It does - but here is the thing - of the individual payer bucket (we call it private payer, or self pay) you only collect pennies on the dollar. A HUGE percentage of those will let it go to collections, and fight it until the healthcare provider just writes it off...
And those write offs - go to those who WILL pay - so, there is your $50 aspirin in the ER. You'll pay. If your insurance doesn't - you'll absorb it. SOMEONE has to pay.
We ALREADY have socialized medicine - and those who are honest and pay their bills carry EVERYONE else, from Medicare and Medicaid to the private nationals to the deadbeat patients - until you're paying $750 for a saline drip that your insurance doesn't cover but you'll pay because you're an honest person.
It is all kinds of effed up.
When I get done, and my wife is out - when we're both retired from healthcare - I'm writing a tell-all expose whistleblower book.
Shhhhhh
Wed Dec 03 2025 03:08:43 UTC from IGnatius T FoobarA doctor friend explained it to me as a series of buckets. The first bucket is Medicare and Medicaid, and whatever those refuse to cover spill into the private insurance bucket. Whatever private insurance won't cover spills over into the individual payer bucket. Since there is no bucket after that, the costs inflate until there is a zero balance (at least on paper).
New password requirements: 50 characters, no 'words' at all, must include special characters, never repeat for your entire career, expires every 48 hours, 3 MFA prompts.
F*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieF*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieF*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieUKuNt!!!
Got it.
Fri Dec 12 2025 15:40:42 UTC from Nurb432New password requirements: 50 characters, no 'words' at all, must include special characters, never repeat for your entire career, expires every 48 hours, 3 MFA prompts.
Feel free to copy and paste. I don't use this one, but you have a good idea of what mine look like now, if you want to hack my accounts. They're hostile.
"we breached our SLA because our vendor dropped the ball, its not fair"
Well, its not supposed to be fair, and ya, that is how it should work. They are OUR vendor..
Tue Dec 23 2025 05:35:04 AM UTC from ParanoidDelusionsF*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieF*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieF*cKY3r$3lF1571@$$#013zxyzqw3rty!SuckMyD!ck&dieUKuNt!!!
Got it.
Hey! How did you get my password?!?
Dunno details, since im off sick, but noticed tons of emails today related to an DNS outage. Lets see, a service that is brain-dead easy to setup for redundancy. Eggs in one basket = fail.
They deserve to have the egg in said basket on their face.
"everyone show up Thursday for a group photo! All 400 of you! and wear colors based on your tenure!" ( after 5, yes 5 emails about this week's popcorn party held by the 'fun club' )
wtf. While I don't expect work to be a prison, its not a freaking social club either.
"Surprise! we are mandating bio-metric security on windows devices via 'windows hello', and the meeting is tomorrow on how to set it up"
WTF NO. i will not be giving them my face or fingerprints. I smell a lawsuit coming. That is a PII issue, giving 3rd party that sort of information.
( and while i have no hardware anymore that is owned by the office and 99.9% of what i do is now web access, i do have a single VDI that runs wincrap )
Kaiser is implementing mandatory DFA - which is fine - but they're doing it through Google Authenticator - and my company does it through Microsoft Authenticator - and my company doesn't provide cell phones - they want me to install these on my phone and use it all day to log in... good luck with me not getting distracted by Facebook and other notifications on my PERSONAL device you're forcing me to access during my regular working day - but whatever on that...
Kaiser asked a questionnaire - and my "enter your own comments section here," response was, "have real, onshore tech support that isn't just an offshore callcenter reading from a script to support me when I run into problems."
"Can we contact you about your responses?"
"ABSOLUTELY."
Tue May 12 2026 11:03:58 EDT from Nurb432"Surprise! we are mandating bio-metric security on windows devices via 'windows hello', and the meeting is tomorrow on how to set it up"
WTF NO. i will not be giving them my face or fingerprints. I smell a lawsuit coming. That is a PII issue, giving 3rd party that sort of information.
( and while i have no hardware anymore that is owned by the office and 99.9% of what i do is now web access, i do have a single VDI that runs wincrap )
So i heard a few more details. Still not happy with the idea, but..
- Currently face/print is optional, they worded it poorly.
- They are mandating a 12 digit PIN. "We are streamlining things so you don't need to use a password" um, its the same freaking thing AND once you login, you have to use your password for many apps since they cant get SSO to actually work properly. Idiots.
- If you forget your pin, you can opt to use password, so entire thing is pointless
- If you forget your pin, admins CANT reset it.. only if you login with your password, sitting at the device can you do it. ( seems like a security hole to me )
- its all stored on device in the TPM chip, so i guess your prints/images go nowhere. But still, not fond of the idea
- its per device.. they didn't mention if you had to have different pins for each device, but most people only have one anyway.
- it does NOT effect VDI.. ( yay means im exempt fro the garbage ) "its too hard to make that work, perhaps someday ". And tho i turned it in since i never use it anymore, it does not effect Macs either. "we are not sure how to do that" lol.
And related we now use that crap-fest OKTA which is a total disaster. Now the freaking app keeps asking me every other day "do you want to enable fast pass" In 6 months i get to remove the damned thing.
Stuck in a service now team meeting thing. "what is the biggest impact of your implementation of servicenow" i want so bad to say "it bankrupted us" and "our journey with the product has put us on a fast track to oblivion"
Garbage product. Garbage cheer-leading, Garbage cult. i refuse to drink the koolaid.