Mixed Emotions in Action

PZ Meyers, in addition to being an academic is a prominent Atheist. 

As such he exhibits a bunch of chagrin when he felt the need to praise Pope Pope Leo XIV for his advocacy of universal healthcare.

I feel your pain. 

Today in Weird

A man claiming to be an FBI agent and wielding a barbecue fork and a pizza cutter attempted to bust Luigi Mangione out of jail.

To refresh your memory, Mr. Mangione is accused of  

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know." 

A man claiming to be an FBI agent showed up at a Brooklyn jail with a barbecue fork and pizza cutter and tried to free Luigi Mangione on Wednesday night, according to a law enforcement official and a federal criminal complaint.

Prosecutors said Mark Anderson, 36, told employees at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center that he worked for the FBI and said he had a court order to release a detainee. A law enforcement source who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to share the information publicly said that the detainee was Luigi Mangione.

When jail staff asked Anderson to provide his credentials, prosecutors said, he gave them a Minnesota driver’s license.

He threw several documents at them related to filing claims against the U.S. Department of Justice, the criminal complaint said. He also told officials that he had weapons in his bag, and a search turned up the barbecue fork and a circular steel blade, according to the complaint.

………

In Brooklyn federal court on Thursday, defense attorney Michael Weil asked Magistrate Judge Taryn Merkl to release Anderson to a hospital for an evaluation instead of holding him in jail. He said claiming to be an FBI agent without a badge was “not a serious attempt to spring a federal inmate.”

“It seems like a case representing something else going on,” Weil said.

Gee, ya think? 

 

 

The 'Phants Blinked

With 17 Republican defections, the House of Representatives have voted to reinstate the Obamacare subsidies.

The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed legislation to re-establish tax credits that lowered premiums for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans, after a small group of Republicans broke ranks and joined with Democrats to defy Donald Trump on a key healthcare issue that could sway voters ahead of the November midterm elections.

The chamber voted 230-196 to approve a bill that would extend for three years the credits, which were first created under Joe Biden but expired at the end of last year despite a concerted effort by the Democratic minority to continue them.

All Democrats voted for the measure along with 17 Republicans, many of whom were moderates who said they could not tolerate a hike in healthcare costs for their constituents, but acknowledged the House measure will likely be revised by the Republican-controlled Senate before it is enacted.

I'm not hopeful in the Senate, but this does give us hope.

The Democratic Party Rally Hat

Spelunking helmet, just the thing for caving


Democrats limited knowledge of anatomy

So, Democrats got their promised vote on extending the ACA (Obamacare) subsidies, and Republicans put up a phony bill in opposition and killed them both.

When Chuck Schumer orchestrated this capitulation, anyone with any integrity or courage noted that he was giving up for nothing, but the airlines are big donors to the Senate Minority Leader, and Thanksgiving was coming up, so he arranged for the usual suspects to flip.

And now we have the proof:

Subsidies for the Affordable Care Act appear set to expire for millions of Americans at the end of the year after competing health care related bills failed to advance in the Senate on Thursday.

The outcome was widely expected after Democrats and Republicans chose to release separate partisan proposals. Both parties are under pressure to address health care costs before the expiration of federal subsidies meant to lower the cost of premiums on ACA plans. Those subsidies expire at the end of 2025 and are expected to cause prices to skyrocket.

Both bills needed 60 votes to advance, but neither succeeded.

The Republican-backed plan failed by a vote of 51 to 48. The measure, authored by Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, would have provided up to $1,500 a year in payments for health savings accounts for Americans earning less than 700% of the federal poverty level.

However the bill would not have extended the ACA tax credits and the money could not be used to pay for health care premiums. Deductibles for those plans average around $7,000, according to data from the health policy organization KFF.

I place the blame firmly on Schumer and the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) because it was patently obvious how Republicans would treat their promise for a vote.

It's like the story of the frog and the scorpion. You do not blame the scorpion, it's in their nature.

What a bunch of worthless and feckless schlemiels.

Unfortunately, it is the rest of us are the schlimazels left soaked in soup. 

So, It Turns Out That My Prius Was Totaled

Remember when I wrote about someone side-swiping my Prius on I-83? (Reminder, neither Nat nor I were injured in any way)

It turns out that it was totaled, needed (at least) replacement of the front bumper, radars, wheel, tire, suspension parts, the steering rack, and the engine sub-frame.

I got a check from my insurer, plus coverage of my deductible because the other driver was uninsured, and got another car.

It was a used 2026 Corolla. (138 miles, long story from salesman)

While I liked everything everything automotive about the Prius, I was still out some bucks for depreciation, and I found the car cramped and claustrophobic.  (For all the raving about the new look, it sacrificed a lot in the way of vision and space)

The Corolla is more comfortable, and while it does not get the same mileage as the current Prius, it does get about as much as my old 2004 Prius, with better back seat room, visibility, etc.

It's just more comfortable. 

The decision to make the Prius look like a Tesla in 2022 was IMHO the wrong move by Toyota. 

Human Sacrifice, Dogs and Cats Living Together… Mass Hysteria!

When Charles Schumer and Marjorie Taylor Green are both working to keep the insurance subsidies in Obamacare, this is real end of the world stuff.

When MTG is the sane Republican in the room, things are getting very, very weird.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) touted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) call to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, as he doubled down on his opposition to funding the government without addressing the expiring tax credits.

In remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, the Democratic leader read aloud from part of a social media post in which Greene said she’s “absolutely disgusted” that health insurance premiums could double if the ACA subsidies expire at the end of the year, breaking with her party on an issue at the center of the government shutdown standoff.

“I’m going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district,” Greene wrote in the part of the post Schumer read aloud.

“So hold on to your hats,” Schumer continued in his floor remarks, after reading the post. “I think this is the first time I said this, but, on this issue, Representative Greene said it perfectly.”

“Representative Greene is absolutely right,” he added.

And here I am, staring at the spectacle with a stunned expression on my face that resembles nothing so much as a cow that stepped on its own udder.

Headline of the Day

One Bad Thing About Fighting Fascists Is What You Have to Do to Stop Them

Mike the Mad Biologist, on the weak tea proposals of the Democratic "leadership" in Congress are proposing to prevent a government shutdown.

The proposals seem to be weak tea that would benefit the Republican Party more than the Democratic Party, by doing such things as pushing cuts beyond the midterms with a promise of "consideration" for making them permanent.

To quote not-Tallyrand, "This is worse than a crime, it is a mistake." 

………

It was pretty obvious rank-and-file Democrats would have to fight our own party to make them take an actual stand.

This also demonstrates the internal incoherence of party leadership. Their plan has been to let everything go to shit and hope voters figure out who is responsible. Never thought we would see accelerationist moderates and centrists, but here we are. Protecting Republicans from their own stupidity by preventing things from going to shit is the exact opposite of what leadership has decided to do.

That said, the larger problem is that the Democratic leadership, such as it is, still hasn’t internalized that the Republican Party is fascist. That does matter, as once you accept your opponents are fascists, you realize that there will be costs to be paid to stop them. There already have been people hurt, in one way or another, by this regime, and there will be more no matter what we do, until the regime is stopped. And the act of stopping them is going to result in American Carnage, one way or another. Hopefully, it will be less carnage than more and those responsible for it will bear the greatest cost, but it could get very bad–and far worse than a few months of healthcare subsidies (as murderous as that will be). To stop fascists, you actually have to stop them, not work on healthcare policy.

(emphasis mine)

The Democrats proposal in the Senate is to extend the Obamacare subsidies beyond the midterms.

Not roll back their repeal, just extend them for a year or so, because the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is terrified of drawing a line in the sand and fighting a senile fascist.

This is beyond pathetic. 

Not a Surprise

Prosecutors over-filed their indictment against Luigi Mangioni, so it is no surprise that the judge threw out his terrorism and his first degree murder charges.

First degree murder is pretty much limited to murder for hire and murder of someone in law enforcement under New York State law, and the prosecution proved little evidence for the terrorism charge.

The prosecution's argument, basically that shooting rich white CEO Brian Thompson was terrorism just because.

New York State terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione, the defendant in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive last year, were dismissed on Tuesday, including a first-degree murder count that could have landed him in prison for the rest of his life.

The judge overseeing the case, Gregory Carro, said he had found the evidence behind the charges “legally insufficient.” Mr. Mangione, 27, also faces federal charges, and is still charged in New York with second-degree murder, for which he faces a sentence of 25 years to life, among nine other counts. Those cases will proceed, though no trial dates have been set.

In charging Mr. Mangione with terrorism, the Manhattan district attorney’s office seemed to acknowledge the seismic effect of a shooting that sent shock waves through American society and set off a groundswell of support for a defendant protesting the nation’s health care system. But the judge’s decision means that while Mr. Mangione may ultimately be proved a murderer, New York’s legal system will have nothing to say about the broader implications of his actions. 

"Legally insufficient," is putting it mildly. 

This Worries Me Not One Whit

It turns out that people are using GLP-1 drugs to game insurers, and all I feel is schadenfreude. 

Basically, if you go on GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic for a few months, you can mask a whole bunch of comorbidities, like type 2 diabetes, obesity, cholesterol levels, etc. for a few months.

You can get the drugs more or less anonymously online, and when you go to your insurance exam, you are svelte, your cholesterol and A1C levels, and your sugar levels are good.

So, the underwriters look at the numbers, and you pay less for insurance, and you "win" when you die young.

Anything that hurts insurance companies, and in so doing reduces the money that they have for creating political influence, is OK by me:

I've just got back from HLTH in Amsterdam, nursing what might be the worst three-day hangover of my adult life. Worth it, though. It's one of the best health tech events in Europe, and I made some genuinely great connections.

………

Now, while everyone else obsessed over AI (shocking, I know), I was laser-focused on GLP-1s. One throwaway comment during a private equity panel sent me down a rabbit hole on insurance companies grappling with the weight-loss drug explosion.

The downstream effects are completely fascinating and completely overlooked. I spent the rest of the conference hunting down insurance people who were all asking the same question: how the hell do we deal with this?

Turns out, they have good reason to panic.

Life insurers can predict when you'll die with about 98% accuracy.

This ruthless precision comes from from decades and decades of mortality data they use to figure out how much to charge you every year, so that the money they earn (from you and by investing your premiums) will easily cover what they'll need to pay out later.

………

Typically, underwriters- suspiciously sounds like undertakers-rely on a handful of key health metrics like HbA1c, cholesterol, blood pressure, and BMI to calculate your risk of dying earlier than expected (and thus costing them money).

Those eagle-eyed readers among you have probably noticed something interesting already. Those same four metrics are exactly what GLP‑1s improve. Not just a little, but enough to entirely shift someone's risk profile within at least 6 months of using them.

………

Let’s say a 42-year-old applies for life insurance:

• They self-report a BMI of 25 (healthy)
• No visible co-morbidities in claims data
• No prescription record shows Sema/Tirzepatide
• Labs within normal range

The insurer sees a ‘mirage’ of good health and approves them as low-risk.

But in reality:

• They were obese a year ago (BMI 32)
• Lost around 14kg using GLP-1s from a D2C provider (no detail on their electronic health record)
• Still have underlying metabolic syndrome

………

Insurers call this type of screw-up "mortality slippage."  

Basically, people are pretty good about giving themselves an injection for a few months, but over a 109 year period, most of them drop off the proverbial wagon, which means that their risks go up.

Oops. 

 

Not Enough Bullets

Investor Roberto Faller is suing UnitedHealth because they have stopped cheating their customers in the aftermath of the assassination of their president.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

A health care industry giant’s Wall Street overlords just admitted that the company’s sky-high health insurance coverage denial rates reaped them enormous profits — and to keep the money flowing, they’re suing to stop the insurer from approving more patient care.

UnitedHealth Group has been facing growing discontent from its investors, a battle that — as the corporation faces mounting public scrutiny over its care denials — could shape the future of health insurance for 29 million people.

A May 7 lawsuit brought by a small-time investor in UnitedHealth Group is one of the latest chapters in the battle, arguing that the company’s tanking stock performance this spring had cost its investors unfairly. Some corporate media reports framed the suit as investors taking on the company for its “aggressive, anti-consumer tactics.”

But in reality, court documents reveal, some of UnitedHealth Group’s investors are concerned that the company’s changing “corporate practices” have been too consumer-friendly. And they suggest that these practices are a driving force behind UnitedHealth Group’s disastrous first quarter of 2025, which saw cratering stock value and the departure of longtime CEO Andrew Witty.

………

The investor lawsuit has now been consolidated into a larger ongoing shareholder suit against UnitedHealth Group. In its annual shareholder meeting this week, the company tried its best to quell the growing discontent among investors, who are increasingly shaken by the company’s tanking stock value and poor financial outlook.

As UnitedHealth Group’s investors revolt, the admissions in the lawsuit serve as a reminder that Wall Street greed is one of the reasons for its tendency to deny patients care.

I hope that Mr. Faller lives a long and painful life, and that his health insurance f%$#s him like a drunk sorority girl.

I would not piss on this man if he were on fire.

Best Healthcare in the World

A man committed suicide after he was unable to get mental health care, and his mother is suing the insurance company because their directory of providers was completely inaccurate.

She are claiming that the company was falsely claiming that there were in-network mental health professionals when there were none.

This is a very common thing for insurance companies to do:

The mother of an Arizona man who died after being unable to find mental health treatment is suing his health insurer, saying it broke the law by publishing false information that misled its customers.

Ravi Coutinho, a 36-year-old entrepreneur, bought insurance from Ambetter, the most popular plan on HealthCare.gov, because it seemed to offer plenty of mental health and addiction treatment options near his home in Phoenix. But after struggling for months in early 2023 to find in-network care covered by his plan, he wasn’t able to find a therapist. In May 2023, after 21 calls with the insurer without getting the treatment he sought, he was found dead in his apartment. His death was ruled an accident, likely due to complications from excessive drinking.

Coutinho was the subject of a September 2024 investigation by ProPublica that showed how he was trapped in what’s commonly known as a “ghost network.” Many of the mental health providers that Ambetter listed as accepting its insurance were not actually able to see him. ProPublica’s investigation also revealed how customer service representatives and care managers repeatedly failed to connect Coutinho to the care he needed after he and his mother asked for help. The story was part of a yearlong series, “America’s Mental Barrier,” that investigated the ways insurers employed practices that interfered with their customers’ ability to access mental health care.

The lawsuit, filed on May 23 in Maricopa County by Coutinho’s mother, Barbara Webber, accused the insurer Centene, along with the subsidiary that oversaw her son’s plan, Health Net of Arizona, of publishing an “inaccurate and misleading” provider directory. The suit also accused the companies of breaking state and federal laws, including ones that require directories to be kept accurate.

In case you are unaware, it works like this:  The insurance company lists hundreds of mental health professionals in their directory, but most (all?) of them are either not taking new patients, or they have left the network.

……… 

The lawsuit also describes how Arizona insurance regulators had previously informed Health Net of Arizona that it had failed to maintain accurate provider directories. Health Net of Arizona promised to correct the errors. Regulators did not fine the insurer and declined to answer ProPublica’s questions about whether the Centene subsidiary addressed their concerns. 

………

One of the 25 largest companies in America, Centene and its subsidiaries have been accused in past lawsuits of purposefully misrepresenting the number of in-network providers by publishing inaccurate directories. Centene lawyers have previously denied such claims in two of the bigger cases, in Illinois and California. Both cases are ongoing. 

The top trade group for the industry, AHIP, has told lawmakers that companies contact in-network providers to ensure the listings are accurate. AHIP also stated that the companies could correct inaccuracies faster if providers did a better job updating their listings. Providers have told ProPublica, however, that insurers don’t always remove their names from insurer lists when they officially request to leave their networks. 

The insurers have no incentive to keep their directories accurate.  If they had to list the practices that had closed to new patients and remove the listings for companies that have told them to pound sand, it would be clear to people shopping for insurance that their coverage sucks, and people would not buy their insurance and pay their premiums.

Their solution, rather unsurprisingly, is to defraud their customers.

We need to start prosecuting this sort of bullsh%$. 

Headline of the Day

Republicans Hate You

—Paul Waldman

They don't just hate you, they want you dead.

They don't care if it's starvation, industrial accidents, Covid, Measles, lack of insurance, or the elimination of public health infrastructure, they want you dead.

Republicans in Congress are currently working through the process of passing a giant budget bill that will fundamentally reorient the federal government, taking the combination of malice and incompetence that has characterized the first four months of the second Trump term and solidifying it into law. It’s not an easy task for Democrats to explain to the public what’s happening, since federal budgets are extremely complicated and this one in particular is a kind of fractal nightmare, with equal horror no matter what level of magnification you examine it at.

The message Democrats seem to have settled on is that Republicans want to do a bunch of bad stuff, especially taking away health coverage from millions of people on Medicaid, in order to pay for a huge tax cut for the wealthy. Which is factually true, and a reasonable summation of the bill. But this is a good opportunity to talk about what’s missing, not just in the Democratic message of the moment but in how they approach politics, campaigning, and their opponents.

What Democrats ought to be saying

This is what Democrats ought to be saying, not once or ten times but a thousand times, over and over again until they’re sick of hearing it come out of their own mouths. They want a message that will resonate with the working class voters they’re so worried about appealing to? Here it is:

REPUBLICANS HATE YOU

Allow me to elaborate. If you struggle to pay your bills, if you have anxiety about your economic future, if the cost of housing and college and just ordinary living weigh on you all the time? There is nothing more important for you to understand than this: Republicans hate you. They think you’re lazy, they think you’re stupid, they think you don’t deserve anything better than to be a wage slave working your ass off so they and their billionaire buddies can have more servants and vacation houses and private jets, while they sit around laughing about what a sucker they think you are. They hate you.

This is a good message, not just because it is catchy, but because it is TRUE.

Just Desserts

It looks like the level of evil at UnitedHealth is such that even big investors are complaining that it was bad for their bottom line.

Investors are accusing UnitedHealthcare's parent group of conning the public to boost profits — and, ultimately, contributing to the murder of CEO Brian Thompson.

In a proposed class action lawsuit filed earlier this week in New York, UnitedHealth Group investor Roberto Faller claims that the insurer profited from a series of "aggressive, anti-consumer tactics" that harmed clients and investors alike.

"UnitedHealth had, for years, engaged in a corporate strategy of denying health coverage in order to boost its profits, and ultimately, its share price," the lawsuit claims. "This anti-consumer and, at times, unlawful strategy resulted in regulatory scrutiny (as well as public angst) against UnitedHealth, which ultimately resulted in the murder of Brian Thompson."

Yes, you read that right: these investors are claiming that UHC's craven policies contributed to the murder of its CEO — a wild admission, and one that we've reached out to Faller's attorneys to get more information about.

………

Along with being allegedly misled about the company's finances after the assassination, the motion also suggests that Thompson's murder resulted in a massive strategy change: that it wasn't willing to pursue its widespread claims-denying "as a result of heightened scrutiny...as well as open hostility."

Though most people would consider that shift a good thing, the proposed investor class is calling bull on the entire scheme because, ultimately, it led to them losing money.

This is the first time that I've seen investors claiming that being too evil was bad for business.

It is a bit of a mind-f%$#.

In response, will replace its current CEO with the prior CEO Stephen Helmsley, who, in addition to creating the UnitedHealth that we all hate, was the target of  investigations of fraud (Stock option back-dating) during his first time as CEO.

It does not seem to me that UHC is in the least bit chastened by recent developments, which include allegations of medicare fraud as well as allegations that they paid nursing homes to keep critically ill residents out of hospital and opressured these nursing homes to classify residents as DNR (Do Not Recusitate) against the wishes of these residents and their families. 

This ain't gonna end until we start frog-marching senior UHC executives out of their offices in handcuffs.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day (Unverified)

OMG it’s happening.

‘The 2024 Cybertruck does NOT qualify for coverage under Safeco’s Personal Auto Program due to the vehicle being on our ineligible vehicle list.’

This is gonna leave a mark.

Wow. pic.twitter.com/pryBL1ga5h

— CoffeyTimeNews (@CoffeyTimeNews) March 21, 2025

I need to note that I have seen no independent confirmation of this, so I am dubious that this is true, though I really REALLY want it to be true.

That this closely mirrors a proposal that I have supported for about a decade, which would require cops to carry liability insurance, is just icing on the cake. 

Sauce for the Gander

Instructions

Have you heard of Dogequest?

It is (was) a site, at  https://dogeque.st, which has since gone dark.

I caught a screenshot of the instructions, as well as a download of the web page

I loaded it mid afternoon, and  about an hour later, you got, "Domain not found."

Whoever made the site describes it as follows:

DOGEQUEST is the ultimate hub for enthusiasts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)! Our innovative platform allows users to explore an interactive map of DOGE landmarks.
But that's not all! We also cater to Tesla Motors owners, providing a comprehensive resource to locate nearby service centers, showrooms, and charging stations-all at their fingertips.

Leveraging our cutting-edge artificial intelligence algorithms, DOGEQUEST goes a step further by connecting like-minded Tesla owners with one another, facilitating a vibrant community through shared contact information. Join us as we revolutionize the way DOGE fans and Tesla owners connect and explore!

They further note that, "DOGEQUEST neither endorses nor condemns any actions," referring to potential protests while talking about artistic acts with spray paint.

Also, the cursor is a Molotov Cocktail. 

You can go here for more details.  Give 404 Media some love.  They broke the story.

My suggestion to Tesla owners, sell your cars before your insurance skyrockets.

Took Them Long Enough

Korea's impeached and suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol, has finally been arrested.

There had been previous attempts, but the Presidential bodyguard refused to allow investigators in to serve the arrest warrant.

Maybe some arrest warrants for the Presidential bodyguard are warranted as well:

Yoon Suk Yeol became South Korea’s first sitting president to be detained, surrendering himself for questioning Wednesday after a weeks-long standoff that resulted in a dramatic predawn raid on the official presidential residence.

Police used ladders to climb over barricades made of buses to get into the residence and enable prosecutors to speak directly to Yoon, who was impeached last month after making a brief but botched attempt to impose martial law and exert political control.

Prosecutors had a warrant for Yoon’s arrest, which a Seoul court issued after the president ignored three summonses to appear for questioning over whether his actions amounted to insurrection. Yoon’s presidential security detail offered little resistance on Wednesday, in sharp contrast to an earlier attempt to detain him.

………

Local television stations showed a convoy of black SUVs leaving the presidential residence, transporting Yoon to the headquarters of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO), which is leading the probe into Yoon’s Dec. 3 attempt to impose martial law.

The CIO said its prosecutors have started working through their 200 pages of questions for the impeached president. But Yoon, who is accompanied by a lawyer, has so far refused to provide any answers, a CIO representative said on condition of anonymity at a press briefing Wednesday afternoon.

Yoon is set to be held in a detention center near the CIO headquarters while the questioning continues. Prosecutors have 48 hours to formally arrest or release the president.

Yoon is a nut-case, claiming, among other things, that the US Supreme Court's ruling on Donald Trump's immunity gave him immunity ……… In Korea. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's crazy, but at least there appears to be the rule of law in the Republic of Korea, unlike, you know, the United States,

Fuck Allstate

Allstate, already known as the Visigoths of the insurance market, has been buying app companies to collect your mobile data so that they can jack up your rates.

I'd call them a bunch of pig felching rat-bastards, but would be unfair to people who felch pigs.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday filed a lawsuit against Allstate Corporation and its mobile analytics subsidiary, Arity, alleging the American insurance giant conspired with mobile app developers to collect telematics data on millions of motorists without consent, in violation of consumer protection laws.

When the supremely corrupt Ken Fucking Paxton is the good guy in a lawsuit, you are doing it wrong.

Allstate then allegedly used this data against those drivers to justify rate increases, deny coverage, or to drop coverage.

"Our investigation revealed that Allstate and Arity paid mobile apps millions of dollars to install Allstate’s tracking software," said Attorney General Paxton in a statement. "The personal data of millions of Americans was sold to insurance companies without their knowledge or consent in violation of the law. Texans deserve better and we will hold all these companies accountable."

………

Because the Artity SDK data alone could not reliably identify drivers, Allstate is alleged to have licensed the personal data available to the apps – first and last name, phone number, address, zip code, mobile ad-ID (MAID), device ID, and ad-ID – and to have combined the data sets to profile drivers

………

"For example, if a person was a passenger in a bus, a taxi, or in a friend’s car, and that vehicle’s driver sped, hard braked, or made a sharp turn, Defendants would conclude that the passenger, not the actual driver, engaged in 'bad' driving behavior based on the Arity SDK Data," the complaint explains. "Defendants would then subsequently sell and share the data so it could be used to inform decisions about that passenger’s insurability based on their 'bad' driving behavior."

Allstate doesn't care.  They've never cared.

If this is not a crime, it should be.

Can You Say Jury Nullification? I Knew You Could.

For all of the outrage from the "Very Serious People" it does appear that the American public understands the significance of the murder of UnitedHealthcare's CEO, and that the vast majority of Americans understand that the underlying issue is not one of violence, but of the complete dysfunction of healthcare in the United States.

Believing the health insurance industry is at least partly responsible for the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO is not some fringe position. 69 percent of Americans say health insurance claim denials had “a great deal” or  “moderate amount” of responsibility for the killing of CEO Brian Thompson, according to a new poll conducted by NORC at University of Chicago. Nearly as many (67 percent) blamed health insurance company profits.

The poll also captures a nuance that’s sorely lacking in major media coverage, which tends to collapse the issue into two camps: those who condemn the murder vs. those who support it. That kind of two-sizes-fits-all framing leaves no room for the view that both the shooter and the healthcare industry share responsibility for the CEO’s death. NORC’s poll suggests this more nuanced attitude is in fact quite mainstream. The number of respondents who blamed the shooter wasn’t much higher (78 percent) than those who blamed health insurance claim denials (69 percent).

Now compare that with the tsunami of corporate media op-eds and pundits expressing the sparkling insight that murder is wrong. Yeah, we know. Episodes like these really show you how much contempt these elite media organs have for the public, which they apparently see as helpless children in need of a preschool level moral lesson. This is the exact same media paternalism that prevented them from publishing Mangione “manifesto,” thinking the zombie-like masses would have no choice but to obey the writings and carry out similar acts of violence.

The response of the authorities, and of the pundit class, has been, "Let them eat cake."*

It should be noted that such attitudes when juxtaposed with completely justified outrage of the general populace have not generally been particularly harmonious.

^*A bit of a correction here. First, the quote is actually, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," let them eat brioche, a French egg bread, and this term was coined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau decades before Marie Antoinette became queen.

Of Course They Did

I am not surprised that health insurance companies strong-armed the Department of Justice into filing federal charges against Luigi Mangione.

Lobbying to get their interests placed ahead of the interests of the rest of us is a core of their business model:

According to reporting by Joe Marino, Ben Kochman and Matt Troutman last week, health insurance leaders pressured the DOJ to make an example of Luigi Mangione by bringing federal charges against him in a surprise announcement that caught his lawyers off guard. If tried in federal court, Mangione could be sentenced to death, silencing any further criticism of the American healthcare system he decried in his manifesto.

According to the Post’s report, “federal charges came amid pressure from health insurance industry leaders to make an example out of Mangione.” The post also writes that the decision to unveil federal charges “came from the top of the DOJ in Washington D.C.”

How and when healthcare industry leaders tried to strong-arm the department of justice remains unclear. But the top three DOJ officials under Attorney General Merrick Garland have all represented massive healthcare companies during their respective stints in private practice before joining the DOJ.

(emphasis mine)

Note that the original source is The New York Post, but the rapidity and ferocity of the filings support their reporting.

Thanks, Merrick.

As If There Weren’t Enough Reasons to Hate Them with a White Hot Passion

It turns out that Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) extorted money from pharmaceutical companies to in furtherance of the pharma companies peddling addictive drugs.

Seriously.  Just shut them down.  Make them illegal.

In 2017, the drug industry middleman Express Scripts announced that it was taking decisive steps to curb abuse of the prescription painkillers that had fueled America’s overdose crisis. The company said it was “putting the brakes on the opioid epidemic” by making it harder to get potentially dangerous amounts of the drugs.

The announcement, which came after pressure from federal health regulators, was followed by similar declarations from the other two companies that control access to prescription drugs for most Americans.

The self-congratulatory statements, however, didn’t address an important question: Why hadn’t the middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, acted sooner to address a crisis that had been building for decades?

One reason, a New York Times investigation found: Drugmakers had been paying them not to.

For years, the benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, took payments from opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, in return for not restricting the flow of pills. As tens of thousands of Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers, the middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments.

Let's be clear here.  PBMs did not, "Take,"  payments from big pharma, they did not, "Accept," payments from big pharma, they DEMANDED payment. 

Demanding payment from drug manufacturers and pharmacies is their whole business model.

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The documents reviewed by The Times — including contracts, invoices, emails, memos and financial data — span more than two decades, beginning with the debut of OxyContin in 1996. Many came from a public repository of records unearthed during court cases and investigations. The Times also obtained more than 200 previously confidential documents from plaintiffs in litigation against drugmakers, P.B.M.s and others.

In the public assignment of blame for the opioid epidemic, the P.B.M.s have largely escaped notice. Drugmakers, distributors, pharmacies and doctors have paid billions of dollars to resolve lawsuits and investigations. But more recently, the largest P.B.M.s have been in the legal cross hairs.

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But this often presented the clients with a fraught choice: If they added restrictions, they could lose the rebates that helped make coverage affordable.

In addition, documents show that P.B.M.s sometimes collaborated with opioid manufacturers to persuade insurers not to restrict access to their drugs.

Fines are not enough.  Jail the mother-f%$#ers.