I used to work for an insurance company , and just after they changed the medial plan to something horrible, my daughter needed to be hospitalized.
80% in network coverage is bullshit. Did something happen? Did we lose a war?
I am on a much better plan (and with a better company) now.
I suspect that many of the insurance CEOs had tie ins with the housing industry and their license to print money was revoked, and so their business model failed. And now they have to drastically cut costs and benefits while ramping up premiums to cover the difference.
Basically HMOs are fucking whack, and a government agency without this bacon fat would likely have less overhead than them. Which is a really retarded thing to say about our government being better than a private industry.
I wish I had some of the coverage Medicare/Medicaid has.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
On a somewhat on-topic note, have people heard about the clever editorial cartoon in NY Post today? And by clever I mean how the fuck could anyone possibly think that was okay in any way?
That's honestly one of the most racist political cartoons I've ever seen and that includes Civil War era cartoons
I don't think it's good to jump to the conclusion that it's racist. I think whether or not something is "racist" depends on its intent. As others have pointed out, it's not clear that Obama is being compared to the chimp, and even if he was, Bush was also often compared to a chimp. There's nothing inherently racist with comparing someone to a chimpanzee and I yearn for the day when we've moved sufficiently past the days where idiots thought blacks were "less evolved" than whites and "more like monkeys" such that we can make such jokes without having to worry about walking on eggshells.
Unlike, for example, the obviously racist e-mail forwards by that GOP Florida woman, the "joke" in the comic is funny without being racist; the racism in the cartoon is incidental and in the eye of the beholder.
More importantly, though, chimpanzees are not monkeys. They are apes. Monkeys have tails!
On a somewhat on-topic note, have people heard about the clever editorial cartoon in NY Post today? And by clever I mean how the fuck could anyone possibly think that was okay in any way?
That's honestly one of the most racist political cartoons I've ever seen and that includes Civil War era cartoons
dot dot dot
If the intention was honestly chimp = black man hur, then yes, it is very racist.
I think it very unlikely that was the intention.
We may disagree.
Though we probably shouldn't do it in here, since it's not really stimulus-related.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Basically HMOs are fucking whack, and a government agency without this bacon fat would likely have less overhead than them. Which is a really retarded thing to say about our government being better than a private industry.
I wish I had some of the coverage Medicare/Medicaid has.
Always. Living without insurance is like playing Russian Roulette every day.
Something like that. Though if you're young and healthy, the gun has about 10,000 chambers.
Man, I think this but then we had a friend who came down with leukemia at like 22.
A friend who was previously young and healthy.
Luckily, he had insurance through college, and they bent over backwards to work with him to reduce his costs (like doing every lab that was physically possible at the student clinic, rather than the hospital, to reduce copays).
On a somewhat on-topic note, have people heard about the clever editorial cartoon in NY Post today? And by clever I mean how the fuck could anyone possibly think that was okay in any way?
That's honestly one of the most racist political cartoons I've ever seen and that includes Civil War era cartoons
Well, maybe they meant to refer to Congress as monkeys.
...
Who am I kidding. It's the Post. Good show, gentlemen...good show.
Though we probably shouldn't do it in here, since it's not really stimulus-related.
But the chimp wrote the stimulus. Duh.
mcdermott on
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
Always. Living without insurance is like playing Russian Roulette every day.
Anyone else here ever had a six-figure medical bill?
Thank god my wife had a real job with good insurance at the time, so that we didn't have to rely on my graduate student insurance. I would've been paying that bill for 40 years.
Hell half the time with insurance you end up fighting them to pay a bill of any size anyway
I've had an ankle injury and I've been going through PT and I'm just waiting for my insurance company to try and not pay for something they say they cover.
Also my congressman Jared Polis said Monday at a little speech/ Q&A I was at that he has heard the tax cuts are more for psychological effect.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Though we probably shouldn't do it in here, since it's not really stimulus-related.
But the chimp wrote the stimulus. Duh.
With his invisible typewriter. After finishing the Irish Play. Honestly, the cartoon does offend me. Not as someone who disdains racism, though, but as someone who enjoys comedy. Post Editorial cartoonist? You're doing it wrong.
Honestly, even if we don't get UHC to the extent that I can abandon my 'in case you get hit by a truck' insurance for the Federal plan at $100/mo (which would be great as I'm paying $40 right now for pretty much nothing) so long as they just modernize health records so you don't have to fill out the same god damn form every place you go would be a nice improvement.
What gets me the worst is when they won't fill prescriptions before the "barely able to make it to the store period." I'm talking non-narcotics. Things like BCP, or phosphorus binders. We have to wait until we're at 2(!!) before we can even call them in.
One time the insurance company said we were using the BCP too fast. Apparently once a day in a period of a month is fast and you should only expect it every other month. They throw a hissy fit over $20 prescriptions but cover the $800 per pill ones completely.
I don't understand it.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
538 linked a very long and detailed post from a former Australian Treasury official about the US banking crisis in particular (as opposed to the economy or financial system in its entirety), and whether or not the banks are solvent under some different definitions of solvency and the subject of bank nationalization.
There's a lot in there, but some of his major conclusions are that the US banking system is definitely insolvent under stricter accounting type definitions, but almost surely not so as a whole under looser cashflow based measurements if order is able to be restored to the system. One possible way to do this he says is wholesale nationalization, which he considers undesirable but inevitable if the government fucks up handling it in a better way (and his unfortunately uncontroversial position is that the government has fucked up royally in this regard thus far). Good news of that is that the US government will probably get all their money spent on the banks back in a matter of years going down that route.
However, the more desirable result the author advocates is "nationalization with due-process", where there is a well thought out government plan carried out where they will only nationalize a portion of the banks under specific well thought out and well tested conditions of solvency, and an build appropriate system to facilitate that process. He thinks the "Geithner Plan" could possibly end up doing something like that and working, but is so poorly defined at the moment that it is impossible to tell.
Some more bad news though: he thinks the UK banking system is proper fucked. Sorry Brits.
”It may be necessary to temporarily nationalise some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring,” he said. “I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do.”
This may have been posted already but CNN has a nice little pie chart breakdown of the stimulus spending (you can click on the slices to break it down further).
Looks like I'm going to be the only person here that's against Universal Health Care. I've been under Tricare for some years now and while it's great that I'm 100% covered if I got into some hardcore accident like getting attacked by some radioactive AIDS carrying bear, in every other aspect I'm jealous of my counterparts who can choose their health care provider. Choices in PCPs is pretty low because many of them don't like how long it takes for the government to pay them, you need a referral for everything, and not all the same things are covered as with other health insurance providers. But in the end you get what you pay for.
Looks like I'm going to be the only person here that's against Universal Health Care. I've been under Tricare for some years now and while it's great that I'm 100% covered if I got into some hardcore accident like getting attacked by some radioactive AIDS carrying bear, in every other aspect I'm jealous of my counterparts who can choose their health care provider. Choices in PCPs is pretty low because many of them don't like how long it takes for the government to pay them, you need a referral for everything, and not all the same things are covered as with other health insurance providers. But in the end you get what you pay for.
How many are in that plan now vs everyone in the us being under universal health care? I think that would change things a bit
Looks like I'm going to be the only person here that's against Universal Health Care. I've been under Tricare for some years now and while it's great that I'm 100% covered if I got into some hardcore accident like getting attacked by some radioactive AIDS carrying bear, in every other aspect I'm jealous of my counterparts who can choose their health care provider. Choices in PCPs is pretty low because many of them don't like how long it takes for the government to pay them, you need a referral for everything, and not all the same things are covered as with other health insurance providers. But in the end you get what you pay for.
How many are in that plan now vs everyone in the us being under universal health care? I think that would change things a bit
And the proposal during the campaign wasn't to conscript everyone into a single system, but to simply give people the option to sign up for it. Right now what's available to me sucks. If I could spend $120 and get what my Senator gets I totally would, but I can't because I'm not a federal employee. The only people it hurts by letting me now sign up is Humana for sucking so hard.
Looks like I'm going to be the only person here that's against Universal Health Care. I've been under Tricare for some years now and while it's great that I'm 100% covered if I got into some hardcore accident like getting attacked by some radioactive AIDS carrying bear, in every other aspect I'm jealous of my counterparts who can choose their health care provider. Choices in PCPs is pretty low because many of them don't like how long it takes for the government to pay them, you need a referral for everything, and not all the same things are covered as with other health insurance providers. But in the end you get what you pay for.
Well, it helps to take a more institutional and structural approach to the issue- any individual's personal experience, however compelling it might be for them, is pretty irrelevant to the overall picture.
Professor Phobos on
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
what's the deal with the, I guess, ration board or whatever it's being called? was money put in the bill to research it? I couldn't get anything on factcheck besides that the whole acorn getting 5 billion was bullshit.
what's the deal with the, I guess, ration board or whatever it's being called? was money put in the bill to research it? I couldn't get anything on factcheck besides that the whole acorn getting 5 billion was bullshit.
It's not a ration board, Republicans decided to call it a ration board after they flipped from universal support to universal polemic opposition. It's just requiring medical parts suppliers prove that their new $Texas MRI machine is cost effective when compared with their previous $Texas MRI machine that didn't exude a nice summery perfume at the control panel. They never had to do this before, they just to prove that it worked and didn't accidentally kill people. They had a thing on this on NPR a couple days ago. Think of it as forcing Microsoft to justify having 8 near identical versions of Windows and charging idiotic prices for them because you may or may not get Freecell.
my friend is calling this a gigantic welfare bill. specifically, the safety-net. how do I call him wrong
He's somewhat right. It's providing additional funds to social safety net programs like unemployment insurance. There's a pretty good reason for that, though...
moniker on
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
edited February 2009
The only thing I hate is when people who do absolutely nothing for society (but can, not talking about disabled folks here) get lots of government cash cause it'd be unkind to do otherwise.
Obviously this happens a lot less, but it still happens in some ways. I have no problem with giving money to people who are on hard times (I foresee myself being there soon enough) but someone who hasn't worked a day in their life? Let 'em die on the street and I mean that.
The only thing I hate is when people who do absolutely nothing for society (but can, not talking about disabled folks here) get lots of government cash cause it'd be unkind to do otherwise.
The welfare queen is an antiquated stereotype that no longer applies.
MKR on
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
The only thing I hate is when people who do absolutely nothing for society (but can, not talking about disabled folks here) get lots of government cash cause it'd be unkind to do otherwise.
The welfare queen is an antiquated stereotype that no longer applies.
didn't a woman just have like 8 kids reaching a total of 14? not the exactly the stereotype but it seems similar to me. people putting undue strain on the system without putting in.
I'm not judging one way or the other but it doesn't seem to me that it's gone from our society.
The only thing I hate is when people who do absolutely nothing for society (but can, not talking about disabled folks here) get lots of government cash cause it'd be unkind to do otherwise.
The welfare queen is an antiquated stereotype that no longer applies.
didn't a woman just have like 8 kids reaching a total of 14? not the exactly the stereotype but it seems similar to me. people putting undue strain on the system without putting in.
I'm not judging one way or the other but it doesn't seem to me that it's gone from our society.
The welfare queen is an inner city black woman without a job who's making like 75k from the government every year that the GOP used to demonize the social safety net. Shockingly, such a thing never really existed.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
The only thing I hate is when people who do absolutely nothing for society (but can, not talking about disabled folks here) get lots of government cash cause it'd be unkind to do otherwise.
The welfare queen is an antiquated stereotype that no longer applies.
didn't a woman just have like 8 kids reaching a total of 14? not the exactly the stereotype but it seems similar to me. people putting undue strain on the system without putting in.
I'm not judging one way or the other but it doesn't seem to me that it's gone from our society.
You can find an example to tenuously prove any stereotype, but that doesn't make it an issue worth worrying about.
The only thing I hate is when people who do absolutely nothing for society (but can, not talking about disabled folks here) get lots of government cash cause it'd be unkind to do otherwise.
The welfare queen is an antiquated stereotype that no longer applies.
didn't a woman just have like 8 kids reaching a total of 14? not the exactly the stereotype but it seems similar to me. people putting undue strain on the system without putting in.
I'm not judging one way or the other but it doesn't seem to me that it's gone from our society.
How often do you see shit like the women with 8 kids happen? This is not something on which to base judgment about society.
Also that Greenspan quote is fucking glorious.
Psycho Internet Hawk on
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
"not exactly the stereotype"... still fits into what Magus' was actually talking about though doesn't it?
edit - magus said he hates a certain thing, someone says that stereotype doesn't exist... all I was saying is if it exists in one place Magus can make a statement about disliking it.
double edit - for the record I didn't actually read magus' entire post, just the part that was quoted and responded to.
The only thing I hate is when people who do absolutely nothing for society (but can, not talking about disabled folks here) get lots of government cash cause it'd be unkind to do otherwise.
Obviously this happens a lot less, but it still happens in some ways. I have no problem with giving money to people who are on hard times (I foresee myself being there soon enough) but someone who hasn't worked a day in their life? Let 'em die on the street and I mean that.
Also, would give people jobs cleaning streets.
How would these people help society now? They're last in line for jobs behind the people who want them.
We should avoid welfare reform until the economy is back on track, because anything that makes welfare less effective in getting money to people would not only be unkind, it would also hurt the economy, as people on welfare spend a larger percentage of their money than anyone else.
There's a reason that the last major attempt at welfare reform took place during the 1990's boom years.
my friend is calling this a gigantic welfare bill. specifically, the safety-net. how do I call him wrong
He's somewhat right. It's providing additional funds to social safety net programs like unemployment insurance. There's a pretty good reason for that, though...
But safety net programs make up a relatively small portion of the overall bill
â€It may be necessary to temporarily nationalise some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring,†he said. “I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do.â€
And to think, this guy was once considered the Pope of Laissez-Faire economics.
Posts
80% in network coverage is bullshit. Did something happen? Did we lose a war?
I am on a much better plan (and with a better company) now.
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
I suspect that many of the insurance CEOs had tie ins with the housing industry and their license to print money was revoked, and so their business model failed. And now they have to drastically cut costs and benefits while ramping up premiums to cover the difference.
Basically HMOs are fucking whack, and a government agency without this bacon fat would likely have less overhead than them. Which is a really retarded thing to say about our government being better than a private industry.
I wish I had some of the coverage Medicare/Medicaid has.
Unlike, for example, the obviously racist e-mail forwards by that GOP Florida woman, the "joke" in the comic is funny without being racist; the racism in the cartoon is incidental and in the eye of the beholder.
More importantly, though, chimpanzees are not monkeys. They are apes. Monkeys have tails!
dot dot dot
If the intention was honestly chimp = black man hur, then yes, it is very racist.
I think it very unlikely that was the intention.
We may disagree.
Though we probably shouldn't do it in here, since it's not really stimulus-related.
Besides that, they've depicted Bush as a chimp for years and years and years.
Tricare isn't half bad either.
Man, I think this but then we had a friend who came down with leukemia at like 22.
A friend who was previously young and healthy.
Luckily, he had insurance through college, and they bent over backwards to work with him to reduce his costs (like doing every lab that was physically possible at the student clinic, rather than the hospital, to reduce copays).
Yeah, but I've paid anywhere from $900-$1500 a year for insurance.
Well, maybe they meant to refer to Congress as monkeys.
...
Who am I kidding. It's the Post. Good show, gentlemen...good show.
But the chimp wrote the stimulus. Duh.
Anyone else here ever had a six-figure medical bill?
Thank god my wife had a real job with good insurance at the time, so that we didn't have to rely on my graduate student insurance. I would've been paying that bill for 40 years.
I've had an ankle injury and I've been going through PT and I'm just waiting for my insurance company to try and not pay for something they say they cover.
Also my congressman Jared Polis said Monday at a little speech/ Q&A I was at that he has heard the tax cuts are more for psychological effect.
edit: ah, congress. that guy should be hit for being a retard alone.
With his invisible typewriter. After finishing the Irish Play. Honestly, the cartoon does offend me. Not as someone who disdains racism, though, but as someone who enjoys comedy. Post Editorial cartoonist? You're doing it wrong.
Honestly, even if we don't get UHC to the extent that I can abandon my 'in case you get hit by a truck' insurance for the Federal plan at $100/mo (which would be great as I'm paying $40 right now for pretty much nothing) so long as they just modernize health records so you don't have to fill out the same god damn form every place you go would be a nice improvement.
The only problems I've had is with the hospital trying to duplicate-charge me for stuff. I haven't even had to send my insurance an e-mail.
Although I wish Anthem let you use credit cards on their website. It's the only bill I have to pay from my bank account.
One time the insurance company said we were using the BCP too fast. Apparently once a day in a period of a month is fast and you should only expect it every other month. They throw a hissy fit over $20 prescriptions but cover the $800 per pill ones completely.
I don't understand it.
There's a lot in there, but some of his major conclusions are that the US banking system is definitely insolvent under stricter accounting type definitions, but almost surely not so as a whole under looser cashflow based measurements if order is able to be restored to the system. One possible way to do this he says is wholesale nationalization, which he considers undesirable but inevitable if the government fucks up handling it in a better way (and his unfortunately uncontroversial position is that the government has fucked up royally in this regard thus far). Good news of that is that the US government will probably get all their money spent on the banks back in a matter of years going down that route.
However, the more desirable result the author advocates is "nationalization with due-process", where there is a well thought out government plan carried out where they will only nationalize a portion of the banks under specific well thought out and well tested conditions of solvency, and an build appropriate system to facilitate that process. He thinks the "Geithner Plan" could possibly end up doing something like that and working, but is so poorly defined at the moment that it is impossible to tell.
Some more bad news though: he thinks the UK banking system is proper fucked. Sorry Brits.
pretty interesting stuff.
How many are in that plan now vs everyone in the us being under universal health care? I think that would change things a bit
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
And the proposal during the campaign wasn't to conscript everyone into a single system, but to simply give people the option to sign up for it. Right now what's available to me sucks. If I could spend $120 and get what my Senator gets I totally would, but I can't because I'm not a federal employee. The only people it hurts by letting me now sign up is Humana for sucking so hard.
Well, it helps to take a more institutional and structural approach to the issue- any individual's personal experience, however compelling it might be for them, is pretty irrelevant to the overall picture.
Look at what is in the bill?
It's not a ration board, Republicans decided to call it a ration board after they flipped from universal support to universal polemic opposition. It's just requiring medical parts suppliers prove that their new $Texas MRI machine is cost effective when compared with their previous $Texas MRI machine that didn't exude a nice summery perfume at the control panel. They never had to do this before, they just to prove that it worked and didn't accidentally kill people. They had a thing on this on NPR a couple days ago. Think of it as forcing Microsoft to justify having 8 near identical versions of Windows and charging idiotic prices for them because you may or may not get Freecell.
He's somewhat right. It's providing additional funds to social safety net programs like unemployment insurance. There's a pretty good reason for that, though...
Obviously this happens a lot less, but it still happens in some ways. I have no problem with giving money to people who are on hard times (I foresee myself being there soon enough) but someone who hasn't worked a day in their life? Let 'em die on the street and I mean that.
Also, would give people jobs cleaning streets.
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The welfare queen is an antiquated stereotype that no longer applies.
didn't a woman just have like 8 kids reaching a total of 14? not the exactly the stereotype but it seems similar to me. people putting undue strain on the system without putting in.
I'm not judging one way or the other but it doesn't seem to me that it's gone from our society.
The welfare queen is an inner city black woman without a job who's making like 75k from the government every year that the GOP used to demonize the social safety net. Shockingly, such a thing never really existed.
You can find an example to tenuously prove any stereotype, but that doesn't make it an issue worth worrying about.
How often do you see shit like the women with 8 kids happen? This is not something on which to base judgment about society.
Also that Greenspan quote is fucking glorious.
edit - magus said he hates a certain thing, someone says that stereotype doesn't exist... all I was saying is if it exists in one place Magus can make a statement about disliking it.
double edit - for the record I didn't actually read magus' entire post, just the part that was quoted and responded to.
Making it a key point tells me that he thinks it's a big issue.
How would these people help society now? They're last in line for jobs behind the people who want them.
We should avoid welfare reform until the economy is back on track, because anything that makes welfare less effective in getting money to people would not only be unkind, it would also hurt the economy, as people on welfare spend a larger percentage of their money than anyone else.
There's a reason that the last major attempt at welfare reform took place during the 1990's boom years.
But safety net programs make up a relatively small portion of the overall bill
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
And to think, this guy was once considered the Pope of Laissez-Faire economics.
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