But in America thousands die from gunshot wounds each year. People doing good, people behaving badly, people making a mistake, mass shootings, school shootings. Each a family tragedy. Each in a way preventable. (Compare our gun deaths with other industrialized countries if you doubt this)
Medicynical Note: You would think from the funeral service, the mass mourning of this good man, the attendance of dignitaries that all of these folks would be looking to find a way to decrease gun violence. You would be wrong. That’s America.
Medicynical Note: Congress is the tip of the iceberg. Our political system is influenced by rules that legalize corruption. The notion that money=“free” speech has made bribery legal by giving influence and access to large campaign donors. We also have a politicized radical Supreme Court. It too is compromised by a lack of ethical standards and the will to follow them.
The apex of our government corruption was the attempted coup on January 6, 2001, which is continuing. A group of Trump’s January 6th supporters, current members of congress, are trying to impeach Biden who is by all accounts only guilty of beating Donald Trump by several million votes in the last presidential election.
Trump refused to accept those results. From November to January of that year he encouraged and it is alleged participated in the scheme to interfere with the electoral vote on January 6th. On that date on TV he encouraged an unruly mob to attack congress and prevent the electoral college vote.
And now three years later Trump remains free while many of the perpetrators with the exception of those who are in congress, are in jail. It is these alleged unindicted congressional co-conspirators who are attempting to impeach Biden.
That’s America today. A shadow of itself with mass shootings everyday; a lawless candidate for president who led a failed coup attempt still running free and a congress (House of Representatives) that allows a fringe group to continue an attempt to overthrow our government. Lawless and ugly, American politics today.
I recently had an outpatient medical ultrasound procedure. It took all of 30 minutes and was performed by a skilled technician. The bill came to something like $3900.
I don’t know how to value such a procedure but apparently my insurer does.
Below is the accounting of payments and “adjustments” to the price.:
Medicynical Note: Pricing of healthcare in the U.S. is more opaque and difficult to understand than the pricing at a new or used car lot. My sincere apology to car salesmen for the comparison.
Actually, hospital pricing makes the car dealers look good. But, unlike a car purchase, healthcare is not a discretionary expense and when needed, shopping for the best “price” is impossible because of time constraints and because the bottom line price is obscured.
In this case my insurer paid a total of around $900. The rest of the balance, something like $3,000 was an adjustment/discount. My total co-pay was $50.
A person without insurance, however, would have been billed the full $3,900 and would have had to pay that total or enter into some type of bargaining.I may be wrong but I doubt that the hospital would offer the same magnitude of discountevenifa patient was savvy enough to ask for it.
In this case the medical facility used was one of the Catholic “non-profit” PeaceHealth facilities in the Northwest.
I’ve noted similar huge adjustments to bills ($25,000 bill discounted to $12,000 for example) in the past. These “adjustments” appear to be the standard operating procedure in hospitals in America.
John Eastman the former dean of the Chapman School of Law (ranked 109th in the country) maintains to this day that he thinks Trump won the election. This despite over 60 court cases that ruled otherwise.
Medicynical Note: With the conflicts of interest and politicization at every judicial level this guy, a former law school dean, is symbolic of the corruption of America’s legal system and a zealot’s infinite capacity for self delusion. Unless these clowns are convicted, fined and maybe jailed, America’s once proud democracy is likely finished.
Their goal was the overthrow of the government. In other countries they’d be in jail and/or banned from elective office already. Here they are continuing to plot, aided and abetted by a compromised incompetent judiciary.
“There have been more than 550 mass killings since 2006, according to the AP/US Today database, in which at least 2,900 people have died and at least 2,000 people have been injured.”
Among those events have been shootings at schools, concerts, graduations, super markets, movie theaters, parades, restaurants, night clubs, etc, etc, etc,
The mass shooting numbers don’t include the now legal category of people shooting others because they thought they were being threatened. The other person could be unarmed, without intent to cause harm or threaten but because the shooter felt he was being threatened there was a chance for acquittal of all charges.
You may recall Travon Martin the youth going home from a local store in Florida who was chased and abused by a man following him. When he faced the man and acted to force the guy to stop his abuse, he was shot and the man later cleared of all charges. Legalized murder,
No one is safe.
Medicynical Note: And in all, our erudite scholarly originalist dominated Supreme Court benignly approves of guns everywhere for everyone—except of course the demonstrators near their home. Somehow believing this was what the founders had in mind. And our pathetic congress remains it’s ineffective self, benignly looking elsewhere in hopes of being non-controversial.Not wanting to offend the gun lobby.
“What you gonna do about the old Jim Crow? Now if you was white, should be all right If you was brown, could stick around But if you black, whoa brother, git back git back git back”
And so the conservative, oh so pious republican appointees on the Supreme Court affirmed Big Bill’s observation in it’s ruling on Affirmative Action.
The ruling ignored our history of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and white’s only advantages for 250 years and declared that “magically” America has done away with the lasting multi-generational effects of our history, which they also no longer wish to acknowledge or for that matter include in our history.
And this week, in an industry with even less interest in regulation, 5 people perished in part because of a flaw in a deep sea exploration vessel. One of the innovators of this vessel felt that regulation inhibited innovation— he died with the others on the vessel.
Medicynical Note: Innovation and the need to turn a quick profit without safety rails can be fatal. In deregulated America, safety is apparently a secondary concern, it revenue that counts. But in rushing innovation without oversight mistakes pile up and people die.
Maybe our republican billionaire libertarian friends need to rethink their distain of regulation.
When I was a government employee we were instructed to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest. At that time we couldn’t even accept payment for a meal, much less vacations and monetary gifts of any kind.
So it without risk of contradiction to say that there is an order of magnitude difference between the situation Justice Thomas and other Supreme Court Justices and the long accepted norms noted above.
Medicynical Note: Harlan Crow, didn’t know Justice Thomas before Thomas became a justice. But since that time Thomas and his wife have received direct and indirect monetary payments and other benefits (free private flights and luxurious vacations) from Crow and I would presume others. In dollars Crow’s contributions are valued at over a million dollars.
And just what did Crow receive in return? Yes the citizen’s United decision which Thomas supported allows the Crows and other wealthy individuals to give unlimited dollars to influence political campaigns (a form of legalized bribery)….. but are monetary gifts to judges bribery? And just how much in contributions and other emollients is bribery?Just where is the line? And how should the recipient behave when his benefactor has business before the court?
In any case, Thomas became a reliable vote for whatever issue Crow considered important….. and also issues that his very politically active wife (who also received payments) supported. Should Thomas have recused himself from some these contentious cases?— he didn’t.
Just how corrupt is the current Supreme Court? Are judicial ethics a new disgraceful oxymoron?
Medicynical Note: Anyone think this is what the founders had in mind? The compromised Republican conservative Supreme Court justices apparently do.
These justices sit at home under police protection from demonstrators. Because the demonstrators have access all manner of weapons…… a situation that the court itself facilitated.
Medicynical note: America leads the world in murders.
We used to lead the world in innovation, education, and technology. We did have an original-sin problem with racism, but we seemed to be addressing it for a while.
Now we have racists on TV and maybe Twitter. Now we have more guns/capita than anywhere in the world. And now we have more gun deaths, mass shootings, school shootings, gun murders, accidental shootings, gun suicides, shootings of innocents by police and police getting shot etc, etc, etc. America today.
And the Republican Party and Supreme Court and some Democrats, the people who made it all possible. Sit mute. Some hiding from people who might be near their homes legally carrying the weapons that they have made it so so easy to own.
Medicynic 