All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Tami]

[Tami]

The ‘follow-up appointment’

So far this year, Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center has filed more than 1,100 lawsuits for unpaid bills in a rural corner of Southeast Missouri, where emergency medical care has become a standoff between hospitals and patients who are both going broke. Unpaid medical bills are the leading cause of personal debt and bankruptcy in the United States according to credit reports, and what’s happening in rural areas such as Butler County is a main reason why. Patients who visit rural emergency rooms in record numbers are defaulting on their bills at higher rates than ever before. Meanwhile, many of the nation’s 2,000 rural hospitals have begun to buckle under bad debt, with more than 100 closing in the past decade and hundreds more on the brink of insolvency as they fight to squeeze whatever money they’re owed from patients who don’t have it.

The result each week in Poplar Bluff, a town of 17,000, has become so routine that some people here derisively refer to it as the “follow-up appointment” — 19 lawsuits for unpaid hospital bills scheduled on this particular Wednesday, 34 more the following week, 22 the week after that. Case after case, a hospital that helps sustain its rural community is now also collecting payments that are bankrupting hundreds of its residents.

“Think of me as the referee,” the judge explained, as he called the first case. “It’s my job to be fair. I’m not going to be chugging for either side.”

On one side of the courtroom was a young lawyer representing the hospital, and he carried 19 case files that totaled more than $55,000 in money owed to Poplar Bluff Regional. Three nearby hospitals in Southeast Missouri had already closed for financial reasons in the past few years, leaving Poplar Bluff Regional as the last full-service hospital to care for five rural counties, treating more than 50,000 patients each year. It never turned away patients who needed emergency care, regardless of their ability to pay, and some people without insurance were offered free or discounted treatment. In the past few years, the hospitals’ total cost of uncompensated care had risen from about $60 million to $84 million. Its ownership company Community Health Systems, a struggling conglomerate of more than 100 rural and suburban hospitals, had begun selling off facilities as its stock price tanked from $50 per share in 2015 to less than $3 as the lawyer approached the judge to discuss the first case.

What good is Medicare for All if Hospitals keep going bankrupt?

[Tendrin]

The ‘follow-up appointment’






What good is Medicare for All if Hospitals keep going bankrupt?

This is the impact of the gutting of Medicaid expansion in red states. That said, any further health care reform must be accompanied by a massive amount of money for rural areas to rebuild their access to care.

[Tami]

'Maus' Author Removed from Marvel Collection for Calling Trump 'Orange Skull'

Cartoonist Art Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his graphic novel Maus, withdrew his introduction to a new Marvel comics collection after its publisher insisted he remove a description of Donald Trump as "Orange Skull," drawing a comparison between the president and Captain America's fascist enemy, the Red Skull.

In an introduction commissioned by publisher the Folio Society for its upcoming collection, Marvel: The Golden Age 1939-1949, Spiegelman described how dire threats like the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism inspired Jewish artists and writers to create the first superheroes, or godlike "secular saviors."

Spiegelman concluded his essay by drawing a parallel to the resurgence of far right politics in the modern era. "In today's all too real world, Captain America's most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America," Spiegelman wrote.

The Folio Society asked Spiegelman to remove the Orange Skull reference from the essay, claiming Marvel Comics was trying to remain "apolitical" and wouldn't allow its publications to take political stances. In response, Spiegelman pulled the introduction and will instead write on the subject in an essay to be published in The Guardian on Saturday.

[shooshoomanjoe]

They need to make a "What is the Difference between Trump and Greenland??? Greenland ISN'T for Sale" meme.

[Kirby101]

'Maus' Author Removed from Marvel Collection for Calling Trump 'Orange Skull'

[Dalak]

WTF is with this headline? Truck tries to drive into group of Jewish protesters outside ICE detention center

Another tweet said the group had delivered a letter to the center's leadership "demanding transparency about the condition of those inside," and giving an ultimatum: "If they do not come out to meet with us by 8pm, then we will have no choice but to shut down their facility."

When that deadline passed, the protesters declared the facility "officially closed for business." They moved to the staff parking lot, where they planned on meeting night guards as they arrived for their shifts. "We will not allow business as usual to continue: no more roundups, no more cages, simple as that," they wrote.

"RI State Police have just arrived to try to clear our protest, to allow the ICE Detention Center to continue business as usual," the next update read. "30+ of us are risking arrest, 200 more are supporting as we prevent guards from arriving for the night shift."

The next tweet was a harrowing one. It included a video of a pickup truck trying to drive through a line of protestors who were sitting on the pavement.

"Oh my god. An ICE Detention Center guard just drove their truck straight through a line of us sitting peacefully to block the parking lot. There don't appear to be major injuries, still assessing the situation, police are moving in *on us* now," Never Again Action tweeted with the jarring video of the truck getting dangerously close to the protestors.

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The group said some people were "run over," and they also alleged Wyatt Detention Center guards pepper-sprayed them while Rhode Island State Police "just stood by and did nothing."

Later they said five people from the group had been hospitalized — three for severe pepper spray exposure, and two with injuries from the truck. "Thankful the injuries were not life-threatening," they wrote.

They can't even say that another **** nut tried to run down peaceful protesters, just "Truck Tries to". People coddling these maniacs are going to lead to more deaths, not less!

[SquirrelMan]

WTF is with this headline? Truck tries to drive into group of Jewish protesters outside ICE detention center



They can't even say that another **** nut tried to run down peaceful protesters, just "Truck Tries to". People coddling these maniacs are going to lead to more deaths, not less!

Pretty soon it will be "school children bleed out and stop breathing after contact with bullets."

[Dalak]

Pretty soon it will be "school children bleed out and stop breathing after contact with bullets."

What do you think they'll blame lack of medical care or necessary-to-live meds on? "Suicide by Poverty?"

[SquirrelMan]

What do you think they'll blame lack of medical care or necessary-to-live meds on? "Suicide by Poverty?"

Lack of boot straps?

[JCAll]

WTF is with this headline? Truck tries to drive into group of Jewish protesters outside ICE detention center



They can't even say that another **** nut tried to run down peaceful protesters, just "Truck Tries to". People coddling these maniacs are going to lead to more deaths, not less!

Must be the Green Goblin truck from Maximum Overdrive.

[Dalak]

Lack of boot straps?

Velcro shoes are more affordable, don't shoe shame brah.

Must be the Green Goblin truck from Maximum Overdrive.

If it were at least this would be far more entertaining.

[Ragged Maw]

'Maus' Author Removed from Marvel Collection for Calling Trump 'Orange Skull'

Translation: "Dont name-drop (still living) real people working in them' fancy government buildings."

You can make all the clever hints, nudges, and winks you want, but the moment you explicitly reference them by name or exact appearance+profession, a social media and PR shitstorm against you isn't far off.

[shooshoomanjoe]

WTF is with this headline? Truck tries to drive into group of Jewish protesters outside ICE detention center



They can't even say that another **** nut tried to run down peaceful protesters, just "Truck Tries to". People coddling these maniacs are going to lead to more deaths, not less!

This happened on the 15th. I wonder why there was little coverage of this.

[Tami]

Construction workers prepare to battle former ally Trump

One of the nation’s largest labor groups embraced Donald Trump at the start of his presidency, in hopes he would create construction jobs and retreat from proposals that might reduce workers’ wages.

But now the two sides are on the brink of war, endangering a key bloc of Trump’s support in Midwestern swing states in 2020.

At issue is a deal gone bad between Trump and North America’s Building Trades Unions over a Labor Department apprenticeship initiative, the politics of which have grown more complicated since last month’s ouster of Secretary Alexander Acosta. Leaders of the union federation worry that the final version will undermine their own job-training programs and create a supply of cheap labor for developers, undercutting high-skilled construction workers who rely on prevailing-wage jobs to make ends meet.

“It’s an existential threat to the Building Trades,” said a former administration official with knowledge of the discussions. And it has the powerful group — a union federation that represents millions of construction workers across the U.S. — seeing early signs of a member-driven revolt against Trump in 2020.