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CSotD: High Prices, Hot Tempers, Low Sparks

2 minutes 15 comments

An excellent day for you to click on all the links, because there’s a lot to be said, but let me start with a quote from John Donne: Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.

This photo was taken September 16, 1920, in the wake of an explosion outside the offices of JP Morgan on Wall Street. The unsolved bombing killed 38 people and wounded about 300, which is certainly fewer than died on 9/11 or in the Oklahoma City bombing, but, then again, it’s more than the single man killed Wednesday on Sixth Avenue.

For those who enjoy irony, police now believe Brian Thompson’s killer came from Atlanta, which is where, during the 1996 Olympics, Eric Rudolph placed a bomb to protest abortion, killing one and injuring about 100.

I mention that because, in the wake of Rudolph’s bombings and the efforts to capture him, the issue of public anger didn’t come up much, despite how divided we were over abortion.

Well, times change, and the horror of this week’s murder seems overwhelmed by the fury over the health care industry in which Thompson was a major figure.

Amid the usual thoughts and prayers, we’re not hearing “How could this have happened?” nearly so often as we are hearing exasperated explanations.

Juxtaposition of the Day

John Darkow

Joe Heller

Darkow and Heller frame their responses in the form of parody and criticism of heartless insurance companies, for which they’ve drawn both criticism and praise.

We should not lose sight of the fact that a man died. But we might react the same way when a drunk driver goes into a bridge piling: His unfortunate death prompts a discussion of the central issue.

The killer should be caught, tried and punished. Absolutely. But while applying John Donne’s principle that every man’s death diminishes me, we should also examine the source of this demented fury and turn the message inward.

“How the hell did the shooter get to that point?” is also “How the hell did we get to this point?”

The killer’s sociopathic response has touched an alarmingly empathetic note in the public.

People are not applauding, quite, but they are extending a great deal of understanding, and many are recounting stories of infuriating encounters with the for-profit health care industry.

This one-time worker at Thompson’s company spoke of quitting after a mother called about an unpaid claim for which she was being sued while planning her dead child’s funeral. The worker’s boss became angry because she spent more than the allotted phone time trying to help the mother resolve the issue.

Pia Guerra noted on BlueSky that a new policy by BC/BS in three states would end payment for anesthesia after the predicted time.

I had major spinal surgery when I was 13. It was supposed to be 3 hours but went to 6 after complications. Thanks to Canadian healthcare, the only bill my parents got was 10 bucks for a TV rental the night before to calm my nerves. American healthcare is barbaric.

My cancer surgery was 12 hours. I don’t know how long it was scheduled for, but thank god Medicare didn’t decide to make me pay for any overtime.

And today’s Mr Boffo isn’t so funny, landing as it did the morning after I read a posting from someone whose child’s massive claim was denied because they went to the ER without a referral from her primary care doctor.

They’d taken her to the doctor, who dismissed it as nothing serious, then raced her to the ER when it became plainly a crisis.

But the insurance company had its rules.

We have a lot of rules here, and Elon Musk is correct that they cost money, but he’s only counting money spent on the bureaucracy, not the money individuals expend when the rules prevent payment, compassion or common sense.

Americans are awash in medical debt, which accounts for some two-thirds of personal bankruptcies in this country.

Elon won’t improve things by cutting back on Medicare, veterans’ benefits and Social Security, even if he also somehow kneecaps the insurance companies.

In fact, if there isn’t a major change in how we handle medical costs in this country, cutting back on “the bureaucracy” may simply mean layoffs so that telephone wait times are even longer and it takes longer to shuffle the necessary papers for resolution of problems.

Bearing in mind that, when Democrats sought to beef up the IRS with more office workers to handle questions and processing, the Republicans fought the measure with fanciful tales of armed, jackbooted auditors storming into houses.

Though I’m sure Elon Musk’s plans are completely benevolent and above board.

I verified that he indeed posted this on Xitter.

And NBC News verified that he indeed spent a quarter of a billion dollars supporting Donald Trump’s candidacy.

Steve Breen (Creators) suggests that their bromance is hurting the feelings of poor JD Whatsisface, who hasn’t been heard from in weeks. Seems Trump has developed a hillbilly allergy.

The latest twist is Jeff Bezos shedding his pretense of neutrality this week and declaring his loyalty, which David Horsey suggests will touch off a Battle of the Billionaires for dominance as they work to help Dear Leader reduce harmful, unnecessary regulations, by which they mean unleash the full power of relentless plutocracy.

After all, given the reduction in rail traffic these days, we no longer need rules against tying young women to the tracks.

And it’s been years since anyone died from tainted beef, so why waste money on inspectors?

Michael Ramirez (Creators) exaggerates on a more global level, as Trump’s insane, uninformed plan to return to the tariff-bound Gilded Age of the 19th Century threatens to plunge us back into that time of rich people at the top of the pile and desperately poor people below.

It was a time when social reformers like Josephine Shaw Lowell and Jane Addams lobbied for reform, while Jacob Riis exposed How the Other Half Lives, and joined Theodore Roosevelt to remake wretched neighborhoods into viable living space.

The response of the powerbrokers was to make Roosevelt vice-president in order to turn the progressive activist governor into a powerless Washington cog.

But that’s a story for another day.

For now, thoughts and prayers …

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Comments 15

    1. The subject is

      Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield calls off surgery anesthesia cap

      1. Good move. Good move on the public’s part in raising hell, good move on their part in listening.

      2. A meme that floated about on social media yesterday on this topic featured a picture of Anthem BCBS’s CEO, presumably taken from a company website. Shares of that meme are being removed from circulation by the social apps, presumably to avoid any copycat behavior.

  2. Administrative costs for Medicare are around 20% of those for private insurance. Does Elon recognize that all those other countries in his chart have something approximating a single-payer system – along with lower overall per capita expenses and better overall health outcomes?

    1. Of course he does, but the goal isn’t viable health care. It is obscene money earned by insurance company executives.

  4. I dare anyone to explain the Medicare cost differential between what the provider bills and what Medicare pays. Our medical system is woefully corrupt.

  5. Remember, back in the old days, tariffs were the only way for the Federal government to raise money. There were no income taxes at all, as Lincoln’s attempt was declared unconstitutional. (You think the Supreme Court is bad NOW? Hoohoohoooo!)

    Also, there was the second-worst depression in American history from 1893-98 (people forget that Grover Cleveland’s second presidency was a complete disaster), there were no electric appliances yet (everything had to be done by hand), and with almost no cars, the streets were paved with literal horseshit.

    The middle classes generally lived in what we today think of as poverty.

    1. Read some Jacob Riis to see what literal poverty was like. Both “How the Other Half Lives” and “The Battle With the Slum” are fascinating and easily found online.

      For a scarier deep dive into the lives of homeless children and other street-dwellers, try Helen Campbell’s “Darkness and daylight: or, Lights and shadows of New York life” which is available in reprints or online here:
      https://archive.org/details/darknessdaylight00campuoft

    2. It wasn’t “Lincoln’s Income Tax.” It was Cleveland’s. The Supreme Court killed the 1894 Income Tax, not the 1862 one. The 1862 income tax died in 1872, replaced by, as you noted, tariffs, as well as taxes on whiskey and beer. The 16th Amendment not only allowed tariffs to be lowered, it eliminated one of the main arguments against Prohibition, that Uncle Sam needed the alcohol tax revenue.

      The Depression of the 1890s began just before Cleveland took office, while Harrison was in office. Cleveland was unpopular because he insisted it was not the responsibility of the federal government to do anything to help out those who were suffering. For example, rejecting Jacob Coxey’s suggestion of a pubic works program.

  6. btw, always loved Traffic and their jazz influenced rock. thx

  7. The longer the shooter remains at large, the longer the health care scandals are on the front page.

    The murder, the chase and ultimate capture, the trail and its aftermath – all intended the keep out broken health care system front and center. What a plan!

  8. A little over 40 years ago, I was the bone marrow donor for my sister. After one night in the hospital, I was released even though I felt like I had been run over by a freight train. I just assumed that my insurance (Blue Cross) would handle most of the bill. I was denied, though, “because I wasn’t sick”, as if I had decided to spend a night in the hospital for the fun of it. That didn’t seem right so my sister’s boyfriend, bless his heart, went down to Olympia and worked with legislators to get this changed. It took many months but the policy was finally changed and I was reimbursed. I always wondered how many people had to pay out of their own pockets before the change for simply doing what needed to be done to keep somebody alive.

  9. If and when the shooter is caught, and if or when his motivation turns out to be a sob story worthy of a Dickens or a Bob Clark (see, “Turk 182”), the suspect will likely have no shortage of offers of free representation at his trial.

    I for one will be curious to see if we’ll get a “ripped from the headlines” ep of Law & Order; can’t wait for that cold open!

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