111–120 of 170 posts
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There’s a bag of almonds in my pantry that literally says “Contains almonds” on it in the fine print.
And cooking spray sometimes says "Fat free!" because an average 'serving' contains < 10 calories of fat. Yet its 100% fat. A spray can of fat.
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In ancient Rome, Crassus owned the fire department. When there was a home on fire, Crassus would negotiate the price for extinguishing the fire with the owners or tenants. Plus ça change...
I mean, this is close to being right, but it's wrong in every one of the details. Crassus didn't own the fire department. Crassus owned a bunch of slaves who he had trained to put out fires. Crassus didn't charge for extinguishing fires. If your house was on fire, Crassus took his team and negotiated to buy your house . If you sold it to him, he'd put out the fire. There was no flow of money from you to Crassus under…
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I believe if you are recieved dangerously hot beverages(that could melt your skin) where there is no context to expect the beverage could harm you, and are injured from it, then it shouldn’t be your fault. If I ask for a glass of water from a restaurant, should I handle the glass of water as if it could give me frostbite? What if they handed me super cooled water that damaged my hand as I accidentally touched the sur…
Again, not the case in this particular instance. And further, the cup was very hot, and the lid secure. Those straw men are irrelevant - it wasn't by touching the cup that the litigant was injured. It was willfully removing the top.
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I think this legal arms race is a consequence of America's overly-litigious and profitable legal system. These EULAs are the equivalent of warning labels on soda bottles that loosely read "Warning: Contents under pressure, don't point at your eyes"... who is that written for? We laugh and call it unnecessary, but that warning exists because there is precedent that must now be defended against. When those ludicrous ca…
Make losing plaintiffs pay the defendant's attorney's fees and costs, it changes everything
It sounds to me that what is being monetized is the authority of doctors. There's a lot of medical conditions where you rely on the doctor to tell you what to do. After all, you don't have a degree in that. Now I can buy a clinic and pressure all the doctors through an incentive scheme that they are not used to, and get them all to nudge the borderline cases into must-act cases. And chances are each individual case i…
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This summer I made the mistake of going to a large dermatology practice with several locations because a dermatologist I had seen a few times before was unavailable. I had what turned out to be essentially contact dermatitis. The large corporate practice ended up billing almost $900 for this including an unnecessary biopsy. I assumed that this was simply a rogue practice, but this news story makes me see this in a ne…
Vertical integration is happening everywhere, especially due to advances in technology allowing for much greater economies of scale. Insurers have to combine with each other to get bigger to negotiate with providers and pharmacies, providers have to combine with each other to get bigger to negotiate with insurers, pharmacies have to combine with each other to negotiate with drug manufacturers and PBMs, drug manufactu…
After just finishing "Bad Blood", the book by John Carreyrou on the Theranos fraud, this particular passage in the article had me incensed: > This week a lawyer for Advanced Dermatology and Cosmetic Surgery, which is backed by private equity and is the largest dermatology practice in the United States, called the general counsel at the University of Florida, where two of the authors are employed, demanding specific c…
I'm disgusted by these high-powered law firms using thuggish tactics to try to silence critics. The actions of Boies law firm, as documented in the book, are particularly egregious. Worse still is that Boies himself has a track record of being super tech savvy; he’s litigated against Microsoft and Google. As he was a board member at Theranos, it stretches credulity that he wasn’t more aware of the deception. Paid in…
But there should be some ethics about helping clients with a lot of money bullying people with no money. Reading about the way Theranos abused whistleblowers with the help of lawyers was infuriating. The little guy simply has no chance against this unless you are willing to risk everything.
What is the value that private equity and/or VC are adding to dermatology? I guess what I'm asking is, why would the physicians be interested in sharing some portion of their income with these non-physicians? Medicine, like other guild professions like law, dentistry, and accounting, is an enterprise which seems to naturally fit the partnership model instead.
I am a general surgeon employed by a hospital system in the southeast. PE / VC don't add anything other than trying to skim a profit off the top of medicine, like any other capitalist. Dermatology is a lucrative practice. They don't have to work in hospitals, so they set their own hours. VC/PE's are doing the long game - purchase a practice (dermatology / anesthesiology, orthopedics ) and reward the current partners…
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Do they actually write that on carbonated drinks in USA? That's brilliant.
There’s a bag of almonds in my pantry that literally says “Contains almonds” on it in the fine print.
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In many other countries you can not fire someone by default (it's illegal) so calling it a powerful tool sounds wrong.
In what country can you not fire your own employees?