jcalpdx (he/him)

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

It remains genuinely amazing that millions of people look at their health insurance premium and denied claims and think this is the best America can do. It is a true triumph of corporate propaganda and corporate politics — an absolute lobotomization of the mass psyche.

[david @realdavidonline]

Never forget they called indigenous people “savages” to justify killing them.

They call Palestinians
“terrorists” to justify killing them.

They call immigrants “criminals” to justify killing them. #IndigenousPeoplesDay

[Maryam @hell_line0]

You mean the Mexico that has a $2 trillion economy, is America's top trading partner, and elected a woman president with a doctorate in energy engineering who served on the Nobel-winning UN climate panel? The Mexico whose scientists helped save the ozone layer, created the key compound in the birth control pill, and patented early color TV? The one with a university since 1551 that abolished slavery 36 years before the US? Yes. That Mexico is rolling out universal healthcare.

[pinkishlefty @pinkishlefty]

We can't have clean energy because it will destroy the oil industry. We can't have healthcare because it will destroy the health insurance industry. We can't have peace because it will destroy the weapon industry.
Capitalism built a system we can't afford to do the right thing.

[⭒˚ ☀︎.⋆ @khalifaslimxx]

Religion can give people hope. But hope should never become a substitute for justice, wages, healthcare, education and functioning institutions.

[Animal @EnClaveDSol]

En pandemia dizque "de esta saldremos siendo mejores personas" y ahora todos son fascistas.

[People Over Profit @Floridamarx]

The U.S. is a high gross income, low net living standard country. It pays high wages and then takes them back through privatized costs that other high-income countries socialize. The working class here is more indebted, more precarious, and more alone.

[Melat Kiros for Congress, CO-1 @MelatKirosCO]

What the billionaires who actually run the White House don’t want you to know about our rigged economy.

[disco barbie @annabesss]

hey so everyone involved in this should be fired

[Nick Young @nickofnz]

A good reminder.

Pass it on.

#ClimateCrisis

[literland @literlandweb1]

"Mentir constantemente no tiene como objetivo hacer que la gente crea una mentira, sino garantizar que nadie crea en nada. Un pueblo que ya no distingue entre la verdad y la mentira no puede distinguir entre el bien y el mal: un pueblo privado del poder de pensar".
Hannah Arendt

[Micah Erfan @micah_erfan]

Cities who fund the arts are routinely the most successful btw.

[𝕯𝖞𝖑𝖆𝖓™ @Dylanszn01]

One of the problems is that slavery is taught as the history of Black people and not the history of white people.

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

Thanks Reagan 😕

The Republican agenda for the past 45 years in one chart 👇🏽

[⭒˚ ☀︎.⋆ @khalifaslimxx]

The most dangerous class divide is the one where the poor start defending the system that keeps them poor.

[Dan Benbow 🌊🌊🌊 @danbenbow]

Why do Americans pay so much for healthcare, childcare, web service, college, and other 21st Century needs?

Because the GOP made a conscious decision 45 years ago to gut the social contract.

It’s no coincidence that Harry Truman called the GOP The Guardians Of Privilege.

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔Private equity owns 447 US hospitals. ER deaths rose 13% under PE ownership, per the Annals of Internal Medicine. Preventable adverse events jumped 25% after PE acquisition, per JAMA. Hospital assets fell an average of 24% within two years of a PE buyout, about $28 million per hospital that just disappeared. PE firms account for 7% of GDP but were behind 21% of all healthcare bankruptcies in 2024. Steward Health Care, once the largest private for-profit hospital system in the country, closed its safety net hospitals and went bankrupt. Twenty-five states have introduced 79 bills to address PE ownership of hospitals.

My Take
PE firms buy hospitals the same way they buy retail chains. Load them with debt, strip the assets, extract fees, and move on. The difference is when Eddie Bauer closes you find another jacket. When your hospital closes, the nearest ER is 45 minutes away and a stroke patient doesn't have 45 minutes.

They buy the building, sell the land underneath it in a sale-leaseback, then bill the hospital rent on property it used to own. The debt payments eat whatever revenue is left. $28 million per hospital gone in two years while ER deaths climb 13% and infections double. Federal Medicaid cuts are projected to pull roughly $1 trillion out of the system over the next decade. These hospitals already run on margins so thin that one bad quarter can force a closure. I don't know how the ones still under PE ownership survive what's coming, and the communities that depend on them don't have a backup plan.

Hedgie🤗

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

AOC: “We must abolish ICE. This is not an extremist position. ICE is not structured as any sort of recognizable law enforcement agency even if they are labeled as such. They are not subject or structured in any way to even resemble law enforcement. There is no accountability. You cannot assert your constitutional rights in these facilities. These black box detention centers are for-profit institutions. They exist to house bodies and that is one of the many reasons it should be abolished”

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association says insurers paid out nearly $1 billion more than usual from AI-assisted hospital documentation in 2024-2025. Hospitals use AI to scan records and find secondary diagnoses that human reviewers missed. More diagnoses means higher reimbursements. But treatment levels haven't gone up.
BCBSA's SVP of data science said AI is "identifying more billable conditions, not sicker patients." Insurers now deploy their own AI to deny those same claims. Patients pay for both through higher premiums.

My Take
This might be the most American healthcare story I've ever read. Hospitals bought AI to find more things to bill for. Insurers bought AI to deny those bills. The technology cost money on each end and the tab went straight to patients through higher premiums. A billion dollars moved and no one got any healthier. The only thing that changed was the size of the invoices.

Two sides of a trillion-dollar industry found a new tool to fight over the same pool of money and the person in the hospital bed pays for all of it. Premiums go up, denials go up, and the AI vendors collect from everyone. If you want to know who AI works for, stop reading the press releases and look at where the money goes. In healthcare it went straight into the billing department.

Hedgie🤗

[Renzo™ @fwrenzo1]

Schools in rich neighborhoods have robotics labs. Schools in poor neighborhoods have metal detectors. We're not funding education equally, we're preparing some kids for college and others for incarceration. The ZIP code determines the future.