This is extremely troubling news. It is really important to find out exactly what the compromise was here. Was the legit clinic using an unsecure platform or do they have a bad actor among them. I did find it interesting that the third party software companies weren’t commenting on the case. It would be absolute mayhem in the healthcare industry if it turns out that the software was easily compromised by bad actors. I understand that a lot of smaller companies “get what they pay for” however HIPAA isn’t something to fuck around with. And I would definitely like to see some criminal charges for the crisis center’s theft of data and patients here. Those snake oil salesmen are a plague on real healthcare.
Insurance companies need to face financial penalties for having these ghost networks. You should legally be able to demand, and sue for, $50 for every fake listing you find in your insurance’s company’s network. This is the 21st century. It should be possible for insurance companies to instantly know whether providers are still accepting new patients. Insurance companies could have a platform where providers can instantly indicate that they’re no longer accepting new patients. And insurance companies could add penalties to their contracts with providers. If the providers don’t update their status as soon as they are no longer accepting new patients, then the providers themselves will have to pay some sort of penalty.
I mean, I've been voting about forty years, been told to vote blue just once more since Bill Clinton, and people would burn me at the stake for finally realizing the illusion of choice/ratchet effect. I'm over it.
They’re similar to the ones the good liars we’re handing out at a trump rally. It reads “TRUMP IS [NOT] BORING” with the part in brackets in a dark red.
Trump negotiated with terrorists, while excluding the democratically elected government of Afghanistan.
Trump released thousands of Taliban fighters.
Trump closed bases and airbases in Afghanistan and drew down the forces to a level that could never defend themselves if push came to shove.
He then left office with Biden holding the bag. Biden had no choice but have his people gtfo. Because the Taliban outnumbered the US troops and there was no air support possible any more. The Taliban would have massacred the remaining Americans.
This happened to us when we wanted to get my son help for some behavioral issues. Trying to find a counselor who specialized in helping children was a nightmare.
Our health insurer’s website listed a few dozen, which was encouraging at first. But when I started calling them most were no longer in business, no longer accepted our health insurance (despite still being listed on the insurer’s website), or didn’t accept any new patients. And of the few who did have some availability, their evangelical Christianity beliefs were a fundamental part of their work - to the point where Jesus preaching was going to be a constant focus of the therapy.
We finally found someone (she was a devout Christian but it didn’t interfere with her counseling strategies, so that’s fine). But even she stopped accepting new patients soon after we signed up because she was so slammed with demand.
The state of mental healthcare in America is fucking atrocious. There are too few therapists in general, especially ones who help children. And as this article points out, health insurers deliberately make it so difficult for those counselors to use them that they refuse to work with with many insurance plans. And so many therapists are outside the pricing of families, even when they have insurance, and even with those therapists giving discounts.
A big part of this is the legacy that mental healthcare still isn’t seen as a legitimate practice by many in the corporate world, despite their false marketing claims. Considering how frequently big insurers screw people out of claims for physical illnesses (cancer, etc.), you just know they will screw people with mental health challenges at least as much. Because to some of them - especially older boomers who are still lingering in senior management rules - it’s all fud.
Another part of the problem (which relates to my previous point) is that mental healthcare isn’t as quantifiable as most physical healthcare (because the brain and feelings are very complicated), so corners are cut and the industry is seen with suspicion and frustration by insurers who are focused on making as much money from their customers as possible.
The net result? A ton of people who are struggling through daily life with their own challenges, and exhausted family members and friends who are having to try to help them as best they can.
Until we massively overhaul the broken healthcare/insurance system here, shit like these ghost networks and the underlying causes and their other effects will continue to break our society.
Providers are suffering, too. Were need single payer comprehensive, and giving the average taxpayer some of the benefits of their tax dollars is easily achievable. We just keep moving economically right.
My two pennys are betting that this is all part of some larger purposeful plot to destroy the US from within, starting with the 1981 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act by the Reagan administration which cut federal funding for mental health services and shifted responsibility to individual states who did not have the resources or systems in place to adequately care for those with mental illness.
Or, maybe I’m just paranoid and in need of some help.
We got super lucky that a new therapy office that took our insurance opened up here a couple of months after my daughter’s former therapist had to give up her job for health reasons. She really needs therapy to help her stay centered and she was losing it. We were looking into driving her to other towns if necessary. You’re right, it’s a nightmare.
Imagine you have to choose a health insurance company to be insured with like you choose a credit card (Visa, Mastercard, etc). Many doctors (shops) only accept certain insurance providers (cards) due to fees and other regulations.
The problem described in this article is when your insurance lists doctors that you can go to that will accept your insurance, but most of them have gone out of business or actually don’t accept your particular insurance anymore.
To make things even harder, a lot of people don’t really have much of a choice which insurance provider to use because of cost. I can’t afford insurance outside of what my employer offers.
These are listings of doctors who are in network (= covered by a certain insurance provider), but the reality is these listings are fake, as in no longer correct. Insurance companies keep these listings anyway to create an illusion of choice (aka, I am a good insurer and I have a lot of providers, that are contracted with me, for you to choose from).
People who discover that most of these doctors are unavailable, are effectively denied care or have to resort to our of network doctors that are covered at much lower rate or not covered at all (= higher out of pocket expenses).
It means we need universal health care. Some providers are out of business or have deductibles and copayments that mean they take a lot of money but the people signing up pay a lot to not access care.
The patient has insurance but once you have insurance you have to find healthcare professionals who accept your insurance, doctors don’t have to accept any insurance plan. The insurance company here has a list of health providers that accept their coverage (we call this in network) and you can go to them for care. The insurance company’s list is poorly maintained so many of the listed providers went out of business, stopped accepting the insurance plan, or stopped accepting new patients.
If you go to a doctor that is out of network, the insurance company charges you much much more for the visit if they cover it at all, or you may have to pay completely out of pocket.
It’s a maze of craziness where you could be covered by one doctor at a location but the person doing a particular procedure (like radiology) don’t take your insurance. So you can’t know for sure until after you get the bills whether you are covered or not. Every medical event is financial Russian Roulette.
I believe those are two separate things. The 4 years being for how long this contract will stand. And the wage increase being immediate change to the pay grade tiers.
But we’ll have to see when details are out. I’m only guessing based off other union contracts I’ve had experience with.
Maybe I’m just that nagging pessimist everyone hates, but the more these complete-fucking-sociopaths publicly endorse Harris, the more I worry that the democratic platform will hold on to those voters and cling to the chauvinist policies they come with.
Sure, it’s fun to watch Trump get ejected from his party like a parasite from a rectum, but this feels like one of those ‘live long enough to see yourself become the villan’ moments that I hope I’m wrong about.
The debate (Tuesday night?) is going to be a REAL shitshow. Hope the moderators/network don’t protect him too much but expecting at least one n-word and a few unprompted threats of retribution to both democrats and republicans.
The fact that it needs to come from a “familiar with the company” anonymous source instead of the official source gives me pause in believing this 100%. Plants like this have been known to game the system for tax purposes while not actually making anything. And like everything, time for me to find the appropriate The Dollop episode.
Edit - For anyone not wanting to click through and/or listen, this episode is about the Foxconn deal that gave Foxconn essentially a way to subsidize it’s other factory while doing nothing in the US . People literally showed up to work with nothing to do, all day every day.
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