Basic Glitch @ AcidicBasicGlitch @lemm.ee Posts 106Comments 184Joined 1 mo. ago
The whole point of having a giant monopoly is that all hospitals are under the same control with the same policy and regulations.
This is not normal.
Certainly not enough of them. Especially not on smaller levels.
It's a sad fact, but even though so many Democrats claim to be anti establishment, many are in fact part of the establishment and receiving giant donations from banks and corporations.
It's one of the first things AOC pointed out when she was elected.
On the other hand so many Republicans claim to love small government and transparency, but many are also getting funded at the state level by some very shady corporations and groups like SPN and the heritage foundation.
The SPN is a network created by one of the earliest funders of Heritage Foundation. They use money to influence policy at the state level to make it seem like small government and representative of individuals in the state, but really it represents interests of some very powerful people and their corporations.
I'm not saying any of this as an attack on people with views that lean democratic or Republican. I only point it out because we all need to shift away from the idea of treating politics and politicians as a sports team that we have to support bc they're representing "our team."
Its kind of a sunken cost fallacy to keep supporting a team that won a championship decades ago when you realize lately they seem to be throwing a lot of games. Except with sports it is a team paid to represent a local city or state.
Politicians are humans like anyone else. There's good and bad ones and they're capable of corruption and change just like anyone else.
Black and white thinking is what got us here and what keeps dividing us as a country while individuals continue to profit from it.
So maybe we need some legislative action to push for caps on CEO salaries and number of CEO/administrative positions per hospital to receive any federal or state funding.
Why tf does one giant monopoly of hospitals need a CEO for each campus?!
I'm not saying we should be rasing pay for other employees at all. I'm saying the reason Medicaid is becoming unsustainable is because we have so many CEOs making insanely huge salaries like this.
The point of healthcare is to provide care to patients. Not to create hospital monopolies.
If Medicare is unsustainable that means healthcare cuts.
When you're looking for where you should be making healthcare cuts what makes the most logical sense to you?
At least having a discussion about how these administrative salaries and positions are actually justified?
Or
•Slash and burn policy eliminating doctors that were already accepting Medicaid
•Reducing care offered to patients so that the patients will then indeed become less healthy, rely on emergency services and require more costly care in the long run
•Claiming Medicaid is unsustainable bc "no doctors want to accept Medicaid patients."
If you abruptly eliminate all the doctors that do accept Medicaid and then claim you need to increase the Medicaid budget to incentivise doctors in order to get them to accept Medicaid patients, then yes, by default it becomes easy to make the argument that no doctors in your hospital "want to accept Medicaid."
References:
Landry announces $11M in savings: https://gov.louisiana.gov/news/4768
LA DOGE Secret Meeting with Guidehouse: https://www.nola.com/news/politics/jeff-landry-created-group-meets-in-secret-to-cut-spending/article_920e929c-e32e-11ef-915a-dbb1b1826804.html
LA DOGE partners with LA Legislative Auditor: https://www.nola.com/news/politics/jeff-landrys-louisiana-doge-to-work-with-auditors/article_9fae9dc4-f478-11ef-8d56-332511026662.html
LA Legislative Auditor says MCIP funds misspent by hospitals: https://www.nola.com/news/healthcare_hospitals/louisiana-health-department-failed-to-oversee-parts-of-state-medicaid-program-audit-says/article_c59da822-fdfb-11ef-8015-9f4118cb1f63.html
(3/26)Budget to LDH increasing $1.5B despite Landry's saving cuts. Surgeon General Abraham claims need to offer doctors more money to get them to accept Medicaid patients: https://lailluminator.com/2025/03/26/louisiana-medicaid-set-to-grow-under-landry-even-as-d-c-republicans-may-force-cuts/
(3/27) Elon Musk's DOGE website shows $55M in cuts to LDH: https://www.wwno.org/public-health/2025-03-27/doge-website-shows-55m-in-cuts-to-louisiana-department-of-health
Louisiana faces $10M loss for mental health and substance use disorders after federal cuts: https://www.nola.com/news/healthcare_hospitals/louisiana-federal-cuts-health/article_c5a6715f-0c56-4ee7-b36b-1a26be86ace3.html
References:
Landry announces $11M in savings: https://gov.louisiana.gov/news/4768
LA DOGE Secret Meeting with Guidehouse: https://www.nola.com/news/politics/jeff-landry-created-group-meets-in-secret-to-cut-spending/article_920e929c-e32e-11ef-915a-dbb1b1826804.html
LA DOGE partners with LA Legislative Auditor: https://www.nola.com/news/politics/jeff-landrys-louisiana-doge-to-work-with-auditors/article_9fae9dc4-f478-11ef-8d56-332511026662.html
LA Legislative Auditor says MCIP funds misspent by hospitals: https://www.nola.com/news/healthcare_hospitals/louisiana-health-department-failed-to-oversee-parts-of-state-medicaid-program-audit-says/article_c59da822-fdfb-11ef-8015-9f4118cb1f63.html
(3/26)Budget to LDH increasing $1.5B despite Landry's saving cuts. Surgeon General Abraham claims need to offer doctors more money to get them to accept Medicaid patients: https://lailluminator.com/2025/03/26/louisiana-medicaid-set-to-grow-under-landry-even-as-d-c-republicans-may-force-cuts/
(3/27) Elon Musk's DOGE website shows $55M in cuts to LDH: https://www.wwno.org/public-health/2025-03-27/doge-website-shows-55m-in-cuts-to-louisiana-department-of-health
Louisiana faces $10M loss for mental health and substance use disorders after federal cuts: https://www.nola.com/news/healthcare_hospitals/louisiana-federal-cuts-health/article_c5a6715f-0c56-4ee7-b36b-1a26be86ace3.html
What do you mean stretched out across all employees?
Lcmc is a "nonprofit" for tax related purposes and the CEO's salary is $2.2M!
The two main hospital chains are oschner and LCMC.
As of a few years ago I remembered the oschner CEO salary being way smaller than lcmc's CEO.
I just double checked and it looks like they had a leadership change 2 years ago and now oschner's CEO makes even more than lcmc's at $3.2M!
https://nonprofitlight.com/la/new-orleans/ochsner-health-system
Not only that, within oschner there are different CEOs across different campuses
https://news.ochsner.org/news-releases/david-callecod-named-ceo-of-ochsner-lsu-health
This is fucking insanity! It's very much a problem. People talking about Medicaid Cuts and more efficiency, but yeah let's have multiple CEOs for the same hospital within the same city.
The Louisiana department of health is blaming Medicaid being too expensive and unsustainable on patients being less healthy over recent years and requiring too much healthcare and doctors not wanting to take Medicaid patients because they get paid less.
Yet LCMC just got rid of several doctors who took Medicaid! Not a whole lot of logic there.
Is it really that people got less healthy over the last two years and required more care? Or is it that oschner changed leadership and tried to go for the corrupt model lcmc was already using and now it's breaking the system.
Hospital expenses are mainly going into the pockets of CEOs that shouldn't exist and this is being blamed on the doctors and patients.
We gotta make cuts, where do we start.
Hmm... Healthcare needs it's CEOs that's a given. No need to keep all those unnecessary doctors and patients around though
I guess some people can change
My instance has a rule that new accounts can't post images until 30 days old
I guess some people can change
Bc last time I just posted the link it got removed for not being a screenshot. Only screenshots are allowed to be posted here
I guess some people can change
Funny thing is there are plenty of Republicans in Louisiana who never felt that way.
"Now, let’s be political. I’m a Republican. I represent the amazing state of Louisiana and as a patriotic American, I want President Trump’s policies to succeed in making America and Americans more secure, more prosperous, healthier," Cassidy said Thursday while leading Kennedy's confirmation hearing.
"But if there is someone that is not vaccinated because of policies or attitudes you bring to the department and there is another 18-year-old who dies of a vaccine-preventable disease, helicoptered away, God forbid dies, it’ll be blown up in the press."
Cassidy was one of several senators who was skeptical about Kennedy's stance on vaccinations, also noting Kennedy has changed his tune on the subject during the hearing.
"You are telling us in the Senate this week that you support vaccines. What are you going to tell them?" Cassidy said. "Now, your past of undermining vaccine confidence with unfounded or misleading arguments is concerning to me."
Cassidy, a medical doctor, shared a story of an 18-year-old patient brought to his hospital with hepatitis B who had to undergo an "invasive, quarter-of-a-million-dollar surgery" that would continue to cost $50,000 in hospital bills annually.
"As I saw her take off, I was so depressed, a $50 vaccine could have prevented this all," Cassidy said. "Ever since, I have tried to do everything I can so that I do not ever have to see another parent lose their child due to a vaccine-preventable illness."
There has always been plenty I disagreed with Cassidy on, but Medicaid and vaccines he always made decisions informed by his background as a doctor. I always had a lot of respect for him for that reason. I was glad he was on the Senate committee deciding RFKs fitness.
I watched the hearings. I heard RFK say things that I know Cassidy doesn't agree with. I wrote Cassidy a letter saying I know you understand how dangerous this is and I am glad to have someone like you in the position to make such an important decision.
He was the deciding vote. All he had to do was say what he already knew and believed. He didn't, and I lost the respect I had for him.
Not because he's a Republican. Not because of everything else we disagree on. Because I know for a fact he knew how dangerous RFK would be, and yet his vote is the only reason his fitness was approved.
I guess some people can change
So Landry's proposed 2026 state cuts were supposed to be offset by a Federal budget increase.
So not really sure what that means in reality since Federal DOGE is now also slashing money already planned for 2025.
I'm not even in Wisconsin and I don't know who is pushing what argument right now, but I'm going to recommend that whichever option the evil billionaire in the federal government who is currently destroying the world and trying to bribe people in Wisconsin wants you to vote for, don't do that.
Do the opposite of that. Regardless of what you believe about how things would/should work during normal times. This is not normal and we need people to start understanding that.
It reminds me of one of the best pieces of advice I ever received. I had a friend who had grown up with probably the worst parenting you could imagine. She told me that since she had her son there are plenty of situations where she has no clue what to do or what the outcome will be. When that happens, she stops and thinks about what her mom would do in that situation, acknowledges it, and says ok, just don't do that, and you're already off to a good start.
In this case her mom is Elon. So whatever he is trying to get you to vote for, don't do that.
The only social media I used was reddit and I eventually got shadow banned for trying to warn people about shit like this.
I've tried using bluesky and Mastodon but it never gets much if any traction. I share stuff online hoping people that use other forms of social media will share it too though, so please feel free to share it everywhere you can.
No DeVos is the Amway family.
I had never heard of Vos before, but out of curiosity just looked at his Wikipedia page. I learned he made his money in the popcorn business (?) and apparently is notable in Wisconsin for his legislative role to weaken bargaining rights and labor unions in Wisconsin while Scott Walker was governor. Which also checks out with some typical SPN scumbag BS going way back:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/state-policy-network-union-bargaining/
What state are you in?
Start collecting evidence and try to keep people in your community informed about what they're really voting for. Feel free to drop it here to add to the collection so people can see just how vast this "small government" loving network reaches. https://lemm.ee/c/stateleveldoge
For instance, find your state policy center. Look up what policy they're promoting. (There's a good chance it's doge related). Look up news articles related to that policy, and there's a very good chance you will start to find some pretty blatant local corruption going on.
At least point out to people billionaires are buying elections across the country to serve their own interests.
Here is a blue print with Wisconsin as an example, but it could be used for any state:
Unsurprisingly the model for this meta AI data factory is almost identical to Musk's xAI data factories I've been trying to call attention to for months.
Giant data centers, build them where you think people will be less likely to have power to complain, pollute the shit out of those areas, and then ignore any regulations because you control the federal (and soon the state) government.
Soon coming to the UK as well.
https://www.uktech.news/ai/elon-musks-xai-starts-hiring-in-london-after-setting-up-shop-20250108
I made a flow chart to explain all the corporate corruption behind the anti-vax/anti-science movement if anyone is interested in learning more. It's a lot. And it gets worse.
Is there a community for learning how to spot bot activity on social media?
NIH Funding Policy Frequently Criticized by Republicans for "Lack of Oversight," is Based on HHS Framework Created by Trump Administration
