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US hospitals and drug companies are claiming that a Trump regulation demanding transparency in pricing is violating their right to free speech. The rule demands that health and pharmaceutical companies disclose pricing of their services as well as the discounts that they negotiate with trade groups and insurance companies, and they don’t want to do so.

Let me explain:
I went to the emergency room about ten years ago because I woke up with my heart racing along at 140 beats per minute. An EKG showed an abnormal heart rhythm called Afib. I was far too young for that, so I was admitted to the hospital. They attempted several doses of medicine to no effect. After an hour or so, while the hospital was running tests, the problem resolved by itself, They hospital held me overnight, and then I was discharged.

A week later, the bill came in the mail: it was over $13,000. I went in to talk to the hospital’s billing department to give them my insurance information. They gave me a revised bill that reflected the “negotiated discount pricing” from the insurance company. The new bill was $1,100, with $500 of that being my copay and the insurance company paying the other $600.

How can a negotiated discount be over 90% off the full price? Since the hospital is willing to accept that low of a price, it seems to indicate that they can make money at that price, so what is the deal? My opinion is that the insurance companies need prices for uninsured people to be scary high, so that people all clamor for insurance. I could see a discount of 10, 20, or even 30% off, but more than 90% as a discount seems to be some kind of scam.

This is why the companies hate this rule demanding transparency, because that practice would have to come to an end, once people realized they are being duped. Disclosing prices and discounts would be a great way to allow consumers to decide for themselves whether or not to patronize a business. Can you imagine any other business where the prices are not disclosed to the consumer until after purchase?

Bring free market pricing back to health care. Let consumers know the price beforehand, and watch medical pricing become more affordable.

I spent a good ten minutes formulating my points opposing another’s opinion on gun control. This was what I got in return:

Fuck it. I’ve done my research and have been immersed in all this mess the last couple of days and just all of a sudden, I don’t care about making my point or hearing any more of yours.
Corvus oculum corvi non eruit, right? Have a good life.

I especially love the condescending use of a Latin non-sequitur (see what I did there?) at the end.

Referencing my last post: I used to laugh at people who believed in conspiracy theories with regards to the government staging or encouraging mass shootings in order to enact more gun control. I was even willing to believe incompetence was the cause of “Fast and Furious.” However, start looking at the incompetence involved: 

The recent church shooting has everyone fortifying their positions on gun control. The would be mass murderer used a shotgun, despite the fact that he was apparently a prohibited person. However, there is a monkey wrench in that theory.

Under Texas law, a convicted felon may possess a firearm in the residence in which he lives, once five years have elapsed from the date his sentence was discharged. What this means is that, while he may not have been able to buy a firearm from a dealer (who would have had to follow 18 USC 922) there is no problem with him having a shotgun in his home.

Now suspicious me seems to notice that every time the gun control debate heats up, there is a mass shooting that seems to happen at the most opportune (for the Democrat gun banners) time. I am going to predict that this shooting, had Wilson not shot the bad guy in the face, would have been the poster child for nationwide UBC.

Virginia, Texas, and whichever state is convenient for the next time, are being used to push the narrative.

Reading about this interview between Crowder and this professor, the biggest problem that I have is that major universities have professors of hip hop. Yes, even Harvard. If you are majoring in hip hop, you are wasting your time and your money. (Hint: Dr Dre isn’t a real doctor.)

The saddest part of all of this is that most of those who would major in rap music are doing so using taxpayer funds in the form of Pell grants. You and I are paying our taxes so that some aspiring rapper can hand $150 to $500 per credit hour over to this guy. Once they get their degree, the graduate has spent tens or even hundreds of thousands of tax dollars and are now just as qualified for employment as they were before they started college.

I recently got into an argument with a cop about firearms safety courses. I suggested that a basic gun safety course for people who have never fired or handled a gun before should not be taught using live firearms or ammunition. Instead, blue guns should be used to teach the basics of safety.

(The basis of the argument was that teaching firearm safety should be done in high school. A parent came on and said she didn’t think it was a good idea for children to handle guns in school. I suggested that the course could be taught using blue guns, and that way the basics could be taught without exposing students to undue risk.)

He responded by being an insulting ass, and telling everyone that HE is a 20 year New York cop, and that makes him an expert. He then told me that all of my certifications in shooting and firearms instruction are useless because the most important thing to be taught is how to load and unload firearms while keeping your finger off the trigger.

I told him that firearms and ammunition should NEVER be handled by students anywhere in a classroom, and that ammo and guns should never even be in the classroom together- this kind of thing should be restricted to range sessions only. Having guns and ammo being handled together, especially by novices, is just asking for an ND.

He then told me that I should stick to hoses. Since he was the cop, and everyone seems to defer to them on all topics related to guns, the crowd all nodded and gave me the stare down. I left the conversation at that point.

So, here is my request: Do any of my readers have a link to a best practices page from a reputable training organization that supports either position? I want to see who is correct…

This is the part where I tell you about my trip. Las Vegas is my favorite US city to travel to for a number of reasons: It is easy to get there, it is relatively cheap, and there is a lot to do, especially if you are travelling without kids.

First, when we go we usually fly there on a nonstop flight, even if we did drive once. It’s a six hour flight going west and a three hour flight coming back. We usually leave Orlando at around 5 and arrive in Vegas some time around 8 o’clock. Coming back, we leave at the same 5 o’clock and get to Orlando around midnight. Two round trip tickets usually cost around $600.

We stay in MGM owned resorts on the strip. Our favorite is NY-NY. The reason we stay with MGM is that our four days of our stay is usually comped, and we only pay taxes. They usually also give us a $150 room credit, so by the time you count taxes, they actually pay us to stay there.

This time, we stayed at the Bellagio for the first three days. The total cost was $153 for the three nights, but they gave us a $100 credit that we applied to meals, so the final cost was actually $53. For the next three nights, we stayed at the NY-NY. That one was entirely free, plus they gave us a $150 room credit. In all, the total for both hotels was a $97 credit.

Meals we ate out, and most of them were fairly cheap. We ate Christmas dinner at an upscale Italian place, and we had the Bellagio buffet one night. The total cost for two of us to eat both of those meals was about $200. Other nights, we ate cheaper meals. Our total meal bill for the entire week was about $800.

We rented a car on Christmas day and drove half an hour to the top of Mt Charleston so we could play in the falling snow. We walked the strip. We did some gambling, and we also caught a couple of shows. We also rode the “High Roller.”

The gambling was great fun, and as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I love to play CRAPS. I had lost a total of about $600 up until Saturday, bu I had a big night at the table on Sunday, winning about $1600 when one of the shooters at the table went on a roll. My wife also wound up winning a couple of hundred. (Sometimes, we come home winners, sometimes not.) So we came back to Vegas with about $1200 in cash more than we left with.

What all of this means is that our week-long Christmas trip to Las Vegas (air fare, meals, gambling, plus all entertainment) wound up costing us less than $700.