CEO Shot -a thread

Ian: please get the physical. Every freakin year. You're of the age.

Asa: please go back to smashing canoes and unlock the damn meme thread and stop trying to regulate what's funny. Trust the 👎🏼 and 👍🏼 and let the Suddards break the glass in case of emergency  

Mr_Asa said:

In reply to californiamilleghia :

Rewards for tips have a shaky history for payment.  There are already stories about why the reporting person might not get paid

There have also been threats against her and numerous bad reviews of the restaurant for having "rats".  

In reply to maschinenbau :

Well played. Just leave some memes here. 

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Mr_Asa said:

In reply to californiamilleghia :

Rewards for tips have a shaky history for payment.  There are already stories about why the reporting person might not get paid

That right there is both ironic AND funny.

Appleseed said:

I thought about the apathy towards the killer. How did the country get like this? Then I thought of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. They violently robbed banks and were lauded as folk heroes. No one today seems to stick up for bank robbers. But in the Great Depression, when banks were foreclosing on everything, Bonnie and Clyde were seen as sticking it to the people that berkeleyed over the common man.

See any parallels?

B&C also took paperwork for mortgages and destroyed them, if I remember correctly.

Until the other thread reopens...

There have been several comments here statiing that insurance companies make their profits by paying out less than they bring in in premiums.  My understanding is that they make their money on the"float", that is the money they have received in premiums and not paid out but have invested in stocks, bonds, etc.   Of course, the more premium money they can hold onto, the more they can invest.

I also wonder if the shooter has read and may have been influenced by the novel "Unintended Consequences" by John Ross.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

You could just give the offending parties a time-out, rather than locking a thread that most of us enjoy.

Posting a meme here since we can't have nice things anymore.

Interesting thread in that there's actually folks arguing about this here.  Having hit several social media threads today where the audience tilts much younger, the pro shooter sentiment is running about 1000 to none.  There's a whole lot of anger.  Based mostly on that, I'm not sure that any jury trial would end with a guilty verdict.

From recent personal experience - In Portugal the per capita healthcare spend is about one quarter of the US (most things are cheaper there, but not that much).  Everyone is covered.  There is no such thing as medical bankruptcy.  My US primary care doc is scheduling 3-4 months out, and my GP doc appt in PT was same day.  (Private doc, I paid for it)  And in my experience as well as my circle of friends, care is good and waits are less than the US.  Perhaps the US "system" is so corrupt that single payer couldn't be implemented to make things better, but at this point I'm a huge fan of what Europe is doing:  Spending less with better results.

Wow. I read the whole thing.

My current take on this is that the shooter wanted to be caught. He kept the gun, etc. Rather than getting gunned down at the scene, he was captured alive. Now the discovery portion of the trial will include motive. Why did he do this? I expect that he wanted this to become the focal point of the trial.  I think he is willing to be a martyr to raise awareness of the broken system. His alleged manifesto states:

“They diagnosed my mother with severe neuropathy when she was forty-one years old. She said it started ten years before that with burning sensations in her feet and occasional sharp stabbing pains. At first the pain would last a few moments, then fade to tingling, then numbness, then fade to nothing a few days later.

The first time the pain came she ignored it. Then it came a couple times a year and she ignored it. Then every couple months. Then a couple times a month. Then a couple times a week. At that point by the time the tingling faded to numbness, the pain would start, and the discomfort was constant. At that point even going from the couch to the kitchen to make her own lunch became a major endeavor

She started with ibuprofen, until the stomach aches and acid reflux made her switch to acetaminophen. Then the headaches and barely sleeping made her switch back to ibuprofen.

The first doctor said it was psychosomatic. Nothing was wrong. She needed to relax, destress, sleep more.

The second doctor said it was a compressed nerve in her spine. She needed back surgery. It would cost $180,000. Recovery would be six months minimum before walking again. Twelve months for full potential recovery, and she would never lift more than ten pounds of weight again.

The third doctor performed a Nerve Conduction Study, Electromyography, MRI, and blood tests. Each test cost $800 to $1200. She hit the $6000 deductible of her UnitedHealthcare plan in October. Then the doctor went on vacation, and my mother wasn’t able to resume tests until January when her deductible reset.

The tests showed severe neuropathy. The $180,000 surgery would have had no effect.

They prescribed opioids for the pain. At first the pain relief was worth the price of constant mental fog and constipation. She didn’t tell me about that until later. All I remember is we took a trip for the first time in years, when she drove me to Monterey to go to the aquarium. I saw an otter in real life, swimming on its back. We left at 7am and listened to Green Day on the four-hour car ride. Over time, the opioids stopped working. They made her MORE sensitive to pain, and she felt withdrawal symptoms after just two or three hours.

Then gabapentin. By now the pain was so bad she couldn’t exercise, which compounded the weight gain from the slowed metabolic rate and hormonal shifts. And it barely helped the pain, and made her so fatigued she would go an entire day without getting out of bed.

Then Corticosteroids. Which didn’t even work.

The pain was so bad I would hear my mother wake up in the night screaming in pain. I would run into her room, asking if she’s OK. Eventually I stopped getting up. She’d yell out anguished shrieks of wordless pain or the word “berkeley” stretched and distended to its limits. I’d turn over and go back to sleep.

All of this while they bled us dry with follow-up appointment after follow-up appointment, specialist consultations, and more imagine scans. Each appointment was promised to be fully covered, until the insurance claims were delayed and denied. Allopathic medicine did nothing to help my mother’s suffering. Yet it is the foundation of our entire society.

My mother told me that on a good day the nerve pain was like her legs were immersed in ice water. On a bad day it felt like her legs were clamped in a machine shop vice, screwed down to where the cranks stopped turning, then crushed further until her ankle bones sprintered and cracked to accommodate the tightening clamp. She had more bad days than good.

My mother crawled to the bathroom on her hands and knees. I slept in the living room to create more distance from her cries in the night. I still woke up, and still went back to sleep.

Back then I thought there was nothing I could do.

The high copays made consistent treatment impossible. New treatments were denied as “not medically necessary.” Old treatments didn’t work, and still put us out for thousands of dollars.

UnitedHealthcare limited specialist consultations to twice a year.

Then they refused to cover advanced imaging, which the specialists required for an appointment.

Prior authorizations took weeks, then months.

UnitedHealthcare constantly changed their claim filing procedure. They said my mother’s doctor needed to fax his notes. Then UnitedHealthcare said they did not save faxed patient correspondence, and required a hardcopy of the doctor’s typed notes to be mailed. Then they said they never received the notes. They were unable to approve the claim until they had received and filed the notes.

They promised coverage, and broke their word to my mother.”

It might be the cynic in me, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if motive was ignored or downplayed in the media. It's not in the best interest of the shareholders and profit centers for people to start thinking about this sort of stuff.

That's heartbreaking to read. On top of that, it's quite easy to imagine a similar situation for myself or someone I know.

I won't be surprised if the jury never gets to know any of this.

I've had neuropathy in my feet for years, and I'm presently laid up for three weeks recovering from foot surgery for an unrelated injury. The procedure is only intended to relieve my pain for a few years, then I will need to have a joint replacement. If I can get it approved.

Other possibility: his reason for keeping the gun wasn't to provide proof if he was captured, but for more planned murders. I think he was trying to escape but preferred being captured alive to dying.

New UHC CEO has vowed to fight to "continue practices that combat 'unnecessary' care"

S.S.D.D.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/leaked-video-shows-unitedhealth-ceo-saying-insurer-continue-practices-combat-unnecessary-care

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Wow!  That guy will probably never be without armed guards. Good luck(not really), you're gonna need it. 

Time for a timeout.