Monthly Archives: May 2010

Oil Disaster in Gulf Gets Worse

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There was no remote-control backup switch on the oil rig that exploded and sank, according to the WSJ.  Why not?  Probably to save money.

Graphic from the Wall Street Journal

“The oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico didn’t have a remote-control shut-off switch used in two other major oil-producing nations as last-resort protection against underwater spills.  The lack of the device, called an acoustic switch, could amplify concerns over the environmental impact of offshore drilling after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig, hired by oil giant BP PLC, last week.

The accident has led to one of the largest ever oil spills in U.S. water and the loss of 11 lives. On Wednesday federal investigators said the disaster is now releasing 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf, up from original estimates of 1,000 barrels a day.

The scale and complexity of the operation highlights the titanic struggles faced by the modern oil industry. Locked out of easier-to-exploit oil reservoirs by governments in developing countries, international oil companies such as BP invest billions of dollars every year in scouring the depths of the sea for oil and gas. But when problems arise, they are equally difficult to conquer.

On Tuesday, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) and Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) sent letters to BP and Transocean asking the companies to explain what they knew about the risks of drilling at the site.”

Source: Wall Street Journal

“Easier to exploit” is perfect wording for this WSJ article. Exploitation is what fossil fuel companies are best at.

In an astonishing comment today, facing this devastating environmental disaster, some of the more ignorant Republicans in the U.S. said this should not deter anyone from offshore oil drilling.

“At almost the exact moment that Reuters broke the news (on Twitter) that a second oil drilling rig had overturned off the coast of Louisiana, Sarah Palin posted her latest Facebook “note.” The headline: “Domestic Drilling: Why We Can Still Believe.”

Apparently no non-natural disaster caused by drilling or sucking up fossil fuels in any manner will ever stop the profit-based, anti-science approach to energy and the unlimited greed of Republicans like Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, Michele Bachmann, and their fossil fuel energy friends.  No disaster is too great to try another more progressive way forward, to stop using these destructive, polluting forms of energy.  What will ever deter these people? We don’t need to use fossil fuels.

“No human endeavor is ever without risk,” Palin’s ghostwriter adds later, comparing dangerous and pointless off-shore domestic drilling to the moon landing.”

Even the news that another oil rig has overturned has had no impact on the worst of them.   We know from hurricanes of the past how oil rigs do overturn during storms and apparently, even without storms.  They also explode, [...]

Anthem of CT Denies $600 Until “Subscriber Responds to our Coordination of Benefits Questionnaire”

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Question: How does your “family of trusted happy healthcare partners who love you and love working for you and humbly wish you’d simply love them in return” make their “Affordable Health Insurance” “Affordable”?

SOLUTION: PURE DISTILLED GENIUS:

Anthem shall now present the GREATLY ANTICIPATED SOLUTION of the world famous Universal Gnomish Business Plan:

  1. Take your money now.
  2. Promise to pay other people with your money in exchange for valuable goods and services.
  3. ??? Don’t do that.
  4. Profit! Make it a crime to not participate!

Health care solved! Now available at a low, low subscription fee of “all your money we can collect” from “all the money we think you might have” from “anybody who could give you money.”

Please allow me to reframe this presentation less as “you’re going to die” and more so that you —the masses— may more fully savor the finer intellectual sophistication of Anthem of Connecticut’s fiscal genius in theory without the distracting inconveniences of uncontrolled diabetes with complications and a suboptimal FICO score in practice.

Imagine you go to Best Buy. You buy $600 television with your credit card.

One month later, the merchant bank informs Best Buy that they’ve successfully settled this transaction as follows:

  • You get $0.00.
  • NOT NEGOTIABLE
  • By “selling” this “television” to our “member” (whom we love and cherish as a trusted member of the Anthem family), per our “contract,” we now own your “credit” of this television.
  • You cannot recover this television.
  • You cannot recover this credit of a television.
  • We possibly dispute the existence of this television. Please call our toll-free number at ***.
  • Even if this television existed, we dispute that it’s appropriate that you gave our member this television —should it exist. Please call our toll-free number at ***.
  • You cannot bill our beloved and cherished Anthem family member or we will be very disappointed and we may not invite you to our birthday party next year.
  • It “might” “help” if you “help” the patient by “reminding” him that he “should” complete our “survey” about “his benefits” “in your office at your expense and liability and sole responsibility and we’ll still probably not pay you anyways but have you called our toll-free number? Also, we’ll audit you. Also, we’ll sue you.
  • We are here to help. Call us toll-free at *** and spend an hour fighting our phone tree IBM-designed to extract the maximum cost from you without disabusing you of our systems’ legitimacy and have several operators read back to you several contradictory versions of this same paper remittance to you like disappointed school marms scolding you for sloppy homework.
  • Would you like to speak to a sales representative about our health information technology cost savings initiatives can add an additional justification for us not to pay you at your expense while still forcing you to use all other means of communications including phone, mail, and fax to conduct business with us and while automatically disclosing all you and your patients’ valuable demographics to us for our exclusive benefit and which we have hosted on our “partner’s partner’s partner’s” computer servers? Call us toll-free at… to schedule an interactive live demo in which our healthcare information technology representatives will harass you at your office indefinitely to install “stuff” on your all your desktop computers which “magically” collects all your operational demographics (the “magic” part is where you must manually enter the demographics of your entire business operation into our system at your expense… on your own computer! Isn’t that just magical?) to “help” you “provide” the most advanced information technology to our members without actually submitting any billing to us for us to process which of course is a completely different system which we certainly aren’t going provide to you directly! AND NOW: you can buy our UPGRADED SUPER SAVVY version of our software which purports the even more magic ability to disclosure other people’s credit cards and ACH-enabled checking accounts to us for us to bill for ourselves at your transactional liability… over the Internet! (that’s the “even more magic” part)
  • We’re still going to randomly send you and your patients surveys by telephone and paper mail and then still refuse to pay you for not completing the survey in addition to demanding penalties for not using our computer systems. Have you called our toll-free number?
  • It’s your fault when full grown man calls back almost in tears because he can’t afford a $600.00 bill this month and he’s dying and scared and now he’s getting angry calls and letters that he doesn’t understand. Have you called our toll free number?
  • You know… maybe this all would just go away if you just forgot about this silly little bill in the first place. What’s $600.00 between super best friend bro pals just trying to get the best healthcare to patients together as a team?
  • Have you completed our Coordination of Benefits Questionnaire? Please call our toll free number at *** for more information regarding Anthem member benefit policies and procedures.

Free televisions! For everybody! Forever! Welcome to the Anthem of Connecticut family. We love you! (please do not actually try to collect your television)