Another day another ruling by the supreme court to erode any confidence in their ability to do anything correctly. Rather than addressing a problem head on, we shall instead hyperfocus on the way it worked itself through our court system to avoid any responsibility at this time.
Arguably its a direct result of fentanyl’s ease of synthesis and import from overseas
but more importantly I’m talking about the creation of the epidemic in the first place, not on addicts switching from one opioid to another… the whole thing is complicated but ultimately drug enforcement is neither the source of the problem nor the solution.
the DEA that decided to crack down twice as hard to make up for their fuck ups with the opioid crisis.
Frankly, the DEA should not be at blame or fault for the opioid crisis. The crisis was a capitalistic creation, where we did not have appropriate regulation on the interaction between the drug designers (those who profited) and the drug prescribers (those who gave access). The drug designers pursued a method to maximize profits by paying the prescribers to prescribe their product and incentivizing them to maximize how much they prescribed. This is no longer an issue in today’s society because we have regulated this interaction via the STARK law and other similar legislation.
The DEA should not have any authority over medical drugs. This used to be solely the purview of the FDA, prior to the DEAs creation, and they did a perfectly fine job of managing this. The DEA was created when we decided to start the war on drugs, which has been an overwhelming failure. The DEA having purview over drugs which are not used in the medical context is perfectly fine to me, but giving them authority over drugs used for medicine feels out of scope and rife with potential issue.
I’m completely on board with this kind of thing, but a much more effective measure is to levy fines which can get extreme. HIPAA is a great example of how powerful of a force fines can be. If you get stripped of your right to do business you can always start a new business or move to another state. But if you have to pay a fine, there’s no easy way out - you can fight it in court but at the end of the day you’re likely paying the fine. This would allow the state to actually recoup on the damage that wage theft reaps on the populace of the state.
I personally think arresting the kid was a step too far (this is the kind of policing that is rather unwarranted), but it is a rather bizarre choice of behavior
Housing laws are complex and weird and in many cases laws are based on case precedent or specific things happening in an area. They vary greatly from state to state and often include archaic provisions. They also don’t garner a ton of attention from the media, so things sometimes get passed in large bills that are weird one-offs because someone who’s involved in voting on the bill who was important asks for or inserts something due to a particular bias or belief.
Entirely unsurprising. I also think with how anti-regulation we are in the US, that nothing is likely to change anytime soon. At the very least, you’d think it would be pretty widely accepted that investigating and spending resources to stop price collusion would be an easy win. Realistically, they aren’t investigating now and I see little to no reason they’d start investigating anytime soon.
The cost of recidivism is so high that we could easily be supporting these individuals a lot more, but with that being said this is a step in the right direction.
I don’t think I’ve heard a single bit of positive news about the 5th circuit of appeals in at least a decade. This just drives home, in stunning detail, how utterly corrupt the justice system in the US has become.
The title of the article on arstechnica comes from the following quote, a few paragraphs in
Though few patients appeal coverage denials generally, when UnitedHealth members appeal denials based on nH Predict estimates—through internal appeals processes or through the federal Administrative Law Judge proceedings—over 90 percent of the denials are reversed, the lawsuit claims. This makes it obvious that the algorithm is wrongly denying coverage, it argues.
While they are correct that error rate applies to the number of misclassified cases (denied when it should not have been), it’s only 90 percent of the denials which are appealed which are overturned. As stated in the quote above, few patients appeal their coverage denials, so it is possible the error rate is much lower as presumably the denials which are not appealed would not be overturned at the same rate.
I don’t think that the punishment meets the crime. No one deserves to be treated inhumanely in prison. No matter how mislead this person is, that’s a terrible outcome.
Hey there, this is better suited for another community, this isn’t directly about a book or a discussion about books, the author just happens to have written some.
Love to see it. We need more strikes, pretty much everywhere. Corporations and government stopped listening a long time ago, force them to pay attention.
