this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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This is tangential, but I recently learned quite a bit about hospice care in Oregon. I was dating someone who worked in the industry. She said that private equity was buying up the industry, intending to bill Medicare for as much as possible. I asked why she and her hard-working co-workers didn't start up their own hospice. Don't quote me on the specifics, but 1) a new hospice here has to generate no profit for the first X years and 2) you have to have something like half a million in reserves in order to be allowed the license to start one.
The laws were well-intentioned, but they end up being a way for the wealthy to continue generating income on the backs of everyone else. If you have the industry knowledge and funding to start a hospice, you can do it, then sell it off to private equity after a few years. Rinse and repeat. The rich get richer and we all pay for it, largely via Medicare.
Jesus Christ. Hospice and private equity do not belong in the same universe together. The fact that this isn't swiftly and easily prevented by the courts is an incredibly basic failure of society. We cannot have a civilization while something like that exists.
Yeah, if you are looking for waste, fraud, and abuse it's this right here. It's endemic in all things health related. Very few individual patients are wasting social welfare money, instead it's almost entirely the providers who are milking the government.
Yet for some reason (hmmm) basically all the laws to "stop fraud" focus around the patients and not the providers. May have something to do with the fact that senators like Rick Scott being one of the biggest medicare fraudsters in the US.
Waste in government happens when private businesses get involved. There's very little real waste (beyond, ironically, laws which create waste to try and stop waste or means test recipients).
Healthcare should be nationalized. We'd save huge amounts of money by eliminating all these private company hucksters stealing public funds.
My dad went into hospice a year ago and died less than a week later. We keep getting letters from Medicare indicating that his hospice program keeps submitting bills for services to them.
Report them for Medicare fraud
I don't think it's fraud per se. The dates for the services are all from when he was still alive.
basically "higher quality" laws always make it very difficult for new players (such as your friend) to enter the market, because you have to have a whole lot of assets to start. which means there's less competition -> providers don't have to optimize on price so much -> they can get away with higher mark-ups.
the same is happening with cars, and housing. in the EU for example they require that every car have a few extra sensors (such as driving assistance, check whether the driver falls asleep, etc.). this makes manufacturing cars more expensive -> cars get more expensive. we all (everyone who buys a car) pay for this. they "improve quality" (mandatorily) at our expense.