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Same as that... I certainly hope it's true but I doubt it. Israel needs to be treated as pariahs by the international community and this bullshit smashed that condemning genocide and landgrab is 'anti-semitic". 

The tide does seem to be turning in that direction. Even in the US, support for Israel is no longer a bipartisan issue. The left is quickly turning away from the pro-Israel position, particularly among younger people, since they seem to be better informed about the history of it and are getting their news from sources that are not under the thumb of the pro-Israel lobby.

If that can happen in the US then it can happen anywhere.

The death penalty's on the way out in the US. Support for it has been steadily slipping, plus the mechanics of it are too complicated. They can't get their hands on the lethal injection drugs because European drug manufacturers refuse to sell it for execution purposes. This sometimes results in untested concoctions being used, which leads to botched executions which further undermine support for the practice.

Inmates spend so long on death row that there's a good chance a governor will come along at some point and commute the sentence. With federal charges it might be different, that'd take a Democratic president to commute the sentence, which could probably happen in a lame duck session.

I'd be very surprised if your man got executed.

Runs until the 31st.

https://dublinwinterlights.ie/

This winter lights thing in Dublin looks fantastic. Great way to brighten the place up in the darkest days of the year. Would love to be able to go and see it in person.

[big bad Assad]

Israel have launched more than 300 airstrikes since big bad Assad fled while creeping further and further into Syrian territory... the territory which has now been taken over by Jihadists who have no beef with Israel.

Sarcasm?

Oh they were all right, their mum happened to have enough cash on hand for them.

The best advice is to marry an organised person, ideally one with lots of cash.

She is extraordinarily well organized, I'll give her that!

Oh they were all right, their mum happened to have enough cash on hand for them.

Bloody kids are spoiled.

Went to buy hot chocolate at an ice skating event with the youngsters the other night. The cocoa stand only accepted cash, but they pointed me to an ATM. The machine was going to charge me $5 to get my money out. I didn't bother with it.

How anybody can be bothered with paper money in this day and age is beyond me.

CEO shooter caught in a McDonalds in Pennsylvania. Identified by a McDonalds worker who called the cops. WTF.

Had fake ID in the name of the hostel room rental, had a gun similar to the murder weapon and a 3 page manifesto against capitalist America.

All that trouble to go incognito to get busted in a venue that is the epitome of capitalist America - a fuckin McDonalds.

That McDonald's will be getting boycotted now. I wonder if the inevitable GoFundMe rakes in more than the one Kyle Rittenhouse got.

Hear the one about the woman in San Francisco that was knocked off her bike by a car driver and said "don't call an ambulance, I can't afford one"?

That actually happened.

[Northern Ireland]

What's the verdict on the health care system in America? Are we better off over here or is it much the same?

Really it depends on the severity of the issue and your personal situation with insurance and money for bills.

Northern Ireland
3 weeks ago in Ireland my mother fell in the kitchen. She waited 2 hours on the floor for an ambulance, then waited in a chair in a hallway in the Erne for almost 36 hours prior to getting a bed after her X rays and scans.
She went half days without being seen or talked to after her proper admittance to the Erne and spent 6 days there total sharing a ward bed with other patients present and no privacy except a curtain. She was at times frustrated with her experience and care that was being administered.
She's home now.

America
On Friday of last week my wife took a Grand Mal seizure in our living room while sitting in a chair (in America). It was a second event, first having happened in September. We had just paid off her first event bill, which came to us around $35,000. That included an ambulance ride to the hospital ($7,000). Our insurance kicked in and we paid about $2,000 out of pocket.

Within 60 minutes of the Seizure my wife was in the ER, had had an emergency EKG and CAT scan. Within 12 hours she had had an additional EEG, MRI, and Ultrasound as well as multiple administrations of anti seizure medications, IV administrations of amino acids and electrolytes. She stayed 3 nights in her own private room, and I expect this bill to be around $50,000 before our insurance kicks in. Our deductible is close to having been met for the calendar year, so I expect our out of pocket to be around $1200 for this on the upper end. If it happens again in 2025 our deductible will be back at Zero and I will probably have to pay the full $5k maximum out of pocket.

EDIT: She also broke 2 teeth during the Seizure so that's gonna be a $calping as well.

That last bit is important. "Health" insurance in America doesn't cover dental or vision. You need to buy separate policies for those. Apparently your ability to see and your ability to eat are optional extras.

[When our nipper had his appendix out a while back, we initially got a bill for 200K.]

When our nipper had his appendix out a while back, we initially got a bill for 200K.

A while later, we got a discounted bill for just under 100K.

Then the insurance company negotiated the bill down to about 5k, and the amount we ended up having to pay out of that was $200.

The numbers on the initial bills are all obviously made up with the expectation that the insurance company will negotiate that down by 90% or so.  But if you don't have insurance, you're not going to have the clout to negotiate that for yourself.

Suffice to say, there's no way the appendectomy, a one-hour procedure, cost the health care provider the annual salary of a senior Silicon Valley software developer. When these people are making up their prices, it's a case of charge what you think you can get away with, the victim's hardship be damned.

All this talk about the "cost" of healthcare. It's the "price" of healthcare that's the problem. People need to stop using the word "cost" and start talking about the "price." It's a completely made-up number, not a naturally-occurring phenomenon on like the weather, as some would have you believe.

His last LinkedIn post was not well received:

We're not talking about a mild mannered surgeon here. This is a wealthy CEO of a legalized extortion racket that was directly responsible for the deaths of innocent people and bankruptcy and hardship for millions, many of them elderly and vulnerable. After he took over as CEO, UHC's denial rate jumped from 8.7% to 22.7%, double the industry average. He also wasn't averse to a bit of insider trading, selling off stock before making it public that the corporation was being investigated for antitrust violations.

He belongs in the same category as Dr Harold Shipman. The lack of outrage about his death is entirely to be expected.

I think some people less familiar with the American health system are having a hard time believing how evil these insurance companies are.





UHC is subject to a lawsuit alleging "the company uses artificial intelligence (AI) to deny coverage to some elderly patients who are on a Medicare Advantage plan, despite allegedly being aware that the algorithm has a 90 percent error rate."

The suit says that UnitedHealthcare banks "on the patients' impaired conditions, lack of knowledge, and lack of resources to appeal the erroneous AI-powered decisions."

It goes on: "The fraudulent scheme affords Defendants a clear financial windfall in the form of policy premiums without having to pay for promised care, while the elderly are prematurely kicked out of care facilities nationwide or forced to deplete family savings to continue receiving necessary medical care, all because an AI model 'disagrees' with their real live doctors' determinations."

The suit says that an AI model was used to compare a patient's diagnosis, age, living situation and physical function to similar patients to predict the person's needs, estimated length of stay and target discharge date from care facilities.

That model, however, allegedly provided "generic recommendations" that did not "adjust for a patient's individual circumstances and conflict with basic rules on what Medicare Advantage plans must cover," according to the suit.