America has doubled down on middlemen controlling the prices of medical care and making sure that there is no set price for anything. With the ACA effectively falling apart in the new budget, we do have a chance to move to a different reality, one where medicare prices are the set prices for everything, but that is nearly a political impossibility given the amount that these middlemen spend in keeping politicians who support that from winning primaries. Instead, we are stuck in a situation where companies get to dictate prices and access to care while we get diminishing returns in health quality and longevity.
I’ll look into it. From what I can tell it’s not a simple hero vs villain story. It feels more like an industrial disaster or the AWS outage where there are like a dozen compounding system failures leading to where we are today.
Medical billing is like a massive centuries-old tenement building with a patchwork of legacy plumbing, electrical , framing, sewage all patched together with decades of duct tape, wood shards, and rusty couplings. But in this case there’s massive incentives to keep it all bodged because each pipe and crevice hides billions of un-audited income.
Matt Stoller is properly described as an insane person who thinks every single problem in the world is caused by monopolies (yes, including whatever random problem you're thinking of now).
His most notable attributes on Twitter are he constantly lies about everything and that he spends all his time promoting Republicans who are clearly not going to implement his anti-monopoly agenda.
I haven't paid a lot of attention to Stoller particularly, but the rest of that line of thinking frequently correlates with also believing that monopolies are exclusively a result of active government regulation, a belief which is naturally attracted to Republican deregulatory rhetoric.
Oh, I don't think that applies. He's part of a movement called "neo-Brandesian" aka "hipster antitrust", which basically thinks government should promote small businesses by explicitly bullying large businesses, and that the customer welfare standard was a cop out to give up on this.
So not only would they be against deregulation (they think painful regulations are good because pain for the sake of it is good), but the previous admin actually tried this with Lina Khan and it didn't really work.
The issue here is Democrats are "mainstream" coded, so all populist politics works by fighting them even when they're trying to do your own policy.
> one where medicare prices are the set prices for everything, but that is nearly a political impossibility given the amount that these middlemen spend in keeping politicians who support that from winning primaries.
You're missing the part where the Stated and objective goal of popular politicians from one party is not to let that happen.
They don't get elected because someone scheming to control their funding (though that is a proximal cause of Republican candidates getting more extreme: Align with MAGA or get primaried)
They get elected because a huge portion of the USA are divorced from reality and utterly deny said reality. They say "government is less efficient" as we sit on top of this atrocious system, a system where we already have the government version and it's radically cheaper and we could literally just sign up everyone for that, save everyone time, money, and headache, and then improve service quality.
These people deny that nearly all developed countries and lots of undeveloped countries have vastly better healthcare outcomes than the USA, extremely better healthcare access, and pay way way less overall, taxes included.
These people just consume propaganda, and purposely refuse to engage with any clear or obvious evidence that contradicts said propaganda.
i don't really disagree with you, but i do think it is funny given that the single largest policy targeting medical price transparency came from a republican admin.
i'm potentially on board with signing up everyone for medicare, but only if we actually can get voters to vote for the taxes necessary to fund that. i doubt we will be able to given we can't get voters to vote for the taxes necessary to fund existing medicare consumption.
I don't know how this fits into the narrative you just posted, but DHH was a keynote speaker at RailsConf this year. I was there and heard him speak. He didn't speak about anything "political"; just his usual ranting and raving, this time about how long it takes to test and deploy things.
I would say it heavily depends on what converts and festivals you’re going to. I just went to Making Time in Philadelphia where Fourtet was the headliner and by far the biggest name. Everyone else would be what you would consider “underground” or niche. My favorite DJ, Donato Dozzy, played an incredible set.
The post you are trying to refute has a source which is a study that found "It can obstruct the ability to interpret emotions, fuel aggressive conduct, and harm one's psychological health in general."
There are ~0 comments in any of the linked threads that are pro or anti war/Israel/Palestine. The discussion is about this specific situation at Google, and is flagged by people who want to censor it.
That's just not the case here. Most of the comments are taking a stance on Israel/Palestine and arguing from there. There are a ton of comments likening Israel to the Nazis. That's pretty anti-Israel, no matter what side you're on. I mean, even look at the sibling post to yours. Its anti-Israel conspiracy theories.
Yes, it absolutely does. It also uses public funds for private religious institutions, which I personally believe goes against the separation of church and state.
I find this to be a weak reading of the judicial system.
Laws are not last in, first out; previous laws need to be taken into context when new laws are created, no matter how they are created. The fact that this law was created by popular vote has no bearing on its validity or standing in court.
The levels of inhumanity and doublespeak in here are staggering. This post attempts to euphemize 65 people losing their incomes, and probably healthcare, to the point that it reads almost as farce. Not to mention what the impact will be on those remaining, students and staff alike.
"...they believe it's impossible to make this model work.
We strongly disagree." This is wildly insensitive to those involved. I find it hard to imagine how the 65 people laid off today are going to make that make sense when trying to look for new jobs.
"...today's restructuring and right-sizing..." Is this to say that the 65 people who lost their jobs today were somehow wrong? Again, it staggers me how lacking in empathy these words about people losing their jobs, and probably healthcare, indefinitely.
"For employers looking to hire senior product, engineering, design, community management, or instructional staff, we'll be sharing a list of interested staff looking for their next opportunity on social media" And good luck current students; these people will take all the jobs you're aiming for.
I get what you’re saying here, but think you’re being a little too harsh. I’m not sure what else to call a reduction in force for PR purposes, I don’t imaging just saying “fired 65 people” is productive.
In this comment:
“ "For employers looking to hire senior product, engineering, design, community management, or instructional staff, we'll be sharing a list of interested staff looking for their next opportunity on social media" And good luck current students; these people will take all the jobs you're aiming for.”
Sounds like Lambda School grads are pretty junior and they’re giving people that are senior a good recommendation. I don’t think there’s much overlap between LS boot camp grads and senior people leaving LS as employees. Maybe I’m wrong?
I think the critique is for the corporate need to propagandize every act such that it paints all decisions, and by extension the leadership, in the best way possible. It's revolting anti-truth.
Marketing and propaganda are among the most disgusting inventions of human-kind.
Austin seems to take corp-speak to another level. See his response when they settled with the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation:
I am an outsider, but clearly looks to me like they chose to not fight that battle, which was just legal thuggery. Colleges in the U.S. are a racket that make the mafia look like a bunch of amateurs. The Bankruptcy Exception for student loans is one of the most corrupt scams going on in the USA today.
Lambda lied to their students for years about loan dischargeability. They were told to stop by the regulator, so Lambda did. The regulator did nothing to penalize them.
Didn't they lie by wrongly saying the loan can't be discharged through bankruptcy? Surely that would make candidates less likely to join Lambda?
Why is it even in their interest to say that? It's not like them saying it makes it true. And if it were true, it would mean that Lambda is a bigger risk for the student who therefore may be less likely to apply.
Lambda was securitizing the ISAs and selling them to investors on the backend, obviously with a discount based on risk.
Some people treat this like a bad thing, but it's really pretty basic risk-mitigation and cash-flow stabilization. This is kind of like basic factoring, or "modern" solutions like Pipe (https://www.pipe.com/).
There is an argument to be made that it disaligns Lambda and student incentives ("outcome it doesn't matter because Lambda already got paid") but long term, defaulting students would definitely decrease the sales values of the ISAs.
Part of the argument here is that calling these ISAs non-dischargable would lower the risk to the investor, which would make those ISAs worth significantly more.
> calling these ISAs non-dischargable would lower the risk to the investor, which would make those ISAs worth significantly more
I wonder how true this is. Declaring bankruptcy comes at a huge cost. It's not something people do lightly. Most people, if they have the money to pay back the loan, would probably do so. Once they're in that position (presumably with a stable job), they have little incentive to declare bankruptcy.
But that goes hand-in-hand with the aligned outcomes; it's best for Lambda if these people get good jobs afterwards, because they're more likely to pay the ISA in full.
If they don't, they're less likely, the risk is higher, and the ISA is worth less (to the investor).
The potential for bankrupcy is also a risk, which lowers the yield. Removing the risk of bankrupcy heightens it.
We could argue about the magnitute of these risks all day; I'm sure people significantly better at math than I am have done a lot of work here.
I've been critical of some of their comms before [1], but this statement seems pretty good. You seem to be working hard to read it in the worst possible light.
I don’t know, man. Hearing someone refer to layoffs as “right-sizing” leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, and I don’t think that’s an unfair reaction.
I think it is perfect because it assigns blame at the right place in my mind- the people that had no idea what they were doing and hired too many people in the first place.
Chill your hyperbolic outrage. We should be able to talk about sensitive topics like job loss intelligently and in context to the realities of building a startup. Working at a startup is inherently risky and the people who take on the risk are adults. They don't need you to defend them as if they're children
All of this is well taken, but IME, when you read a "perfect" statement about layoffs, it was the result of a process meant to generate exactly that. Which isn't really any more human or personable. This reads like Austen wrote it personally. Is that better or worse than an artisanally crafted statement by a team of PR people? Or worse -- no statement at all?
I'd expect that all of the clarifying questions you're looking for answers to are covered in internal Q&A's, at least that's how it has been done at every startup I've ever worked at.
To be fair, there are at least three distinct groups:
1) Employees being let go
2) Employees continuing
3) Students - current and prospective
Any statement has to balance the message across these three. For example, a statement that's "too negative" about future prospects risks spooking people in #3 - causing further damage to the business, as well as to people in #2.
Wow, this is def the next level of what you have been getting at with posting and moderation. Making me think deeply about my consumption and interaction here on yet another axis; my best posts are my most highly edited so why not edit first?
You always make me think, dang. Criticisms by me and others aside, thanks for doing your job.
America has doubled down on middlemen controlling the prices of medical care and making sure that there is no set price for anything. With the ACA effectively falling apart in the new budget, we do have a chance to move to a different reality, one where medicare prices are the set prices for everything, but that is nearly a political impossibility given the amount that these middlemen spend in keeping politicians who support that from winning primaries. Instead, we are stuck in a situation where companies get to dictate prices and access to care while we get diminishing returns in health quality and longevity.