Stevie's Angels

05/14/2026

05/07/2026

Elisabeth Rosenthal learned the hard way that if you need admission to a hospital, you might remain in the emergency department for hours, even days, while waiting for a real hospital bed.

As he battled esophageal cancer, her husband, suddenly needed to go to the hospital in 2024. After 36 hours in the emergency department, he finally got a bed “upstairs”—which turned out to be another temporary area for ED overflow lacking adequate personnel. “The overworked staff did the best they could, but that was far from good care,” Rosenthal writes.

When she started asking around, Rosenthal quickly discovered that ED boarding has become commonplace in the past five or so years and is getting worse, more or less omnipresent in hospitals.

Today, hospitals run like airlines and intentionally overbook, Gabe Kelen, the director of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said. “An empty, staffed bed is a money loser, so the institution has an incentive to keep beds full and make new patients wait,” Rosenthal writes.

For ED boarders, “the rules governing acceptable care and safety measures become much less clear,” Rosenthal writes. Despite a national push to establish “safe staffing” nurse-to-patient ratios in EDs, if a boarder has a medical complaint that needs quick attention, it’s easy for them to fall through the cracks, Adrian Haimovich, an ED doctor, told Rosenthal.

“The problem isn’t inefficiency—it’s the way health-care finance is structured,” Kelen told Rosenthal.

🎨: Isabel Seliger / Sepia

Full Story https://theatln.tc/V1k7jVQo

04/07/2026

Trump Administration Finalizes 2.48% Medicare Advantage Payment Hike For 2027, Sending Insurer Stocks Surging

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services set the payment increase at a net average of 2.48%, adding more than $13 billion in payments to Medicare Advantage plans in 2027. That was far above the 0.09% increase the agency had floated in January, which had pushed insurer stocks lower.

Stock Markets responded swiftly. Shares of UnitedHealth Group Inc.(NYSE:UNH) and CVS Health Corp.(NYSE:CVS) each climbed more than 9% in after-hours trading on Monday. Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) surged about 12%. Elevance Health Inc. (NYSE:ELV) rose nearly 6%.

Annual Medicare premiums are projected to rise from roughly $2,440 per person today to nearly $5,000 by 2035, with an estimated $450 of that increase tied to Medicare Advantage overpayments alone

Source: Benzinga

The Trump administration on Monday raised the amount it will pay private insurers to run Medicare health plans for seniors, setting rates well above a prop

04/07/2026

Millions of Americans paid billions in tariffs later ruled illegal — and they won’t see a dime back

Low- and Middle-Income American families, and small businesses, accounting for well over half of our country’s population, paid out a disproportionate share of their incomes to the government due to IEEPA Tariffs recently struck down by the Supreme Court.

Total payments amounted to roughly $175 billion.

Now these families and small businesses face the prospect of receiving no rebates. Thus, the system is regressive for them on both the front and back ends — the burden of the original high tariffs and now the denial of rebates to compensate them.

As the result of the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs announced April 2, 2025, retail prices rose by between 6 and 7 percentage points, costing the average American household between $400 and $600 — and many considerably more. For low-income families especially, this was a painful gouge into their incomes.

One might imagine that in the interest of fairness, rebates would automatically go to these families and small businesses. That is not the case. The way our system works, rebates go ONLY to importers who DIRECTLY paid the tariffs to the Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) in the first place. The CBP estimates that 330,000 American importers actually paid the tariffs.

In contrast, 300 million-plus Americans assumed most of the burden virtually every time they went to the grocery store, bought a car, or purchased a pair of shoes, a dress, or a home appliance. Small businesses lost as well because most of the costs of the tariffs paid by larger importers or wholesalers were passed on to them. Most consumers and small businesses have NO clear recourse to getting any of their money back.

Source: Fortune

The $175 billion rebate system only returns money to importers — leaving low- and middle-income families and small businesses with nothing.

04/07/2026

Calling all cancer survivor and caregivers: we want to hear from you! Complete the NJ Cancer Survivorship Survey to share what information, resources, and support matter most to you. Answers are anonymous and will guide our future planning. bit.ly/NJCancerSurvivorshipSurvey

01/13/2026

Reminder: Your normal, ordinary day, is the anniversary of someone else's tragedy. I try to always remember that because we just don't know what anyone is going through no matter what they look like publicly.

Kindness and compassion should be ingrained in our moral code as humans.

Cancer stole decades of my daughter's life before the last chapter stole her from us - every time we thought it was over & she was safe, it came back down the road. That's a different kind of emotional trauma and fear to live with.
Be grateful for your children's health. Pray for early detection. Pray for access to healthcare. Pray for their health. RIP Steezy J Baybeh 💔

12/31/2025

Please bookmark this Private Equity Hospital Tracker (PESP). Avoid these hospitals at all costs!

What it is: A public database tracking US hospitals owned by private equity firms, revealing ownership structures and identifying firms like Apollo Global Management (Lifepoint, ScionHealth) as major players.

Purpose: Increases transparency, as private equity ownership models (debt-reliant, profit-focused) can conflict with quality care and increases patient mortality

Where to find it: On the Private Equity Stakeholder Project website.

The Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) is releasing a first-of-its-kind data project to track the insurgence of private equity (PE) ownership of our nation’s hospitals. The new PESP Private…

12/29/2025

Urgent information you should know. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17xW5JeA3d/

12/21/2025

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