I'm going to take a wild guess and say that was probably consensual.

lol. everything is okay. i gotta his plaque.



when you threaten people, make sure you have a bigger truck than he.

this is exactly why the violent left wants to disarm the peaceful right.

Its crazy that we live in a country where people are shocked to get run over while standing IN THE MIDDLE OF PUBLIC ROADS... Bunch of idiots, they got exactly what they deserved, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

especially after threatening the driver's life after he politely asked them to move...

Now my biggest question is did the driver get reported and charged.

If by charged you mean received a humanitarian award for doing exactly what all of us imagine doing when we see idiots "protesting" in the middle of the street, then lets hope so!

the comments on the truck video are a fun read. it's nice when people can band together to hate on SJWs.

Reginald Denny taught us to keep driving when things get testy.

Did the "protesters" have a permit to protest and be in the area they were?

If I were a betting man, I'd say no.

yeah, usually people with permits just run into roads and block traffic, then threaten people who want to travel freely...

Well, it's not quite price-fixing, but it's not quite anything else, either.


Take a look at the insurance documents associated with your last surgery / inpatient treatment / other significant medical expense. Look at the line-by-lines.

Let's say that you've already covered your deductible. You get a bill from an Anesthesiologist for $1,815. Here's my most recent one:

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...37c0388112.png

Now, the bill was for $1,815, but my insurance only paid him $1,023, and I owed nothing. WTF? Network Discount. When a health services provider enters into a contract with an insurance carrier, they agree to give a rather substantial discount to that carrier. So, obviously, this means that providers artificially inflate their bills to compensate. My anesthesiologist expects to earn an average of around $1,000 for performing a certain procedure, so he knows that he has to set his billable rate at around $1,800 in order to get that.


Say that I haven't met my deductible yet, and I get a CAT scan to determine whether or not my appendix is about to explode:

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...97f28c9a19.png

This is where it gets really interesting. Since I haven't met my deductible at this point I'm on the hook for the whole amount, however the network discount still applies! The hospital bills for $447, but I pay only $162! I get the same discount as the insurance company simply because I'm part of the "in club." If I didn't have that insurance, I'd have been on the hook for the whole $447, and since I, as an individual, have no bargaining power with hospitals, there's jack shit I'd be able to do about it.


And THAT is the core of the problem. This system of inflated billing to compensate for network discounts makes health insurance basically mandatory if you want to pay a reasonable price. Even if you have a $50,000 deductible and never even come close to meeting it, you'll pay only a tiny fraction of what an un-insured person would, for no other reason aside from the fact that your insurance provider has entered into a covenant with this hospital. You inheret the bargaining power of the insurer, and people who do not have insurance are left paying the inflated prices that healthcare providers charge in order to compensate for these discounts.



It's a pretty fucked-up situation, and there's not much that can be done about it.


I mean, think about it. Hospitals and insurance companies are engaged in a practice which very strongly resembles Collusion, without actually breaking the law. And in order to "fix" it, the legislature would have to enact a law which very strongly resembles Restraint of Trade, which the courts tend to dislike.



Discuss.

Stop placing legal requirements/restrictions on health insurance companies.

Make coverage discrimination illegal.

Would you agree with doing that for car insurance too?

Or do you think that it's slightly reasonable to look at risk profiles when insuring someone? I think things that can be controlled should be taken into account, smoking for instance.

Sort of parallel to what's happening over here, but with a twist.

I have a top notch insurance plan. No deductible, no exclusions, no excuses.
I walk in, get whatever I need done, show my insurance card and walk out.
Any hospital, anywhere, anytime, any reason.
(I pay for the tea I drink at the cafeteria - I go there for smokes)

I looked at the invoice for my knee surgery.
Close to 60K (in Turkish Liras, roughly $20K) including couple month's wort of PT..

Now, if I were some guy off the street with no insurance, that would cost me about 80K.
This is because the insurance company makes a deal with the hospital(s) in the beginning of the year in exchange for a promise to bring X dollars in business for that year.

But there's a catch.
If you have no insurance, and are in a position to pay your bill in cash or in, say, 3 installments, you can sit down at the office and bargain.
Yes. Bargain.
They usually knock a substantial amount off the bill, I'm told.

And that substantiates the universally inflated healthcare costs Joe is talking about.

(And, don't scoff at the bargaining... You guys bargain at the car dealerships, we get to do that at the hospitals over here. No biggie)

FYI, we were paying about $2500/year 5000 TL) in the form of 8 installments for our coverage, for myself and my wife.
After several serious surgeries and procedures over the past few years, they bumped it up to just under 10K TL (about $3000) this year, with guaranteed lifetime coverage.
We are happily paying it.

Built on the power of white men or built at the expense of the parties named thereafter? How does not defining feminism equate to not thinking men and women are equal?

Saying something could be better doesn't mean it's not great to start with.

If trump was a smart business person, he wouldn't have lost other people a billion dollars in a year. If he was even smarter, he would have put the money he was given in an index fund because it would be worth a shit ton more than his 'wealth' is worth now and it would have saved a few small businesses in the future. I'm not sure how someone that 'built their wealth' at the expense of small business is going to turn into some sort of people's champion. When you run for office your past is relevant. It doesn't just magically go away because you decided that you want to run for office. Remember the pics of obama smoking weed in college. They came up...

If he doesn't have a political track record, fine, but you have to evaluate him on the only track record available, which is re: his business and charitable dealings. Those are pretty sketchy, no? Not to mention any potential conflicts of interest he may have due to his business dealings which are conveniently hidden since he hasn't released his tax info.

On a serious note, I actually lament the death of the moderate in American politics. The sheer amount of polarization in our political system has made conversations between those with different opinions more emotionally than factually charged. It's pretty stupid and at the end of the day it makes our system suck because you can't really work together towards any sort of progress when you automatically disqualify someone else's opinions without bothering to see where they even come from. Or if you prefer to treat made up opinions as fact. That last one pisses me off the most because nothing makes someone feel like a more special snowflake than knowing in their adorable little hearts that only they know the truth and everything else is a conspiracy.

So, two observations here...


First, those two sentences are completely contradictory. Making "coverage discrimination" illegal is precisely the opposite of not placing legal requirements/restrictions on health insurance companies.


Second, how do you define "coverage discrimination"? Are you saying that insurance companies should charge the same rate to a 25 year old who jogs 5 miles a day as they do an obese diabetic smoker who downs a full pint of Ben & Jerry every afternoon while watching Oprah?

Because that would result in a lot more uninsured healthy 25 year olds, which in turn exacerbates the problem of network-discounted pricing for the occasional healthy 25 year old who gets hit by a car while jogging and winds up getting billed "full-price" for his orthopedic surgery and inpatient care.


Makes about as much sense as Geico eliminating its safe-driver discount, and charging me the same comprehensive/collision premium for my 20 year old Honda Civic and zero-accident history as it does the 19 year old girl with two DUIs who has wrecked her daddy's 2016 BMW M5 three times.