The US Healthcare Mass Debate

[Tero]

UHC, whose CEO got shot, doing poorly
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/15/business ... estigation
my Medicare supplement is through them for the year. I can change in fall.

[Tero]

United Healthcare manipulated thosands of nursing homes.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -transfers

“No one is truly investigating when a patient suffers harm. Absolutely no one,” said one current UnitedHealth nurse practitioner who recently filed a congressional complaint about the nursing home program. “These incidents are hidden, downplayed and minimized. The sense is: ‘Well, they’re medically frail, and no one lives for ever.’”

The Guardian’s investigation is based on thousands of confidential corporate and patient records obtained through sources, public records requests and court files, interviews with more than 20 current and former UnitedHealth and nursing home employees, and two whistleblower declarations submitted to Congress this month through the non-profit legal group Whistleblower Aid.

The documents and sources provide a never-before-seen window into the company’s successful effort to insert itself into the day-to-day operations of nearly 2,000 nursing homes in small towns and urban commercial strips across the nation – an approach which has helped UnitedHealth secure a vast stream of federal dollars from Medicare Advantage plans that cover more than 55,000 long-term nursing home residents.

UnitedHealth said the suggestion that its employees have prevented hospital transfers “is verifiably false”. It said its bonus payments to nursing homes help prevent unnecessary hospitalizations that are costly and dangerous to patients and that its partnerships with nursing homes improve health outcomes.

[Tero]

Medicare is not free. Unlike Medicaid, we pay 185 a month as a premium. Then each person a supplement to insurance.

For as long as Trump is there the gov't part is cut 4% each year.

Medicare does not pay for nursing homes.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Kennedy: Respected medical journals? Bah. Merely propaganda organs for Big Pharma and the corrupt medical profession that doesn't acknowledge to my brilliance.

'RFK Jr. Threatens to Block Scientists From Publishing in Top Medical Journals'

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he’s not happy about government scientists writing for top medical journals and would rather have them publish their findings “in house” instead.

“We’re probably going to stop publishing in The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals, because they’re all corrupt,” President Donald Trump’s health and human services secretary said during a sit-down with the Ultimate Human podcast.

All three journals, founded during the 19th century, receive tens of millions of visits to their websites each year, as some of the world’s most respected and trusted publishers of peer-reviewed studies at the cutting edge of medical research.

Asked about his plans for establishing “in-house” journals at the Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy said these would swiftly “become the preeminent journals” that in turn “anointed” any author who published with them as “a good, legitimate scientist.”

[L'Emmerdeur]

This is more like it. Upholding the good and legitimate work that Kennedy and the Trump administration exemplify--the gold (well, gilded anyway) standard.

'The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist'

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report harnesses “gold-standard” science, citing more than 500 studies and other sources to back up its claims. Those citations, though, are rife with errors, from broken links to misstated conclusions.

Seven of the cited sources don’t appear to exist at all.

Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes is listed in the MAHA report as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents. When NOTUS reached out to her this week, she was surprised to hear of the citation. She does study mental health and substance use, she said. But she didn’t write the paper listed.

“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS via email. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”

It’s not clear that anyone wrote the study cited in the MAHA report. The citation refers to a study titled, “Changes in mental health and substance abuse among US adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic,” along with a nonfunctional link to the study’s digital object identifier. While the citation claims that the study appeared in the 12th issue of the 176th edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics, that issue didn’t include a study with that title.

As the Trump administration cuts research funding for federal health agencies and academic institutions and rejects the scientific consensus on issues like vaccines and gender-affirming care, the issues with its much-heralded MAHA report could indicate lessening concern for scientific accuracy at the highest levels of the federal government.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment on the report’s citation inconsistencies.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Speaking of brilliance ...

'Trump HHS Slammed for Axing Human Bird Flu Vaccine Contract'

The Trump administration Department of Health and Human Services has canceled a $766 million contract with Moderna to complete the development of a vaccine to protect humans against potential pandemic flu viruses, including bird flu. Outbreaks in animals have hit all 50 U.S. states and the disease has started jumping to the human population. Experts are expressing concern and outrage over the decision, calling it “a significant blow to pandemic preparedness.”

Moderna’s bird, or avian, flu vaccine was to be built on its mRNA technology that successfully helped end the COVID pandemic. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a promoter of vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories, has expressed opposition to mRNA vaccines in particular, according to The Washington Post.

“The cancellation means that the government is discarding what could be one of the most effective and rapid tools to combat an avian influenza outbreak,” Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told Reuters.

Secretary Kennedy this week also canceled the CDC’s recommendation of coronavirus vaccine boosters for pregnant women and healthy children, another action that has been met with strong opposition by medical experts.

“Bird flu has infected 70 people, most of them farm workers, over the past year as it has spread aggressively among cattle herds and poultry flocks,” Reuters noted. Secretary Kennedy “has questioned the use of vaccines and earlier this year drew censure from some in the U.S. Congress after he suggested in a television interview that poultry farmers should let the bird flu spread unchecked through their flocks to study chickens who did not contract it.”

[Tero]

What is going to kill us first? Will falling down planes or pandemics make more news items?

[Woodbutcher]

My wife needs iv shots to control her lipid levels. They cost $840 each. Due to healthcare we pay $4.11 for each, which is the dispensing fee at our pharmacy.

[pErvinalia]

Socialism!

[Svartalf]

My wife needs iv shots to control her lipid levels. They cost $840 each. Due to healthcare we pay $4.11 for each, which is the dispensing fee at our pharmacy.

or how the Canadian health service is better than that of the USA?

[Brian Peacock]

Also, $840 for a shot is blatantly predatory.

[Svartalf]

yeah, but it's up to the state health service to negociate those prices with the maker... or maybe to subsidize another company to manufacture a generic version for decent prices

[Tero]

The injectable drugs are all under very strict control, for the injection alone. A very expensive machine is needed simply to make sterile water. Compounding pharmacies have been caught making injectables that caused infections.

The drugs themselves that are injected, including insulin, are somewhat unstable. The insulin is well known as a product. Some 99% will survive a day or two at room temperature (think air travel). Also the break down products are harmless.

[Woodbutcher]

The injectable drugs are all under very strict control, for the injection alone. A very expensive machine is needed simply to make sterile water. Compounding pharmacies have been caught making injectables that caused infections.

The drugs themselves that are injected, including insulin, are somewhat unstable. The insulin is well known as a product. Some 99% will survive a day or two at room temperature (think air travel). Also the break down products are harmless.

One of my cats is on insulin. I keep the ampule in the fridge.

[Tero]

"When you voted for Trump, you voted to get off the couch!" Find a job.