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pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

The bill took several tries to get trhough the legislature. As Oregon House Majority Leader Representative Ben Bowman told Matt Stoller and David Dayen on their Organized Money podcast, the statehouse was crawling with lobbyists hired by *out of state* private health-care firms who were worried about "contagion" if Oregon's bill passed and spread to other states:

https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/how-oregon-is-ending-corporate-run

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pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

The Oregon bill closes this loophole, and not a minute too soon. Giant healthcare monopolists - most notably groups associated with Unitedhealth, the largest health corporation in America - have embarked on a statewide buying spree, buying and shutting down rural hospitals and clinics, and transforming the remaining facilities into understaffed charnel houses that hemorrhage doctors.

11/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

The doctor takes orders from the PE firm, and hires the PE firm's outsource agencies to actually operate the clinic or hospital, absorbing the entirety of the practice's profits.

10/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

The American Medical Association has a longstanding, absolute prohibition on medical practices that are run by anyone *except* a doctor. Oregon has had a CPOM ban on the law-books since 1947. Private equity meets this prohibition with a very transparent ruse indeed: they get a "rent a doc," often out of state, to serve as the nominal owner of their practices.

9/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

But this is America: when the feds fail, that creates an opportunity for state legislators to step in and act. And that's just what's happened in Oregon, where the state legislature has passed sweeping, bipartisan legislation that bans corporations from owning or operating a medical practice in the state:

https://prospect.org/health/2025-06-13-united-health-care-oregon-corporate-medicine/

This is called the "corporate practice of medicine" (CPOM) and it's *already* banned.

8/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

The carried interest tax scam is preserved in the Big Beautiful Bill, joined with many other giveaways the least productive, most guillotineable looters America has produced:

https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/no-changes-carried-interest-big-beautiful-bill-so-far.html

Working people cannot rely on Trump's federal government and the Republican Congress to protect us from these vampires.

7/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

"Carried interest" is a tax law that gave 16th century sea-captains a break on their "interest" in the cargo they "carried." It is both weird and fantastically unjust that richest, worst financiers in America are able to take advantage of this Moby Dick-ass-law:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

But while Trump sometimes talks a good line about fighting private equity looters, he does not, has not, and will not lift a finger to them. He dares not.

6/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

Donald Trump sometimes panders to anti-elitist elements in his base by threatening the private equity racket. For example, Trump has frequently railed against the "carried interest" tax loophole that allows PE bosses to pay half as much tax as you or I would on their vast takings.

5/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

Unsuspecting patients who went in for routine surgery a hospitals that were in-network for their insurer would get a rude awakening from sedation: "surprise bills" running to tens or hundred of thousands of dollars. PE groups did the same thing with emergency rooms, so that people experiencing serious medical emergencies who had the presence of mind to insist upon being brought to an in-network ER nevertheless got hit with life-ruining surprise bills:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/14/unhealthy-finances/#steins-law

4/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

As bad as this is, it's ten quintillion times worse when applied to healthcare. When PE buys your hospital, people *die*. A *lot* of people:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

PE doesn't even have to buy the whole hospital - for a long time, PE groups bought out anesthetist practices affilated with hospitals and pulled them out of the hospital's insurance affiliation.

3/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

Their favorite scam, the "leveraged buyout" is a mafia bustout dressed up in respectable clothes, and if you mourn a beloved, failed business, chances are that an LBO was the murder weapon, and PE was the killer:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

(Despite simplistic explanations and bad-faith apologestics, a leveraged buyout is *nothing* like a mortgage - it is a sinister, complex, destructive form of financial fraud:)

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy

2/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

Private equity firms are the demon princes of the hellspace that is the imploding, life-destroying, plutocrat-generating American economy.

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/20/the-doctor-will-gouge-you-now/#states-rights

1/

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

The rich are a plague on humanity.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/06/20/when-will-we-get-a-vaccine-against-billionaire-brain-disease/

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
jayfairless ("Jonty") wrote:

@zverik @pluralistic Sounds like you need to talk to @jankamensky. His work on visual utopias really sets the standard for this stuff I reckon

https://visualutopias.com/

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

I solved this problem years ago by turning off every single possible notification except texts by approved phone numbers, ie, wife, child and friends. Literally everything else can wait until I decide to get around to it.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jun/20/increase-alert-fatigue-phone-users-disable-news-notifications-study-finds

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
daemon_nova@labyrinth.zone (":minecraftPickaxe: ⸸ cmdr ░ nova ⸸ :~$ 🏳️‍⚧️") wrote:

I saw someone post somewhere an article called "The Tyranny of the Marginal User" and I don't remember who did it, and I didn't get to read the full article, but I get the concept

And now I have a phrase for people who remain on bad social media despite everything

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
cstross@wandering.shop ("Charlie Stross") wrote:

It's glaringly obviously so—at least to me: I've been around long enough to remember the first dot-com boom at first hand, plus various property bubbles, the credit default swap bubble, the original bitcoin bubble, and so on.

After a while you learn to recognize a new market bubble on sight. Unfortunately that learning time can be 30 years ... so youngsters ALWAYS think "this time it's going to be different."
https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/114712748295654159

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
juliewebgirl@mstdn.social ("Julie Webgirl") wrote:

Days?? They'll find glitter in their underwear 5 YEARS from now!

Also, please tell me this is true.

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
mjg59@nondeterministic.computer ("Matthew Garrett") wrote:

My first paid software development job was on accessibility software. I remember visiting a user to help set up our code, and the sheer joy he had at being able to communicate more quickly than he had been able to for years.

Seeing the effort put into improving modern Linux accessibility is heartwarming. There's been almost 20 years of almost nobody caring. It's important. It's worthwhile.

Say thank you to the people doing that work. Stop amplifying the people saying that work isn't happening.

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
FediFollows@social.growyourown.services wrote:

Official accounts for 🇫🇷 French public organisations & government agencies:

(All in French unless otherwise noted)

➡️ @cnes - France's space agency

➡️ @cnrs - National Centre for Scientific Research in France

➡️ @hal_fr - French national open archive of multidisciplinary published & unpublished research

➡️ @episciences - Academic overlay journal platform funded by French public bodies (in French & English)

➡️ @inria - French National Institute for Research in Digital Science & Technology

🧵 1/5

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
finestructure ("Sven A. Schmidt") wrote:

No, we don't. We need to talk about your trackers.

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
amiserabilist@beige.party ("paul") wrote:

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
nixCraft ("nixCraft 🐧") wrote:

France quietly deployed 100,000+ Linux machines in their police force - GendBuntu is a silent EU tech success story

https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1lfxdsd/france%5Fquietly%5Fdeployed%5F100000%5Flinux%5Fmachines%5Fin/

Well done. Let us get free from Microsoft spyware OS. They are not trustworthy vendors, and all taxpayers' money should go to fund open-source apps/software and not to Bill Gates' fortune.

#linux #OpenSource

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
zverik@en.osm.town ("Ilya Zverev") wrote:

In @pluralistic 's The Lost Cause there was some software that kids used to show fellow residents a vision of a better future by modelling their streets and their houses. Basically what construction companies do to sell houses, or what road building companies do to sell asphalt. But easier and faster to use.

The question is, do we have anything like that? I'm at a point where I need to show a future of my town to residents, and I want to show them pictures and renderings, not just maps.

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
ryebreadnyc@fosstodon.org ("Ryan Thomas") wrote:

@noamross.net
I read several of @pluralistic books last year. I’ve enjoyed all of the books in the Marty Hench series (on wait list at library for most recent) and I also liked The Lost cause.

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
helenchong@social.lol ("Helen Chong :prami_pride:") wrote:

🏳️‍🌈 In this Pride Month, I want to take the opportunity to celebrate my queerness in my own personal blog:

https://blog.helenchong.omg.lol/en/posts/2025-06-20-queer-personal-blog/

#PrideMonth #PrideMonth2025

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

well, that’s disappointing @CARROT

Attachments:

• video: ba37b40048f78203.mp4

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
Jontofski@mastodon.art ("Jonathan Edwards") wrote:

Sly Stone.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
behindtheconsole@podcasts.social ("Behind The Console") wrote:

I can recommend this talk. https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn23-302-sound-chip-whisper-me-your-secrets- lots of #retrocomputing and #vintagecomputing in the #dsp audio generation world

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Checks out:

https://www.jonoalderson.com/conjecture/javascript-broke-the-web-and-called-it-progress/