Where is TikTok not maximizing monetization? If you mean the GP's comment on China's ban on the algorithm originally used then you are missing a critical aspect of that: It wasn't TikTok's choice to stop or decrease monetization there.
Also, even if they were differently monetizing by region, you are also missing the non-monetary reasons this might happen: Manipulation & propaganda. Even aside from any formal policy by the Chinese govermnent self-censorship by businesses and individuals for anything the Party might not like is very common. Also common is the government dictating the actions a Chinese company may take abroad for these same efforts in influencing foreign opinions.
Yes, HN guidelines are generally to avoid modifying the source for headlines like this unless it is impossible/impractical otherwise. Doing so risks either accidental misrepresentation or editorializing, which is a bit of what happened here.
Thanks for that— I though I was going crazy (well still could be I guess) or had some strange habit or gesture I didn’t realize was silencing the alarm somehow.
When I have it do a search I have to tell it to just get all the info it can in the search but wait for the next request. The I explicitly tell it we’re done searching and to treat the next prompt as a new request but using the new info it found.
That’s the only way I get it to have a halfway decent brain after a web search. Something about that mode makes it more like a PR drone version of whatever I asked it to search, repeating things verbatim even when I ask for more specifics in follow-up.
AthenaHealth has a different type of rational self-interest, suddenly backing off an awful policy changes about anesthesia coverage. "Maybe we're pushing the overton window on acceptable levels of apathy a bit too fast?" is probably a common thought on the minds of corporate policy makers at the moment. Not, you know, goodness-of-the-heart or anything like that, just "pitchforks today mean political will for healthcare reform tomorrow, and we can't have that..."
Even burning buildings down and rioting, while people don't like it, it forces change.
Note how they are spending so much effort to prevent copy-cats like somehow they know there is a reason for many people to be mad and that the evil practices among businesses have been going on too long unchecked. If they treated people fairly and honestly there would be nothing to worry about.
You refer to Anthem walking back its decision to charge anesthesiologists according to Medicare standards (average time of procedure, rather than recorded time). I agree that the timing of the new policy announcement (if not the policy change itself) was probably influenced by the recent murder and public reaction.
But I’m not convinced this is actually a positive thing.
Notice that word in my previous paragraph: Medicare. One of the promises of single‐payer healthcare like Medicare is to lower bloated procedure costs by having a powerful, unified negotiator (the government) on the side of the patient. The fact that Medicare charges anesthesia this way seems to be an intentional example of this.
Is cutting costs here justified? Obviously it would be unjustified if the anesthesia were necessary. On the other hand, it would be justified if the anesthesia charges didn’t actually reflect the cost of the procedure. Personally, I don’t assume Medicare is in the business of maliciously cutting necessary healthcare to lower costs (the “death panels” argument famously put forth by Sarah Palin), at least not without evidence. So what does the evidence show? Well, it’s easy to find stats saying recorded anesthesia procedure times are considered unreliable, that an unusual number of procedure times are measured in round numbers, that the unusual procedure times are consistently and significantly longer than average procedure times, and suggesting (though not proving) fraud on the part of anesthesiologists and doctors.
The main group I’ve seen advocating against BCBS following Medicare’s charging rules has been the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Which makes sense—of course anesthesiologists would be against policies that decrease their pay. (By the way, the mean anesthesiologist salary in the US is $340,000 per year. https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes291211.htm) This walkback is a great PR victory for them.
Insurance companies are, of course, evil grifters. They have incentive to lower costs by cutting necessary care. But this particular policy is copied from Medicare, which doesn’t have the same incentives as an insurance company. Part of the dysfunction of the US health care system is that our procedure costs are unreasonably high. That doesn’t come from insurance companies and Medicare, it comes from doctors and hospitals. We can’t paper over that.
You refer to Anthem walking back its decision to charge anesthesiologists
according to Medicare standards (average time of procedure, rather than
recorded time).
Medicare reimburses anesthesia providers for the entire time the patient was under anesthesia. This is captured by time units. Anthem was planning to implement a hard cap based on Physician Work Time which is entirely different. In essence Anthem is weaponizing Medicare in an attempt to deflect blame.
You're right, I misunderstood how Medicare covers anesthesia. But the GAO report you shared strengthens Anthem's argument: they pay far more for anesthesia compared to Medicare, a sign that the providers are overcharging. And the stats about unreliability of recorded procedure times are still compelling.
Or a sign that private insurance companies are too burdensome. UHC is well known both for constantly changing the claims process and for preemptively denying valid claims. Arguably private insurance companies need to pay more because they are a significantly bigger hassle to deal with than Medicare and require a legion of support staff.
A change to SNAP benefits beyond the statutory amount referenced in the TFP would require legislative action. Both increases in existing benefits and an extension of the temporary benefits that had been in place were champion by many Democrats, but ultimately died through lack of bipartisan support as such I don’t think we can lay the blame for this particular government failure at the feet of the outgoing administration. It was this fight and others like it that the GOP saw as strategically important to regaining executive power.
I get how obviously the GOP was incentivized to block that, but be all that as it may, if the Democrats can't get it done with the power they already have, including the power of the bully pulpit and all legislative horse trading they could have engaged in, they should be completely unsurprised if the people who got burned as a result are loath to give them any additional power.
Honestly even though I disagree with the TrumpGOP 70% of the time, I'm actually kind of happy to see them control the whole thing, at least we can now put a bunch of right-wing ideas to the test rather than just have a big political wrestling match that usually ends in a draw, like we have for most of the past 3 presidencies. The thing is, without the government trying to destroy itself with infighting, right-wing ideas at least have some upsides, such as lower taxes. We have mostly seen the worst of both sides' ideas with few of the gains due to sabotage being so common.
Republicans had exactly this chance in 2016, and showed that their policies are just a bunch of hot air. The border? chaos. Repealing Obamacare? They were caught completely flat-footed and had nothing to offer. Cutting government costs? the debt and deficit grew each year of Trump's first presidency. Shrinking government? Yes, some departments were crippled, and regulations intended to protect consumers and the environment were weakened or reversed; but new regulations were also passed, many of them that benefit business at the expense of employees, consumers, and/or the general public.
Republicans have shown they can't govern. The House has been in complete disarray for the last 4 years, with constant in-fighting among the GOP and just trying to keep the government funded and running. Republicans are constantly flipping on criticizing Trump and fawning over him, depending on which way the wind blows.
It's shocking that so many people prefer a bully-rapist-fraud-felon with "a concept of a plan" who has openly talked multiple times about suspending the Constitution and rights of Americans, over almost any other alternative.
During the first 2 years of 45, the courts were firmly held by anti-Trump, Dem-friendly judges. Lots of stuff Trump tried to do, his campaign promises, were beat back instantly by the courts. Therefore little got done and then 2018 elections took away the ability for Republican (or any other) legislation to be passed due to a split government.
Again I don’t even agree with a lot of Trump stuff - or for instance TCJA which was total BS and raised my taxes. But again, Democrats have done nothing for me when they had power either. Where are healthcare improvements? Where is a better tax cut that actually hits the middle or even lowest earners? They couldn’t get it done because they suck at both convincing enough people to vote for them to get 60 votes in the Senate, and they suck at horse-trading to get the important things.
To test things out I searched for a neck brace. A few days ago I was trying, unsuccessfully, to find one that met certain criteria. Google didn't do a very good job, and not even as a result of countless ads-- there were surprisingly few. But results still weren't helpful, so I went to images to sort through countless photos for ones that looked promising and still didn find something that quite met what I was looking for.
I just did the same search with chatGPT and it gave 6 bullet-point options with a reasonable description, though that was likely based off marketing copy. Half were white-label rebrands of the same option but that's not really ChatGPT's fault, and even then it was the one that best met what I've been looking for.
Do you know where I could get some data on that topic?
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