DISQUS

Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas · 1 year ago

Okay...reposting this but it bears repeating...a buddy of mine at Yale eventually went on to Harvard Law School and graduated top of his class. He got a job at Blue Cross right out of school. He worked his way up to top of the legal department there in his thirty five year career. His sole purpose at Blue Cross was to find legal language to deny claims against a policy. Nice. It's a huge legal department. Anyway when he retired, the handed him a golden handshake of $22 Million. I asked him the following question. "How the fuck can ONE non profit HMO pay ONE lawyer one time that kind of bonus money?" His answer to me was, "You are so goddamned naive about how K-Street works." Q.E.D.

Nigel Elliott · 1 year ago

...but we're still number one in global debt!!!

Indigo · 1 year ago

In a free market health care economy, the poor die.

OlderAndWiser · 1 year ago

It's not just health care, but all kinds of opportunities that are not available to many, many in the working class and even the so-called "middle class." Let's not forget that connections, money, etc. are most often used to get top shelf jobs--NOT talent, experience and even education. And people will compromise their own ethics to get ahead in too many cases.

Also operating is the uniquely American attitude that if you don't succeed, it's your fault, and your fault alone. You don't work hard enough, you don't try to get an education, you don't "sacrifice" enough (said to me by a spoiled brat 20-something HR manager when I applied for a job in my 50s, and I was damned lucky not to get it).

Until the US realizes there is a real class (and caste) system in the US, nothing will change. It's a myth that there is real opportunity for everyone in this country. People who believe in equal opportunity regardless of where you come from are seldom in charge.

kevinbgoode · 1 year ago

I would have asked for that "manager's" superior as soon as that "interview" was over, and loudly asked that person what "sacrifice" his/her manager was willing to make for being so outrageously unprofessional.

OlderAndWiser · 1 year ago

Does McBush really care that he has a criminal on his staff?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087...

The taxes on untold billions from Americans and hidden by UBS could have financed a hell of a lot of health care in the US.

ComradeRutherford · 1 year ago

"Does McBush really care that he has a criminal on his staff?"

That's a joke, right? Bush hired all the criminals from the first Bush administration, people like Elliot Abrams. All they've ever done is hire the anti-American traitors that his dad pardoned after their subversion of the US Constitution back in the first Bush presidency from 1980 to 1992.

The White House if filled with pardoned criminals all committing High Crimes and Treason every day. And the Democratic Leadership is in on it.

TomJoad · 1 year ago

Thats because it is all ass-backwards. Bush and neo cons want to regulate the PEOPLE, and have them be sink-or-swim, but use our taxes to NOT regulate businesses, and socialize them when they fail.

JustAnOldLady · 1 year ago

I have no sympathy for people who continue to be duped by the ruling class and will vote against their own best interests because of ignorance and hate.......

mangoes · 1 year ago

By the time the Johns and Janes Q Public wake up and get outraged, they'll be too poor and sick to do anything besides shout at the TV.

jr · 1 year ago

everyone ask your representative to support H.R. 676 medicare for all bill

ComradeRutherford · 1 year ago

Health insurance exists for only one reason - to deliver profits to it's shareholders.

Paying out claims interferes with profits.

That millions of Americans are refused claims in the process is exactly how insurance is supposed to work.

America has the world's best health care system: it transfers wealth from the poor and middle class to the extremely rich AND forces the poor and middle class into bankruptcy at the same time - A win-win for everybody ... that counts.

The GOP is correct, the US healthcare system is working perfectly.

Asterix · 1 year ago

Health care was a priority campaign issue in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004 and it's one today. So far, it's business as usual with politicians and "health care" executives getting rich beyond the dreams of Croesus.

But then, we don't have a coherent energy policy, our infrastructure is crumbling and our armed forces are being stretched to the breaking point.

The American Way. Why anyone trusts his life to these idiots is beyond my understanding.

Personally, I'd be a strong advocate for taking the tumbrel to the car wash and oiling up the guillotine...

mauro7inf · 1 year ago

We should be proud that we have so many prisoners, because in too many other countries, they just kill them instead. I think the ridiculous incarceration rates are the results of law enforcement, possibly too-harsh prison sentences for things that don't really deserve them like drug possession, and our not outright killing every petty criminal that dares to spit gum onto the sidewalk. We don't have honor killings for sexual immorality like adultery (and luckily we also don't have it for sexual "immorality" like kissing a boy). We don't have as much of safe havens for criminal activity; we actually clamp down on those instead of just letting our officials be bribed about it. We take criminal offenses seriously, but not so seriously that we execute everyone. I really don't think that having so many people in jail is all a result of bad things and overzealous laws, though some certainly is. We have a great court system that allows appeals endlessly, etc. There are certainly many problems with the way we treat common criminals (and especially the way we treat foreigners who haven't been formally charged with any crimes, whom we just torture because hey, torture is fun), but on the whole, I wouldn't really say that this is a disastrous statistic. Certainly, places like Brazil (I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro) would have a much higher prison population if the police bothered to do its job.