Those Indecipherable
Medical Bills? They’re
One Reason Health
Care Costs So Much.

Hospitals have learned to manipulate medical
codes — often resulting in mind-boggling bills.

BY ELISABETH ROSENTHALMARCH 29, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/magazine/those-indecipherable-medical-bills-theyre-one-reason-health-care-costs-so-much.html

A nice little manifesto for the addicted:

I have no problem with people taking the Tina Fey approach from the start, and being like, “Objectively, that looks like a whole shitstorm I don’t have time or appetite for.” What a wise and abstemious thing to say; I am envious of their resolve. But then there are the rest of us, who go to Twitter as a source of news, entertainment, company, resources, encouragement, and debate. We live here, in this shit town, and we know it’s a shit town, but we’re too embedded to leave now. Also, we don’t really want to leave. We talk about doing it a lot and sometimes we go away for a while, but we’d never write it off entirely, because so much of our life is here now.

"Hospitals have learned to manipulate medical
codes"

That whole system is a joke. My wife works in that field and she tells me about it. Everyone has lists of which diagnosis codes get which tests and procedures paid for. To be fair to them, the diagnosis code system isn't designed to work for them. It's designed to work for insurance companies -- they have screening software that rejects claims automatically if they are coded for something that the insurance company doesn't feel like covering. The ICD-10 standard hugely broadened that, because now the code includes not only the problem, but what the proximate cause was, and what incidental conditions exist with the patient. For example, if the code indicates that the patient has diabetes, and the insurance considers that a pre-existing condition, the claim will be robo-rejected whether the condition has anything to do with the diabetes or not. My family doctor tells me that since ICD-10 went into effect, about 3 out of 4 claims that he files are rejected the first time through, and then his office manager has to call the insurance company and negotiate. It adds hugely to overhead costs for both the doctor and the insurance company.

Annnd Crid's a genius for having called this out! I knew it was difficult just to figure out who works for the government, looking at "The US Government Manual", and I know that my contractor status is a badminton shuttlecock: sometimes we are Federal employees (time to furlough), sometimes we are not (Federal pay raise), sometimes we are a commodity (contractor changes but none of the workers), and all of the time we are propagandized.

But this is a GEM I had not seen. Thank you!

(I've never wanted an apology. That's not you. I want you to write a book. I'll buy it.)

Too good to check.

Scientific Studies Show Women Really Do Like Guys With Dad Bods More

https://thesocialman.com/girls-like-dad-bods/

FBI sting operation or incitement of terrorism?

In the best-case scenario, the text was just one irresponsible but ultimately uninfluential remark to a man who was already ready to shoot people. But that would still raise the question of just why exactly anyone thinks this sort of encouragement should be a part of any police investigation. In the meantime, it wasn't an undercover G-man who stopped the plot; it was the local cops in Garland, who were there because they realized that this was the sort of event someone might try to attack.

http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/29/that-time-an-undercover-fbi-agent-told-o

Not so much that the author left feminism, but that feminism left her.

Liberal feminism had shifted from the universality of equal human rights to identity politics. No longer were ideas valued on their merit but on the identity of the speaker and this was multifaceted, incorporating sex, gender identity, race, religion, sexuality and physical ability. The value of an identity in social justice terms is dependent on its degree of marginalization, and these stack up and vie for primacy. This is where liberal feminism went so badly wrong. When postcolonial guilt fought with feminism, feminism lost. When it fought with LGBT rights, they lost too.

https://areomagazine.com/2016/12/29/why-i-no-longer-identify-as-a-feminist/

Girl, 5 years old, plays like a boy, gets a 1 day suspension.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/03/30/5-year-old-suspended-from-school-for-pretending-a-stick-was-a-gun/

Struggling middle-income families may not understand that welfare programs are so meager that the poor hardly get any help. But they can directly understand that they missed out on the earned-income tax credit because their family income hit $50,000. It is not surprising that harried working mothers resent that 30 percent of low-income families using center-based child care receive some form of subsidy while middle-income families get next to nothing.

“All they see is their stressed-out daily lives, and they resent subsidies and sympathy available to the poor,” Professor Williams wrote.

President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act — the most significant expansion of the safety net since the War on Poverty in the 1960s — has unsurprisingly bred class resentment, too. Many disgruntled workers see it as another program for poor people that just pushed up their own premiums, offering little of benefit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/business/economy/trump-budget-entitlements-working-class.html

Some ideas, not that the 'publicans are that smart.

http://rameznaam.com/2017/03/25/healthcare-improvements-republicans-could-make/

Uh, bunkie. Let me know how that works out for you?

EUROPEAN Union boss Jean-Claude Juncker this afternoon issued a jaw-dropping threat to the United States, saying he could campaign to break up the country in revenge for Donald Trump’s supportive comments about Brexit.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/785813/European-Union-EU-boss-threatens-break-up-US-retaliation-Trump-Brexit-support

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/261251/

> my contractor status is a
> badminton shuttlecock

That's because of your cynical & sinister manipulations of the Red Mercury market. How dare you.

Frum regarding the Pence marriage.

Y'know, if I got married and my wife said no more private dining with other women, I'd probably be okay with it.

This is pretty neat, via welch

The purposes, enthusiastic timbre and guileless amateur design of this website are amusing to me.

...Those people are usually so inscrutable, knowutimean?

Well, meeeeeeeee-yow.

We need to talk about the trannies.

HB2 was cruel, foaming idiocy. Today's repeal, whatever its faults or continuing hazards, is welcome.

But trans people (and gays! and women! and the disabled! and everyone who ever lived) who say things like this are testing my patience:

Because she still has a deep voice, contractors sometimes call Summersett "sir" on the phone. "But when I meet them face-to-face," she says, "they can't eat their words fast enough."

Is that really how you think you'll earn my support? Is it not more likely that this desperation for crass but intimate engagement is the core of the problem?

I don't know what makes a person want to change gender, but it's got to be a deeply interior force. It really, really isn't my error, any more than is your alcoholism or your love of country music. And that will be the elemental ("identity!") component which drives my political thinking about trans people and bathrooms: I never pestered anyone at the pisser in my entire life.

However...

…However, I think the larger issue is in this story, also by Graham, and it's the biggest tale of the decade: Are we to be governed (and served) by people nearby, or by people far away?

If you still wanna talk about sex, see this.

People, please keep your faces out of your smartphones when walking around.

Report: Pedestrian Deaths Spike in 2016 Because People are Distracted by Their Smartphones

DANG!

Italy's Considering Offering Women Paid Menstrual Leave

By the way and I wish I'd been clearer above: "Crass but intimate engagement" describes also those who want to pick fights with people in bathrooms... Both sides are bringing their most childish character to the issue.

Hey, Crid, is George W. Bush channeling you here?

‘That Was Some Weird Sh*t’ George W. Bush Reacts to Donald Trump’s Inauguration

More Hollyweird . . .

Jane Fonda ‘Grace and Frankie’ Vibrator Billboard Turning Heads in Hollywood

Remember, folks, all cultures are equal!

Curry house chef prepared food after wiping his bottom with his bare hands because he doesn't use toilet paper for 'cultural reasons'

I busted Jeff for not knowing this 3 years ago, now here it is: The Laptop Bomb.