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PSA for folks in Northern California:

The Sutter Health Network / Palo Alto Medical Foundation routinely get caught committing widespread insurance fraud.

They also offer products that seem to be junk insurance to me, but I’m not a lawyer.

Here are three examples of their alleged widespread insurance fraud:

https://allaboutlawyer.com/claim-your-sutter-health-settleme...

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/sutter-health-accused...

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/government-intervene...

Some of those suites involve other big providers, like KP. Not sure if any of the healthcare providers around here are reputable at this point.

This Pluralistic post seems very rant-y, but it links to a Bloomberg piece that seems like a better source for backing up the claim: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-obamacare-open-enrol...

As someone with a little experience with the 'advertiser side' of Google, they also push junk to their paying clients, using every opportunity to sell terrible, worthless placements to advertisers. Which is to say that the problem is not that 'searchers' are the product, the problem is that Google is not focused on creating value for its counter-parties.

I hate to be that guy but is it Google's responsibility to police legally operating insurance companies? It's not their problem that USA has a trash insurance market and a backwards healthcare system.
To be fair, it's all "junk insurance"
> Amazingly enough, these aren't even the worst kinds of garbage health plans that you can buy in America: those would be the religious "health share" programs that sleazy evangelical "entrepreneurs" suck their co-religionists into, which cost the world and leave you high and dry when you or your kids get hurt or sick:

Seems worth noting that "sleazy" and "suck their co-religionists into" are (unfounded, as far as I can tell) opinions, "cost the world" is flat-out false and the exact reason why they are an appealing option, and "and leave you high and dry when you or your kids get hurt or sick" is also an unfounded claim. His only citation for any of this is talking about someone who doesn't like morality clauses, but...picked it anyways, presumably because it didn't cost the world?

Some are better than others. I picked the one that looked the most like real insurance and has a >30 year track record of not leaving people high and dry. I've been on it for almost seven years and it's worked out well so far.

"It's omnienshittified, a partnership between the enshittified search giant and the shittiest parts of the totally enshittified health industry."

Omnienshittified: May go down as the most hilarious - yet prescient - new word this century. (In the USA of course.)

I don't really see that Google is causing this, just showing what's out there. Search inherently selects for advertising because companies craft their sites to look good for on the search terms.

The problem is that these things exist at all.