Marta

Retired. Avid walker. First career was as a pediatrician. Second career was as an allergist-immunologist.

[Cyborg Pediatrician @CyborgPeds]

Having chicken pox as a kid is *why* you should consider the shingles vaccine. The virus from your childhood infection invades your neurons and re-emerges later in life causing shingles. I don’t really care what anyone does. If they don’t care about shingles that’s fine. But people should understand the mechanism of the disease in order to make an informed choice.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

A story I've told several times: during college, I got a job in an immunology lab despite not majoring in a biological science.

Asked my PI how I should go about learning immunology. He said, "Immunobiology by Charles Janeway."

I bought and read it.

Apparently, no previous undergrad hire had ever done this.

[Trevor Tomesh ☕ @realDrTT]

I lived in Canada for nearly a decade. Up there they have a practice called “hallway medicine” where they park beds and treat people in hallways because there are no rooms available.

One of my best friends was rushed to the ER with the worst headache of her life — and she had a history of brain cancer. They made her wait (which can take hours in a Canadian ER). Eventually she slumped over and died of an aneurism at the age of 25.

I was once waiting with my wife to be seen for a staph infection on her face. About six hours in of waiting in the ER waiting room (and being harassed several times by a drunk homeless woman for cigarettes) a large man comes in bleeding from his abdomen. They made him sit and wait to be triaged with a growing puddle of blood on the floor in front of him. After about a half an hour he begged to be seen and showed them that he was bleeding and they got annoyed with him and told him to go sit back down and wait.

We waited about 10 hours and then decided to go home.

My mother-in-law waited for nearly an entire year to have her neurostimulator that is literally wired into her spine replaced. She was bumped three times — one time she was literally ON THE OPERATING TABLE when she got rescheduled.

Yet you won’t hear complaints from Canadians about their healthcare system because it’s an unspoken taboo — but when every 1 in 20 Canadians is being killed by their government intentionally, it’s becoming hard to ignore.

[Marta @Marta1255307]

@AyeMibbes @syntax2600 Great questions. Was just sharing anecdotal experience. These were people with asthma (high risk). Never had a vaccinated person end up in ICU (that I knew of). Decisions should be individual.

[Marta @Marta1255307]

@JDaviesPhD Just show up, even when you don’t feel like

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

A rare benefit of advanced age ;-)

[Susanita @susanjtreading]

@seanonolennon A beautiful garden grown tomato is a glorious seasonal treat. A refrigerated, pale, flavorless grocery store tomato is pushed to the edge of the plate in shame.

[Seán Ono Lennon @seanonolennon]

Instead of nuclear fusion scientists should be figuring out how to harness the power of human stupidity.

Infinite energy hack.

[Krisztina Maria @KrisztinaMaria]

Say his name!❤️‍🔥

[Anthony DiGiorgio, DO, MHA @DrDiGiorgio]

Admin: “you’re on suspension for not reviewing your results with patients”

Doctor: “I review all results with patients and it’s clearly documented in my note”

Admin: “oh we know but we need you to check the boxes saying you reviewed the results.”

Doctor: “you also send me results for patients that aren’t mine…”

Admin: “yeah we don’t actually care if results get reviewed. We just need someone to click the boxes”

[Dutch Rojas @DutchRojas]

Imagine Walmart could veto a new grocery store in your town. That is how hospital “competition” works across much of America.

In 34 states and Washington D.C., Certificate of Need (CON) laws allow existing healthcare institutions to fight new facilities, equipment, and competitors before they ever treat a patient.

The better hospitals never open. You drive farther, wait longer, and pay more.

Then the hospital points to the lack of competition as proof that it should be allowed to merge again.

First they lock the door. Then they smoke you for the privilege of standing outside.

[Dutch Rojas @DutchRojas]

Want to know why your premiums are higher every year?

Congress banned doctors from owning hospitals. Then it let hospitals buy the doctors.

Once a hospital acquires a physician practice, it can steer referrals into facilities where the same scan, visit, or procedure costs 3-5x more.

Same doctor.
Same treatment.
New owner.
Bigger bill.

It is your insurance premium that pays the difference.

[Marta @Marta1255307]

@mholt6 @realDrTT No, but sometimes education CAN spark/reignite faith in Christ and his Church. Doing a deep dive into the source of the canon vis-a-vis the early Church did that for me. So keep educating (with love). Some of us appreciate it.

[MOMof DataRepublican @data_republican]

It is EXTREMELY rare for taxes to go down. Every new program requires money. That's it. That's the post.

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

Mr. Rick Rescorla, Morgan Stanley security chief, hero.

[Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD @houmanhemmati]

This is what “preventive care” looks like in America in 2026.

A patient goes in for the annual physical her insurance promised would be covered. She mentions anxiety and bloating. The clinic later bills her $216 because, and I quote the billing office: “Insurances pay once a year for a physical—which is just that. A physical, no problems can be discussed.”

Read that again.

No problems can be discussed.

What, exactly, is the point of a “preventative physical” if the patient is not allowed to mention the conditions she is trying to prevent?

There is no healthy adult walking around with zero medical concerns. Anxiety. Bloating. Fatigue. Sleep. Weight. Blood pressure that is starting to creep. A family history that suddenly feels relevant. These are not “problem visits.” These are the exact conversations that turn a checkbox exam into actual prevention.

The current coding and payment rules punish that conversation. The moment a physician documents a concern and uses clinical judgment, the visit can be reclassified from a no-cost preventive service into an evaluation-and-management visit subject to deductible and copay. Clinics know this. Insurers know this. Hospital systems that own those clinics know this. The patient is the last person told.

The result is predictable:
• Patients learn to stay silent so they do not get a surprise bill.
• Early, cheap problems become late, expensive ones.
• Physicians are trained by RVUs and modifier-25 rules to treat humans as either “well” or “sick,” never as people who need both screening and counsel in the same 20 minutes.
• Insurers keep the premium and deny the claim. Hospital systems bill the higher code. The patient pays twice—once in premiums, again at the window.

This is a billing product dressed up as wellness, and it has nothing to do with medicine.

@SecKennedy @RobertKennedyJr @DrOz @DrOzCMS @CMSGov @POTUS — you have the authority to end this farce.
Require that a covered annual preventive visit include the discussion of common symptoms and risk factors without automatically converting the encounter into a separately billed problem visit.

Mandate clear, written notice before the visit if any conversation may trigger cost-sharing. Stop letting the CPT codebook decide whether a doctor is allowed to listen.

Prevention that forbids the patient from speaking is not remotely close to prevention. It is a trap that makes Americans sicker and the people who run the billing departments richer.

Fix the rule. Do it now.

Every adult who has ever sat in that exam room already knows this is broken. They are waiting for someone in Washington to admit it.

[Dutch Rojas @DutchRojas]

The number one reason healthcare is so expensive is not tax-exempt hospitals.

It is not insurance companies.

It is the incentives created by government.

At an independent physician’s office, Medicare makes one payment.

For services delivered through a hospital outpatient department (HOPD), Medicare makes two payments.

Here is an example:

Lumbar epidural in a physician’s office: $256.

The same procedure through a hospital outpatient department: $741.

Nearly three times the payment! It’s utterly ridiculous to be $40 trillion in the hole and then pay 3x as much for the same thing.

Same physician.
Same patient.
Same procedure.
Different owner.
Higher bill.

Changing ownership triples the payment.

That payment gap gives hospitals a government-funded reason to acquire physician practices.

The more practices a hospital acquires, the more care it moves through the higher-paying system.

This arithmetic is not difficult. Congress simply finds it inconvenient. Government rewards hospitals for acquiring physician practices.

Congress banned physician-owned hospitals and froze most existing ones at their 2010 capacity.

Apparently, physicians are trustworthy enough to perform the surgery. Owning the hospital is where Congress draws the line. Congress approves lawyers, MBAs, and Felons. Not physicians.

Tax-exempt hospital systems pay no federal income tax, no state income tax and no property tax.

Your grandmother pays property tax.

She made the rookie mistake of not calling her house a hospital campus.

Government also created 340B.

In 2025, 340B covered entities purchased $100 billion in discounted outpatient drugs.

That is what they purchased.

It does not tell us what they billed.

It does not tell us how much they made.

The hospital buys the drug at the 340B price.

The hospital bills the employer the full contracted allowable amount.

The patient pays a deductible or coinsurance calculated from that amount.

The patient’s name unlocks the discount.

The hospital keeps it.

Acquire an oncology practice.
Extend the discount.
Keep the spread.

In 34 states and Washington, D.C., hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers and radiology centers must ask government for permission to open or expand.

The incumbent hospital gets to object.

Naturally.

Who should decide whether a community needs competition if not the company facing it?

Then politicians pretend to be surprised when independent physicians disappear, hospital markets consolidate and employer premiums rise.

Hospitals and insurance companies are not innocent.

Hospitals lobby to preserve these advantages. Insurers pass the resulting expense into next year’s premiums.

Everyone follows incentives.

Government chose these incentives.

The people you elected wrote them into law, protected them for years and now hold hearings to discover who could possibly have done this.

Want lower healthcare costs?

Pay the same amount for the same service.

Let physicians own and expand hospitals.

End Certificate of Need laws.

Make 340B discounts follow the patient.

Americans must demand that government stop subsidizing consolidation and picking winners and losers.

Washington pays hospitals more to consolidate, blocks physicians from competing, exempts the winners from taxes and then lectures America about greed.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

An American traveler got off the bullet train at Kyoto Station.
Thirty seconds after the doors closed, his stomach dropped:

His leather wallet was still in the seatback pocket of Car 7, Seat 14-A.
Cash, credit cards, passport — everything.

The train was already accelerating out of the station at 180 miles per hour,
heading for Tokyo.

In panic, he ran to the station attendant, stammering through broken Japanese.

The attendant didn't roll his eyes.
He didn't hand the traveler a claims brochure and say "Check our website in two weeks."

He pulled out a radio.
He called the train's head conductor while the train was traveling at full speed through the mountains.

The conductor walked to Car 7, retrieved the wallet from seat 14-A,
verified the name on the ID over the radio,
and placed it in a secure pouch.

When the train stopped at Nagoya — forty minutes away —
a station officer was standing precisely at the car door.
The wallet was handed off, placed on the very next Kyoto-bound train,
and within 90 minutes,
the traveler was holding his wallet on the Kyoto platform.

Not a single dollar was missing.
Not a single credit card touched.

When the traveler tried to bow and give the attendant cash as a reward,
the attendant stepped back, bowed lower, and smiled:
"Welcome to Japan. Please enjoy your trip."

[Marta @Marta1255307]

@AntiwarNews @UncleFlapjacks What’s the context here?