Michael Peterson

"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." — George Orwell.

[Daniel @danielgothits]

America is literally being strangled to death by this

[Bill Goggin @wgoggin]

For the record, that interest payments on the national debt are unnecessary, exorbitant, regressively unequal, wasteful with huge opportunity costs, and potentially inflationary is standard MMT.

Educate yourself, please.

[Dr. Sydney Watson @SydneyLWatson]

Seen a lot of conversation about how predatory the American medical system is.

So I will weigh in.

I ended up going to the ER about 2 weeks ago for crippling pain. Turned out to be a ruptured ovarian cyst. I was there for MAYBE 4 hours.

My bill? $13,500 dollars.

Because I'm uninsured (by choice, that shit is a SCAM), the hospital dropped my bill down to $8,100 and some change as an "uninsured" discount.

For starters, $13,500 for a 4 hour hospital visit is insane as it is.

But the fact the hospital can wipe $5,000 off the bill "just because" should show you how utterly fucked this system is.

And to be clear - $8,000 is still an absolutely insane sum of money when all these people did was scan my stomach and give me some pain killers.

On my itemized bill, my CT scan was 7k. The iodine they used was $900. Just being in the ER room alone was $2,500.

We phoned the hospital to haggle. They dropped the price by $20.

Normal people can't survive this shit. I do okay and $8,000 is still an INSANE chunk of money out of my savings.

Anyone who argues this isn't a disgusting, predatory system is crazy. And it is even crazier that Americans accept this.

And for those of you who argue this is the free market, I need you to be quiet. There can never be a true free market here when government and insurance have their creepy little fingers in this pie.

People shouldn't go bankrupt trying to pay medical bills. This has to change.

[Marko Kolanovic @markoinny]

Putting Goebbels to shame
https://t.co/DZUjN4qaiy

[Phil Bak @philbak1]

Work hard for a salary to feed your family and they’ll take half of it from you, but if you irresponsibly gamble it, they wouldn’t dare.

How far government incentives have strayed.

[CrowdHealth @JoinCrowdHealth]

CrowdHealth solves every one of these issues. Thats why our members are getting rates that are half of what health insurance pays. Pay direct. Ditch health insurance.

[Peter Mallouk @PeterMallouk]

The average US family health insurance premium has increased from $6,000 in 1999 to nearly $27,000 in 2025. That’s a 365% increase, more than triple overall inflation. The biggest beneficiaries of this massive increase in costs: health insurance companies.

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

The ACA, as passed, is far from what it is today. It was passed to help get coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Which it has done and done well.

15 years ago it was a question of what was the less bad outcome , letting people who are already sick not have access to care, and costing everyone more.
Or
Letting the sick people suffer and everyone else pays what they were paying.

There is a strong argument for compassion over cash.

But. That was 15 yrs ago. Now the insurance companies are vertically integrated and far different. What we see today isn’t because of the ACA. It’s because we let the companies grow into behemoths that have more power over our lives than any other companies. They define the healthcare system.

Now it’s time to turn the tables. More than half the customers of health insurance companies are private companies.

If you want to protest the cost of healthcare , go to your ceo that signs off on doing business with them , and tell that because of the deal they signed with the big insurers and their PBMs , they are fucking over the country.

Most of those CEOs self insure. Tell them to switch to direct contracts , wrap around insurance, smaller PBMs that are transparent and Fee for Service this party administrators

Your ceo is as responsible for your skyrocketing healthcare costs as the companies he is buying your insurance from

[Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 @FmrRepMTG]

If there was very detailed pricing transparency in the healthcare industry from doctors, surgeries, treatments, pharmacists, literally everything directly to patients, without health insurance, would that appeal to you?

Like concierge and/or a la carte medical care that frees doctors and common prescriptions out of the burdens of the current system lowering cost.

I know obviously not for everyone, but could appeal to many.

In other words, for those who are paying $1,800+/mo with $7-10,000 deductibles, if that money could pay directly for care without going to insurance companies and instead directly to your own health care needs, how many people would that appeal to?

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

The only financial questions in healthcare are
1. What does it cost
2. How do you pay for it

For most people in this country, employers, taxpayers and patients absorb the risk of payment.

Insurance companies rarely take risk. It's time to ask why we use them at all ?

If you need money for college, a house, a small business loan, and more, taxpayers will give or guarantee a loan.

If you are in a horrific accident and can't pay your deductible or OOP, we ignore you

There are ways to solve this problem. But they start with realizing in 2025, insurance isn't the solution. It's the problem.

They know you can't pay your deductibles, but they take your premiums. Let that sink in

[ZZ Santa Chevy Cruze™️ #SmokeFleet🟦 @Danphillipsresi]

Not until then.

[Pete Buttigieg @PeteButtigieg]

This level of corruption is not normal or acceptable. Even if we are exhausted by each report of it going further and further, we can never grow numb to it.

[Warren B. Mosler @wbmosler]

Deportations translate to slowing GDP growth even as employment of the remaining population stays high. And tariff induced price hikes slow real consumption even as nominal spending remains high.
It's a slow motion train wreck of declining real standards of living.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Heard!

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

When the Trump regime's reign of terror comes to an end and the magnitude of their crimes are revealed to the public — America is going to have its own version of the Nuremberg trials. Trump is already death warmed over, but Stephen Miller is going to spend a long time in prison.

[Brad @BraddrofliT]

Neil deGrass Tyson: "How sad it must be believing that scientists, historians, scholars, economists, journalists would devote their entire lives to deceiving you, but a con man proven in court to be a lying felon is your beacon of truth & honesty"

[Morgan J. Freeman @mjfree]

Chief Justice Roberts says the rule of law is eroding like we've rarely seen. Maybe he should've thought of that before ruling the president is above the law. You don't get to burn the house down and act shocked it's on fire.

[sam @sam_d_1995]

it should probably be a bigger story that most of the world has stopped shipping packages to the U.S. entirely because of Trump’s tariffs

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

Actually, Mr. Trump, “a lot of people” say that millions of Americans fought and died to DEFEAT dictators.

Ask anybody. We’d rather be a free country.

[Patrick S. Tomlinson @stealthygeek]

We should really all be retweeting this daily.