Happily, some pushback to Musk's flailing about is occurring. Probably not your intention but the comment on Mangione implies approval of his action. People who sign up for Medicare Advantage programs are suckers and much has been published to that effect. I guess they don't read.
What's not to approve? Is the life of a single slimeball more important than the countless people who have died because their claims were denied? And you expect elderly people to go over their Medicare Advantage plans with a fine-tooth comb, and understand they're getting ripped off? I would argue that allowing those programs to include "Medicare" in the name gave them a legitimacy they did not deserve, and Clinton deserves all the shit he should have gotten for allowing "Medicare+Choice" to be created (and Bush the Lesser for allowing it to be renamed "Medicare Advantage, but then he was just being the "Compassionate Conservative that he was). Blaming the victim here is pretty shitty of you.
Sorry but I'm not going cheer for a murderer. As for people choosing Medicare Advantage programs without being bothered to check out the pros and cons, they remind me of some of the voters in the last election who apparently decided to show those Democrats who did things they didn't approve of without apparently paying any attention to what the Trumpers would do. Should they be insurance experts? No, but it's not like there hasn't been plenty of explanatory journalism on the topic. That doesn't mean I'm giving the medical hucksters a pass but I do think people have some responsibility to learn what they're signing up for.
I guess you didn't read the Mo Tkacik article that Weldon generously linked to in this post. Pity.
"Foreign aid, of course, is a rounding error compared to the multitrillion-dollar health care budget, in which the Prospect estimates a team of forensic accountants might easily find as much as a half-trillion dollars in waste annually, roughly $100 billion of that in Medicare Advantage overpayments alone. (Obama had the chance to clamp down on the obvious MA grift, but abruptly reversed course in 2014.)"
On one side you have these criminal organizations which have invested tens of millions of dollars researching how to swindle people, and then tens if not hundreds of millions more in writing the laws and buying the lawmakers and regulators who can make that legal, and on the other side you have old and disabled people who have to try to decipher densely-written legalese designed to obscure the potential for harm.
Most people get their news from an increasingly bleak local news landscape or from nightly national news shows which take advertising money from these criminals, not from the Times or the Post or ProPublica or American Prospect or anywhere else the subject is likely to be treated even remotely appropriately. They see these plans advertised on their favorite shows, news and otherwise, by companies they've known about and maybe done business with for years; why would they be advertised on teevee if they're a scam?
I mean, jesus, man, punch *up*, don't kick 'em when they're down. That's why Mangione struck such a chord: he punched up. I'm not recommending everybody go out and murder a CEO at whatever organized crime concern they happen to hate, although certainly it might have a salutary impact on the affected industries over time, but it ought not to be a surprise or even a matter for much concern when the guy who actually did it gets lionized by everybody who wishes or fantasizes that they could.
Despite your best effort, I am not convinced that you approve murder to make a point.
Brief story: Couple of weeks ago, I got scammed by one of the oldest plays. A friend's credit card was out of service due to a bank issue that couldn't be fixed for a couple of days and so could I use mine to accomplish an obligation of his? I bit. I should have known better. Was the scammer an asshole? Yes. Should I have known better? Yes. There are often multiple causes for bad events. Sometimes our own failure to "check it out" can be one of them.
So you admit that even a brilliant mind such as yours can be duped by an obvious scam, yet you have sympathy for, as Weldon put it, "old and disabled people who have to try to decipher densely-written legalese designed to obscure the potential for harm." WTF is wrong with you, man? Did the empathy gene not make it into your DNA, as appears to be the case with the DOGE boys? May you or a family member never suffer a catastrophic illness or be in the vicinity of a natural disaster, because apparently you will have only yourself to blame when the insurance companies you've been paying monthly premiums to tell you to go get fucked.
The Eli Valley cartoon really does hit hard, showing clearly that the GOP was already the party of Trump before it became the Party of Trump. Jeb Bush, the "moderate Republican who still has conservative principles; he promised immigration reform, spoke fluent Spanish, (and) mentioned his wife's Mexican origins" when he declare his candidacy! Chris Christie, the guy who "thought Obama deserved credit for his help in the disaster relief in New Jersey" after Hurricane Sandy and shook hands with him! Ben Carson, the man who took an oath as a neurosurgeon to "do no harm"! The less said about Carly, Ted and Mario the better.
Happily, some pushback to Musk's flailing about is occurring. Probably not your intention but the comment on Mangione implies approval of his action. People who sign up for Medicare Advantage programs are suckers and much has been published to that effect. I guess they don't read.
What's not to approve? Is the life of a single slimeball more important than the countless people who have died because their claims were denied? And you expect elderly people to go over their Medicare Advantage plans with a fine-tooth comb, and understand they're getting ripped off? I would argue that allowing those programs to include "Medicare" in the name gave them a legitimacy they did not deserve, and Clinton deserves all the shit he should have gotten for allowing "Medicare+Choice" to be created (and Bush the Lesser for allowing it to be renamed "Medicare Advantage, but then he was just being the "Compassionate Conservative that he was). Blaming the victim here is pretty shitty of you.
Sorry but I'm not going cheer for a murderer. As for people choosing Medicare Advantage programs without being bothered to check out the pros and cons, they remind me of some of the voters in the last election who apparently decided to show those Democrats who did things they didn't approve of without apparently paying any attention to what the Trumpers would do. Should they be insurance experts? No, but it's not like there hasn't been plenty of explanatory journalism on the topic. That doesn't mean I'm giving the medical hucksters a pass but I do think people have some responsibility to learn what they're signing up for.
I guess you didn't read the Mo Tkacik article that Weldon generously linked to in this post. Pity.
"Foreign aid, of course, is a rounding error compared to the multitrillion-dollar health care budget, in which the Prospect estimates a team of forensic accountants might easily find as much as a half-trillion dollars in waste annually, roughly $100 billion of that in Medicare Advantage overpayments alone. (Obama had the chance to clamp down on the obvious MA grift, but abruptly reversed course in 2014.)"
https://prospect.org/health/2025-02-14-doge-czars-plan-to-loot-medicare/
I read it and said I wasn't giving the medical hucksters a pass. It is possible for more than one party to be responsible for a bad situation.
Ok, so you're going to continue blaming the victims. Got it.
On one side you have these criminal organizations which have invested tens of millions of dollars researching how to swindle people, and then tens if not hundreds of millions more in writing the laws and buying the lawmakers and regulators who can make that legal, and on the other side you have old and disabled people who have to try to decipher densely-written legalese designed to obscure the potential for harm.
Most people get their news from an increasingly bleak local news landscape or from nightly national news shows which take advertising money from these criminals, not from the Times or the Post or ProPublica or American Prospect or anywhere else the subject is likely to be treated even remotely appropriately. They see these plans advertised on their favorite shows, news and otherwise, by companies they've known about and maybe done business with for years; why would they be advertised on teevee if they're a scam?
I mean, jesus, man, punch *up*, don't kick 'em when they're down. That's why Mangione struck such a chord: he punched up. I'm not recommending everybody go out and murder a CEO at whatever organized crime concern they happen to hate, although certainly it might have a salutary impact on the affected industries over time, but it ought not to be a surprise or even a matter for much concern when the guy who actually did it gets lionized by everybody who wishes or fantasizes that they could.
Weldon,
Despite your best effort, I am not convinced that you approve murder to make a point.
Brief story: Couple of weeks ago, I got scammed by one of the oldest plays. A friend's credit card was out of service due to a bank issue that couldn't be fixed for a couple of days and so could I use mine to accomplish an obligation of his? I bit. I should have known better. Was the scammer an asshole? Yes. Should I have known better? Yes. There are often multiple causes for bad events. Sometimes our own failure to "check it out" can be one of them.
So you admit that even a brilliant mind such as yours can be duped by an obvious scam, yet you have sympathy for, as Weldon put it, "old and disabled people who have to try to decipher densely-written legalese designed to obscure the potential for harm." WTF is wrong with you, man? Did the empathy gene not make it into your DNA, as appears to be the case with the DOGE boys? May you or a family member never suffer a catastrophic illness or be in the vicinity of a natural disaster, because apparently you will have only yourself to blame when the insurance companies you've been paying monthly premiums to tell you to go get fucked.
The Eli Valley cartoon really does hit hard, showing clearly that the GOP was already the party of Trump before it became the Party of Trump. Jeb Bush, the "moderate Republican who still has conservative principles; he promised immigration reform, spoke fluent Spanish, (and) mentioned his wife's Mexican origins" when he declare his candidacy! Chris Christie, the guy who "thought Obama deserved credit for his help in the disaster relief in New Jersey" after Hurricane Sandy and shook hands with him! Ben Carson, the man who took an oath as a neurosurgeon to "do no harm"! The less said about Carly, Ted and Mario the better.