Did you happen to look at the news feeds today. A picture of the G-7 (U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.S) summit meeting’s members for all of posterity to remember was the lead for many articles of how Joe Biden and the other 6 nations of the world were going to fix everything. There, standing on the steps of something were nine (Wait a minute, 9? Yes, 9.) individuals posing for this famous picture.
Funny, my old fashion math differentiates 9 from 7. But to confuse the issue even more, text states that Australia, India and South Korea were invited as guests. There again, my old fashion math counts 10, not 7and not 9.
From your grumpy Uncle Dave, kind of a stickler on math skills.
“Ex-New York Times health reporter: ‘Lab leak’ coronavirus theory looking stronger Possibility that virus escaped from Wuhan lab was initially dismissed by media as a conspiracy theory.”3
Well, it seems the US may have been involved, financially or collegially if not physically, explaining why there has been such a lackluster response in finding out why, where and when the pandemic started.
Laura Ingram and Senator Ran Paul are right as rain in their criticism of Anthony Fauci. I just wish they would credit their source. Or recognize that I was on him almost a year before they came to this conclusion.
Posted June 13, 2020 on The Weary Wretch, and several times since, I have exposed the lies the government has presented to us. Now in March of 2021, Laura Ingram and Ran Paul speak and act as if they “discovered” Fauci and the government’s lies. Shame on you Laura and Ran.
From a physician’s perspective, Anthony Fauci has sold his soul to politics. There is no place in medicine for politics. Absolutely and without a doubt! The role of a physician is the absolute care of the patient. Period! There is no room for yourself or the common good or anything but the patient. Fauci has reneged on that devotion many times over. I say reneged because at one time he must have been a dedicated physician, to have become the “recognized expert” he is acclaimed to be today. Unfortunately, Trump gave him headlines and Biden gave him this current position. Both wrong moves. Fauci is a quack.
From your grumpy Uncle Dave, retired but still a physician.
The only citation I can give is igfiddles.com/wearywretch/ (Search for all Coronalies.)
A nurse that works for a hospital, Mosaic Life Care in Saint Joseph, Missouri, was supposed to work the night shift of December 29, 2020. Yep, right dab in the middle of The Great Coronavirus Epidemic of 2020.
But on December 28, she developed a fever, headache, loss of taste and smell, cough and shortness of breath. Yep, right dab in the middle of The Great Coronavirus Epidemic of 2020 and a few days after working med-surg at that very same hospital.
So, trying to get direction on how to document her illness and arrange for sick-days off, she is told that the hospital would not screen her for COVID-19. She had to use her COBRA insurance (she has been working for the hospital for 6 weeks) and arrange testing on her own.
That same Hospital quarantined a cafeteria worker because she had symptoms of COVID-19. She was told that she had to get tested. Test results would not be available for 4 days and she would have to quarantine until the test was negative. When the test came back negative, the “human resources department” personnel told her that the quarantine time off was to be taken out of her personal time off bank instead of sick time off. Because the test was negative.
This is the kind of attention to public health I’d expect from Bill de Blasio or Crazy Cumo of New York.
Yep, right dab in the middle of The Great Coronavirus Epidemic of 2020.
A patient had an, as yet, un-diagnosed condition. The routine testing done by her specialist yielded an initial diagnosis that about a year later was determined to be wrong. They were looking at a cluster of difficult, slowly developing and confusing diagnoses. The specialist recognized her shortcomings and sent the patient off to the big city for a second opinion by a big wig specialist.
The second specialist repeated most of the testing previously done and some new avenues of testing. He reviewed the prior treatment that had not produced the expected results that had ultimately lead to questioning the original diagnosis. No firm diagnosis was evident, but the focus was trending which made the second specialist want to try a new therapy.
But that’s just the background. The reason healthcare costs are so high follows.
The patient had health insurance. The doctor visits and diagnostic testing costs were submitted, as usual, for payment. After about 3 weeks, the insurance company notified the patient that they were declining one of the laboratory tests as unnecessary. The second specialist was recruited to explain to the insurance company what he was looking for, why he ordered the test, what the result would do to help the patient find her diagnosis, and on, and on. The insurance company declined, again.
In fact the insurance company fought the payment of the lab test for the next 9 months, through several submissions to be paid, 2 levels of review and 3 appeals. For a lab test that cost them $145.70.
What the insurance company won’t tell us is how many full time employee man-hours (and at what hourly rate) were used in the submission and appeal process to finally capitulate and pay the bill.
For 2018, the total direct written premiums to health insurance totaled $714 billion.
Healthcare.gov health insurance issuers (essentially medicare) deny, on average, 18% of all claims and across the board 13% of all insurance claims (private and medicare) are denied.
There are over 900 insurance companies in the USA.
About 270 million USA citizens have health insurance (estimated 300 million qualify).
So, here we have one patient out of 270 million fighting one insurance company out of 900 over $145.70 in an industry that nets over 1.4 trillion/year in revenue.
I’m tired and you can do the numbers, but who is scamming who?
