REPUBLICAN TROLLS

REPUBLICAN TROLLS

 
Occasionally we find our NFTOS email loaded with infested crap from republican trolls. If you're somehow unfamiliar with the term, think of a troll as the drunk who pushes his way into your barroom conversation. The proverbial turd in the punchbowl, in the rather unlikely case there's a proverb out there about turds and punchbowls. You get the picture.

MADDOW:TROLLS

 

NFTOS' email trolls tend to be radical teapublicans of varying stripes, their intent is disruption. From the blunt-force troll with little to say  - that's not of the four-letter word variety to the benevolent troll who stops by to lecture everyone on the best practices of blog management. Trolls are very annoying.

But why stay annoyed when you can have fun instead? Make lemonade out of lemons readers. Trolls are an everyday reminder that someone, somewhere, disagrees with what you're saying and considers it important enough to respond to. So stand proud, progressives! They hate us. They really, really hate us.

Benevolent right-wing trolls are often as predictable as their more vulgar fellow travelers. First, they inject themselves into a debate, posing as "independent thinkers". Then they regurgitate well-worn out talking points that reveal them to be anything but nonpartisan. Once unmasked as right-wingers, the benevolent troll's saga usually ends in two ways. Neither, as you could imagine, are pretty.

Often the troll resorts to name-calling and baseless assertions, despite the fact they at first appeared to be "above the fray". Then, when confronted, they disappear completely without a peep. When confronted, they email one last jeremiad about how there's too much negativity on the site and they're leaving, never to read our blog again, because they've got better things to do. Only they brought the negativity. Only they don't have better things to do. They've decided to stop slumming and, I'm guessing, return to the Algonquin Round Table from whence they came.

While benevolent trolls are annoying, they're also rare. Most common are the blunt-force trolls, the commenter's with absolutely nothing to add. They leave intellect and proper grammar behind. All they bring is invective garbage. You could be a former member of the armed services with combat experience critiquing the current Secretary of Defense. But to them, you're a peace-loving hippie bastard with a latte in one hand and a joint in the other.

No matter who you are or what you say, you somehow fit into their image of liberalism. Pounding square pegs into round holes are their best skills, because their worldview has been so scrubbed, sanitized and simplified that even the most complex issues have been reduced to radical insane arguments.

If you're lucky, these temporary tough guys rarely metastasize into the third type of pest. Like a dope-sick junkie who can't resist any longer, relapsing trolls frequently fall off of the wagon and return to their old progressive haunts.

Let's not fool ourselves. If you're going to advocate for change, there are always going to be naysayers out there who will fight you, tooth-and-nail, to reverse that progress. Is it worth it to debate them? Absolutely, but remember to keep your eyes on the prize, not the cesspool from where your teapublican friends are slinging mud. Besides, if what you're saying is having that kind of effect among right-wingers, you've got to be doing something right.




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Hospital Trolling?

Hospital Debt Trollers

Imagine going into an emergency room or maternity ward and being greeted by a debt collector telling you that you won't receive treatment until you agree upon terms to pay an outstanding bill.

Its real, the next time you’re at the hospital, be on notice: The person taking down your information and admitting you for treatment might not be a hospital employee but a staffer from a debt-collection agency.

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson filed suit against a debt-collection agency called Accretive Health in January after an employee left a laptop containing personal information about for 23,500 patients in a rental car last July. Swanson’s lawsuit alleges that Accretive Health’s access to patient records violates federal privacy laws.

The case brings attention to the little-known practice of hospital companies embedding debt collectors in their facilities, the New York Times reports.

Americans are being subject to increasingly harsh tactics by debt collectors seeking to recoup money for their clients by using tactics including threats, insults and lies, recent research shows. Lisa Lindsay, an Illinois woman recovering from breast cancer, endured an arrest and a brief stay in jail over an unpaid $280 hospital bill that wasn’t even hers.

Hospitals are under increasing financial pressure as health care costs escalate and payment rates from Medicare, Medicaid and private health insurance companies become smaller. And largely because of a decades-old federal law requiring hospitals to provide emergency medical care to anyone, regardless of their ability to pay, hospitals take on tens of billions of dollars in bad debt each year. In 2010, hospitals were stuck with $39.3 billion in unpaid bills, which amounted to 5.6 percent of their total expenses, according to the American Hospital Association.

Cash-hungry hospitals aren’t the only obstacle to patients’ getting the health care they need. Health insurance premiums continue to rise even as benefits get more meager, joblessness and the sluggish economy are causing many Americans to go without medical care or become uninsured, and the size of hospital bills themselves can be impossible to predict.

Anxiety about dollars and cents has driven hospitals into the arms of aggressive debt collectors, according to the Times:

As a growing number of hospitals struggle under a glut of unpaid bills, they are turning to companies like Accretive. To win promised savings, all hospitals have to do is turn over the management of their front-line staffing — ranging from patient registration to scheduling and billing — and their back-office collection activities. Accretive says it has such arrangements with some of the country’s largest hospital systems to help reduce their costs.

Accretive Health works with dozens of U.S. hospitals, including Fairview Health Services and North Memorial Health Care in Minnesota, according to the Times and a press release from Swanson’s office. Debt collectors are instructed to ask patients for credit cards or checks when they arrive at an emergency room seeking treatment, the Times reports.

Hospitals across the U.S. are trying new methods of avoiding unpaid bills. HCA, the largest for-profit hospital chain, and other companies have started demanding upfront payments as high as $350 from people in emergency rooms, Kaiser Health News reported in February. In 2011, about 80,000 people walked out of HCA emergency rooms before getting any medical care because of the company’s $150 fee, according to Kaiser Health News.




NFTOS
STAFF