SURPRISING STUFF
Finally, a publication as sizeable as the New York Times begins to tell the story of the thieving going on with Medicare-related Advantage Plans.
The take of these huge medical insurance companies with prestigious names and formerly ethical reputations has been enormous and continues. The NY Times article only goes into how much the government is being ‘hosed’ by inflating the poor medical condition of its client/patient subscribers. That’s about 23 billion dollars a year (more than the annual budgets of NASA, the FBI and Department of Justice combined!) and the conclusion of the article about this continuing theft is that it is now too big to stop. How’s that for a great rational conclusion.
That’s almost as good as when the congressional investigation into the missing twenty billion dollars in cash that disappeared when it was flown into Baghdad during the Iraqi war was lost due to ‘the fog of war.’ Congress celebrated that loss by cheering that they’d finally found a good reason to describe the near high humor of their conclusion. Nothing was done in that case, either.
The other theft going on with Advantage Plans is, of course, the month by month, year by year, stealing of older citizen’s money by these same insurance companies. They are inflating what these plans provide in order to get senior citizens to quit Medicare (forever) and sign on with them for less coverage in restricted areas and with much more restricted provider rules. Both thefts are an outrage, and that they are continuous with nobody giving a tinker’s damn about stopping it is even more outrageous.
Stop buying or converting your Medicare to Advantage or, if you don’t, then get ready to live the rest of the time you’ve got left on the planet with financial diarrhea for which your plan will not provide medication.
Octoberfest lost like the Green Bay Packers.
Octoberfest leaders of the event in 2022 made some mistakes. The first mistake was chaining off Flat Iron Park and then charging five bucks’ admission to get in. The second mistake was in having no seeming control of the people and groups deciding to sell food and other products during the event. There was little, almost nothing at all, of real Octoberfest (and ergo, German) food or music or culture at all. There was sort of another Tacofest without the tacos, Baconfest without the bacon and so on.
The final damning mistake was in holding the Sunday morning, the usually best attended fest day, because the Packer game against the Giants started in London at eight-thirty that morning…and most Wisconsin natives, among others, don’t miss Packer games. The Packer’s lost, starting out fine before flailing around like there were playing soccer in another dimension while the Octoberfest fell flat on its own face. Maybe next year.
