All posts by Henry Koren

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Overpriced Prescription Drugs: Completing The Circle Of Blame – @ExpressScripts @AnthemHealth

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I still don’t fully understand why my insurance caused my prescription drug costs to go up 83%.

Today I talked with a representative from express scripts, the company that services drugs for Anthem Health Care.  The representative repeated ad infinitum that their pricing agreements with specific pharmacies were “proprietary information”, but seemed to state that that if the rates from the pharmacy were lower than the insurance company dictated rates, that I should end up paying the lesser of the two prices, not the greater.  That makes sense to me, but that isn’t what ended up happening. Continue reading Overpriced Prescription Drugs: Completing The Circle Of Blame – @ExpressScripts @AnthemHealth →

Society

Why Health Insurance Reform Must Happen: Express Scripts Conspiring With Anthem Health to Rip Off Patients

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Updated 2016-4-16: Anthem has sued Express Scripts for 3 billion dollars. This post contains hard evidence of Express Scripts culpability.

Updated 2012-3-16: see below

The conventional wisdom, as well as recent studies, say that having health insurance makes the cost of your prescription drugs lower. Recently, I have found the exact opposite to be true. In fact, having health insurance has made my prescription drug cost go up to 84% more than what I would pay without a prescription.

This seems to be the result of something going on between my health insurance provider Anthem Health, and the company they employ to service their prescriptions: Express Scripts. These companies seem to like to point the finger at Wallgreens for proposing higher prices.

I think there is something more sinister going on:  a cabal of for-profit health care corporations who are colluding to fraudulently overcharge consumers for their prescription drugs. Continue reading Why Health Insurance Reform Must Happen: Express Scripts Conspiring With Anthem Health to Rip Off Patients →

Technology

Hardware Keyboards On Android Have a Long Way To Go

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I love my Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, but the keyboard is not perfect.  It works better than the touchscreen on my netbook, but it’s still very unrefined. I did however manage to use it to write this post.

Mostly, the keyboard problems are the fault of Android app developers who did not anticipate a keyboard being a primary interface to their app.  Here are some apps that don’t quite work how they should:

ConnectBot – Key maps for special characters !@#$%^&*() are broken.  These work fine for password inputs, but once I’m logged in, they’re dead.  The #1 SSH client for Android is useless for all but the most basic commands.
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Gmail and Google Earth – I love using the keyboard shortcuts for these desktop apps, but they have not been ported over to their Android counterparts yet.

Voice Input – When I dock my transformer to its keyboard, I lose all ability to issue voice commands or speech to text. The virtual keyboard has a nice microphone to invoke the speech capture, but no such hardware button is part of the Asus keyboard.

None of these problems are insurmountable.  Hopefully the experience of having a keyboard on a tablet will improve with some basic software updates.

Society

Homophobia And Marriage Inequality Must End

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Inequality for the non-heterosexual must end.  I’ve been a beneficiary of having my straight relationship recognized by the government.  As some white people once stood for the rights of the oppressed blacks, now I feel it is my duty to stand for the rights of my fellow humans who are Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender to not be persecuted or shamed, and to have the same right to benefit from a government sponsored relationship that I have.  Equal protection under the law.

Here are some videos that have moved me in the last week to make this post…

Continue reading Homophobia And Marriage Inequality Must End →

Society

Don’t Let The Internet Get Blacked Out – Stop The PIPA And SOPA Legislation

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The Protect-IP act in the senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House are dangerous legislations that can have a destructive affect on the Internet.

SOPA and PIPA would endanger the internet as we know it.  It can endanger the operators of URL shorteners.  It will endanger user generated content.  It will push the internet underground into fragmented dark nets which will make anti-piracy detection and enforcement more difficult.

I’m proud to have the representation of Jared Polis in the House, where the bill seems to have been recently shelved.   Jared recently discussed the issue on Reddit. I’m lucky to have him as my congressman.  However, the PIPA remains alive in the Senate.

Here’s what Jared Polis recommends you can do to influence the opinion of your representative or senator:

 “in order of impact from most to least:

1) Show up at a town hall or talk to them in person, check their schedule w their office
2) phone call, ask for the Legislative Associate in charge of the issue
3) Snail mail
4) email
5) post on their facebook wall or tweet them
6) sign petition”

My Colorado senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet recently withdrew their support for PIPA because exactly this kind of action.  Don’t believe that you can’t make a difference!