DL Open Thread: Saturday, November 25, 2023
Pretty Much EVERYBODY Hates Medicare Advantage. Meaning, John Carney should read this article:
More than 30 million older Americans are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, wooed by lower premiums and more benefits than traditional Medicare offers.
But a bipartisan group of lawmakers is increasingly concerned that insurance companies are preying on seniors, and, in some cases, denying care that would otherwise be approved by traditional Medicare.
“It was stunning how many times senators on both sides of the aisle kept linking constituent problems with denying authorizations for care,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in an interview, referring to a bevy of complaints from colleagues during a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing.
Congress has already gone after insurers for their celebrity-filled ads and misleading directories. But its scrutiny of these care denials, which is expected to continue into next year, could have a far greater impact and reshape the rules for one of the most profitable parts of the insurance industry.
A survey released earlier this month by the physicians’ trade group Medical Group Management Association found 97 percent of medical group practices said an insurer delayed or denied medically necessary care. Another 92 percent said they had hired staff specifically to process prior authorization requests. A December 2022 survey from the American Medical Association also found that 94 percent of physicians reported care delays due to prior authorization denials or processing.
Jesus Christ, John, everybody knows that these insurers make obscene profits by delaying or denying care. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Rethug Governor Pardoned Rapist, And Then…: You see, his parents were donors to the Rethug AG who pushed for the pardon by, um, lying.
Justifying his commutation of Dayton Jones’ sentence in a brutal sodomy, Gov. Matt Bevin said the only evidence implicating Jones came from co-defendants trying to get leniency for the near-fatal assault on an unconscious 15-year-old boy.
Bevin told The Courier Journal last month that he had read “hundreds of documents” from the case and that “there was nothing there except for the testimony of kids who were getting a better deal by throwing” Jones “under the bus.”
Bevin insisted there was no corroborating evidence — “zero, zero” — adding that if Jones, 25, had been “even remotely involved,” he wouldn’t have received the commutation.
But a Courier Journal review of the case shows that Bevin was wrong — other witnesses besides Jones’ co-defendants implicated him. Indeed, Jones implicated himself.
Oh, well, he skated that time, but not for long:
Paducah, KY – Dayton Jones, 27, was sentenced this week to 96 months in prison followed by 15 years of supervised release for production of child pornography. There is no parole in the federal system. Jones was also ordered to pay $50,000 in restitution to the victim and he will be required to register as a sex offender upon his release from custody.
Justice, of a sort.
DeSantis Campaign Needs Yet Another Reboot. $100 mill for a 5th-place showing in NH polls.
Anti-Zionism Is Not The Same As Anti-Semitism. A worthwhile historical primer. Read it, you’ll learn something:
Notwithstanding, most Israelis probably do not think of themselves as racists. But they don’t necessarily favor equal rights for all Israel’s inhabitants, either. There are, however, millions of Jews scattered throughout the world who do. Their rejection of Zionists’ insistence on the requirement to support Israel come what may makes them neither antisemites nor “self-hating Jews.” They may be simply non-nationalistic or even anti-nationalist, which is to say, internationalist.In this sense, they are the legatees of a long Jewish tradition going back to the 17th-century Portuguese-Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and carried forward by the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, by Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, and Leon Trotsky. Isaac Deutscher, the Polish-Jewish Marxist, called them “non-Jewish Jews.” They each transcended their own ethnic or religious particularities to struggle for the emancipation of all.
That’s just a taste. Read. Learn. Share.
What do you want to talk about?
Carney’s hands are tied.