Joel Klein Joins Health Insurance Start-Up

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1. m4potw says:

   January 14, 2016 at 11:45 pm

   Gaming people lives with all NEW, young, ambitious, and greedy FOREIGN doctors online, young and greedy DOCTORS should beware of and watch out for the dirty tricks in CONTRACT from EXPERIENCED SALESMEN/ BUSINESSMEN. Back2basic

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2. Old Teacher says:

   January 15, 2016 at 12:26 am

   I would not buy a car or insurance from him.

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3. Christine says:

   January 15, 2016 at 12:59 am

   Lots of data to be collected on folks there.

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4. Lloyd Lofthouse says:

   January 15, 2016 at 12:59 am

   It’s great that Klein is allegedly gone from the corporate war on public education but take a closer look at Oscar where Klein is now working. Oscar is online medicine and it sounds similar to online education but worse because if what I just read is true, Oscar is contributing to the next global pandemic.

   From International Business Times, I read this about Oscar, “Last month, during a busy week at work, Mody felt a cold coming on. Taking time to visit the doctor was out of the question. Instead he used the Oscar’s mobile app to request a call from the teledoctor service. Five minutes later he had a prescription for an antibiotic and within a couple of days was back to normal.”

   That is BS. You don’t take antibiotics for the common cold. The common cold is caused by a virus and antibiotics do not treat viruses.

   If the story in International Business Times (12/10/15) was factual, Oscar contributes to the abuse of antibiotics, and this abuse is why there are now super bacteria that most if not all antibiotics can’t touch causing a higher risk for a global pandemic where millions and tens of millions of people could die and that includes children who are often face a higher risk factor.

   Patients should not be able to get a prescription online or by phone if they have not been physically seen by a doctor first and been properly diagnosed. Patients with a common cold should not be prescribed an antibiotic unless they also have a bacterial infection and the doctor verified this. The antibiotic is for the bacteria not the cold virus.

   From Webmd.com: “Colds are caused by viruses, and no antibiotic in the world can fight one. They only treat an infection that’s brought on by another small living thing — bacteria.

   “It might not seem like you’re doing any harm if you take a medicine even though it doesn’t treat your cold, but it can. When people take antibiotics when they don’t have to, over time, the medicine becomes less effective. Someday you’ll really need one because you’ve got an illness caused by a bacteria, but it won’t work.

   “The reason has to do with the bacteria themselves. They can be sneaky. When they come into contact over and over with antibiotics, they may change in order to survive.

   “These new strains are ‘resistant’ to some types of antibiotics. If you get an infection with one of these bacteria, your doctor may need to try several types of drugs until he finds one that works. You could get a lot sicker while you wait for the one that can treat you.”

   Klein is not done harming other people, but this time he wants to do more harm for the money he is being paid.

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5. 21st Century Poet says:

   January 15, 2016 at 4:59 am

   Same neoliberal project, different arm. If we can’t see these connections, even if we technically win the reform battle, we will lose the class war. In fact, we already lost, but neoliberals (Democrats and Republicans) are fighting more viciously than ever – against working people.

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   • dmaxmj says:

     January 15, 2016 at 7:56 am

     Neo-liberal? Maybe. Free market capitalist profiteering? Definitely. Involvement in mechanisms meant for the good of all might be a liberal sort of thing, but the parasites who wander the landscape of these entities and organizations being hired/fired/ promoted/ reorganized/invested/divested/politically appointed… as they roam from success/failure/destruction and then onto their next great adventure-taking advantage of the dishonest cloak of fake public(corporate) service: don’t trust any of them. Still wonder what exactly is in Klein’s “wheelhouse” that makes him so transferable between public education policy, tech platforms, and health care. Maybe he is a true renaissance man?

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   • Dienne says:

     January 15, 2016 at 7:59 am

     dmaxmj – you need to look up the definition of neo-liberal. It has to do with the primacy of the free market and private property. It has almost nothing to do with liberalism as we typically understand it in modern times.

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   • Chiara says:

     January 15, 2016 at 8:06 am

     90% of “neoliberal” can be summed up with a much more familiar phrase, “government contracting”.

     It was true for Amplify too. If they were to succeed, 95% of their product would have been purchased by public schools with public money. Happily, schools didn’t buy it (good job!) but all of his various projects depend on public subsidies, including this one.

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6. artseagal says:

   January 15, 2016 at 5:56 am

   What “better way” to invade the privacy and collect data on a captive group (those using health insurance services) than to hire Klein with his proven record of willingness to overstep his bounds and invade privacy (which inventually led to him joining AMPLIFY)! Does his resume state “privacy invader who follows the money”? Will his next step after running this insurance company into the ground be a secretary of health position? Ughh!

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   • dmaxmj says:

     January 15, 2016 at 7:59 am

     Maybe the poor being failed by their schools will now be blessed by a massive network of cradle to grave health care/education/ employment data collection/tracking and evaluation.

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7. formercheesehead says:

   January 15, 2016 at 6:17 am

   regretfully, klein keeps “evolving” just like a superbug…

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8. Dienne says:

   January 15, 2016 at 6:18 am

   Perhaps the best reason yet for single payer.

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9. Michael Fiorillo says:

   January 15, 2016 at 6:30 am

   Wow, so instead of destroying teacher’s professional lives and children’s education’s, this man will actually be responsible for monetizing people’s health data, while simultaneously denying some of them medical care and treatment.

   That’s a textbook version of failing upward for the Electronic Dark Ages…

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   • Michael Fiorillo says:

     January 15, 2016 at 10:28 am

     On a more positive note, since everything this man touches turns to S*&#, it’s probably a good time to short this company’s stock.

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10. Chiara says:

    January 15, 2016 at 7:30 am

    It’s actually his field. It’s just government contracting in a different sector. The company wouldn’t (and couldn’t) exist without the Affordable Care Act subsidies.

    They’re trying to appeal to young people who don’t use a lot of expensive health care so that’s lower risk for an insurance company. The older the group of people insured the more a health insurance company pays out.

    I think there are a lot of similarities between the Affordable Care Act structure and market-based ed reform systems. They’re both systems that rely on publicly-subsidized private contractors. I don’t think there’s a bit of difference between a “portfolio” system of publicly-supported charter and private schools and a state-run health insurance exchange other than scale.

    Conceivably they could model a privatized system of K-12 service providers ON the Affordable Care Act. One would be required to pick a contractor and then receive a subsidy, depending on income.

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11. Chiara says:

    January 15, 2016 at 7:50 am

    Does this sound familiar to anyone?

    “Prime Minister David Cameron has said he would like every government-funded school in England to be a free school or academy by 2020. At present, they represent 60 percent of the country’s roughly 2,000 state-supported secondary schools.
    A mantra appears to have been adopted by Conservative politicians which—roughly summed up—translates to academies and free schools are “good,” and state-maintained, local-authority schools are “bad.”

    You would have to change it for the US, though. “A mantra appears to have been adopted by ALL politicians…”

    http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/the-rise-of-englands-charter-schools/423984/

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    • 21st Century Poet says:

      January 15, 2016 at 1:59 pm

      See aforementioned comment on the neoliberal project. It is world-wide. The job it has done on the UK has been rapid and brutal. Looking through the comments, it seems clear many people are still unaware of what’s going on. It doesn’t bode well for the fight.

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12. phla.ken says:

    January 15, 2016 at 8:10 am

    He has not left his deformery enterprise in education. On March 10 he will give the 13th Annual John Templeton, Jr. lecture at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. His lecture will “explore the problems plaguing public education and offers a blueprint for how they can be solved.” http://constitutioncenter.org/calendar/joel-klein-the-13th-annual-john-m-templeton-jr-lecture

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13. NYCTeacher says:

    January 15, 2016 at 9:52 am

    What, Larry Craig was unavailable?

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14. markstextterminal says:

    January 15, 2016 at 10:18 am

    Wait: what?

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15. 21st Century Poet says:

    January 15, 2016 at 1:53 pm

    Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.

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16. 21st Century Poet says:

    January 15, 2016 at 2:05 pm

    People are commenting like this is new. It is common corporate practice – which is the norm in education now as well. Top administrators regularly do damage at one school, quit or get fired, and immediately move and get hired at another school. This happens K-university. It is a corporate model used in the neoliberal project to crush unions and privatize.

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17. Christine Langhoff says:

    January 15, 2016 at 7:21 pm

    “One less reformer.”

    Same number of grifters, though.

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