Ugh! Took the dogs for their annual checkup. $1200 later, we have reason to believe the dogs are and will stay healthy. My how the price of routine care has escalated! Healthy doggies, priceless!
A few from this morning…
December 5, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Yesterday a gunman assassinated the chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, as he arrived at a meeting of investors in New York City. While authorities are still investigating, officials have released the information that the casings of the bullets that killed Thompson bore the words “deny,” “defend,” “depose,” all words associated with companies’ denial of health insurance, taken from the longer phrases “deny the claim,” “defend the lawsuit,” “depose the patient.”
December 5, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
The lawsuit alleges that UnitedHealthcare uses artificial intelligence to deny claims from Medicare Advantage policyholders. The lawsuit claims that the company knowingly uses an algorithm that makes errors 90% of the time because it also knows that only about 0.2% of policy holders will appeal the decision to deny their claims. Last month the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hammered UnitedHealth for dramatic increases in their denial rates for post-acute care between 2019 and 2022 as it switched to AI authorizations.
December 5, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Thompson’s murder seems to be a cultural moment in which popular fury over the power big business has over ordinary Americans’ lives exploded. Maureen Tkacik of The American Prospect noted, “Only about 50 million customers of America’s reigning medical monopoly might have a motive to exact revenge upon the UnitedHealthcare CEO.” The shooter, whose actual motive remains unknown, is fast becoming a folk hero.
December 5, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
The RBG PAC flew under regulatory radar at end of election and funded advertising claiming 45 would never support a national abortion ban…
Bridget Bowman, Ben Kamisar, and Scott Bland of NBC News reported tonight that Musk spent at least $250 million to get Trump elected. In addition to the $20.5 million to the RBG PAC, he put $238 million into the America PAC. Musk also supported Trump through free advertising and commentary on his social media platform X.
Ecologist David Pimentel has estimated that “if all of the world ate the way the United States eats, humanity would exhaust all known global fossil-fuel reserves in just over seven years.” (Jeff Golden, Reclaiming the Sacred)
Every corporation channels the powerful material desires of the people who work there and the people who invest in it, and it focuses them on the exclusive purpose of maximizing profit, regardless of whether the corporation contributes to the public good in some way, or whether it actually undermines the public good, or if it even causes tremendous destruction and suffering. (Jeff Golden, Reclaiming the Sacred)
Why should we consider literal truth superior to, rather than just different from, metaphoric truth? We need both and they have different proper applications. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
Yesterday i was grateful for the Wynotte Sisters annual Christmas concert and all the friends i got to see, including D&S.
Today i am looking forward to a quiet evening at home with H and the fur family.
Yesterday i was grateful for my wife and our fur family. Nothing beats their love and companionship.
Today i am looking forward to the Whynot Sisters annual Christmas concert with our friends D&S.
from this morning’s walk…
i think this is very important relative to the global realignment that is going on…
There exists an international subculture composed of people with Western-type higher education … that is indeed secularized beyond measure. This subculture is the principal ‘carrier’ of progressive, Enlightenment beliefs and values. While its members are relatively thin on the ground, they are very influential, as they control the institutions that provide the ‘official’ definitions of reality, notably the educational system, the media of mass communication, and the higher reaches of the legal system … (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
beauty is not enough… we are in a moment where goodness and truth are threatened with being overwhelmed…
For it seems that beauty alone, though it addresses itself to the soul like little else, is not enough to sustain the soul, which requires also goodness and truth. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
relative to the Korean coup attempt and our future…
Fear is the primary force upholding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known. When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat. When we choose to love we choose to move against fear—against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect—to find ourselves in the other. (bell hooks, All About Love)
December 3, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
may we have similar courage if/when the time comes…
The South Korean people reacted immediately. Reporting from Seoul, John Yoon of the New York Times recounted the story of a real estate agent who watched President Yoon’s speech, got in his car, and drove for an hour to get to the National Assembly. The man told journalist Yoon, “I thought, ‘The end has come,’ so I came out. The president of a country has exerted his power by force, and its people have come out to protest that. We have to remove him from power from this point on. He’s in a position where he has to come down.”
Yesterday i was grateful for breakfast with KL and my yoga practice.
Today i am looking forward to restorative pilates with my wife and TB.
Tonight’s Christmas movie… Meet Me in St. Louis…
Yesterday i was grateful for my yoga practice.
Today i am looking forward to coffee with KL.
- Lost at Christmas
- Polar Express
- Spirited
My first three Christmas movies!
Yesterday I was grateful for football with my brother and watching Polar Express with my wife.
Today i am looking forward to returning to my yoga practice…
The first signs of resistance in my city…
from this morning’s walk…
Odds and ends from yesterday…
Christmas decorations from yesterday…
