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Will Tanner

@Will_Tanner_1

Nov 12

"We" have financialized every aspect of life in an effort to squeeze financial return from everything

Private equity is particularly notorious for this, buying everything from Little League sports teams to medical practices

The medical aspect is particularly worrisome🧵👇

Take the above example, a report conducted by CBS. Dentistry IQ, summarizing the Private Equity problem and what the report found, noted:

"Private equity firms are also buying large dental chains, many of which are owned by individual dentists and specialists who offer implant procedures. According to PitchBook, Aspen Dental bought ClearChoice for an estimated $1.1 billion in 2020, Affordable Care (whose largest clinic brand is Affordable Dentures & Implants) was purchased for an estimated $2.7 billion in 2021, and the private equity wing of the Abu Dhabi government bought Dental Care Alliance for an estimated $1.1 billion in 2022.

"The American Dental Association (ADA) reported that private equity deals with dental practices increased ninefold from 2011 to 2021. There is also an additional interest in oral surgery, possibly due to how expensive implants can be.

...

"Lawsuits have been filed nationwide alleging that dentists at implant clinics have extracted patients' teeth unnecessarily, leaving patients with misaligned implants, or even unable to chew. Dentists who are heavily pushing for implants may be striving for lucrative income instead of the health of their patients.2

"Edwin Zinman, a San Francisco dental malpractice attorney and former periodontist, said: "They've sold a lot of [implants], and some of it unnecessarily, and too often done negligently, without having the dentists who are doing it have the necessary training and experience," Zinman said. "It's for five simple letters: M-O-N-E-Y."

It gets worse. The same general issue has come to medicine generally, with PE firms buying up hospitals just to raise costs and perform unnecessary procedures.
Such is what the American Journal of Medicine noted in a report titled “Private Equity and Medicine: A Marriage Made in Hell.” It provided:

Nearly every study reported in a recent meta-analysis found that PE acquisition led to higher prices. This has been documented in detail in anesthesia practices and in a combination of dermatology, gastroenterology, and ophthalmology practices. These latter studies documented “upcoding” such as seeing a higher percentage of visits claiming more than 30 minutes spent with the patient after PE takeovers. In addition, more new patients are seen and more fee-generating procedures are performed immediately after such takeovers. PE-backed management companies generated a major share of the out-of-network “surprise bills” that received considerable notoriety, as they have acquired major shares in such fields as emergency medicine, pathology, and anesthesiology, where patients do not have the ability to choose “in-network” physicians. Another way PE firms increase their ability to raise fees is by acquiring a dominant share of select specialties in a geographic area. PE firms are particularly attracted to procedure-oriented specialties such as dermatology, gastroenterology, and cardiology, where a few more procedures a week can make a big difference to “the bottom line.”

...

Why would PE firms invest in medical and dental practices, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, and other health care entities? These firms typically seek to sell their acquired businesses in 3-5 years, aiming for at least a 50% profit. To do this, they must show sufficient revenue and profit growth to justify a higher sales price or increase the profitability of an entity they own to justify maintaining ownership. To do this, they must increase revenues and decrease operating costs. To achieve higher revenues, they will raise prices, increase the “productivity” of practitioners (ie, ask the physicians and others to see more patients), or seek a more lucrative mix of procedures. To lower costs they will seek lower-cost supplies; in a best case through forcing lower prices on currently used products, in a worst case by substituting inferior products. More often, because the major “cost” in a medical setting is the salaries of personnel, they will seek to substitute lower-paid staff: LPNs for RNs, minimally trained “medical assistants” for nurses.

Read 7 tweets

Will Tanner

@Will_Tanner_1

Nov 12

When was the last time that England and her glorious Empire could have been saved from becoming a decaying, socialist hell?

Many say, incorrectly, either WWI, when the empire was exhausted, or WWII when it was bankrupted

The real answer is 1911, with the Parliament Bill🧵👇

The fight that led to the Parliament Bill began in 1909, with Winston Churchill's so-called People's Budget

By that point, Churchill had shifted to the Liberals from the Conservatives and was allied with Lloyd George to tax the landed elite into oblivion, despite his family being part of that elite.

The bill sparked a huge fight that culminated in England declaring war on its traditions and history in the name of socialism

The problem with the People's Budget was that it was the first overtly socialist law to come to England

In fact, it was entirely unprecedented and is known today as a "revolutionary concept" because it was expressly crafted to redistribute wealth, taxing landed wealth and income to fund welfare programs of the sort that have now bankrupted Britain

Because of its very nature, the bill was a shot across the bow of the landed elite, and fomented a great deal of social unrest and internal anger

Read 13 tweets

Will Tanner

@Will_Tanner_1

Nov 11

It's the 59th anniversary of Rhodesia's Independence from the British who were demanding their self-destruction in the name of mass democracy

But why did Rhodesia declare independence on the 11th of November, 1965?

Few actually seem to know, so it's time to explain in the 🧵👇

By 1965, Rhodesia had been independent from the British South Africa Company and self-governing for about 42 years

Over those four decades, it went from being unsettled, landlocked veldt into a hugely successful country, the country with the highest standard of living for blacks in the continent

Of course, Rhodesia didn't do that by singing kumbaya and embracing race communism

Rather, it avoided the apartheid of South Africa while also avoiding the communism of the East and mass liberal democracy of the West by embracing Western government circa 1830: propertied voting

For white and black alike, to vote on the A roll in the national elections, one had to have the modern equivalent of about $60,000 USD in Rhodesian property, such as a house, business, farm, etc.

In limiting the national franchise to such people, it screened out the incompetent, the wastrels, and so on, limiting stewardship of the nation to those who had shown their ability to earn or steward wealth

Read 15 tweets

Will Tanner

@Will_Tanner_1

Nov 11

This made me laugh because it's so true, but it also made me think, what would a modern equivalent be?

There's the Somali pirate ship stock market, but I have a different idea:

A militarized REIT that resettles abandoned, anarchic cities like Detroit

A 🧵on how it'd work👇

First, just think of the wasted capital in cities like Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, etc.

The reason for the abandonment makes sense: de-industrialization, the crack crisis, and lax policing make them about as dangerous and poor as Johannesburg

But it also means that whole swathes of essentially valueless neighborhoods exist in which the houses are still livable - there aren't trees growing through the living rooms or deer bedding in the bedrooms yet - but no one lives in them because crime, primarily, and the lack of jobs, to a lesser extent, made whole neighborhoods uninhabitable

Adding to the problem is that the cops are either corrupt, as in Chicago, or simply don't exist because they quit the force

So far, that has just meant these cities are dying for want of residents who add value rather than subsit on crime or the dole

They can't afford the police they need, can't attract business, and can't raise debt to rebuild

But it doesn't have to be that way...as Detroit's Greek Town area shows, there's a space for heavily defended areas that attract valuable guests, businesses and residents, and can be successful so long as the crackheads and gangsters are chased away by men with rifles

Read 13 tweets

Will Tanner

@Will_Tanner_1

Nov 7

Trump won, which is fabulous

But the problem for America is that its full of people who praise the Soviets, a regime that murdered 10 million Christians 9the reason for the praise)

You can't have a country with that cancer in it, but America has solved this problem before🧵👇

This is, I think, one of America's big problems

About a quarter of the country (half of Dems) supported not just locking you in a concentration camp for refusing to be part of a science experiment, but also wanted to take your children from you for not making them part of it, and imprison you for criticizing it

What is that but a modern variation of Stalin starving millions of Ukrainian and Russian Christians to death and sending millions more to the gulags?

I suspect the responses would be similar if you asked about "racism"

Surrounding all that are outright overtones of violence

They send Antifa and BLM to riot, have the FBI arrest their political enemies (which it does willingly enough), and post online about "punching Nazis" (assaulting Trump supporters) and assaulting men for voting Trump

You can bet there's a great deal of overlap between the "imprison you and take your kids for refusing the jab" and the "assault normal guys for not voting for the gay race communist" crowds. They're probably the exact same groups

Read 14 tweets

Will Tanner

@Will_Tanner_1

Nov 6

If Trump's to do anything, he'll have to actually take on the Deep State and Drain the Swamp

Could he do so?

It will certainly be a fight, but if Andrew Jackson could defeat Biddle and the Second Bank of the US, Trump can defeat the Deep State

Here's 5 ways how he could🧵👇

First, the Jackson and the Second Bank of the US comparison is, I think, important and worth remembering as a guide to action

Nicholas Biddle, who directed the bank, retracted loans and crashed the economy in an attempt to get Americans to look at Jackson as the reason for their economic woes and demand protection of the bank

It didn't work. Jackson, known for his populist bent, kept the American people on his side. His successor, Van Buren, did the same, using infrastructure projects and deregulation to gradually overcome Biddle's economic crash. This policy of Van Buren's eventually turned into massive railroad expansion, economic expansion, and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution via increased production of things like pig iron and general American prosperity.

In short, the spat and Biddle-caused crash was long-lasting, spanning multiple administrations, and it was overcome with policies that built on Jacksonian strengths; empowering the people through deregulation and creating, through infrastructure, and environment in which success was more possible despite banking shenanigans

By the end, the bank was defeated and American prosperity intact

That's relevant to Trump. Much as Biddle caused a crash in a desperate attempt to protect the Swamp of that day, the Bank of the US, the Deep State of our day will pull any trick possible, not excluding an economic crash, to protect itself

So, how to overcome it? Do what Jackson and Van Buren did - continually call out the real cause of the crash and social woes, Deep State malfeasance, all while hacking away at the Deep State responsible for that malfeasance and empowering normal people to succeed where it has retreated, or where new opportunities have opened up because it has been hacked away

Read 10 tweets

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