From Pine View Farm

February, 2021 archive

The Fee Hand of the Market 0

At the Inky, Harold Brubaker takes a look at hospital fees for various services that have been recently made available under a new federal regulation strongly opposed by hospitals and insurers. He concludes that they make no sense when exposed to the light. A snippet; follow the link for more.

The price for a simple knee MRI under Independence Blue Cross plans ranges from $330 at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery in East Norriton to $1,500 at Riddle Hospital in Media.

Those are the prices consumers with high-deductible plans would have to pay to scan their knee and find out how serious the source of their pain is.

And replacing that knee would cost from $12,300 to more than $44,000 under insurance plans that IBC sells to employers and individuals.

The notion, often promoted by persons who call themselves “conservative,” that someone who is sick will comparison-shop for health care has always been fanciful. The reality is that, if there is a choice, a patient will go where his or her doctor says, and, in rural areas, there is often little or no choice from the git-go. Add in a landscape of wildly variable and irrational pricing schemes, comparison shopping for health care becomes an impossible dream all-too-possible nightmare.

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Behind the Scenes . . . . 0

Frame One, titled

Click for the original image.

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Know Them by the Company They Keep 0

E. J. Montini suggests that Arizona’s Congressman Paul Gosar’s actions belie his words.

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All the News that Fits, “We’re the Victims Here” Dept. 0

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Fly the Fiendly Skies 0

An unscheduled stop.

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Twits on Twitter 0

Cruz v, Kruse,

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Treat your neighbors to a little politeness.

Investigation determined that a gun had been fired in a third floor apartment, traveling through the floor and through the ceiling of the occupied second floor apartment underneath.

(snip)

Stone (the shooter–ed,) indicated to police that he believed the handgun was not loaded at the time that he was manipulating it.

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QOTD 0

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.:

The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn’t worth a damn.

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Geeking Out 0

Listening to the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, Clouds of Witness, from the Old Time Radio Theater, with the QMMP media player using the Winamp Catubi_3000 skin, on Ubuntu MATE with the Fluxbox window manager. The wallpaper is from my collection. (One of the things I like about QMMP is that I can use my collection of Winamp skins with it.)

Screenshot

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The Rule of Lawless, Nuremberg Dept. 0

The Trumpettes’ “I was just following orders” defense doesn’t look like it’s going to fly.

Afterthought:

We are a society of stupid.

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The Bait 0

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Image of man labeled

Via Job’s Anger.

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Facebook Frolics 0

The Zuckerborg assimilates David Brooks.

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Immunity Impunity 0

Get out of Jail free cardDeath by “first responder.”

Words fail me.

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A Day’s Work for an Hour’s Pay 0

Sam and his crew dismantle the Republican double-talk on the minimum wage.

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Drinking the KQQl-Aid 0

Jason Blazakis warns that Q believers are behaving like cultists, and, like cultists, when a prophecy does not come true, their faith is unshaken. Rather than question their idol, they double-down on it. A snippet:

For example, after one of the co-founders of the Heaven’s Gate cult died, the other began preaching about taking followers to the “Next Level,” a science-fiction version of the afterlife. To explain the unexpected death of his co-founder, he began sermonizing that his followers’ bodies were unimportant vessels that they would shed upon reaching their final destination. He blended aspects of New Age science and evangelical Christianity to persuade them to go on one final trip, which ended with a mass suicide by 39 cult members in 1997.

Like the Heaven’s Gate cult, the QAnon community brandishes religious imagery and repurposes theories to fit new truths. Q’s theory about an impending storm where global elites are vanquished is a recurring end-times scenario in many religions, including Christianity. The predicted storm is still coming, they now say, when Trump retakes power March 4.

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QOTD 0

Gilbert Highet:

The aim of those who try to control thought is always the same. They find one single explanation of the world, one system of thought and action that will (they believe) cover everything; and then they try to impose that on all thinking people.

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And Now for a Musical Interlude 0

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Another child is the victim of the confluence of guns and stupid.

Another day in NRA Paradise

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QOP Is the New GOP 0

Field explains.

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