Sutter recently bought the company that my kids' pediatrician works for. The changes so far have been sufficiently negative that I have to decide if I want to go through the pain of finding a new pediatrician or just stick it out for the next few years until my youngest switches to a GP.
Until you find yourself desperate for a malpractice suit, and Surprise! your insurer and care provider are on the same team and you already agreed to arbitration when you got that insurance.
A friend had his life wrecked by Kaiser, and none of the attorneys he consulted wanted to touch the case because according to the attorneys they had an army of lawyers and he'd already agreed to arbitration when getting the insurance. The max they claimed could be won wouldn't even cover the legal fees.
You definitely don't want insurance from the same team you're getting the insured services from. It's the conflict of interests to end all conflict of interests, especially in the context of health care.
>A single murderer rarely triggers societal change.
I was gonna bring up Franz but you said "rarely" not "never".
I think people are wising up to the fact that at scale modern forms of insurance, all forms not just health, is not a real product that delivers value to both parties, it's a contrived way to use government force to lighten everyone's pockets to the benefit of a few while paying out only as needed to justify the pretext and the only thing it really shares with it's free-ish market equivalents from 50+yr ago is the name. So there will probably be more murders before things change.
You can call things inevitable and on some level they likely are but +/-5yr makes a huge difference in the exact turns of events and the form that history takes because at the very least it determines who the parties involved are and/or affects the circumstances they are balancing. Do we still get Hitler if WW1 starts later or goes slightly differently? You don't get the modern world without Hitler.
Us typing this here and now with the world as it is is necessarily predicated on a ton of things who's details came down in large part to chance. And it goes back way, way, way further than that.
As someone with a little experience with the 'advertiser side' of Google, they also push junk to their paying clients, using every opportunity to sell terrible, worthless placements to advertisers. Which is to say that the problem is not that 'searchers' are the product, the problem is that Google is not focused on creating value for its counter-parties.
I agree that Google is benefiting from being the dominant player in a two-sided marketplace (which makes it harder to compete), but we can always choose not to use it, both as advertisers and as searchers. Google’s exploitation of its counter-parties has definitely caused me to use alternatives more and more often.
Google is my third choice for searches. I try Ecosia first, but their indexing is garbage so I typically then go to Brave. If Brave doesn’t have it then I submit to the evil overlords at Google. Thankfully Brave indexing is pretty good so it‘s had a measurable impact on the amount of search I actually put through Google.
> Amazingly enough, these aren't even the worst kinds of garbage health plans that you can buy in America: those would be the religious "health share" programs that sleazy evangelical "entrepreneurs" suck their co-religionists into, which cost the world and leave you high and dry when you or your kids get hurt or sick:
Seems worth noting that "sleazy" and "suck their co-religionists into" are (unfounded, as far as I can tell) opinions, "cost the world" is flat-out false and the exact reason why they are an appealing option, and "and leave you high and dry when you or your kids get hurt or sick" is also an unfounded claim. His only citation for any of this is talking about someone who doesn't like morality clauses, but...picked it anyways, presumably because it didn't cost the world?
Some are better than others. I picked the one that looked the most like real insurance and has a >30 year track record of not leaving people high and dry. I've been on it for almost seven years and it's worked out well so far.
I hate to be that guy but is it Google's responsibility to police legally operating insurance companies? It's not their problem that USA has a trash insurance market and a backwards healthcare system.
Legally? No. However, due to their alteration of search results anything that becomes the top is effectively an endorsement regardless of whether it was chosen by the black box or their employees. They already remove legally operating websites they disagree with. Since they’re selective editors with multiple lost antitrust suits, the only thing we as consumers can do is criticize. Especially as most of these companies top the charts due to SEO spam and not genuine traffic.
PSA for folks in Northern California:
The Sutter Health Network / Palo Alto Medical Foundation routinely get caught committing widespread insurance fraud.
They also offer products that seem to be junk insurance to me, but I’m not a lawyer.
Here are three examples of their alleged widespread insurance fraud:
https://allaboutlawyer.com/claim-your-sutter-health-settleme...
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/sutter-health-accused...
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/government-intervene...
Some of those suites involve other big providers, like KP. Not sure if any of the healthcare providers around here are reputable at this point.
Sutter recently bought the company that my kids' pediatrician works for. The changes so far have been sufficiently negative that I have to decide if I want to go through the pain of finding a new pediatrician or just stick it out for the next few years until my youngest switches to a GP.
Just use Kaiser if you’re down bad. It’s cheaper than the absolute cheapest scam insurances and will get you a decent level of care.
Until you find yourself desperate for a malpractice suit, and Surprise! your insurer and care provider are on the same team and you already agreed to arbitration when you got that insurance.
A friend had his life wrecked by Kaiser, and none of the attorneys he consulted wanted to touch the case because according to the attorneys they had an army of lawyers and he'd already agreed to arbitration when getting the insurance. The max they claimed could be won wouldn't even cover the legal fees.
You definitely don't want insurance from the same team you're getting the insured services from. It's the conflict of interests to end all conflict of interests, especially in the context of health care.
Kaiser (Nor Cal), has been amazing. I highly recommend them. I hear lots of complaints from friends who have other providers, but Kaiser "just works".
We've been through cancer and diabetes (so far).
You actually get great level of care they suck at advertising though and most people think they are bottom tier when they are not
So Luigi Mangione had no effect, or it's too early to tell?
He never had any chance of having any effect, except maybe for an increased bodyguard budget. A single murderer rarely triggers societal change.
>A single murderer rarely triggers societal change.
I was gonna bring up Franz but you said "rarely" not "never".
I think people are wising up to the fact that at scale modern forms of insurance, all forms not just health, is not a real product that delivers value to both parties, it's a contrived way to use government force to lighten everyone's pockets to the benefit of a few while paying out only as needed to justify the pretext and the only thing it really shares with it's free-ish market equivalents from 50+yr ago is the name. So there will probably be more murders before things change.
Great powers were already on the brink by the time the archduke thing happened. It would have been some other trigger.
If Franz isn't good enough we can do Caesar.
You can call things inevitable and on some level they likely are but +/-5yr makes a huge difference in the exact turns of events and the form that history takes because at the very least it determines who the parties involved are and/or affects the circumstances they are balancing. Do we still get Hitler if WW1 starts later or goes slightly differently? You don't get the modern world without Hitler.
Us typing this here and now with the world as it is is necessarily predicated on a ton of things who's details came down in large part to chance. And it goes back way, way, way further than that.
If Ted K. had no effect what hope did Mangione have?
Well, the woman Ted threw into Poucha Pond didn’t have any ties to health care.
This Pluralistic post seems very rant-y, but it links to a Bloomberg piece that seems like a better source for backing up the claim: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-obamacare-open-enrol...
As someone with a little experience with the 'advertiser side' of Google, they also push junk to their paying clients, using every opportunity to sell terrible, worthless placements to advertisers. Which is to say that the problem is not that 'searchers' are the product, the problem is that Google is not focused on creating value for its counter-parties.
It's incredible hard to build a ad business around fairness. In 99% of all cases it's going to be a highest bidder thing.
Why should it? If you aren’t satisfied you can take your business elsewhere… wait never mind, there is no alternative.
I agree that Google is benefiting from being the dominant player in a two-sided marketplace (which makes it harder to compete), but we can always choose not to use it, both as advertisers and as searchers. Google’s exploitation of its counter-parties has definitely caused me to use alternatives more and more often.
Google is my third choice for searches. I try Ecosia first, but their indexing is garbage so I typically then go to Brave. If Brave doesn’t have it then I submit to the evil overlords at Google. Thankfully Brave indexing is pretty good so it‘s had a measurable impact on the amount of search I actually put through Google.
Kagi is the correct answer, because you pay for the service you use.
I use DDG on the consumer side but you, I and most people on HN are outliers, the other 90% don’t care enough to use something else yet.
> Amazingly enough, these aren't even the worst kinds of garbage health plans that you can buy in America: those would be the religious "health share" programs that sleazy evangelical "entrepreneurs" suck their co-religionists into, which cost the world and leave you high and dry when you or your kids get hurt or sick:
Seems worth noting that "sleazy" and "suck their co-religionists into" are (unfounded, as far as I can tell) opinions, "cost the world" is flat-out false and the exact reason why they are an appealing option, and "and leave you high and dry when you or your kids get hurt or sick" is also an unfounded claim. His only citation for any of this is talking about someone who doesn't like morality clauses, but...picked it anyways, presumably because it didn't cost the world?
Some are better than others. I picked the one that looked the most like real insurance and has a >30 year track record of not leaving people high and dry. I've been on it for almost seven years and it's worked out well so far.
"It's omnienshittified, a partnership between the enshittified search giant and the shittiest parts of the totally enshittified health industry."
Omnienshittified: May go down as the most hilarious - yet prescient - new word this century. (In the USA of course.)
To be fair, it's all "junk insurance"
I hate to be that guy but is it Google's responsibility to police legally operating insurance companies? It's not their problem that USA has a trash insurance market and a backwards healthcare system.
I believe traditional publishers had pretty specific liability for the stuff they carry. There's no magic exclusion for ads that I know of.
Source? Specifically, examples where publishers were sued for fraudulent products they advertised?
Legally? No. However, due to their alteration of search results anything that becomes the top is effectively an endorsement regardless of whether it was chosen by the black box or their employees. They already remove legally operating websites they disagree with. Since they’re selective editors with multiple lost antitrust suits, the only thing we as consumers can do is criticize. Especially as most of these companies top the charts due to SEO spam and not genuine traffic.