Funny events in anti-woke world

[Phoenixmgs]

They work fine for me--

Topic: Pharmacy benefit managers

Discover all statistics and data on Pharmacy benefit managers now on statista.com!

www.statista.com

Will Blue Shield’s New Pharma Model Disrupt the PBM Market? | AHA

A new plan will transition Blue Shield of California’s drug supply management from CVS Health’s PBM to five companies — a move the payer believes will save its 4.8 million members as much as $500 million a year in drug costs or about 10% to 15% of what it spends on drugs annually.

www.aha.org

Prime Therapeutics is one of the five companies over which they have spread PBM responsibilities.

As for ownership... you're sort of right. It's joint-owned by a number of individual 'Blue' plans, not by the parent company.

The central point stands: majority of PBM roles for 'Blue' plans are third-party.



The rebate does not originate in premiums. It comes directly from the manufacturer.

You could say that if the entirety of the rebate was passed to the insurer (functioning as discount), then it came indirectly from premiums. But we've established that isn't the case.

The Statista link wasn't working before for some reason, works now. Ok, so the big 3 PBMs are getting a lot of money from other insurers. Though, there's probably no reason the insurers that own the big 3 would work with other PBMs (outside of rather rare cases).

All the money any PBM gets is from premiums. Regardless if someone that is insured with say United or say Blue Cross and the drug they get that has $1,000 list price is through Optum Rx (United's PBM), that money is all from premiums.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Now this is a doozy, the president elect of the US is refusing to specify that he will NOT take military action to bring Greenland under US control.

LIVE: Trumps søn besøger Grønland

USA's kommende præsidents søn er på besøg i Grønland.

www.dr.dk

1:49 min video at the bottom of the page.

Or the Panama Canal, for that matter.

https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-wont-rule-out-military-economic-action-he-seeks-control-panama-canal-2025-01-07/

I hope all those people who put up "TRUMP FOR PEACE" signs are taking notice.

 

[BrawlMan]

Or the Panama Canal, for that matter.

https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-wont-rule-out-military-economic-action-he-seeks-control-panama-canal-2025-01-07/

I hope all those people who put up "TRUMP FOR PEACE" signs are taking notice.

Spoilers: They're not or ignoring it until they get personally effected. Even when they do, a majority of them won't learn shit.

 

[Silvanus]

The Statista link wasn't working before for some reason, works now. Ok, so the big 3 PBMs are getting a lot of money from other insurers. Though, there's probably no reason the insurers that own the big 3 would work with other PBMs (outside of rather rare cases).

Well, that's an assumption, but accepting it for now-- that's less than a third of coverage, so my point stands.

All the money any PBM gets is from premiums. Regardless if someone that is insured with say United or say Blue Cross and the drug they get that has $1,000 list price is through Optum Rx (United's PBM), that money is all from premiums.

But it's literally not. The rebate comes from the manufacturer, not the end user, and is partially pocketed by the PBM. The manufacturer has made its money from a variety of sources.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I hope all those people who put up "TRUMP FOR PEACE" signs are taking notice.

 

[Agema]

There is no physical evidence a crime was committed,

So, an absence of information.

no date to validate if he was in the store or even the city,

So, an absence of information

no witness that Trump had the opportunity,

So, an absence of information

no concrete explanation for why the store's barriers to such an opportunity (staff presence, door locks) would all be absent at the same time,

So, an absence of meaningful information*

and the only others who can testify on her behalf say that she described a sexual encounter with Donald Trump ("you won't believe what just happened to me") and they told her that she was raped. That is a substantial amount of information.

So, some corroboration of the victim's version of events.

* * *

* Just to make clear, I am extremely disinterested in your speculations about the store staffing and circumstances, because they are speculations: designed more as an appeal to incredulity than as good reasoning.

Just to give an idea here, imagine I were to say that prisoners cannot escape because of all the barriers to opportunity (guards, cell doors, walls) etc. And yet escapes occur: because opportunities appear, or because prisoners make them. If we step back, we understand that the world and its systems are full of "gaps" that are opportunities for people to exploit. People also make their own opportunities, and the rich and powerful have unusual ability to: they can assault someone in front of CCTV and have a decent chance of burying it - and for every one that may eventually come to light, I wonder how many got away with it.

 

[tstorm823]

Just to give an idea here, imagine I were to say that prisoners cannot escape because of all the barriers to opportunity (guards, cell doors, walls) etc. And yet escapes occur: because opportunities appear, or because prisoners make them. If we step back, we understand that the world and its systems are full of "gaps" that are opportunities for people to exploit.

But if someone accused a prisoner in jail of committing a murder, you wouldn't say "well, it's a 50/50 chance they escaped from jail to commit that murder and then went back, cause jailbreaks happen." I understand that is more extreme than a department store changing room, my point is the principle that systems to observe or prevent misconduct shift the probability that misconduct occurred.

 

[Agema]

I hope all those people who put up "TRUMP FOR PEACE" signs are taking notice.

Trump voters, broadly, aren't interested in peace per se. "Peace" is just the trendy rhetoric du jour because there are wars going on they didn't explicitly sign up to.

What they envisage is a world which the USA can carry on economically exploiting, but with minimal effort. What they want is not peace, but to win. That the USA's involvement in conflict is short, decisive, and victorious. Invading a small-medium size country, sweeping in all shock and awe over some poorly-trained troops with 50-year-old tech, 100:1 casualty ratio, great. Garrisoning that country for a decade against a hostile population to stabilise it post-invasion, no.

I would question whether Trump could get away with invading Greenland at a higher political and diplomatic level: Denmark is, after all, an allied nation. Panama is more credible as it's never been that far from being a US colony, although I think the USA could probably break Panama economically first. Nevertheless, irrespective, I think the Trump peanut gallery would merely hail his strength and domination in the case of an invasion of either, peace be damned.

 

[Trunkage]

Or the Panama Canal, for that matter.

https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-wont-rule-out-military-economic-action-he-seeks-control-panama-canal-2025-01-07/

I hope all those people who put up "TRUMP FOR PEACE" signs are taking notice.

Just to be clear, when they mean peace, it actually means that there is no opposition to US authority

It's got nothing to do with armies

 

[Agema]

But if someone accused a prisoner in jail of committing a murder, you wouldn't say "well, it's a 50/50 chance they escaped from jail to commit that murder and then went back, cause jailbreaks happen." I understand that is more extreme than a department store changing room, my point is the principle that systems to observe or prevent misconduct shift the probability that misconduct occurred.

Your analogy makes little sense in the context of the situation.

In your analogy, the location of the prisoner and victim can be reasonably verified and thus are effectively knowns - this is the same rationale as why it unlikely Silvanus committed an assault on you. However, the allegation here is that Carroll and Trump were both in a department store at the same time. There's no clear objective evidence to verify this or refute it, so it's an unknown.

So, if an accused shoplifter were to argue "Every day, 100 people enter a store and only one is accused of being a shoplifter, therefore there is only a 1% chance I am a shoplifter", you would credit that as a reasonable defence?

 

[tstorm823]

In your analogy, the location of the prisoner and victim can be reasonably verified and thus are effectively knowns - this is the same rationale as why it unlikely Silvanus committed an assault on you. However, the allegation here is that Carroll and Trump were both in a department store at the same time. There's no clear objective evidence to verify this or refute it, so it's an unknown.

...In a business with attentive staff and locked dressing rooms. Your "reasonable verification" is not absolute, it is based on reasonable assumptions. Silvanus could have booked a plane to Pennsylvania in the past just to assault me, there is no clear objective evidence to refute that, but that is a barrier to the crime that shifts the rational assumptions of the situation. You are perfectly open to making rational assumptions in every other situation, it is in just Trump's case that you have decided not to.

So, if an accused shoplifter were to argue "Every day, 100 people enter a store and only one is accused of being a shoplifter, therefore there is only a 1% chance I am a shoplifter", you would credit that as a reasonable defence?

That is not at all parallel to any logic that I've used, and it's a terrible defense, and yet it is still closer to valid reasoning than your actual stance.

 

[Agema]

...In a business with attentive staff and locked dressing rooms.

All the time, infallibly? If not, how reliable was it? You have no idea. So how much weight should we put on this to start with?

When I noted P Diddy, I'm inviting you to consider how the rich and powerful can circumvent procedures and norms. Trump could potentially redirect a sales assistant (e.g. ask them to get something in another size), or just invite, threaten, bribe, them to make themselves scarce. He's a very recognisable billionaire, after all, and they are just a sales assistant who's job depends on meeting the demands of very rich customers.

You could probably consider a whole host of other factors. The point being that your "reasonable assumptions" are vastly less assured than you treat them as.

* * *

That is not at all parallel to any logic that I've used, and it's a terrible defense, and yet it is still closer to valid reasoning than your actual stance.

Let's imagine you roll a die.
1) The chance that you roll a three is 1/6th.
2) The dice lands and you report it is three. Someone else argues that you didn't roll a three. In the absence of any other information, is the chance that they are telling the truth and you are lying 5/6ths?

 

[Silvanus]

That is not at all parallel to any logic that I've used, and it's a terrible defense, and yet it is still closer to valid reasoning than your actual stance.

It's perhaps not a parallel argument, but the shoplifting scenario is worthwhile. Shops are supposed to have attentive staff and anti-theft measures. Yet its indisputable that shoplifting is extremely commonplace.

With that in mind, we have plentiful evidence that those measures are insufficient to prevent the common occurrence of the crime. So it would be profoundly silly to assume a specific shoplifting incident didn't happen because staff in shops are supposed to be attentive.

And if a shop accused someone of shoplifting, it would also be silly to argue, "well employees in shops are supposed to stop shoplifting, so it's not very likely you were subject to shoplifting in this instance".

 

[Hades]

That Zuckerberg would be a rat like Musk wasn’t surprising. What was somewhat surprising is him saying the quiet part out loud in regards to Europe, that he aims to join hands with Trump to punish us for daring to have consumer protection, which measures against disinformation certainly falls under.

That’s ultimately what it all boils down to. European countries are often rule based democracies with consumer protection, and oligarchs like Trump, Musk and Zuckerberg hate, hate hate that.

That’s why they’re so anti EU. Those rule based democracies banding together can protect themselves and the public from oligarchal vermin. Divided and fractured they cannot.

They claim it’s about freedom of speech but it’s not. It’s that the public having rights and protection against them limits their greed

 

[Samtemdo8]

That Zuckerberg would be a rat like Musk wasn’t surprising. What was somewhat surprising is him saying the quiet part out loud in regards to Europe, that he aims to join hands with Trump to punish us for daring to have consumer protection, which measures against disinformation certainly falls under.

That’s ultimately what it all boils down to. European countries are often rule based democracies with consumer protection, and oligarchs like Trump, Musk and Zuckerberg hate, hate hate that.

That’s why they’re so anti EU. Those rule based democracies banding together can protect themselves and the public from oligarchal vermin. Divided and fractured they cannot.

They claim it’s about freedom of speech but it’s not. It’s that the public having rights and protection against them limits their greed

Missed out on news. What did Zuckerberg do?

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Climate change is woke, don't forget

 

[BrawlMan]

That’s ultimately what it all boils down to. European countries are often rule based democracies with consumer protection, and oligarchs like Trump, Musk and Zuckerberg hate, hate hate that.

That’s why they’re so anti EU. Those rule based democracies banding together can protect themselves and the public from oligarchal vermin. Divided and fractured they cannot.

Good

They claim it’s about freedom of speech but it’s not. It’s that the public having rights and protection against them limits their greed

Bictches in boxstands being the biggest bitches so they can be miserable bitches to everybody else without getting called out on or interfered with.

 

[Silvanus]

Missed out on news. What did Zuckerberg do?

Announced that Facebook and Instagram will be getting rid of its fact-checkers, relying solely instead on community notes (like Twitter).

 

[tstorm823]

All the time, infallibly? If not, how reliable was it? You have no idea. So how much weight should we put on this to start with?

When I noted P Diddy, I'm inviting you to consider how the rich and powerful can circumvent procedures and norms. Trump could potentially redirect a sales assistant (e.g. ask them to get something in another size), or just invite, threaten, bribe, them to make themselves scarce. He's a very recognisable billionaire, after all, and they are just a sales assistant who's job depends on meeting the demands of very rich customers.

You could probably consider a whole host of other factors. The point being that your "reasonable assumptions" are vastly less assured than you treat them as.

But none of that is the testimony. She didn't say he sent them away, she didn't say he arranged anything. She said they met by chance, he recognized her, the area happened to be empty when they got there and the door happened to be open. To establish his potential guilt, are you really willing to presume that both she and he are lying in his favor?

Let's imagine you roll a die.
1) The chance that you roll a three is 1/6th.
2) The dice lands and you report it is three. Someone else argues that you didn't roll a three. In the absence of any other information, is the chance that they are telling the truth and you are lying 5/6ths?

No. You're trying to argue against a point I didn't make. You're the one trying to make this some simplistic probability question.

If two people give conflicting records of events, there are way more than 2 options. They could both be honest, they could be one lie and one truth, or both be lying. And then beyond that, an honest account can also be mistaken. With no other information and just the variables of being honest and being accurate, and I am taking away the option of lying and accidentally telling the truth, there are 3 potential states for each individual: honest+accurate, honest+inaccurate, and dishonest+inaccurate. The only combination of two of those that is potentially invalidated by them contradicting is both being honest and accurate at the same time. That leaves 8 different ways two people can give contradicting accounts of events, 6 of which her account is inaccurate.

I'm not going to suggest all possibilities are equal without context, that's more a you thing, that isn't logically valid. But "it's a he said/she said, it starts at 50/50, and then we only consider things that make him look guiltier" is ridiculous on multiple levels.

It's perhaps not a parallel argument, but the shoplifting scenario is worthwhile. Shops are supposed to have attentive staff and anti-theft measures. Yet its indisputable that shoplifting is extremely commonplace.

With that in mind, we have plentiful evidence that those measures are insufficient to prevent the common occurrence of the crime. So it would be profoundly silly to assume a specific shoplifting incident didn't happen because staff in shops are supposed to be attentive.

And if a shop accused someone of shoplifting, it would also be silly to argue, "well employees in shops are supposed to stop shoplifting, so it's not very likely you were subject to shoplifting in this instance".

I agree this is worthwhile. Shoplifting happens, I agree. But imagine an accusation of shoplifting in a store that had no inventory discrepancy with sensors that didn't detect the theft when you went out the door and the only record of it is word of mouth that the manager told some friends 25 years ago.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Missed out on news. What did Zuckerberg do?

Remember when Facebook allowed promotion of violence against the Rohingya resulting in genocide by the Myanmar military? Zuckerberg now wants to do the same thing with Meta.