• 129 Posts
  • 878 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 4th, 2025

help-circle


  • You forgot to include:

    Her (Randazzo’s) lawyer, Wynton Sharpe, disputed the group’s claims and said court officers reacted quickly and the presiding judge cleared the room immediately.

    “She didn’t have to say anything. We were like, oh OK, this is happening, like, now,” Sharpe told The New York Times. “It was a joyful and sad situation, given the circumstances.”

    Al Baker, a spokesperson for the New York Office of Court Administration, told The Independent that “officers acted with swift professionalism to ensure the safety and sanctity of life for all individuals” in court, “personifying the everyday virtues of their sworn service.”

    Randazzo was arrested Thursday on charges of drug possession and trespassing. She was allegedly on the roof of her building in the Nostrand Houses in Brooklyn without permission, according to the New York City Police Department.

    Officers claim to have found a small amount of heroin and cocaine on her during a search.

    Randazzo was not eligible for a desk appearance ticket, which would allow her to return to court at a future date, because she had an open warrant for her arrest. She was taken to nearby hospital, then discharged 30 hours later and taken to the courthouse for arraignment.

    “Ms. Randazzo had reportedly recently been discharged from a hospital despite being nine months pregnant before being returned to custody and brought to Brooklyn arraignments, where she went into labor in open court,” according to Saturday night’s joint statement from The Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn Defender Services, New York County Defender Services, The Bronx Defenders and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.

    So to recap, the woman was arrested for possession and trespassing. Because she ALREADY had a warrant out for other stuff, she couldn’t just be issued a ticket to appear in court at a later date. After arresting her, the police brought her to the hospital first and spent 30 hours in the hospital before being taken to court. She was under arrest, why wouldn’t she be handcuffed? She was likely handcuffed during those 30 hours in the hospital also. Being pregnant or disabled doesn’t make you above the law. Arraignments typically occur within 24 to 48 hours in NYS. She happened to give birth during the process because it was time for it to happen, not because conditions stressed her into labor. Labor is different for every woman and can vary wildly. Some women can give birth within minutes of their water breaking.

    This article seems like it’s click bait/rage bait. My original reaction at just reading the blurb in the post was rage, but when I read the WHOLE article I didn’t feel like I had a reason to be mad anymore.

    There are plenty of instances of inhumane treatment, but this isn’t one of them.



  • As someone that has experience in the eyewear business; Luxotica owns target optical, Pearle Vision, LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Oliver Peoples, Glasses.com, EyeBuyDirect, Rayban, and oakley. VSP, which is a vision insurance company, now owns visionworks and Eyemart Express. (Fun fact, HVHC used to own Davis Vision, a vision insurance company, and lauched visionworks to launder insurance payments back into company coffers at the expense of private providers in the Davis Vision network. HVHC sold Davis Vision, and then a few years later sold visionworks.)

    If you want eyecare that isn’t connected to a large conglomerate, find a small, private/local provider. Find out which ophthalmologists are in network with your medical insurance. The glaucoma screening and dilation/fundus photos can be billed to your medical insurance and you can pay out-of pocket for the refraction. The refraction is the part of the eye exam that gives you the eyeglass prescription. Everything else checks on the medical health of your eye, which is why it’s billable to the medical coverage.

    For anyone looking for cheap glasses, brick and mortar retailers like walmart, sams club, BJs, have the least mark up on frames. You can probably find cheap frames online too. If you find and buy your own frames, you can bring them to your retailer/eye DR to have them make the lenses for the frame. The least expensive types of lenses are standard plastic, followed by polycarbonate. If you have simple correction needs, and your DR is telling you that hi-index lenses, blue-blocker, anti-glare, or progressive lenses are medically necessary, your provider is straight up lying to you to sell you more shit.











  • I worked for a non-profit insurance company, (Fidelis Care,) that was purchased by a for profit conglomerate, (Centene.) Health insurance companies deny appropriately billed and coded shit all day long hoping:

    • you don’t know your rights
    • you can’t figure out how to submit appeals if you are smart enough to know your rights
    • you will give up because the process is too complex, can take as much effort as a full time job, and can lower your credit rating while you wait for the appeals process to pay out.

    I witnessed appropriately coded claims get improperly denied all day long. I spent most of my time working there helping people file appeals, or giving them the information to the state agency where they could file external appeals after our own review team denied their internal appeal.

    Right before covid hit, a gentleman was approved for pain injections, but couldn’t get into the office before his authorization ran out, because anything non emergent was closed. Once the doctor’s office was open, the doctor submitted a new request, with the same clinical information, and it was denied. I put an appeal together for this man, painstakingly pulling the clinical records from the first authorization, the second authorization, EVERY PAID CLAIM related to his condition, AND EVERY RX CLAIM FOR PAIN MEDS the company paid for to demonstrate medical necessity. 4 hours of work. The appeals team denied it in 15 minutes later, it was absolutely not reviewed. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back and made me rage quit Fidelis.


  • I read the whole article, twice, to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating how fucked up this was.

    McElroy, who was being held on charges stemming from an allegation of substance use during pregnancy

    She was put in jail on charges stemming from potentially endangering the life of her child via drug use. However, when it came to actually protecting the life of the child in question;

    According to the complaint, another inmate eventually assisted McElroy in delivering a baby girl who was not breathing when she was born on the prison floor, as prison guards watched. The filing says two women housed in the same pod attempted to revive the newborn by removing mucus from her mouth and rubbing her until she finally cried.

    Motherfucking guards watching this unfold, then did jack shit to help the child when it wasn’t breathing. God fucking damn. Stop the world I want to get off.

    If anyone is interested, you can get the court filings here, through the pregnancy justice website.