Andi Hedberg

Freedom-Loving Woman - Wife, Mother of 2 Girls, a Boy & (a few) Rescue Bulldogs. Youngest is #T1D.

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

This is absolutely insane

American went to buy Walgreens brand blood glucose test strips. She takes the box up to the register to buy it

The price should be $30 but it rings up as $75. The issue turned out to be that the people stocking the shelves put the ones that were supposed to be behind the pharmacy counter on the regular shelves

But they are the exact same test strips, same box, same amount of strips, just a different barcode but everything else is the same

The box behind the pharmacy counter sells for $75 for people with insurance. The one on the same is $30

So if you have insurance and pay at the pharmacy the price is $45 more

What are we even doing anymore… our healthcare system is such an absolute scam

We need healthcare reform immediately

[MDBayNews @MDBayNews]

💰 MARYLAND: A new transparency push could subject nonprofits receiving $50,000+ in public funding to Maryland’s Public Information Act.

The principle is simple: if taxpayers are footing a substantial part of the bill, taxpayers deserve to know where the money goes.

Public money shouldn’t disappear behind a “private nonprofit” label.

[Andi Hedberg @ahedbergmaloni]

@SoundMoneyG Happy Birthday! Appreciate your posts. Our family moved to MD right around the same time…it’s tragic how things have changed since then.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Nobody profits from telling you the body heals itself. So nobody tells you.

Your taste buds are new every 10 to 14 days. The tongue reading this flavour is a fortnight old.

Your stomach lining rebuilds every 3 to 5 days. Last week's gut is already gone.

Your skin turns over every 4 weeks. You grew a whole new surface this month.

Your white blood cells renew in days. Tonight's immune army was not on watch last week.

Your red blood cells retire every 120 days. Four months, and the entire fleet is replaced.

The fat built into your cell membranes turns over too. Years of stored seed oil can slowly be walked back out.

Your liver just gets on with regenerating. It holds no grudge about the bad years.

Your skeleton rebuilds over roughly ten years. The bones made in the worst years are not the ones you finish with.

Every one of those rebuilds is made from what you feed it.

Feed it meat, fat, sunlight and sleep, and it builds you strong.

Feed it sugar, seed oil and the sofa, and it builds you soft.

The body you will have next year is under construction right now.

What you give it today is what it builds you into.

[Dr Shawn Baker 🥩 @SBakerMD]

The real reason we decided to leave Washington!!

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

RFK Jr. reveals what HHS found when they went looking for the 375,000 migrant kids Biden lost.

"It's a huge, huge tragedy."

"One guy pretended to be the parent of 42 children. We have no idea what happened to those kids."

"We're now finding them. We found about 137,000 of them, but a lot of them you just can't find. There was about 60 kids who were sent to one address. When we looked at that address, it was a container, a steel container in the middle of a parking lot."

"A lot of them were sent to work at slaughterhouses and picking fruits in the fields. They were slaves."

"So we stopped that. Now everybody who comes in has to validate the relationship. We DNA test them to make sure they're related to that kid. Nobody gets a kid unless we know that is the kid's parent or relative."

"It's a huge, huge tragedy. My agency [under Biden] was the single biggest child trafficker in the world."

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

Fact Check: True

[Greg @SoundMoneyG]

Montgomery County, MD used to be:

✅️ Top 5 public school system (entire USA)
✅️ Top 5 median income (entire USA)

Took just about 2 decades under one party ideologues to ruin this. Detroit-ification.

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

For anyone wanting to give wealth to their children, it’s a pretty good offer. With some billionaires generously giving back.
This was the hope, yeah? Generational wealth being created and the very wealthy helping others.

[Kite & Key Media @kiteandkeymedia]

How do you tell the full story of 250 years of American history?

Our new video does it nine minutes — with no words.

Watch the full video here: https://t.co/2DiOWTpGrI

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 AMAZING: 103-year-old World War II veteran Cpl. Wilbur “Jack” Myers just perfectly sang "GOD BLESS AMERICA" on camera during America's 250th anniversary

THE BEST OF US! 🙏🏻

[Bluntly Put Philosopher (BPP) @SocraticScribe]

Happy Fourth of July… A penny hides a tiny Lincoln statue inside the Memorial on its back, but he’s too small to have a face. So a focused ion beam gave him one: a real Lincoln portrait milled atom-by-atom in gallium, 18 hours of carving, on that same back side.

[Nick Sortor @nicksortor]

🔥 THE US NAVY’S BLUE ANGELS HAVE ARRIVED IN DC

These guys have been working HARD today, doing a flyover in NYC this morning before jetting straight here to DC to celebrate America’s 250th birthday

Absolute LEGENDS 🇺🇸

[Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson]

Massive fireworks display over Mount Rushmore.

It doesn’t get any more American than this 🇺🇸

[Ron DeSantis @RonDeSantis]

250 years ago, on July 2nd, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted to declare independence from Great Britain.

John Adams wrote to his wife the next day:

“The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.—I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Well, not quite.

On July 4th, the delegates adopted the Declaration of Independence — and that has been the day for celebrations ever since.

[hunter @hxxntrr]

you're about to pay that $14,000 hospital bill. Stop

call the billing department and say five words: "I need an itemized statement"

watch $14,000 turn into $3,200

hospitals send you a summary bill on purpose. one line. one number. one deadline. designed to make you panic and pay or ignore it until it destroys your credit

the itemized version tells a completely different story

every charge has a CPT code (Current Procedural Terminology). this is the 5-digit number that identifies the exact procedure or service. your $14,000 bill might have 30-60 individual CPT codes on it. each one represents a charge the hospital decided you owe

here's what you'll typically find when you actually read them:

$83 for a tablet of acetaminophen. you know this drug as Tylenol. CVS sells a bottle of 100 for $6.49. the hospital charged you $83 for ONE

$482 for "room utilization." you sat in a curtained area in the ER for 22 minutes while a nurse took your blood pressure

$1,400 for "physician consultation" when a nurse practitioner checked your chart for 90 seconds and a doctor you never met signed off remotely

$312 for "surgical supplies" for 4 stitches and a gauze pad that cost the hospital $0.74 in materials

$234 for "facility fee." this is a charge for being in the building. literally a fee for walking through the door

duplicate charges billed under different CPT codes for the same procedure

the chargemaster:

every hospital has a document called the chargemaster. it's a master list of every service and its price. chargemaster prices are set internally by the hospital with zero external regulation. there is no law governing how much a hospital can charge for a tylenol or a CT scan. the chargemaster is a fictional pricing document that has no relationship to the actual cost of care

under the Hospital Price Transparency Rule (CMS-1717-F2, effective January 2021), hospitals with 300+ beds are required to publish their chargemaster prices online. most hospitals bury the file in an obscure corner of their website as a 40,000-row spreadsheet that nobody can read. but it's there

pull it. compare what they charged you to what they published. then compare both numbers to the Medicare reimbursement rate for the same CPT code at https://t.co/OYp6CWUAOK. Medicare rates represent what the federal government has determined is a fair price for each procedure

the gaps are violent:

CT scan abdomen (CPT 74177):
Medicare rate: $280
Average chargemaster price: $4,200
Markup: 1,400%

basic metabolic panel (CPT 80048):
Medicare rate: $11
Average chargemaster price: $620
Markup: 5,536%

ER visit level 4 (CPT 99284):
Medicare rate: $268
Average chargemaster price: $2,800
Markup: 945%

the negotiation sequence:

call 1: "I received my itemized statement. I've compared each CPT code to the Medicare reimbursement rate and found that your charges exceed Medicare rates by 400-1,400% across 18 line items. I'd like to discuss a fair adjustment to bring these charges closer to market rates"

most billing departments have authority to reduce 20-40% without supervisor approval. push for 50%+

call 2: "I'd like to apply for your financial assistance program under your 501(r) charity care policy"

every nonprofit hospital (roughly 60% of US hospitals) is required under IRC Section 501(r) to maintain a financial assistance policy. if your household income falls below 200-400% of the federal poverty level (varies by hospital), you qualify for 40-100% reduction. for 2026, 400% FPL for a single person is roughly $60,240. family of four: $124,800

this means a family earning $120K/year may qualify for a 50-80% reduction at many nonprofit hospitals. they will never tell you this. you have to ask

call 3: "I've identified billing errors including [duplicate charges/upcoded procedures/unbundled services] and I'm filing a formal billing dispute. Please route this to your patient advocate for internal audit review"

the word "audit" triggers a different process. a compliance officer reviews the bill instead of a collections agent. errors get found. charges get removed

call 4 (the close): "I can pay $3,200 today as settlement in full. This resolves the account. I'll need written confirmation that the account is settled and will not be sent to collections"

hospitals would rather take $3,200 today than send $14,000 to a collection agency that will buy it for $420 and harass you for years. your lump-sum offer at 23 cents on the dollar is more profitable for the hospital than the collections route

if it already went to collections:

the collector bought your $14,000 bill for $280-$560. they'll take $1,500 and delete. but first, send the FDCPA 809 validation letter demanding the full itemized statement with CPT codes, the insurance explanation of benefits, and proof the remaining balance is accurate after all contractual adjustments

collectors almost never have this for medical debt. the hospital sold a spreadsheet. the supporting documentation went to a filing cabinet nobody will ever open. unable to validate = dispute with bureaus = deleted in 30 days

a woman came to us with $89,000 in medical bills across 4 hospital visits from 2023-2025. we requested itemized statements for all four. found $31,000 in duplicate charges, facility fees already included in surgeon's bills, and supplies billed at 2,000-5,000% above cost. applied for 501(r) financial assistance at 2 of the 4 hospitals. she qualified for 70% reduction at both

$89,000 original total
$31,000 removed (billing errors)
$58,000 remaining
$40,600 reduced (70% charity care at 2 hospitals)
$17,400 remaining across 2 for-profit hospitals
Settled for $6,200 lump sum payment

$89,000 to $6,200. 7 cents on the dollar. score went from 512 to 703 in 68 days after the collections were deleted

five words. "I need an itemized statement." the hospital is hoping you never say them lol

(i fix credit in 30-90 days. link in bio)

[Mary Katharine Ham @mkhammer]

I love this from @kiteandkeymedia! Showing it to the kids today. The drama, the hardships, the compromises, the injustices, the epic clashes over them, the miracle that is the formation of America in under 10 mins.

[Washingtonian 🌸 @washingtonian]

If you’ve been on the National Mall lately, you may have noticed that it feels a bit like a maze.

To clear up confusion, we’ve created an interactive map that shows all the road closures, fencing, and barricades, and also lets you know where to get some water and go to the bathroom.

Check it out here: https://t.co/oOnRbVt3Gf

[Jeff Selingo @jselingo]

Think it's time for Montgomery County to split into two.

[Tom Cruise @TomCruise]

For the last 46 years, it has been my privilege to work alongside countless talented artists and crews to create these characters, stories, and films for you all.

I'm looking forward to seeing you at the movies! DIGGER. Only in theaters this October.