Lunatech

Lunatech , 1 month ago

@briankrebs I'll just say this in response, personally I never know what is going to offend someone. I have never had great social skills, and when someone takes offense at something I say or do I often agnogize over who was in the wrong, me or the person being (maybe too easily) offended.

That said, if someone has the choice to mute or block me (and they feel they must do one of the two), I'd much rather they block me so I can't read what they write and then maybe at some future point write a response that they will never read. If, as rarely happens, someone offends me so much that I never want to see anything else they might ever write, I'll always choose to block. I do use mute too, but most often because someone is posting in a language other than English but their posts are still getting through despite the fact that I have set my preferences to see English language posts only. Since I only understand English, there is no point in receiving posts from someone who writes in another language.

Lunatech , 2 months ago

@Teri_Kanefield You really need to find an instance that will let you post more than 500 characters at a time. When you post a series of posts, I generally see one or two ot of ten.

Just so you know, infosec.exchange will let you post up to 11,000 characters at a time. Some otrher instances will also let you post more than the Mastodon default of 500 characters, though as far as I know there unfortunately is no list of instances ordered by maximum post length.

Lunatech , 3 months ago

@dangillmor There are other reasons that #MedicareAdvantage plans are popular with seniors. The article covered a big one, it is less complicated and offers more benefits, including vision and dental benefits. But there are other benefits as well. For example, the plan I am on not only does not charge me any premium beyond what the government takes out of my monthly Social Security payment for standard #Medicare, but this year they actually offer a plan where I get $150 of that premium back each month, so there is an extra $150 in my Social Security direct deposit (which is a HUGE help in these inflationary times). But wait, there's more...

I can get my prescriptions from their mail-order pharmacy with zero co-pay on Tier 1 and Tier 2 drugs. I get an allowance of over $100 each calendar quarter to purchase Over The Counter (OTC) items from a catalog, and I can either order them online or pick them up at a local pharmacy branch (if you take vitamins or supplements this is kind of a big deal). If I enjoy hanging out at a gym (I don't, but some people do) I can do that whenever I want using a program called Silver Sneakers. And there are several other benefits I can't think of right now, but that are not offered in standard Medicare.

The tradeoff is if I get sick or need hospital care, I will pay somewhat higher co-pays to see specialists or for hospital stays, etc. than the people who have plans with fewer benefits. If you stay healthy and don't need any major operations, you'll probably make out like a bandit. Many plans have no co-pay for visits to your primary care doctor. If I do get sick or injured, or need to see specialists, there is still that annual cap on out of pocket expenses, but care could cost me more than what I save by getting those sweet, sweet Medicare premium refunds.

Honestly they ought to offer these plans in Las Vegas, because it is a big gamble to try and pick the most adventageous plan, and also to pick an insurer that will not try to screw you out of necessary care. I know enough to avoid Humana and United Healthcare (the two that seem to get mentioned a lot in stories where there are problems), and Blue Cross is just too stingy with their offerings in my area, which means I need to pick from one of the lesser-known companies. Three years ago I signed up with a company that was great the first year, but got less and less so as time went by. So this year I chaged to a different company, but I really did not feel llike I was making a fully informed decision - there were just so many variables between the plans, and the one thing the plan literature doesn't tell you is whether they will try to delay or avoid payment of claims.

One issue is that a lot of seniors, especially those who are confused by all the offerings, sign up for these plans through "navigators" (basically insurance agents) and those folks may or may not offer the best plans in an area. If you get a good one, they will let you know about pros and cons of all the available plans and let you make make the best decision for you, and then help you fill out the paperwork. If you get a bad one, they will try to steer you toward the plan that pays them the highest commissions or the one they are affiliated with, and you can bet that's probably not the plan that gives you the best benefits.

Viewed one way, the entire system is insane - there is no way any senior can make sure they are making the best choice because they cannot predict the future, and because they may not even be informed about the best choice. But you can hardly fault seniors, especially ones who don't have chronic medical issues (or minor ones that can be addressed using inexpensive medications, such as hypertension or high cholesterol) from going with a Medicare Advantage plan that reduces their out-of-pocket expenses, and maybe gives them access to benefits they wouldn't otherwise have.

As just one example, the plan I am on even covers acupuncture treatments. Why? Because acupuncture probably costs them a lot less than paying for surgery to mitigate pain. And if a person believes acupuncture is helping, they probably won't go see a surgeon, and many people would rather put up with the pain than go under a surgeon's knife anyway. Does acupuncture actually do anything? I have no idea, all I know is that if you are a true believer it probably helps (if only because of the placebo effect), and if you think it is unscientific voodoo you probably won't use it. But the insurer saves money when the believers get their acupuncture treatments, and some seniors may also appreciate the physical contact and even just the conversation with the acupuncture practitioner (as opposed to most surgeons, who just want to knock you out, do their cutting, and move on to the next patient or maybe the golf course).

I've read several articles like this dissing Medicare Advantage plans, and acting like seniors choose them because they have no idea what they are getting into. But I think the truth is not nearly that cut-and-dried. For many seniors, they may be choosing such plans because with their current state of health, such plans really do make the most financial sense AND eliminate much of the confusion surrounding traditional Medicare. That said, I would much prefer to see the US go to a singler-payer #healthcare system, particularly one where no one has to try to predict what their health will be line over the next 12 moths, or whether they will have a serious accident in that time. But of course the Republicans will never go along with that, and every time the Democrats are in power they squander the opportunity to make meaningful changes for the better. Maybe when the current crop of Republicans are all rotting in hell we'll actually have meaningful heathcare reform that brings great health care to all (without having to roll the dice and select a plan), but I won't live long enough to see that and neither will any of the seniors alive today.

Lunatech , 3 months ago

@dangillmor Hello Chief, I'd like to introduce you to Barbra Streisand...

Lunatech , 3 months ago

@CultureDesk There are different types of self-checkouts. If you want to see self-checkouts done right, visit a #Meijer store in the midwestern Great Lakes area of the United States. Many other stores do them wrong, for example #Aldi (#aldius) which has self checkouts that neither accept cash nor the store's own gift cards. Also if a store is notorious for pricing errors (prices changed don't match prces in the store ad or the store's shelf tags) it may affect how willing customers are to use a self checkout (it is easier to spot errors when using a self-checkout because you can easily observe the price you are being charged for each item, but if you do find an error it is usually easier to get it corrected by a human clerk).

Lunatech , 3 months ago

@tilvids If you really want to see less #YouTube usage then develop a #Kodi addon that supports #PeerTube or whatever other service you consider a replacement. Because I watch most videos on my TV, not my computer, using Kodi.

Oh, and do what you need to in order to get your addon accepted into the official Kodi addon repository. I don't get addons from janky third-party sites.

Oh, you don't know how to make a Kodi addon? Well neither do I. Or maybe you think there's not enough people like me to try making an alternative addon? Sorry about that, I guess YouTube is my only choice then.

All you folks who think that YouTube videos are only viewed on phones need to wake up. There are many other ways to watch online videos and virtually all of them support YouTube. When they support a viable alternative, maybe folks will switch to that, or at least reduce their use of YouTube.

Lunatech , 4 months ago

@NewsDesk I hear Michigan is a lovely state...

(WHY are these hateful Republicans so obsessed with controlling other people? Are they just a bunck of miserable S.O.B.'s that just want everyone else to be miserable too? Because I think that is their greatest accomplishment, making other people miserable!)

Lunatech , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

@malwaretech Psychiatrists are the worst. If ever there was a profession that's full of quacks, it's psychiatry.

Lunatech , 6 months ago

@feditips You should mention that different instances have different post length limits, and that while the default maximum post lenth is 500 characters, there are many instances that allow a higher limit - the one I use has an 11,000 character limit, for example.

(It would also be great if there were a listing of instances that allow more than 500 character posts, showing what the maximum post length is on each!)