• 11 Posts
  • 123 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Health Net is one of Centene’s companies and they pull this crap and worse every single day.

    Health Net’s provider lists includes a huge number of ghost providers. In my case even the ones that were real were the wrong kind of specialists. Heath Net insisted I go to these providers despite the fact they couldn’t help me and refused to see me.

    I ended up having to regularly make a 220 mile trip to get the healthcare I needed.

    It gets worse. Health Net regularly refused payment for services that were covered under their policy. I easily spent 10 hours a week on the phone trying to get legitimate claims paid by this horrible company. The first 45 minutes of the calls were spent trying to get past their first line “customer service” people to someone who could actually deal with the problem. Health Net repeatedly refused coverage on DME that they had previously paid for and said the previous approvals were a mistake. They weren’t.

    Health Net even refused payment for a visit to specialist after they had provided pre-approval for the visit in writing. It took seven months and probably 20 hours on the phone before the crooks paid the bill.

    Centene and their subsidiaries should be shut down and their executives should be in prison.










  • So we’re supposed to believe that the highest corporate profits in more than 70 years are not a primary driver of inflation? I don’t buy it and neither do all economists.

    It is unlikely that either the extent of corporate greed or even the power of corporations generally has increased during the past two years. Instead, the already-excessive power of corporations has been channeled into raising prices rather than the more traditional form it has taken in recent decades: suppressing wages.

    Corporations have such excessive power that they can even push the narrative that their historic profits don’t have anything to do with inflation. Some people actually believe the propaganda.





  • I’m worried it would cause permanent tension between two friends.

    Significant tension with our Mexican neighbors is exactly what Trump, Desantis and other weirdo’s rhetoric is causing. They’re just trying gin up more hatred from their bizarre, poorly educated, toxic supporters and they don’t get a fuck about anyone else.

    Each time some GOP idiot talks about invading or bombing Mexico the news spreads like wildfire in Mexico while American news media ignores it almost completely. I repeatedly hear about bullshit the GOP freaks are spouting from my Mexican friends instead of reading about it in our own mainstream media.




  • We now live in an overt oligarchy heading toward fascism. Although it’s always been an oligarchy behind the scenes IMO, you are right, they are now saying the quiet part out loud. They are also taking actions that were once done behind closed doors right out into the open.

    David Frum: “If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”

    We are watching that happen. An oligarchy run by a fascist would be just fine with conservatives as they’re showing us every single day.

    Frank Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition… There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

    Laws clearly do not bind Trump, Thomas, Roberts, Alito or Musk and they’re done pretending that they do. They don’t even bother playing lip service to the idea that we have a government of laws, not of men.

    I once had a Mexican friend tell me “I weep for my country” when talking about Mexican crime. Watching the Republican’s accelerating mockery of our laws, institutions and government I’m sorry to say that as an American I weep for mine.



  • This would be of limited use for many people. Carriers lock people in by selling lots of phones that are missing frequency bands and cannot be used on their competitor’s networks. For instance, many of TMO’s phones cannot be used on AT&T and Verizon’s networks. My Oneplus 9Pro is a great phone, but if I wanted to switch to Spectrum (on Verizon’s network) or AT&T I would be forced to buy a new phone.

    Some phones like the Iphone and Pixels are compatible with every U.S. network, but plenty of others are not.