I followed Rob's work on this in real time, it was a master class in calling out a company with no value. He just continually laid out how numbers didn't add up, and laid out the inevitable conclusion. I had no idea about the threats, but I do know his wife had a baby while all this was going on.
The way the MPT execs became so unhinged and went obsessively hard after their critics (journalists and analysts) is reminiscent of the ebay exec pig mask harassment.
> Jim Baugh, eBay’s former Senior Director of Safety and Security, and six other members of eBay’s security team targeted the victims for their roles in publishing a newsletter that reported on issues of interest to eBay sellers
> Baugh and his co-conspirators executed a harassment campaign intended to intimidate the victims and to change the content of the newsletter’s reporting. The campaign included sending anonymous and disturbing deliveries to the victims’ home, including a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig and a funeral wreath and live insects; sending private Twitter messages and public tweets criticizing the newsletter’s content and threatening to visit the victims in Natick; and traveling to Natick to surveil the victims and install a GPS tracking device on their car. The harassment also featured Craigslist posts inviting the public for sexual encounters at the victims’ home.
I still get a chuckle that eBay has to have the "we fucked up :(" link on their footer, though now notice that eBay has an infinite scrolling listings view now on their homepage, so you now can't even stay at the "Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the State of Massachusetts" link...
It pretty much parallels private equity leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and the typical pattern of buying up medical practices, hospitals, veterinary clinics, industrial capacitor manufacturers, and everything else that's not nailed down and doing asset stripping.
Private equity and for-profit deathcare are evil. When these assholes buy up tiny hospitals, shutter specialty services, and use this as an excuse to sell more life flights while delaying care, the shit is way past criminally rotten.
Oh and insurance is doubling for tens of millions of Americans next year.
Then there's Medicare Advantage bankruptcies because it's fake, predatory deathcare.
Nonprofit and single-payer healthcare or bust, because ordinary Americans need a humane amount of welfare too, not just another trillion showered on the morbidly rich.
Reality is much worse than a noir plot for almost everyone in America not middle-class or rich; it was only marginally better post-Obama/RomneyCare where a major health event like cancer can still easily lead into one or both of these common scenarios:
A. Can't afford treatment and denied by insurance? One must beg on GoFundMe to get life-saving treatment because they reached insurance lifetime limits, lacked disastrous coverage, or it's considered "experimental"/"not medically necessary".
B. Spend their last weeks going through chapter 7 or 13 personal bankruptcy where they fight with healthcare collectors to keep transportation, housing, and clothes in their final days while they're in pain, on nasal infusion pumps, etc. Sell almost everything and hand it to the collection vampires.
Oh, and about the only way to qualify for Medicaid for extremely expensive long term care (not covered by Medicare) should anyone live long enough to become elderly requires having almost no income and no resources. If one becomes disabled and/or elderly without resources, dual eligible (Medicare and Medicaid) is the best place to be (SNP) or one is probably looking at homelessness, misery, and/or a shorter life.
Medicaid cuts were passed to pay for tax cuts for billionaires that won't take effect until after 2026 midterm elections. Millions of elderly people are at risk of being made homeless and around 1 in 5 elder care facilities and many thousands of rural hospitals will close. Meanwhile, half of the White House is demolished to make it horrible, POTUS is enriching himself with planes and gold trinkets, goes golfing for millions of dollars, and has a Great Gatsby-themed party without understanding how bad it looks.
I followed Rob's work on this in real time, it was a master class in calling out a company with no value. He just continually laid out how numbers didn't add up, and laid out the inevitable conclusion. I had no idea about the threats, but I do know his wife had a baby while all this was going on.
The way the MPT execs became so unhinged and went obsessively hard after their critics (journalists and analysts) is reminiscent of the ebay exec pig mask harassment.
I cannot believe I've never heard of this before...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/case/us-v-ebay-inc
> Jim Baugh, eBay’s former Senior Director of Safety and Security, and six other members of eBay’s security team targeted the victims for their roles in publishing a newsletter that reported on issues of interest to eBay sellers
> Baugh and his co-conspirators executed a harassment campaign intended to intimidate the victims and to change the content of the newsletter’s reporting. The campaign included sending anonymous and disturbing deliveries to the victims’ home, including a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig and a funeral wreath and live insects; sending private Twitter messages and public tweets criticizing the newsletter’s content and threatening to visit the victims in Natick; and traveling to Natick to surveil the victims and install a GPS tracking device on their car. The harassment also featured Craigslist posts inviting the public for sexual encounters at the victims’ home.
what the fuck?
I still get a chuckle that eBay has to have the "we fucked up :(" link on their footer, though now notice that eBay has an infinite scrolling listings view now on their homepage, so you now can't even stay at the "Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the State of Massachusetts" link...
It pretty much parallels private equity leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and the typical pattern of buying up medical practices, hospitals, veterinary clinics, industrial capacitor manufacturers, and everything else that's not nailed down and doing asset stripping.
Private equity and for-profit deathcare are evil. When these assholes buy up tiny hospitals, shutter specialty services, and use this as an excuse to sell more life flights while delaying care, the shit is way past criminally rotten.
Oh and insurance is doubling for tens of millions of Americans next year.
Then there's Medicare Advantage bankruptcies because it's fake, predatory deathcare.
Nonprofit and single-payer healthcare or bust, because ordinary Americans need a humane amount of welfare too, not just another trillion showered on the morbidly rich.
It sounds like goddamn Chinatown.
Reality is much worse than a noir plot for almost everyone in America not middle-class or rich; it was only marginally better post-Obama/RomneyCare where a major health event like cancer can still easily lead into one or both of these common scenarios:
A. Can't afford treatment and denied by insurance? One must beg on GoFundMe to get life-saving treatment because they reached insurance lifetime limits, lacked disastrous coverage, or it's considered "experimental"/"not medically necessary".
B. Spend their last weeks going through chapter 7 or 13 personal bankruptcy where they fight with healthcare collectors to keep transportation, housing, and clothes in their final days while they're in pain, on nasal infusion pumps, etc. Sell almost everything and hand it to the collection vampires.
Oh, and about the only way to qualify for Medicaid for extremely expensive long term care (not covered by Medicare) should anyone live long enough to become elderly requires having almost no income and no resources. If one becomes disabled and/or elderly without resources, dual eligible (Medicare and Medicaid) is the best place to be (SNP) or one is probably looking at homelessness, misery, and/or a shorter life.
Medicaid cuts were passed to pay for tax cuts for billionaires that won't take effect until after 2026 midterm elections. Millions of elderly people are at risk of being made homeless and around 1 in 5 elder care facilities and many thousands of rural hospitals will close. Meanwhile, half of the White House is demolished to make it horrible, POTUS is enriching himself with planes and gold trinkets, goes golfing for millions of dollars, and has a Great Gatsby-themed party without understanding how bad it looks.