Tag: villainy

Dept of Pure Evil: Genentech says “no substitutions”

Genentech makes an eye drug called Lucentis. It’s expensive: $2000/month. They also make a cancer drug called Avastin. It’s inexpensive: $40/month.

The two drugs are chemically very similar. So similar, in fact, that compounding pharmacies are repackaging Avastin and doctors are prescribing it for the eye problem.

Genentech doesn’t like this. They want the money for Lucentis. So, they’re stopping shipment of Avastin to all the pharmacies and sending it only to hospital pharmacies or directly to doctors. Furthermore, they’re refusing participate in the NIH study to confirm or reject the similar usefulness of the two drugs, and not even providing drugs at cost to the study as is customary.

Result? $1-$3 billion more a year of taxpayer money into Medicare, because almost all the patients involved are over 65. I think it’s great how the drug companies selflessly do research and development to keep us all healt… yeah.

Wall St. Journal article below.

article

THE MOTHER OF ALL BUTTLES

The “health” “plan” from my last job has still not paid any of the claims from February to March of this year.

Today I got a bill from a collection agency for an $800+ charge, now with added interest.

A month ago I spoke to a “rapid resolution expert” at the health plan who was shocked, shocked at the lack of payment and pressed lots of buttons and told me it would be resolved in 30 days.

Nothing was done.

Today I spoke to another “rapid resolution expert” who was even more shocked and promised me a written response in 48 hours and resolution within ten business days. He gave me a magic string of digits which supposedly will make the collection agency back off.

Once again let me observe that I am at the very top of the privilege ladder here, and I’m getting reamed really hard.

Now that’s what I call mail fraud

Impersonating the U.S. Government? Yup. False Census mailer? Yup. Official-looking eagle and star logo? Yup. Aimed at seniors? Oh yeah.

This time the Rev. Lou Sheldon, chief huckster of the religious right, has really boned it. I reported it so far to the Census Bureau and the Post Office. Oddly there’s an article from last year about this from the SFGate site but no one is yet in jail.

cut for large scan

Don’t use your debit card at the gas station.

pinzWell you can, but don’t put in your PIN; insist on doing it as a credit transaction. Why? Because people love to steal the PIN. It’s way easier to empty your bank account that way than it is with regular credit card fraud.

Retailers will do just about anything to force you into using the PIN instead of a credit card type transaction, because credit cards cost them money and PIN/Debit transactions don’t. So you have to say it’s credit, punch the credit button, decline to use your pin, and then tell the checker again that’s credit. Or they just automatically present you with the PIN entry screen with no other options.

So, what happens when you use your PIN? Usually nothing, because supermarkets and other big retailers are secure environments. But if you use one of those rollaway ATM droids, or the ATM at some nightclub, not so good. And if you go to a gas station that only takes PIN transactions, like the ARCO here, you might just get royally and electronically screwed.

Why yes, yes it is.

I heard a carnival barker-style bellowing ad on the car radio yesterday while listening to the all-news AM station. It was the usual mortgage broker appeal to refinance, this time with the added warning that rates were going up. The ad concluded:

“It’s the biggest no-brainer in the history of Mankind!

THE FALL OF RAHODEB

From the WSJ news alert thingy:

Whole Foods’ founder and CEO John Mackey posted many messages on Yahoo’s stock forums for about eight years, ending around August 2006, the company confirmed Wednesday. Mr. Mackey used the pseudonym “Rahodeb,” an anagram for Deborah, the name of Mr. Mackey’s wife. On the boards, Rahodeb routinely cheered Whole Foods’ financial results, trumpeted personal gains on the stock, and bashed rival Wild Oats.

hahahahahaha DOH

I just canceled two credit cards.

Zeroed out balance, they were crap ghetto credit, goodbye.

1) HSBC. Polite and pleasant operator transfers me to “win-back” guy. He talks too fast reading the script and is hard to understand due to an accent, but very nice. After two attempts to sell me back, including a fairly pathetic 2% cashback offer and waiving the membership fee, he folds and agrees to cancel it and send me written confirmation.

2) Juniper/Apple Credit. Same type of operator transfers me to win-back guy. He is a “relationship manager” which makes me think of Dr. Neil Clark Warren. He doesn’t try to give me any deals. Instead he first tries to sell me on how great the card is, and is not chagrined at all to learn that I have 8% less interest and ten times the limit elsewhere. Then he issues a warning: if I cancel the card, it could have an adverse effect on my credit rating! He says this once and I point out that closing the account after paying it off is probably not a minus. In a more ominous tone he asks me to reconsider because it could seriously be a negative MARK on my CREDIT RATING if i canceled. “Oh no you don’t,” I say. “Enough with the threats; that is not cool. Immediately cancel the account and send me written confirmation.” He folds too.

Nice bullying, Juniper/Apple!

POLITICS

Because I am having a bad work day and I didn’t sleep, here’s a cranky political bit.

I read and hear and see various thoughtful “analysts” and “pundits” and political types discussing the Iraq war lately, and they keep saying things like this: “How did this intelligence failure occur?” and “How is it that we proceeded on bad evidence about weapons of mass destruction?” and “How can we improve/reform/rebuild our intelligence services to avoid these blunders in the future?”

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The WMD rationale for the war was a deliberate lie from beginning to end. Anyone who stood up to the lie, especially in the intelligence services, was fired or sidelined. Parallel intelligence services were set up exactly to repeat the lie in official documents. An ugly revenge was taken on an official who stuck to the truth. This is all common knowledge.

So why are these beard-stroking collaborationists musing in a measured and dignified way about the strange and certainly unfortunate case of the not-quite-accurate intelligence estimate? Why hasn’t Hillary or Obama or anyone at all with access to the microphones and the rabbit-ear TV come out and said “J’accuse, Mr. President: you have lied to us and done so deliberately, and you know full well there were no WMD, and you and your lackeys have sent us into a bloody unwinnable war out of pride and greed?”

I’m supposed to understand all the cynical reasons why politics is shitty but this one is just past me. These people have so much to gain from telling that truth loudly; what are they afraid of, exactly?

the slappy hand of justice

A shitty doctor who gave me bad medical care 17 years ago is now up on FORTY SEVEN FELONY COUNTS for doing, well, what he did to me: overcharging and charging for nonexistent services.

Odd that I reported him back then and only now is the bastard on the hook. You don’t forget a name like “Mario Rosenberg.” (He’s an Argentine.)

The guy literally stuck something up my ass and then overcharged me for it. I recall telling my next doctor the story and he said “Mario did that?” Yeah, and Luigi helped.