skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on US Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, ruling against Donald Trump's order in ~society
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Comment on US Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, ruling against Donald Trump's order in ~society
skybrian LinkResponses here seem rather negative. It's narrower than I'd like, but it seems to me that a 5-4 win is still a win and that's worth celebrating. It's one less thing to worry about.Responses here seem rather negative. It's narrower than I'd like, but it seems to me that a 5-4 win is still a win and that's worth celebrating. It's one less thing to worry about.
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Comment on $22,000 per hour: assistants use a legislative loophole to outearn US surgeons in ~health
skybrian Link ParentEven when most people are honest, some people gaming the system is to be expected. It seems like this system could be improved if Congress were willing. Ideally this would include regular reviews...Even when most people are honest, some people gaming the system is to be expected. It seems like this system could be improved if Congress were willing.
Ideally this would include regular reviews and updates. Why would we expect Congress to get a new law right the first time?
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Comment on US Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, ruling against Donald Trump's order in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article:From the article:
The ruling reaffirms the long-settled understanding that the 14th Amendment automatically confers citizenship on any child born in the United States, with limited exceptions for children of diplomats and other rare cases. The principle was established in a landmark 1898 high court decision that found that Wong Kim Ark, a man born to Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, was a citizen.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the majority opinion for the ideologically mixed group of justices that included the court’s three liberals, as well as conservative Amy Coney Barrett.
Conservative Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh dissented from the 5-4 majority in ruling the executive order violated the 14th Amendment, but he joined the 6-3 majority in finding the order violated federal law.
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US Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, ruling against Donald Trump's order
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Comment on US Congress clears housing bill, cementing a rare bipartisan feat in ~society
skybrian LinkJohnson sends landmark housing bill to Trump for signatureJohnson sends landmark housing bill to Trump for signature
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan bill aiming to address affordability by increasing housing supply and homeownership, can now either be vetoed by Trump or signed into law. Absent the president’s signature, the bill will become law with no action after 10 days not counting Sundays — around July 10.
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Comment on $22,000 per hour: assistants use a legislative loophole to outearn US surgeons in ~health
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]From the article:
It takes a surgeon around three hours to remove a cancerous prostate gland. Most sit behind a console, using joysticks to control a surgical robot with tiny clamps, scissors and other tools on its four arms.
An assistant stands at the bedside to place the robot’s arms, suction out fluids, and swap instruments at the surgeon’s instruction.
For those services, the standard fee paid by most health insurers is 16 percent of the surgeon’s earnings. But across the country, assistants are sometimes earning up to 25 times what the doctor makes, according to data reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with officials who manage large health plans.
They do it by capitalizing on a law intended to protect patients from surprise billing by providers not in their insurance plan. Under the law, those providers can file for arbitration, where they are able to make a case for much higher payments than they could otherwise receive from health plans.
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Patients typically have no idea when their cases end up in arbitration, and they pay what they normally would for an in-network provider. But the high payouts may encourage more doctors (and surgical assistants) to stop taking insurance and use arbitration instead.
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Doctors’ groups argue that insurers often offer payments that are too low for physicians managing complex cases. Several have sued health plans that they say have not paid awards, which are binding under federal law.
Surgical assistant groups say that health plans often refuse to let them in their networks, leaving them with payments that can be unpredictable and low. Luis Aragon, chief executive of Illinois-based Surgikal Assistants, says he pursues arbitration when insurers offer little to no money, such as a health plan that sent $30 for a three-hour robotic surgery.
“If I could guarantee $400 per case, I’d be very happy with that,” he said. He typically asks for $850 to $1,500 in arbitration, and wins most cases.
But he said very large awards for assisting are signs of a system gone awry. “$100,000, $50,000, all these amounts are way out of line,” he said. “And that is not sustainable for health care costs.”
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Some in-network surgeons appear to team up often with the same out-of-network assistants. At Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, Dr. Shari Reitzen-Bastidas frequently assists Dr. Nicholas Bastidas, her husband, on operations to make transgender women’s faces look more feminine.
She has repeatedly earned six to 224 times as much as him, according to records reviewed by The Times.
In one instance, arbitrators awarded Dr. Reitzen-Bastidas $210,000 for her work assisting with an operation that involved reshaping bones around the eyes. Dr. Bastidas earned $12,767 for the same case.
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A Wisconsin neurology practice received $196,215 for a 2024 spinal fusion operation — $125,058 to the main surgeon, Dr. Arvind Ahuja, and $70,707 to his assistant, according to documents reviewed by The Times. Typically, health plans would pay the surgeon $9,310 and the assistant $1,562. The practice split the operation into multiple bills, enabling them to bring 11 separate cases to arbitration, winning all of them.
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With little movement in Washington, health plans are experimenting with benefit cuts to lower arbitration payouts.
Owen Rumelt, a partner at the law firm Cary Kane, who advises union health plans, said many of his clients have begun canceling contracts with hospitals where out-of-network operations are common.
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$22,000 per hour: assistants use a legislative loophole to outearn US surgeons
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Comment on On vulgar materialism in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...]From the article:
In 1914, before the First World War, there was this belief: “a European war would be economically disastrous, the moneyed classes won’t let it happen”. Europe went to war anyways, and the war was in fact an economic disaster as everyone knew it would be. Why were those people wrong? Because the rich were not in control: the Tsar and the Kaiser and the Emperor were in control.
I thought of this in 2022, in the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, whenever I would read someone argue: “Russia invading Ukraine would be economic suicide, the oligarchs won’t let Putin do it, they want to keep their yachts and villas”. Then Putin did it anyways, and the oligarchs had their assets in the West seized. Because the oligarchs are mis-named. They have no political power whatever and live and die by Putin, who appoints them to run stuff, and they get to live well, as long as they are loyal. They are the recipients of political patronage, not the source of it. When the wars start anyways, the same cynical people change their tune, suddenly it’s the armaments industry that’s behind it all, the war was profitable after all.
The default lens through which modern people look at the world is vulgar materialism: a stylized, populist version of historical materialism where everything is explained by money, states are weak, democracy is a fiction, corporations and the rich run the world, ideology and religion and nationalism and language have no explanatory power and are merely covers for secret, underlying material motives.
Once you notice it, you see it everywhere: you’ll hear people say that the Rwandan genocide was a scam to sell machetes or the war in Gaza is about oil or ISIS beheadings are caused by a lack of economic opportunity. People on the right justify skepticism of medicine by invoking Big Pharma, and climate skepticism on climate scientists seeking grant money. Glyphosate is probably the most studied molecule in history at this point, but no amount of studies will convince people it’s safe, because corporations are evil.
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Second, we can ask: in the real world, does money give you influence over the state? To some extent, yes. Some lobbying efforts succeed. America is one of the few countries in the world where it’s legal to advertise prescription drugs to the public, for example. But corporations don’t have veto power over the state. If e.g. Pfizer spends billions on a clinical trial, and some guy at the FDA says no, and wipes that investment, who wins? The FDA wins. Pfizer can’t do shit.
There’s also an invisible graveyard problem, where the success of lobbying is very salient, because it’s often shockingly offensive. But there are many contrary cases that are less salient because, well, if you ban something, it doesn’t happen. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not approve a single nuclear reactor from its creation in 1975 until Vogtle 3+4. What has Westinghouse done about that? Nothing successful, apparently. It’s not like they’re getting paid to not build reactors.
Big Tech has a lot of smart people and a lot of money. Do tech billionaires run California like a private fiefdom? Reader, they don’t even run San Francisco. The best they can do is maybe help a slightly more moderate Democrat get elected as mayor.
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On vulgar materialism
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Comment on California legislature agrees to upload driver’s licenses to national database in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...]From the article:
Withdrawing its opposition under behind-the-scenes pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawless threats from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the California legislature has agreed to fund and revise state law to authorize the upload of information about all driver’s licenses and ID cards issued by the state to the private SPEXS national ID database operated by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).
The budget compromise between Gov. Newsom and the legislature announced last night includes “guardrails” intended to give an illusion of protection for license and ID data.
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Once this data is transferred to AAMVA, components of the DHS or other Federal or state law enforcement agencies will be able to obtain it from AAMVA by court order. Such a subpoena or warrant could, and probably would, include a gag order prohibiting AAMVA from disclosing it to the state of California or to the individuals whose data is disclosed.
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That data could be misused in many ways, but it’s especially likely be weaponized against immigrant and transgende Californians who are already being targeted by Federal agencies and other states.
The summary of the proposed “budget trailer” bill released last night says that it “Limits data sharing to only that required by federal law.” But that’s not true. “Compliance” with the REAL-ID by California or any other state is optional, not required. Neither the Federal REAL-ID Act nor any other Federal law requires, or could require, California or any other state to share any data with AAMVA, a private nonprofit corporation.
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California legislature agrees to upload driver’s licenses to national database
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Comment on Generals.io: a simple yet very cool online real time strategy game in ~games
skybrian LinkIs there an exaplanation somewhere about what this game is about and how to play?Is there an exaplanation somewhere about what this game is about and how to play?
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Comment on Generals.io: a simple yet very cool online real time strategy game in ~games
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Comment on Five million Americans dropped ACA health insurance after the GOP let prices rise in ~health
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...]From the article:
Five million fewer people are currently enrolled in ACA marketplace plans compared to the record high reached last year. More than 1 million fewer people picked a plan for 2026, and then 4 million more either disenrolled or failed to pay their premiums and therefore dropped coverage.
Prices in the market skyrocketed after President Trump and Republicans in Congress failed to extend extra financial help for enrollees last year. The Department of Health and Human Services published a report about the data on its website Friday.
The report says 19.2 million people are currently enrolled in ACA insurance now.
At its high, 24.2 million people were in the ACA marketplace in 2025, according to government figures.
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The higher health insurance costs are tough for consumers in an economy still plagued by overall inflation. As congress let the prices go up, people made tough decisions about family budgets, where to work, whom to marry and more.
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It's also a problem for insurance companies, several of which have announced they will not be participating in ACA markets next year, including Cigna.
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Five million Americans dropped ACA health insurance after the GOP let prices rise
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Comment on Gander social launching on Canada Day in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentFor me the issue is that they haven't published any technical details at all about how their system will work. Maybe they'll do that after they launch?For me the issue is that they haven't published any technical details at all about how their system will work. Maybe they'll do that after they launch?
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Comment on Gander social launching on Canada Day in ~tech
skybrian (edited )LinkI’m wondering if Gander uses regular PDS’s that interoperate with Bluesky. There’s no technical information that I was able to find. If you have an account, does your account have a dtd? Do tools...I’m wondering if Gander uses regular PDS’s that interoperate with Bluesky. There’s no technical information that I was able to find. If you have an account, does your account have a dtd? Do tools like pdsls work with it?
Gander claims to use AT Proto and to somehow make sure your data stays in Canada, but both can’t be true if it participates in AT Proto in the normal way, because PDS’s are public and designed to be replicated without asking permission. (Bluesky is designing a new protocol called Spaces to allow more privacy.)
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Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news
skybrian LinkMan with same name as U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan is eligible for Alaska’s primary ballot, judge rules …Man with same name as U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan is eligible for Alaska’s primary ballot, judge rules
Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews’ ruling overturns a June 15 decision by Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher to disqualify the challenger and keep him off the primary ballot. Matthews’ ruling can be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Attorneys for the state have said Tuesday is the deadline for a final ruling so that ballots for the Aug. 18 primary can be printed.
The judge ruled that the Division’s decision to exclude Dan J. Sullivan because his candidacy was not “in good faith” was not based on the Constitution, Alaska law or the Division’s own regulations. The retired teacher from the small fishing community of Petersburg filed to challenge the incumbent.
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The challenger Sullivan has said that sharing a name and party affiliation with the incumbent gave him “an instant megaphone.” But the 69-year-old retired teacher and former U.S. Forest Service employee said he had considered a run for some time and had grown frustrated with the senator.
He initially was certified on the state’s candidate list as Dan J. Sullivan, with the senator listed as Dan S. Sullivan and identified as the incumbent
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Comment on US releases powerful Anthropic model Mythos to some US companies in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentIt depends what hype you were listening to. It's supposed to be pretty good.It depends what hype you were listening to. It's supposed to be pretty good.
Since the majority disagreed with Kavanaugh, I don’t see that making a difference until years from now, after a justice resigns and another one is appointed? Hopefully that will be after Trump is gone. Who knows what happens then?