Really, you gonna start crying about everything we post again?
if you're a health care insurer and you prioritize stock buybacks and executive compensation over the people paying you for coverage to the tune of billions of dollars a year, perhaps you ought not be allowed to do that.
until 1982, stock buybacks were largely illegal because the law frowned on price manipulation.
I dunno, maybe let shareholders vote on it?
The Ugly Truth Behind Stock Buybacks
Did Snakes ever stop?
, if I remember right, before the 1970s, hospitals were not allowed to function as for profit businesses.
you balance the ing ledger, plus what you need to grow sustainably.
https://theonion.com/man-suc bs-to...ce-1819570129/According to an independent study released last month by the Mayo Clinic, health insurance is the nation’s No. 2 cause of death, claiming the lives of some 400,000 Americans each year. A silent killer, health insurance often strikes without warning, its harmful and profit-based policies avoiding detection until it is far too late. Although the cruel bureaucratic disorder does not discriminate, statistics have shown that senior citizens, young dependents, and those woefully underemployed are most at risk.
“I can’t tell you the number of patients I’ve had to deliver the bad news to over the years,” said Haige’s longtime family physician, Dr. Howard Silverman. “It’s never easy to look someone in the eye and tell them it’s going to have to be out-of-pocket. For most of these poor people, prayer is the only hope.”
Toward the end of Haige’s seven-year ordeal, family members said, the once loving husband and father had become an empty husk of his former self.
“I remember the last thing he ever said to me,” said eldest son Mark Haige, holding a small picture of his father during happier times, before the endless battery of co-pays began. “He took my hand in his, and he said, ’Son, promise me you’ll never sign up for a high-deductible, network-model HMO.’”
https://julianmacfarlane.substack.co...-not-own-mediaThese people may be better off in padded rooms than corner offices. That was the finding, incidentally, in a 2006 study of CEOs: fully 12% exhibited psychopathic traits, meaning psychopathy is somewhere around 12 times more common among senior management than among the general population, and about the same rate found in prisons.
That number was revised in 2016, by the way.
Up.
The number of CEOs who are psychos is actually closer to 20%.
“A psychopath,”Forbes explains, “is different from a psychotic in that the latter is a person who has lost touch with reality, often suffering from delusions, while the former is not detached from reality but lacks empathy and doesn’t care about the consequences of his or her actions. Psychopaths are generally considered intelligent, manipulative and charming—and lack the ability to learn from mistakes or punishment.”
PBMs going to town
https://www.yahoo.com/news/unitedhea...175429944.htmlAccording to the FTC report, UnitedHealth’s OptumRx, along with Cigna’s Express Scripts and CVS Caremark Rx, were able to collectively pocket $7.3 billion in added revenue above cost during the five year period of the study through 2022.
“The Big 3 PBMs marked up numerous specialty generic drugs dispensed at their affiliated pharmacies by thousands of percent, and many others by hundreds of percent,” it concluded.
A thousand percent increase in the price of a drug that costs $10 wholesale would result in a retail price of $110.
insurance companies complain about high health care costs when they're under attack for screwing policyholders
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/comp...ns/ar-AA1xnQNM"Ultimately, improving health care means addressing the root cause of health care costs," he said. "Fundamentally, health care costs more in the U.S. because the price of a single procedure, visit or prescription is higher here than it is in other countries."
They cry about everything, so... Of course they'll cry more about a whole lot of nothing.
Three days after saying it would take up the appeal, the Trump administration drops it in favor of UHC, one of the country's worst Medicare Advantage providers.
Maybe their CEO gave Trump a million dollars for the inauguration, a little ass kissing goes a long way these days
hhttps://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/us-medicare-agency-to-appeal-unitedhealth-star-rating-decisionUnitedHealthCare, one of the largest Medicare Advantage providers in the country, had been facing backlash from the federal government and patients alike after an investigation found widespread issues with patient care, prescription drug access, and communication with healthcare providers. As a result, CMS initially lowered the company’s star rating from 4.5 to 2.5 stars, which is well below the national average of 4.5 stars.
The reduced star rating had significant consequences for UnitedHealthCare, including potential penalties and fines, as well as increased scrutiny from regulatory bodies and potentially even contract cancellations with patients.
However, in a surprising turn of events, CMS has announced that it is withdrawing its appeal of UnitedHealthCare’s star rating. The move has left many healthcare experts and analysts scratching their heads, wondering why CMS would abandon its efforts to hold the company accountable for its alleged missteps.
if they want to keep the torches and pitchforks at bay, they need to start treating people right
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cole-...b09f65216c9280The parents of a 22-year-old Wisconsin man who died after an asthma attack have filed a lawsuit against Walgreens and UnitedHealth Group’s pharmacy benefit manager after they said the price for his medication suddenly rose from $66 to $539.
Cole Schmidtknecht, 22, had lived with asthma since he was a baby, but he was able to manage his symptoms by taking Advair Diskus, a preventative inhaler, every day, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court last week. Since 2023, Schmidtknecht had health insurance through his employer that covered his medication, which cost him no more than $66.86 each month.
Cole SchmidtknechtFamily Handout
However, when Schmidtknecht went to his local Walgreens pharmacy on Jan. 10, 2024, to fill his prescription, he was informed that his medication was no longer covered by his insurance, according to the lawsuit. Advair Diskus would now cost Schmidtknecht $539.19 out of pocket, and the pharmacy allegedly told him there were no cheaper alternatives or generic medications available to him. The lawsuit also says the pharmacist failed to contact Schmidtknecht’s physician or insurance company to seek an alternative.
Not LOL to that dude if true. But LOL huffpost! That feminist rag outlet is complete and utter !
feel free to point out what HuffPo got wrong
Didn't say they got anything wrong in your linked article I'd never read due strictly to the rag outlet you linked to.
UHC on the warpath against "inaccurate social media posts"
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/busine...al-media-postsUnitedHealth Group Inc. has hired a prominent defamation law firm to counter what it sees as inaccurate and irresponsible social media posts about the company’s practices.
Clare Locke, an Alexandria, Virginia-based boutique law firm, is working for UnitedHealth, the company confirmed. A doctor “is using her social media following to perpetuate inaccuracies, which is irresponsible, unethical and dangerous,” UnitedHeath said in a statement.
not a reader, how unsurprisingDidn't say they got anything wrong in your linked article I'd never read due strictly to the rag outlet you linked to.
Definitely a reader but unlike you, I don't care much for fiction; I'm more into technical books on computing. Not surprising you're into girly dramatic fiction.
Dude reads ChatGPT for Dummies while listening to Tim Pool.
backtracking on the backtracking
it's like Trumpies don't know what they're doing and they don't know what they want to do
https://apnews.com/article/elizabeth...acd13c151e705cThe US Justice Department has been investigating UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s Medicare billing practices, a person familiar with the matter said. The company’s stock fell sharply.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the civil fraud investigation into whether the insurance giant’s practices related to patient diagnoses force higher payments from the government’s Medicare Advantage program.
I already got what I wanted. Anything he wants to do is Jake with me.
Like building a shoe store in Z's ass early this afternoon in the Oval Office, then minutes later throwing his and his in' people's asses off the in' property.
Like publicly indicting the vast group of suckers who did Russia Gate. Named 'em a stout number of 'em today in broad daylight, on a Friday no less.
I'd miss not one in' opportunity to nail their asses up every ing chance I got for the next 4 years. I'd crucify their in' souls.
a bunch of corporate investigations have been dropped by Trumplandia, but not this one
"did Luigi save the UnitedHealth case?"
https://prospect.org/health/2025-03-...edhealth-case/UnitedHealth alone collects some $8.5 billion every year for covering supposed maladies no doctor has ever treated, according to the Journal. Added to fic ious maladies a doctor may have treated at one time and other scams, Medicare Advantage fraud is estimated to cost the federal government at least $100 billion a year in unnecessary overpayments, according to most of the think tanks that have studied the issue. Even Medicare Advantage boosters like Ezekiel Emanuel estimate the program costs between $20 billion and $30 billion more than it should, making bogus insurance company–concocted diagnoses the single most con uous source of fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal budget, not that DOGE has found it yet.
The problem is that for decades now the laws that prohibit defrauding Medicare have been under attack by a cabal of lobbyists, conservative judges, and cynical wonks who essentially believe rampant Medicare fraud is the price America must pay to nurture insurance companies willing to perform the odious task of cutting senior citizens off when their lives have gotten too costly to sustain. “The line I would hear every time I brought up” some questionable billing practice, says O’Meara, “is, this is just what you have to do to survive in value-based care, and ‘CMS says we can do it, so it’s OK.’”
But she didn’t think it was OK, and after quitting the Polyclinic last spring and reading a lot of books, articles, and white papers on “value-based care,” she reached out to Wall Street Journal reporter Anna Mathews to talk about what she had experienced. That call turned into the aforementioned series detailing UnitedHealth’s efforts to milk the Medicare Advantage program while systematically denying coverage to patients it ostensibly covered.
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