Insane! The @washingtonpost editorial board attacks @revolvingdoorDC research file on Jeffrey Zients for being fair enough to include the positive purpose of Zients in government (seeking efficiency) & ignoring and ignoring... washingtonpost.com/opinions/biden… (1/x)
how we found out about Zients' purchase of a surprise medical billing operation. (btw, "long term holdings" wannabe Berkshire Hathaway funds like Cranemere engage in EXTENSIVE due diligence, they knew what they were doing). nytimes.com/2020/12/01/us/… (2/x)
How do you write about @revolvingdoorDC criticism of Zients without taking into account Zeints' leading role in NorthStar Anesthesia? (3/x)
What did NorthStar -- that Zients buddies at the Post Editorial Board think is unimportant -- do? During Cranemere's due diligence AND post-purchase, they engaged in surprise medical billing. (5/x)
See also (6/x)
Democratic FTC Commissioners have noted the problems with the business model of Zients and NorthStar -- they're actively pursuing violations of the very antitrust laws Americans are relying on the Biden administation toe enforce!!!! (7/x)
So yeah, @revolvingdoorDC is worried about government by people who do due diligence and buy into a business that does surprise medical billing (DEEPLY unpopular, even Republicans pretend to oppose)....
and seek to violate antitrust laws! Wow, we're fringe crazies, huh? (8/x)
There's a bipartisan Senate bill on the topic (not endorsing, just noting the odd bedfellows): congress.gov/bill/116th-con… (11/x)
Again--as we exposed in the New York Times, this is what Jeffrey Zients' business DID. Something no defends. It's a highly germane political issue. his goal was to undermine antitrust laws. Shouldn't that concern us about he would approach the health care industry in government?
Again, as someone who benefits from being a colleague of @EileenAppelbaum: The entire "medical practice group" system of provision is gross. It's a symptom of creeping financialization. It should not be. It exists to extract rents. cepr.net/wp-content/upl… (13/x)
Zients CHOSE to outbid other bidders in this space beloved by private equity, which kinda has to mean he expected to surprise medical bill at least as well as the standard in this HORRIFYING field. cepr.net/wp-content/upl… (14/x)
Zients has been worth 9 figures for at least a decade.
9 figures! Cranemere didn't buy NorthStar Anesthesia so Zients could help his struggling family lift itself from poverty. He did it because he can.
And government should exist to stop such predation. (15/x)
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REMINDER AS YOU READ about "widely respected" attorney Abbe Lowell... many DC BigLaw lawyers are "widely respected" for... bogus reasons. It's a mutual back scratching culture. nytimes.com/2020/12/03/us/… (1/x)
As the Wall Street Journal summarized... Lowell is an equal opportunity fixer for both parties. He went MAGA fixer for Jared Kushner + if indications of as yet unproven allegations bear out, maintained as much ethics as one expects for a Kushner lawyer. /2 wsj.com/articles/both-…
Please keep Abbe Lowell in mind if and when a BigLaw partner is chosen by Biden as Attorney General. Any such pick (e.g., Trump law firm King & Spaulding's Sally Yates) will receive bipartisan hosannas. As did BILL BARR!!! (3/x)
Here's my hot take -- one I kinda believe, even as I suspect no one will agree.
COVID-19 ultimately didn't hurt, and may have helped, Trump & the GOP in the election.
Arguments:
1. Biden will end up winning by amount he was beating Trump in head to heads pre-pandemic. (1/x)
2. COVID-19 became THE STORY, crowding out...well, all of the other stories.
3. It *IS* a pandemic, & 1 that throughout October became increasingly terrible across the world. Blaming Trump for COVID-19 much less fair than blaming him for cutting taxes for rich, anti-ACA, etc 2/x
4. Trump got to make essentially unchallenged claim that economy all good pre-COVID-19. Why blame him for a pandemic also crushing Europe.
5. Biden spent shockingly little time describing the medhanics of Trump's HHS/CDC effing up pandemic response, just assumed people knew. 3/x
Now it is up to a President Biden -- and forgive me, we DO know that is what's happening -- to view running the executive branch effectively as the main way to both deliver results and de-radicalize the country. (2/x)
Biden GESTURED at this theory of the case, but with no detail. And pelosi's STEADFAST AVERSION to oversight made it an unnecessarily hard story to tell. (3/x)
My thoughts on the failed Schumer-Feinstein approach to #SCOTUShearings:
1. Polling to determine the best message for paid media is not relevant to earned media strategy. This ought to be basic, but it's been hard for Establishment Democrats to understand FOR YEARS. (1/x)
2. There's a kabuki style of question deflecting that means that Democratic Senators can NOT get the storyline out of straightforward substantive questions they seek.
So ACA, Roe, etc polling is irrelevant to what questions should be asked. The question is what can get noticed!
3. Democratic Senators should ask principally about:
A) Her violation of innumerable Washington DC laws in attending restaurants and the like while she and her family were REQUIRED BY LAW to quarantine.
1. Deaths statistic is being treated as factual even when we know it's a WILD undercount. This is deeply irresponsible. EVERY sentence referencing the stats MUST include the fact it is SERIOUSLY too low.
I *strongly* suspect red state/rural counts are WAY off, given inadequacy of testing & political incentives.
Why does this matter? By underplaying the human cost of our irresponsibly delayed social distancing, "stats based" people are facilitating a premature return to normalcy.
Statistics *seem objective,* and so limitations must be highlighted.