Folks,
Greetings from the Burgh, where the snow is coming down hard, and Payday is preparing to launch a major winter offensive.
$2,700 raised towards $10,000 End-of-Year Fundraising Goal
During the election, Payday filed 52 stories and 26 videos from Western PA, one of the few areas where Democrats did better than in 2020. Due to our efforts here; we depleted our reserve fund. In order to take on significant projects, we will need to rebuild that reserve fund.
Now, we have raised $2,700 towards our $10,000 goal and hope to raise more money by the end of the year.
Donate to help us rebuild our reserve fund. Please sign up as one of our recurring donors today.
Health Insurance Companies Erase Leadership Webpages
Following the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Kevin Thompson yesterday, many health insurance executives are feeling nervous. Some companies are scrubbing their leadership pages from their website so that their corporate executives' names aren’t publicly known. From 404 Media:
As of Thursday, United Healthcare’s “about us” page, which listed leadership, including slain CEO Brian Thompson, redirects to the company’s homepage. An archive of the page shows that it was still up as of Wednesday morning, but it is redirecting at the time of writing and isn’t directly accessible from Google search or the site’s navigation buttons.
Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, which said on Thursday that it would walk back changes announced this week that would charge patients for anesthesia during procedures that went longer than estimated, now redirects its own leadership page to its “about us” page. Originally that page showed leadership, including President and CEO Kim Keck, Executive Vice President and CFO Christina Fisher, and 23 more executives as of earlier this year according to archives of the page, but is now inaccessible.
@GASLIGHTER_ on X spotted other major insurers following suit. Nonprofit health insurance organization Caresource took down the individual pages for all of its executive leadership, including President and CEO Erhardt Preitauer, Executive Vice President David Williams, Executive Vice President for Markets and Products Scott Markovich, Executive Vice President for Strategy and Business Sanjoy Musunuri, CFO Larry Smart and COO Fred Schulz. Snippets from each of these pages are still visible on Google search, but the pages themselves return an error that says, “the requested URL was not found on this server.”
Another nonprofit health plan, Medica, did the same: Medica’s executive leadership page redirects to its homepage, and its foundation leadership staff page now returns an error: “Oops. That page doesn’t exist.”
Elevance Health took down its leadership page, too, replacing it with a message that says “Sorry, that page is no longer here.” The most recent archive for that page is from last week.
For more, check out 404 Media.
Guardian Journalists Strike Over Proposed Sale
Since 1936, the non-profit Scott Trust has owned the Guardian and its sister publication, the Observer. Now, the Trust intends to sell the Observer to Tortoise Media.
On Tuesday, over 500 journalists went on strike at the Guardian for the first time in 50 years to protest the sale.
“It can’t be right to go ahead with a rushed sale when journalists haven’t been consulted and we do not understand the logic for this,” striking Observer columnist Sonia Sodha told the New York Times. “We think it puts both Observer and Guardian journalism at risk.”
For more, check out the New York Times.
GWU Resident Doctors Strike over Mental Health Benefits
In Washington, DC, more than 450 resident doctors at George Washington University are on strike right now. They are demanding cost-of-living adjustments and more robust mental health care benefits.
“We have been pushed to our breaking points,” Dr. Neha Gupta, a resident physician in emergency medicine, told DC News Now. “It does feel like we are going in circles, and we constantly keep bringing things to the table …basic things that we need, like adequate pay, mental health coverage.”
For more, check out DC News Now.
Local Steelworkers Upset Trump Block Nippon-US Steel Deal
Finally, here in Pittsburgh, United Steelworkers local 2227 President Jack Maskill, who works at US Steel’s Irvin Works, backed Donald Trump in the most recent election. He is upset that Trump is opposing US Steel’s sale to Nippon Steel.
The sale of US Steel to the Japanese-owned Nippon Steel. The national leadership of the Steelworkers opposed the sale of US Steel and wanted it to be sold to Cleveland Cliffs, with whom they already have a working relationship.
However, local labor leaders believe that Nippon Steel will likely invest more money in the plant.
“I am very frustrated with the news that came out last night,” United Steelworkers Local 2227 Vice President Jason Zugai said at a panel discussion this week. “I didn’t expect that to come out. So that was like a gut punch.”
For more, check out the Tribune Review.
Alright folks, that’s all for today. Keep sending story ideas, tips, comments and complaints to melk@paydayreport.com.
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Love & Solidarity,
Melk
