You know what has radicalized me the most? Getting a fucking math degree and understanding precicely how evil capitalism at large, but insurance companies in particular, is. To see the falsehoods they peddle because the consumers of their propaganda do not know what is being said. To see how they skirt and cheat every guard rail put in place to make sure that there is some level of ethics using statistics and a bit of other math bullshit. It is disgusting, egregious, and downright infuriating.
I’ll give you a couple of caveats. (1) There is such a thing as Mutual Insurance, where the company is owned by its policy holders. Assuming they don’t have massive overheads, there is at least an ethical version of insurance that does exist. And (2) C’mon USA, get your fucking act together and do government health insurance. (signed, Canada)
We have some insurance vendors that are mutual, but when it comes to health, vision, and dental you don’t get much of a choice (unless you want to spend even more money and go with a different plan than your work supplies assuming that it’s part of your benefits package in the first place).
I speak as a member of the country that indeed needs to get our shit together (like come on, every other country has this figured out).
Canada
If we’re not careful we’re gonna a vote in a scumbag next election whose people want to do away with healthcare access and put it back on “my death panel is my credit limit”.
Yes. It is always a battle. Unfortunately the pendulum will likely swing right next election, but hopefully we can limit the damage. Everyone is tired of Trudeau – combined with a lack of a counterpunching charismatic leader anywhere else means a lot of Canadians will hold their nose and vote PP. Fuck them all. But it’s going to happen, sadly.
The Canadian Future Party doesn’t have a hope in hell, but they at least have a promising platform. First past the post is bleh.
Same for me. Getting a law degree.
Read tens of thousands of pages. Hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands of cases, law review articles.
Story after story of police and corporate America fucking poor people.
In 2024 there are still companies arguing that asbestos is safe. Anything less than chattel slavery with strict runaway slave laws is insufficient for these psychos.
That’s a really interesting perspective. Was that material you sought for personal reasons or a required part of your education? Any specialization involved, if the latter? (I’m pretty ignorant about y’all’s schooling)
I have this eerie feeling that any large amount of legal documents is going to contain mostly stories of those with means fucking the rest of us.
Good question. I’ve wondered how people could go to the same schools as I, sit through the same classes, and have wildly different political views. But it’s that they come into it with a different lens.
Example, There’s a Supreme Court case about a woman who was charged with obscenity for possession of porn. It didn’t belong to her. It was her boyfriends, maybe husband. Police came in with a warrant for his arrest, but he wasn’t there, and they wanted to squeeze her for information on his whereabouts, so they charged her with possession of porn he had squirreled away in the basement.
You’re could read that and be like “good, the police had a warrant and she should have cooperated, she had her turn in court and was convicted of possessing it, and we might disagree now but that was just the law of the day.”
Other students who were less ignorant, more fun to be around, and usually much better students and people read that and be like “could you believe these obvious racists jammed up this innocent woman over a porn mag just to serve a warrant?”
Speaking for myself, I could see that they were out there right now pulling the same type of shit and I thought now they’re going to have to go through me, once I get my card, let’s fight about it.
Then you start practicing and the lines start to blur a bit, things become grey, and you start to drink your own Kool Aid, whatever that may be. If you go defend corporations, you’re going to start thinking maybe they should have more rights, maybe they aren’t getting a fair shake by all these whiny plaintiffs and their surviving family members. You go prosecute criminals, you’ll think there is danger everywhere, suspicious of everyone.
I found a happy mix of picking and choosing cases of all kinds, now, but spent my formative years representing employees who got hurt at work. My Kool Aid was like “employees are being fucking by corporations, watch them or they’ll fuck you too, and insurance companies are evil, life sucking leaches.” So, my Kool Aid has no artificial flavor, right?
I did do a lot of extra reading as I was eic of the law review and a top student, able to remember obscure footnotes in great detail; reading stories and then drawing on them to remember rules and policy reasoning is very natural for my memory. Worked out well.
I’ve worked in healthcare for over 20 years, and the fact is that licensed, well trained, and caring individuals are forced to waste hours a day getting ‘approval’ from non-licensed high school educated insurance reps to try and justify their treatments. There can be entire departments dedicated to just dealing with insurance companies at pretty much every hospital, but often times insurance companies will only talk with the actual clinicians that care for patients.
The entire practice is fucked. First of all non-licensed non-medical people should not be dictating the treatment of care. Whether it’s directly or by means of denying coverage. Second of all there should be absolutely no way that they should even be allowed to look at your private medical records. And finally when it comes to something like auto insurance there are laws that insurance companies cannot steer customers to certain repair shops or dealerships. And yet when it comes to our health, health insurance companies are able to set up elaborate networks that essentially do the exact same thing they steer customers to certain institutions and prohibit them from going to others.
The entire setup of our health care industry seems like it would be at odds with most of our well-established laws regarding insurance, PHI Access, and delivery of medical care.
This is going to become more and more of a problem since the working conditions are burning out clinicians at alarming rates
I commiserate with my medical professionals literally every time I have to see them. The worst part is that it isn’t even the GED holder on the other end of the request. It is the actuarial table and risk analysis software they punch everything in to. Or an AI trained on the exact same tables and algorithms.
I have contemplated training an AI to look at medical records and score the standard of care given to patients. Would be nice to be able to weaponize the tech against them.
What is this picture of? I’m not sure I get it.
This was an attempted correction for a L5-S1 Spondy. Basically the 5th lumbar vertebra slips anterior (forward) over the sacrum. This stretches the spinal cord, causing pain. The correction was attempted by using posterior fixation pedicle screws and rods to pull the 5th lumbar vertebra posterior (backwards) relative to the sacrum.
Based on this image, it’s hard to say - but very possible that this expensive procedure did not improve the pain the patient was experiencing. The spondy is still clearly present.
can you tell if this image off-angle or are the pins not parallel?
looks excruciatingly painful
The vertebrae needn’t come back to its place but still give pain relief in the long term by giving it stability. It is usually accompanied by other procedures which also reduces strain on the nerve giving relief.
BTW I am a surgeon treating and operating for back pain.
Pain certainly make you see things differently.
Remember, convicted felons can be president!
