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Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing
- valval 2y ago[flagged]
- ghusto 2y agoGenuine question: What is so difficult about healthcare in the USA? European countries solutions range from free to government subsidised (for those who can't afford it). The free ones vary in quality, but systems where you pay unless you can't work pretty well, and the quality is very high. Why is this such an issue in the USA? Is it purely a "powerful people with vested interests" thing?
- HDThoreaun 2y agoThe US spends over 17% of GDP on healthcare while comparable countries are around 8%. There are some ways we could reduce that but at the end of the day americans consume a lot of healthcare and americans get paid a lot to provide health care so any solution is going to have cost related problems. Because theres so much money involved there are tons of special interests which makes it politically extremely difficult to change anything. Two of the most obvious things we should do are pay less for pharmaceuticals and increase the number of doctors but the pharma lobby and AMA make that impossible.
- gnabgib 2y agoDiscussions Americans React to UnitedHealthcare CEO's Murder: 'My Empathy Is Out of Network' (141 points, 12 hours ago, 329 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42327272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42327272 Moderators Delete Reddit Thread as Doctors Torch Dead UnitedHealthcare CEO (45 points, 3 hours ago, 22 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42332347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42332347
- tiernano 2y agohttps://archive.is/DiRbs https://archive.is/DiRbs
- mkmk 2y ago[flagged]
- cowpig 2y agowould love some sources to learn more about how it works if you have any to recommend
- jmoak 2y agoWhile not directly related to your question, I think this will help answer many questions you may have about our spending. This is a good start comparing america's healthcare expenditure to other countries' expenditures: https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/why-conventional-wisdom-on-health-care-is-wrong-a-primer/ https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/why-conventional-wisdom-o... The short of it, on a national level: Health spending is determined by income Income predicts changes in health expenditure The rising health share explained by rising quantities per capita (not prices!) America spends much more because it consumes much more The claim that US health care prices are inexplicably high was never well-evidenced! Real health inputs (labor) increase rapidly with income levels High overall wage rates and profit margins cannot explain much. Physician take-home pay explains even less The composition of the American health workforce is consistent with trends observed elsewhere. and finally... Diminishing returns to spending and worse lifestyle factors explain America’s mediocre health outcomes These headline claims map to large sections of the linked content. I highly recommend chewing through it all.
- maxerickson 2y agoInteresting that we consume more services and have less doctors. I wonder if doctors respond to incentives.
- TheGRS 2y agoI've seen attempts to explain the system, but I've never seen them well-articulated. And I think the complexity is a major part of the problem where many are taken advantage of. Do insurance companies not share at least some of the blame in the system?
- potato3732842 2y agoThe hate was always there. It's just now newsworthy.
- UncleOxidant 2y agoDefinitely was already there. I'd guess that people hate insurance companies more than they hate politicians - in fact, I'd go so far as to say that at least some of the hate for politicians is sublimated hate for insurance companies and our Kafkaesque healthcare system. It's almost a bit surprising that this is the first time this has happened. And now that someone has done it, it seems likely that there will be copycat attempts.
- tptacek 2y agoWas it? If that's the case, why do the majority of M4A voters say their support is conditioned on them retaining access their existing private insurance?
- NautilusWave 2y agoThe hate wasn't always there. Pent up frustration for the healthcare system precipitated as hate when an obvious target hit the news.
- Bilal_io 2y agoYou get frustrated when your doctor is 30 minutes late. Being denied coverage by your insurance for something serious and expensive is a matter that causes hate.
- jbrot 2y agoAt first glance, this looks pretty similar to the Bob Lee murder last year. I find it interesting and a little surprising how different the reaction and coverage has been
- pfannkuchen 2y agoAre you restricting the Bob Lee murder to first glance info also? I thought that one turned out to be a personal beef, not an assassination.
- ics 2y agoWhat similarity does it bear other than... stretching here... the victims were both likely wealthier than the killer?
- vdupras 2y agoThis reminds me more of Chris Dorner. The manifesto is shorter, but this sense of injustice felt by the perpetrator is similar. Back in the days, mainstream media had enough control over the narrative to water down the "manifesto" part and avoid copycats. This time, "rogue" social medias are much more prevalent, so there's not much of a barrier to prevent the perpetrator from becoming a hero. We can think that copycats will emerge. I guess that billionaires around the world are dusting off their "apocalypse bunker" protocol...
- tptacek 2y agoAnd, in case we all need a reminder: Chris Dorner was an actual monster, and his brief casting as a cause celebre a pretty big embarrassment in retrospect.
- maybelsyrup 2y ago> But that did not stop social media commenters from leaping to conclusions and from showing a blatant lack of sympathy over the death of a man who was a husband and father of two children. The journalists' tone and choice of words here, which I've italicized, isn't helping the overall feeling many Americans have of "the people running the show have active and unceasing contempt for us", which of course is what's driving the "torrent of hate for health insurance industry" that this article sets out to document. I'm sorry, but where do these writers get off wagging their fingers and tut-tutting people who'd prefer not to spend their neurons on sympathy for someone at the helm of an inhuman system? The point's already been made, but plenty of monsters are husbands and fathers.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI dont find the "lack of sympathy" to be an issue. What I do find disappointing is the lack of concern over people being gunned down in the street, and the not so subtle glee some people are expressing. Murder should not be normalized or endorsed. It isn't healthy for a society and doesn't lead to progress.
- Dalewyn 2y ago>What I do find disappointing is the lack of concern This is (was) the CEO of the largest health insurer in the country which has shown a lack of concern for paying out insurance or securing data both private and medical. Their data leak this year is second only to National Public Data's leak (also this year) of practically every single SSN on the planet and arguably worse because their leak also contains medical data. Murder is never okay, but this guy is also about the most unsympathizable man in the country.
- defen 2y ago> this guy is also about the most unsympathizable man in the country. There's no way that is true. It's only remotely possibly true if you're only talking about people who at least nominally obey the rules and laws of society. You don't actually think that he was worse than a murderer, or a rapist, or a child abuser, of which we have many, many thousands in this country.
- tptacek 2y agoIt's mostly not rational. For instance, much of the conversation over the last day has been about Anthem pushing back on anesthesiology pay on the East Coast. That's people angry about their insurers working to make surgeries cost less by employing the literal guideline Medicare uses, and yet people online were overtly suggesting Anthem's CEO be murdered over it. Incoherent. This won't win me any points in this particular forum, where this opinion (that I strongly hold) is unpopular, but I'm reminded of what someone else said about Net Neutrality: it's a bunch of people suiting up and taking sides on behalf of one group of giant corporations against another group of giant corporations. That's the "health care debate" in the US, where medical staff are paid 2-3x more than they are in other countries, and expensive procedures are prescribed and delivered at drastically higher rates. It's my problem with "Medicare For All", which more or less absolves providers from their role in choking people out with health care costs, despite the leading role they have in this situation. At any rate: there's no serious theory of change that begins with murdering health care industry people.
- vundercind 2y ago> At any rate: there's no serious theory of change that begins with murdering health care industry people. I dunno. This is the most publicly-united I’ve seen people against the industry maybe ever. Usually they’re separately-angry at the industry in their partisan silos (everyone hates it, more or less—hence the amazingly consistent and widespread reaction) but this has been the closest thing to a bipartisan healing moment since, like, the week after 9/11. Not particularly close to that, sure, but I can’t think of anything closer. If this were part of a theory of change, it strikes me as no less serious than any other I’ve seen. At least.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI think it is the most disgusted I have been with a broad swath of the public in a long time. I dont think anything productive will come of it.
- vundercind 2y ago
- apsec112 2y agoPolitical operative here. If you're wondering why healthcare reform has been so hard to get and so piecemeal, even though most Americans want it, the big reasons are: 1) any reform has to get past the Senate, and the Senate gives a lot of extra weight to states with conservative electorates. In 2009, this meant the pivotal Senators were right-wing Blue Dogs, an independent (Lieberman), and a former Republican (Specter). In 2024, this means the pivotal Senator will be a conservative Republican, since Dems run fewer Blue Dogs, and liberals can't win states like North Dakota and Louisiana. 2) people don't only vote on healthcare; Democrats also support much less popular stances on other issues, especially immigration. Lobbying etc. matters some, but is much less important than those two big ones.
- tptacek 2y agoSingle-payer proposals have failed in state referenda in non-conservative states.
- apsec112 2y agoYeah, the median voter position is not all the way to single payer but is still left of the status quo
- tptacek 2y agoIs it? Where do you see the boundaries here?
- apsec112 2y agoPolls consistently show the public supports Democrats more than Republicans on healthcare policy, even as they trust Republicans more on other issues like inflation and immigration https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/dnc-democrats-republicans-policy-economy-lgbtq-b2598620.html https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
- 2y ago
- cs702 2y agoHealth "insurance" companies in the US are not actually, primarily insurers. For the most part, they are not in the business of insuring rare events. Maybe they were primarily in the insurance business at some point in the past, but today they are mainly in the business of entrenching themselves in the middle of all interactions between patients, doctors, and hospitals, and extracting rents from all of them. Health "insurance" companies have become extractive businesses that produce nothing of evident value except unpleasant paperwork, and extract an economic rent for it, to the detriment of everyone else. I call them "paperwork-shuffling processors."
- WorldWideWebb 2y agoAccurate. They are literally middle men taking a cut without offering anything to the process. Switch to single payer, dump the middlemen, and have our taxes pay for essential services (keeping us alive and healthy). Seems simple enough but…
- tptacek 2y agoBut literally every state in the country disagrees with you and so it's not going to happen.
- mostlysimilar 2y ago(decades of propaganda and state capture by the insurance companies later...) oh I guess the people just don't want it! Too bad.
- bdangubic 2y agotrue but that doesn’t make it right when people are running these states are paid by the same people who benefit from the current system…
- tptacek 2y agoThe people in those states do not want it, which is why state single payer referenda fail.
- OkayBuddy44 2y ago[dead]
- yongjik 2y agoSo, private insurance companies ripping off patients is such an injustice that we are arguing that a literal murder could be (somewhat) justified - in HN of all places, where "it's the evil billionaires" was never a popular position - as if we are in total desperation and everything is on the table. ...when it is simply a consequence of America's system and the solution (public health insurance) is implemented in every other places. Have we all got drunk on libertarianism until we would rather see CEOs murdered on the street than admitting maybe, sometimes, government managing its own citizens' welfare is an acceptable solution?
- wombatpm 2y agoThe libertarian argument is that he should have employed better security to protect himself from weirdos. This is why the rich need more tax cuts -they need to be able to afford security.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]