On the note of Elon musk building shit that impacts marginalized communities, his Space X launch test site in Boca Chica is affecting the majority Mexican-American community! Every time a rocket goes off my grandparents home gets more damaged due to seismic activity. Also he’s dumping wastewater into the Laguna Madre which affects the shrimping industry which Port Isabel relies on. And the debris from the rockets fucks with the wildlife. But it’s space endevours and not AI no one talks about it
i mean this is what genuienly sometimes makes me angry about the ai discourse, right, people will momentarily like magically become aware of an incredibly severe and important issue but only for the brief moment and narrow understanding they need to complain about midjourney or whatever
Big Insurance Uses AI to Quickly Deny Claims, One Man Fights Back with AI App That Quickly Appeals
"The idea that American health insurance companies are using AI to analyze and adjudicate claims for approval or denial sounds terrifying, but one North Carolinian is using AI to fight back.
When Raleigh resident Neal Shah had a claim denied for his wife’s chemotherapy drugs, he thought it was rare, that he was the only one, that it was just bad luck.
Litigating his case on phone calls that lasted for hours changed the husband and father, and he set about creating a sophisticated app that uses artificial intelligence to compare claims denial forms against health insurance contracts, before automatically drafting an appeal letter.
“For a doctor to write this, it’s not rocket science, but it still takes hours,” Shah told ABC News 11, adding that a well-written appeal letter, sent in immediately, can sometimes get denials reversed within days or weeks, but most people either don’t know they can appeal, or don’t know on what grounds they can appeal.
In fact, according to Shah’s research, 850 million claims denials occur every year, and less than 1% are ever appealed.
That’s where Counterforce Health comes in, a startup that’s created a free-to-use app for claims denials.
It’s all the more critical a service now that health insurance companies, already armed with statewide government-protected pseudo monopolies and duopolies, are using AI to deny claims within seconds of them being filed.
“Before, you used to have a reason you would deny it, and you used to have a doctor review or a nurse review it, but once AI rolled out, they could just have AI deny it,” Shah explained.
For Counterforce Health, Shah brought onboard Riyaa Jadhav, a Jill of all trades who has helped grow and expand the undertaking through her experience in both the business world and working alongside patients at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.
Together, they’ve built Counterforce to the point where it boasts a 70% success rate in appealing claims.
Thousands have already logged on; many going on to use the service.
“Sometimes when enough people get loud, enough people put pressure, then I think all of a sudden society wakes up, so I really feel like it’s really about to click,” Shah said.
-via Good News Network, August 5, 2025
Here's the link to this organization, by the way. According to their numbers, less than 1% of denials in the US are appealed, but 75% of appeals are approved. This could do so much good.
And another source for validity:
Stephanie Nixdorf's insurance company repeatedly declined to cover a drug to treat her arthritis. That changed after she sent an appeal lett
Being an intellectual property abolitionist is a bit like being a prison abolitionist in that people that disagree with you expect you to be able to give a perfect solution on the spot for every possible theoretical problem that could conceivably be created by getting rid of intellectual property, without being expected themselves to offer any solution to any of the real problems that are created by keeping intellectual property around.
Entry level jobs haven't existed since the 2008 crash. 90% of hiring managers won't hire recent graduates. A quarter of job listings are ghost jobs. Companies hire part time so that they don't have to give benefits. Federal minimum wage hasn't increased since 2009. The True Unemployment Rate is 25%. Master's are the new bachelor's. For most the job search takes over a year. 75% of resumes are never. actually seen by the hiring team.
Imperialist core entry level jobs have been replaced with outsourcing for the working class and internships for the wealthy.
The lack of entry level jobs means that recent graduates are not hired because they are expected to know in advance how to behave in the workplace rather than being trained when they begin working.
Actually as many as 1-in-3 job listings are fake, because this allows companies to claim they are "actively recruiting and growing" even when they aren't, which looks good to investors and can lead to government benefits as well.
In the US, hiring several part time jobs allows companies to save about 30% on benefits compared to hiring one full time job. This is directly because of the US's predatory healthcare system and lack of the worker protections common in other imperialist core economies.
The US minimum wage has been static for my entire adult life, in part because efforts to pin the minimum wage to cost of living metrics are constantly stonewalled by wealthy political groups.
The US labor participation rate is around 80% of abled adults, which yes, does mean about 20% of abled adults are not working, but perhaps much more damningly, this is actually very high participation compared to a lot of US history, and yet the cost of living and pay are so mismatched that quality of life is reaching impressive lows.
Masters degrees are being devalued as a consequence of the prior devaluation of Bachelors, that itself caused by the destruction and devaluation of compulsory public schooling in the US. This combines with the absence of entry level positions in deeply fraught ways.
I am unable to corroborate the claim that US job searches average greater than a year. However they do average well over 7 months, and the US's notoriously spiteful and underpaying unemployment system cuts off support much sooner than that. If you can even get unemployment support in the first place.
And finally, yes, 75% of completed and successful applications will be automatically rejected by machines without human oversight. That's for complete applications on the company's own site with resumes attached. Just plain resumes, and applications completed on third party sites like Indeed, have much worse numbers than even that.
1830s print after George Cruikshank titled “The Sick Goose and the Council of Health”, depicting various remedies and health fraudsters suggesting treatments. Old Parr says: “Parr’s Life Pills I see are the only things that can save him”. Morrison’s Vegetable Pills, where Herbert Ingram got his start in the patent medicine business, replies: “Life pills! Vegetable pills you mean, let him be well stuffed with Morison's no. 1 & 2”
Had a coworker tell me they hadn’t texted once because of the time. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
I stared at them through the dawning realization that they lived in a world where that was remotely possible. “My phone is on do not disturb if I’m sleeping. Why would I let random texts wake me up? My sleep is important.”
Equally baffled they replied, “What if someone at work needs you?”
“I am not a manager. No one at work will ever need me badly enough to interrupt my sleep. If I’m not working then there’s no reason to be calling me.”
“Not even if you need to cover?”
I laughed, “I don’t need to cover. They could ask me to cover but good luck getting ahold of me if I’m sleeping.”
They looked distressed at this idea.
To console them I added, “I have important people like my mom and my wife set to override. If they call they get through no matter what.”
There was a small pause before they asked, “You can do that…?”
So friendly reminder. Become unreachable. Work does not need you that badly. Sleep.
I feel like we kinda glazed over the EXTREMELY racist idea that MLK wore a suit because he was "presenting his movement" rather than because they were ordinary and expected dress for his social class.
I'm going to harp on this actually because MLK wearing a suit actually did piss a lot of people off who thought Black people shouldn't be in suits. If MLK wanted to dress in a way that would piss off the minimum number of (white) people it would not be in a suit because the suits were themselves controversial (among white racists). It wasn't some cynical ploy to appear presentable to white people and so it can't have been successful or unsuccessful in that capacity, but you actually could have raised the same argument against MLK in his time dressing in a way that (if you're the most self-centred and racist person in the world, which the average American was then and is now) can be construed as designed to piss off members of an oppressor class.
MLK was a Baptist minister and the leader of civil rights organisations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the only reason that a guy like that wouldn't be wearing a suit is because he was Black and thus, regardless of all his other accomplishments, expected to dress in a way that did not convey authority over white people. In public he and all Black people were expected to dress in a way that conveyed subservience, not authority. His suit was a claim to equality to similar white church leaders and people were not pissed off at him despite that, but because of it.
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