Even if you get an approval for an expensive specialty drug, good luck.
I had the insurance written approval in my hand while the pharmacist told me it was being rejected for needing prior approval. The insurance phone rep said they could find no record of any REQUEST, let alone approval, for the drug.
So I go to the state insurance regulator. That does at least light a fire under their arse. They can't claim it's not medically necessary when I already have their approval.
During the complaint process I learn:
- Front line reps don't have any access to any pre-auths. You need to talk to a supervisor. They ADMITTED the system is by design obstructive.
- The person who entered my approval did it wrong and did not follow the SOP to run a test transaction that would have caught the error.
They then submit their reply to the regulator leaving out all of the above and blaming the pharmacy instead. I follow up with the regulator pointing this out. I have voice recordings.
Regulator closed it as resolved.
I'd class action their butts if I wasn't still exhausted by the experience two years later.
dolphin3.0-llama3.1-8b Q4_K_S [4.69 GB on disk]: correct in <2 seconds
deepseek-r1-0528-qwen3-8b Q6_K [6.73 GB]: correct in 10 seconds
gpt-oss-20b MXFP4 [12.11 GB] low reasoning: wrong after 6 seconds
gpt-oss-20b MXFP4 [12.11 GB] high reasoning: wrong after 3 minutes !
Yea yea it's only one question of nonsense trivia. I'm sure it was billions well spent.
It's possible I'm using a poor temperature setting or something but since they weren't bothered enough to put it in the model card I'm not bothered to fuss with it.
I've had BCBS reject prescriptions they've already pre-approved multiple times. First time, they denied all knowledge of the REQUEST (when my doctor has their APPROVAL fax in hand). Second time they acknowledged they had approved it but had to contact their pharmacy group to put in an "override".
I've submitted a complaint with the state insurance regulator though I doubt it goes anywhere.
Anyone for a class action lawsuit on the grounds of bad faith breach of contract and medical malpractice for obstructing access to care they already admit is medically necessary (by denying something already pre-approved)? I don't even want money. I want a Consent Decree enforced by the court that strikes fear across their whole industry.
Audio record every interaction you have with insurance and tell 'em you're on a recorded line.
As we went from zero to 10K+ embedded systems (full PCs with significant RAM) the issues got weirder.
The best was a one-off error log along the lines of "unknown type System.DateTime". Huh? That's a system defined type that just went missing. Never saw it again.
Another at a different employer was a crash that occurred after a check condition that absolutely should have gated the crash from being reached. Single threaded. Simple microcontroller. Had to reflash it to flip the bit back. After doing the math on how much RAM we had in the wild vs. cosmic bit flip rates reported in super computers, we had to expect one flip per year.
If it's a safety critical system, server or not, use ECC RAM!!
And the effect will be the opposite of the intent - now only students wealthy enough to afford private tutoring or that have a stable enough home environment to self-study can pass AP exams. Wonder what races those students will be?
I'm admittedly talking my own book, having come from the lower end of middle class. I was also the runt of the litter and at the bottom of the social pecking order. Students of all races enjoyed looking down on me to feel better about their own situation.
I retired from working for other people at age 40. I credit gifted/AP courses in 8-12th grade for a significant portion of that. Did my racial background still advantage me? You bet. I had a stable home environment and low crime neighborhood.
Perhaps we should focus on how to offer children stable home environments and low crime neighborhoods.
I had the luxury of time in my last move, which I used to go to a lot of open houses and talk to the attending realtor (which is not always the listing agent btw). Treat it like a behavioral interview and judge agreeableness and conscientiousness. Also, study basics of sales tactics so you know when they are being deployed on you. This will filter for honest, hardworking people in many situations.
I had the insurance written approval in my hand while the pharmacist told me it was being rejected for needing prior approval. The insurance phone rep said they could find no record of any REQUEST, let alone approval, for the drug.
So I go to the state insurance regulator. That does at least light a fire under their arse. They can't claim it's not medically necessary when I already have their approval.
During the complaint process I learn: - Front line reps don't have any access to any pre-auths. You need to talk to a supervisor. They ADMITTED the system is by design obstructive. - The person who entered my approval did it wrong and did not follow the SOP to run a test transaction that would have caught the error.
They then submit their reply to the regulator leaving out all of the above and blaming the pharmacy instead. I follow up with the regulator pointing this out. I have voice recordings.
Regulator closed it as resolved.
I'd class action their butts if I wasn't still exhausted by the experience two years later.