according to a document the White House released Friday…
Maybe Kushner really did forget all those assets, including a stake in a start-up valued at $5 million to $25 million. Just as maybe he really did accidentally submit a security-clearance form that left off more than 100 contacts with foreign nationals…
It’s true that willfully omitting an asset on one’s federal financial disclosure form comes with the risk of criminal action. But how motivating can a threat of prison possibly be if Kushner knows he can just go back and add anything that the press happens to dig up?
That’s exactly why we need the banana republic rule (named for the lawless state, not the store).
Above a certain value — let’s say $1 million — any assets that are “forgotten” on federal disclosures can be seized by Uncle Sam. If they weren’t memorable enough for these forms, then clearly you’re rich enough that you don’t really need them.
Treasury gets to take them, without compensating you.
“That’s socialism!” you might protest. But really, it’s not so different from another policy that the definitely-not-socialist Trump administration already backs enthusiastically: civil asset forfeiture.
This is when law enforcement seizes private property without proving the owner is guilty of a crime, often without even charging the owner with a crime. Just last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced he was restarting a federal forfeiture program the Obama administration had shut down.
“Civil asset forfeiture takes the material support of the criminals and instead makes it the material support of law enforcement,” Sessions explained, even though the stuff being seized is not necessarily providing “material support” for any crime or any criminal.
With such tenuous logic, why shouldn’t Sessions support appropriating possibly-innocent-but-still-kinda-suspicious financial disclosure omissions, too?…
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Apart from (gleefully) imagining a more just world, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Banana RepublicansPost + Comments (119)