the "Headline That Caught My Attention or the WTF" thread

Really? Solar power is a subsided racket and it doesn't actually work as advertised?

Color me shocked! :eek:

www.newsday.com

Marcor Solar supports orphaned systems on Long Island

Marcor Solar, led by Gina Farese, provides support for orphaned solar energy systems on Long Island, ensuring continued service and maintenance.
www.newsday.com

There’s a reason Gina Farese is known to her employees as the foster mother of the solar industry.

The chief executive of West Babylon-based Marcor Construction and its sister company, Marcor Solar, has taken on the monumental task of servicing upward of 3,000 solar rooftops on Long Island and the five boroughs whose original installers or panel makers have either left the market, closed down or filed for bankruptcy.

It’s a little-discussed sector of the solar industry on Long Island that has seen considerable turnover after rebate programs and other incentives have come and gone, leasing companies ran Tupperware-like solar sales parties, and the industry continues to see ups and downs that justify its local moniker, the solar coaster.

WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
Marcor Construction and Marcor Solar have taken on the task of servicing upward of 3,000 solar rooftops on Long Island and the five boroughs whose original installers or panel makers have either left the market, closed down or filed for bankruptcy.

For example, Marcor stepped in this week after EmPower Solar disclosed it was winding down operations just months after the federal government nixed a home solar tax credit.

Over the past decade more than a dozen solar installers, leasing companies and manufacturers have exited the market, leaving a large number of customers in the lurch as systems age and installation problems become more evident.
 

Whale That Swam 20 Miles Up Washington River Is Found Dead​

The gray whale, which some locals affectionately named Willapa Willy, was found on Saturday afternoon after first being spotted swimming up the Willapa River last week.

The young whale seemed slender but OK — aside from the bizarre fact that it was swimming along a small river in Washington State.

Onlookers filming from the banks of the Willapa River expressed disbelief; surely news of the sighting was an April Fools’ prank (it was April 1). Every so often, the whale, which appeared to be at least 30 feet long, with mottled charcoal skin, spewed out a cloud of vapor.

“Oh, that’s awesome,” one of the onlookers murmured in a video posted online.

Just three days later, the whale, which had swum 20 miles inland, was dead — the third gray whale death in the state just last week and the sixth this year, according to researchers, who are growing alarmed that the trend is part of a broader decline of the species.

Each year, from mid-February to May, eastern North Pacific gray whales migrate northward along the West Coast, but in recent years more have been dying on the journey. Last year, 179 gray whales died during migration season, 18 of them in Washington State, said John Calambokidis, a research biologist with the Cascadia Research Collective, which had been tracking the whale. On Monday, the collective conducted a necropsy.

“This is still really early in the season,” he added. “Most of the gray whale mortality that we see occurs in April, May and June.”

Scientists don’t know exactly what is causing the spike in deaths, Mr. Calambokidis said, but they think that the deaths could be connected to the whales’ food sources in the Arctic, which have been dwindling as climate change transforms the region.

From 2019 to 2023, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration documented an “unusual mortality event” in the population of whales that migrate along the West Coast of the United States. The agency’s count in winter last year indicated that the population had dwindled further, to about 13,000 gray whales — the smallest population since the 1970s.

Only about 85 gray whale calves migrated past Central California on their way to feeding grounds in the Arctic in early 2025, the lowest number since record-keeping began three decades ago, according to the agency.

“When the higher mortality in 2019 began, some of us maybe viewed it as concerning but not alarming,” Mr. Calambokidis said, citing a large-scale mortality event from 1999 to 2000 that the gray whale population bounced back from. “But now that this has gone on for seven years, and we’ve seen this 50 percent decline with no sign of rebound, scientists like myself have become really alarmed.”

He and other researchers believe that the whale that died in the Willapa River — they don’t yet know its age or sex — most likely swam inland because it was searching for food or because it was ill and disoriented. The research collective was first contacted by a member of the public on Wednesday and then located the whale, Mr. Calambokidis said.

Some residents of the region surrounding the river, about 120 miles southwest of Seattle, rushed to see the oddity of an ocean beast navigating its way up the shallow waterways. They named it Willapa Willy.

“Three, two, one — blow!” children exclaimed from the banks, counting down until the whale exhaled. In the many videos posted online, the whale moves languidly, letting out an occasional whoosh and a spurt from its blowhole before ducking back underwater.

Though it is unusual for whales to end up in rivers, Willapa Willy is hardly the first. Beluga whales have ended up in the Seine River in France and the Thames in England; in 2019, a young humpback washed ashore on a remote, forested island in the Amazon River in Brazil; and in 2007, two humpbacks were stranded in the Sacramento River in California. (That time, a team of marine rescuers played recorded humpback songs, hoping to lure the stranded mammals back to the sea.)

With Willapa Willy, Mr. Calambokidis said, it was unclear whether trying to coax the whale from the Willapa River would have helped or added to its distress. Researchers had still been trying to gather information about the whale when they learned it had died, he said. “As they get in worse and worse conditions,” he added, “they just become in a more debilitated state and may be a little out of their mind finding their way.”

By Friday, the whale had traveled so far upstream that scientists from the research collective, together with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, could no longer reach the whale by boat, Mr. Calambokidis said.

That day, two other whales were found dead about 40 miles away, he added. They were emaciated, and one had evidence of blunt force trauma to the head.

By Saturday, Willapa Willy, which had been slowly navigating its way upstream, was also dead. A member of the public reported finding the animal deceased and half-submerged in a shallow part of the river near Raymond, Wash.

Mr. Calambokidis said that when researchers examined the whale on Monday, it seemed larger than they initially thought. It did not appear to have any major injuries, he added.
 
Hope no one was dining on geese this winter...

The Hamptons Has a Bird Flu Problem​

This winter, hundreds of dead geese fell around Georgica Pond. No one knew how to dispose of the infected bodies, so a local landscaper just winged it.

Georgica Pond is the brackish coastal pond in East Hampton, Long Island, around which sit the summer homes of the filmmaker Steven Spielberg and the hip-hop mogul Jay-Z.

This winter, however, the pond went from a picturesque location to a horror scene when more than 700 dead geese lined its sandy shore and the surrounding area.

Their deaths came at a time when much of the North Fork of Long Island was hit with a scourge of H5N1, also known as bird flu.

Wildlife conservationists believe the outbreak was principally caused by an unusually long spell of freezing temperatures, which meant birds were dealing with scarce resources and weakened immune systems. Whenever birds can find small patches of water, they flock straight to them, breathing all over one another and quickly spreading germs. Once symptomatic, the birds typically become disoriented and start dropping dead, often within a day.

Birds have been hitting the beach in Southampton as well, with hundreds showing up on the shores of Sagg Pond in Sagaponack, according to Ryan Murphy, the emergency manager for the Town of Southampton.

“Since 2022-ish, it has been an ongoing issue,” he said. “But typically, the impact has been toward agricultural chickens and ducks that are intended for consumption. This is the first year it’s been seen in a large number of wild water fowl.”

Transmission to humans is relatively rare, according to Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, a founding director of Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases.

“But it’s not zero,” she said.

And, according to Dr. Richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude’s Hospital, when the pathogen does jump to humans, the worldwide fatality rate among confirmed cases over the past two decades has hovered around 50 percent, although, for reasons scientists don’t fully understand, only two of the past 71 cases in the United States have resulted in death.

“Clearly there needs to be better preparation,” said Dr. Webby. He added that he believes the pathogen is likely to mutate, becoming more infectious to humans; and that he has no idea which agency — local, state or federal (if any) — bears responsibility for managing potential outbreaks.

In a likely outbreak near Cincinnati, chronicled in The Times last December, different agencies haggled over who was responsible for removing 72 dead vultures from a Catholic school’s athletic fields. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife did not agree to help dispose of the carcasses until after township officials complained to a local news station.

The town trustees of Southampton elected to deal with the problem there by hiring Suffolk County Deer Management to cart away the birds. In East Hampton, cleanup landed in the lap of Jim Grimes, a local landscaper who also serves as a trustee for the town. According to Mr. Grimes, the town’s trustees first heard from East Hampton Marine Patrol sometime around Feb. 27.

Almost no one seemed to want to lend a hand to dispose of the bird carcasses, he said.

Certainly not the town board, which has a spotty relationship with the town trustees dating back to colonial times, when East Hampton’s most notable residents were local fishermen and the government was divided, more or less, between the people who managed the beaches and waterways and those who managed other stuff, like the police and taxes.

Of course, that was a time before agencies like the Centers for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the National Institutes of Health had been established. It was also a time when infectious disease specialists did not worry about avian flu jumping to various members of the animal kingdom, whether they are Fortune 500 CEOs or their $4,500 goldendoodles.

“The kneejerk reaction of the town board was, ‘We don’t want to touch this,’” Mr. Grimes said.

When The Times spoke by phone on Friday with Patrick Derenze, the public information officer for the town, he assigned the responsibility to the town trustees.

Mr. Grimes said calls had also been placed to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It advised that the dead birds could be triple-bagged and taken to Stony Brook University for testing. The website also provided disposal recommendations, either by incineration or burial.

Whatever method was chosen, the D.E.C. website made it clear that the agency would be unlikely to parachute in with a team of infectious disease specialists overseen by a Harvard-trained leader evoking the demeanor of Viola Davis or Jodie Foster.

“There is currently no way to effectively manage this disease in wild birds,” the website says in bold letters, and, “In most cases, there will be no direct response.” (“In a post-Covid world, we are on our own,” said Mike Tessitore, who cleaned up the birds in Southampton.)

Mr. Grimes asked several of his fellow trustees for help.

“I said, ‘Are you here? Can you give me a hand?’” Mr. Grimes recalled. “I thought, Let’s just deal with this in-house,” adding, “I’ve never heard so many lame excuses.”

So with a little advice from his son, Noah Grimes, a Texas-based equine veterinarian, Mr. Grimes put on a white coverall suit and an N95 mask and went to work. He dug a two-foot-deep, four-foot-wide, 30-foot-long trench in a secluded area on the southwest side of the pond (past the intertidal zone, he noted), and used his Ford Ranger truck to transport some 200 birds to the site. He hopes it will be their final resting place.

Within days, more than 500 other dead birds were found nearby, although these were buried by Mr. Grimes and his small landscaping crew in a field on Accabonac Road, a few miles away.

Kathy Cunningham, the executive director of the Village Preservation Society of East Hampton, was one of many nearby residents who said Mr. Grimes had behaved heroically.

“The fact that Jim did this all on his own was a real kindness,” she said.

But Mr. Grimes was also paid nearly $6,000 by the trustees to conduct the cleanup operation. That led to sporadic complaints of insider dealing in a community that is known for it.

“There’s no business card that says Jimmy Grimes, pet interment!” Mr. Grimes countered. “I was just trying to deal with the problem as efficiently as possible.” (The cost for Southampton’s cleanup effort was well over $20,000, according to James Mack, the president of the town trustees.)

Dell Cullum, a wildlife photographer who previously served as a town trustee, penned a diatribe posted on Nextdoor calling the beach “the absolute WORST place to bury infected birds.” Doing so, he said, was “NO DIFFERENT THAN BURYING INFECTED MEDICAL WASTE IN THE SAND.”

In an interview last week, Mr. Cullum called the beaches of East Hampton a “superhighway” for foraging raccoons.

“They’re going to be digging in the soil!” he said. “Foxes are going to be digging in the soil!”

“I don’t want to say someone’s crazy even though they really are,” Mr. Grimes shot back, going on to say that he has yet to meet a raccoon that digs two to three feet into the ground.

But, he said, if the situation were to recur, “I wouldn’t bury them on the beach again!”
 
Roccus7 said:
Hope no one was dining on geese this winter...

The Hamptons Has a Bird Flu Problem​

This winter, hundreds of dead geese fell around Georgica Pond. No one knew how to dispose of the infected bodies, so a local landscaper just winged it.

Georgica Pond is the brackish coastal pond in East Hampton, Long Island, around which sit the summer homes of the filmmaker Steven Spielberg and the hip-hop mogul Jay-Z.

This winter, however, the pond went from a picturesque location to a horror scene when more than 700 dead geese lined its sandy shore and the surrounding area.

Their deaths came at a time when much of the North Fork of Long Island was hit with a scourge of H5N1, also known as bird flu.

Wildlife conservationists believe the outbreak was principally caused by an unusually long spell of freezing temperatures, which meant birds were dealing with scarce resources and weakened immune systems. Whenever birds can find small patches of water, they flock straight to them, breathing all over one another and quickly spreading germs. Once symptomatic, the birds typically become disoriented and start dropping dead, often within a day.

Birds have been hitting the beach in Southampton as well, with hundreds showing up on the shores of Sagg Pond in Sagaponack, according to Ryan Murphy, the emergency manager for the Town of Southampton.

“Since 2022-ish, it has been an ongoing issue,” he said. “But typically, the impact has been toward agricultural chickens and ducks that are intended for consumption. This is the first year it’s been seen in a large number of wild water fowl.”

Transmission to humans is relatively rare, according to Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, a founding director of Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases.

“But it’s not zero,” she said.

And, according to Dr. Richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude’s Hospital, when the pathogen does jump to humans, the worldwide fatality rate among confirmed cases over the past two decades has hovered around 50 percent, although, for reasons scientists don’t fully understand, only two of the past 71 cases in the United States have resulted in death.

“Clearly there needs to be better preparation,” said Dr. Webby. He added that he believes the pathogen is likely to mutate, becoming more infectious to humans; and that he has no idea which agency — local, state or federal (if any) — bears responsibility for managing potential outbreaks.

In a likely outbreak near Cincinnati, chronicled in The Times last December, different agencies haggled over who was responsible for removing 72 dead vultures from a Catholic school’s athletic fields. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife did not agree to help dispose of the carcasses until after township officials complained to a local news station.

The town trustees of Southampton elected to deal with the problem there by hiring Suffolk County Deer Management to cart away the birds. In East Hampton, cleanup landed in the lap of Jim Grimes, a local landscaper who also serves as a trustee for the town. According to Mr. Grimes, the town’s trustees first heard from East Hampton Marine Patrol sometime around Feb. 27.

Almost no one seemed to want to lend a hand to dispose of the bird carcasses, he said.

Certainly not the town board, which has a spotty relationship with the town trustees dating back to colonial times, when East Hampton’s most notable residents were local fishermen and the government was divided, more or less, between the people who managed the beaches and waterways and those who managed other stuff, like the police and taxes.

Of course, that was a time before agencies like the Centers for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the National Institutes of Health had been established. It was also a time when infectious disease specialists did not worry about avian flu jumping to various members of the animal kingdom, whether they are Fortune 500 CEOs or their $4,500 goldendoodles.

“The kneejerk reaction of the town board was, ‘We don’t want to touch this,’” Mr. Grimes said.

When The Times spoke by phone on Friday with Patrick Derenze, the public information officer for the town, he assigned the responsibility to the town trustees.

Mr. Grimes said calls had also been placed to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It advised that the dead birds could be triple-bagged and taken to Stony Brook University for testing. The website also provided disposal recommendations, either by incineration or burial.

Whatever method was chosen, the D.E.C. website made it clear that the agency would be unlikely to parachute in with a team of infectious disease specialists overseen by a Harvard-trained leader evoking the demeanor of Viola Davis or Jodie Foster.

“There is currently no way to effectively manage this disease in wild birds,” the website says in bold letters, and, “In most cases, there will be no direct response.” (“In a post-Covid world, we are on our own,” said Mike Tessitore, who cleaned up the birds in Southampton.)

Mr. Grimes asked several of his fellow trustees for help.

“I said, ‘Are you here? Can you give me a hand?’” Mr. Grimes recalled. “I thought, Let’s just deal with this in-house,” adding, “I’ve never heard so many lame excuses.”

So with a little advice from his son, Noah Grimes, a Texas-based equine veterinarian, Mr. Grimes put on a white coverall suit and an N95 mask and went to work. He dug a two-foot-deep, four-foot-wide, 30-foot-long trench in a secluded area on the southwest side of the pond (past the intertidal zone, he noted), and used his Ford Ranger truck to transport some 200 birds to the site. He hopes it will be their final resting place.

Within days, more than 500 other dead birds were found nearby, although these were buried by Mr. Grimes and his small landscaping crew in a field on Accabonac Road, a few miles away.

Kathy Cunningham, the executive director of the Village Preservation Society of East Hampton, was one of many nearby residents who said Mr. Grimes had behaved heroically.

“The fact that Jim did this all on his own was a real kindness,” she said.

But Mr. Grimes was also paid nearly $6,000 by the trustees to conduct the cleanup operation. That led to sporadic complaints of insider dealing in a community that is known for it.

“There’s no business card that says Jimmy Grimes, pet interment!” Mr. Grimes countered. “I was just trying to deal with the problem as efficiently as possible.” (The cost for Southampton’s cleanup effort was well over $20,000, according to James Mack, the president of the town trustees.)

Dell Cullum, a wildlife photographer who previously served as a town trustee, penned a diatribe posted on Nextdoor calling the beach “the absolute WORST place to bury infected birds.” Doing so, he said, was “NO DIFFERENT THAN BURYING INFECTED MEDICAL WASTE IN THE SAND.”

In an interview last week, Mr. Cullum called the beaches of East Hampton a “superhighway” for foraging raccoons.

“They’re going to be digging in the soil!” he said. “Foxes are going to be digging in the soil!”

“I don’t want to say someone’s crazy even though they really are,” Mr. Grimes shot back, going on to say that he has yet to meet a raccoon that digs two to three feet into the ground.

But, he said, if the situation were to recur, “I wouldn’t bury them on the beach again!”
Click to expand...
Wildlife conservationists believe the outbreak was principally caused by an unusually long spell of freezing temperatures, which meant birds were dealing with scarce resources and weakened immune systems. Whenever birds can find small patches of water, they flock straight to them, breathing all over one another and quickly spreading germs. Once symptomatic, the birds typically become disoriented and start dropping dead, often within a day.

That there is one very scientific way of looking at it.
 
Hmmm, what could go wrong???

To Fill Air Traffic Controller Shortage, F.A.A. Turns to Gamers​

Avid players of video games have emerged as a target demographic for recruiters at range of federal agencies, including the military and the Department of Homeland Security.
 
Roccus7 said:
Hmmm, what could go wrong???

To Fill Air Traffic Controller Shortage, F.A.A. Turns to Gamers​

Avid players of video games have emerged as a target demographic for recruiters at range of federal agencies, including the military and the Department of Homeland Security.
Click to expand...

You never saw The Last Starfighter, did you?
 

Practices in NY & Fl, a bit of a stereotype here???​

​

A $440,000 Breast Reduction: How Doctors Cashed In on a Consumer Protection Law​

A law meant to end surprise medical billing accidentally created a multibillion-dollar industry that is making doctors richer.

Dr. Norman Rowe, a plastic surgeon with offices in New York and Florida, advertises on his website that breast reduction surgery usually costs between $15,000 and $25,000.

But these days, his practice sometimes earns $440,000 for the procedure.

Dr. Rowe has taken full advantage of a new arbitration system, part of a major consumer protection law Congress passed in 2020 with bipartisan majorities. The No Surprises Act was designed to eliminate surprise medical bills, for patients who showed up in the emergency room and were treated by a doctor who didn’t take their insurance.

It bars those out-of-network doctors from billing patients directly. Instead, they can plead their case to a government-approved arbitrator. If they win, the patient’s insurer has to pay their desired amount.

By all accounts, the law is successfully protecting patients against bills from doctors they never chose. But it has also generated an expensive unanticipated consequence: Doctors have flooded the arbitration system with millions of claims. Most are winning, often collecting fees hundreds of times higher than what they could negotiate with insurers directly or what they could have earned from patients before the law passed.

“I’m still glad we passed the bill, because we got consumers out of it, but we need to rein in this arbitration process,” said Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, who helped negotiate the law.

Some health plans said they have increased premiums this year to cover the extra costs. The United Service Workers health plan, which covers 20,000 trades workers in the New York area, said it boosted premiums by an extra 1.75 percentage points to offset arbitration awards and fees. The system has also enriched a new class of specialized businesses, which assist doctors in navigating the bureaucratic process.

“This is a recipe for driving up health care costs,” said Karen Ignagni, the chief executive of EmblemHealth, which sued Dr. Rowe in March, arguing his use of arbitration amounted to fraud. “There are no checks. There are no balances. There’s no oversight.”

When the law passed, government officials estimated that about 17,000 cases would go to arbitration a year. Instead, doctors brought 1.2 million such cases in the first half of last year, and won around 88 percent of them.

The arbitrators are doing well too. The fees they earn for deciding cases, which range from $425 to $1,150 per case, have added up. They earned $885 million from 2022 to 2024.

The Number of Disputes in Arbitration Has Exploded​

In arbitration, doctors and insurers each propose a price for the care, along with arguments for why it is appropriate. An arbitrator must pick one of the two numbers, and there is no opportunity to appeal the decision.

Arbitrators have repeatedly approved doctors’ submissions of extremely high prices for common medical procedures, according to court filings and a New York Times analysis of a large public data set with basic information on each dispute.

A neurosurgery practice outside of Philadelphia went to arbitration after the health plan Highmark offered its standard payment of $2,660 for a diagnostic procedure to measure blood flow to the brain. An arbitrator awarded it $333,000 instead. A New Jersey anesthesiologist was awarded $14,560 in 2025 for an X-ray-guided steroid injection.

Many claims that shouldn’t be eligible for arbitration, such as those for patients covered through the government programs Medicare and Medicaid, move through the system anyway. The claim from the New Jersey anesthesiologist involved a patient on a UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage plan, according to a lawsuit that UnitedHealth has filed protesting the arbitration decision.

The doctor’s billing company recognized the submission was a mistake, and tried to withdraw it before the decision. But his lawyer, Eric Katz, said that the arbitrator clearly thought the award was appropriate.

“No one put a gun to anyone’s head,” he said. “If the plans have issues with the way this is being handled, take it up with Congress.”

Medical specialties like spinal and plastic surgery, for which surprise bills were rare before the law, now frequently have cases in arbitration, according to the public data. Some practices are using the law to obtain high payments for routine medical care, including gynecologists who have won fees 600 times higher than usual rates for placing intrauterine contraceptive devices, or I.U.D.s.

The money does not always end up with the doctors but instead can go to the owners of their practices. The Times interviewed two physicians who show up repeatedly in public data files. Both said they were salaried workers and uninvolved in the claims filed under their names.

The government has hired 15 firms, some boutique vendors and others large contractors, to arbitrate billing disputes. Doctors and insurers can select a firm if they agree, or be randomly assigned one if they do not.

Health policy experts have been surprised to see such lopsided results that favor doctors. Some argue that because the arbitrators are paid per case, they may have an incentive to render decisions that keep doctors coming back.

Arbitrators may also, like the broader public, prefer doctors to insurers, said Matthew Fiedler, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has studied the law. “Arbitrators are people, and the typical person likes physicians.”

David Farber, a lawyer for the newly formed Coalition of Independent Dispute Resolution Entities, a trade group representing some of the arbitration firms, disputed the notion that arbitrators acted improperly.

“We’re getting the job done,” he said. “And the job is getting done consistent with how Congress set the process up to work.”

Doctors contend that they only pursue arbitration when insurers offer unreasonably low payments.

“We have very strong preference to be in network at sustainable rates,” said Dr. Richard Heller, a senior vice president at Radiology Partners, which employs over 4,000 radiologists. The company now has 150 staff members working to bring arbitration claims.

‘Eyebrow-raisingly high’​

Dr. Rowe has practiced for decades on New York City’s Park Avenue and in New Jersey. Last winter, he opened an office in Palm Beach, a few miles from President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Just before the inauguration, he told The New York Post the office had been overrun with clients who wanted to look good when they “have face time with the leader of the free world.”

Dr. Rowe did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Times.

On social media, he flaunts a lavish lifestyle. An Instagram post in February detailing his 60th birthday party featured a performance from the rapper 50 Cent and a custom-cake recreation of his 1950s vintage Porsche.

Health insurers do not cover many of the elective procedures that Dr. Rowe provides, such as penis enlargement. That service became a big enough part of his practice that he has trademarked the nicknames “Dr. Penis” and “Doctor Penis.”

Breast reductions, however, are different. They are often treated as medically necessary because they can reduce back and neck pain.

Before the No Surprises Act, Dr. Rowe’s practice was out of network with EmblemHealth, but he accepted fees $30,000 or lower for hundreds of breast reduction surgeries, the lawsuit claims.

In 2024, the lawsuit says, he started routinely performing surgeries on EmblemHealth patients in hospitals that accepted the insurer’s in-network payments, though he still did not.

Under the No Surprises Act, doctors in such situations can provide patients with a waiver that warns of additional costs. If patients sign that form, the doctor has permission to bill them directly.

Dr. Rowe does not hand out that waiver. That allows him to take his payment disputes to arbitration.

He and his practice have filed more than 6,000 arbitration claims, according to an analysis of public filings from the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms. He has won more than 85 percent of his cases.

The lawsuit offers details about five of those cases, all for elective breast reduction surgeries.

In the first case, in November 2024, Dr. Rowe won a payment of $112,500 that covered his work and the work of an assistant surgeon. In the fifth one, in late December 2025, his practice brought and won separate claims for each surgeon, totaling $440,000. Altogether, the practice won more than $1.4 million from those five surgeries alone.

EmblemHealth’s strategy also changed over time. According to the suit, the company started with a low counteroffer, around $6,000. Over time, it tried offering fees as high as $124,000, but continued to lose. The plan’s lawyers also started including language in their briefs stating that Dr. Rowe “has a pattern of exploiting” the process.

Dr. Rowe’s briefs to the arbitrator are not public, so it is unclear exactly what arguments he made to justify the much higher rates he was claiming in arbitration. The law directs arbitrators to consider several factors, including the usual price insurers pay, the doctor’s experience and the patient’s complexity.

Elevance Health, another insurer, said that breast reduction surgeries are now its most expensive category of arbitration claims. Ariel Bayewitz, the company’s vice president of health economics, said one Connecticut plastic surgery practice has escalated its earnings from the procedure, beginning at $70,000 in 2024 and hitting $440,000 late last year.

Michael Gottlieb, the lawyer who handles Dr. Rowe’s arbitration filings, declined to speak about continuing litigation but did broadly defend his clients’ seeking much higher amounts than insurers typically pay. He described the arbitrators as having “reverse sticker shock” at how low the health plan payments were.

“When they got wind of three-digit payments for massive, complex surgeries and they know they pay their plumber more to fix a toilet, they just gravitate toward the providers’ offers even if they do seem eyebrow-raisingly high,” he said.

Arbitration decisions are supposed to be binding, but Mr. Gottlieb said that health plans often refuse to send payment. He has sued multiple insurers over the issue.

In March, one doctor he represents received a letter from the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan, which provides coverage to many film workers. The letter, which The Times reviewed, stated that the plan would not pay the amount an arbitrator selected because it “does not constitute appropriate use of plan assets.”

Silence in Congress​


For years before the No Surprises Act passed, surprise billing was an urgent topic in Congress. Lawmakers from both parties denounced the high bills that ambushed patients.

But these days in Washington, the law’s unexpected results are rarely discussed. Instead, many legislators who worked on the law emphasize the success of consumer protections.

“My focus is on ensuring everyone can get the care they need without worrying about the cost,” said Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, who helped craft the bill.

Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and a physician, who helped write the law, said the large awards were a sign that insurers were not making reasonable offers.

”If they’re winning, it’s because the insurance companies are not coming back with a reasonable thing,” he said.

In late 2023, the Biden administration proposed changes to the arbitration system, including more scrutiny of ineligible claims. The Trump administration has not yet put into place those reforms.

Only one bill has been introduced in Congress to change arbitration, and it would increase penalties on insurers that fail to pay doctors quickly after cases are concluded.

Seeing little movement in Washington, health plans have turned to the courts. They have filed at least 20 lawsuits against doctors and the companies they use to submit claims.

But this month judges in California and Florida dismissed two such cases, finding that Congress did not intend for judges to review the arbitration awards.

If an insurer believes doctors are acting improperly, the Florida judge wrote, it should “raise the issue” in arbitration.
 
Rut-roh!!! Even the cost of screwing is impacted by the war!!

World’s Top Producer of Condoms Raises Prices as Iran War Rattles Supply Chains​

The Malaysian company Karex, which produces about five billion condoms a year, said it was raising prices by 30 percent because of higher raw material prices and global shipping disruptions.

The world’s largest condom maker is raising prices of its products by up to 30 percent, warning that shortages of raw materials and chemicals because of the Iran war could disrupt production.

The Malaysian condom company, Karex, which produces about five billion condoms a year, blamed a surge in raw material prices, global shipping disruptions and higher freight costs for the price increases.

The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz has led to a surge in the price of oil and gas, disrupting supply chains and driving up costs for a wide range of materials that companies like Karex depends on, including nitrile and synthetic rubber, packaging materials, silicone oil and aluminum foil.

“Some raw material prices have increased by 100 percent. We have no choice but to make adjustments now,” Goh Miah Kiat, the chief executive of Karex, said in an interview with The New York Times on Thursday.

The company says that it makes about a fifth of the world’s condoms and uses more than a hundred chemicals and raw materials in its production. If the war persists, Mr. Goh said, a shortage of even a single item could ripple through its factories and bring production to a halt.

“There will be jobs that will be at stake, ” Mr. Goh warned.

Karex supplies some of the world’s best-known contraceptive brands, including Durex and Trojan. The company employs around 3,000 people in its factories in Malaysia and Thailand, and sources materials from countries across Asia and Europe. It sells its One brand of condoms for an average retail price of 9 ringgit for a pack of three, or over $2, in the Malaysian market.

The company has long supplied condoms to government-funded programs for AIDS prevention and family planning. That segment of the business took a hit last year after the Trump administration cut funding to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which supported condom distribution initiatives in foreign countries.

Still, Mr. Goh, who has been the company chief executive for more than a decade, said that the company has seen demand for condoms rise this year, including in developing countries, and he warned of possible panic buying among consumers if supplies run low and the Iran war drags on.

“Everyone hopes that this ends fast and swiftly,” he said.
 
ROTFFLMFAO!! Somebody has a real identity crisis and a very antiquated view of surface ship warfare, nor the planning, design and construction of a new class of surface ships!!

Trump’s Dreams for a Battleship Led to His Navy Secretary’s Ouster​

The Navy secretary, John Phelan, was supposed to deliver the first of the president’s ships by 2028. The timeline was nearly impossible.

John Phelan, the secretary of the Navy, wearing a blue suit and tie and standing next to a poster with an image of a battleship that reads “Trump Class U.S.S. Defiant.”

John Phelan, the Navy secretary, in December. President Trump’s frustration over Mr. Phelan’s management of his prized battleship program grew over the past two weeks.

President Trump wanted one thing, more than anything else, from his secretary of the Navy, John Phelan: a new class of battleships.

“They’ll be the fastest, the biggest and by far — 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Mr. Trump boasted at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate and resort in Florida a few days before Christmas. Mr. Phelan, a billionaire investor who has a home near the club, stood next to the president as he made the announcement.

Mr. Phelan’s job was to deliver the first of Mr. Trump’s battleships by 2028.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump fired Mr. Phelan, who had struggled to come up with a plan to deliver the ships on the nearly impossible timeline that Mr. Trump has demanded, senior defense and administration officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.

Mr. Phelan is the first service secretary to be forced from the Defense Department during this administration, though he is far from the only senior Pentagon official to be dismissed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired or sidelined more than two dozen generals and admirals over the past year, including the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, earlier this month. Mr. Hegseth has also butted heads with the secretary of the Army, Daniel P. Driscoll, over promotions and a host of other issues.

The churn of senior Pentagon officials at a time when the U.S. military is engaged in war with Iran has alarmed top Republican and Democratic members of Congress.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions regarding the circumstances surrounding Mr. Phelan’s dismissal. Mr. Phelan could not immediately be reached for comment.

The breaking point for Mr. Phelan, who often said that he and Mr. Trump texted and talked on the phone regularly, came in the last two weeks as the president’s frustration over Mr. Phelan’s management of his prized battleship program grew and Mr. Phelan’s enemies in the Pentagon, including Mr. Hegseth and Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen A. Feinberg, mounted a campaign to force him out.

Earlier this month, Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Feinberg told Mr. Trump that the Navy secretary was not a team player and needed to go, military officials said. Mr. Trump called Mr. Phelan to talk about his poor relationship with other leaders in the Pentagon.

Mr. Feinberg and Mr. Hegseth had recently seized some decision-making authority from Mr. Phelan, tapping a three-star admiral to oversee the Navy’s submarine portfolio and having him report directly to Mr. Feinberg.

That left Mr. Phelan with oversight of a major investment in new ships that Mr. Trump has called a “golden fleet,” built around the president’s beloved battleship program.

Presidents rarely pay close attention to military procurement, but Mr. Trump has spoken repeatedly about his plans for a new “Trump-class” battleship. In a February speech to soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., Mr. Trump insisted that he had helped design the new class of ships that bear his name.

“I put a little more spirit in the hull,” Mr. Trump told the troops. “I want that ship to look gorgeous, you know.”

For Mr. Trump, the ships recalled “Victory at Sea,” a documentary television series that ran in the 1950s and touted the role that battleships and other Navy vessels played in World War II.

“Did you ever see ‘Victory at Sea?’ ” he mused to reporters in January when talking about the new battleships. “What a great thing that is to watch!”

Mr. Phelan played a prominent role in selling Mr. Trump on the new ships and his ambitious plans for revitalizing the U.S. Navy’s fleet and the U.S. shipbuilding industry.

In his confirmation hearing last year, Mr. Phelan said that the president often texted him late at night to ask him about “rusty ships or ships in a yard” and what Mr. Phelan was going to do about them. Before the Navy settled on its plans for the Trump-class battleship, Mr. Phelan wooed the president to the idea by showing oil paintings of some of the service’s great battleships from earlier eras, defense officials said.

In its $1.5 trillion defense budget, released earlier this week, the Trump administration is asking for $65.8 billion for shipbuilding, the second-largest shipbuilding budget proposal since 1955, according to Congressional Budget Office data.

The Navy is also projecting that it will be asking for $17 billion in fiscal year 2028 to start construction on the first of the Trump class, Navy officials said.

But senior defense officials said the program, along with Mr. Trump’s ambitious plans for his golden fleet, was marred by problems. The U.S. shipbuilding industry has nowhere near the capacity to build a technologically advanced battleship of the sort Mr. Trump is envisioning in the next few years, senior military officials said.

The Trump administration has failed over the last 16 months to nominate anyone to serve as assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition — who is supposed to oversee the Navy’s weapons programs. And the Navy’s civilian work force, which plays a critical role in developing and testing new warships, has been devastated by cuts and early retirements, military officials said.

In the days after Mr. Trump announced his plans for the new battleships, defense experts raised questions about whether they would ever be built.

“The ship’s purported characteristics are so extraordinary that the announcement will surely spark immense discussion,” wrote Mark F. Cancian, an expert on military budgeting with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “However, there is little need for said discussion because this ship will never sail.”

The ship would take “years to design,” Mr. Cancian noted. “A future administration will cancel the program before the first ship hits the water.”

In Mr. Trump’s imagination the new warship would be massive, weighing as much as 40,000 tons, and would be packed with new high-tech weapons, like lasers, hypersonic missiles and electric rail guns, most of which are still in development and years from being deployed.

In recent weeks, it had become clear to Mr. Phelan that the Navy and the U.S. shipbuilding industry did not have the ability to deliver on Mr. Trump’s vision. Mr. Phelan recently suggested to Mr. Trump that the Navy might have to rely on European shipyards to deliver the battleships on the ambitious timeline Mr. Trump was demanding, senior military and administration officials said.

Mr. Trump rejected the suggestion.

In his December news conference, announcing his plans for the battleships, Mr. Trump had vowed that the vessels — “the largest battleship in the history of the world ever built” — would be made in the United States with U.S. steel.

“We’re going to restore America as a major shipbuilding power,” he said.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth agreed that the Navy needed new leadership, officials said, and the president asked Mr. Hegseth to handle the resignation.

On Wednesday, Mr. Phelan heard he was being fired and went to the White House to see Mr. Trump, the officials said. He never saw him, but the president later phoned him to confirm the news, the officials added.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump wrote a message on social media that seemed designed to salve his fellow billionaire’s feelings.

“John Phelan is a long time friend, and very successful businessman, who did an outstanding job serving as my Secretary Of The Navy for the last year,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I very much appreciate the job that he has done, and would certainly like to have him back within the Trump Administration sometime in the future.”
 
Interesting. I claim dibs on the Popcorn Concession!!

New Taxes Cooled London’s Housing Market. Could That Happen in New York?​

Economists and real estate agents are calling London’s taxation of wealthy property owners a cautionary tale for New York, where leaders have endorsed a second-home tax.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan for a yearly surcharge on second homes in New York City worth $5 million or more could be an elegant political move — one that taxes the rich who don’t live in the city full-time.

If approved, the so-called pied-à-terre tax will be a populist win that avoids levying new taxes on constituents of Ms. Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York.

But real estate agents and economists say the tax could be catastrophic for the city’s housing market, hurting not the superrich investors who park their money here, but the very middle- and lower-income citizens it’s designed to benefit.

For proof, they say, just look at London.

A slew of punishing new taxes has transformed London’s luxury housing market over the last decade. The taxes have pushed housing values down and driven international buyers, who have historically made up nearly half of the homeowners in prime London neighborhoods, to consider other markets.

The once-sizzling housing market in central London is now chilled. Sales prices of properties in London have dropped more than 20 percent since 2015. As taxes mounted and prices dipped, smaller landlords threw in the towel, taking tens of thousands of apartments off the market and constricting supply. Average monthly rents, as a result, are now at record highs.

A similar blowback could be the consequence of Ms. Hochul’s proposal that Mr. Mamdani has gleefully promoted, the economists and real estate agents warn.

Katya Nadirova, a New York-based real estate agent with Douglas Elliman, works frequently to help foreign buyers relocating to and from New York.

“There is a big exodus of wealthy individuals from London, they’re trying to sell and they are thinking then maybe I will put this money into the stock market and I will do much better,” she said. “London is no longer a beacon for this kind of buyer. We don’t want this to happen here.”

The details of New York’s tax proposal remain fuzzy. One proposal being discussed would apply one tax rate to pieds-à-terre with assessed values between $5 million and $15 million. Those with second homes worth between $15 million and $25 million would pay a higher rate; with an even higher one applied to homes assessed for more than $25 million.

The actual value of each of those tax rates remains to be seen, but the governor hopes the new tax will bring in $500 million a year, funds New York City could desperately use at it struggles to pay its estimated $5.4 billion deficit. In 2023, about 59,000 units in the city were “held for seasonal, recreational, or occasional use,” according to The New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey.

Detractors say that the proposal fails to take into account the significant amount of property tax dollars those second homes already bring to New York City. For example, Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Citadel, paid more than $840,000 in property taxes last year on his penthouse that overlooks Central Park. In 2019, his purchase of the penthouse for $238 million was the most expensive residential sale in U.S. history at the time.

The record remains a symbol of income inequality in a city now headed by Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, who announced the second-home tax proposal in a social media post where he appeared in front of Mr. Griffin’s building.

Mr. Griffin, whose primary residence is in Palm Beach, Fla., did not respond to a request for comment about his thoughts on the proposal.

British media reports have chronicled the exit of several well-known billionaires. John Fredriksen, the Norwegian-born shipping magnate, told newspapers “Britain has gone to hell” before selling his $338 million mansion and relocating to Dubai. Nassef Sawiris, the owner of the Aston Villa soccer team who is known as the richest man in Egypt, also exited and blamed the government on his way out.

“This was all in the making for 10 years of incompetence by the most left-leaning Conservative Party in history,” Mr. Sawiris told the Financial Times in April of last year.

The share of foreign buyers buying investment properties worth more than 5 million pounds in Central London has dropped four percent over the past decade, according to the Savills Index, which tracks residential property data across the United Kingdom.

Taxes on second-home owners in England have been piling up since 2016, when a Stamp Duty tax required any home buyers who already owned at least one property to pay an additional surcharge of around 3 percent. In April 2025, the government gave local councils in England the power to ramp up property taxes on second homes by as much as 100 percent. That same month, the United Kingdom government abolished the special tax status of nonresidents, instituting new rules that tax them on their global income.

The flurry of new taxes, said Lucian Cook, a London-based housing economist who leads research for Savills, have created a narrative that London is no longer as friendly to real estate investment. The number of foreign buyers in the United Kingdom registering with a real estate agent — the first step before purchasing property — is now at its lowest level since 2008. At the same time, the real estate markets in cities like Barcelona and Dubai, where tax rules are much friendlier to second-home buyers, are seeing a fresh influx of foreign money.

“One city’s tax is another city's gain,” said Ryan Serhant, the founder and chief executive of the New York brokerage SERHANT.

Brad Lander, the former city comptroller and mayoral candidate who is now running for Congress, said in an interview that the proposed tax would be a windfall for New York City, and that concerns about a looming exit of wealthy businesspeople were being exaggerated.

“People will pay this relatively modest tax and we’ll have additional resources,” he said. “I think people know broadly that it’s a good idea at this moment to tax the wealthiest in order to fund the basic services that everybody needs. It is an intuitive concept: nobody really needs more than one home. If you can afford two, three, four, or five, you should pay a little extra so that other people can survive.”

But in London, Mr. Cook said, so many international buyers have turned elsewhere, taking their spending and charitable giving with them, that the market has deflated.

“All of this has played into the narrative that London isn’t as welcoming to international wealth as it was previously,” Mr. Cook said. “It sends a message.”

In an email to Citadel staff on Thursday, Gerald Beeson, the chief operating officer, noted that Mr. Griffin has personally made donations worth $650 million to social-good causes in the city, including museums, hospitals and educational groups.

“The mayor has once again manifested the ignorance and disdain of the elite political class towards those who have been consistently committed to building one of the greatest cities in the world,” Mr. Beeson said in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times and first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Citadel employees also have collectively paid $2.3 billion in city and state taxes over the last five years, Mr. Beeson said in the email. The hedge fund is currently preparing to start construction on a super-tall tower on Park Avenue, a project that the company estimates will create 15,000 new jobs in the city. The project was approved last September.

The email sent a chill through the real estate industry, with worries that both commercial and residential real estate exits could be on the horizon. Some business leaders are rallying to convince Ms. Hochul to change course.

In 2019, when a similar second-home tax was proposed for New York, the city’s powerful real estate lobby mobilized to help torpedo it.

Jim Whelan, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said his organization was opposed to the idea of the tax and was holding conversations with Gov. Hochul’s team to share its perspective.

“Tax policy impacts behavior,” Mr. Whelan said. “The impact it has on behavior is that people decide to do other things. They decide to purchase elsewhere.”
 
The people are revolting!!


Yeah, one time, that's this year, will there be Billionaire Rape II next year??

My personal take on this, yes tax codes need to limit loopholes so the ultra wealthy pay a more reasonable tax rate. However, taxing assets is a very slippery slope, billionaires first, millionaires next...

California Billionaire Tax Has Signatures Needed for Ballot, Backers Say​

The measure calls for placing a one-time 5 percent tax on the assets of California residents with at least $1.1 billion. Opponents are backing competing measures to counter the tax.

The labor union backing a proposal to place a new tax on California billionaires says it has collected enough signatures to place the measure on the state’s November ballot.

Supporters have collected more than 1.5 million signatures on petitions that call for a vote on the proposed tax, according to a statement from the campaign on Sunday. The group backing the measure intends to announce on Monday when it will submit the signatures to elections officials.

If approved to go on the ballot, the proposal will kick off an expensive election fight that will tap into voter anxieties about economic inequality as well as concerns from business leaders that California could lose its luster as a cradle of technological innovation. Powerful people, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and numerous Silicon Valley executives, have vowed to fight the proposal, while Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent of Vermont, has endorsed it.

The measure calls for placing a one-time 5 percent tax on the assets of California residents with at least $1.1 billion, and would dedicate most of the revenue to health care. The union leading the campaign, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, argues that the tax is necessary to make up for cuts to Medicaid and other federal health insurance programs by the Trump administration last year.

“Healthcare workers and our allies won’t quit until we fully protect our patients from the looming healthcare disaster,” Suzanne Jimenez, a leader of the union, said in a statement.

Opponents of the proposed tax intend to release a new economic study on Monday claiming that the tax would devastate California’s ecosystem of start-up companies just as the artificial intelligence industry is in its nascency. The new tax would lead to a raft of consequences, the report says, including the loss of an estimated 108,000 high-paying jobs and billions of dollars in income tax revenue over the next two decades. The study was written by consultants who worked in the finance departments of two former California governors, Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

An earlier analysis by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office found that the proposed wealth tax was likely to increase state tax revenue by tens of billions of dollars over several years. That analysis also found that the measure would decrease income tax revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars or more annually because some billionaires would leave the state.

“It’s gambling a potential one-time revenue bump in exchange for massive ongoing losses, which would force cuts to schools and health care,” said Dan Newman, a spokesman for an opposition group that is funded by the tech investor Ron Conway, among others.

Another opposition group, funded by the Google co-founder Sergey Brin and several other billionaires, is supporting rival ballot measures that could undermine the billionaire tax. One of them would prohibit new taxes on personal property and financial assets. The other two contain provisions that could invalidate the wealth tax in other ways.

Whether the billionaire tax or any of the rival measures will appear on the November ballot is still not certain. After backers of the wealth tax submit the signatures they’ve collected, election officials will go through a verification process. If at least 875,000 signatures are valid, proponents of the measure have until late June to decide if they want to proceed with placing it on the ballot.

Last month, Mr. Conway said that the rival ballot measures could serve as leverage for Mr. Newsom and other opponents of the billionaire tax to try to negotiate with its supporters to keep the measure off the ballot. Speaking on Jack Altman’s “Uncapped” podcast, Mr. Conway said that it was important that the rival measures collect enough signatures to also qualify for the ballot.

In California, if competing ballot measures on the same subject are approved by voters, the one with the highest number of yes votes takes effect. Competing ballot issues can also confuse voters, however, increasing the risk that any particular measure will fail.

“That will give Gavin some bargaining chips,” Mr. Conway said.
 

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