Anna

By listening patiently and communicating thoroughly, we ensure that patients and their families enter the operating theatre with confidence and return to their

[Anna @Anna6B6B]

The morning scenery is simply enchanting

[Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren]

BREAKING: Today, I'm introducing a bill to BAN corporate takeovers of your doctor's office.

Doctors should be able to care for their patients without greedy private equity investors getting in the way.

Let's get this done.

[Anna @Anna6B6B]

The city is still waking up, but the sunlight has already arrived

[Anna @Anna6B6B]

The blue of New York is purer than a dream
I take the sky into my eyes

[Anna @Anna6B6B]

Professional care, with a touch of warmth
Ensuring every elderly person is treated with kindness

[Anna @Anna6B6B]

Every discussion is an act of responsibility towards life
United in white we safeguard hope

[Anna @Anna6B6B]

The nurse borrowed a piece of alcohol swab from the ward. The nurse who was wiping, wiping wiping her mobile surely not?

[Anna @Anna6B6B]

It’s suddenly so quiet; I’m still finding it a bit hard to get used to

[Anna @Anna6B6B]

Standing in the hospital corridor, he was intently checking the details of each patient on his tablet

[VIEW @viewsoff]

Calabria Italy 🇮🇹

[Anna @Anna6B6B]

The corridors in modern hospitals are clean and bright

[Jen (ESC) 🇨🇦❤️🦋 @Smil3yAngel]

Beautiful Lake ONTARIO 😍❤️

[manolo639 @manolo63921]

The Effects and Costs of Obesity in the US

Obesity has become one of the most pressing public health challenges in the United States, affecting more than 40% of American adults. Its impact stretches far beyond individual health, rippling through families, workplaces, and the economy as a whole.

Health Effects

Obesity significantly increases the risk of serious medical conditions, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, and certain cancers. It is also closely linked to mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, often due to stigma and reduced quality of life. For many, obesity shortens life expectancy and makes daily activities more difficult.

Economic Costs

The financial burden is staggering. Obesity-related healthcare costs in the US exceed $170 billion annually, accounting for a large share of national medical spending. Beyond direct medical expenses, obesity contributes to lost productivity, increased absenteeism, higher disability claims, and reduced workforce participation. Employers and taxpayers alike shoulder much of this cost.

Who Is Affected

While obesity affects all demographic groups, disparities are stark. Lower-income communities and certain racial and ethnic minorities experience higher rates due to factors like food deserts, limited access to healthcare, and socioeconomic inequality. Children and adolescents are also increasingly affected, raising concerns about long-term population health.

A Path Forward

Addressing obesity requires a multi-pronged approach: better nutrition education, expanded access to healthy foods, safe spaces for physical activity, improved healthcare coverage for prevention and treatment, and policies that support rather than stigmatize those affected. Prevention is especially critical, as early intervention can dramatically reduce lifelong health risks.

Obesity is not just a personal issue — it is a societal one. Tackling it effectively will require collective action, smart policy, and a commitment to health equity.

#ObesityCrisis #PublicHealth #HealthEquity #USHealthcare #PreventiveCare #NutritionMatters #HealthyLiving #ChronicDisease #HealthcareCosts #MentalHealth #FoodDeserts #WorkplaceWellness #HealthPolicy #ObesityAwareness

[Hodgepodgery /s 🙃 @TaylorChar83070]

Labor Day is a U.S. federal holiday celebrated on the first Monday of September to honor the American labor movement and workers’ contributions. It became a federal holiday in 1894.

Overview of Labor Day

Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States, celebrated on the first Monday of September. It honors the American labor movement and recognizes the contributions of workers to the nation's development and achievements.

Historical Background

First Celebration: The first Labor Day was celebrated on September 5, 1882, in New York City, organized by the Central Labor Union.

Federal Recognition: Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, following a push from labor activists and the growing labor movement.

Key Figures: Peter J. McGuire and Matthew Maguire are often credited with proposing the holiday, although there is some debate about who was the original proponent.

Significance and Celebrations

Purpose: The holiday serves to honor workers and their contributions to society.

Celebrations: Common activities include parades, picnics, and various community events. It is also seen as the unofficial end of summer, with many people using the long weekend for family gatherings and outdoor activities.

September 7th also celebrates several other important observances. Since apparently one holiday just isn't enough, I didn't want to leave anyone out—so I directed AI to create one picture combining them all.

In addition to Labor Day, we have:

🍺 National Beer Lover's Day
🥩 National Salami Day
🏥 National Grateful Patient Day
🌰 National Acorn Day

Because nothing says “September 7th” quite like beer, salami, healthcare gratitude, and acorns all partying together. You're welcome. /s 😂

[Cecile Shaw @CecileShaw]

Seriously, you’re the one who is seriously ill-informed about how uniquely dangerous Canada’s system is.

No other social democracy on the planet emulates it. Canada's system is a national embarrassment.
It is a rationed government monopoly.

Under the Canada Health Act, provinces/gov't is the only insurer legally allowed to cover the full basket of services.

There is no competing insurer legally allowed to offer the same coverage.

That is the monopoly.
That is the communist element being described.
What is the definition of communism?
Government ownership of the means of production.

So, if it's not a gov't monopoly/communist, please provide me the name of another insurance provider legally permitted to cover all hospital services and doctor visits.

You can’t.

You point to private diagnostic clinics.
Sure, those exist out of pocket.
But what happens, when the gov't becomes so ideologically captured, they refuse to partner with private clinics? Even for publicly paid for scans?

That's exactly what happened in BC in 2023, the radical NDP absolutely refused to partner with private clinics for diagnostic scans even though they were publicly paid for.
Do you know what ended up happening?
Thousands of cancer patients had to be sent to the United States for treatment.

Canada already has a two-tier system.
It just doesn’t work the way people think.
Federal employees, union members, and even prisoners often get faster access than ordinary, poor citizens waiting in the public queue.

Most provinces still use global hospital budgets.
A lump sum that treats extra patients as a cost.
Most OECD countries use a different funding model: activity-based or patient-focused funding, where money follows the patient.
Alberta has moved in that direction.
The incentive flip matters: hospitals get paid when they treat people, not when they ration care.
This change is an improvement, but it's not enough.
Canada must emulate the best systems of other social democracies, not ignore them.

The administrative overhead is extreme.
Germany’s Bismarck-style system:
1 administrator per 14,000 people
Canada is one administrator per 1,400 people.

The video clip above is Dr. Brian Day, past president of the Canadian Medical Association. I recommend all his books. He has spent decades trying to open the system and provide Canadians with the same healthcare rights every other social democracy has. Or at least allow Provinces to have the same rights as Quebec.

You see, Quebec gained limited private-insurance rights after Chaoulli v. Quebec in 2005. But when he brought a similar challenge to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2023, it was dismissed. So much for Canadians being equal.

A Canadian family of four already pays around $1,700 a month in taxes for the system. Then you're saying they should have no qualms flying to England, Germany, or New York for a hip replacement if they can't get one that they have paid for already? That's ludicrous.

Now euthanasia or MAiD is being pushed, even on young adults with seasonal depression.
That is not a model any country should copy.

Study supply-side economics and incentives, and look at what the current U.S. reform effort under MAHA is actually doing. The American system has problems, like every other country. But it is no where near the fear mongering stories the Canadian MSM pushes. Bismarck-style models such as Switzerland’s and Japan’s, South Korea are superior & the United States is increasingly moving in that direction.

Watch these 2 documentaries on the realities of Canada’s system and provide reasonable solutions to get it in line with other social democracies.

People should absolutely be 'scared' of Canada’s system. It should be held up as a cautionary example of what NOT to emulate.

Canadians have every reason to be fed up with it in its current state: paying tens of thousands of dollars only to die on a waitlist, wait years for surgery, watch their ER close, or be offered MAID.

Even more ludicrous are people waiting for a hip surgery, but they're seeing their tax dollars go to men who think they're women & a surgery to give them a fake vagina.
Again, no other social democracy emulates it.
Nor should they.
https://t.co/0xOi1cpQKc

https://t.co/d3agKWx4PO

[3 Star Media @3starmediaus]

💰 DO NOT COLLECT $200 —
American Monopoly, Monetized Edition 🏦
🏥 FINANCIAL FORENSICS: HEALTHCARE & INSURANCE ▸ ▸ ▸ 📖 Post 9 OF 14
In 2024, health insurers on the federal marketplace denied roughly 85 million in-network claims. More than a third of those denials were filed under a reason category that simply says "other."

Healthcare is the only market in this series where the customer typically cannot shop around at the moment of the transaction, cannot decline the purchase, and frequently cannot even see the price before the service is rendered. That structural condition — need without negotiating leverage — is the starting fact this chapter's forensics have to account for.

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WHAT THE DENIAL DATA ACTUALLY SHOWS

✅ ESTABLISHED FACT: A March 2026 KFF analysis of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services transparency data found that insurers offering plans on https://t.co/wGPaAF8I5i denied 19 percent of in-network claims in 2024 — roughly 85 million claims — and 37 percent of out-of-network claims, for a combined denial rate of 20 percent across all submitted claims. Denial rates varied enormously by insurer, ranging from 3 percent at the lowest-denying plans to as high as 36 percent at the highest, meaning a patient's odds of a claim being paid depend substantially on which insurer's name is on their card, independent of the actual medical circumstances of their claim.

⚠️ CRITICAL FINDING: The single largest category of denial reason, at 36 percent of all denials, is listed simply as "other" — a category with no more specific explanation provided in the insurers' own reporting to federal regulators. "Not medically necessary," the reason most people likely assume drives most denials, accounted for only about 5 percent. This means the plurality of the roughly 85 million annual denials this data covers are not disclosed to regulators, or to patients, with a reason a patient could meaningfully contest.

📊 STRONG EVIDENCE: Consumers rarely fight back against a denial even when they could. The same KFF analysis found that fewer than 1 percent of denied in-network claims were appealed in 2024. When patients did appeal, insurers upheld their own original denial roughly two-thirds of the time — though separate analysis of well-documented appeals specifically found meaningfully higher overturn rates, suggesting the low overall success rate reflects, in part, how few appeals are prepared with the documentation needed to succeed rather than proving every denial was correctly decided in the first place.

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THE EVENT THAT MADE THIS DATA A NATIONAL CONVERSATION

✅ ESTABLISHED FACT: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in New York City in December 2024. Luigi Mangione was subsequently charged in connection with the killing and has pleaded not guilty; his case remains in the criminal justice process as of this writing, and this series makes no claim about his guilt or innocence, which remains a matter for the courts to determine. What is established, independent of the outcome of that case, is the public reaction that followed: the killing triggered an intense and sustained national conversation about health-insurance claim denials, with UnitedHealthcare's own denial practices drawing particular public scrutiny in the aftermath — a reaction that reporting attributes directly to the gap between how routine claim denial has become in the industry-wide data above and how invisible that routine denial usually is to the broader public until a single, extreme event forces it into view.

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WHO PROFITS, MEASURED IN THE SAME TRANSACTIONS BEING DENIED

🔍 WHAT THE EVIDENCE SHOWS: UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, has for years ranked among the largest companies in the United States by revenue, built substantially on a structure where the same parent company owns both the insurance side of a claim (which can deny it) and, through its Optum subsidiary, a large share of the pharmacy-benefit-management and physician-practice infrastructure on the other side of many of those same transactions — a vertical integration that critics argue creates a structural incentive to deny or delay payment on one side of the business in ways that protect margins the company also captures on the other side. Optum's scale expanded further through its 2022 acquisition of Change Healthcare, a company that processes a large share of the country's medical claims and billing data — meaning a single corporate entity now sits at multiple points in the pipeline between a patient's treatment and that treatment's payment.

⚖️ DISPUTED: Insurers and their trade association counter that denial rates reflect legitimate plan-design limits, documentation requirements, and fraud prevention — not an attempt to avoid paying valid claims — and that health plans operate on thin margins once the full cost of medical claims, administration, and required medical-loss-ratio rebates under the Affordable Care Act are accounted for. The ACA's medical-loss-ratio rule requires most insurers to spend at least 80 to 85 percent of premium revenue on medical care and quality improvement or rebate the difference to policyholders — a real regulatory constraint on how much of every premium dollar can become pure profit, even as the sheer scale of these companies means a modest margin on an enormous revenue base can still produce very large absolute profits.

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🎯 THE KEY QUESTION: If the medical-loss-ratio rule already caps how much of every premium dollar can become profit, how does the industry remain this consistently profitable? Largely by controlling costs on the other 80-plus percent — through the claim-denial and prior-authorization mechanics documented above, through vertical integration into the provider and pharmacy-benefit side of the business, and through the private-equity-driven consolidation of physician practices this series' next chapter documents in detail. The medical-loss-ratio rule constrains the margin rate. It does not constrain the size of the revenue base that rate applies to, or how aggressively a company manages the cost side of that ratio before the margin is even calculated.

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💡 The bottom line of this chapter: American healthcare's monetization mechanism is not a single fraudulent act repeated at scale. It is a structural feature — a plurality of claim denials filed under no disclosed reason, an appeals process almost nobody uses, and a small number of vertically integrated companies sitting on both sides of an increasing share of these transactions. That structure produced a national reckoning only after an extreme act of violence forced public attention onto data that had been publicly available, in less dramatic form, the whole time.

🧩 Post 10 goes to the specific financial mechanism turning fragmented healthcare and other everyday-service markets into concentrated ones — the private equity roll-up, and the one federal case that already tried to stop it in a single industry.

📖 Post 9 of 14 — Do Not Collect $200

— Continue to 📬 Post 10 ▸ ▸ ▸
#HealthInsurance #ClaimDenials #UnitedHealth #Politics #Truth #Journalism #LongRead #RepBX #TheBXFiles @3starmediaus 💫
🧑‍🏭 Pwd by 👉 ChatGPT + Claude 👌🤖🏗️⚙️🚂💨

[Churchill @arthuromeo]

The crazy thing about Universal Healthcare in the United States, all the people asking how will we pay for it, okay they’re mostly stupid Republicans but I digress, we already pay for it, we just don’t get it , spent 5T yearly when 4T would pay for Universal Care

[Obviously @ElliotES44]

The reason the United States is the only 1st world country without universal healthcare is that the health budget is spent on their military.

War is the most profitable business by large.

And now they are asking us in Europe to do the same.

Are you connecting the dots yet?

[JACCP @JACCPJournal]

The goal of this themed issue is to highlight the unique and evolving contributions of pharmacists within federal healthcare systems and agencies in the United States. https://t.co/iyZAJszgqI

[Anna @Anna6B6B]

@m_galorath Medical staff like this are certainly not acting in the best interests of their patients.