For-profit hospitals weren't really a thing until the 60s, and they began as a way to milk Medicare and Medicaid, caught on slowly until the HMO act of 1973 (Nixon was president) made for-profit health insurance viable, then really took off when Reagan de-regulated the health care industry in 1981. So, an almost entirely Republican-created phenomenon.The GOP hasn't had a single good idea since Reconstruction...
You did not mention, I notice, all the loudly vocal ninnyhammers who bleat about "first they said wear masks, then they said don't, so which time were they right? It's all too confusing, so I just do whatever I feel like because who do they think they are? They're not the boss of me!" without observing that there was a lot of confusion early on, when it became obvious that there was a problem but there wasn't enough data to clarify its exact nature, not helped at all by Dear Leader politicizing distribution of masks and directing lucrative contracts to cronies. So the public health people were riding herd on an evolving crisis, being expected to announce definitive statements about the nature, the origin, and the treatment of this new mysterious disease. Science is not Revelation, it is not comprised of divinely dictated commandments from on high, it is necessarily tentative and subject to revision as accurate knowledge is compiled and evaluated. Simple minded people want the sort of simple minded cut and dried statements like "the Bible says it, I believe it, that's that", which is not how empirical understanding of this immensely complex interconnected world works. And there are always exceptions, which do not necessarily invalidate general rules.
Certain kinds of small businesses hugely skew towards the GOP. Funeral directors and cemetery operators among them. They sure benefit from the non-vaccinated.
Donald Trump has developed a sudden obsession with the afterlife. The 79-year-old president—once fixated on gold toilets, now apparently fixated on golden harps—has been using campaign emails and televised interviews to plead for salvation, declaring: “I want to try and get to Heaven.”
His newfound heavenly fixation comes as #TrumpIsDead trended during his unexplained absence, forcing a brief reappearance in golf gear, looking like a bloated wax replica of himself. Bruised hands and ballooned ankles only add to the rumors, and no spin can mask the stench of decline.
As Trump clings to life, power, and relevance, Heaven has issued its final verdict—and not even a MAGA-stacked Supreme Court could overturn it.
Herewith is the official statement from Saint Peter, Pearly Gates Gatekeeper.
✨ 👼 👼 👼 ✨
OFFICIAL HEAVENLY STATEMENT ON DONALD J. TRUMP’S APPLICATION FOR ETERNAL RESIDENCE
Office of Eternal Admissions & Celestial Security
After an exhaustive audit of Donald John Trump’s earthly record—spanning decades of bankruptcies, scams, cruelty, and an unwavering devotion to the idol of himself—the Celestial Admissions Council finds no trace of humility, repentance, or redeemable virtue.
The applicant’s lifetime portfolio of sins reads like a cautionary scroll: fleecing the desperate, mocking the afflicted, desecrating vows, weaponizing hatred for power, and engraving his own name as a graven image.
Despite innumerable lifelines extended during mortal probation, the Applicant remained steadfast in his devotion to lies, vengeance, and gold-plated everything. No evidence of charity or contrition has been submitted beyond accidentally getting people to talk about the Bible by holding one upside down.
Effective immediately, his petition for eternal residency is DENIED WITH PREJUDICE. The Pearly Gates remain sealed; any claims of a ‘rigged eternity’ will be archived alongside his 91 indictments, 6 bankruptcies, and a moral insolvency so total that Hell has commissioned an entire new wing in his name.
Pursuant to Section Eternity, Subsection Damnation, Mr. Trump is hereby remanded to a private chamber within the Infernal Reflection Annex—a facility lined floor-to-ceiling with mirrors, ensuring perpetual confrontation with the man he has always feared. There, stripped of sycophants, teleprompters, and branding rights, he will spend eternity choking on his own image, condemned to reckon with the smoldering wreckage of a life squandered on vanity, cruelty, and spite.
This ruling is final, irrevocable, and non-negotiable. Any further petitions may be submitted directly to Beelzebub, Clerk of the Infernal Court.
So Ordered,
Saint Peter
Chief Gatekeeper, Keeper of the Keys, and Eternal Bouncer of the Kingdom of Heaven
✨ 👼 👼 👼 ✨
Subscribe for more rage, reason, and righteous mockery: @Open Letters by Mersault
The contradictions around for-profit health care are apparent. Some results are:
private equity firms buying up clinics, urgent care centers, pharmacies and rationing care and access. Even Not-for-profit hospitals are acquired by “non-profit” mega corporations who buy more clinics, more hospitals to expand their chain and build empires of real estate, medical high-tech and obligate staff. They reach financial goals by acquiring more facilities, therefore, write-offs and “non-profit” on the books. The track to profitability and non-profit outcomes involves cutting staff, longer wait-times and ten-minute visits to care providers.
If profitability and growth are baked into medical models, then they should be underwriting the cost of medical schools so that doctors and nurses do not graduate with six-figure debt.
Canada had 1/2 the Covid death rate of the US. Mandates. Our socialized medicine is over-stressed, especially at emergency, but the scheduled stuff goes well. Price is right, quality is high, but the price / quality / speed trilogy is at play to a certain extent.
If you vote for any Republican these days you are voting against your own self-interest. They always vote not only against their own self-interest but also that of all their supporters. They are all scammers and con artists and liars. Everything in this article is absolutely true. Wake up! Stop listening to Fox “News.” It is not legitimate news from reliable sources; it is a propaganda channel run by one very rich guy to make himself richer. Rupert Murdoch does not give a fig about the poor losers who eat up his lies believing them to be mana from heaven. Fox is run by liars for liars and for gullible rubes who don’t know any better but should.
Ta, Robyn. Eliminating that problem will only happen when we have veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress and the White House. I, too, am an advocate for single-payer. Yes, Medicare for All. The pharmacos and pharmabros will still make bank, but the obscenity of profiteering on misery will end. May I (who have Medicare and private group insurance through my job) live to see it. And may the VA survive and thrive long enough to cover my beloved husband when he retires. He's years away from Medicare, and his health coverage will end with his job at the end of the '26 school year.
I'm one of the rare people with a REAL grudge against the medical community. Iatrogenic medicine maimed and/or killed members of my immediate family. I started studying what's now called alternative medicine when I was 13. Before that, I wanted to be a doctor, and had I pursued that line of study, I probably would have been a good one. Job stress gave my hypertension, which I treat with one little pill every night. Before that, apart from aspirin (and stronger painkillers when I had dental surgery), I was mostly Pharma-free. Being a Welfarian was the hardest job I ever had, and I thank my lucky stars I was on Medicaid when I got diagnosed with Hepatitis C (I got it from my second ear piercing). Back then, Zepatier was $90,000 for the 12 weeks of treatment. Medicaid and NY State paid for it all.
And while I want these rightwingers to fuck off, I do not want them fucking off into the sea. Ocean pollution is already a worldwide problem.
For-profit hospitals weren't really a thing until the 60s, and they began as a way to milk Medicare and Medicaid, caught on slowly until the HMO act of 1973 (Nixon was president) made for-profit health insurance viable, then really took off when Reagan de-regulated the health care industry in 1981. So, an almost entirely Republican-created phenomenon.The GOP hasn't had a single good idea since Reconstruction...
The most politically radical thing an American can do is suggest that every American ought to be able to see a good doctor when they are sick.
You did not mention, I notice, all the loudly vocal ninnyhammers who bleat about "first they said wear masks, then they said don't, so which time were they right? It's all too confusing, so I just do whatever I feel like because who do they think they are? They're not the boss of me!" without observing that there was a lot of confusion early on, when it became obvious that there was a problem but there wasn't enough data to clarify its exact nature, not helped at all by Dear Leader politicizing distribution of masks and directing lucrative contracts to cronies. So the public health people were riding herd on an evolving crisis, being expected to announce definitive statements about the nature, the origin, and the treatment of this new mysterious disease. Science is not Revelation, it is not comprised of divinely dictated commandments from on high, it is necessarily tentative and subject to revision as accurate knowledge is compiled and evaluated. Simple minded people want the sort of simple minded cut and dried statements like "the Bible says it, I believe it, that's that", which is not how empirical understanding of this immensely complex interconnected world works. And there are always exceptions, which do not necessarily invalidate general rules.
I want moare socialism!
I don't call many things evil, but when I do the greedy for profit health care system is near the top of my list of evil things that need to die.
Certain kinds of small businesses hugely skew towards the GOP. Funeral directors and cemetery operators among them. They sure benefit from the non-vaccinated.
Cemetery operators lobby to ban the most enviromentally-friendly ways of disposing of human bodies (coffin-free burials and aquamation).
https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/get-involved/legislative-advocacy/support-composting-legislation/
🚫😇 NO ENTRY: TRUMP’S HEAVEN APPLICATION REJECTED
Donald Trump has developed a sudden obsession with the afterlife. The 79-year-old president—once fixated on gold toilets, now apparently fixated on golden harps—has been using campaign emails and televised interviews to plead for salvation, declaring: “I want to try and get to Heaven.”
His newfound heavenly fixation comes as #TrumpIsDead trended during his unexplained absence, forcing a brief reappearance in golf gear, looking like a bloated wax replica of himself. Bruised hands and ballooned ankles only add to the rumors, and no spin can mask the stench of decline.
As Trump clings to life, power, and relevance, Heaven has issued its final verdict—and not even a MAGA-stacked Supreme Court could overturn it.
Herewith is the official statement from Saint Peter, Pearly Gates Gatekeeper.
✨ 👼 👼 👼 ✨
OFFICIAL HEAVENLY STATEMENT ON DONALD J. TRUMP’S APPLICATION FOR ETERNAL RESIDENCE
Office of Eternal Admissions & Celestial Security
After an exhaustive audit of Donald John Trump’s earthly record—spanning decades of bankruptcies, scams, cruelty, and an unwavering devotion to the idol of himself—the Celestial Admissions Council finds no trace of humility, repentance, or redeemable virtue.
The applicant’s lifetime portfolio of sins reads like a cautionary scroll: fleecing the desperate, mocking the afflicted, desecrating vows, weaponizing hatred for power, and engraving his own name as a graven image.
Despite innumerable lifelines extended during mortal probation, the Applicant remained steadfast in his devotion to lies, vengeance, and gold-plated everything. No evidence of charity or contrition has been submitted beyond accidentally getting people to talk about the Bible by holding one upside down.
Effective immediately, his petition for eternal residency is DENIED WITH PREJUDICE. The Pearly Gates remain sealed; any claims of a ‘rigged eternity’ will be archived alongside his 91 indictments, 6 bankruptcies, and a moral insolvency so total that Hell has commissioned an entire new wing in his name.
Pursuant to Section Eternity, Subsection Damnation, Mr. Trump is hereby remanded to a private chamber within the Infernal Reflection Annex—a facility lined floor-to-ceiling with mirrors, ensuring perpetual confrontation with the man he has always feared. There, stripped of sycophants, teleprompters, and branding rights, he will spend eternity choking on his own image, condemned to reckon with the smoldering wreckage of a life squandered on vanity, cruelty, and spite.
This ruling is final, irrevocable, and non-negotiable. Any further petitions may be submitted directly to Beelzebub, Clerk of the Infernal Court.
So Ordered,
Saint Peter
Chief Gatekeeper, Keeper of the Keys, and Eternal Bouncer of the Kingdom of Heaven
✨ 👼 👼 👼 ✨
Subscribe for more rage, reason, and righteous mockery: @Open Letters by Mersault
WILD APPLAUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The contradictions around for-profit health care are apparent. Some results are:
private equity firms buying up clinics, urgent care centers, pharmacies and rationing care and access. Even Not-for-profit hospitals are acquired by “non-profit” mega corporations who buy more clinics, more hospitals to expand their chain and build empires of real estate, medical high-tech and obligate staff. They reach financial goals by acquiring more facilities, therefore, write-offs and “non-profit” on the books. The track to profitability and non-profit outcomes involves cutting staff, longer wait-times and ten-minute visits to care providers.
If profitability and growth are baked into medical models, then they should be underwriting the cost of medical schools so that doctors and nurses do not graduate with six-figure debt.
Canada had 1/2 the Covid death rate of the US. Mandates. Our socialized medicine is over-stressed, especially at emergency, but the scheduled stuff goes well. Price is right, quality is high, but the price / quality / speed trilogy is at play to a certain extent.
If you vote for any Republican these days you are voting against your own self-interest. They always vote not only against their own self-interest but also that of all their supporters. They are all scammers and con artists and liars. Everything in this article is absolutely true. Wake up! Stop listening to Fox “News.” It is not legitimate news from reliable sources; it is a propaganda channel run by one very rich guy to make himself richer. Rupert Murdoch does not give a fig about the poor losers who eat up his lies believing them to be mana from heaven. Fox is run by liars for liars and for gullible rubes who don’t know any better but should.
Ta, Robyn. Eliminating that problem will only happen when we have veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress and the White House. I, too, am an advocate for single-payer. Yes, Medicare for All. The pharmacos and pharmabros will still make bank, but the obscenity of profiteering on misery will end. May I (who have Medicare and private group insurance through my job) live to see it. And may the VA survive and thrive long enough to cover my beloved husband when he retires. He's years away from Medicare, and his health coverage will end with his job at the end of the '26 school year.
I'm one of the rare people with a REAL grudge against the medical community. Iatrogenic medicine maimed and/or killed members of my immediate family. I started studying what's now called alternative medicine when I was 13. Before that, I wanted to be a doctor, and had I pursued that line of study, I probably would have been a good one. Job stress gave my hypertension, which I treat with one little pill every night. Before that, apart from aspirin (and stronger painkillers when I had dental surgery), I was mostly Pharma-free. Being a Welfarian was the hardest job I ever had, and I thank my lucky stars I was on Medicaid when I got diagnosed with Hepatitis C (I got it from my second ear piercing). Back then, Zepatier was $90,000 for the 12 weeks of treatment. Medicaid and NY State paid for it all.
And while I want these rightwingers to fuck off, I do not want them fucking off into the sea. Ocean pollution is already a worldwide problem.
YOU should be the person to address the joint session of Congress about this!
Fuck me, you’re REALLY good at this.
Thank you.
Robyn has an excellent ability to cut to the chase.
I love the use of Mrs. White in the beginning.
Excellent column! Is there any way it can be delivered to the entire House and Senate?
Print up copies, and the next time the Dems send you one of their "issue surveys"......
Put copies in bags of chips with $160.
No shit!! Everything is upside down and bassakwards on this fucked up maga merry-go-round.
*Stands up and applauds wildly* dot gif