2024: Good Days And Bad Days

Here we are at the end of 2024.

2024 felt like it was twelve months long. Then, on the other hand, it felt like it was 365 days.

It was a year like President Biden. It had its good days, and it had its bad days.

You remember President Biden.  They said he was sharp as a tack, depending upon you definition of "sharp" and "tack".

I had several favorite President Biden moments.  One was when he called a news conference to dispute the Hur report that the President was really a nice old man but still thinks he can play "flanker" for the Delaware Blue Hens.  He yelled at the White House Press Corp and referred to Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the "president of Mexico."

Then Biden agreed to debate Donald Trump in June and taunted Trump before the debate. Then the debate started, and Biden looked like Floyd R. Turbo.  It was so bad it made Trump look good. Think about that. 

This caused the Democratic Party to panic because Trump is an existential threat to democracy, the earth, sun, moon and all things bright and beautiful so the big boys in the Democratic Party pushed Biden out and put Vice President Harris in as the nominee because she was A) so brat, B) born in a middle-class family and C) joyful.

Donald Trump had good days and bad days, too.

He was indicted on several major felonies, the main one being a "big poopy head." This caused Trump's poll numbers to fall.

Ha, ha. Wrong. As Dana Carvey once said, Trump is like a Batman villain.

BATMAN: "I have you now, Trump!"

TRUMP: "I don't think so, Batman."  (A rope ladder from a helicopter drops  down, and Trump grabs it and flies away.)

If I may toot my own horn, I noted at the time Trump was a parking ticket away from winning the election in a landslide. I was close to being right. All of the lawfare had the opposite effect, making Trump more popular.

Trump had a very bad day in Pennsylvania was he was shot at by a young man who did not have the wits to be rich and handsome.  Trump survived.

After Kamala Harris wowed everyone with her brattiness, she picked (check notes) Tim Walz to be her running mate because he was what some people (snotty young college graduates) think a white man should look like.

This caused a chain reaction of Zoom calls:  "White Men For Harris," "Older White Men For Harris," and "White Men Who Mow Their Yards For Harris."  

The national news media, coming off of their hard-hitting, dogged reporting of President Biden's cognitive abilities ("He looks fine to me"), tried for most of the summer to get an interview with Vice President Harris to ask her out her middle-class background.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump picked a new running mate, JD ("JD") Vance of Ohio, who once wrote a book called "Hillbilly Elegy". Somebody posted on Twitter that Vance wrote about his sexual attraction to couches in his book.  Of course, the book did not mention couches, but several people noted that he didn't mention he wasn't sexually attracted to any other type of furniture. Which meant Vance was"weird".  Then, the country met Tim Walz, and soon learned what weird looked like. 

A big issue in the campaign was if Haitian refugees were eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio.  Finally, our American news media jumped at the opportunity to make Trump look like a goob, which he happily provided to them.  It turns out the refugees were not eating dogs or cats or couches, for that matter. 

The election finally came, and as a citizen of a "battleground state," I was glad it was over. I expected a close, tight election result. The opposite happened. Trump won around 2:00 in the morning and began to make America Great Again by selecting Matt Gaetz as Attorney General and annexing Greenland. 

Robert F Kennedy, Jr. had good days and bad days, too.  He announced that doctors had found a dead worm in his brain.  He also announced he had "hit" a bear and decided to drop it off in Central Park. (Of course, why not?)  But then, Trump nominated Kennedy as the Health and Human Services secretary.  So, in a short span of four years, we've gone from "you're fired if you don't get the vaccine" to "Hurray for Polio" because Kennedy, a lawyer, knows all about vaccines.

Some had bad days, like the Boeing Corporation, which apparently has no quality control manager because every plane that suddenly fell out of the sky was made by Boeing.

Other people had good days, like the actors who won Academy Awards, whose names I have forgotten.

The Atlanta Braves had mainly bad days because all of their good players were injured with season-ending injuries, which never happens to the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

Bill Belichick had good days. He has a new job as the Head Coach of The University of North Carolina and a new girlfriend who is way too young for him.

I had good days, too.  I retired from my paying job on September 1st. I highly recommend it.

There were some bad days, too. My brother-in-law died after a two-year battle with cancer.  He was a good guy. 

 

Comments From A Health Insurance Worker Bee

 

Just so you know where I'm coming from, I wrote this about a week ago on Facebook.

"I worked at United Healthcare from 1995 to 2002. They bought the company I worked for, Metrahealth, which was a merger of the health insurance divisions of MetLife and Travellers. I worked for Metlife on The General Motors Informed Choice Plan. The merger took place on 1/1/95. Which means by September of 1995 when we were bought by UHC,  I had worked for three companies and never left my desk."

 
I was posting about the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare. He was shot in the back, walking to the entrance of a Hilton Hotel before 7:00 in the morning.

I have walked past this Hilton several times during our various trips to New York.  If my memory serves me right, it is where Don Draper would meet Conrad Hilton on "Mad Men."

The killer hopped on a bike, rode away, and eventually caught a cab, which took him to a bus station.  This guy ended up in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where somebody recognized him at a McDonald's, called the cops, and he was arrested. 

We found out that his guy is a scion of a very wealthy family and wasn't some workin' class Joe killing THE MAN because United Healthcare denied Memaw's heart surgery.  

He attended a tony private school and earned a bachelor's and a master's from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school. 

In comparison, Brian Thompson comes from a small town in Iowa, and his father was a grain elevator operator.  He graduated from The University of Iowa.  The fact he rose to the top of the healthcare insurance industry from relatively modest beginnings is something we used to celebrate in this country instead of shooting in the back.

Like many, I have been disturbed by the reaction of some, mainly on social media, regarding this murder. But social media is social media and you have to take it with a grain of salt.

Instead, I was really taken aback by what some "smart" people said, like a former Harvard law professor (Elizabeth Warren) said.

She said, “Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far. This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”

It is not the answer but a warning to go ahead and pay for non-covered services because the boss man may get shot over it. 

In a column in "The Guardian," Arwa Mahdawi wrote, "If you spotted the person who shot Brian  Thompson, would you a) turn them into the police or b) continue to go  merrily about your day? Judging by the gleeful reaction to the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s murder, 99% of the United States would choose option b."

I know it is a column, and hyperbole is a tool of the trade, but I seriously doubt 99% of the United States would choose option b.

Mahdawi goes on to describe health insurance as a "racket" whose primary goal is to maximize their profits by killing people. Oops, sorry, that is hyperbole again.  The goal is to maximize their profits by denying claims.  Mahdawi links a CNN article about people complaining about when United Healthcare rejected a claim. Graciously, CCN notes, "stories could not be independently verified by CNN."

 I can only tell you my experience working in the health insurance industry for 17 years and working in the revenue cycle of a large health system for 21 years.

We never had a meeting where we were chewed out about paying too many claims.  Nobody ever said, "Go out and deny those claims!"  A denied claim meant a phone call from the insured, which was almost always difficult. 

One time, I took a call that started like this: "I'm going to say this very clearly. If you don't say that Metlife is going to pay my claim, I'm going to take this gun in my other hand and kill myself".  (I said, "Can I put you on hold for just a second?" The person explained their issue. It wasn't something to kill yourself over.)

Another time, an insured was upset regarding a claim denied after being medically reviewed by a clinician.  He told me, "I hope you have someone you love in the hospital and they die."  At that moment, my nine-month-old son was in the hospital with Pneumonia. (By the way, this was about a podiatry claim. And before you can say it, this was long before HIPPA was ever thought of.)

So, no, the people in the insurance companies never denied a claim with glee.

During my time with the insurance company, one of my duties was to process claims for expatriated General Motors employees. I worked on claims from all of these other countries, which are supposedly so much better than the United States. 

First of all, you would be surprised how much the charges were similar to those in The United States. The total wasn't as much, but they paid upfront in taxes by the citizens of that country.

Secondly, some countries have a two-tier system in which, yes, you can go to The British NHS hospital, or you could go to the fancy-schmancy hospital Charles and Camilla go to. 

When I went to work from the hospital system, I worked on many accounts covered by United Healthcare. United Healthcare has many people covered under self-funded plans provided by the company they work for. This means United Healthcare only administrates the "contract" from the company.

Most of these plans do not have a "pre-existing" condition clause. Some do. It may sound mean, but insuring someone has a pre-existing condition is like selling homeowners insurance to a house that has already burned down. 

United Healthcare also owns several smaller companies that sell to small businesses (like UMR and Golden Rule).  They tend to have large out-of-pockets, and some have pre-existing condition clauses. 

For my United Healthcare accounts, sometimes they paid quickly, and sometimes they did not. (My advice: do not give birth to twins if United Healthcare insures you. Trust me.)  But for the most part, I don't remember a delay with many United Healthcare accounts. Maybe I have just forgotten. But they tended to pay the high dollar and the low dollar claims in about the same amount of time. 

I would never say the healthcare system in America is perfect.  I will say, it seems like every time someone steps in to "fix" health insurance, it seems to get worse. 

Healthcare is a complex issue. The idea that it can be fixed by shooting executives is a mental healthcare issue more than it is anything else.

 

This Week's Picks

 

 

 From #1 to #12, the College Football bracket seeding is as follows.


#1 Duckies
#2 Texsass
#3 Methodists
#4 Boyzee State
#5 The Lions of Nittany
#6 Our Lady
#7 Jawja
#8 Ahia State
#9 Tennysee
#10 Indiana Wants Me
#11 Alabama
#12 The Sun Debils

As you can tell, this next-to-the-last seeding of Alabama has caused a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth, mainly from South Carolina fans.

South Carolina has the same record as Alabama, plus they beat Clemson, which should count for something, but it doesn't since they are not Alabama.

Miami got dropped, too, but they got beat by Georgia Tech and Syracuse at the end, so, really, guys, you don't have too much to complain about.

The other big thing in college football last week was the I'm Going to Plant Our Flag At Your Midfield brouhaha. The idea is that the visiting team "conquers" the home team, which is so embarrassing.

Michigan beat Ohio State in Columbus for the fourth time in a row, and one of their players planted a Michigan flag in midfield. This caused a ruckus, and the police had to get involved and use pepper spray to break it up.

It happened at the UNC-NC State, Florida-Florida, and Arizona-Arizona State games. It didn't happen at the Georgia -Georgia Tech game, mainly because that game is still going on.

This Week's Picks!

Jawja vs Texsass:  Georgia and Texas face off in the SEC championship.  Georgia beat Texas a few weeks ago, but you never know which Georgia team will show up.  This is a battle for the bye.  I think Texas is out for blood and will win this game, although it really doesn't matter.  Texas wins.

Methodists vs Clem's son:  Another new to the league Texas school is playing for a championship. Clemson has been playing pretty well and they have been this way before. I want SMU to win. They won't. Clemson wins.

Ducks vs The Lions of Nittany:  On paper, this looks like the best game. Number one versus number four.  I watched the Ohio State-Penn State game and I thought Ohio State was the better team.  Oregon has been the best team in the country. Oregon wins.

I Owe A State vs Sun Debils:  Your guess is as good as mine. Sun Devils win.

On The Beloved Owls front:  If you have been keeping up with Kennesaw State, you know it hasn't been the best season. Their head coach got sacked and they won only two games.  This past week,  Kennesaw State hired Jerry Mack who has a pretty good resume, to be the new head coach. Good luck, coach!