Sutter recently bought the company that my kids' pediatrician works for. The changes so far have been sufficiently negative that I have to decide if I want to go through the pain of finding a new pediatrician or just stick it out for the next few years until my youngest switches to a GP.
Note that most of his complaint is with experimental stuff. Why should insurance be required to cover experimental stuff? It's basically chasing the illusion of a solution.
Until you find yourself desperate for a malpractice suit, and Surprise! your insurer and care provider are on the same team and you already agreed to arbitration when you got that insurance.
A friend had his life wrecked by Kaiser, and none of the attorneys he consulted wanted to touch the case because according to the attorneys they had an army of lawyers and he'd already agreed to arbitration when getting the insurance. The max they claimed could be won wouldn't even cover the legal fees.
You definitely don't want insurance from the same team you're getting the insured services from. It's the conflict of interests to end all conflict of interests, especially in the context of health care.
As someone with a little experience with the 'advertiser side' of Google, they also push junk to their paying clients, using every opportunity to sell terrible, worthless placements to advertisers. Which is to say that the problem is not that 'searchers' are the product, the problem is that Google is not focused on creating value for its counter-parties.
That’s strictly not true, at least for “old media” advertising.
Advertisers are selected based on being palatable for the content and the audience. It’s common for content licensing deals to has stipulations about which advertisement is acceptable. Virtually all platforms — even Google Search — has rules about the type of advertisements you see. There are of course laws that prohibit the advertising of certain types of products in certain places.
Even if these scams had the money for a full page NYT article, they wouldn’t had gotten it.
I agree that Google is benefiting from being the dominant player in a two-sided marketplace (which makes it harder to compete), but we can always choose not to use it, both as advertisers and as searchers. Google’s exploitation of its counter-parties has definitely caused me to use alternatives more and more often.
I don't really see that Google is causing this, just showing what's out there. Search inherently selects for advertising because companies craft their sites to look good for on the search terms.
I hate to be that guy but is it Google's responsibility to police legally operating insurance companies? It's not their problem that USA has a trash insurance market and a backwards healthcare system.
Poor, powerless Google. The scrappy, ragtag outfit down in Mountain View, barely hanging on, unable to downrank predatory insurance companies. I'll say an extra prayer for them during Compline tonight.
Imagine how hard moderating a forum is. Now imagine moderating the whole Internet. Everyone always thinks it's trivial. Everyone couldn't be more wrong.
Legally? No. However, due to their alteration of search results anything that becomes the top is effectively an endorsement regardless of whether it was chosen by the black box or their employees. They already remove legally operating websites they disagree with. Since they’re selective editors with multiple lost antitrust suits, the only thing we as consumers can do is criticize. Especially as most of these companies top the charts due to SEO spam and not genuine traffic.
> Amazingly enough, these aren't even the worst kinds of garbage health plans that you can buy in America: those would be the religious "health share" programs that sleazy evangelical "entrepreneurs" suck their co-religionists into, which cost the world and leave you high and dry when you or your kids get hurt or sick:
Seems worth noting that "sleazy" and "suck their co-religionists into" are (unfounded, as far as I can tell) opinions, "cost the world" is flat-out false and the exact reason why they are an appealing option, and "and leave you high and dry when you or your kids get hurt or sick" is also an unfounded claim. His only citation for any of this is talking about someone who doesn't like morality clauses, but...picked it anyways, presumably because it didn't cost the world?
Some are better than others. I picked the one that looked the most like real insurance and has a >30 year track record of not leaving people high and dry. I've been on it for almost seven years and it's worked out well so far.
They (religious health share stuff) all have an inherent, fundamental flaw in that there is no actual insurance obligation. It's like the old days, get sick enough and you get dropped. But without even an illusion of being able to keep it. I'm not going to blame the author for failing to prove something long established.
"get sick enough and you get dropped" is a very, very different statement than "leave you high and dry when you or your kids get hurt or sick".
And if it's "like the old days", then it must not be some some uniquely sleazy thing.
I'll also add:
>these plans do not comply with the Affordable Care Act, which requires comprehensive coverage, and bans exclusions for pre-existing conditions. These plans only exist because of loopholes in the ACA, designed for very small-scale employers or temporary coverage...
He lumps sharing ministries in with this, but it's worth noting that the company I'm with was explicitly exempted by the ACA from the outset. It's not a loophole. Health sharing ministries that existed before the year 2000 could be used to satisfy the individual mandate. So he's being misleading here as well.
Readit News
The Sutter Health Network / Palo Alto Medical Foundation routinely get caught committing widespread insurance fraud.
They also offer products that seem to be junk insurance to me, but I’m not a lawyer.
Here are three examples of their alleged widespread insurance fraud:
https://allaboutlawyer.com/claim-your-sutter-health-settleme...
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/sutter-health-accused...
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/government-intervene...
Some of those suites involve other big providers, like KP. Not sure if any of the healthcare providers around here are reputable at this point.
Deleted Comment
A friend had his life wrecked by Kaiser, and none of the attorneys he consulted wanted to touch the case because according to the attorneys they had an army of lawyers and he'd already agreed to arbitration when getting the insurance. The max they claimed could be won wouldn't even cover the legal fees.
You definitely don't want insurance from the same team you're getting the insured services from. It's the conflict of interests to end all conflict of interests, especially in the context of health care.
We've been through cancer and diabetes (so far).
As someone with a little experience with the 'advertiser side' of Google, they also push junk to their paying clients, using every opportunity to sell terrible, worthless placements to advertisers. Which is to say that the problem is not that 'searchers' are the product, the problem is that Google is not focused on creating value for its counter-parties.
Advertisers are selected based on being palatable for the content and the audience. It’s common for content licensing deals to has stipulations about which advertisement is acceptable. Virtually all platforms — even Google Search — has rules about the type of advertisements you see. There are of course laws that prohibit the advertising of certain types of products in certain places.
Even if these scams had the money for a full page NYT article, they wouldn’t had gotten it.
The problem is that these things exist at all.
Omnienshittified: May go down as the most hilarious - yet prescient - new word this century. (In the USA of course.)
Dead Comment
You can't cancel google. They make sure of it
Seems worth noting that "sleazy" and "suck their co-religionists into" are (unfounded, as far as I can tell) opinions, "cost the world" is flat-out false and the exact reason why they are an appealing option, and "and leave you high and dry when you or your kids get hurt or sick" is also an unfounded claim. His only citation for any of this is talking about someone who doesn't like morality clauses, but...picked it anyways, presumably because it didn't cost the world?
Some are better than others. I picked the one that looked the most like real insurance and has a >30 year track record of not leaving people high and dry. I've been on it for almost seven years and it's worked out well so far.
And if it's "like the old days", then it must not be some some uniquely sleazy thing.
I'll also add:
>these plans do not comply with the Affordable Care Act, which requires comprehensive coverage, and bans exclusions for pre-existing conditions. These plans only exist because of loopholes in the ACA, designed for very small-scale employers or temporary coverage...
He lumps sharing ministries in with this, but it's worth noting that the company I'm with was explicitly exempted by the ACA from the outset. It's not a loophole. Health sharing ministries that existed before the year 2000 could be used to satisfy the individual mandate. So he's being misleading here as well.