Tag: greed

Sa’day’s Wandering Political Thoughts

UnitedHealth Cuts Coverage for Autistic Children

So you know, just as a reminder…

The new United Healthcare Group CEO, Andrew Witty, has said that the United States’s healthcare system is ‘flawed’.

“No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did. It’s a patchwork built over decades. Our mission is to help make it work better,” Witty said in a New York Times op-ed published Friday morning, titled “The Health Care System Is Flawed. Let’s Fix It.”

Sure, no one would design a system whereby greedy execs would bow to shareholders and increase profits, stock prices, dividends, and executive bonuses keep increasing their wealth at the cost to the health of the customers who depend on it. That’s why such a system is a rarity in the United States among industries. Yes, that was enriched snark.

Here comes more snark. And, gosh, it must be really hard to fix it. Witty’s predecessor, the late Brian Thompson, had ‘only been with’ United Healthcare for twenty years. As part of his efforts to fixed that flawed system, the company saw profits increase from $12,000,000,000 in 2021 to $16,000,000,000 in 2023, which covers Thompson’s time as CEO.

Naturally, Witty praised Thompson’s efforts to improve healthcare for everyone:

“As Brian Thompson’s family, friends and colleagues mourn his killing, we are bearing a grief and sadness we will carry for the rest of our lives. Grief for the family he leaves behind. And grief for a brilliant, kind man who was working to make healthcare better for everyone,” Witty wrote.

Undoubtably, Thompson’s work work to fixed that flawed service was making progress, judging from the story shared on Diane Ravitch’s blog about the women being denied benefits by the healthcare giant.

I am sure that Witty will carry on Thompson’s ‘good work’. I expect a slow rollout of those improvements, a very, very, very slow rollout.

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Friday’s Political Thoughts

A friend sent me this via Messenger.

“I were just talking to another girl at the Y who also supports Kamala and was saying that her brother who lives in Florida is a Republican and got hit by the hurricane and seemed like he was very stressed out so she sent him a couple of linksfor help I guess and he told her to take her crap and burn in hell.”

Reviewing Trump’s long yet growing destructive path, he’s inflicted several deep gashes. With his lies and seeds of hate, he’s made it okay to be hateful, racist, and sexist. Anyone outside of the MAGA circles of delusion are aware of this.

But he turned Americans sharply against one another. Republicans and Democrats could and can always be distrustful and suspicious of one another. But we were usually able to work together. Certainly we came together in times of disasater and need.

Trump has maligned that ability away. He’s introduced an element of deep distrust and outright hostility. He’s made it okay to not only distrust and even hate our Federal government, but to actively attack it as if it was the enemy.

Trump has turned Democrats and Liberals into ‘an enemy’. He frequently employs belllicose tones and theater to declare how Democrats and Liberals ‘hate our country’. Evidence is not offered but the relentless repetition has taken hold.

He declares, if people are not for him, they are the enemy and must be fought. Embedded in his targets of hate are anyone who doesn’t think, act, and look like him. Anyon who doesn’t kowtow to him and worship him as wonderful and great. He picked up that many people struggle to understand transsexuals, pansexuals, and gender and sex issues, and used that as an attack wedge to unite his base in hate.

Beyond what he’s done to women’s rights as a champion of anti-abortion, beyond what he’s done with making lying acceptable, beyond what he’s done to treat others as enemies, he has amplified our differences and declared that these people who are different are dangerous.

This is what makes him most dangerous. His lasting impact on our nation, regardless of the 2024 election results, is the great divide he has created in America in service of his greed and ego. That will take generations to mend. It can only be mended with education, exposure to one another, and trust.

The actions that he’s pledged to understake make it clear that he doesn’t want that divide mended. And the GOP that serves him agree.

This is why he — why they — must be stopped.

Vote blue.

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The Land Dream

I never saw any person in this dream. At a high elevation, I was looking and across a shallow valley. It was hazy with distance but I made out places terraced with book stones. Ponds dotted the landscape, along with colored patches such as pink, magenta, yellow, and various greens and browns, where I knew things were growing.

A voice said to me, “Take what you want. It’s all yours.”

I replied, scoffing, “I don’t need all of that.”

They insisted, “Take what you want.”

So, I took it all. Then I broke it up and gave it away to others, including family, friends, and strangers. I kept one small piece for myself, and that made me happy.

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So, Chipotle

I won’t be eating at Chipotle restaurants for a while, if ever.

The Guardian had an article that mentioned Chipotle by name.

“As inflation shot to its peak around mid-2022, Chipotle’s prices also rose, pushing up what customers paid for burritos and bowls by as much as several dollars. Since then, the fast casual restaurant’s costs have broadly fallen. Prices have not.

“Chipotle’s decision to maintain high prices helped boost profits 110% in recent years, while its executives boasted to investors that they raised prices higher than inflationary costs.”

There’s a list of companies and their profits in the article. Like Cheesecake Factory, with a fat 471% increase. Won’t be going there, thanks.

TBH, I only visit three of these places and it’s not that frequently. My exception is Starbucks. They’re one of my regular Ashlandia coffee haunts because the local places that I loved are gone. That just sucks.

Meanwhile, as you prepare to vote and you hear people complain of inflation and high prices, mention this article. Also mention that energy companies have seen record profits as well.

And let’s not forget grocery stores.

Face it, boys and girls, as voters scream about inflation and corporations complain about wages, regulations, and taxes, corporate executives are becoming stupidly rich.

All at the nation’s expense.

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Worth Repeating

In other news, those high gas prices — you know, the ones that everyone says President Biden caused — are killing the fossil fuel companies.

That’s snark, ya know.

$2,245.62 a second: ExxonMobil scores enormous profit on record gas prices

Corporations will be corporations. They’re formed to make money, no matter what the fuck is going on around them. We need some kind of governor for their greed.

Of course, this is CNN reporting what they ‘claimed’ the companies reported, so it’s probably fake news, right?

Right.

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Finding A Way

I just finished reading Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. It’s a novel worth the time to read, but it will consume some days. Dealing with the geopolitics and technology associated with climate change, especially the trifecta of increasing heat, rising oceans and seas, and increasingly violent and larger storms, Stephenson puts the details to work in the novel right from the beginning: a small jet can’t land in its destination of Houston because high temperatures bring on thinner air. There’s not enough lift to sustain the small jet.

Two other interesting aspects struck me in this huge book. One was a story related to London’s mayor and the 1953 flood. After the flood, engineers came up with a solution but were stopped from implementing any changes for twenty years as political infighting took over. By the time the solution was accepted and a consensus achieved to build it, the solution was already overcome by new problems because these things — climate change, rising waters, etc. — are not static, friends.

The second intriguing, amusing, and probably prescient aspect regarded how Americans responded to rising waters and more flooding: they raised their houses and began building them on stilts. That caused a boom in the house-raising/stilt industry. And sure, you can see that, right? People in their houses on stilts, looking out windows, safe, but surrounded by water. It’s one, the sort of approach people will take, adopting a limited, short-term idea that addresses only their personal issues. Two, it’s the sort of business idea that others will eagerly seize and press, making money while they can. Greed, you know.

That second point reminds me of anti-vaxxers and COVID-19. (BTW, the world has endured several more COVID pandemics between 19 and the book’s period.) They don’t trust the government; don’t trust the vax; don’t trust the medicines. Yet, that’s where most rush to be saved while their loved ones look on and damn the government for not doing more.

Meanwhile, wealthy people in the novel, like the billionaire character, raised his Tudor-style mansion and guest houses and outbuildings, and built a mesa out of clay, high above the flood waters, so they can keep living a safe, comfortable life.

Anyway, the book offers deep ideas on the world’s vectors from where we are to where we might be. It will make you think, or at least caused that in me. Cheers

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