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> 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 abou

by 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.

justinclift 2y ago
> You don't actually think that he was worse than a murderer ... The difference in opinion might be many people considering the guy himself to be a murderer, and not just of one or two people?
DrillShopper 2y ago
[flagged]
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic." -Joseph Stalin https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-ed4-00010383 https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...
- defen 2y ago
  I recognize a distinction between a premeditated direct intent to kill someone, and whatever it was this guy did. If you have different values then you might not.
  - DrillShopper 2y ago
    I do recognize a distinction as well - what this guy did was worse. Don't get my wrong, shooting someone in broad daylight is a bad thing and I will agree that we shouldn't encourage it. In this case I don't have any sympathy for the victim. There's a difference there - I recognize that the assassin is wrong but that's orthogonal to my sympathy (or in this case, lack of) for the victim. What the CEO did was worse. While someone who premeditates a murder clearly has knowledge of and familiarity with the person being murdered the CEO does not have that for the deaths that are a result of denying care. They feel almost clinical to him, numbers on a balance sheet to be weighed against the bottom line. It's textbook banality of evil - the deaths he was responsible for were just the cost of doing business, and what a business it is.
    - defen 2y ago
      The "banality of evil" was originally used to describe the bureaucrats who enabled the mass-murder of Holocaust victims (Godwin's law strikes again!). Their actual goal, the primary outcome they were trying to maximize, was murdering Jewish people and other "undesirables". I don't think this guy was trying to do anything on that level. I don't think he sat down every day and said "how do we kill more people?" Rather, he was working within a really bad system that has bad incentives and no one knows how to fix it.
      - DrillShopper 2y ago
        [flagged]
        defen 2y ago
        Was this guy uniquely evil, as far as health care executives go? Like...if more of them get murdered, will you just shrug and say "yeah they kinda had it coming"?
        vundercind 2y ago
        > Was this guy uniquely evil, as far as health care executives go? I think if you poll the people taking this as a good thing, you will get an overwhelming answer of “probably not”, and the implications are exactly what you suppose.
        drewbug01 2y ago
        There’s an awful lot of wiggle room in the “more of them” phrase, so I suppose the only realistic answer is “it depends.” But speaking more generally - I think a lot of people would, indeed, shrug. The US healthcare system is one of the most miserable parts of living in this country and virtually everyone has had to deal with it at some point. And whether or not they deserve the direct blame, insurance execs (and pharma execs, etc) directly profit from that misery. I think a lot of people are not going to shed a single tear over events like this.
layoric 2y ago
The sheer breadth of misery this person inflicted through his actions is hard to quantify, and trying to say who is worse/better will always be a judgement call. But the broad dislike for this person doesn't come from nowhere..
adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
Our healthcare system literally shaves ~5 years of lifespan off of the country as a whole. Illegal denial of claims by his company almost certainly kill hundreds of thousands a year.
jjj123 2y ago
When deciding who deserves my scorn, I genuinely do put those who are in power and commit atrocities at scale (like healthcare CEOs) above one-off violent criminals. Even if you’re a few levels removed from the deaths you’ve caused, you still have blood on your hands imo.
- defen 2y ago
  Would you rather have had this guy around you / your loved ones, or one of the people in the other groups I named?
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Wasn’t the topic scorn?
  - atmavatar 2y ago
    What precisely is your point? I'd rather have the Sackler family show up for a dinner than the Manson family, but if we're being honest, the former is responsible for several orders of magnitude more deaths than the latter.
- hirvi74 2y ago
  Who knows too... maybe if we have better access to affordable quality (mental) healthcare, which does not deny millions of claims in any given year, then we might perhaps have less murders, rapist, and abusers running around. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
vouaobrasil 2y ago
> 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. I think there is not much point in defining a single metric of "worse" because that is confusing. A rapist is worse if they are following your spouse. This guy is worse if he is about to make a decision that will prevent your loved one from getting medical treatment at the exact time that they need it.
hirvi74 2y ago
Depends how you cut it. The acts of Murders, rapist, and child abusers are far more heinous than health insurance CEOs. However, I would argue the magnitude of damage is larger from the decisions of health care CEOs.

by defen 2y ago

justinclift 2y ago

> You don't actually think that he was worse than a murderer ... The difference in opinion might be many people considering the guy himself to be a murderer, and not just of one or two people?

DrillShopper 2y ago

[flagged]

Dalewyn 2y ago
"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic." -Joseph Stalin https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-ed4-00010383 https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...
defen 2y ago
I recognize a distinction between a premeditated direct intent to kill someone, and whatever it was this guy did. If you have different values then you might not.
- DrillShopper 2y ago
  I do recognize a distinction as well - what this guy did was worse. Don't get my wrong, shooting someone in broad daylight is a bad thing and I will agree that we shouldn't encourage it. In this case I don't have any sympathy for the victim. There's a difference there - I recognize that the assassin is wrong but that's orthogonal to my sympathy (or in this case, lack of) for the victim. What the CEO did was worse. While someone who premeditates a murder clearly has knowledge of and familiarity with the person being murdered the CEO does not have that for the deaths that are a result of denying care. They feel almost clinical to him, numbers on a balance sheet to be weighed against the bottom line. It's textbook banality of evil - the deaths he was responsible for were just the cost of doing business, and what a business it is.
  - defen 2y ago
    The "banality of evil" was originally used to describe the bureaucrats who enabled the mass-murder of Holocaust victims (Godwin's law strikes again!). Their actual goal, the primary outcome they were trying to maximize, was murdering Jewish people and other "undesirables". I don't think this guy was trying to do anything on that level. I don't think he sat down every day and said "how do we kill more people?" Rather, he was working within a really bad system that has bad incentives and no one knows how to fix it.
    - DrillShopper 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - defen 2y ago
        Was this guy uniquely evil, as far as health care executives go? Like...if more of them get murdered, will you just shrug and say "yeah they kinda had it coming"?
        vundercind 2y ago
        > Was this guy uniquely evil, as far as health care executives go? I think if you poll the people taking this as a good thing, you will get an overwhelming answer of “probably not”, and the implications are exactly what you suppose.
        drewbug01 2y ago
        There’s an awful lot of wiggle room in the “more of them” phrase, so I suppose the only realistic answer is “it depends.” But speaking more generally - I think a lot of people would, indeed, shrug. The US healthcare system is one of the most miserable parts of living in this country and virtually everyone has had to deal with it at some point. And whether or not they deserve the direct blame, insurance execs (and pharma execs, etc) directly profit from that misery. I think a lot of people are not going to shed a single tear over events like this.

layoric 2y ago

The sheer breadth of misery this person inflicted through his actions is hard to quantify, and trying to say who is worse/better will always be a judgement call. But the broad dislike for this person doesn't come from nowhere..

adgjlsfhk1 2y ago

Our healthcare system literally shaves ~5 years of lifespan off of the country as a whole. Illegal denial of claims by his company almost certainly kill hundreds of thousands a year.

jjj123 2y ago

When deciding who deserves my scorn, I genuinely do put those who are in power and commit atrocities at scale (like healthcare CEOs) above one-off violent criminals. Even if you’re a few levels removed from the deaths you’ve caused, you still have blood on your hands imo.

defen 2y ago
Would you rather have had this guy around you / your loved ones, or one of the people in the other groups I named?
- vundercind 2y ago
  Wasn’t the topic scorn?
- atmavatar 2y ago
  What precisely is your point? I'd rather have the Sackler family show up for a dinner than the Manson family, but if we're being honest, the former is responsible for several orders of magnitude more deaths than the latter.
hirvi74 2y ago
Who knows too... maybe if we have better access to affordable quality (mental) healthcare, which does not deny millions of claims in any given year, then we might perhaps have less murders, rapist, and abusers running around. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

vouaobrasil 2y ago

> 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. I think there is not much point in defining a single metric of "worse" because that is confusing. A rapist is worse if they are following your spouse. This guy is worse if he is about to make a decision that will prevent your loved one from getting medical treatment at the exact time that they need it.

hirvi74 2y ago

Depends how you cut it. The acts of Murders, rapist, and child abusers are far more heinous than health insurance CEOs. However, I would argue the magnitude of damage is larger from the decisions of health care CEOs.