Karen Myna Cantor

The Main Attraction The first time someone died at Fantasy Fair, no one thought to check near Old Cassie. She was little more than an embellished archway, after all: something people idly passed through without much paus...

THE MAIN ATTRACTION by D.L. Stille

maudlinhouse.net/the-main-att...

The Shortlist for June 13, 2025 - turn and work Nonfiction by Melissa Witcher. Fiction by Dawn Tasaka Steffler, Beth Sherman, D.L. Stille, and Anaïs Godard

and fiction from:
Dawn Tasaka Steffler @dawnsteffler.bsky.social in @jmwwjournal.bsky.social
Beth Sherman in Milk Candy Review
D.L. Stille @dorothystille.bsky.social in @maudlinhouse.bsky.social
Anaïs Godard in @fracturedlit.bsky.social

Links to the stories here:

Opinion | We Saw Medicaid Work Requirements Up Close. You Don’t Want This Chaos.

Medicaid work requirements would be a disaster:

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...

It is such a good book, absolutely chilling. It has pushed me to be more active on this issue irl

⭐️ bookish checkpoint ⭐️

📚 Last book read: HURRICANE HEROES IN TEXAS by Mary Pope Osborne

📚 Current read: ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS by Omar El Akkad

📚 Last book added to tbr: AMERICA'S NOT-SO SWEETHEART by Blair Hanson

📚 Next read: THE RAVEN SCHOLAR by Antonia Hodgson

Spanish TV before Eurovision today

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wait no 😭

This sounds amazing and perfectly bloody 👀

Hope you feel better soon!

This is also an example of the way people don’t immediately think of infrastructure and systems when they think of how to solve societal problems.

When we talk about ending extremism, we discuss it as a fight. Well, what if it was more about building walkable cities and funding community spaces?

Other drug companies adopted similar tactics — a playbook that would prove effective even as the opioid epidemic spread. A manager at the drugmaker Mallinckrodt succinctly explained the access game to colleagues in 2012, after a group of large insurers imposed restrictions on one of the company’s painkillers. “We need to remove the barrier to growth, and that will require us to ‘pay to play,’” the manager wrote. Express Scripts, the P.B.M. for the insurance plans, helped arrange a “rebate enhancement,” and the insurers loosened the restrictions.

Purdue and other leading drugmakers focused on avoiding two types of restrictions. The first was the requirement that doctors provide additional evidence to insurance companies or P.B.M.s that powerful painkillers were warranted. In 2014, a large Blue Cross Blue Shield plan in New Jersey imposed such a requirement on Mallinckrodt’s drug Xartemis XR because of “safety, policy and chronic use concerns,” the drugmaker noted in an internal presentation. But after “assertive action” by Mallinckrodt and a P.B.M. called Prime Therapeutics, the Blue Cross Blue Shield plan “quickly reversed the decision.”

More examples, in case anyone thought insurers were actually looking out for patients. The only incentive is money.

Drugmakers Paid PBMs Not to Restrict Opioid Prescriptions Drugmakers including Purdue Pharma paid pharmacy benefit managers not to restrict painkiller prescriptions, a New York Times investigation found.

Source - www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/b...

An important test came in 2003. At a meeting with Purdue, an executive for the insurer UnitedHealthcare raised concerns about abuse of OxyContin, noting that some patients were being prescribed as many as 1,000 pills a month. The insurance company planned to limit prescriptions to 60 pills; doctors would need to call to get authorization for higher amounts. For help, Purdue turned to Merck-Medco, the P.B.M. that UnitedHealthcare had hired to handle prescription drug benefits for its customers. The effort culminated in a meeting at UnitedHealth Group’s offices. A Merck-Medco official delivered a presentation on the “potential loss of rebates” to the insurer if it went forward with the limit, an executive for the P.B.M. reported to Purdue. “That information convinced the UHG team to change,” he wrote.

Since the UHC CEO killing, I've seen health insurers claim they are a safeguard against "unnecessary care". I wondered: what did they do during the opioid crisis, when restricting drug access may have saved peoples' lives? You will not be surprised to learn they caved to Purdue Pharma for $$$.

So what we're not gonna do with this UnitedHealthcare CEO killing is immediately say the killer was mentally ill/psychotic/schizophrenic etc. Already seeing comments like this. Nope! Not today!! If your first instinct when you hear of a violent crime is to assume mental illness, maybe fix that

How come it’s not a crime when UnitedHealthcare kills people?

Congratulations yes!!!

Interesting!!!! I will look into this one

Oooh I enjoyed this one as well--the writing was so beautiful!

WOOO!!!!

A yuletide holiday photo of a candle in front of a pine tree with crystals around it. Text says "Much Abdou About Nothing Yuletide Giveaway" Recieve a specially curated “writers’ essentials” kit! To enter: Share this post! join my mailing list, fill out the google form inside the “welcome” e-mail Winner selected december 15th

GIVEAWAY TIME!

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Winner will be selected on December 15th!

i wish i could make polls here 😔 i would be so annoying

i want to know more about your favorite books friends what is a book that made you go AAHHHHH this year

NC!!!!!! Congrats!!

no I am simply always distracted by the new and shiny 😔

this is honestly a better strategy

is that the power 👀

this is a good strategy!! I want to do this more because sometimes I put a book down for so long I forget what's going on

right now I am reading seven. this is because I lack self-control

okay friends I have to know: how many books do you normally read at once