Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

CMS Delays a Full Crackdown on Medicare Advantage Plans

It has taken years for the Feds, CMS, MedPac, Congress to catch up with the thieving practice of these healthcare plans. They have mislead the people they sell these plans too with come-ons such as health club ss, etc. Then when it comes time for care, it is delayed or denied. This comes after the […]

When They Go Low

Prejudices, bigotry, misogyny, sexism, discrimination, racism, and put-downs are all forms of bullying. Around since when, the put-down is an especially egregiously harmful form of bullying meant to diminish its target’s self-esteem. To bring them down; to keep them down. Long common to inter-city ghettos, it has of late (or maybe not so late) become […]

Will Dean Baker’s Quiver Full of Solutions Stabilize Social Security?

Dean is on a roll here with propositions for the nation as it ages. Thoughtfully, I called it initially a Quiver of Arrows in Support of the economy and in the end Social Security. He is answering a question of what do we need to do to prepare for an aging population and lower replacement […]

Response Would’ve Been ‘Vastly Different’ if the Rioters Were Black

I was no general, field grade officer, or even an officer in 1970. Just a three-strip Sergeant in my 3rd year stationed at Lejeune drinking the water and bathing in it. Someone had a brilliant idea we should be trained in riot control since Camp Lejeune was not far from Washington D.C. Some elements out […]

Door Wide Open for Republicans on Student Loans

Door Wide Open for Republicans on Student Loans, Alan Collinge, Student Loan Justice, Medium. Angry Bear has featured Alan and Student Loan Justice Org. well over a decade now. In the manner they are written, these loans by the Federal Government and maintained by private enterprises are akin to loans made by a hypothetical student […]

UK National Health Service Failures Due to Privatization & Funding Cuts

What we are seeing in the UK is an example of giving commercial healthcare too much latitude in providing healthcare. Private equity became involved with care for older people and care became chargeable and means-tested, long-stay hospitals were closed. and the government gave over the building of new facilities to private interests. Th US is […]

Minnesota’s Sanford-Fairview Hospital merger is a symptom of a larger problem

Sanford-Fairview merger is a symptom of a larger problem, MinnPost, Kip Sullivan. Minnesota has a hospital merger problem. But it didn’t begin last fall when Sanford Health and Fairview Health Services announced their intention to merge. It began in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s in response to mergers of unprecedented size among health […]

Plans to Cut Billions in Medicare Fraud Ignites Lobbying Frenzy

Have Medicare Advantage plans been over coding? According the MedPac 2022 report for year 2020 they have been. The funds of which come out of Medicare funding. The amount of which was an ~$12 billion for 2020 alone. But it is not just 2020, “Medicare Advantage has Overcharged FFS Medicare by Billions for Years,” Angry […]

3 graphic signs of financial stress

3 graphic signs of financial stress  – by New Deal democrat The theme of my weekly “high frequency” economic indicators update over the weekend was the sudden deterioration in some measurements of financial stress. Tomorrow we’ll find out that house prices as measured by both the FHFA and Case Shiller have decline further, and that […]