Pharmacist here. It’s not our fault as much as you think. Basically, the insurance companies invented something called “Pharmacy Benefits Managers” who basically act as a middleman between you and your doctor on what you can get, and how much they will reimburse the pharmacy if you do.

If your doctor says you need atorvastatin, but your PBM says they only want to pay for simvastatin, you can either get your doctor to pay for simvastatin, or pay for atorvastatin yourself with a discount card. The cost for a generic med like that is probably about your copay anyways, so no big loss to you to skip the headache.

Surprisingly, they invented fees for pharmacies! If you choose the route to get your doctor to change you to simvastatin, we get the privilege of managing that for you, and once we finally reach your doctor and make the change, they will give us maybe $10 to fill it for you! Plus you have a $10 copay, so there is some money… But of course we have to source the med. It probably costs us like $12 for this example, maybe less maybe more, depending on the manufacturer. So if we do all of this then it seems like we made $8, but SURPRISE, your PBM charged us a fee for utilizing them. It might be $6. It might be more if we don’t meet certain criteria, like percentage of diabetic patients on statins.

So okay we have our nice $2 to pay for shipping your med to the oharmacy, renting our location, and filling it (I think it’s less than half that on average, I just don’t know the actual figures) with our staff. It should come as no surprise that we have very limited options on manufacturers now.

You might say “well at least the PBM fought to make my meds cheaper in the end” but no! They now get to say to your insurance company “okay we managed getting your patient another month of lower cholesterol, please pay us $100 for our efforts”. So, indirectly, you paid an extra $100 on this whole thing through your insurance premiums. Not sure on if this part is true I just heard it as a rumor.

But wait there’s more! The insurance company actually owns the PBM all along! They paid themselves to offer themselves this service for you!

So anyways I’m getting out of retail pharmacy. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Is it deceitful? Left. Otherwise: right

There really should be a certification course for using AI safely. I’m slop coding a hobby app and I’m shocked at how much it FEELS like it can do, because it can do amazing things, yet fails in the strangest ways. When it feels like it can get away with it, it forgets earlier discussions and moves on without it. So you can spend time hammering out a whole section of code, then move on, and AI will rip out everything that references that code and think of a different way in the moment and code that in instead. It won’t be the same. It probably won’t work, or at least won’t pass all test cases. But if you aren’t paying attention and keep coding, your original part of the project is no longer functioning and you won’t understand why. But every step of the way it’s confident in its answers and you won’t suspect that it fundamentally no longer understands the project.

At the vet I’ve seen a candle that they light when someone brings in their pet to be put down. It lets other patients know the terrible suffering the family is going through and allows them to be respectful to that. I’m guessing this symbol serves a similar purpose.

To be fair, they were a LONG way from federation rules enforcement.

They are bracing for the voters to finally turn on them. Commit fraud? It’s fine my gas is cheap. Sex with children? Eh whatever I don’t want to consider if that’s true or not as long as my gas is cheap. Bomb a school overseas? Whatever you’ve gotta do to keep my gas cheap. GAS PRICES ARE UP?! WTF IS THIS ADMINISTRATION DOING?! VOTE THEM OUT.

It’s sickening, but it seems the price of gas is really all that matters to the Republican voter.

Except it’s possible some less than ruby red states would flip due to low Republican turnout since gas prices are up. But instead of flipping blue, this might be all it takes to keep it red.

It’s government overreach and gives the states nonsense to point to. “Our hands were tied. We had to do this because the federal government said so… We stay in office. Checkmate”.

Lemmy used to be too “left wing” for me. I felt like my opinions were not a great match for the group here, so I tended to not comment much.

Then simultaneously Lemmy’s opinions seemed to make more sense (eg, billionaires should not exist, which is proving true in the current political climate), and also, more “right wing” people have arrived. And they are aggressive and vocal (eg DEMOCRAT cities will be hell to live in and hurt you and arrest you if you fart in public or something).

So actually I think maybe just bots have started to arrive.

No they pearl clutch and love America and the democracy it has. But they have been taught that Democrats/Liberals are horrible, disgusting people. It’s a knee jerk reaction at this point. My brother, who is hardcore maga, said “no I don’t think they are talking about you. You aren’t a ‘liberal’”. Like he was saving me from a terrible slur. And I had to nicely tell him that I am, in fact, liberal.

It kind of feels like the hatred against “the gays” in the 90s. They need someone to hate and right now it’s the Democrats and liberals, and I guess everyone else the media has told them to hate (lgbtq, trans, etc).

They took out cursive from the curriculum for a while, but they are supposedly putting it back now. I think they are suggesting the brain learns a little differently with cursive so it’s still useful in that manner.

Also I think you’d enjoy the podcast I listen to, American History Tellers. I hated history for the same reasons you describe but this podcast really made me enjoy it. Usually they open a topic with something like “Imagine it’s in the late 1800s, and you are opening up shop. Times have been hard since [backstory], but you are getting by okay. You do worry about [current topic], and feel worse when you read today’s paper.” Even that small little setup kind of ropes you in to feel like it’s relatable.

Not to defend chiropractors or anything, but they legitimately have a doctorate degree and are given the title Chiropractic Physician.

Whether their studies they do in school are nonsense, they do get a degree for it. So they are technically doctors in some shape or form.

Honestly there is likely some small value in what they do, but that small value has almost definitely been absorbed into the Doctor of Osteopathy (actually medical doctor-like role), so I don’t see the need for them. Definitely think physical therapists are much more beneficial.

We had a guy and the pizza shop I worked show up and ask for a job. He had just driven from New Jersey to South Florida to set up a new life. He wanted full time, a privilege that was rarely awarded. But he gave full availability and showed clear dedication to the job. He got the job. He was our best and most energetic employee for over a year.

Then one day he said “alright guys it’s been real, but I want to move to California now.” And he did, the next week. I feel like that guy will do well no matter where he goes.

I think of it this way. The immune system is like an army, ready to fight off foreign invaders. If you were a king, would you want a huge standing army at all times, or the ability to draft soldiers as needed? Having a huge standing army is not only a waste of resources if there isn’t anything to fight, but your soldiers might get bored and invent things to fight or just stir up trouble.

So my guess is you’d be prone to inflammation and develop food sensitivities, but it’s a total guess. If they were the case though, chronic inflammation is really bad long term.

To add to this, I gave my card in one of those black books and paid as normal. We don’t go out to eat much, or use this card much. But a couple days later someone had that credit card number and was making purchases. Of course it COULD have been some other usage weeks earlier, but the timing makes it suspicious. I believe there was either a skimmer placed on the restaurant’s machine, or someone in the back was just stealing credit card info.

It’s now much preferred by me if they either let me go pay at the front, or bring one of those scanners to the table like in Europe.

I’m really surprised no one photoshopped in a Mario with the fire flower

Sorry, you are thinking of a tuba and a piano. Easy mistake.

Meanwhile, I got written up for using more than 4 days in a year

Than vs then is important here

Not that I disagree but, have you seen how low effort all of this has been for them? It wasn’t some sort of complicated pizza code like maga thought Democrats were doing, it was literally just emails like “when is the wildest party on your island?”

Naw I like this move. Obama ended “thanks Obama” with his own use of it, since no one would ever top that. Maybe Kamala can end 6-7 in her own way.