Healthcare in the United States, and I am speaking here not about the doctors, nurses, and technicians but, instead, the system in which they all have to operate is a racket. It has nothing to do with wellbeing, it is about profit and milking you and me like financial cows who give up money not milk. And it is a disgusting system that produces very poor healthcare outcomes. The United States has the worst healthcare in the developed world. Here are the facts.
Big insurers’ revenues have grown dramatically over the past decade, the result of consolidation in the PBM business and taxpayer-supported Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Analysis of the 2022 financial statements of United Health Group, CVS/Aetna, Cigna, Elevance, Humana, Centene, and Molina
respectively since 2012 due to explosive growth in the companies’ pharmacy benefit management (PBM) businesses and the Medicare replacement plans they call Medicare Advantage.
The for-profits now control more than 80% of the national PBM market and more than 70% of the Medicare Advantage market.
In 2022, Big Insurance revenues reached $1.25 trillion and profits soared to $69.3 billion.
That’s a 300% increase in revenue and a 287% increase in profits from 2012, when revenue was $412.9 billion and profits were $24 billion.
Sucking billions out of the pharmacy supply chain – and taxpayers’ pockets
What has changed dramatically over the decade is that the big insurers are now getting far more of their revenues from the pharmaceutical supply chain and from taxpayers as they have moved aggressively into government programs.This is especially true of Humana, Centene, and Molina, which now get, respectively, 85%, 88%, and 94% of their health-plan revenues from […]
As a country, indeed in any country, both society and government, have yet to fully comprehend the effects of the internet. Part of it is using the net to weaponize lies, but it is also about what living in the digital world does to physiologically. As this report describes, particularly with young people, it distorts your brain's functioning. The implications of that are just emerging in the medical literature, and here is a first report.
To access the research paper upon which this report is based here is the citation: Association of Habitual Checking Behaviors on Social Media With Longitudinal Functional Brain Development. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2799812 doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.4924
New neuroimaging research provides evidence that the frequency of checking social media during adolescent might influence how the brains of teenagers develop. The findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, indicate the the use of social media is related to developmental changes in neural sensitivity to anticipation of social rewards and punishments.
“We were interested to see how young adolescents’ social media use behaviors may relate to the trajectory of their brain development over time,” said study author Kara A. Fox, a PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The constant availability of social media allows adolescents to access social rewards at any time they desire, and these rewards come in quantifiable, unprecedented forms such as likes and comments. We hypothesized that checking social media more often would be associated with increases in the brain’s sensitivity to social feedback.”
For their study, the researchers recruited a sample of 169 sixth- and seventh-grade students from three middle schools in North Carolina. The participants were first asked how many times per day they checked Facebook, Instagram, […]
Madeline Duncan, Senior News Reporter - The Daily Texan
Stephan:
Texas under Gregg Abbott and Ken Paxton has become a rather nasty state defined by White Supremacy, male dominance, christian nationalism, poor social outcome data, and a deep commitment to ending democracy. They don't even bother to hide it anymore. They don't want college students to vote because they tend to vote Democratic. So what is the solution? Why take all the polling places off college campuses. Make it very difficult for students to vote.
Students at a college polling site Credit: Madison Morris
Republican Texas Representative Carrie Isaac introduced a house bill to prohibit Texas counties from placing voting locations on college campuses earlier this month. If enacted, HB 2390 would take effect September 2023.
Isaac, the representative for Texas District 73, said she introduced the bill to promote students’ safety on campus during election season. Opponents of the bill claim it was proposed in an effort to make it more difficult for college students to vote. Isaac said these claims are untrue.
“I have the utmost confidence in our young adults here in Texas — that they will be able to vote and will vote at a polling location no matter where it is located,” Isaac said.
Amber Mills, an advocacy organizer at MOVE Texas — a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization started to promote civic engagement among young adults — said the bill is a blatant attempt to suppress student votes.
“For many of the students who live on campus, this is their only opportunity to be able to vote,” Mills said. […]
Here is a trend that is just taking off, but not getting much media attention: the need for electricians. If I were a young person, who wasn't particularly interested in going to college, but who wanted to make a six-figure income I would go to technical school and become an electrician. This article lays it all out.
Illustration by Amelia Bates / Grist
Chanpory Rith, a 42-year-old product designer at the software company Airtable, bought a house in Berkeley, California, with his partner at the end of 2020. The couple wasn’t planning to buy, but when COVID-19 hit and they both began working from their one-bedroom San Francisco apartment, they developed a new hobby: browsing listings on Zillow and Redfin — “real estate porn,” as Rith put it.
Their pandemic fantasizing soon became a pandemic fairy tale: They fell for a five-bedroom, midcentury home in the Berkeley hills with views of San Francisco Bay and put down an offer. “And then came the joys and tribulations of homeownership,” Rith said.
One of those tribulations began with a plan to install solar panels. Rith didn’t consider himself a diehard environmentalist, but he was concerned about climate change and wanted to do his part to help. He didn’t have a car but planned on eventually getting an electric vehicle and also wanted to swap out the house’s natural gas appliances for electric versions. Getting solar […]
