Da Fuq?

Trump got a MRI because unknown reasons?

Who gets a MRI for fun?

To Preserve His Legacy From His First Term, Trump Should Fire RFK, Jr.

He should fire because Brainworn Bobbie is shitting on Trump's greatest scientific achievement.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a statement Tuesday that 22 projects, totaling $500 million, to develop vaccines using mRNA technology will be halted.

Trump's Operation Warp Speed, which quickly developed mRNA COVID vaccines, saved millions of lives. The scientists who developed the technology won a Nobel for it. mRNA vaccines should be regarded by Trump and his supporters as a shining example of his leadership.

But instead, that moronic carrion-munching lunatic that Trump put in as HHS Secretary is tearing down everything that Trump did.

One has to wonder why Trump permits it. He's certainly fired people for less.

Brainworm Bobby Probably Hates This Post; Measles Ed.

Public health experts say there are some adults who should consider getting revaccinated. That includes older adults who were born after 1957 and were vaccinated before 1968.

That's because early versions of the measles vaccine were made from an inactivated (killed) virus, which didn't work particularly well, [Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia] says. That's why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that anyone vaccinated before 1968 get at least one dose of the live attenuated vaccine.

Before the first measles vaccines were developed in the 1960s, nearly everyone got the disease during childhood. So people born before 1957 are assumed to have natural immunity.

Why People Adore Luigi

This, from a doctor:

United Healthcare just denied a claim on one of my patients in the ICU with:

-- a brain hemorrhage
-- in a coma
-- on a ventilator
-- in heart failure

...because I haven't proven to them that caring for her in the hospital was "medically necessary".

Tear it all down.

Indeed. In a just society, a tank battallion would roll up to UHC's corporate campus and level the place at point-blank range.

Luigi Had a Point

In what First World reality can it be that a kid gets condemned to living without a hand because it's not medically necessary? But that's just what happened to Remi Bateman and other kids, who have had to rely on the charity of others in order to have a working second hand.

Here's what should happen: Those who deny claims for an adaptive device should have to live for two months with that disability to get a taste of what that's like.

It's not just medical necessity, it's economic necessity. And not just for them, for society as a whole. The recipients are likely to be more productive. which is better for them, their families, and the rest of us.

Polio Summer May Be Returning

Bobby Brainworm's lawyer is asking the FDA to revoke approval of polio vaccines. He also has his eye on vaccines for heaptitus and tetanus.

Let's be clear: These clowns are dangerous and, if they get their way, people will die.

Will the Luigi Doctrine apply to them?

Wouldn't Want to Be Those Guys

[Republicans] are widely expected to allow the enhanced ACA subsidies to expire at the end of 2025, depriving many people who buy coverage through the ACA and who currently receive these subsidies of that financial assistance, according to health care policy experts.

So-called enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, which lower the cost of health plans for millions of Americans and were passed under the Biden administration, will expire unless lawmakers renew them.

Maybe, in the post-Brian-Thompson world, the Party of Stupid will think better about setting a process in motion that will strip millions of people of health insurance. But I wouldn't hold my breath on that. They were willing to destory much of the American industrial base and throw millions more out of work fifteen years ago in order to make some crackpotideological point. They will have no compunction about kicking people off of medical insurance.

Because anything that both shafts the not-rich and enriches the putocratic class is a win-win for those guys.

And if you lose your health insurance as a result and maybe you or your daddy has to re-mortgage or sell the family home to pay for those now-uninsured medical bills, it will suck to be you. And if you voted for Trump and his party... Toljaso.

Shorter Bobby Brainworm: "Got High Blood Pressure or Cholesterol? Eat Some Magic Mushrooms."

With our nation's health soon to be in the hands of a brain-damaged crackpot, we are going to be in for a rough ride.

Horse-paste was not effective against COVID. Hundreds of thousands of people died during the pandemic because they were believers in the sort of pseudo-scientific claptrap that Bobby Brainworm was pushing.

Almost 6,000 cases of measles happened in American Samoa, with dozens of deaths, because Bobby Brainworm, among others, pushed people to stop vaccinating their kids. That's what he wants to bring to this country.

But hey, people voted for infectious diseases to make a comeback. Maybe weed will help them with the grief of losing a child to a preventable illness.

Bad News for Chicken and Fish

Eating more than 4oz a day increases the risk of type 2 diabetes by 15% or more.

It doesn't mean that you're going to get diabetes, of course. But if you're at risk already, why stack on the odds?

Meanwhile, in the Hellscape Known as Florida

With a brief memo, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has subverted a public health standard that's long kept measles outbreaks under control.

On Feb. 20, as measles spread through Manatee Bay Elementary in South Florida, Ladapo sent parents a letter granting them permission to send unvaccinated children to school amid the outbreak.

The Department of Health "is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance," wrote Ladapo, who was appointed to head the agency by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose name is listed above Ladapo's in the letterhead.

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases around, yet the medieval-grade witch-doctor who Meatball Ron appointed as surgeon general thinks it's just peachy to send unvaccinated kids into a school where there is a measels outbreak. Because, after all, only a tenth of those who contract measels will lose some or all of their hearing (0.1% will die) and that's an acceptable risk to a political douchebag who prizes ideology over science.

Elect a clown and you get a circus.

Don't Vaccinate Yourself and Your Kids. See If I Care.

Anti-vaxxers have been outright lying about COVID vaccines, and all of the others, so far as I know. That addlepated Kennedy manchild is one of the self-proclaimed leaders of the antivaxxers.

I know that the antivaxxers don't care about anyone else. They are intellectual babies, people who believe in freedom with no responsibilities or consequences. And you can bet the farm that they deny the reality that in states where people haven't been vaccinated for Covid have higher death rates.

The problem, of course, is that they themselves aren't footing the costs for their conspiracy-thory-based resistance to vaccines. When they or their kids go to the doctor, the walk-in clinic or the hospital because they've gotten sick from a communicable disease, the rest of us have to foot the cost. Whether its from higher medical insurance premiums or higher costs to the hospitals (which get reflected in insurance) or draining state Medicaid funds, we all pay for it.

And if polio returns to any extent and people start ending up in iron lungs again, we are all going to be paying for it.

Which is the basis of my objection: If you want to be stupid and run the risk of getting sick from communicable diseases, then the rest of us should not have to backstop you. If, it is found that you contracted a communicable disease that was preventable (or mitigatable) by inoculation and you didn't bother, then it should be the law that all of the costs should be recoverable from you, with a denial of bankruptcy or homestead laws as safe harbors.

Baby Kennedy can afford to be a medical moron. Can you?
H/T

Tomorrow Night...

....the goddamn Medicare Advantage ads will end. All that will be left will be the ads for Big pharma, car dealers, auto insurance and ambulance chasers.

With the intensive amount of advertising the Medicare Advantage companies do, I really don't need anything else to suspect that those companies are hugely ripping off Medicare and Medicaid. They're all HMOs of some flavor and I will be confinced until the day I lay down for the Big Dirt Nap that one of those fucking HMOs killed my brother.

Yeah, and the TOFF Had Bone Spurs

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s health episodes show “no evidence” of a stroke or seizure disorder, the Capitol physician said Tuesday, but his statement still left questions about the apparent freeze-ups that have drawn concerns about the 81-year-old’s situation.

Yeah, you can really trust the politicians' doctors.

Our Corrupt Health-Care System

I went in for a physical some years back. Thanks to various anti-competitive mergers, there was now essentially one giant practice in the area.

They billed my insurance $480. The insurer "repriced" that to $60.

Think about that for a second or two. The medicos took an 87.5% haircut on the amount that they wanted to get paid. If they were willing to take $60, than to my mind, that's what the service was worth, not the overinflated bullshit "no insurance" price.

I saw this happen before, when a night-time visit to the ER was billed at over eight grand and they were paid $750. Yet if some schmo without insurance had received the same services, those fuckers would have gone after him for the eight large. And if they couldn't collect, they'd have written off the $8,000, at least as far as the IRS is concerned. Or they would have sold the "medical debt" for a hundred bucks or so and let some bottom-feeding parasite try to collect the money.

Those services were not worth more than $750, because that's what they were willing to take from a party that has the power to bargain with them, in a way that neither you nor I do.

The health care system in this nation is a fucking swindle and it has been for a very long time.

Another Corporate Algorithm to Fuck Up Your Life

A company named Appriss has developed some arcane drug algorithmn called NarxCare. So if you're on a pain medicine and you also have an ailing pet, for which your vet prescribes buprenorphine, you can run afoul of that algorithmn. Your doctors will drop you like a hot rock, your prescriptions will not be filled and you will be condemned to a lifetime of pain. Until you either turn to buying drugs on the street of you kill yourself.

I am not making any of this shit up.

That's the way medicine has been trending. It doesn't matter what your individual situation is or what your doctor might think is best for you. If the algorithmn says otherwise, your doctor will bow to the algorithmn, because doing otherwise might put their license in jeopardy.

Companies like Appriss are substitution their own greed-based evil for that of the Sacklers. Because, at the end of the day, it's never been about what's best for patients, it's all about the bottom line.

The Grift That is Medicare Advantage

The executive summary is that almost all of the insurers that offer Medicare Advantage plans are ripping off the government.

No shocker here: The first insurer mentioned was Kaiser.[1]

The health system Kaiser Permanente called doctors in during lunch and after work and urged them to add additional illnesses to the medical records of patients they hadn’t seen in weeks. Doctors who found enough new diagnoses could earn bottles of Champagne, or a bonus in their paycheck.

Anthem, a large insurer now called Elevance Health, paid more to doctors who said their patients were sicker. And executives at UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest insurer, told their workers to mine old medical records for more illnesses — and when they couldn’t find enough, sent them back to try again.

The only major Medicare Advantage insurer that isn't ripping off the government with both hands is Centene.

So, during this open enrollment period, when you see the ads for the various Medicare Advantage insurers, keep in mind that most of them are thieves who would willingly use you to rip off the government.

If you're in a Medicare Advantage plan and you get an Explanation of Benefits that looks fishy, call in a tip to HHS at 1-800-447-8477.
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[1] My belief is that Kaiser pretty much let a close relative of mine die of cancer because the Kaiser oncologist thought that there was nothing to be done, without, as I understand it, bothering to consult anyone else. My suspicion is that treating people costs money and, if a person who is in a Kaiser HMO isn't on Medicare, then their fiscal incentive is to let them die.

But that's my belief. YMMV.

Might Not Want a Gen Z Doctor

The premed coursework is too hard! Especially organic chemistry. But, rather than buckle down and do the work, their tactic is to get the professor fired in the hopes that the next professer will turn organic chem into a gut course.

Veterans' Administration Fuckery; Agent Orange Deja Vu

It's hard to read this article about how the VA and the DoD have been fighting to prevent recognition of lung problems from burning trash and hazardous materials in Iraq and Afghanistan and not be reminded of the decades that the VA fought to deny benefits for those who were affected by Agent Orange.

Denying the results of studies -- check. Preventins researchers from investigating the issue -- check. Censoring research -- check. Not changing position until political pressure was brought to bear -- check.

Same shit, different war.

Quickie Pregnancy Chromosome Blood Tests Are Usually Wrong

The tests, where they look for rare chromosomal disorders, have a stunning rate of false positives. The blood tests have been pushed by Silicon Valley tech companies, who advertise that the tests are nearly infallible, when they are anything but. Most of the companies who offer the tests refused to talk to reporters about this, which is a pretty reliable sign that they are engaged in fuckery and they are fully aware of what they are doing.

Making a decision based on those tests would be a massive mistake. Any positive needs to be confirmed by good old amniocentisis, which in itself has some risks.

If there is anyone in your circle who is pregnant or planning to be, they need to know that they may be offered tests that are pretty worthless.

People Are Just Dumb

COVID-19 infections are increasing in United States, with 68,835 new infections reported on average each day. That’s 28% of the peak — the highest daily average reported on January 7.

At this point in time, going out and around without practicing basic COVID protocols is a reliable sign of stupidity. I feel bad for the medical professionals who are dealing with the fourth surge. But as regards to the people who don't take precautions and the get sick, not so much.
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In other COVID news:

In a rare admission of the weakness of Chinese coronavirus vaccines, the country’s top disease control official says their effectiveness is low and the government is considering mixing them to get a boost.

Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” said the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, at a conference Saturday in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses abroad while trying to promote doubt about the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine made using the previously experimental messenger RNA, or mRNA, process.

So the Chinese were lying about the efficacy of their vaccine and have been lying about the efficacy of the other vaccines.