California's insurance commissioner has launched an investigation into Aetna after learning a former medical director [Dr. Jay Ken Iinuma] for the insurer admitted under oath he never looked at patients' records when deciding whether to approve or deny care.What's the point of Aetna having paid that clown a good salary if all he did was rubber-stamp the recommendations of the nurses.
This all came out in a messy litigation, of course. Aetna maintains that Dr. Tinuma "made the right decisions", when in point of fact, he never decided a fucking thing, other than to pick up his rubber stamp (and what to have for lunch, one presumes). Tinuma said that sometimes he'd ask the nurse a question about a file, but that happened less than once a month. Aetna maintains that the deciding doctors are provided with all of the medical records, but the facts are that the "deciding doctor" reviewed them about as thoroughly as Donald Trump would have.
Evil fuckers.
I’m not inclinded to call it “evil”, it’s worse than that. It’s more of a sociopathical disregard for any conventions of medicine and care, let alone your “fellow” human beings. He was/is so insulated from normal care and worries that he simply fails to relate it in any manner other than the almighty bottom line. And given Donnie’s proposals for Welfare, Medicaid and Medicare, he’s was on the leading edge of a knife that is about to shred the social safety net, just in time for the next recession/depression. If you think the malaise of the “Great Recession” was an issue, just wait for the next act. Sometime in the next 12 to 18 months things will start off the tracks (rising interest rates, QE balance sheets being unwound, “entitlement” cuts, etc.), and as people realize there is no help anymore, the rich would be well advised to tone it down before the crowd starts baying for blood. If they are lucky, we get a reprise of the late 1910’s and early 1920’s or late 1940’s and the 1950’s, if not, then 1789 is the relevant reference.
ReplyDeleteI'm think more January 30 1933 is the relevant reference, CP88. Unlike 1798 there are not competing non-fascist ideologies. My guess is that fascist "strongman" rule by the minority government will happen complete with more war to justify economic deprivations and a hated minority group being rounded up and deported or sent to extermination camps. And a constitutional convention to write strongman rule into the constitution. The Republicans already have enough state governments locked up to call that convention, if I'm remembering properly....
ReplyDeleteI'll bet that there are Republicans planning to implement an American version of Gleichschaltung, with passage of a version of Der Ermächtigungsgesetz as soon as it can be done.
ReplyDeleteWell, Dr. Franklin, we were only able to keep it for 230 years. Which wasn't such a bad run,