Snagged from tumblr: 24-hour News

 So the other day I said a thing about how I felt like a line could be drawn between antis, and the rise of 24-hour news networks. I’ve given that thought some time to bubble to see what, exactly, my brain meant by that statement, and here’s what I’ve got:

When I was a kid (back in Ye Olde 1990s), we had three major news stations in my town: Channel 12, Channel 24, and Channel 35. These corresponded to NBC, ABC, and CBS, but I don’t remember which one was which so don’t ask me. Anyway–you had a half hour of news at 8 or 9 am (depending on which station you watched), an hourlong program at noon in which half the program was stuff like “here are today’s beach closures and some recipes and also if you’re looking for stuff to do with the kids this weekend here are local promotions,” and half an hour at either 5, 5:30, or 6 (again, depending on which channel you watched). One of the three stations also did a half-hour capper at 10pm. So unless you were watching all three stations, and picking the news every single time, the max amount of news you were going to get was like an hour and a half. If you wanted more news than that, you read the newspaper. When my mom was a kid (back in Ye Olde 1960s), this would have seemed like an inordinate amount of news–for her, it was half an hour at 6pm and ten minutes at 10pm and then the station (there was only one station that did the news) played the National Anthem and went off the air until 6am, at which time you might get like … the weather and a traffic report.

For anything else, you read the newspaper.

Now with only half an hour to present a whole lot of news, what are you going to do? You are going to stick to the facts. You don’t have a choice. You have a very short time to fit a whole lot of information. “Notre Dame cathedral caught on fire today. French firefighters are working to get the flames under control, and authorities in charge of the cathedral are doing their best to remove relics, paintings, and other holy objects while it’s still possible. French President Mr. Somebody addressed the nation and stated every attempt to save the building, and to rebuild the damage, will be made. In local news … “ And that’s it! If you want more information, you’ve got to wait for the newspaper in the morning, and you’re going to have to get a copy of the New York Times or USA Today, because the local paper will only have a blurb, and that blurb will mostly cover what you just heard!

But then the news changed.

By the time I was a teenager, the non-cable news looked like this: All three channels had a morning show that started at 5 or 6 am (depending on your station) and ran until 8 or 9 (depending on your station). The station that ended at 8am then had a half-hour morning news show. The mid-day news at 11 or 12 was still an hour. Channel 35 did a half-hour news segment at 5 and another at 5:30, back to back. The other two stations simply did an hourlong segment. And then one station did half an hour at 10:30, and the other two did hourlong segments at 10pm.

What do you do with that much time? Well, you expand. Yes, you can fit more news, but you can also fit more about the news. “Notre Dame cathedral in Paris went up in flames today. The fire began in the famous historic bell tower, and spread to the roof. At this time, portions of the roof appear to have caved in, and there are concerns about the integrity of the medieval stonework in the cathedral walls. French firefighters have been working since 8am Paris time to get the flames under control, and authorities in charge of the cathedral are doing their best to remove relics, paintings, and other holy objects while it’s still possible. Some firefighters are also helping with this project, as portions of the building have become too unsafe to enter. French President Mr. Somebody addressed the nation late this evening and stated every attempt to save the building, and to rebuild the damage, will be made. Of the cathedral itself, Somebody said, ‘Our Lady has weathered worse troubles than this. Paris as a city, and France as a nation, will overcome.’ In local news … ”

Still facts, but a few more facts. At this point the internet as a public thing is just past its infancy, and in theory you could go look up some stuff on, like, AOL, maybe, about what was happening.

(Nina, you were talking about antis … ?)

(Yes, I was. Bear with me.)

But at this point you also saw the rise of Fox News and CNN.

Now up to this point, I could trust the news. That is important to know. “Nina, American news is full of propaganda–” Listen, you’re not wrong, but the point is, if Scott Brennan told me Notre Dame cathedral was on fire and priests were trying to remove the holy relics, I could safely assume Notre Dame cathedral was on fire and priests were trying to remove the holy relics. If Channel 24 told me “the blizzard of the century” had occurred the night before, I could look out the window of my snowed-in house and go “yeah, that seems legit.”

I grew up, in other words, in a world in which facts were facts. We didn’t waffle or wring our hands over whether or not Notre Dame was on fire. And this allowed me to take a similar approach to fiction: it is a fact that murder is wrong, and knowing this, I can read a book in which someone commits murder for very good reasons, but still know they did something wrong.

But now you have 24 hours of news to fill.

No matter how you pad it, no matter how many voice clips you play or retrospectives you do, you cannot find enough news in the world to fill 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year. You just can’t.

So they started adding “opinion pieces.”

Notre Dame is on fire–is it worth saving? Notre Dame is on fire–but is it as big a catastrophe as it’s made out to be? Notre Dame is on fire–but France has been steadily calling themselves a secular nation, so is this the punishment of G-d? Notre Dame is on fire–

–wait, what was that?

Yep. You saw it, I saw it, we all saw it. But as the “opinion pieces” slowly took over the regular news and stopped being called “opinion pieces” and started being called “programs,” it became less and less clear what was and wasn’t fact.

Now obviously Notre Dame is on fire. But now we have to ask ourselves: is it worth it to save it or not? Is the financial cost outweighed by the history? Will those answers change depending on how bad the damage becomes? And you, lonely elderly person in your chair whose predominant socialization these days is at church, how does this make you feel about French people? These are questions that once would have been asked of the church caretakers and the French government. Now every single person is being asked to think about them, without being provided all of the context that is available to the church caretakers and the French government. And along the way, you get these nice, nasty little bits of prejudice and slanted thinking and bias sneaked in.

I told you I’d come back to antis. And here we are.

The vast majority of antis are very young. They grew up in a world where those “programs” were the norm. They were not provided with a cultural basis of “these are the facts.” They were provided a basis of “here is what I think about the facts.” They were provided a basis of, as Mr. Banks said in Mary Poppins, “kindly do not cloud the matter with facts.”

There are no facts! Who fucking cares! An anti who’s 15 years old today was eleven years old when we were introduced to “alternative facts”! Is it wrong for a 27-year-old man to pursue a relationship with a 13-year-old girl? Depends on which news channel, and which presenter, you ask!

They literally grew up in a world in which critical thinking was discouraged. Once upon a time, you would have seen on TV that Notre Dame was on fire, and at dinner–or whatever your family did for together time–you might say things like “going to be expensive to fix that, I wonder what they’ll do,” but you wouldn’t have been hit with six presenters telling you exactly why Notre Dame should/shouldn’t be rebuilt. And don’t forget–even if you, personally, do not watch the news (or read it on the internet, which is just as bad, because everybody’s after those elusive advertising clicks, everybody needs the “scoop” two seconds before it happens), you know people who do. You hear their opinions and their hot takes and their retellings all around you. And those  opinions and hot takes and retellings will be colored by which “program” that person saw first.

Watch the first thirty seconds of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn2RjahTi3M

Walter Cronkite, a legendary news anchor, giving his opinion on Vietnam. You will notice that he states, very clearly: “it seems very clear to this reporter.” This is Cronkite’s opinion, nothing more, and he makes it clear that he is speaking only for himself.

Now skip to approximately 1:05, and watch him report the Kennedy assassination. You can see he’s emotional, but also keeping it under wraps as best he can because he has An Important Job To Do, and that job is twofold: to deliver the news accurately and concisely, and to keep the American public calm (you can see this when he hurriedly says Johnson is probably taking the oath to become President; a missing VP would be a crisis at this moment). This is a man who’s just found out the most beloved president in modern times is dead. And not just dead–murdered. It’s not like Kennedy had a heart attack, his damn head was blown off. This news is still coming in so quickly that you can see him glancing off the screen to get fresh reports. He’s one of the first to receive this absolute blow–and he’s still holding it together, barely wavering. (When I was a kid, this role would go to Dan Rather. He was no Cronkite, but he tried.)

Where is that kind of rock for today’s teens? Imagine–heaven forbid, in the state our country’s in right now–that tomorrow we get the news Biden was shot.

How would we get that message?

Would it be delivered by an even-keeled, just-the-facts reporter like Cronkite? Or would we get it from a bunch of half-hysterical articles and crisismongering “programs”? And would it be delivered to us straight, like Cronkite did, or would it be buried in three days’ worth of opinions on his “legacy” and policies and What This Means For America?

Now: how are you supposed to build any kind of strong convictions and moral compass on a world like that? Where anything can be true if enough people have an “opinion” on it? Where the facts get immediately buried in a wave of bullshit?

Antis are reacting to a world of “opinions” and “programs” being thrown at them 24/7 by trying to create a world they can control, where there are in fact things that are true, in a world that has actively refused them the opportunity to learn how to parse and process facts. And so what they’ve come up with is this grossly distorted version of facts, because gross distortions of facts are all they know. It’s all they’ve ever seen. They’re perpetuating a system they don’t even realize they’re part of, because they never experienced life before it existed.

They’re not lying when they say they were heavily influenced by fiction because the bounds between fact and fiction have been actively erased. On purpose. And it’s difficult to grok that, if you grew up in a world where you didn’t have to go seek out photographic evidence to be absolutely certain that Notre Dame was, indeed, on fire.

So what we need to be doing, first and foremost, is rebuilding that wall of facts, that line of truth. Otherwise, what we’re going to see is more of this, but getting worse daily.

We set them up for this, and now we’re paying the price for it.

--prismatic-bell on tumblr

Deconstructing Evangelicalism

 A friend asked the other day what percentage of people I went to youth group with “deconstructed” and what percentage remained evangelical. As I thought about it, I realized that for the most part it was the kids who took their faith the most seriously who eventually walked away.

Those of us who tearfully promised that we would follow Jesus anywhere eventually followed him out the door. The Queer kids, more than anyone, learned exactly what it meant to work out our faith with fear and trembling.

They told us to read the Bible and take it seriously and then mocked us for becoming “social justice warriors.”

Now they’re warning us not to deconstruct to the point of meaninglessness.

But they took a chisel to God until he fit in a box. They “deconstructed” the concept of love until it allowed them to tolerate sexual abuse, celebrate white supremacy, and look away from kids in cages.

Some of us got to where we are because we took it all to heart. We took the most foundational elements of our faith to their natural conclusions. Folks who deconstruct evangelicalism aren’t drop-outs; they’re graduates.

“Your kids are not leaving the church because you didn’t train them enough.   Your kids are leaving the church because you trained them well enough to develop a sense for truth and justice.  You let them read the words of Jesus - and they got it.  And they’ve recognized that the church doesn’t seem to be interested in those words. They’re not leaving because they don’t know the truth, they’re leaving because they do.“ 

A twitter thread by Caitlin J. Stout @CaitlinJStout from Feb 25 20A twitter thread by Caitlin J. Stout @CaitlinJStout from Feb 25 2021

Book Review: The Three Cs That Made America Great by Mike Huckabee, Part 1

Preface

Several weeks ago my Dad went to Sam's Club and bought us large bags of almonds, pecans, walnuts, and a big jar of cashews. We love nuts of all sorts at our house. The man-spouse frequently drops by the store on the way home to pick up a bag of pistachios or can of cashews to munch on, and I use almonds and pecans in salads and cashews in my sautéed spinach recipe. So this was a welcome gift. When we had consumed them all, I asked him if we could get some more. Sunday night he messaged me saying that he had been to Sam's and could I come over and get these nuts. When I got there he had a paper grocery bag with the three bags and one jar of nuts, four oranges...

... and a book by Mike Huckabee. "I'd like you to read this book," Dad said.

I shuddered and shook my head. "You don't want to read it?" he asked. I shuddered and shook my head. "He's drunk the Kool-Aid," he said to my mom.

The phrase "to drink the Kool-Aid" is a reference to the Jonestown massacre, a 1978 event in Guyana in which a charismatic cult leader convinced his followers that the government was coming to get them, and that the only way to save themselves was to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking grape flavored Flavor Aid laced with Valium, chloral hydrate, Phenergan, and cyanide. In Foxworld, use of that phrase does not refer to a cult leader type president convincing people that the "socialists" are out to get them and the only way to save themselves is to vote for people who want to take away their health care during a pandemic. It instead refers to people who have a different point of view, one which they supposedly came to because the "lying liberal media" fed them "fake news" in order to enslave them by convincing them to vote for "socialists" who want to "take away our freedoms."

My real reason for not wanting to read the book had little to do with Mr. Huckabee himself, even though I knew I was going to disagree with much of what he would have to say. Nor was it because the forward was written by fascist and professional fabulist Sean Hannity.  No, it was because I knew that this was going to turn into an involved research project that would occupy my brain, and I wanted to be able to sleep. It will take up ALL of my time, and I've got things to do. Plus, I know he's hoping it will influence my vote, but I voted in September.

The conversation turned to the fact that I'm back at work, and how much I am enjoying not being on the overnight shift anymore, and then I stepped into the other room to look for a DVD I wanted (but didn't find.) While there I thought, Oh, why not. I came back to the kitchen, put a set of DVDs that I had decided to take home into the bag. I grabbed the book and put it in too.
   "Oh, you're going to read it?" Dad asked. 
   "I guess," I said.
   "Have Gaby read it too. It's all about the Constitution, and I think he'll find it informative." Gaby has read two books in his entire life. This isn't going to be the third.

  I had to work on Monday, so there was no way I was going to get into the book before I had to go to bed, so Sunday night it sat untouched on the coffee table. I had three days off, so my plan was to start it on Tuesday morning in the hopes that I could mentally leave it behind as the day wore on. I did peek Monday evening. I thought it might be fun to be able to say, "Well, the first sentence was a lie." But it wasn't. I looked at one more sentence on a random page, and got reminded of why this could turn out to be difficult. 

A few years ago I read a book with the rather misleading title The Republican Brain.  It was, in fact, a look at what the differences are between the way the conservative mind thinks vs the liberal mind. Its conclusion, basically was that if you want to convince a liberal of something, you get out the spreadsheets and show them the data. If you want to convince a conservative of something, you have to appeal to their values. (My conservative Facebook friends have convinced me that if you want to convince a conservative of something, you fill them up with bogus information and scare the crap out of them, but that's another post.) For the liberal, their values are informed by their beliefs, and for the conservative, their beliefs are informed by their values. They have different paradigms, and that makes it hard to see the other's point of view.

   The word paradigm means model, and in this case I'm using it to mean the model a person has for his understanding of the way the world works. People with different paradigms have difficulty communicating with each other, usually because they use the same words to describe entirely different things. (My brother did a video about this, primarily about evolution. He could do the same with socialism.) But the understanding of language is more than just the words. There is subtext and nuance and a whole variety of things that influence your usage of the words that out of your mouth. It's like you have your own language. And for someone to understand you, they have to understand your language. That's why it's so hard to argue with strangers on the internet.

Now, I used to consider myself a conservative, and it wasn't that long ago. Unfortunately, it took a while for me to notice that the word 'conservative" had been co-opted by crazy people. But I think I still understand some of the concepts and lingo, so let's give this a go.

The first thing to do was to find out something about Huckabee the man. Checking Wikipedia, I find that there were a lot of things I knew, and a lot of things I didn't. I knew he had been a pastor, I knew he was the Governor of Arkansas at one time, I knew he ran for president a couple of times.  He's conservative on social issues (no surprise there, as his positions on abortion and gay rights are informed by his faith.) He's kind of all over the place on economics. He's surprisingly liberal on immigration. I found out that he plays electric bass in a band, and that he has a sense of humor. I knew that in one of campaigns he had a completely unworkable tax plan, but I didn't remember what it was. Looking further, I found out it was something he called a Fair Tax wherein income tax was replaced by a consumption (sales) tax. Consumption taxes are inherently regressive, which means that the less money you have, the more you pay in taxes. Under his plan, the poor would be given a subsidy (Socialism!) for their basic living expenses, but taxes would still go up significantly for the middle class, while dropping dramatically for the wealthy. 

I also believed that he was a dominionist. After reading the first chapter, that belief was reinforced. 

Dominionism, also known as Christian Reconstructionism, is the belief that 

• America is meant to be governed by Biblical law
• that the US was founded as a Christian nation, then betrayed by secular humanist liberals who created a myth of separation of church and state in the 20th century, leading the country to immorality and godlessness, and
• that the United States must be taken back by Christians.

Dominionists are sometimes called Christian supremacists because of their belief that their religion comes with the privilege of exemption from obeying certain laws, and Christo-fascists (my preferred term) because they seek to eliminate other people's civil and human rights.  Huckabee is quoted as saying, in January of 2008, 

"I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view." 

 But in the title of the book, he gives equal billing to Christianity and the Constitution, so I'm eager to see how he reconciles this. 

Sitting out on the front porch, I began reading the first chapter, Christian Faith Comes To A New World. Immediately I'm confronted with a question: just how pedantic do I want to get? Like, the Pilgrims did not name their colony Plymouth Rock. John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, had surveyed the area a few years earlier, and named it New Plymouth after a town in England, and the Pilgrims kept the name. Plymouth Rock, however, didn't become a thing until 121 years later. (Plymouth Rock has a pretty interesting history. Check out its Wikipedia page.) But of course, that's not Huckabee's larger point. 

Huckabee writes that during the time of the pilgrims the established church had become corrupt, seeking to please the king, who was using the church as a political tool to control his subjects. For the Pilgrims, being English, that would be the Church of England, and the king would be King James I, who had sponsored an English translation of the Bible just a few years earlier. Without meaning to, Huckabee has made the point iterated by Thomas Payne in his pamphlet The Age of Reason:

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law."

I see this as problematic for someone who wants to change the Constitution to line up with the Bible. But this is only page 2, so we'll have to see where it goes. 

Next up is a section about colonial charters. A charter is a letter of permission from the king to a private company allowing them to do business. It's basically a contract that defines the business and its objective. The London Company, for instance, was formed with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in the Virginia territory as defined by the charter. Shareholders were given interest in the natural resources produced in the colony. It was a feudalistic system in which the company served as the lord and the settlers as the fiefs. Huckabee pulls a portion of a quote from the penultimate paragraph of the second Virginia Charter (1609):

"The principle effect that we can desire or expect of this action is the conversion... of the people in those parts unto the true worship of God and Christian religion." 

He says this is an example of the "religious fervor held by the early colonists in America." There may well have been a religious fervor held by the early colonists, but the charters have nothing to do with that. This was a directive from the King of England, who is also the head of the Church of England, who Huckabee said was using the church as a political tool just one page ago. "People in those parts," of course, refers to Native Americans. King James himself had a strong dislike of Native Americans because they had introduced the "filthie novelitie" of smoking into British society. But the king still held the opinion commonly held by English clergy that the Native Americans were ripe for conversion to Christianity -- of a particular flavor, as we will see in a moment. Richard Hakluyt (the younger) wrote, "The people of America crye oute unto us... to come and helpe them, and bring unto them the gladd tidinges of the gospell." In his pamphlet Nova Britannia, Robert Johnson wrote that once in the New World, the English would begin the social and spiritual conversion of the natives "by faire and loving meanes, suiting to our English natures." But while writers back home were insisting that conversion of the natives was a principal purpose of colonization, the men on the scene considered the natives a military problem in which the natives were a real or potential foe. 

Besides, he was very selective about the quote. Here is the rest of it:

And lastely, because the principall effect which wee cann desier or expect of this action is the conversion and reduccion of the people in those partes unto the true worshipp of God and Christian religion, in which respect wee would be lothe that anie person should be permitted to passe that wee suspected to affect the superstitions of the Churche of Rome, wee doe hereby declare that it is oure will and pleasure that none be permitted to passe in anie voiadge from time to time to be made into the saide countrie but such as firste shall have taken the oath of supremacie, for which purpose wee doe by theise presents give full power and aucthoritie to the Tresorer for the time beinge, and anie three of the Counsell, to tender and exhibite the said oath to all such persons as shall at anie time be sent and imploied in the said voiadge.

So the directive from the King of England, Sovereign Head of the Church of England, is to convert the natives and prohibit Catholics, the Catholic Church being the Anglican Church's bitter rival, from entering the colony. 

Meanwhile, back at ranch, the Native Americans did not welcome the new settlers with open arms. They were skeptical of English intentions, and wanted neither Christianity nor encroachment on their lands. John Smith had lied to the Powhatans about their purpose for being there, saying that they had just escaped from a Spanish squadron, and they were taking temporary refuge. Three colonists were killed in a skirmish when the Powhatans found them planting crops. But eventually the English weaponry forced the Powhatans to reluctantly accept the English presence. Captain Smith recorded this conversation in 1609 with Wahunsenacawh, who the English referred to as King or Chief Powhatan: 

"Captain Smith, some doubt I have of your comming hither... for many do informe me, your comming is not for trade, but to invade my people and possesse my country... Having seene the death of all my people thrice... I knowe the difference of peace and warre better than any in my countrie" If he fought the English, Powhatan predicted, he would "be so hunted by you that I can neither rest eat nor sleepe, but my tired men must watch, and if a twig but breake, everie one crie, there comes Captain Smith: then must I flie I know not whether and thus with miserable fear end my miserable life."

The colonists' relations with the natives was complicated. There was a period of hostility between 1610 and 1614, followed by an eight year span of relative peace. Then in 1622, 347 colonists, a third of the population, were massacred by a confederacy of Powhatans. After that it was all out war. 

The history of all that can be read elsewhere, but one of the underlying causes for all the conflict was the English attitude of ethnocentric racism, what would be referred to today as white supremacism, which transformed itself into outright contempt once it arrived in the New World. The Native Americans were viewed as culturally and religiously inferior, and in need of redemption, which involved adopting English customs and fealty to the King. William Strachey wrote, "we shall by degrees chaung their barbarous natures, make them ashamed... of their savadge nakednes, informe them of the true god, and of the waie to their salvation, and fynally teach them obedience to the king's Majestie and to his Governours in those parts." Concern for the native's salvation failed to cover the general disdain the colonists felt for them. John Bonoeil described them as knowing "no industry, no Arts, no culture, nor no good use of this blessed Country heere, but are meere ignorance, sloth, and brutishness, and an unprofitable burthen... [They] are natural borne slaves." The message of his pamphlet fell on receptive ears in a public that perceived the natives as a nuisance to be pushed aside or enslaved. Even the clergy saw no prospects of conversion until "their Priests and Ancients have their throats cut." 

I doubt that any of this is what Huckabee meant when he referred to the "religious fervor held by the early colonists in America." I also doubt that he did any research about it, because it certainly doesn't fit into the narrative he wants to promote.

 I'm only on page four. This is going to take forever.

A Quick Thought: BLM

 A quick thought.

Black Lives Matter is just the latest chapter in the civil rights movement. We may call it something different today, but it's not much different than the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. In fact, it's just a continuation. And with it comes the very same resistance, just wrapped up in new slogans.

https://segregationinamerica.eji.org/report/segregation-forever-leaders.html

Snagged from tumblr: Antifa

 A reminder that antifacism is a thing you DO, not an organisation you JOIN.

Calling a hotel and telling them a KKK chapter rented their ballroom for a meeting is antifa action

Pulling down posters promoting hate groups is antifa action (and if you do, use your keys, not your hands. Some groups put razor blades behind their postings to hurt anyone who takes them down)

Addressing local tensions in your community by participating in food drives and supporting disempowered folks can be antifacist, as facist groups will use community fears to stir up hate and gain power.

Going to an event where a figure whom fascists tend to align with and peacefully protesting is antifa action, whether that speaker thinks they’re fascist or not.

It’s not a club, religion, or organization. You don’t pay dues. Being antifa means actively trying to prevent fascism from being built, usually in local ways that respond to immediate community needs. If you see ANYTHING that talks about officially joining a group or organization, it is SUSPECT.

Snagged from tumblr: Hospital Costs

Costs all vary by hospital, and they’re all massively inflated. They’re part of complex negotiations between the hospital and the insurance company, and they’re a scam.

The hospital puts all these little charges together to “justify” a giant bill. Then they “lower” those costs to what they’ve already agreed on with your insurance company. The insurance company then tells you “look how much we reduced your bill by our negotiating!” and then pays some portion of that bill and passes the rest on to you, depending on your deductibles and so on.

If you have no insurance, you don’t get the benefit of the “negotiated” price - they keep the price that high as part of a deal with insurance companies who are trying to justify why you should pay them so much in premiums every month. If out of pocket patients paid less, nobody would get insurance.

We need price transparency where hospitals have to publish these costs and make them available to everyone. We need to be able to call people out when they charge $20 for a tissue and $30 for a band-aid. We also need to be able to compare prices and choose hospitals that give us the best balance of cost and quality. 

We also need to stop acting like giving everyone health insurance is the solution to our broken healthcare system. The insurance companies are the ones who broke it. 

If you are facing a big bill after a hospital stay, whether for giving birth or for anything else, here are some ways to reduce that bill.

1. If you have insurance, call them and ask for an explanation of what they didn’t cover. The person will probably not have one for you. Say you are not willing to pay a bill if they can’t explain why you owe it. The insurance company will sometimes re-submit the claim and cover more of your cost. 

2. Call the hospital billing department and ask for an itemized bill. This alone may reduce the cost somewhat because they were overcharging you to begin with. 

3. When you get the itemized bill, go through it. Highlight any items that seem exceptionally overpriced or even that don’t apply to your visit (a medication you didn’t receive, a procedure that wasn’t done, etc.)

4. Call the hospital billing department back and go through the itemized bill, asking for clarification on all the items you flagged. They may remove items or reduce the cost.

5. Explain that you are unable to pay your bill in full and ask about a settlement or payment options. Sometimes the hospital will be willing to take a significantly lower amount if you can pay all at once, or you can get a payment plan with no interest that is feasible for you. 

This is based on how my husband has been fighting medical bills for the last couple of years. He has a chronic illness and has frequent appointments, procedures, tests, etc. He frequently gets large bills and then negotiates them down to much smaller ones, or in some cases has gotten bills dismissed completely. 

He says that calling the billing department and the insurance company and simply asking them to explain the charges makes a huge difference every time, because the person on the phone almost never has an explanation for why the bill is so high. 

You ARE being overcharged, and you don’t have to just deal with it. You can fight back!

First Reaction: The Family Defense Edition

Yeah, but you've also complained about compulsory masks, so I'm not sure I believe you.