Why Your Health Insurer Doesn’t Care About Your Big Bills

Marshall Allen, writing at ProPublica

The United States spends more per person on health care than any other country. A lot more. As a country, by many measures, we are not getting our money’s worth. […]

Experts frequently blame this on the high prices charged by doctors and hospitals. But less scrutinized is the role insurance companies — the middlemen between patients and those providers — play in boosting our health care tab. Widely perceived as fierce guardians of health care dollars, insurers, in many cases, aren’t. In fact, they often agree to pay high prices, then, one way or another, pass those high prices on to patients — all while raking in healthy profits.

Fascinating read.

by Paul on May 29, 2018 at 8:31am | Permalink
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“Look, every man should know how to do seven things, and tying a tie is one of them. […] The other six are: whistle with your fingers, read a map, grill with charcoal, shine your shoes, open a bottle without an opener, and breaking down a door.”
— Mike Heck, The Middle, S9E17.

Source: paullandry.micro.blog

by Paul on May 27, 2018 at 9:52am | Permalink
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R.I.P. Alan Bean, 4th to Walk on the Moon. nyti.ms/2JbfUWQ

Source: paullandry.micro.blog

by Paul on May 26, 2018 at 3:45pm | Permalink
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🎶Listening to “Drive My Car” by The Beatles from the album Rubber Soul.

Source: paullandry.micro.blog

by Paul on May 22, 2018 at 2:18pm | Permalink
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🎶Listening to “Have You Met Miss Jones” by Mike Jones & Penn Jillette from the album The Show Before the Show: Live at the Penn & Teller Theater.

Source: paullandry.micro.blog

by Paul on May 16, 2018 at 9:04am | Permalink
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Cassidy Landry +1

Gone, but not forgotten.

by Paul on May 14, 2018 at 3:34pm | Permalink
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R.I.P. Margot Kidder (Lois Lane in the original “Superman” films) Variety

Source: paullandry.micro.blog

by Paul on May 14, 2018 at 12:48pm | Permalink
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A piece of Spam like you

FORD: I hate to interrupt… but… I think you spent too much time in the discos during the 70s — Village People rotted your brain.

LT. AMOS: See that’s the difference between a great investigator like me, and a piece of Spam like you.

FORD: Spam? You’re a piece of Spam — that’s what I think of you.

LT. AMOS: No, I call you a piece of Spam ‘cause that’s what you are.

FORD: Spam!!!

— Andrew “Dice” Clay and Ed O’Neill in The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (20th Century Fox 1990) at 57:42.

by Paul on May 14, 2018 at 5:22am | Permalink
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Doug Stanhope on farts

Jeff Brown and I used to eat at The Sahara Dinner Buffet where I had, to this day, the best spectacle of bowel-wrenching flatulence of my life. The room was full of mostly elderly people, tables tightly packed, and we were seated dead center. It was silent except for the slight tinkling of silverware on plates. I felt my lower intestine chamber-up and I knew that this had championship prospects, and I knew Jeff Brown would have absolutely no appreciation for what was about to happen, which made it way funnier. My chair was the perfect hard plastic for maximum reverberation. I was choking down the belly-laugh as I leaned up and into the table, hands on the corners, thoroughly telegraphing my intentions. What came out of me was ‘Hell’s trumpet’.

A deafening tear echoed off of every corner of that muted hall—it lasted at least six to seven seconds, a veritable eternity of hang-time for non-stop wind. The pitch roared up and down the scales in range. The clarity of sound would have made you feel like you were actually dining inside my colon! People were seated literally a foot behind me. When it concluded, all sound in the dining room had completely evaporated; there was no question that every single person of the hundred or so that were in there had bore witness to my masterpiece! Jeff Brown was paralyzed with inner fury as the mortified silence turned to widespread murmurs of disgust. I simply stared at my plate as tears flooded my eyes, my nose ran, and I began to drool while convulsing and desperately trying to contain any audible laugh. Jeff would have run out the door had it not been situated so far away. He was genuinely enraged and still comically fumes to this day when I bring that story up.

I laughed when I wrote this, I laughed at every re-write of this, and I’m laughing while I telling this story. Farts are the funniest thing in life, and if you disagree then you have no soul—end of story.

— Doug Stanhope, Digging Up Mother: A Love Story (Audio version, Audible Studios, 2016) at 15:27.

by Paul on May 11, 2018 at 6:24am | Permalink
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Fuck Facebook: I’m dumping ’em

It’s official: I’m dumping Facebook (a.k.a. Facefuck).

What started out as a fun place to connect with actual friends online, has become a swirling storm of shit, wrapped in Mark Zuckerberg’s lies (he has, after all, been “apologizing” for online privacy problems since before there even was a Facebook…). And let’s not forget that Mark Zuckerberg think’s we’re all “dumb fucks” to begin with. I’m finished.

Of course, because many of my friends and family members only contact me via Facefuck, I decided to keep the account and delete all my content. If you’d also like to dump Facebook, there are a variety of good guides out there, I personally used the guides from AppleInsider and iMore.

If you’d rather just go ahead and permanently delete your Facebook account, then I’d still suggest the guide from AppleInsider as well as Mashable.

Regardless of which method you choose, or whether you dump Facefuck at all, you should absolutely download all the data Facebook has collected about you and review it carefully (especially the “Information About You / Ads” sections). It’s a real “eye opener.”

Good luck.

by Paul on May 10, 2018 at 7:20am | Permalink
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