Politics Please say rock bottom is getting close

Another reason I hate health insurance companies....and why they are the problem; Last December 6, I had my annual eye examination. On my way out the door, the clinic automatically scheduled me for a year out (today). So I went to my appointment, checked in, waited and then was told that since it hadn't been a full year ("only" 363 days) since my last exam, my insurance company (f**king Regence Blue Cross) would not pay for today's exam. I would have to come back on Friday at the earliest. So they decided to be assholes over being 2 days short of a full year. Fortunately I had cataract surgery several years back and now have 20/15 vision. So I just told the clinic to forget about it. I didn't NEED the exam (I was going more out of habit) and if that was the game the insurance companies were going to play, I would adjust accordingly (drop my vision coverage next open enrollment) and have a nice day. In the end it's the insurance company's loss, not mine.

 

I guess they denied a claim to the wrong MF.

 

The Ezra Klein Show


Would Bernie Have Won? (Listen)

There are a lot of different opinions about how the Democratic Party should rebuild after the blow of Donald Trump’s victory. And for the next two episodes, we’re going to showcase two very different ones.

Faiz Shakir was Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign manager, and he believes that Democrats need to embrace a Sanders-style class-first populism. This question of whether Sanders or a candidate like him could have beaten Trump loomed over Democratic post-mortems of the 2016 election, and they’ve reared up again this year, as Democrats have continued to lose working-class voters. As Sanders put it in a blistering statement: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

But some Democrats have been frustrated with this criticism. President Biden has been arguably the most economically populist president of the modern era. And the Democrats who have been winning in redder parts of the country aren’t democratic socialists. So I wanted to have Shakir on for a lively debate. Shakir worked not just for Sanders; he was also a senior adviser to the Senate majority leader Harry Reid and to Nancy Pelosi. And he’s currently the founder and executive director of More Perfect Union, a media outlet focused on issues affecting America’s working class.

This episode contains strong language.


It's the Corruption, Stupid (Listen)
Right after the election, I talked about how the results reminded me of 2004. George W. Bush won re-election that year — and unlike four years earlier, the popular vote, too. Democrats were truly, undeniably in the wilderness. But two years later, they found their way out. Democrats won the House for the first time in 12 years. And two years after that, with the election of Barack Obama, they completed their trifecta. Does that comeback story have any lessons for Democrats today?

Rahm Emanuel is the person to ask. He helped orchestrate that 2006 Democratic victory as the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He was Obama’s first chief of staff. And before that, Emanuel was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. Emanuel has been a central player in most of the biggest Democratic victories of the past few decades. And people like David Axelrod and Steve Israel have been floating his name to lead the Democratic National Committee to help guide Democrats out of the wilderness once more. But Emanuel is also a controversial figure in the party. And the eras of Democratic politics he represents have complicated legacies and aren’t remembered with unanimous warmth.

In this conversation, Emanuel argues that Democrats have fallen out of touch with what Americans actually want. We discuss why Democrats lost this November, what lessons they’ve forgotten from the Obama and Clinton years and how he would plot a Democratic comeback today.

 

It’s been reported the suspect ran off wheezing and coughing from an untreated illness.

 

One would hope, but I doubt there’s much self reflection amongst those type of people.

 

Trump's new press secretary said he is unlike all other politicians, because he never lies.

 

If they really cared about their shareholders, they’d get assassinated too.

 

https://www.asahq.org/about-asa/new...uration-of-anesthesia-for-surgical-procedures

 

Is that verified?

 

I posted a link above the twitter post from a couple weeks ago that seems to at least partially verify it

 

The anesthesia thing? Yep!

Anthem Insurance will cap anesthesia coverage at certain time limits for CT, NY patients

 

So do doctors just let surgery patients scream without anesthesia? Fucking 18th century.

 

which is fine I guess. But those kids don’t have a dad tonight. But fuck those kids right

 

It definitely sucks for those kids. And it sucks for the kids who lose their parents because of insurance penny pinching.

Universal healthcare could solve this all.

 

Doc can provide a towel for the patient to bite down on.

 

I have zero sympathy for insurance companies who fuck over patients. I hate for profit health care system.

But this was still a human being who had a wife and two children. Let's not dehumanize and cheer his death, @Everything Beagle. Let's not become them.

 

For the record, I would like to have seen this CEO prosecuted, not assassinated.

 

You know prosecution would never have happened because what he was doing to millions was legal.