Here's a first hand example of insurance companies power.

5 years ago I hurt my elbow, in typical man fashion I thought it would get better and ignored it, it became inflamed and I could not straighten my arm. I called the doctors office I had been going to for my whole life which was and still is family care network. They told me my insurance(Obama care NON molina apple health)was not accepted there to which i responded "no problem, I can pay cash to see the doctor", they said "no we cant see you even if you pay cash", I asked why and the receptionist said "thats insurance fraud". I argued at great length that they are 100% wrong. I went to 4 doctor offices around the county which sadly were all fcn and they all turned me away with cash in hand. I was irate. A smart nurse at the last one gave me a sticky note with fcn ceo name and home phone number, she said "talk to this guy", so I did. He also said that fcn could not see me if they dont take my insurance and I am willing to pay cash.  He said go to a walk in and lie and say you dont have insurance, so I did.

Later I called state insurance commision and they told me fcn was dead wrong to turn me away when I was willing to pay cash, I emailed the ceo with that info, he later got back to me and apologized for being wrong. You want to guess what his explanation was why they tell everyone they dont accept cash pay if your insurance is out of network for them?

He told me "we rely on molinas legal department for what we can and can't accept for payment, they were misinforming fcn on legality of cash pay for out of network insured patients".

Fcns vast majority of income is from Molina, therefore Molina is who they listen too.

That is POWER, a medical insurance provider corruptly preventing cash pay for basic medical services because it competes with their financial choke hold on fcn.

I could have sued, but im not like that.

Not much later the fcn ceo left fcn.

He was a good guy who heard me and looked into the citation and resolved it.

I learned alot about medical insurance and care providers and the choke hold insurance corps have on doctors and patients

 

Most of what you say is true, however we should be careful what we wish for, whatcom county council cant execute the justice project aftervoters approved amd have been paying for since Jan 2024.

Government has in no way helped Healthcare in the the last 20 years.

The affordable care act opened the door to medical insurance consolidation (remember the epi pen guy who bought all the epi pen manufacturerssand jacked the price to $600 per pen in 2011ish? Which was 100% legal after the affordable care act passed, 60 minutes did a story on that, super scary) and monopolization which is very harmful to patients and doctors.

Large medical insurance companies now have all power to control who gets care and when. They also control what doctors and hospitals get for compensation. This has led to less and service providers and closures of smaller rural facilities 

The loss of competition in the medical insurance industry has led to all the scary issues in the lengthy article.

Almost all the promises of the affordable care act have been broken, our medical system nation wide is more unaffordable than ever and tests/procedures are having very long wait times

D. Cook

Many stores offer close to entrance parking spots as well as across the board discounts for vets which need to be pointed out as tangible  honoring of veterans.

Im not sure i fully understand the act mentioned, would this act allow an injured vet to collect much more retirement pay than a non injured vet?, if so, would that offend vets who served without injury? 

When anything is funded by government it is very hard to call it "privatized".

Medicare in whatever form administered to patients will be government funded which will always come with rules and some government oversight.

It is not accurate for our executive to mention kings when he is the highest payed county employee and has approved new destructive policies known as land back. I hope Dick researches and writes about that, though I doubt that will happen.The only kings in our state are Our governor and executive who relentlessly raise taxes that further burden the working class

 

Carol, we are getting money from evil industry that is destroying the planet, have you ever heard of the climate commitment act on our state?.....it collects 2 plus billion dollars a year  from oil refiners, but the reality is that money actually comes out of the motoring public's pocket because they/we actually pay it at the pump, business will never pay any of it because all their costs are passed on the fuel buyer, aka us.

There is no measurable rise in ocean levels in birchbay, birchbay looks the same today as it did 50 years ago.

Climate change is the most over used excuse for mismanagement or lack of management in our critical public infrastructures. The amazing part is most of the public buys that lame excuse and nobody in government is held accountable for them not doing their job.

Why were there no major floods from 1959 (river was dyked and put into 1 channel) until 1990?.....answer.....government managed the river in a way to prevent flooding such as allowing dredging and gravel bar removal to keep water capacity at a maximum.

One of the most ironic things is that the people  who preach climate change as the cause for flooding are the same ones who say we are having more and more droughts.....complete opposite things. Last summer in whatcom county we only had a half dozen days over 90° and not even 60 days without rain, yet ecology declared a drought in april due to lower than average snowpack, which is meaningless for whatcom county's water needs as we do NOT have a reservoir to capture snow melt.

A reservoir would prevent flooding and add water to river flows in summer for salmon and Agriculture and generate carbon free electricity. Sequim did this in 1960s, no floods, no water shortage in summer. A reservoir would prevent sediment from coming down the river also

The flooding is largely due to sediment build up and loss of water capacity. In the past some sediment was being removed to mitigate that problem

The answers to largely, but not completely, solve the uncivilized sititation caused by homeless drug addicts loitering in downtown is very simple.

1.if you crap or urinate in public you go to jail and have a mental evaluation, involuntary commitment or incarceration depending on evaluation by professionals.

2.hold city council accountable (vote them out) for not enforcing all laws relevant to the situation, public decency, loitering, lued conduct, theft, vandalism, public drug use, also environmental concerns regarding untreated sewage. City, county and state government are incompetent, they endanger our communities by allowing this sick and destructive behavior.

3.educate your friends and neighbors the difference between help and enabling. This is a huge problem, people want to help but dont understand that in most cases they are making the problem worse. Homelessness will increase if we make it easier to be homeless!!!!!!

The bottom line is the government is  failing to enforce laws we have against the unacceptable  things the homeless are doing in public places. This will not get better until bellingham residents vote differently, which they won't, therefore this problem will only get worse, there is no fixing continually re-elected bad polititians. 

 

I cant figure out how budget cuts are taxation?, very strange comparison.

Washington state passed record new taxes as well as tax increases in 2025, how in the world can olympia be short of money??? 

What about the recent new multi billion dollar carbon auction revenue stream that came online 2 years ago?.

The cronic over spending of government will never end no matter how much revenue comes into the state cauffers. They just overspend as a matter of normal daily practice. Its so depressing to always hear "we dont have enough money" moments after a new tax is levied, its absurd.

This state will tax the middle class out of existence, in the future 95% of citizens will be dependent on multiple government programs after paying over 50% of their income in a dozen forms of tax and the other 5% will be Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon ceis and managers.

The red tape and regulation will stop new home and businesses from being built by "death by delay".

Western washingron in the last 10 years has caught up to Southern California cost of living and is one of tje most expensive places in the United stated to live and buy anything including food, and restaurants are insame expensive here because of their high labor costs due our counterproductive inflation driving high minimum wage.

Minimum wage could go to $50/hr and people who earn it will still be broke because rent will be $10k a month for an apartment and $100 to eat at McDonalds for 1 person........sadly this will happen in the next 20-30years

Darn misspellings...... less water use in agriculture now compared to 1960s

Also important to note that the orange dots indicate a clame or water right that was filed with ecology once upon a time.

Those dots do not indicate use as far as last used, or quantity or frequency over time.

My experience in agriculture leads me to believers water in use for irrigation than was used in 1960s, there are less dairy farms and less overhead irrigation, modern water use for irrigation is more efficient such as drip tape, it uses 75% less water than overhead sprinkler application. 

If we really want to understand water use in dry months it would need to be observed in real time and in real life, not information in a database.

This whole adjudication process assumes there is a water problem and or shortage. I have not heard of any water shortage in whatcom county, only crowing about instream flows being low for fish. There is a dirty little secret about low instream flows, the lowest flow time of the year for the river a is after the irrigation season (october) when temperatures fall and glacial melt and snow melt stop and fall rains haven't started yet. We could legislate a stop to all irrigation and it would make no difference in the fall because there is no agricultural use then.

Very good information that Walker report, that was back when government agencies were trustworthy and had the good of the public in mind, now the public is viewed by many as "bad for the environment. 

A big irony I always see is the stories of large quantities of fish being caught in 1950s and 60s is that industrial pollution went into any waterways, farmers let cow manure go into ditches streams and rivers, and at the very same time there was so much more fish (at least we are told) than there are now. 

Can someone explane that?