So, here we are, handing billions of dollars a month to insurance industry executives so they can buy new Swiss chalets, private jets, and luxury yachts...
Republicans will cause a Great depression in no time if they get elected. Their economic policies is just to rob the poor. And when the poor have no more money, the right just abandons that Nation as a failed communist state. Vote blue for the trickle up! The right are consistently greedy and stupid!
Federalist Society ideologues object to federal involvement in any social program, and Medicare is just one of them. Same for Social Security, Medicaid, other "benefit" programs like Black Lung, VA benefits, etc.
I've been working on some projects... one of them is "don't slit your own throat" aimed at people on SSI who vote for Republicans who want to kill the program. Lawyers, social workers, medical providers, care givers. Looking for allies....
Daniel, I've learned not to tell people that they are fools, slitting their own throats, working against their own self interest. They knee jerk, react and bend over backwards to prove that you are right.
Reverse psychology is a great manipulator of behavior. I effectively used it on a rebellious step son.
If there was a behavior I didn't want, I ordered him to do it, and vice versa.
His mother wanted me to pay for his college, so I ordered him to study and get A;s. He didn't and failed.
He was an asshole at 17 and is a 59 year old Trumpian asshole, like the scorpion on the frogs back, that is his nature.
If you or anyone has a teenager or preteen, if you tell them not to do something be assured that they will do it. Best to use reverse psychology.
Mr. Farrar, I think you might be talking about something closely related to the"Inaddmissible Social Definition" which my colleagues and I first formulated and kicked around well over 50 years ago. It goes about like this:
When I was a prepubescent boy my father said to me: "Do not take the neighbor girl Barbara out behind the garage and have her remove her clothes." He thereby presented me with the possibility that it was within my power to do so. So I did just that because I was entering pubescence and it was great fun. It remained fun for the next 70 years or so in my life. Sexual play between males and females is an "addmissible social definition." So most of us do it in spite of the hysterical admonitions against it by the deranged advocates of our Judeo-Christian tradition.
However, my father never said to me: "Do not take Barbara out behind the garage, cut her into pieces and eat her." I never did that. Not ever in my entire life.
There are some things one can imagine which are so horrible, detestable, frightening and loathsome that it is understood it is not necessary to proscribe them. We assume that people understand how bad these actions are without being told they are bad. When I was very young, homosexuality was on the borders of being an "Inaddmissible Social Definition." This was always very difficult for me because I have always had dear homosexual friends from my earliest days. I am quite delighted to say it no longer is on the border of inaddmissible. It is now addmisible. There is even a modern term which recognizes this change:
homosexuals are now "out of the closet." They are "gay." We are all (not just gay people) better off after this change.
Imagine the surprise one experiences upon reading ALIVE by Piers Paul Read; the true story about the soccer players whose plane crashed in the cordillera of the high Andes. Some of these men survived by cutting their team-mates into pieces and eating them. The "Inaddmisible Social Definition" was so effective in their case that it took a great deal of argument by a small group of those men to convince the rest of them to cannibalize their friends in order to go on living. All of those survivors suffered from severe mental problems for the rest of their lives. Much like PTSD. Some requiring treatment by priests and counselors.
The serial killer Jeffry Dahmer cannibalized some of his victims. Dahmer was diagnosed as mentally ill. [To be honest here; I do not believe there is such a thing as mental illness I am using the term to simply get on with the discussion. Suffice it to say that I believe Dahmer was seriously deranged emotionally.]
I have many other examples which I used in my courses I taught in Criminology for 36 years besides Dahmer: Gille De Rais, Blue Beard, Vlad Tepes (The real Dracula),
Caligula and more. Furthermore, there are of course, societies which practice, or have practiced human dismemberment and cannibalism as an acceptable part of their culture. Those cultures which practice cannibalism have "Inaddmissible Social Definitions" which are much different from ours. [Need I point out that modern medicine practices human dismemberment? There is a whole history here that is fascinating.]
I think what you are calling "reverse psychology" possibly falls within this framework.
Well Gerald that was a grisly post, and unfortunately I read it just before my bed time (I go to bed early, wake up early).
I think that reverse psychology and inadmissable social definitions are two things, but by the tellng of your first example, there seems to be some element of revrse psychology in it.
I cannot see the connection between canabalism and reverse psychology though.
As regards dismemberment, my last gesture is to leave my body to Medcure, hopefully that medical students can practice and improve their skills that others may benefit (you see there is an element of altruism in this cold, pessimistic, skeptic mind. My wife on the other hand is going for composting (terramation).
First I marshal the troops, especially the lawyers who in many cases got them the benefits and are the most influential people in their lives.
Second, the medical providers and social workers, grocers, landlords etc. in effect have an annuity based on the lives of the recipients. When I say affects every business, I mean it.
Third, I hope that the law firms, etc communicate with their former clients. It may be a means to get more business for some of them.
Fourth, when I made cold calls for Biden in 2020 into Pensyltucky and Caro;lina, IT WORKED! Up close and personal, I say stuff like "don't slit your own throat," "not suckers or losers" and I can see it in their eyes. "Trump hates dogs" really gets 'em.
Other variations on the theme for other groups. Veterans; miners; truckers' issues s, etc. I have reached out to organizations that represent them. E.G. many a retired trucker does not know that the workers' compensation concept, "repetitive trauma" exists. Many retired people who don't get much SS may be entitled to SSI.
BTW I took psychology courses and my wife's undergraduate degree was in psychology. These aren't kids. Adults. I took a course in andragogy, when I was at the NJC.
The Republicans are intentionally destroying the Middle Class. They are targeting good paying jobs, health, education, and home ownership. They view humans as interchangeable, replaceable Coggs, excepting themselves. To do this they want conformity, obedience and a subset of people at the bottom that they easily control. You might consider this the old Confederate/Fascist/Tyrant view of life. This is opposed to the Cooperative, Democratic idea of working together for fairness, equality, progress, diversity and freedom to individuals.
I am forced to admit , when I was first eligible for Medicare, the company that I’d retired from , sent their insurance fellow to help me ‘ convert to Medicare’ . At that time I was unaware of much about Medicare and he enrolled me into a plan which turned out to be Medicare Advantage through the same provider I’d had all along, Excellus Blue Cross & Blue Shield.
Now that seemed like a decent thing at the time.
Several years later when I began suffering some of the effects of “ Medicare Advantage”, which were cumulative co pays for necessary surgeries in the hundreds and ultimately thousands of dollars, I started having questions .
Last year I went to the Social Security office locally.
My intention was to switch to straight Medicare.
The agent there told me I wouldn’t qualify for pharmacy coverage under Medigap because I made too much money .
I at that point I had income provided by Social Security alone.
I have routine medications that I must take such as thyroid ( total replacement) and several others that are necessary to maintain my optimum health.
So , I would have to pay thousands of dollars yearly to cover the continually increasing cost of these meds .
As it is I pay about $3,000/ annually for co pays on the Advantage plan.
So, I’m stuck with the alleged Advantage plan.
The truth is we are being routinely ripped off because of the policies put in place over the years that benefits only the wealthiest among us .
I’m a widow , my husband was a physician , a radiologist.
He died more than twenty years ago and he talked about the upcoming changes in Health Care as we knew it .
He said on numerous occasions, Medicine , as we know it, will cease to exist in the next twenty years.
Everything will go from reasonably compassionate health care , to corporate welfare health care .
As will every other service provider in this country. He also said we’d fall behind all the highest standards of medical care in other developed countries and pay more for much less.
He died in the late nineties.
I’m sure there were many people who saw some of this coming .
Living in the reality of this corporate thievery is altogether worse than we thought .
Patricia, my ex husband is a physician. He retired about 25 years ago. He experienced it and predicted much the same as you described. My current doctors are primarily young.They, of course, have to adhere to the new corporate welfare limitations. 40 minute maximum visits, one or two visits a year, hardly any follow up. The only saving grace is something called Senior Care at Stanford. The PCP's do not have the same limitations that the young specialists do. What I have noticed after my acoustic neuroma surgery was the wide disparity between what the surgeons received for their services and the total bill. The doctors received about 2% of the total cost. Total cost was over $100,000. Thank goodness, I had medicare. I paid less than $400. I also have blue Cross as my supplemental Ins. The doctors today are seeing double the number of patients per hour and get a boiler plate low salary given the years of training they have had to go through. That is why we have boutique practices now, costing upwards of $25,000 per year. Our best and brightest students are not going into medicine.
And that is the shame . Insurance companies now second guess Medical people and make medical coverage decisions based on cost not symptoms / diagnosis , is precisely more corruption.
We have a Medicare Advantage Plan. We are near Boston, so if you advocate for yourself you can get very good care. When I got a cancer dx, I got approval to go to Dana Farber in a day.
But, they are getting worse. The appointees are timed. People over 75 are encouraged to “think about” having procedures that will help us live more comfortably but are not life-saving. We are encouraged to die quietly. But you can push back.
This is America. Healthcare is one of the biggest revenue streams into corporate pockets. How many private investment firms own nursing homes and assisted living places? What has that done to the care?
EVERY issue, including the election, is now about one underlying issue: the growing wealth and power of a a decreasing number of arrogant, sociopathic billionaires who want to take it all for themselves. Fewer and fewer people have more and more of the money. They have created monopolies, and the coordinate their actions all over the world. They finally see their chance to swallow the golden goose of America, the richest country in the world. They are using an ignorant, deteriorating, sociopath to help them destroy the government, and democracy. It seems that about half the people are being sucked in by their lies and fear mongering.
Many people buy Medicare Advantage insurance because they can't afford supplemental insurance. If you incur major medical expenses and only have Medicare, you can lose your home and become homeless. The choice becomes to take a chance you will die prematurely due to Medicare Advantage methods of denying care or possibly live longer but be homeless. With the financialization of everything, we will become increasingly insecure.
I'm sorry, but the advantage plans are more risky. You think you have coverage, but....
Here in Baghdad By the Sea, the defacto capitol of Medicare fraud, Cano Health, a company once valued at $4.4 billion, went into bankruptcy. Imagine what happened to the bills for what ordinally would be covered. Meanwhile, ads featuring Joe Namath (we went to different schools together) don't disclaim that the company behind those ads, now called Blue Lantern Health, and their products, HealthInsurance.com and the Medicare Coverage Helpline, have an expansive rap sheet of misconduct, including prosecutions by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, and a recent bankruptcy filing that critics say is designed to jettison the substantial legal liabilities the firm has incurred. In September 2023, the company became Blue Lantern; before that, it was called Benefytt; and before that, Health Insurance Innovations. Forty-three state attorneys general had settled with the company in 2018, with it paying a $3.4 million fine. A close associate of the company, Steven Dorfman, has also been prosecuted by the FTC, in addition to the Department of Justice.
Many others have become bankrupt. I know I'm cynical bit IMHO part of their business plan. They collect premiums, deny claims, and liquidate - keeping the premiums.
BTW the cost of Part B is based on income. Knowing all this, my wife and i are triple insured -- we kept our Federal BC/BS. Still some medical procedures are coded as not covered and we have to intervene to avoid big bills. E.G. my wife had a procedure done while she was in an operation that was denied by all three -- until we forced a "clarification." My wife once worked for HICFA, the predecessor to CMS and has superior knowledge.
What if you must pay the 20 percent of $500000. Of a bill Medicare doesn't pay? They come after your property. Sadly, there is no legal remedy for most of society 's ills anymore, if there ever was one. It's a rise that our system is just, just as democracy is the facade for our oligarchic form of government.
MA pays dividends to investors by denying services
I have had only one problem with Medicare and for me it is trivial and personal.
Medicare treats diabetes supplies as Part B, medical supplies, not as prescription medicine, Part D.
Part D is expensive, if you have Tricare r a good Medicare supplement, you don't need part D.
As a pre diabetic I prick my fingers daily and record the results. I use a blood glucose strip.
The only reliable meter is Free Style lite. Free Style lite is evidently too expensive for Medicare, their authorized meter and strip is Metric which is inaccurate as hell. My secondary, Anthem/Regence blue shield from CalPers has only two authorized vendors, both of them unsatisfactory, Tricare or Life has one, also unsatisfactory. So I have no choice but to by the strips myself, from Amazon for $31. My local pharmacy has to pay $160 and will not, supply them because they lose $150 each issue, and there are 50 to a vial.
When I lived in Redmond, WA I got them from Rite Aid, who had negotiated with Abbott the manufacture of Free Style, My local pharmacy is a mom and pop and does not have the ability to negotate.
So I buy my own, $31 from Amazon is a big jump from $160 by my pharmacy.
Medicare won't honor a prescription from my PCP for an Epipen unless he fills out a lot of paperwork. But Tricare honors it without a second thought.
To even get my phamacy to honor Medicare Part B I had to fill out three pages of paperwork.
However with medigap Insurance, through Calpers, after 7 years of treatment for brain and lung cancer, and with insulin resistance, I have yet to pay even $100 total and that for Epipen and metformin. And I will kick in cataract surgery and Medicare provided eye glasses. I did pay about $14 total for the steroid and antibiotic drops I had to take for three to six weeks after surgery.
Medicare isn't free. They deduct $164.90 from my SS and my wife, who doesn't have social security as she was on a SS replacement plan, pays $164,90 monthly. Tricare pays for her prescriptions,with a modest copay.
My Supplemental Insurance is about $350 a month but my former employer pays about $200 of that.
I fill out those pesky forms. My young PCP is willing to do the same. Many doctors will not, but if you tell them it's the difference in a co pay from $10 to $100. When I had problems after negotiating with OPTUM RX, my online prescription drug pharmacy, I wrote a letter to medicare, OPTUM RX, my retired teacher organization and anyone I thought should know how older people are being treated. I told them my experience, that for almost a year they were denying a medication my PCP believes is necessary. Yes, I spoke to a dozen reps. in Prior authorization and we wrote and called what they call appeal 1 and 2. I received calls from all of them. I finally got the phone call that made the difference. She was in a dept that over saw all these dept's, I had been in touch with. It was worth the time and effort. I have done this with any medication that was medically necessary. The name of these insurance companies game is DELAY. They know you will give up. I now pay $10. a tear 1 exception, instead of $100 for my BP medications. I got what is called a tier 2 exception for a drug that would cost me $100 for $50.
Wow, talkingabout Jumping through hoops. I have Optimum RX through CalPers as well, but don't use it for anything except Metforim, and now blood glucose strips.
I also have Tricare, which I don'[t use, yet., might in the future though. My wife does via her marriage to me, and Tricare uses Express Scripts , and there is a co pay, small, for her meds.
Instead of a statin produced by PhRMA, made of petroleum chemicals, I use red Yeast rice, 600 mg BID, and at 85 my average blood pressure is 120/80, then again I limit the food I eat,two meals a day, both light, one at noon and one at 5 pm I snack on tangerines, olives, pickles and popcorn. Not a vegan or vegetarian, but never eat pork or fowl, and only once in awhile ground meat.
I find that Beyond Beef and Beyond Sausage are great meat substitutes.
PS, at 85 I am just now cooling off after weed whipping around the house, my garage apartment, septic tank and barn,
My sister who passed on Apr 12th, lived in NC. She read all of Taylor Caldwells books and got all of her disinfo from Facebook, she hated socialism and Democrats. She fell ill with Lung Cancer (never smoked) , divorced and never worked, all she had was Medicaid and Social Security from her divorced husband. Years of immunotherapy (Opdivo then Keytruda) oncology visits, CT Scans and other health problems, the medical bills piled up, she made arrangements to pay them $35 a month, and retitled her house to her grandson. Otherwise the house would be confiscated upon her death.
Sis was a happy, Christian, conservative house wife, content with her Deacon of a husband, dealing with the cold , hard , real world while she stayed home secure in her cocoon, until she tired of his demand for blow jobs and sex, then he left her for a more willing woman, older and with three kids, who in turn after she snared her means of support, denied him hummers also, she had no recourse but to open her home, to her sons and there wives,who quickly exploited and stole from her.
In the end her grandsons wife, looked after her,changed her diapers, and Sis fell asleep, not to wake up, and the family cremated her, no memorial service, no flowers, just a family sit down dinner.
I suspect that her case is not singular, but exemplar.
There are nice ads on TV, like A Home for Mom, old age living faciliies. I lived in Panama three years and there was no such thing, and no one lived on the street unless they wanted to. with perpetual nice weather, except for rainy season, it is a perfect place for the homeless, but there were none.
Medicare Advantage is yet another GOP strategy to privatize the entire government - as if Citizen's United was not enough. Yesterday the Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale) school board announced that it would likely have to close 2 or more public school schools next year because the DeVos voucher scam was so successful in DeSantisland that there was insufficient enrollment to justify keeping the public schools open. Dont-say-gay land is rapidly becoming an educational wasteland replete with fascist book-burning and similar Nazi festivals. BTW, there is zero research showing vouchers improve academic performance.
Americans need to get "Trickle-down" out of their heads as well as the stupid idiotic notion that government efficiency can only be maximized when operated as a business. The flaw in that latter logic, aside from Thom's example, is that government is a non-profit service organization. MBAs do not teach you how to manage a non-profit service. The main problem is that capitalism performance indicators are usually stuck on profits and body-counts; not better services.
The Deep State Army understands this, and does try to redirect service behavior in ways to avoid unintended consequences. Of course, Trump has declared war on our Deep State heroes with things like Schedule F - "Do as you are ordered or you are fired!" even if your boss is making things worse.
The powers that be are reliant on a public educated enough to read instructions and perform routine tasks. Lewis Powell, who was seated on the Supreme Court wrote a memo about the time of the Vietnam protests and civil rights movement,that the problem was the children of the middle class, were too educated, and had too much time on their hands.
Thom Hartmann has discussed this many times. here is an article that encapsulates
Trump signed EO 13957 which created Schedule F employees, enabling him to embed, at the last minute, loyalists in DOJ, DHS, NSA, and other vital agencies, while reclassifying the positions that they replaed as at will.
One of Bidens first acts was to sign EO 14003, which revoked Trumps EO, however that was a mistake, because he could and should have used that ED to get rid of David Weiss and the other Schedule F employees that Trump embedded.
Matters not because if Trump wins in November he will reissue that EO and then some, worse than before. Biden achieved nothing except tying his own hands, and he could do what Trump did, create his own Schedule F and embed real democrats, which Trump will surely fire anyway.
If SCOTUS gives Trump full immunity, then Biden can use that to assassinate Trump.
Squeeeeeezed like a lemon till the last drop. But nobody cares much. Even dems do not move against this bullshit scam. Why not pls? Incredible. Maybe they got it free for them and all their family? Corrupted. Bribed. What a poor country America has become. Not anymore a model to copy anywhere in the world.
If you have been the target of a scam, you may have a viable Medicare Qui Tam, Whistleblower case or False Claims Act case. The largest area of fraud against the government today is against Medicare fraud and Medicaid fraud. Approximately 10% of all Medicare/Medicaid bills are inflated or fraudulent. That helps explain why the Department of Justice pays such large whistleblower rewards for reporting Medicare fraud. Below are some of the ways hospitals and other health care providers cheat Medicare/Medicaid:
*Pharmaceutical Fraud
*Long Term Acute Care Hospital (LTACH) Fraud
*Upcoding Fraud
*Home Healthcare Fraud
*Unbundling Fraud
*Unreasonable Costs of Goods or Services Fraud
*Kickbacks and Stark Fraud
*Ambulance Fraud
I support Medicare for all in part because with elimination of the collateral source rule Medicare Part B premiums would drop like a rock as would the cost of piratically all types of PI coverage, like workers' compensation and long term disability insurance. That's because future medical care would be covered by Medicare.
CMS sends out Explanation of Benefits. I review them to see if the I really recived that service. I have found scams, one by Southern Labs in Alabama, and another for an outfit in Ohio, both billed Medicare for Processing COVID tests, I have never taken a COVID test, there was one from some company in Maryland for incontinence supplies, I don't even know that they are
I am sure that they got my Medicare Number from an employee at Adept Health which supplies my CPAP supplies..
I reported them to Medicare Fraud, and they acted like it was a bother taking the info. Then they cancelled my card, and reissued with a new number and it took weeks, fortunately I had no appointments in the interim. but I did have to change my medicare info with my CPAP supplier, and warned them that I had reported fraud,and will do so again. ,as well as my local medical center.
A month or two later I received a package of home test for COID from Southern Labs, I called them and they told me that the company had been taken over, and that they are filling orders that had not been filled. I assume that a new owner has taken over because Medicare filed suit or closed them down. The COVID tests are sitting on a shelf untouched and unopened.
With each report you ask if we enjoyed it to send it to someone else.....I just want to say that I don't enjoy any of your reports!!! Your exposure of fraud, waste and corruption makes me so angry that I worry about teeth breaking.
Last year my former employer—a giant public university system—switched all its employees and retirees (we all still get our insurance through the university system, as it pays most premiums etc.) to Advantage without even asking us! Apparently this is allowed if it’s a “group plan”! They make it very hard to return to plain Medicare, but I’m gonna do it when open enrollment comes by. Anyone else in this boat?
Elise, thanks for your story. I just called the Medicare line to make sure what I'm telling you is fact. During open enrollment, you can ditch your "Advantage" and get into Medicare with NO QUESTIONS asked by the government. It's always your right to have original Medicare.
If you also choose to try to buy a gap policy as a supplement, the private insurance companies CAN ask about your health. Seems it could affect the prices and maybe even a refusal.
We certainly need legislation to stop them, just like we did with the ACA and no preexisting conditions.
I was in the same boat, Elise, and refused the Advantage Plan and quickly got an original Medicare Plan which I pay for myself along with a supplemental plan for the extra 20% which is the Medicare co-pay on all procedures. But the original cost of the procedures has already been whacked down by Medicare and so my supplemental plan doesn't have to pay that much. Be sure and do this before you get sick because before you can sign up for original Medicare after being off it (and being on an MA Plan) you have to answer health questions. If you are not well, you will not be able to get on the original Medicare Plan.
Really appreciate you telling your experience Bonny. Can you clarify who asked the questions? I am thinking it's the private insurance companies when you try to buy a supplemental. It might put someone in a position where they can get Medicare, but have great deal of trouble getting private insurance for the part Medicare doesn't pay.
Alis, it is original Medicare that you will not be able to get on and then of course not the supplemental as it only works with the original Medicare. You will be stuck on your Medicare Advantage plan.
Sorry, according to my husband, it is the Medigap plan that you will not be able to get on, you are correct Alis. It was the private insurance who did ask the questions. He said that you can always be on the original Medicare.
Thanks Bonny for checking. I called Medicare and you now and your husband have it exactly right.
So confusing that we let the private insurance companies ask about conditions for gap policies, since under the ACA for Obamacare policies companies can not. We need a new law.
When is someone going to admit the Emperor has no clothes?! Our system is broken, dysfunctional, corrupt. The Dems can run around claiming they must win to save our democracy. We don't even have a representative republic anymore. The MAGAs are delusional in thinking Trump is their messiah. I often wonder if things would be different today if social media had been around when Granny D (Doris Haddock) in 1999 at 89 did her walk across the US for campaign finance reform. I won't be voting for just plain evil, The Orange One. Neither will I opt for a 3rd party. Nor will I not vote. I will cast my vote for Biden. Hoping against hope he and those around him will have the courage to address the real problems; money, Electoral Çollege and gerrymandering. Oh, did I fail to mention the military/industrial/political complex. Heaven help us!
I think the outcome is inevitable, because they are fired up, angry and organized, and we the opposition are in discord, each with their own agenda, hurling insults at each other. Liberals, i am sorry to say,are stupid and shoot their own, even though they claim to be open minded and open hearted, they aren't, they are highly selective and too easily swayed.
If a disurptor, an agent provocateur. manages to insinuate himself in a crowd of fascists, he is sniffed out and trampled. If one slips into a crowd of liberals, he will find himself welcomed by some or a faction., and promoted.
The right unifies, falls in line, the left fragments and falls in love.
Going through Hartmann looking for a quote I saw this. Don't think I responded. You are soooo right! It's what drives me crazy. Don't you love, not!, how they can turn a convicted felon into a martyr and victim. You have to give them credit. They win the Devious Award.
Thom has been saying this for years but every now and then a good study comes out and points to the obvious. So thom again reminds us with another powerfuII post
We have been Ied Iike Iambs to the sIaughter and for severaI decades. Now the entire framework our governing bodies no Ionger, after the repeated onsaught of money and profit over humanity, WE, We have now created a monster of obscene weaIth running aImost aII the branches of our government, with totaI manipuIation of the sociaI fabric, aII for personaI gain and screw the majority. This monster wiII eat itseIf to death sooner than Iater
Use this infographic to see how much the CEOs of the major Medicare Advantage providers make while denying seniors access to health coverage? How much do they donate to Republicans? Which states have the highest rates of coverage denial? And what you can do to fight back against bogus coverage denials?
25% of Democrats voted for the Medicare Advantage bill in 2003, with about 20% of Republicans voting against it. The Biden administration has proposed miniscule cuts to Medicare Advantage reimbursement (which still will result in an effective increase in revenue overall) but the for-profit industry that helps to run the country is outraged that they won't get to rip us off quite as much as they expected. "Axios: Medicare Advantage Plans To See 2025 Base Pay Fall
The Biden administration on Monday followed through on its proposal to cut next year's base payments to Medicare Advantage plans an average of 0.16%, despite pressure from insurers and their allies in Congress. Why it matters: While the plans will wind up seeing a net increase once payments are risk-adjusted to account for the health of their customers, the news sent shares of UnitedHealth, CVS Health, Humana and Centene falling amid predictions of continued financial pressure."
So the Rip Off Medical Companies will be donating big time to Republicans as are Oil Companies and Big Media. Expect all Billionaires and Monopolies to go anti Biden.
I’m retired from a unionized state university. I spent some time with the retired educators chapter of National Education Association. Casual empiricism suggests that the teachers unions pretty much all have disadvantage plans. Seems Congress could address this thru Department of Education policy: if your school received DoE $$$ your retired must have real Medicare.
The government can't intervene directly and order anyone to do anything, but they can and should do a constant blitz advertisement on channels the elderly watch like MSNBC and CNN, and give them the facts about Medicare and Disadvantage, but then UHC, Kaiser, Blue Shield and other death dealers will pour millions into PR and attack candidates and the party that exposes them.
The only reason there is Medicare Advantage is because of the George Walker Bush administration and it's relationship ith the Association of Health Insurance Providers (AHIP)
That is an acronym that you don't hear anything about, not even from the likes of Robert or Thom, but they are the reason we don't have single payer and we do have a piss poor ACA.
Of which Rahm Emanuel silenced dissent by saying "Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good" and now I hear that phrase every time there is a concession to the financial powers and corporations.
Like the father told the son, when he asked what do you want for your Bar Mitzvah? the boy replied, a pool table, the father replied balls you will get.
Of course the government can intervene directly. It’s a federally funded program. If just all the retired U.S. educators were all in real Medicare … game changer..
Programs created by federal law, can only be amended by federal law,and Congress along with the Executive are the government. The government is more than the Execuive and his cabinet. there are three branches of government, Legislative, Execuive and Judicial.
The Executive has the ability and requirement to execute (that is what executive means) the laws approved or originated by Congress and Signed by the Executive.
The Executive can issue orders (Executive Orders) as to how to implement the laws that the executive is suppose to oversee and execute.
The executive can not change the requirement of a law, like the eligibility of a recipient of a program, only congress can do that. Thus the Medicare enabling legislation originally said that you became eligible on your 65th birthday, and that is when I became eligible, but was chanted to age 67 but a subsequent act when Dubya was president, and my wife didn't become eligible to age 67.
When all of that wasteful nonsense was going on under Obama, about the ACA. All congress had to do was to amend the Medicare enabling act, one more time to eligible at birth., but the health insurance companies, who have a massive war chest for political campaigns would have been very unhappy, as would the mutual and private equity funds and other investors, not to mention the tens maybe hundreds of thousands of employees they have,if they had changed the law instead of cobbling together a 600 page monstrosity.
Thanks, Thom, and this old doc will stick with my "straight" Medicare. I didn't realize most of the scamming you pointed out for the "alternative" version, but common sense always led me to assume that the Medicare Advantage plans were suspicious when they inserted another layer of paid bureaucrats into the already corrupt ("Managed Care") healthcare 'industry" I used to work in. Keep up the great investigative work!
After the fall of the all encompassing Roman Empire in the fifth century there was a period of a little more than one thousand years when The Western World was organized into what is now called Feudalism. Under this form of social organization the wealthy elite aristocrats payed no tax, only peasants did. The peasants paid those taxes in a large number of forms to the aristocrats on whose huge estates they lived out their miserable lives. Even dying required a tax which was extracted from the puny things the peasant had owned and left behind, eg. a chicken or a lamb or a bag of wool or hemp or beans. If there was a powerful enough aristocrat in the neighborhood to enforce his will on other aristocrats; that powerful aristocrat, a "King" might occasionally forcefully take wealth in the form of LAND, PEASANTS and CASTLES from others of his kind.
History shows us, that the way in which an aristocrat would increase his wealth was to forcefully take it by military action from a neighbor aristocrat. A class of males called "Knights" would "honorably" attack and acquire the victimized neighboring estate on behalf of their "Lord." These "Knights" were men who had been elevated from the caste of peasants in the community. It was these elevated peasants who did the fighting and dying in combat, not the aristocrats. After a "Knight" was killed on the field of battle his armor, sword and shield were appropriated by the winning "Lord." If the "Knight" died of other, noncombat causes, his armor, sword and shield were transferred to his "Lord" as a form of death tax.
This Feudal system had evolved out of the more rationally organized system of social stratification created by the Romans.
Back in the days when I was still teaching; a husband and wife team at the University of Michigan (Frances and Joseph Gies) described the life of these "Medieval" peasants in a series of seven excellent books. The reader might want to start with LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL VILLAGE, Harper and Roe, 1990.
We should not be too surprised that the wealthy elites under our Capitalist system pay little or no taxes while they control our lives through a system of peonage which Abraham Lincoln accurately called "wage slavery." It is still the ordinary folk who foolishly and tragically send their sons and daughters to die in combat. The purpose of the military in a Capitalist system is to guarantee reliable access to sources of RAW MATERIALS, LABOR and MARKETS for the economic system so that it will continue to generate immense wealth and power for our modern version of Landed Aristocrats: the owners of the Capitalist system.
If I could travel back in time and describe to Roman emperors and Medieval Aristocrats the amount of wealth and power our modern system places in the hands of our elite; they would be staggered into non-belief.
I conclude that the Social Security program given to us by FDR and the Medicare system created by LBJ seem almost to be mere transient blips in the continuous exploitation of the common folk by America's powerful in Humankind's shameful march of social stratification.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the American intelligence H L Mencken
Mark Twain understood many things about America, including its people’s gullibility. In “Huckleberry Finn” (1884), the Duke and the Dauphin, itinerant swindlers and pitchmen, persuade small-town folks that they are in the presence of European aristocrats of wealth and prestige — then fleece them blind. The Duke and Dauphins’ rude roadshow, “The Royal Nonesuch” (comically resembling “The Apprentice”) is revealed as a fraud. Townspeople learn that those taken in have urged their friends and neighbors to attend the show and lose money too, so they won’t look as stupid, stoking their collective embarrassment. Before the fall, The Dauphin proudly remarks, “Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain’t that a big enough majority in any town?” https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2020/12/the-good-the-bad-and-the-gullible/
Why does PhARMA, Mike Lindell, Wayfair, etc spend big bucks on TV advertising? Because it works.
AARPA, United Health Care, Colonial Penn are all hucksters, along with PhRMA scheming of ways to separate you from your wealth, and then there are political adds.
The fault, dear friends,is not in the stars, but in ourselves. Lazy minds, uncritical minds, bandwagon effect, respect and beliefe in authority (aged ex skate boarder Tony Hawk, hawking Ubiquinol, an actress in a lab coat with a stethoscope round her neck as a "trusted authority".
The willingness to suspend belief, which we are taught as a child, in Easter bunnies, Santas, Jesus or Allah.
The time and effort it takes to even question, much less research the crap tossed at us, as news and info.
Our propensity for circular reasoning:
Ex: Bible is the word of god because it says so in the bible is the word of god because it says so in the bible.
or
Gravity is a property of mass , mass is the source of gravity is the property of mass is the source of gravity.
An authority tells us what to believe, what to think and we oblige by thinking and believing. To do otherwise sets outside the pale, and we stand alone from the safety of the collective.
Shudder, shudder that some one fling an accusation, a slur a slander and ostracize you from the herd if prey or the pack if predator.
Mr. Farrar, I agree with all you say. May I add a note on "mass" and the force of "gravity?"
Physicists have not defined "gravity" or "mass." It is likely that humankind never will be able to define them or understand them. It is probably one of those things in the universe we humans are simply UNABLE to understand, like "light" or entropy. It is commonly taught in History courses that Newton took us out of the age of Mysticism and propelled us into a new age of rational mechanics with his writing about the force of "gravity" and his CALCULUS. He did no such thing. He ironically plunged us into a deeper, broader form of mysticism with his "gravity." What is this phenomenon called gravity which reaches out through hundreds of millions of light years through empty space and connects celestial masses; attracting them to one another? The huge particle accelerators like the one in Switzerland are intended to reveal to us what mass and gravity are. How many particles exist? How many forces exist which serve to bind those particles together? Is there one basic and fundamental particle? And the question Albert Einstein spent his entire life trying to solve: Are the forces in the universe all related to one another? Can these forces all be explained by one unifying , mathematical theory? He failed in this, his greatest, life-long effort.
Isn't it interesting how we often fail to properly interpret the impressive, original, creative work of the true geniuses among us?
After the one long comment. I offer this. Einstein was looking for a unified field theory, and he need look no further than under his feet.
We know, and science admits that the action of the earths core as it interacts with the mantle, generates an electro magnetic field, they could include gravitic were it not accepted as holy writ that gravity was a property of mass, and they claim to have proved it. Any celestial body with an active core generates an electro magnetic gravitic field.
comets and asteroids have no gravity, thus no mass, unless they are under the influence of a superior force,like the sun.
If one seeks to find the source of life, that without which there is no life, step outside and look at the sun, but be sure to wear protection or you will be blinded, take a good long look at Ra .Aton, Amon, Amen, Amun
Ah a kindred soul. We are susceptible to what is considered authority, especially when our incomes and stature depend on acceptance of authority and the regnant paradigm.
Correct on your description of mass. Mass is defined in term of weight,however weight is dependent on Gravity. A one lb ball of lead on Earth is only .38 of a pound on Mars (f their calculations of Martian gravity are correct, I don't think that they are. Years ago I calculated the gravity of the moon based on the performance of astronauts and the rover and it turns out to be not .167 that of earth,but more like .64.
If he lunar gravity was .167 g/e then the astronauts would have bounded 14 ft into the air, and the moon rover bounced 6 ft or more. Granted the astronauts were encumbered by their space suits and portable oxygen, but they easily perambulated on earth. Deep sea divers have to carry increasingly heavy lead weights depending on depth, just to keep them on the bottom.
As regards calculus, in my opinion Leibniz invented Calculus and Newton stole it and because he had connections with the newly created Bank of England and Royal society, was able to publish it and claim credit as he did for many things.
He rose to fame when Charles the II was installed on the throne. Charles had a coupleof bad habits, gambling and whoring. In particular his favorite was the cousin of George Villiers, the favorite of James I, by name of Barbara Villiers,but gambling was the vice that did him in. He went broke and went begging to the East India Company for a loan, the directors of the company said fine, but give us a charter as the Bank of England, and he did. and the East India Company then formed the Bank of England.
Charles blew through that loan, and this time went to the Bank for a loan, and they said, well we want collateral, and he gave up as collateral the crown jewels, which included he sceptre and orb, which are the symbols of sovereignty, who ever holds them is sovereign.
He gave Barbara the castle, Nonesuch, build by Henry VIII for his teenage queen Katherine Howard he beheaded for her affair with Thomas Culpepper.
She sold the castle stone by stone, and there is nothingleft of Nonesuch.
Back to Isaac Newton.
Shortly after being created and taking in depositors gold for safe keeping, it circulated that the bank did not have enough gold on hand to honor it's commitments and there was a run on the bank.
The bank was smart, there was an alchemist in the realm who was well known and popular, and people KNEW that an alchemist could transmute base metal into gold,so they hired him as first warden of the mint,and the fears were assuaged.
Isaac regularly frequented the Cock and Robin tavern and quaffed Pints and Quarts with the like of EdmundHaley, the architect Christopher Wren, and other famous intellectuals of that time and era,
He now had fame, connection and access to resources and took the work and ideas of his friends and published them in the Principia Mathematica, bear in mind that he was no genious, but only an alchemist.
And we have been living with his ideas as holy writ, only to be challenged at one's own peril. I could go on about how Karl Popper ridiculed Newtonian gravity as a young and up and coming scientist and felt the hammer of Thor come down upon him. He got even with his idea of falsification though it has never been tested against mass gravity.
One other belief that is sacred and holy is the theory of of relativity of space time.
When an undergraduate we are told not to mix vectors, do not add, divide, subtract and multiply apples and oranges, but by the time we are budding scientists we are told to forget all of that, and muse over space time.
Now add, divide, multiple, subtract 1 mile by 1 minute. I can calculate how many miles I can travel in X number of minutes, but that is not the same, that is not space time.
one hour of earth time is not the same as one hour of Mercury time.
1 lb on earth is not the same as 1 lb on Mars.
If yo are shot with a bullet in space, is it the same as being shot with a bullet on earth.
Well that depends on the distance you are from the source of gravity, because the gravitational force falls off by the distance you are from it's source. Thus a bullet in say low orbit, will still have much the weight and force that it has on earth, however in deep space unaffected by any gravitational force, its mass and yours are negligible, mass only exists in the presence of a gravitational force.
The space lab and the people still weigh about 99. 4% of what they would weigh on earth, it is just that they are in perpetual free fall, and experince zero gravity because they are falling . a falling object has no mass, because it has no weightuntil it comes to a halt in the presence of gravity.
Thus relativity, everything is relative, mass is weight, weight is relative to the gravitational force exerted on it, time is relative to one's location. and things weigh less at the equator because of centrifugal force, than they do at the poles, because there is no centrifugal force.
Republicans will cause a Great depression in no time if they get elected. Their economic policies is just to rob the poor. And when the poor have no more money, the right just abandons that Nation as a failed communist state. Vote blue for the trickle up! The right are consistently greedy and stupid!
Federalist Society ideologues object to federal involvement in any social program, and Medicare is just one of them. Same for Social Security, Medicaid, other "benefit" programs like Black Lung, VA benefits, etc.
I've been working on some projects... one of them is "don't slit your own throat" aimed at people on SSI who vote for Republicans who want to kill the program. Lawyers, social workers, medical providers, care givers. Looking for allies....
Daniel, I've learned not to tell people that they are fools, slitting their own throats, working against their own self interest. They knee jerk, react and bend over backwards to prove that you are right.
Reverse psychology is a great manipulator of behavior. I effectively used it on a rebellious step son.
If there was a behavior I didn't want, I ordered him to do it, and vice versa.
His mother wanted me to pay for his college, so I ordered him to study and get A;s. He didn't and failed.
He was an asshole at 17 and is a 59 year old Trumpian asshole, like the scorpion on the frogs back, that is his nature.
If you or anyone has a teenager or preteen, if you tell them not to do something be assured that they will do it. Best to use reverse psychology.
Mr. Farrar, I think you might be talking about something closely related to the"Inaddmissible Social Definition" which my colleagues and I first formulated and kicked around well over 50 years ago. It goes about like this:
When I was a prepubescent boy my father said to me: "Do not take the neighbor girl Barbara out behind the garage and have her remove her clothes." He thereby presented me with the possibility that it was within my power to do so. So I did just that because I was entering pubescence and it was great fun. It remained fun for the next 70 years or so in my life. Sexual play between males and females is an "addmissible social definition." So most of us do it in spite of the hysterical admonitions against it by the deranged advocates of our Judeo-Christian tradition.
However, my father never said to me: "Do not take Barbara out behind the garage, cut her into pieces and eat her." I never did that. Not ever in my entire life.
There are some things one can imagine which are so horrible, detestable, frightening and loathsome that it is understood it is not necessary to proscribe them. We assume that people understand how bad these actions are without being told they are bad. When I was very young, homosexuality was on the borders of being an "Inaddmissible Social Definition." This was always very difficult for me because I have always had dear homosexual friends from my earliest days. I am quite delighted to say it no longer is on the border of inaddmissible. It is now addmisible. There is even a modern term which recognizes this change:
homosexuals are now "out of the closet." They are "gay." We are all (not just gay people) better off after this change.
Imagine the surprise one experiences upon reading ALIVE by Piers Paul Read; the true story about the soccer players whose plane crashed in the cordillera of the high Andes. Some of these men survived by cutting their team-mates into pieces and eating them. The "Inaddmisible Social Definition" was so effective in their case that it took a great deal of argument by a small group of those men to convince the rest of them to cannibalize their friends in order to go on living. All of those survivors suffered from severe mental problems for the rest of their lives. Much like PTSD. Some requiring treatment by priests and counselors.
The serial killer Jeffry Dahmer cannibalized some of his victims. Dahmer was diagnosed as mentally ill. [To be honest here; I do not believe there is such a thing as mental illness I am using the term to simply get on with the discussion. Suffice it to say that I believe Dahmer was seriously deranged emotionally.]
I have many other examples which I used in my courses I taught in Criminology for 36 years besides Dahmer: Gille De Rais, Blue Beard, Vlad Tepes (The real Dracula),
Caligula and more. Furthermore, there are of course, societies which practice, or have practiced human dismemberment and cannibalism as an acceptable part of their culture. Those cultures which practice cannibalism have "Inaddmissible Social Definitions" which are much different from ours. [Need I point out that modern medicine practices human dismemberment? There is a whole history here that is fascinating.]
I think what you are calling "reverse psychology" possibly falls within this framework.
Well Gerald that was a grisly post, and unfortunately I read it just before my bed time (I go to bed early, wake up early).
I think that reverse psychology and inadmissable social definitions are two things, but by the tellng of your first example, there seems to be some element of revrse psychology in it.
I cannot see the connection between canabalism and reverse psychology though.
As regards dismemberment, my last gesture is to leave my body to Medcure, hopefully that medical students can practice and improve their skills that others may benefit (you see there is an element of altruism in this cold, pessimistic, skeptic mind. My wife on the other hand is going for composting (terramation).
I hope I don't have bad dreams.
First I marshal the troops, especially the lawyers who in many cases got them the benefits and are the most influential people in their lives.
Second, the medical providers and social workers, grocers, landlords etc. in effect have an annuity based on the lives of the recipients. When I say affects every business, I mean it.
Third, I hope that the law firms, etc communicate with their former clients. It may be a means to get more business for some of them.
Fourth, when I made cold calls for Biden in 2020 into Pensyltucky and Caro;lina, IT WORKED! Up close and personal, I say stuff like "don't slit your own throat," "not suckers or losers" and I can see it in their eyes. "Trump hates dogs" really gets 'em.
Other variations on the theme for other groups. Veterans; miners; truckers' issues s, etc. I have reached out to organizations that represent them. E.G. many a retired trucker does not know that the workers' compensation concept, "repetitive trauma" exists. Many retired people who don't get much SS may be entitled to SSI.
BTW I took psychology courses and my wife's undergraduate degree was in psychology. These aren't kids. Adults. I took a course in andragogy, when I was at the NJC.
Also when the poor run out of money, they hit more of the middle class.
The Republicans are intentionally destroying the Middle Class. They are targeting good paying jobs, health, education, and home ownership. They view humans as interchangeable, replaceable Coggs, excepting themselves. To do this they want conformity, obedience and a subset of people at the bottom that they easily control. You might consider this the old Confederate/Fascist/Tyrant view of life. This is opposed to the Cooperative, Democratic idea of working together for fairness, equality, progress, diversity and freedom to individuals.
I am forced to admit , when I was first eligible for Medicare, the company that I’d retired from , sent their insurance fellow to help me ‘ convert to Medicare’ . At that time I was unaware of much about Medicare and he enrolled me into a plan which turned out to be Medicare Advantage through the same provider I’d had all along, Excellus Blue Cross & Blue Shield.
Now that seemed like a decent thing at the time.
Several years later when I began suffering some of the effects of “ Medicare Advantage”, which were cumulative co pays for necessary surgeries in the hundreds and ultimately thousands of dollars, I started having questions .
Last year I went to the Social Security office locally.
My intention was to switch to straight Medicare.
The agent there told me I wouldn’t qualify for pharmacy coverage under Medigap because I made too much money .
I at that point I had income provided by Social Security alone.
I have routine medications that I must take such as thyroid ( total replacement) and several others that are necessary to maintain my optimum health.
So , I would have to pay thousands of dollars yearly to cover the continually increasing cost of these meds .
As it is I pay about $3,000/ annually for co pays on the Advantage plan.
So, I’m stuck with the alleged Advantage plan.
The truth is we are being routinely ripped off because of the policies put in place over the years that benefits only the wealthiest among us .
I’m a widow , my husband was a physician , a radiologist.
He died more than twenty years ago and he talked about the upcoming changes in Health Care as we knew it .
He said on numerous occasions, Medicine , as we know it, will cease to exist in the next twenty years.
Everything will go from reasonably compassionate health care , to corporate welfare health care .
As will every other service provider in this country. He also said we’d fall behind all the highest standards of medical care in other developed countries and pay more for much less.
He died in the late nineties.
I’m sure there were many people who saw some of this coming .
Living in the reality of this corporate thievery is altogether worse than we thought .
Patricia, my ex husband is a physician. He retired about 25 years ago. He experienced it and predicted much the same as you described. My current doctors are primarily young.They, of course, have to adhere to the new corporate welfare limitations. 40 minute maximum visits, one or two visits a year, hardly any follow up. The only saving grace is something called Senior Care at Stanford. The PCP's do not have the same limitations that the young specialists do. What I have noticed after my acoustic neuroma surgery was the wide disparity between what the surgeons received for their services and the total bill. The doctors received about 2% of the total cost. Total cost was over $100,000. Thank goodness, I had medicare. I paid less than $400. I also have blue Cross as my supplemental Ins. The doctors today are seeing double the number of patients per hour and get a boiler plate low salary given the years of training they have had to go through. That is why we have boutique practices now, costing upwards of $25,000 per year. Our best and brightest students are not going into medicine.
And that is the shame . Insurance companies now second guess Medical people and make medical coverage decisions based on cost not symptoms / diagnosis , is precisely more corruption.
Very true!
We have a Medicare Advantage Plan. We are near Boston, so if you advocate for yourself you can get very good care. When I got a cancer dx, I got approval to go to Dana Farber in a day.
But, they are getting worse. The appointees are timed. People over 75 are encouraged to “think about” having procedures that will help us live more comfortably but are not life-saving. We are encouraged to die quietly. But you can push back.
This is America. Healthcare is one of the biggest revenue streams into corporate pockets. How many private investment firms own nursing homes and assisted living places? What has that done to the care?
EVERY issue, including the election, is now about one underlying issue: the growing wealth and power of a a decreasing number of arrogant, sociopathic billionaires who want to take it all for themselves. Fewer and fewer people have more and more of the money. They have created monopolies, and the coordinate their actions all over the world. They finally see their chance to swallow the golden goose of America, the richest country in the world. They are using an ignorant, deteriorating, sociopath to help them destroy the government, and democracy. It seems that about half the people are being sucked in by their lies and fear mongering.
Many people buy Medicare Advantage insurance because they can't afford supplemental insurance. If you incur major medical expenses and only have Medicare, you can lose your home and become homeless. The choice becomes to take a chance you will die prematurely due to Medicare Advantage methods of denying care or possibly live longer but be homeless. With the financialization of everything, we will become increasingly insecure.
I'm sorry, but the advantage plans are more risky. You think you have coverage, but....
Here in Baghdad By the Sea, the defacto capitol of Medicare fraud, Cano Health, a company once valued at $4.4 billion, went into bankruptcy. Imagine what happened to the bills for what ordinally would be covered. Meanwhile, ads featuring Joe Namath (we went to different schools together) don't disclaim that the company behind those ads, now called Blue Lantern Health, and their products, HealthInsurance.com and the Medicare Coverage Helpline, have an expansive rap sheet of misconduct, including prosecutions by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, and a recent bankruptcy filing that critics say is designed to jettison the substantial legal liabilities the firm has incurred. In September 2023, the company became Blue Lantern; before that, it was called Benefytt; and before that, Health Insurance Innovations. Forty-three state attorneys general had settled with the company in 2018, with it paying a $3.4 million fine. A close associate of the company, Steven Dorfman, has also been prosecuted by the FTC, in addition to the Department of Justice.
Check out the rest of the story in American Prospect. https://prospect.org/health/2024-02-22-company-joe-namath-medicare-advantage-ads-misconduct/
Many others have become bankrupt. I know I'm cynical bit IMHO part of their business plan. They collect premiums, deny claims, and liquidate - keeping the premiums.
BTW the cost of Part B is based on income. Knowing all this, my wife and i are triple insured -- we kept our Federal BC/BS. Still some medical procedures are coded as not covered and we have to intervene to avoid big bills. E.G. my wife had a procedure done while she was in an operation that was denied by all three -- until we forced a "clarification." My wife once worked for HICFA, the predecessor to CMS and has superior knowledge.
What if you must pay the 20 percent of $500000. Of a bill Medicare doesn't pay? They come after your property. Sadly, there is no legal remedy for most of society 's ills anymore, if there ever was one. It's a rise that our system is just, just as democracy is the facade for our oligarchic form of government.
I know. That's why I kept Federal BC/BS. But penny wise, pound foolish.
Just because you have MA doesn't mean they'll cover the bill.
MA pays dividends to investors by denying services
I have had only one problem with Medicare and for me it is trivial and personal.
Medicare treats diabetes supplies as Part B, medical supplies, not as prescription medicine, Part D.
Part D is expensive, if you have Tricare r a good Medicare supplement, you don't need part D.
As a pre diabetic I prick my fingers daily and record the results. I use a blood glucose strip.
The only reliable meter is Free Style lite. Free Style lite is evidently too expensive for Medicare, their authorized meter and strip is Metric which is inaccurate as hell. My secondary, Anthem/Regence blue shield from CalPers has only two authorized vendors, both of them unsatisfactory, Tricare or Life has one, also unsatisfactory. So I have no choice but to by the strips myself, from Amazon for $31. My local pharmacy has to pay $160 and will not, supply them because they lose $150 each issue, and there are 50 to a vial.
When I lived in Redmond, WA I got them from Rite Aid, who had negotiated with Abbott the manufacture of Free Style, My local pharmacy is a mom and pop and does not have the ability to negotate.
So I buy my own, $31 from Amazon is a big jump from $160 by my pharmacy.
Medicare won't honor a prescription from my PCP for an Epipen unless he fills out a lot of paperwork. But Tricare honors it without a second thought.
To even get my phamacy to honor Medicare Part B I had to fill out three pages of paperwork.
However with medigap Insurance, through Calpers, after 7 years of treatment for brain and lung cancer, and with insulin resistance, I have yet to pay even $100 total and that for Epipen and metformin. And I will kick in cataract surgery and Medicare provided eye glasses. I did pay about $14 total for the steroid and antibiotic drops I had to take for three to six weeks after surgery.
Medicare isn't free. They deduct $164.90 from my SS and my wife, who doesn't have social security as she was on a SS replacement plan, pays $164,90 monthly. Tricare pays for her prescriptions,with a modest copay.
My Supplemental Insurance is about $350 a month but my former employer pays about $200 of that.
I fill out those pesky forms. My young PCP is willing to do the same. Many doctors will not, but if you tell them it's the difference in a co pay from $10 to $100. When I had problems after negotiating with OPTUM RX, my online prescription drug pharmacy, I wrote a letter to medicare, OPTUM RX, my retired teacher organization and anyone I thought should know how older people are being treated. I told them my experience, that for almost a year they were denying a medication my PCP believes is necessary. Yes, I spoke to a dozen reps. in Prior authorization and we wrote and called what they call appeal 1 and 2. I received calls from all of them. I finally got the phone call that made the difference. She was in a dept that over saw all these dept's, I had been in touch with. It was worth the time and effort. I have done this with any medication that was medically necessary. The name of these insurance companies game is DELAY. They know you will give up. I now pay $10. a tear 1 exception, instead of $100 for my BP medications. I got what is called a tier 2 exception for a drug that would cost me $100 for $50.
Wow, talkingabout Jumping through hoops. I have Optimum RX through CalPers as well, but don't use it for anything except Metforim, and now blood glucose strips.
I also have Tricare, which I don'[t use, yet., might in the future though. My wife does via her marriage to me, and Tricare uses Express Scripts , and there is a co pay, small, for her meds.
Instead of a statin produced by PhRMA, made of petroleum chemicals, I use red Yeast rice, 600 mg BID, and at 85 my average blood pressure is 120/80, then again I limit the food I eat,two meals a day, both light, one at noon and one at 5 pm I snack on tangerines, olives, pickles and popcorn. Not a vegan or vegetarian, but never eat pork or fowl, and only once in awhile ground meat.
I find that Beyond Beef and Beyond Sausage are great meat substitutes.
PS, at 85 I am just now cooling off after weed whipping around the house, my garage apartment, septic tank and barn,
My sister who passed on Apr 12th, lived in NC. She read all of Taylor Caldwells books and got all of her disinfo from Facebook, she hated socialism and Democrats. She fell ill with Lung Cancer (never smoked) , divorced and never worked, all she had was Medicaid and Social Security from her divorced husband. Years of immunotherapy (Opdivo then Keytruda) oncology visits, CT Scans and other health problems, the medical bills piled up, she made arrangements to pay them $35 a month, and retitled her house to her grandson. Otherwise the house would be confiscated upon her death.
Sis was a happy, Christian, conservative house wife, content with her Deacon of a husband, dealing with the cold , hard , real world while she stayed home secure in her cocoon, until she tired of his demand for blow jobs and sex, then he left her for a more willing woman, older and with three kids, who in turn after she snared her means of support, denied him hummers also, she had no recourse but to open her home, to her sons and there wives,who quickly exploited and stole from her.
In the end her grandsons wife, looked after her,changed her diapers, and Sis fell asleep, not to wake up, and the family cremated her, no memorial service, no flowers, just a family sit down dinner.
I suspect that her case is not singular, but exemplar.
There are nice ads on TV, like A Home for Mom, old age living faciliies. I lived in Panama three years and there was no such thing, and no one lived on the street unless they wanted to. with perpetual nice weather, except for rainy season, it is a perfect place for the homeless, but there were none.
As always I wander far afield.
Medicare Advantage is yet another GOP strategy to privatize the entire government - as if Citizen's United was not enough. Yesterday the Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale) school board announced that it would likely have to close 2 or more public school schools next year because the DeVos voucher scam was so successful in DeSantisland that there was insufficient enrollment to justify keeping the public schools open. Dont-say-gay land is rapidly becoming an educational wasteland replete with fascist book-burning and similar Nazi festivals. BTW, there is zero research showing vouchers improve academic performance.
Americans need to get "Trickle-down" out of their heads as well as the stupid idiotic notion that government efficiency can only be maximized when operated as a business. The flaw in that latter logic, aside from Thom's example, is that government is a non-profit service organization. MBAs do not teach you how to manage a non-profit service. The main problem is that capitalism performance indicators are usually stuck on profits and body-counts; not better services.
The Deep State Army understands this, and does try to redirect service behavior in ways to avoid unintended consequences. Of course, Trump has declared war on our Deep State heroes with things like Schedule F - "Do as you are ordered or you are fired!" even if your boss is making things worse.
The powers that be are reliant on a public educated enough to read instructions and perform routine tasks. Lewis Powell, who was seated on the Supreme Court wrote a memo about the time of the Vietnam protests and civil rights movement,that the problem was the children of the middle class, were too educated, and had too much time on their hands.
Thom Hartmann has discussed this many times. here is an article that encapsulates
America has been poisoned for 50 years https://hartmannreport.com/p/america-is-at-maximum-crisis-from
Trump signed EO 13957 which created Schedule F employees, enabling him to embed, at the last minute, loyalists in DOJ, DHS, NSA, and other vital agencies, while reclassifying the positions that they replaed as at will.
One of Bidens first acts was to sign EO 14003, which revoked Trumps EO, however that was a mistake, because he could and should have used that ED to get rid of David Weiss and the other Schedule F employees that Trump embedded.
Matters not because if Trump wins in November he will reissue that EO and then some, worse than before. Biden achieved nothing except tying his own hands, and he could do what Trump did, create his own Schedule F and embed real democrats, which Trump will surely fire anyway.
If SCOTUS gives Trump full immunity, then Biden can use that to assassinate Trump.
Squeeeeeezed like a lemon till the last drop. But nobody cares much. Even dems do not move against this bullshit scam. Why not pls? Incredible. Maybe they got it free for them and all their family? Corrupted. Bribed. What a poor country America has become. Not anymore a model to copy anywhere in the world.
Actually, lots of litigation. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/cigna-group-pay-172-million-resolve-false-claims-act-allegations
If you have been the target of a scam, you may have a viable Medicare Qui Tam, Whistleblower case or False Claims Act case. The largest area of fraud against the government today is against Medicare fraud and Medicaid fraud. Approximately 10% of all Medicare/Medicaid bills are inflated or fraudulent. That helps explain why the Department of Justice pays such large whistleblower rewards for reporting Medicare fraud. Below are some of the ways hospitals and other health care providers cheat Medicare/Medicaid:
*Pharmaceutical Fraud
*Long Term Acute Care Hospital (LTACH) Fraud
*Upcoding Fraud
*Home Healthcare Fraud
*Unbundling Fraud
*Unreasonable Costs of Goods or Services Fraud
*Kickbacks and Stark Fraud
*Ambulance Fraud
I support Medicare for all in part because with elimination of the collateral source rule Medicare Part B premiums would drop like a rock as would the cost of piratically all types of PI coverage, like workers' compensation and long term disability insurance. That's because future medical care would be covered by Medicare.
CMS sends out Explanation of Benefits. I review them to see if the I really recived that service. I have found scams, one by Southern Labs in Alabama, and another for an outfit in Ohio, both billed Medicare for Processing COVID tests, I have never taken a COVID test, there was one from some company in Maryland for incontinence supplies, I don't even know that they are
I am sure that they got my Medicare Number from an employee at Adept Health which supplies my CPAP supplies..
I reported them to Medicare Fraud, and they acted like it was a bother taking the info. Then they cancelled my card, and reissued with a new number and it took weeks, fortunately I had no appointments in the interim. but I did have to change my medicare info with my CPAP supplier, and warned them that I had reported fraud,and will do so again. ,as well as my local medical center.
A month or two later I received a package of home test for COID from Southern Labs, I called them and they told me that the company had been taken over, and that they are filling orders that had not been filled. I assume that a new owner has taken over because Medicare filed suit or closed them down. The COVID tests are sitting on a shelf untouched and unopened.
With each report you ask if we enjoyed it to send it to someone else.....I just want to say that I don't enjoy any of your reports!!! Your exposure of fraud, waste and corruption makes me so angry that I worry about teeth breaking.
Thank you so much for your work.. Keep it up
Last year my former employer—a giant public university system—switched all its employees and retirees (we all still get our insurance through the university system, as it pays most premiums etc.) to Advantage without even asking us! Apparently this is allowed if it’s a “group plan”! They make it very hard to return to plain Medicare, but I’m gonna do it when open enrollment comes by. Anyone else in this boat?
Do it fast. You only have one year to switch back without getting penalized by higher rates for the rest of your life.
Elise, thanks for your story. I just called the Medicare line to make sure what I'm telling you is fact. During open enrollment, you can ditch your "Advantage" and get into Medicare with NO QUESTIONS asked by the government. It's always your right to have original Medicare.
If you also choose to try to buy a gap policy as a supplement, the private insurance companies CAN ask about your health. Seems it could affect the prices and maybe even a refusal.
We certainly need legislation to stop them, just like we did with the ACA and no preexisting conditions.
Yep that’s my plan! But it was very tough to figure out exactly how to get it done. I’m sure most folks can’t or won’t figure it out.
Get a lawyer.
I was in the same boat, Elise, and refused the Advantage Plan and quickly got an original Medicare Plan which I pay for myself along with a supplemental plan for the extra 20% which is the Medicare co-pay on all procedures. But the original cost of the procedures has already been whacked down by Medicare and so my supplemental plan doesn't have to pay that much. Be sure and do this before you get sick because before you can sign up for original Medicare after being off it (and being on an MA Plan) you have to answer health questions. If you are not well, you will not be able to get on the original Medicare Plan.
Really appreciate you telling your experience Bonny. Can you clarify who asked the questions? I am thinking it's the private insurance companies when you try to buy a supplemental. It might put someone in a position where they can get Medicare, but have great deal of trouble getting private insurance for the part Medicare doesn't pay.
Alis, it is original Medicare that you will not be able to get on and then of course not the supplemental as it only works with the original Medicare. You will be stuck on your Medicare Advantage plan.
Sorry, according to my husband, it is the Medigap plan that you will not be able to get on, you are correct Alis. It was the private insurance who did ask the questions. He said that you can always be on the original Medicare.
Thanks Bonny for checking. I called Medicare and you now and your husband have it exactly right.
So confusing that we let the private insurance companies ask about conditions for gap policies, since under the ACA for Obamacare policies companies can not. We need a new law.
When is someone going to admit the Emperor has no clothes?! Our system is broken, dysfunctional, corrupt. The Dems can run around claiming they must win to save our democracy. We don't even have a representative republic anymore. The MAGAs are delusional in thinking Trump is their messiah. I often wonder if things would be different today if social media had been around when Granny D (Doris Haddock) in 1999 at 89 did her walk across the US for campaign finance reform. I won't be voting for just plain evil, The Orange One. Neither will I opt for a 3rd party. Nor will I not vote. I will cast my vote for Biden. Hoping against hope he and those around him will have the courage to address the real problems; money, Electoral Çollege and gerrymandering. Oh, did I fail to mention the military/industrial/political complex. Heaven help us!
I think the outcome is inevitable, because they are fired up, angry and organized, and we the opposition are in discord, each with their own agenda, hurling insults at each other. Liberals, i am sorry to say,are stupid and shoot their own, even though they claim to be open minded and open hearted, they aren't, they are highly selective and too easily swayed.
If a disurptor, an agent provocateur. manages to insinuate himself in a crowd of fascists, he is sniffed out and trampled. If one slips into a crowd of liberals, he will find himself welcomed by some or a faction., and promoted.
The right unifies, falls in line, the left fragments and falls in love.
Unity wins. Fragmentation loses.
Going through Hartmann looking for a quote I saw this. Don't think I responded. You are soooo right! It's what drives me crazy. Don't you love, not!, how they can turn a convicted felon into a martyr and victim. You have to give them credit. They win the Devious Award.
Thom has been saying this for years but every now and then a good study comes out and points to the obvious. So thom again reminds us with another powerfuII post
We have been Ied Iike Iambs to the sIaughter and for severaI decades. Now the entire framework our governing bodies no Ionger, after the repeated onsaught of money and profit over humanity, WE, We have now created a monster of obscene weaIth running aImost aII the branches of our government, with totaI manipuIation of the sociaI fabric, aII for personaI gain and screw the majority. This monster wiII eat itseIf to death sooner than Iater
Unfortunately they will take us down with them first.
Use this infographic to see how much the CEOs of the major Medicare Advantage providers make while denying seniors access to health coverage? How much do they donate to Republicans? Which states have the highest rates of coverage denial? And what you can do to fight back against bogus coverage denials?
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/05/27/medicare-advantage-providers-exploit-seniors-follow-the-money/
25% of Democrats voted for the Medicare Advantage bill in 2003, with about 20% of Republicans voting against it. The Biden administration has proposed miniscule cuts to Medicare Advantage reimbursement (which still will result in an effective increase in revenue overall) but the for-profit industry that helps to run the country is outraged that they won't get to rip us off quite as much as they expected. "Axios: Medicare Advantage Plans To See 2025 Base Pay Fall
The Biden administration on Monday followed through on its proposal to cut next year's base payments to Medicare Advantage plans an average of 0.16%, despite pressure from insurers and their allies in Congress. Why it matters: While the plans will wind up seeing a net increase once payments are risk-adjusted to account for the health of their customers, the news sent shares of UnitedHealth, CVS Health, Humana and Centene falling amid predictions of continued financial pressure."
So the Rip Off Medical Companies will be donating big time to Republicans as are Oil Companies and Big Media. Expect all Billionaires and Monopolies to go anti Biden.
Now that is a comment I can like. Thanks/
I’m retired from a unionized state university. I spent some time with the retired educators chapter of National Education Association. Casual empiricism suggests that the teachers unions pretty much all have disadvantage plans. Seems Congress could address this thru Department of Education policy: if your school received DoE $$$ your retired must have real Medicare.
The government can't intervene directly and order anyone to do anything, but they can and should do a constant blitz advertisement on channels the elderly watch like MSNBC and CNN, and give them the facts about Medicare and Disadvantage, but then UHC, Kaiser, Blue Shield and other death dealers will pour millions into PR and attack candidates and the party that exposes them.
The only reason there is Medicare Advantage is because of the George Walker Bush administration and it's relationship ith the Association of Health Insurance Providers (AHIP)
That is an acronym that you don't hear anything about, not even from the likes of Robert or Thom, but they are the reason we don't have single payer and we do have a piss poor ACA.
Of which Rahm Emanuel silenced dissent by saying "Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good" and now I hear that phrase every time there is a concession to the financial powers and corporations.
Like the father told the son, when he asked what do you want for your Bar Mitzvah? the boy replied, a pool table, the father replied balls you will get.
Of course the government can intervene directly. It’s a federally funded program. If just all the retired U.S. educators were all in real Medicare … game changer..
Programs created by federal law, can only be amended by federal law,and Congress along with the Executive are the government. The government is more than the Execuive and his cabinet. there are three branches of government, Legislative, Execuive and Judicial.
The Executive has the ability and requirement to execute (that is what executive means) the laws approved or originated by Congress and Signed by the Executive.
The Executive can issue orders (Executive Orders) as to how to implement the laws that the executive is suppose to oversee and execute.
The executive can not change the requirement of a law, like the eligibility of a recipient of a program, only congress can do that. Thus the Medicare enabling legislation originally said that you became eligible on your 65th birthday, and that is when I became eligible, but was chanted to age 67 but a subsequent act when Dubya was president, and my wife didn't become eligible to age 67.
When all of that wasteful nonsense was going on under Obama, about the ACA. All congress had to do was to amend the Medicare enabling act, one more time to eligible at birth., but the health insurance companies, who have a massive war chest for political campaigns would have been very unhappy, as would the mutual and private equity funds and other investors, not to mention the tens maybe hundreds of thousands of employees they have,if they had changed the law instead of cobbling together a 600 page monstrosity.
I hope this helps.
Thanks, Thom, and this old doc will stick with my "straight" Medicare. I didn't realize most of the scamming you pointed out for the "alternative" version, but common sense always led me to assume that the Medicare Advantage plans were suspicious when they inserted another layer of paid bureaucrats into the already corrupt ("Managed Care") healthcare 'industry" I used to work in. Keep up the great investigative work!
Mr. Hartman,
After the fall of the all encompassing Roman Empire in the fifth century there was a period of a little more than one thousand years when The Western World was organized into what is now called Feudalism. Under this form of social organization the wealthy elite aristocrats payed no tax, only peasants did. The peasants paid those taxes in a large number of forms to the aristocrats on whose huge estates they lived out their miserable lives. Even dying required a tax which was extracted from the puny things the peasant had owned and left behind, eg. a chicken or a lamb or a bag of wool or hemp or beans. If there was a powerful enough aristocrat in the neighborhood to enforce his will on other aristocrats; that powerful aristocrat, a "King" might occasionally forcefully take wealth in the form of LAND, PEASANTS and CASTLES from others of his kind.
History shows us, that the way in which an aristocrat would increase his wealth was to forcefully take it by military action from a neighbor aristocrat. A class of males called "Knights" would "honorably" attack and acquire the victimized neighboring estate on behalf of their "Lord." These "Knights" were men who had been elevated from the caste of peasants in the community. It was these elevated peasants who did the fighting and dying in combat, not the aristocrats. After a "Knight" was killed on the field of battle his armor, sword and shield were appropriated by the winning "Lord." If the "Knight" died of other, noncombat causes, his armor, sword and shield were transferred to his "Lord" as a form of death tax.
This Feudal system had evolved out of the more rationally organized system of social stratification created by the Romans.
Back in the days when I was still teaching; a husband and wife team at the University of Michigan (Frances and Joseph Gies) described the life of these "Medieval" peasants in a series of seven excellent books. The reader might want to start with LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL VILLAGE, Harper and Roe, 1990.
We should not be too surprised that the wealthy elites under our Capitalist system pay little or no taxes while they control our lives through a system of peonage which Abraham Lincoln accurately called "wage slavery." It is still the ordinary folk who foolishly and tragically send their sons and daughters to die in combat. The purpose of the military in a Capitalist system is to guarantee reliable access to sources of RAW MATERIALS, LABOR and MARKETS for the economic system so that it will continue to generate immense wealth and power for our modern version of Landed Aristocrats: the owners of the Capitalist system.
If I could travel back in time and describe to Roman emperors and Medieval Aristocrats the amount of wealth and power our modern system places in the hands of our elite; they would be staggered into non-belief.
I conclude that the Social Security program given to us by FDR and the Medicare system created by LBJ seem almost to be mere transient blips in the continuous exploitation of the common folk by America's powerful in Humankind's shameful march of social stratification.
I hope my conclusion is wrong.
There is a sucker born every minute: P T Barnum
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the American intelligence H L Mencken
Mark Twain understood many things about America, including its people’s gullibility. In “Huckleberry Finn” (1884), the Duke and the Dauphin, itinerant swindlers and pitchmen, persuade small-town folks that they are in the presence of European aristocrats of wealth and prestige — then fleece them blind. The Duke and Dauphins’ rude roadshow, “The Royal Nonesuch” (comically resembling “The Apprentice”) is revealed as a fraud. Townspeople learn that those taken in have urged their friends and neighbors to attend the show and lose money too, so they won’t look as stupid, stoking their collective embarrassment. Before the fall, The Dauphin proudly remarks, “Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain’t that a big enough majority in any town?” https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2020/12/the-good-the-bad-and-the-gullible/
Why does PhARMA, Mike Lindell, Wayfair, etc spend big bucks on TV advertising? Because it works.
AARPA, United Health Care, Colonial Penn are all hucksters, along with PhRMA scheming of ways to separate you from your wealth, and then there are political adds.
The fault, dear friends,is not in the stars, but in ourselves. Lazy minds, uncritical minds, bandwagon effect, respect and beliefe in authority (aged ex skate boarder Tony Hawk, hawking Ubiquinol, an actress in a lab coat with a stethoscope round her neck as a "trusted authority".
The willingness to suspend belief, which we are taught as a child, in Easter bunnies, Santas, Jesus or Allah.
The time and effort it takes to even question, much less research the crap tossed at us, as news and info.
Our propensity for circular reasoning:
Ex: Bible is the word of god because it says so in the bible is the word of god because it says so in the bible.
or
Gravity is a property of mass , mass is the source of gravity is the property of mass is the source of gravity.
An authority tells us what to believe, what to think and we oblige by thinking and believing. To do otherwise sets outside the pale, and we stand alone from the safety of the collective.
Shudder, shudder that some one fling an accusation, a slur a slander and ostracize you from the herd if prey or the pack if predator.
Mr. Farrar, I agree with all you say. May I add a note on "mass" and the force of "gravity?"
Physicists have not defined "gravity" or "mass." It is likely that humankind never will be able to define them or understand them. It is probably one of those things in the universe we humans are simply UNABLE to understand, like "light" or entropy. It is commonly taught in History courses that Newton took us out of the age of Mysticism and propelled us into a new age of rational mechanics with his writing about the force of "gravity" and his CALCULUS. He did no such thing. He ironically plunged us into a deeper, broader form of mysticism with his "gravity." What is this phenomenon called gravity which reaches out through hundreds of millions of light years through empty space and connects celestial masses; attracting them to one another? The huge particle accelerators like the one in Switzerland are intended to reveal to us what mass and gravity are. How many particles exist? How many forces exist which serve to bind those particles together? Is there one basic and fundamental particle? And the question Albert Einstein spent his entire life trying to solve: Are the forces in the universe all related to one another? Can these forces all be explained by one unifying , mathematical theory? He failed in this, his greatest, life-long effort.
Isn't it interesting how we often fail to properly interpret the impressive, original, creative work of the true geniuses among us?
After the one long comment. I offer this. Einstein was looking for a unified field theory, and he need look no further than under his feet.
We know, and science admits that the action of the earths core as it interacts with the mantle, generates an electro magnetic field, they could include gravitic were it not accepted as holy writ that gravity was a property of mass, and they claim to have proved it. Any celestial body with an active core generates an electro magnetic gravitic field.
comets and asteroids have no gravity, thus no mass, unless they are under the influence of a superior force,like the sun.
If one seeks to find the source of life, that without which there is no life, step outside and look at the sun, but be sure to wear protection or you will be blinded, take a good long look at Ra .Aton, Amon, Amen, Amun
Ah a kindred soul. We are susceptible to what is considered authority, especially when our incomes and stature depend on acceptance of authority and the regnant paradigm.
Correct on your description of mass. Mass is defined in term of weight,however weight is dependent on Gravity. A one lb ball of lead on Earth is only .38 of a pound on Mars (f their calculations of Martian gravity are correct, I don't think that they are. Years ago I calculated the gravity of the moon based on the performance of astronauts and the rover and it turns out to be not .167 that of earth,but more like .64.
If he lunar gravity was .167 g/e then the astronauts would have bounded 14 ft into the air, and the moon rover bounced 6 ft or more. Granted the astronauts were encumbered by their space suits and portable oxygen, but they easily perambulated on earth. Deep sea divers have to carry increasingly heavy lead weights depending on depth, just to keep them on the bottom.
As regards calculus, in my opinion Leibniz invented Calculus and Newton stole it and because he had connections with the newly created Bank of England and Royal society, was able to publish it and claim credit as he did for many things.
He rose to fame when Charles the II was installed on the throne. Charles had a coupleof bad habits, gambling and whoring. In particular his favorite was the cousin of George Villiers, the favorite of James I, by name of Barbara Villiers,but gambling was the vice that did him in. He went broke and went begging to the East India Company for a loan, the directors of the company said fine, but give us a charter as the Bank of England, and he did. and the East India Company then formed the Bank of England.
Charles blew through that loan, and this time went to the Bank for a loan, and they said, well we want collateral, and he gave up as collateral the crown jewels, which included he sceptre and orb, which are the symbols of sovereignty, who ever holds them is sovereign.
He gave Barbara the castle, Nonesuch, build by Henry VIII for his teenage queen Katherine Howard he beheaded for her affair with Thomas Culpepper.
She sold the castle stone by stone, and there is nothingleft of Nonesuch.
Back to Isaac Newton.
Shortly after being created and taking in depositors gold for safe keeping, it circulated that the bank did not have enough gold on hand to honor it's commitments and there was a run on the bank.
The bank was smart, there was an alchemist in the realm who was well known and popular, and people KNEW that an alchemist could transmute base metal into gold,so they hired him as first warden of the mint,and the fears were assuaged.
Isaac regularly frequented the Cock and Robin tavern and quaffed Pints and Quarts with the like of EdmundHaley, the architect Christopher Wren, and other famous intellectuals of that time and era,
He now had fame, connection and access to resources and took the work and ideas of his friends and published them in the Principia Mathematica, bear in mind that he was no genious, but only an alchemist.
And we have been living with his ideas as holy writ, only to be challenged at one's own peril. I could go on about how Karl Popper ridiculed Newtonian gravity as a young and up and coming scientist and felt the hammer of Thor come down upon him. He got even with his idea of falsification though it has never been tested against mass gravity.
One other belief that is sacred and holy is the theory of of relativity of space time.
When an undergraduate we are told not to mix vectors, do not add, divide, subtract and multiply apples and oranges, but by the time we are budding scientists we are told to forget all of that, and muse over space time.
Now add, divide, multiple, subtract 1 mile by 1 minute. I can calculate how many miles I can travel in X number of minutes, but that is not the same, that is not space time.
one hour of earth time is not the same as one hour of Mercury time.
1 lb on earth is not the same as 1 lb on Mars.
If yo are shot with a bullet in space, is it the same as being shot with a bullet on earth.
Well that depends on the distance you are from the source of gravity, because the gravitational force falls off by the distance you are from it's source. Thus a bullet in say low orbit, will still have much the weight and force that it has on earth, however in deep space unaffected by any gravitational force, its mass and yours are negligible, mass only exists in the presence of a gravitational force.
The space lab and the people still weigh about 99. 4% of what they would weigh on earth, it is just that they are in perpetual free fall, and experince zero gravity because they are falling . a falling object has no mass, because it has no weightuntil it comes to a halt in the presence of gravity.
Thus relativity, everything is relative, mass is weight, weight is relative to the gravitational force exerted on it, time is relative to one's location. and things weigh less at the equator because of centrifugal force, than they do at the poles, because there is no centrifugal force.
Everything is relative.