According to Market Watch, Aetna CEO Ronald Williams “earned” nearly $43 million in total compensation in 2007. The census bureau set the 2007 poverty line for a single person at $9944 (over 65) or $10,787 (under 65); let’s just call it a nice round $10,000.

Meanwhile, this painter/sculptor might dispute the use of the word “earned” in the Market Watch story:  Read more 

My very own corporate parasite, Aetna, is losing the battle for public opinion in the pages of New Jersey’s Bridgeton News. In a story on the reaction to Aetna’s decision to drop The Center for Diagnostic Imaging (CDI) of Cumberland County from its network, Andrea Scapellato, whose husband has been depending on CDI for regular ultrasounds, is quoted:

“First you have to pay for insurance, and then you can’t even go where you want to go,” she said. “We live in the United States, not communist China or Russia.”  Read more 

Stock prices of Aetna and other health insurers are up. How nice for them and their shareholders.

Meanwhile, the lowly life-forms who actually need health care abandon all hope in the health (couldn’t) care (less) system:  Read more 

Adopt-a-parasite? The whole health (couldn’t) care (less) system is a parasite on the body politic. At Salon, a doctor lays out the obscenity: (via Suburban Guerilla)

As a resident in a Los Angeles hospital, he tries to get the on-call orthopedic surgeon to come in the middle of the night to treat a five-year-old with a severe broken leg.  Read more 

Why was Caitlin White’s $113,000 brain surgery delayed for more than two months? Would she ever have had the surgery without the intervention of TV news?

It’s really not clear from the linked story, but this much is clear: Caitlin’s mother believes the “claim came in too late” for her to have the surgery scheduled for May. She also believes that the insurer denied coverage altogether when she rescheduled the surgery. The insurer, Aetna, disputes the circumstances, but according to the story it took pressure from a local TV station and a four-day investigation to get Aetna to “change its tune” and “partner” with Tampa General Hospital to fully cover the costs.  Read more 

I was going to write a great post about this idea, but readers will have to make do with slap dash. In order to pass single payer we need to completely discredit the health insurance companies. In order to achieve this we will need their help. Fortunately they are willing to cooperate.

Thus today’s disgrace: Blue Shield sued for allegedly canceling policies

The Los Angeles city attorney is suing Blue Shield of California for allegedly bilking policyholders when they tried to make claims.  Read more 

We’ve all seen CSI, where within an hour two or three impossible cases are pieced together and there is an arrest headed for conviction. Or Law and Order, where they usually limit themselves to one case. The reality is different. Despite decades of law and orderism breaking out all over the United States, it is more possible to get away with a murder now than before.

Well it is a myth, and one which favors the right wing, because it creates the impression that modern police work is better. It’s not, the old police departments had more murders to deal with, and they had a better rate of clearing them by arrest. Now some of these clears as we find out later, was because they arrested the wrong person, but not by the proportion that we see a drop in solving crims.  Read more 

This fascinates, and scares me. I’m not kidding when I say I expect many of these kids to end up enforcers for the state someday. Nor do I believe that the particular peculiarities of this “gang” came solely from teen brains. Get to know Straight Edge:

You wouldn’t expect a splinter faction of teens that rejects alcohol, tobacco, drugs or promiscuous sex to be an active criminal street gang, but in Washoe County that’s exactly what’s happening, authorities say.
In March — following a six-month investigation — Straight Edge was officially classified a gang by the Regional Gang Unit. Nearly every week, gang officers investigate Straight Edge crimes or harassment that doesn’t seem to subside following arrests.
Authorities describe Straight Edge attacks as random, opportunistic, violent beatings that can be spurred by minor comments from nonmembers. Members — who sometimes use bats, shovels, knives, brass knuckles and Mace — don’t engage in violence unless they can outnumber their targets, police said.  Read more 

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America, that is. Let’s see, I think this blurb has it all. Tell me this doesn’t sound strangely like someplace you know, fast foward a few years:

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This is too mildly worded for me, but it’s still a good post to keep handy for the next time you need to shut up a Rethug coworker or neighbor.

Death tax my ass.

Yeah, yeah, I know—this sort of thing has gone on since forever. But weren’t we supposed to have a set of higher standards these days? A shiny, high-tech, high-quality military? Some things never change:

A Bangor Area High School senior who admitted his role in a BB-gun shooting spree that blew out about 200 windows and caused nearly $74,000 in damage won’t have to go to prison — but only if he joins the Army and stays in.  Read more