7 ms·
Anthem BCBS calls off surgery anesthesia cap after UH CEO murdered
- conartist6 2y ago"It's terrifying," the article ends. Yes! Even without vigilantism, when society places a great deal of trust in you you are supposed to live with a certain level of fear that if you abuse that trust society will impose upon you life-destroying consequences. It feels like it should be terrifying for Silicon Valley too, another group of very rich and powerful people who tell themselves that everything they do is for the benefit of society while actually most people make their bread and butter on technology whose benefits to society are quickly consumed by anti-competition and that familiar attitude of overwhelming negligence towards human harm where it is caused.
- thebigspacefuck 2y agoYouTube already had a shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_headquarters_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_headquarters_shooting SV may be different though in that most cases you are opting in and most people agree that the products improve their life. If you feel otherwise don’t buy it. Someone can still decide that technology is bad and go on a bombing campaign like the unabomber, but we haven’t seen much support for that approach, instead questioning his sanity. I think the YT shooter fell on the crazy side of the scale in public opinion as well. With health insurance, you are forced to buy it or have little choice on which company you go with when it’s provided through your employer. I guess if you’re forced out of a job because of AI or something that’s fair. I always thought the best argument for UBI was if you take all of our jobs and give us nothing in return, we can make your life a living hell.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- userabchn 2y agoI wonder whether the murder, and the immediate strong social media reaction supporting it, were part of a foreign influence operation. Normalising the idea that murdering a CEO makes you a hero and that a large percentage of the population would react to a murder with a laughing emoji will be effective means of furthering division.
- uhtred 2y agoI don't buy it. I think people are tired of the current system. Seeing loved ones suffer because of lack of healthcare. For me the irony is that this has brought people from both sides of the political divide together, yet the people on the right just voted for a guy that will make society even more unfair. Perhaps the next four years will be a true reckoning. The darkest moments before the dawn of a new era. The rise of Bernie 2.0, half man half machine, an efficient anti-drilling machine.
- genter 2y agoI don't have my hopes up. The only thing he accomplished in his first presidency (of which Republicans controlled the House and Senate for half off) was a huge tax cut for Wall Street, yet he was elected again.
- zelias 2y agoBoth things can be true. It would make sense for a foreign adversary to exploit the feelings of discontent produced by very obvious, very omnipresent shortcomings in the system.
- snowwrestler 2y agoForeign influence ops work like throwing seeds on the ground. They only grow when they find the right conditions. The answer to such operations is not to just point at everything bad and divisive and say “might be foreign influence!” Of course, it might be. Or might not! Who knows. Guesses are not really actionable or influential. And without hard proof, over time it sounds like crying wolf. The sustainable defense is to address the ground conditions themselves. People are pissed about health care and wealth inequality—separately and together. That’s not something a foreign country did to the U.S.
- itishappy 2y agoDoesn't really pass Occam's razor. It might be foreign influence. It might be aliens. It might be people are genuinely upset with an insurance company and/or it's CEO.
- 2y ago
- impish9208 2y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42334531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42334531
- thebigspacefuck 2y agoIf that submission has one upvote and comment and this one has 50, that submission’s the dupe
- impish9208 2y agoNot really. It was posted earlier.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoEarlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42320232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42320232
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRelated: Anaesthesiologists and Surprise Billing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42335824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42335824
- aaomidi 2y agoHonestly the reactions to the CEO being killed has been interesting. Basically most people are at least not mad that it happened. Folks that are mad I’ve noticed come from a background of generational wealth, which translates to never having dealt with an insurance company. As a society we’ve been far too comfortable with death in the form of profit seeking and bureaucracy. It’s all good if the death is indirect and many layers deep. It’s bad if the death is direct and targeted.
- tjpnz 2y agoI'm guessing the announcement was just unfortunate timing. Normally the industry wouldn't be facing a reckoning and it would slip under the radar. In other words I fully expect them to try this again.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoEven though professional groups representing anesthesiologists fought back against this new policy on limiting coverage of anesthesia, I bet it was the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO that caused them to back off. The timing is too convenient. But they’ll try this again once the public stops paying attention. It’s what they do. All these health insurance companies don’t make money by providing more value to customers. They make more money by doing less for them. It’s a perverse incentive.
- silisili 2y agoAgreed. But I also thinks this sets a bit of a bad precedent. Apparently all you have to do to get a hated industry to back off is murder one of their leaders. Kind of a no win situation they put themselves into.
- Clubber 2y agoI suspect the long term effect will be determined by if the guy gets caught. If he doesn't get caught, people will think, "hey, you can get away with this," and it will happen more. If does get caught, people will think, "these people are greedy and unjust, but I don't want to die or spend the rest of my life in jail and deprive my family, I'll just deal with it."
- rasz 2y agoAnother option is gets caught but walks free due to jury nullification.
- Larrikin 2y agoI think most people cheering him on expect him to get caught and probably the shooter expects that himself. Having a long term effect will be if his reasons for doing it inspires law makers to enact change. Or if he inspires 3 or 4 other people who are successful in gunning down CEOs of other exploitative industries, even after upping security. If he is killed and/or we never learn a motive, he'll just be forgotten under a pile of online and media speculation. Hopefully his plan anticipated some kind of dead man's release of his motive.
- ashoeafoot 2y agoThis seems to lead to a broader "dancing in the street" moment, left,right and center?
- reducesuffering 2y agoPopulist left and right at least indifferent, if not cheering on murder. An insurance company able to extract $500 billion in value from Americans' healthcare. I really dislike all of it. This country has seen better days.
- deprecative 2y ago[flagged]
- thejazzman 2y ago> celebrating the loss of some innocent person. We're just happy to see consequences for their mass homicidal actions happening TIL mass homicidal actions are innocent
- yunwal 2y ago> is not
- nightowl_games 2y agoEven using the term "We" here seems so casual and sick to me. "We" vs "Fascists". Wow. Reading your final statement "the center is okay with fascists' makes me think maybe you are a troll farm member trying to stir up anger and division.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fargle 2y agosince you presume to speak for all leftists, this makes things so much easier to discuss; i can just speak to you directly, how convenient! "As for the center, they're ok with fascism which makes them fascists." one could argue that since you have espoused such radically leftist policies that you have then alienated and abandoned a huge swath of the (also now apparently "fascist") sensible moderates and centrists. losing what was, until recently, a clear political advantage. you created the conditions necessary for these center-left, center, and right wing fascists to acquire power. since you are perfectly ok with concretely aiding and abetting fascists, by your style of logic, you're a "fascist" then too. so perhaps one might suggest, in the alternative, to please first carefully check the definition of words like "fascist" [1] before throwing it around loosely. and if you must use it as a slur, do so correctly and judiciously at something vaguely defensible. if you go around calling everybody and everything you don't like "fascist", it becomes more difficult to understand what you actually mean. and then what name do you call the "real-evil-actual-facsist-fascists"? simply screaming insults at super-majority swaths of the population isn't really a viable path toward making the world a better place. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- netsharc 2y ago> Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield recently decided to "no longer pay for anesthesia care if the surgery or procedure goes beyond an arbitrary time limit, regardless of how long the surgical procedure takes," according to the American Society of Anesthesiologists, which opposed the decision. Heh. When EU authorities started implementing (partial) refunds for flight delays over x minutes, the airlines just added 30 or so minutes to their flight schedules, so most of the times they land early - wahey, progress! If the law got implemented I can imagine surgeons padding surgery time to make sure their patients get adequate care.
- kittikitti 2y agoI still feel this is a better approach. It's absurd that consumers have to pay out if they miss a flight or appointment even if it's 2 minutes over the deadline yet when corporations are late they can just say "oopsie" and get away with it. Incentivizing a buffer time and providing consequences for scammy time estimates is something I would appreciate.
- orf 2y ago> the airlines just added 30 or so minutes to their flight schedules, so most of the times they land early - wahey, progress That is progress, given the advertised flight times more accurately represent the p95 time as opposed to a hopeful guess.