Lincare makes so much money that it can openly scam Medicare and patients who need oxygen and still make a generous profit after paying fines and settlements. The company services so many people (I know many in Sierra County on oxygen) that the government fears shutting it down. Patients sometimes pay Lincare thousands of dollars rental fees just to use equipment that costs several hundred dollars. With Elon Musk in charge of deregulation, one can expect this business model to thrive.
The article is detailed, looks into the company’s history, talks with patients, former company employees, and company spokespeople, Medicare, lawyers all explaining how the various scams work. If you are on oxygen or know someone who is, inform yourself by clicking on this link: Lincare Made Billions While Repeatedly Defrauding Medicare. Feds Did Little To Rein It In. — ProPublica.
I take it the election didn’t go as you wanted. I’m having a hard time understanding why you would believe we need to know the information in the referenced document which includes descriptions of how poorly the government is doing its job but also include the statement that Musk’s organization will make it worse. You must suffer from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) so, like the some of the universities, I’ll offer you milk and cookies to get over the loss.
Since you say that you find it hard to understand why I posted an article about the medical supply giant Lincare, I will try to explain. It is an article about how a company rips off the tax payer and the patient. It details how Lincare does this, what some individuals and groups have done about it, how a patient might or should be aware of practices like billing when there is nothing owing – all so that a reader who is on oxygen that is being supplied by Lincare might find useful to avoid being scammed. Is that not an easy understanding of why people should know about this?
It may not be so difficult to understand if one reads the article with some attention as to what the author is saying. For example, you say that the article “includes descriptions of how poorly the government is doing its job.” I would say this is a pure misreading or misunderstanding, and if this misreading demonstrates why you bash the government, then you bash the government for no reason at all. The article shows the government behind the eight-ball. It cannot ban the company because it serves so many people: doing so would harm them. This is especially true, if you think about it, in rural areas like Sierra County, where we don’t have a bunch of competing companies supplying medical equipment. It is doing its job as far as this company goes, since its job is to protect the people. All it can do is keep fining and warning the company. These elderly people on oxygen are not abstract numbers, but people who can suffer and die. I hate to think that the government’s job is not protection here but simple-mindedly enforcing rules. No, in this article, the miscreant is the company, not the government.
This is one of the small examples of how difficult the government’s job is, and this difficulty is there whether the President and Congress are one party or the other. Health care is or should be non-partisan. And in recent years, both parties have recognized this since the last five Secretaries of Health and Human Services have been more independent than Democrat or Republican.
The reason I thought Musk’s possible appointment to a new department to deregulate might make this particular problem worse is because deregulation would encourage more companies to follow this business model to the feeding trough. Their actions would then go unnoticed. Is that what you are advocating when you wonder why I think people should know about this scam: see no evil, hear no evil, do no evil?
As for the elections, I had no particular desires one way or the other. Politics are a matter of thought and not of desires. Political choice is not like buying things.
You seem to think I’m a Democrat. Again, you are wrong.
I really can’t see any value in debating someone who references Musk’s appointment to head what will likely be called the Department of Government Efficiency and your take is it will just reduce regulations and encourage fraudulent companies. I guess efficiency only means reduced regulations to you. The guy figured out how to send a comparable payload into space for 10% of what it cost the government. I expect he’ll do a lot more than just reduce regulations. And the same issue with the report. If you can read that can come away thinking the government is doing all it can to address the issue with that company, you definitely need more than milk and cookies. As for you politics, if you walk like a duck, quack like a duck and hang out with ducks, you can call yourself a swan if you want to.
You may have noticed, as someone who counts, that the arithmetic difference between 2 and 3 is the same as between 4 and 5. That identity (the abstract idea of the unit) plus the idea of sequence gave us number systems, which are extremely useful. But counting things discounts all other differences. Counting 4 chairs ignores, discounts, all other differences between those chairs (and all other chairs too), of which there are many. Counting dwells in an unreal unitlandia but not real life. It’s very useful, but it contains no other value except arithmetic value. You seem to think, erroneously, that numbers are themselves a value with your idea of efficiency.
You think a 10% reduction of costs is something we should generally take for a value? That efficiency is only good for making Musk a profit. That is your idea of efficiency, the counting of dollars and cents. Never mind that people’s lives were lost in that profitable venture. You are logical, though; in unitlandia you can count dead people just as virtuously as counting live people.
Let’s get back on topic: Lincare’s scams cheating patients and the government (i.e., us taxpayers). Applying your unitlandia sense of efficiency as itself valuable, we should say that scamming is very efficient. Good for Lincare; boo to the government regulations that try unsuccessfully to stop that.
We come back to the your topic of government (not the topic of the article nor the reason I posted it). You want to apply the unitlandia idea of efficiency to government. So, true to unitlandia thinking, there are no distinctions between government and for profit corporations. It’s all just structures of control, top down organizations. Good, efficient government means it should make a profit from us, who are either the customers or the workers, but both to be scammed in some efficient way to the benefit of the bosses. I suppose an efficient killing machine is to be admired.
Your answer to me shows that you do think people are just numbers, and it is, therefore, not surprising that you can’t tell a duck from a swan.