7 ms·

You know why I don't work for a trapping and pest control company? Because structurally they kill animals. They go around with tools of destruction and end the

You know why I don't work for a trapping and pest control company? Because structurally they kill animals. They go around with tools of destruction and end the lives of animals. Its the function of their existence. Do you know why I don't work for a _for profit_ health insurance company, who's stated goals are explicitly to make profit by slicing out some amount of premiums that are not spent to provide healthcare in a world in which total health expenditures can be* effectively infinite? Same reason. Also this tends to do it for me: https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/ai-with-90-error-rate-forces-elderly-out-of-rehab-nursing-homes-suit-claims/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/ai-with-90-error-rate... Do CEOs run companies or don't they?

nickff 2y ago
If your definition of responsibility is so broad, wouldn't every Head of Government for every country be deserving of assassination? Even more broadly, every police chief in every large city, along with all military officers, most mayors, governors, and premiers would also be 'natural targets'. This seems a bit drastic to me, is it your view?
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  > If your definition of responsibility is so broad His/her definition seems to be narrower than yours — namely profit over lives.
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    I am unaware of any heads of government who are not offered salaries above a minimum wage. Further, having such connections gets you invited to the upper crust society events and networking connections. Their direct role in the deaths of others is usually more concrete than that of any CEO.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  This is my view for sure. Every one of those examples is responsible for more deaths than an above average serial killer, they just do it through some degree of abstraction and distance that for some reason means it doesn't count. I disagree, it still counts.
- itsanaccount 2y ago
  I think in philosophy there's something to be said for the difference between action and lack of action when it comes to culpability. Is a surgeon responsible for not being good enough to save a persons life? No, I don't think so. Is a surgeon responsible for not being sober for a planned surgery? In our society, yes. I think a lot of responsibility is determined by mens rea, and when you run a health insurance company you have good numbers for exactly how many lives you're going to effect when denying coverage.
  - nickff 2y ago
    You think this CEO had more 'mens rea' than a city police chief (or the other examples I listed)? The police chief is literally responsible for purchasing guns, distributing them to officers, and telling the latter to use the former to coerce people!
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    if you're saying they actively decide denial rates at management level to hit profit targets, I don't buy it. He has much closer culpability to the CEO of the company that sells me cigarettes than the guy who murdered my grandma. The world is a fallen place. I thought the example up thread re: not being an animal trapper was a Jonathan Swift-esque send up of the whole idea though, so I might be missing a screw or two.
    - motorest 2y ago
      > if you're saying they actively decide denial rates at management level to hit profit targets, I don't buy it. To believe in that, first you need to believe that somehow any executive of a company has no control over the company, does not have a duty to make certain things are done a certain way, nor is accountable for how the company is managed.
      - 2y ago
- drewcoo 2y ago
  > If your definition of responsibility is so broad, wouldn't every Head of Government for every country be deserving of assassination? Chomsky would say "put to death, not assassinated." https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/ https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > If your definition of responsibility is so broad, wouldn't every Head of Government for every country be deserving of assassination? I don't agree to the radical formulation "every Head of Government for every country is deserving of assassination", but I do believe that the weaker statement "for most Heads of Government of most country, there exist quite some people (even among the citizens) who would like them them to be dead" is very plausible.
chris_va 2y ago
The assumption by insurance commissioners (elected officials) is that private insurance will result in better outcomes in the long term, and profit margins are regulated and this is the will of the voters. ... Now that doesn't mean it is true, and health insurance in the US is completely broken, but it is not at all obvious who is at fault here.
avalys 2y ago
By this same logic, you are responsible for the death of every person who could have been saved by you donating all of your income beyond basic living expenses (your personal "profit", if you will) to pay for their medical care. You monster! How many people could you have saved! Instead you spend your money on vacations, television, computer games, music, movies, coffee, whatever. Oh, what's that you say? _You_ (who, I presume, do not directly save any lives yourself) are morally allowed to use the profit from your labor on unnecessary things for your own pleasure, but people who actually work in healthcare must not just dedicate all of their professional energy and effort to helping people and saving lives, but also must not take any profits from it either, is that right? Healthcare can morally only be provided by charities?
- aijdosaijd 2y ago
  Personal income, that which sustains someones family, is vastly different then the billions made by United off the backs of those suffering. What, are you some healthcare exec or something? This is not the own you think it is.
  - avalys 2y ago
    United Healthcare is a publicly-traded company which makes a 6% profit margin and pays a dividend, which means that those profits ultimately benefit people's retirement accounts, pensions and middle-class investments. The person who was killed made $10M last year, while UHC provided care to 52 million patients. So, the CEO was paid approximately $0.20 per patient treated last year. What part of all this do you believe is immoral?
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      It could have 65 million, I think it the immediate answer.
    - jonathanlb 2y ago
      Probably the part where people were denied care that they needed in order to provide profits and dividends to its shareholders.
aijdosaijd 2y ago
I could not agree more. Where does the buck stop? From what I can tell United has almost double the national average for denials. They do what they do for the almighty dollar. Padding shareholder pockets has a direct effect on peoples lives and definitely results in at least some deaths. If the highest level of executive is not held responsible then who is? The regulation and law in the US is heavily influenced by these companies lust for money and power via lobbyists. They are effectively a cartel. Do people honestly think this dude lost a wink of sleep over all the people who suffered from their wanton greed? I think not. As barbaric as it seems, he got exactly what he deserved. “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ryandrake 2y ago
> Do CEOs run companies or don't they? They both do and don't simultaneously. Schrödinger's Responsibility. When the company makes money or does something good, it's because of the CEO's leadership...they are responsible because they are in charge. When the company loses money or does evil/bad, then the CEO has nothing to do with it, and instead it's either the fault of government, lone wolf low-level employees, customers, external factors, "economic trends", anything but themselves
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
FireBeyond 2y ago
I used to work for a company that wrote software for health insurers to run their businesses, from determining financial responsibilities and amounts, all the way through cutting checks to providers, handling repricing, everything. I wish I could say I got out of there for ethical reasons (there were good reasons, but if that was the only...) We did a LOT to be ethical. The amount of requests we turned down from our customers - "If we have a database of familial relationships (who knows what, or from where, be it public records or 23andme), how can we mine the database with that information to determine people's predisposition to certain conditions based on familial diagnoses?" "You can't." "Why not, it's in the database?" "Yes. But that is federally illegal for you to do. And if it's illegal for you to do, we are not going to facilitate it either." But the writing was on the wall, I'm sure at some point there would be more and more "grey areas".

nickff 2y ago

If your definition of responsibility is so broad, wouldn't every Head of Government for every country be deserving of assassination? Even more broadly, every police chief in every large city, along with all military officers, most mayors, governors, and premiers would also be 'natural targets'. This seems a bit drastic to me, is it your view?

JKCalhoun 2y ago
> If your definition of responsibility is so broad His/her definition seems to be narrower than yours — namely profit over lives.
- zdragnar 2y ago
  I am unaware of any heads of government who are not offered salaries above a minimum wage. Further, having such connections gets you invited to the upper crust society events and networking connections. Their direct role in the deaths of others is usually more concrete than that of any CEO.
giraffe_lady 2y ago
This is my view for sure. Every one of those examples is responsible for more deaths than an above average serial killer, they just do it through some degree of abstraction and distance that for some reason means it doesn't count. I disagree, it still counts.
itsanaccount 2y ago
I think in philosophy there's something to be said for the difference between action and lack of action when it comes to culpability. Is a surgeon responsible for not being good enough to save a persons life? No, I don't think so. Is a surgeon responsible for not being sober for a planned surgery? In our society, yes. I think a lot of responsibility is determined by mens rea, and when you run a health insurance company you have good numbers for exactly how many lives you're going to effect when denying coverage.
- nickff 2y ago
  You think this CEO had more 'mens rea' than a city police chief (or the other examples I listed)? The police chief is literally responsible for purchasing guns, distributing them to officers, and telling the latter to use the former to coerce people!
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- refulgentis 2y ago
  if you're saying they actively decide denial rates at management level to hit profit targets, I don't buy it. He has much closer culpability to the CEO of the company that sells me cigarettes than the guy who murdered my grandma. The world is a fallen place. I thought the example up thread re: not being an animal trapper was a Jonathan Swift-esque send up of the whole idea though, so I might be missing a screw or two.
  - motorest 2y ago
    > if you're saying they actively decide denial rates at management level to hit profit targets, I don't buy it. To believe in that, first you need to believe that somehow any executive of a company has no control over the company, does not have a duty to make certain things are done a certain way, nor is accountable for how the company is managed.
    - 2y ago
drewcoo 2y ago
> If your definition of responsibility is so broad, wouldn't every Head of Government for every country be deserving of assassination? Chomsky would say "put to death, not assassinated." https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/ https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/
aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> If your definition of responsibility is so broad, wouldn't every Head of Government for every country be deserving of assassination? I don't agree to the radical formulation "every Head of Government for every country is deserving of assassination", but I do believe that the weaker statement "for most Heads of Government of most country, there exist quite some people (even among the citizens) who would like them them to be dead" is very plausible.

chris_va 2y ago

The assumption by insurance commissioners (elected officials) is that private insurance will result in better outcomes in the long term, and profit margins are regulated and this is the will of the voters. ... Now that doesn't mean it is true, and health insurance in the US is completely broken, but it is not at all obvious who is at fault here.

avalys 2y ago

By this same logic, you are responsible for the death of every person who could have been saved by you donating all of your income beyond basic living expenses (your personal "profit", if you will) to pay for their medical care. You monster! How many people could you have saved! Instead you spend your money on vacations, television, computer games, music, movies, coffee, whatever. Oh, what's that you say? _You_ (who, I presume, do not directly save any lives yourself) are morally allowed to use the profit from your labor on unnecessary things for your own pleasure, but people who actually work in healthcare must not just dedicate all of their professional energy and effort to helping people and saving lives, but also must not take any profits from it either, is that right? Healthcare can morally only be provided by charities?

aijdosaijd 2y ago
Personal income, that which sustains someones family, is vastly different then the billions made by United off the backs of those suffering. What, are you some healthcare exec or something? This is not the own you think it is.
- avalys 2y ago
  United Healthcare is a publicly-traded company which makes a 6% profit margin and pays a dividend, which means that those profits ultimately benefit people's retirement accounts, pensions and middle-class investments. The person who was killed made $10M last year, while UHC provided care to 52 million patients. So, the CEO was paid approximately $0.20 per patient treated last year. What part of all this do you believe is immoral?
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    It could have 65 million, I think it the immediate answer.
  - jonathanlb 2y ago
    Probably the part where people were denied care that they needed in order to provide profits and dividends to its shareholders.

aijdosaijd 2y ago

I could not agree more. Where does the buck stop? From what I can tell United has almost double the national average for denials. They do what they do for the almighty dollar. Padding shareholder pockets has a direct effect on peoples lives and definitely results in at least some deaths. If the highest level of executive is not held responsible then who is? The regulation and law in the US is heavily influenced by these companies lust for money and power via lobbyists. They are effectively a cartel. Do people honestly think this dude lost a wink of sleep over all the people who suffered from their wanton greed? I think not. As barbaric as it seems, he got exactly what he deserved. “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ryandrake 2y ago

> Do CEOs run companies or don't they? They both do and don't simultaneously. Schrödinger's Responsibility. When the company makes money or does something good, it's because of the CEO's leadership...they are responsible because they are in charge. When the company loses money or does evil/bad, then the CEO has nothing to do with it, and instead it's either the fault of government, lone wolf low-level employees, customers, external factors, "economic trends", anything but themselves

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

FireBeyond 2y ago

I used to work for a company that wrote software for health insurers to run their businesses, from determining financial responsibilities and amounts, all the way through cutting checks to providers, handling repricing, everything. I wish I could say I got out of there for ethical reasons (there were good reasons, but if that was the only...) We did a LOT to be ethical. The amount of requests we turned down from our customers - "If we have a database of familial relationships (who knows what, or from where, be it public records or 23andme), how can we mine the database with that information to determine people's predisposition to certain conditions based on familial diagnoses?" "You can't." "Why not, it's in the database?" "Yes. But that is federally illegal for you to do. And if it's illegal for you to do, we are not going to facilitate it either." But the writing was on the wall, I'm sure at some point there would be more and more "grey areas".