So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Angus Forbes]

The conniving worms of the American Medical Association, whose lobbying efforts are more than any factor responsible for the morass we face today whenever we set foot in a hospital, are a shame and a blight on the human race, and a moral betrayal of every decent thing supposedly represented by their profession. If I believed in hell, I would be happy to see them rot in it.

AMA and health-care-industry propaganda move me only to spit on the ground. A corrupt, money-grubbing snakish industry run by corrupt, money-grubbing snakes. A schoolyard bully shaking down a kid for her milk money is more honorable.

. . . it was pretty well obvious that the weasel-faced paskudnyak in the CEO's office . . .

May I assume that you think they're OK, other than that?

 

[2jakes]

May I assume that you think they're OK, other than that?

SpeedSkaterBoston Blog: Yiddish Word of the Day: Paskudnyak

 

[belfastboy]

SpeedSkaterBoston Blog: Yiddish Word of the Day: Paskudnyak

I figured she wasn't calling them "mensche"

 

[tonyb]

I don't begrudge physicians and other direct care providers their sometimes substantial incomes. It's hard work, it requires lots of education and commitment, it's a heavy responsibility and can involve a great deal of personal sacrifice (ask the doc who's called away from his Sunday barbecue to treat an emergency). I wouldn't want the job, thank you very much.

 

[sheeplady]

One of the things I will never do again is sign a statement that I'm responsible for bills denied by my insurance.

I had a year long fiasco after an emergency room visit where a subcontractor double billed and upcharged my insurance. Both of these are fraud. These bills were denied on the basis of fraud.

However, I was told time and time again that I would have to pay these bills- and any bills they sent me- because I signed that statement. Signing it, according to them, made me responsible for anything they charged me. If I believed it was fraud, I would have to take them to small claims court, but meanwhile they'd be sending me to collections.

I eventually got it straightened out, but I logged over 50 hours on the phone to do it over a year period... and I eventually threatened to go to both the attorney general in any state their llc ever so much as touched and to the media. I don't have that kind of time, but if I gave in and paid the $250, I knew they'd make up bills until they bled me dry.

 

[tonyb]

I spent better than an hour on the phone today talking with the people at my primary care doc's office, his billing agent's office, and my health insurance company to get paid a $130 claim the insurer initially denied, in error. I hope this is the end to it, but having gone through a similar rigmarole a couple-three or four weeks ago over a four hundred and some dollar claim also initially denied, in error, I ain't holding on to much hope of that.

Last time I saw that doc he grumbled about how much of his time is spent dealing with insurance companies, time he would much rather spend tending to his patients.

 

[Fading Fast]

I've spent four hours of phone time just trying to get my medical records moved as my primary care physician switched to a "concierge" model which requires you to pay a fee just to be his patient. I finally walked over, picked them up in person, paid the ridiculous $38.25 copy fee, made an extra copy at Staples for myself (cost $8 not $38.5 - what a rip off) and walked them to the new physician's office.

Also, my insurer has something called "teledoc" where you can request a call from a doctor and discuss your issue on the phone (when it works - it saves you and the insurer a full-cost office visits). However, something broke in their "teledoc" system where it wouldn't recognize me, so I've spent - at least - three hours of calling and emailing trying to get that straightened out.

My girlfriend has spent at least five hours on the phone over the last two weeks as the diagnostic center messed up the coding on her routine mammogram and that - of course - made us responsible for the bill according to "the system." How nice that someone else's error always seems to require you to either pay something you don't owe or spend endless hours trying to get it corrected.

All the above has happened in the last month.

Two observations:

• The obvious one - our healthcare system is horribly broken and ugly

• Why hasn't productivity in our economy increased despite all the technological advances? My guess, everyone is spending part of their day at work dealing with issues like this (you can't get anyone on the phone at night or on the weekend, so you have to do it during work hours) and this "hidden" drag is offsetting all the technology gains. And it is not a rare event anymore. Ask anyone and they will have a story about all the hours they spent on the phone trying to fix a healthcare issue

 

[Angus Forbes]

Increasing complexity. At some point, the downside of complexity surpasses the upside.

 

[Trenchfriend]

My new brakes are still so bity, woohoo. Still unfamiliar.

 

[Fading Fast]

Increasing complexity. At some point, the downside of complexity surpasses the upside.

Agreed. I am not anti-digital at all as I work for myself and am, basically, my own tech support. I can do more than the average person, but think that many systems, software, programs, etc. are overly complex because code writers don't think about their user base but write for each other and their egos. We've talked about this before, but there is no better example of this than my inherited-from-the-previous-owner washer and dryer which have so many controls, buttons, cycles and features that we keep the manual for them out all the time. That is complexity surpassing the upside.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
I inherited from a friend a 60-inch Sharp "smart" TV, with an auxiliary sound bar and subwoofer in a separate box. It's set up in our basement short-term rental unit, as a sort of added amenity.

This setup has three separate remote controls. Whenever a renter avails himself of the features that require use of two of those three remote controls, and doesn't return the system to how it was set up when he found it, it typically takes me several minutes to make the thing work like a regular TV again. My success in that effort is mostly accidental. I try this function and that function until I see something familiar.

 

[sheeplady]

The technological productivity paradox. We get more technology and then we have more stuff to do.

The healthcare thing is a drag. To note, I didn't have a single billing issue that I had to deal with in my 9 months of cancer treatment. Not one.

But I went to a community-based private oncology practice. This means I did not receive treatment from a hospital, but from a private practice that supplied it's own pharmacy, billing department, and a financial advisor. The advantages to this model are significant compared to a hospital based setting. When a common chemo therapy drug experienced a World wide shortage, my practice had it in stock, as they only dealt in drugs for cancer patients and the pharmacists spend time monitoring the market. I sign an agreement each year that details what I owe for various services and can meet with someone if I have questions, or need to apply for aid, disability, or medicaid.

When I was prescribed a drug that cost $4,500 for a single shot (I needed 8 of these), my practice researched my insurance and determined I should get it there ($35 a shot) versus at home ($100 a shot from a pharmacy).

When my insurance denied something during my treatment (some sort of billing error) I had a woman from the practice call me and describe the issue to me, take ownership, and say the magic words "I will take care of it." When I told her my brain was too foggy to catch the details- could she please call my husband- she got right off the phone and did that. She took care of it and updated my husband throughout.

My cancer care cost no more than going to a hospital. But I received superior care.

Unfortunately, thanks to a number of policy decisions that lobbyists have put under way, clinics like mine are under threat. Large online pharmacies want to make it impossible for a doctors practice to have a pharmacy onsite, and hospitals receive steep discounts on chemo therapy drugs private practices do not.

 

[Zachary]

Since many years, I'm a customer of "3" (a mobile provider) with an iPhone and an LTE Web Cube. Some weeks ago I saw in the customer details of 3 that with my bonus points, I could buy an LTE iPad with a really big discount.

So I went to the 3 Shop closest to me and asked. They told me, I can only sign a contract on my Web Cube's plan, not my iPhone's. Also, they didn't have the iPad in stock. So I went to the 3 Shop in the city center. With no problems, they prolonged my plan, put a new SIM card into my iPhone, kept the plan of the Web Cube, handed me a brand-new iPad with SIM for LTE, and even gave me a pre-paid SIM as a little something. To make the iPad even cheaper (also in long-term view), I agreed to buy a Mobile TV plan for 6 € per months extra, which does not count towards my download quota.

As a happy iPad customer, I left the shop, got into the bus home, looked at my iPhone and found out it was displaying "No Signal" -- in the middle of the city.

I returned to the shop and after a short time, they fixed it with a simple computer work.

Some weeks later, I realised I hadn't received any SMS (only iMessages) since end of June. I could send them, but not receive them. I first contacted my bank since the first problem I realised was I didn't obtain any TAC SMS. Of course it wasn't the bank's fault, as I soon realised there were no incoming SMS whatsoever. I called 3, and they forwarded me to the Apple Support, to which I talked for 40 minutes with no result.

I couldn't help me. So I returned to the only place I trusted in -- the 3 Shop in the City Center. They immediately found out the problem: When there is more than one SIM card linked to the same phone number, only one of them qualifies for receiving SMS. Eventually I could receive SMS and TAC SMS again. Finally, I was able to meet my obligations via netbanking.

However, the operation of the unlimited mobile TV reception for which I pay 6 € monthly denies to work until today.

 

[Trenchfriend]

An east-german sweets-manufacturer now produces a lemon/buttermilk-sort of their kids-chocolate product-line, now.

I was in supermarket, minutes ago, saw it and bought one to test. So good, damn, I'm screwed!

 

[Paisley]

The current wholesale cost in the US of a dose of OPV is about twenty five cents. The cost to a patient today is in the area of fifty dollars. That dose was *free* in 1954. A filthy stinking immoral unconscionable racket. The conniving worms of the American Medical Association, whose lobbying efforts are more than any factor responsible for the morass we face today whenever we set foot in a hospital, are a shame and a blight on the human race, and a moral betrayal of every decent thing supposedly represented by their profession. If I believed in hell, I would be happy to see them rot in it.

Big pharma, medical research and "health" nonprofits (I'm being redundant) make the medical profession look like a bunch of amateurs. I'd sooner give money to Al Quaeda than the American Heart Association or the American Diabetes Association.

https://twitter.com/pharma_ceo/with_replies

 

[GHT]

I see that the bigoted, God bothering thread has been closed, I was just beginning to enjoy it for the sport that it was. There's no sense in engaging with someone who rants, give them intellectual argument and they just rant louder. But I always find that if you give them enough rope, sooner or later they will hang themselves.

 

[Paisley]

I see that the bigoted, God bothering thread has been closed, I was just beginning to enjoy it for the sport that it was. There's no sense in engaging with someone who rants, give them intellectual argument and they just rant louder. But I always find that if you give them enough rope, sooner or later they will hang themselves.

I think my reference to "Rama Lama Ding Dong" sent him over the edge.

 

[GHT]

I thought that Rama Lama Ding Dong was both comical and inspired. Did you know that the band called themselves The Edsels?
Named after the 1950's Ford car, which in turn was named Edsel after Henry Ford's son.
The Edsel absolutely bombed after Bob Hope described as: "It looks like it's sucking a lemon."

 

[Paisley]

I Youtubed it just to hear it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The guy appears to have been a global troll. He posted essentially the same thing on dozens of different forums, dealing with subjects ranging from football to Discordianism. I suspect he might in fact actually have been an adherent of the latter. Praise Eris.