Aaand, In Other News...

[Wrathbone]

Was it just a crackpot populist conspiracy theory or does the South regularly deal with infiltrators from North Korea?

I assume NK has some amount of spies in SK, but typically their attempts at inflitration are laughably futile, such as the time when they were caught tunnelling under the DMZ and insisted that they were coal miners (evidenced by the rocks they'd recently painted black). I get the impression they're just being used as a convenient bogeyman for Yoon to point to, much as Trump points to Mexico.

[eny]

I'm sure there's some other angle here that we're all not aware of. Like money laundering.

Funny you should say that, the guy is under investigation for fraud by the SEC... And "bought" $80m of crypto from trumps company last week...guess who intends to gut agencies such as....the SEC?


https://popular.info/p/a-chinese-nation ... with-fraud

[Animalmother]

The CEO of a major US health insurance company got murdered in New York yesterday. The public reaction has been less than sympathetic...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/peopl ... r-AA1vhhag

"All human life is sacred, so it's not proper to laugh when serious harm befalls someone," one Bluesky user wrote. "The moral thing to do is instead charge them hundreds of thousands of dollars."

"Our apologies, but bullet wounds are only covered under our platinum+ package," another user added.

Apparently he was a horrible Edwin so fuck the loss.

[Wrathbone]

I think the killer's still on the loose too, and he left some curious evidence: bullet casings with the words Deny, Defend and Depose written on them.

https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/de ... 41862.html


I saw someone saying this sort of thing was inevitable with rampant CEO greed being completely out of hand and that maybe it would scare some other major CEOs. Not sure most of them are capable of basic human emotions like fear, tbh.

[Sly Boots]

Probably a good time to mention that one healthcare insurer has just announced that in three States it will no longer cover the use of anaesthaesia for the full duration of some operations.

I feel the US healthcare system has moved beyond merely completely fucked up and is now in 'just plain evil, actually' territory...

[Animalmother]

I could be wrong but I think this is to prevent some doctors charging say 5 hours of anesthesia for a 3 hour operation. It's fucked up either way.

[Sly Boots]

I could be wrong but I think this is to prevent some doctors charging say 5 hours of anesthesia for a 3 hour operation. It's fucked up either way.

It's possible, although that wasn't what I took from what I read... this is what I saw:

[Animalmother]

No, you're right. It's just plain evil.

[eny]

Insurance has become legalised parasitism, it is no surprise. Medical Insurance companies put a price on people's lives and the possibility of survival. If medical treatment exceeds that they deny.

My #UnitedHealthcare story. I am a longtime #diabetic who had uncontrolled #diabetes at the time. I had been on several #medications with no luck getting my A1C down below 8. My doctor wanted to put me on Januvia before attempting insulin. UHC denied my prior authorization for the med. They said we needed to try different meds first. My doctor sent them the list of meds, dates of use and A1C results. I had taken every single med they suggested. Still denied me. I finally got ahold of someone at #UHC “customer service”. After fight with various “managers” one finally explained…I was denied because my life was worth less than the long term cost of the medication. He explained that as a pastor, which has no real value to society, and my health issues, I might live another 10-15 years. I might be able to bring in $20,000 in profit to them in that time if I was lucky. The med cost over that time was over $30,000. So it was not worth the cost.

It's notable that this guy dumped a load of stock just recently as DOJ were to announce a fraud investigation...


https://crooksandliars.com/2024/12/uhc- ... tent=96533

[Raid]

Every little thing I hear about the US health care system makes me wince. It's just astonishing that people over there, and I mean the general electorate here, not the lobbyists and the politicians they grease the pockets of, are so resistant to changing it. America likes to think of itself as a world leader, as a shining beacon of hope and prosperity, and they're blind to the fact that parts of their culture are absolutely barbaric and backward.

But yes, I have to agree with Pete here. Health care is not a luxury, people can and do die because they don't have sufficient access to it, and the CEOs of these companies are often extremely wealthy because of all of the "value" they've "created" for the shareholders. Being bankrupted by an unfair system while seeing CEOs being given million dollar bonuses? There's only so far you can push people before they snap. When someone snaps in the US, they have easy access to firearms. I'm honestly surprised that this is the first instance of this I can think of.

[Wrathbone]

Obviously it’s a newsworthy story, so I get why it’s making headlines, but it begs the rhetorical question of why other New York murders don’t get this level of overwhelming police attention and coverage. They closed bridges, have lord knows how many police looking into it round the clock, and yet here’s betting they have a stack of murder cases with promising leads that are now gathering dust, and it’s because this guy was rich and powerful. Money can’t stop you getting shot in the street, but it apparently can get you a first-class law enforcement response.

[eny]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-sel ... s-posties/

[Animalmother]

The US is a disturbing hell hole at times. Cops being able to request a minigun....

[Raid]

Adair, Iowa, had a population of 794. So, it seemed suspicious when its three-person police department asked regulators to buy 90 machine guns, including an M134 Gatling-style minigun capable of shooting up to 6,000 rounds of ammunition every minute.

The M134 minigun was a weapon designed to be mounted to helicopters and in gunpods on fighter aircraft as they needed to be able to saturate an area with so much ammunition in a single flypast to guarantee killing light vehicles and concentrations of infantry on the ground. Let's ignore the fact that a town of fewer than a thousand people is likely to require that kind of ordnance, surely even spinning the barrel up constitutes a reckless endangerment of public safety. Why is that an option on the requisition form?

[Wrathbone]

Maybe they have a Predator hunting in the cornfields?