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United Health CEO Decries "Aggressive" Media Coverage in Leaked Recording

jondonsmith 2y ago
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jjulius 2y ago
The complete inability for anybody in any of these companies, in the past few days, to ask themselves, "Well, okay, are we the baddies?" and instead just doubling down on rhetoric like this and beefing up their own personal security is just... fascinating. For well over a decade, public sentiment has largely been against healthcare companies. They go to sleep at night knowing the populace hates them. And yet there's a complete inability to look inward. Fascinating.
- block_dagger 2y ago
  If "fascinating" were "repulsive" I'd be aligned with your post.
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- VyseofArcadia 2y ago
  I think it's important to recognize that a lot of Americans (most? nearly all?) simply don't have a choice in health insurance. If you are on United, it's probably because that's what your employer has offered as a benefit. I don't remember how much choice I had when I purchased my own health insurance through the ACA, but that was also almost a decade ago and the market has likely changed. In light of that, I think this > They go to sleep at night knowing the populace hates them. And yet there's a complete inability to look inward. is because they go to sleep thinking, "what are our customers going to do about it? They're a captive audience. We only have to treat them as well as we are legally obligated to." And they are wholly unprepared for how many Americans are currently thinking, "hmm, I suppose murder is something we could do about it."
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > I think it's important to recognize that a lot of Americans (most? nearly all?) simply don't have a choice in health insurance. If you are on United, it's probably because that's what your employer has offered as a benefit. As a non-American, this was indeed a big surprise when someone here recently replied to me to make that exact point. All the disadvantages of a monopoly, none of the advantages of a free market. Kinda like the UK rail network and water systems, neither of which the British hold in high regard.
    - VyseofArcadia 2y ago
      > All the disadvantages of a monopoly, none of the advantages of a free market. Just wait until someone tells you about Comcast.
      - throwaway48476 2y ago
        Comcast executives would be in real danger if their customers got working internet.
    - phkahler 2y ago
      >> All the disadvantages of a monopoly, none of the advantages of a free market. Yes. One thing I hate is the coupling of insurance and employment in the U.S. These things don't belong together. Most employers offer different "plans" but all through the same insurance company. A good question to ask in an interview is "who is your insurance provider?" Some really are better or worse. But again, it's wrong that this can even be a consideration in finding work.
      - maxerickson 2y ago
        Keep in mind that many/most medium size and larger companies will self insure and pay for administration of the plans. I suppose the management contract probably won't really include terms about how aggressive the manager should be in rejecting terms (so you get what you get).
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- stego-tech 2y ago
  The thing is, even though I know where I stand on this issue as someone with a chronic condition that’s required routine care and occasional intervention since birth… I can see how they think they’re right. Our institutions built them to only equate success with income, and flooded their social networks with others of the same mind. They fought to join the ranks of the elites, and believe themselves to be deserving of every fortune and success associated with their status. Their entire world is an echo chamber, where money can - quite literally - isolate them from the rest of the world. They never have to see the people they fire, or know their hardships, or understand their grievances. They are, in effect, a completely different society separate from our own, yet dependent upon us and our sacrifice for their fortunes. If it weren’t for the fact the ruling class are literally killing us to increase profits for themselves, I’d pity them for willingly staying within Plato’s cave, ignorant of how the real world works.
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- fullshark 2y ago
  What can they do, they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, that's the system as designed. They offloaded any and all moral scruples in order to become effectively cogs in the machine, and will be replaced by someone who's willing to ignore those pings of guilt to get the line moving up and to the right if necessary.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    10/10 no notes, well done, indeed.
- kenjackson 2y ago
  It's really not that hard to do. There are huge portions of the population that hate police officers, athletes, teachers/professors, politicians, etc... I think their ability to seemingly not look inward is because they fundamentally believe that people aren't trying to even understand what they're doing. I'm sure the execs at health insurance companies feel like they are doing good work within the context of a for-profit business. The first thing to note is they acknowledge they are for-profit. And within that context they probably feel like they're trying to do the right thing against overzealous hospitals, doctors, fraud, and people don't sloppy work filing claims (even if not fraudulent). I just don't see how you can't do trade-offs in a for-profit where costs can be almost effectively unbounded. So I think in aggregate all of these things can convince themselves that they're doing the best they can and the market will help ensure they do a good job.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Costs are bounded. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) imposed an 85% minimum medical loss ratio on most health plans. Many commercial health insurers are non-profit. That includes such large organizations as many of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association licensees, HighMark, EmblemHealth, etc. Their coverage and claim processing policies are pretty similar to the for-profit companies.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      The way I read it is that costs are unbounded, not profits are unbounded. The health insurers are responsible for negotiating, checking and denying costs. If not them, you would have a state bureaucrat in charge of denying claims. Many will argue this is better, but it still isn't a blank check. As you point out, health insurance companies make money as a percentage of bills approved, not bills denied. The vast majority of Americans don't understand this. The completely different and more insidious problem is that this provides an incentive to approve claims, but drive their prices up, like any government regulated cost plus contractor. Cost Plus contracting only works when there is a competitive market and high transparency. Government laws tying healthcare to employers mean there is almost no competition, and healthcare costs are inherently opaque due to their complexity.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  Selfishness is the opposite of compassion, and when one has chosen to prioritize money over human beings, they have left the Path of Loving Wisdom. The heartless CEOs of these corps are chosen for a deliberate set of reasons and after serious backgrounding. For that kind of money, they're not taking any chances, those selfish, callously cruel fools. So long as they don't kill anyone or break any laws, we must let our local criminal justice systems perform their duties. Our criminal justice system here in America has all the processes we need to justly maintain society, where each person can be prosecuted for their crimes in an honest and honorable system without regard to station in society or wealth. That is all possible and it's the stated design. Remember that until one decides to improve oneself's capability and desire to be compassionate, one only sees others in a predatory way, either with selfish desire or callous disregard. But we are not lions of the Serengeti, we are human beings with the capability for humanity, being a humanitarian, caring for others, as our highest human potential. If only our economic system rewarded such people with positions of influence and power, then the world could change for the better, but under democracy -- the best system we know of -- the govts always reflect the amorality of the populace, often shrunk down to a very select group of citizens. I believe in a person having to earn my trust, just as I believe the same for me with respect to them.
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  > are we the baddies? https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY?si=4qjTyltGXoq0mkJZ https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY?si=4qjTyltGXoq0mkJZ
- tzs 2y ago
  A majority of the public are dissatisfied with the American healthcare system in general, but a majority are satisfied with their insurance provider and doctors.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  I don't think it's particularly fascinating and I'm incredibly confused why anyone would expect a different response. If a public figure you support got assassinated, is there even the slightest chance that you would take it as an opportunity to introspect on whether their critics might have a point?
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Exactly! Feeling simply doesn't trigger introspection and it is an absurd expectation.
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- ugh123 2y ago
  Because to most of the people who work there - it's a job. It's their livelihood and most people will set aside a good chunk of their morals for a paycheck which is sad.
- duped 2y ago
  My spiciest take is that "executives being gunned down in the street" is the natural consequence of the philosophy that corporations are amoral and have no duty but distributing profit to their shareholders.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    My spicy cake is that it is the natural consequence of several decades of telling Americans that they have no Democratic agency and any policy or laws they disagree with are clearly illegitimate.
- devjab 2y ago
  It’s as the old punk lyric goes, “the guilty don’t feel guilty, they learn not to”. It’s wild how much of the cyberpunk we read in the 80ies and 90ies are coming to pass though. This assassination was done in person, but how long will it take before someone flies a drone into their target instead?
- nradov 2y ago
  The hatred is largely misdirected, based on an outdated misunderstanding of how the health insurance industry works. A lot of people still have the mental model that health insurance works something like auto insurance, where they pay in premiums every month and the insurer bears financial risk for paying claims — and thus has a financial incentive to deny claims. But most health plans no longer operate that way. The bulk of the industry has now moved to large self-funded employer-sponsored plans in which the health "insurance" companies no longer provide any real insurance or bear any risk. Instead they act as administrators, constructing provider networks and processing claims. The actual risk has been transferred to employers who pay the claims. Large employers prefer this model because it ends up being cheaper for them. In the short term at least, health insurance companies have no direct financial incentive to deny any claims. In fact, due to the minimum medical loss ratio imposed by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) they actually make more profit by approving more claims. The coverage policies which lead to denied claims, step therapy, and prior authorization are really set by employers in order to hold down their costs. In other words, health insurers are really just doing the bidding of their customers. If you don't like your health coverage then the fault most likely lies with your employer's HR department. To explain it another way, if a large company wanted to they could ask a health insurer to offer a custom plan which would pay every claim for any service, no questions asked. This would be enormously profitable for the insurer, but no employer wants to pay that much. This is one of the reasons why tying healthcare access to employment via tax incentives was a bad idea. Unfortunately, for historical reasons it's politically difficult to move away from that coverage model.
  - capybaraStorm 2y ago
    This is a fascinating insight. Can you walk me through, at what point the HR department has the power to delay and deny claims for medical care covered under the insurance contract? It is my understanding the hatred doesn't extend so much in the denial of claims but rather the denial of claims for covered events.
    - nradov 2y ago
      HR departments generally have no authority over individual claims. Rather they work with insurers and independent employee benefits consultants to construct a health plan with certain benefits and coverage rules which they think will minimize costs (based on predictive analytics) without hurting employee retention too much. Large insurers offer employers a menu of options with various provider networks (narrow versus wide), negotiated rates, deductible / co-insurance / co-payment amounts, carve outs, special extra benefits, etc. Once the plan rules are set at the beginning of the year, the insurer just enforces the rules as written and passes the claim charges on to the employer. Of course, sometimes health plans just make errors in claim processing and deny a claim that should have been approved. Or the provider makes an error and submits a claim with incorrect codes or lacking the necessary documentation to establish medical necessity as per coverage rules. Or there are gray areas where it's not always clear whether a certain service should be covered or not, and it comes down to a judgment call by a nurse or doctor employed by the insurer (medicine is still more art than science and the best treatment plan isn't always clear). This can be a huge hassle for patients dealing with serious medical conditions.
- cyanydeez 2y ago
  Looking at trumps nominations of billionaires theyre rightfully confused. Didnt america just elect business super heroes...
- xyzzy123 2y ago
  I am struggling to come up with a way you could run a health insurance company and NOT be hated. Can anyone come up with examples of successful, beloved health insurance companies? Their role in the system is to more or less to do rationing / make resource allocation decisions (or at least be the "administrative face" of rationing policies) and this is always going to be unpopular. While "look inward" is always good advice, I think these companies understand that some percentage of customers will hate them simply because that is the nature of the business. They have to say "no" to some things. The more things they say "yes" to the higher your premiums are. If they say yes to way too many things (like public health care systems will tend to do) then you will see rationing by waitlist rather than price. They are also subject to the laws of large companies and so will make both random and systemic mistakes (just like every other large organisation) for the usual bureaucratic reasons. Even if major systemic change is made, whatever entity is left with the responsibility of saying "no, you don't get that care" will still be hated.
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    > I am struggling to come up with a way you could run a health insurance company and NOT be hated. Perhaps this is a sign that a health insurance company is inherently a poor way to provide health care to a country. > Their role in the system is to more or less to do rationing / make resource allocation decisions And they increase their profits by rationing more. And as is so often pointed out to me, the highest priority of a private company is profit.
    - nradov 2y ago
      That is simply false. Due to the minimum medical loss ratio, rationing care doesn't increase health insurer profits. Rather the opposite. https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/private-health-insurance/medical-loss-ratio https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/private-health-insurance/med... Every country's healthcare system rations care. Demand is effectively infinite and resources are limited. Socialized systems tend to ration by restricting supply, forcing patients to wait for expensive treatments or simply not offering certain treatments at all. That might be a net improvement over private insurance but there are certainly some downsides. https://peterattiamd.com/saumsutaria/ https://peterattiamd.com/saumsutaria/
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- jaredklewis 2y ago
  To me, it feels facile, even cruel, to put so much blame on the the insurers when US laws and regulations have created every incentive for insurers to behave exactly as the they do and no incentive not to. Their behavior is entirely predictable. Why is there not more criticism and blame put on our legislators and regulators who have done so little for the suffering public? Is there any area of the market where we would expect that participants will all routinely act against their own self-interest and for the benefit of others? Markets have to be structured and regulated so that participants are incentivized to behave well. The US has not done that.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    I'd be more inclined to sympathy if it were not for the well-documented fact that the overwhelming majority of healthcare-related legislation is drafted by lobby groups working on behalf of the health insurance industry. They literally designed the legislative framework that incentivizes shit medical outcomes. Hell, the mere existence of their business model creates moral hazard.
    - jaredklewis 2y ago
      It is par for the course that businesses will lobby for their interests. That doesn't excuse our representatives for selling us out for a steak dinner and a first class flight to the Bahamas or whatever. We must holder our leaders to a higher standard than that. The anger here on HN seems focused on the greed of the insurance companies, but that corporations tend to optimize for profit should surprise exactly no one. Where's the anger at our corrupt government? To be be 100% clear, I'm not saying don't blame or criticize insurance companies executives. I'm saying that only blaming the insurance companies implicitly gives a free pass to our representatives who pass laws written by lobbyists. That is both unfair and counter productive, since the government is actually in a position to fix these issues.
      - forgetfreeman 2y ago
        We're in violent agreement here.
schmidtleonard 2y ago
> I would recommend not responding and, if necessary, simply refer them to our own media organization. > I provided their communications department with an opportunity to tell their side of the story, is that they simply didn’t respond They have nothing to say in their defense. That says a lot.
- aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
  I think it says that they don't respect Ken Klippenstein, nor should they. I like some of his stuff and he's a good snooper, but of course UnitedHealth won't respond to his questions: he is a ginormous asshole who was openly gloating about the death of their CEO! He's completely unprofessional, he has a long history of dishonest trolling and sexist bullying, and AFAICT the only reason he left The Intercept was that he got tired of editorial standards and wanted that sweet Substack money.
  - computerthings 2y ago
    Dishonest trolling? As opposed to honest trolling? Talk about padding the list. And people who are fine with hundreds and thousands of people suffering horribly or even dying, so they can have some more money they have no real use for, draw the line at sexist bullying? Or is the issue is that he wasn't gloating behind closed doors, as professionals would? (note the "long laugh" bit) https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-insurance-denial-ulcerative-colitis https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-i... > On the 2021 phone call, which was recorded by the company, nurse Victoria Kavanaugh told her colleague that a doctor contracted by United to review the case had concluded that McNaughton’s treatment was “not medically necessary.” Her colleague, Dave Opperman, reacted to the news with a long laugh.
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pixelatedindex 2y ago
Ironically, their denial of insurance is also aggressive, inappropriate and disrespectful. It’s unbelievable how tone deaf these people are. Instead of being introspective, other insurance companies are simply removing leadership pages, and calling for armed guards.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  > their denial of insurance is also aggressive, inappropriate and disrespectful It's not. Objectively, people get sick and die and there's often not anything that can be done about it. Throwing money at treatments that will not help does nothing but raise costs for everyone. Individuals (understandably) get very emotional when grandma can't get the $100,000 therapy that might prolong her life for a few months because the big bad insurance company denied it, and it makes a great story to promote on social media. Do insurers sometime err in their denials? Probably. But so do public health plans, and there is no health care system in any country that does not draw the line at some point and say "no, we are not going to pay for that."
  - tivert 2y ago
    I think it's pretty well established that UHC denies care that people actually need. It's not just long-shot end-of-life stuff. e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/nyregion/delay-deny-defend-united-health-care-insurance-claims.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/nyregion/delay-deny-defen...: > The Stat investigation noted specific instances that troubled United employees, like when an older woman who had a stroke was only covered for half the nursing days typically required for recovery.... > A 2023 story from ProPublica dived deep into the experience of one United patient, a college student who racked up $2 million in medical claims a year to treat a severe case of ulcerative colitis. The story showed United disregarding an internal report finding the expensive treatment to be necessary. The patient eventually sued United and received an undisclosed amount in a settlement. > Insurance denials are rarely appealed, with some studies finding appeal rates of roughly 1 percent.
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deadbabe 2y ago
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will-burner 2y ago
It's crazy that insurance companies are (rightfully) viewed so negatively that the killing of a CEO is responded to positively in a lot of circles. No doubt the jokes on twitter have been great, and it is a good release like I've heard people say about breaking a window with a brick during a protest. It (edit: represents) a lot more than just property damage. It's unlikely but maybe some good will come of this from insurance companies.
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flerchin 2y ago
I assume it went much like Downfall. https://youtu.be/xBWmkwaTQ0k?t=11 https://youtu.be/xBWmkwaTQ0k?t=11 for anyone who hasn't seen it.
- siquick 2y ago
  For some reason my brain thought you meant Falling Down with Michael Douglas (which also feels pretty apt for the situation) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/
martythemaniak 2y ago
America sure is funny. They just happily elected an oligarchy that can't wait to very aggressively cut anything social spending they can (most government spending is pensions and healthcare, ACA subsidies are also expiring in 2025 and there's 0% chance they get extended), but they're also kinda gleeful about the murder of a CEO that is merely operating a company within the environment they so happily voted back in? It's just an absurd situation all around.
- chrisco255 2y ago
  You can't elect an oligarchy. They have a four year term, and almost no one in the incoming administration has a long-term career in government. It's literally the opposite of an oligarchy, it's a republic. Also, United Healthcare has no place in the incoming administration. Bobby Kennedy Jr is Trump's selection for Health Secretary, if anything is a spurn to the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance industry.
  - theossuary 2y ago
    Growing up in a very conservative household, I was always told to look at what people do, not at what they say all my childhood. Now those same people are ranting about what Trump and his cronies say, completely ignoring what they do. It'll always amaze me how easy it was to convince people to ignore actions, and only pay attention to words. RFK will only be able to propose plans within what Trump will allow; the overlap between their ideas is only bad things. If he tries to go any further he'll just end up like Tom Price did, and resign in six months.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    You might benefit from a closer examination of what an oligarchy is and how the US political system functions in the context of campaign finance, lobbyist groups involvement with drafting legislation, and the conveyor between the legislative branch and private industry jobs. If you have the constitution for rummaging through tweedy academic thickets you might also consider reviewing the Princeton papers that deconstruct the US political apparatus and indicate pretty vividly that the US is, in fact, an oligarchy. Lastly, given the combination of wealth inequality in the US and the Supreme Court rulings on money == speech and political influence == speech it's pretty trivial to conclude that money == political influence and the top 0.1% has more of both. To be clear, this is an indictment of both major political parties in the US, as they operate functionally identical campaign finance strategies.
thot_experiment 2y ago
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- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Society is made up of the individual people. It makes little sense to blame it without looking at ones self. Almost everyone who holds society to blame, holds themselves blameless.
  - thot_experiment 2y ago
    Can you expand on why you think this is a relevant point to make in response to my anecdote? Did I come across as trying to blame society here? That's not at all the point I was trying to make.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      Sure. I saw you say that society had failed the other person, and that society had failed the main character of the story. Accusations of failure are generally viewed as accusations of blame. Many people use the concept of society to externalize fault. This isn't always the case, so I tried to frame my post as a point of clarification not necessarily one of negation
      - thot_experiment 2y ago
        Ahhh, yeah I mean I think everyone holds some of the blame, both in my story and in the real world assassination situation. My hope was to provoke people who would read my hypothetical story and think "that's justified" but also believe that killing a CEO is horrible and bad to rethink whether those things are really so far apart and who is to blame. As a society we should strive to eliminate situations where people are dying, both from lack of healthcare and as retaliation for profiting off denying people care. Great power should come with great responsibility, and shirking of that responsibility should come with great consequences. We shouldn't be letting people stab eachother in the streets (or assassinate CEOs) but to profit off denying care to people should aslso have consequences. Assassination is an overcorrection, but it is perhaps closer to justice than a Manhattan penthouse. FWIW I regret saying that I would expect the jury to acquit. I don't really. I just think that the context here is complex and we have to wrestle with it in order to be consistent in how we judge the act of killing.
noobermin 2y ago
The public reaction around this reminds me a lot like shinzo abe's assassination given the reaction, although the former ceo wasn't a political figure. The public really seems gleeful around it, to be frank. The abe analogy is the general public reaction is sympathy towards the assassin and antipathy to the murdered.
OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago
Humans really struggle with identifying fault past one step. If you shoot a CEO, it's national headlines, but thousands die due to denial of proper treatment and there's no outrage. It seems this shooting made bridging the gap a mentally easier task for many people - Hence why there is very little public support for the late CEO.
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  That there is no outrage is a deeply questionable proposition. Folks generally don't get whacked in broad daylight for no reason. Social media turning one's murder into a block party likewise signals pretty deep seated animosity.
- tines 2y ago
  Anecdotally I find this to be the case with team-based online gaming. For example, if you fail to secure your lane in a Moba because your support left you to fight against two of the enemy alone, people will blame you, when the blame should rest on the shoulders of the person who abandoned you. Or, if one of your team decides not to play, which makes you 4v5 against the enemy, and you make a mistake that loses you the game, people will blame you, rather than the teammate that put you in the 4v5 situation. Very frustrating.
- always_imposter 2y ago
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nemo44x 2y ago
One of the best examples of bad policy and misplaced incentives is how the Affordable Care Act limits the amount of profit as a percentage of premiums that health insurance companies are allowed to make. Sounds great, right? If they make too much as a percentage (profit margins) they have to give money back to customers. However, all it has done is incentive costs to up for them so they can charge higher premiums (since they have to now) and pocket the same percentage of premiums which is of course a larger number overall. How could an insurance company ever even consider lowering premiums by striking better deals with providers? The dead CEO is a symbolic thing for people to direct their anger at, and with some justification (anger, but not wishing death), but really the frustration is with how bad policy and regulations of the healthcare industry in general is. There's a reason there's very few startups in the space as regulatory capture is all over the space. Between tort law, regulations, and poor policy it's no wonder the space is a mess.
- polemic 2y ago
  Countries with functional and affordable healthcare didn't there with startups and less regulation.
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    Countries with functional and affordable healthcare got there by making a policy judgment that healthcare ought to cost less. In the US, any cost reduction that might reduce payments to providers is a political non-starter, so we end up nibbling around the edges and staring at the most abusive insurers.
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furyofantares 2y ago
I'm shocked by all the comments in this thread. Dude was assassinated. Of course that's not going to lead to introspection. Especially not immediately. Assassination is wildly inappropriate! When was the last time you were egregiously, drastically wronged and thought to yourself "maybe they have a point"?
- abnry 2y ago
  This week I have learned that murder, not justice, is wildly more popular than I thought.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Vigilante justice has always been popular. It's one of the handful of themes at the core of most popular movies and TV shows.
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  - srj 2y ago
    I think the animosity is some indication people feel justice was not being served.
- cruffle_duffle 2y ago
  I too find people celebrating some dudes assassination pretty gross. It’s not justice. The dude who did it slunk away never to be seen again. At least man up and turn yourself in.
  - always_imposter 2y ago
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mullingitover 2y ago
I would expect that, politically, the insurance companies are just entering their time in the barrel. The mantle of populist, anti-establishment hero is up for grabs now that the group who campaigned as anti-establishment are the establishment. Their stated position is that private insurance companies are good, actually, and we should be moving more people out of government funded health care and into the waiting arms of UnitedHealthcare and other private insurers. This shooting, and popular acclaim for it, are a bright red signal that there is a huge tailwind for anyone who campaigns to burn these companies down, and the new establishment is going to be forced into opposing that popular demand.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  The problem is that populism doesn't have to be ideologically consistent. Supporters of privatized healthcare can and do simply agree that there's a problem and insist that more privatization will fix it.
mmooss 2y ago
Many people, especially in a certain political class, have confused their movement's rhetoric with reality. The rhetorical tactic is to make yourself the victim, always, all the time. If you're criticized or prosecuted or bad news comes out, you're being persecuted. You can see it all the time, yet few seem to notice the pattern. It also fits other rhetorical tactics: 1) Always stay on the offensive, no matter what; keep the intiative. Attacking the critics is the offensive; responding to criticism is not. 2) Attack the opposition with your own weakness: If you're a liar, call them liars; if you persecute people, call them persecutors. This confuses the issue and disarms them. Rationally and factually, the victim narrative is usually BS. There is all the difference in the world between bad news, etc. based on facts and that based on falsehoods, and especially there is all the difference between attacks on established powers and attacks on the vulnerable. Punching up is an essential social function, to protect society and hold the established powers accountable; punching down is oppression (and true victimization). But the rhetoric works because everyone has embraced the post-truth way, abandoning post-modernism (which is fundamentally a distrust of power) and its tools, and have very effectively disarmed themselves.
srameshc 2y ago
They know that eventually this will fade from the news and people will forget how bad the company is. They probably want to keep quiet until then. Hopefully, this attention will lead to some positive changes so that Americans can get better health insurance.
jfengel 2y ago
I had expected this to come down to "Hey, a guy is dead, could we take a moment here?" But no, they really seem to be complaining about the attention paid to policies that really should have gotten attention a long, long time ago. He is right, though: refer journalists to the media department. If you're not authorized to speak on behalf of the company, don't. Even if you are, deflection is the safe thing to do, because the press is not your friend and dealing with them is best left to the people who make a living at it. His company is going to get beat up for a few media cycles. And then it will go away. His media department knows this, because that's what they do.
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exabrial 2y ago
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- criddell 2y ago
  The shooter is being hailed as a hero by a lot of people on Reddit (shocking, I know). When they catch him, if he puts up a gofundme for his defence, he's going to collect millions. There's lots of speculation out there that the shooter was motivated by some failure at United. If so, UHC's PR people are probably in for some long hours during the trial when their dirty laundry gets aired.
  - tivert 2y ago
    > There's lots of speculation out there that the shooter was motivated by some failure at United. If so, UHC's PR people are probably in for some long hours during the trial when their dirty laundry gets aired. I kinda doubt a judge would let the murder trial turn into a trial of UHC's policies.
    - criddell 2y ago
      I'd be surprised if none of the particulars of the person's case come out (if there are any relevant details). There's the trial in the courtroom and then there's the trial in the court of public opinion. There are people on Reddit calling for potential jurors to know about jury nullification because they seem to think the killing was justified. There's a lot of very angry people there.
      - tivert 2y ago
        > There's the trial in the courtroom and then there's the trial in the court of public opinion. And the judge is going to want to keep those as separate as possible. > There are people on Reddit calling for potential jurors to know about jury nullification because they seem to think the killing was justified. What people say on Reddit doesn't really have any significance. IIRC, the entire legal system is pretty hostile to the concept of jury nullification, and I'm pretty there will be giant roadblocks in front of what those Redditors want.
capybaraStorm 2y ago
Someone just showed (on national TV) it is possible to murder a CEO of one of the top 10 companies in the US, during broad daylight of downtown New York, and get away with it well long enough to escape the country. Columbine inspired all sorts of copycats despite far worse social signals from the public and much quicker demise of the instigators. Every health insurance executive is shitting bricks right now.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  They're trying to delete all pictures of themselves and remove their wiki pages.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    How will they delete the wayback machine?
tschellenbach 2y ago
Things that seem weird to me: - Why are employment and insurance connected? - Why can't you select an insurance company? - Why are there no standardized 3 levels of insurance with a legal mandate for the coverage to be the same across all insurers (so they cant play games with denies). You can't have an efficient and competitive market if nobody understands what they are buying - Costs are inflated due to legal and administrative fees... - Costs are inflated due to high educational fees... - Why are we effectively subsidizing research and medicine for the rest of the world? - Food and health is a major part of what increases the costs Hope someone fixes it one day
- deleted 2y ago
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- nradov 2y ago
  Yes, the system is weird. Obviously if we were designing a healthcare system from scratch it wouldn't look anything like what we have today. What everyone needs to understand is that the system was never really designed as a cohesive whole but instead evolved over time under what economists call "path dependence". It's not even really a "system" at all in the sense of a unified entity working towards a common goal, but rather a collection of disconnected entities each pursuing their own interests. In particular tying healthcare access to employment seems crazy but it's mainly a result of wage controls that were imposed during WW2. Fixing this is politically difficult because due to economies of scale it actually gives larger corporations a competitive advantage over their smaller rivals. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235989/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235989/
asdefghyk 2y ago
10 Million a year remuneration, is like $50,000 a day. Probably more than lots people earn more than a YEAR
asdefghyk 2y ago
Seems there was lots turmoil at the CEO's company Resentment for Thompson was widespread at the company, the employee said, citing an internal company announcement about his death that only garnered 28 comments despite being seen by 16,000 employees. Also accusations? of insider trading by CEO in the linked pages. And complaints these accusation's are not mentioned by most media
asdefghyk 2y ago
Several other media articles about this murder, mention the book , that details the problem. I've just started reading it.... Jay M. Feinman - Delay, Deny, Defend_ Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claim and What You Can Do About It (2010, Penguin Group US)
keernan 2y ago
Many people forget the history of health insurance in America. Prior to 2010, you could be a good and loyal customer, always paying your premiums, but if you had a heart attack or got cancer, your health insurance company would refuse to renew your policy - for any amount. Then, once your policy lapsed, they would agree to issue you a new policy that excluded from coverage the very condition you developed that caused them to refuse to renew. Laws were passed (in the 1990s I believe) to appease the public that banned the insurers from refusing to renew a policy just because the policy holder got sick. However, the law was a joke because it permitted the insurer to set the premium on the renewal at any price they wanted. So, it was effectively the exact same situation. You have insurance. You have a heart attack or get cancer, and when it comes time to renew your policy, the health insurance company raised the premium so high that nobody could possibly afford to renew. The policy would then lapse and the insurer would immediately offer the insured a brand new policy that excepted from coverage the medical condition in question. It wasn't until the Affordable Care Act in 2010 that health insurers were finally required to keep offering the insured coverage after they got sick. They can no longer raise your rate just because you get sick (after all, what good is health coverage if it doesn't cover you when you get sick?). But health insurers HATE the Affordable Care Act and are paying lots and lots of money to elected officials to change the Affordable Care Act so insurers can once again refuse to renew policies if the insured gets sick with an expensive illness. So, hold onto your hats everyone.
- nradov 2y ago
  Nonsense. Health insurers LOVE the Affordable Care Act. Major parts of that legislation were basically written by industry lobbyists. It essentially mandated that everyone get coverage, which greatly expanded their customer base and revenue stream. Now that most employers have self-funded health plans the insurers no longer sell much insurance (in the sense of bearing financial risk) and mainly just provide administrative services while passing the bills on to employers. This is guaranteed stable profit. Zero large health insurers are lobbying to repeal the ACA. Why would they kill the golden goose?
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
throwaway48476 2y ago
What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. -Jefferson
tjpnz 2y ago
Please. The media have been nothing but sympathetic and have continued to push the bullshit narrative that this came entirely out of the blue. My favorite quote was from Fox: "as so many try to process the why of it all". Why? I'll give you one guess.
taimurkazmi 2y ago
"Stop pointing out our atrocious behavior!"
normanwilliam 2y ago
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normanwilliam 2y ago
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The complete inability for anybody in any of these companies, in the past few days, to ask themselves, "Well, okay, are we the baddies?" and instead just doubling down on rhetoric like this and beefing up their own personal security is just... fascinating. For well over a decade, public sentiment has largely been against healthcare companies. They go to sleep at night knowing the populace hates them. And yet there's a complete inability to look inward. Fascinating.

block_dagger 2y ago
If "fascinating" were "repulsive" I'd be aligned with your post.
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VyseofArcadia 2y ago
I think it's important to recognize that a lot of Americans (most? nearly all?) simply don't have a choice in health insurance. If you are on United, it's probably because that's what your employer has offered as a benefit. I don't remember how much choice I had when I purchased my own health insurance through the ACA, but that was also almost a decade ago and the market has likely changed. In light of that, I think this > They go to sleep at night knowing the populace hates them. And yet there's a complete inability to look inward. is because they go to sleep thinking, "what are our customers going to do about it? They're a captive audience. We only have to treat them as well as we are legally obligated to." And they are wholly unprepared for how many Americans are currently thinking, "hmm, I suppose murder is something we could do about it."
- ben_w 2y ago
  > I think it's important to recognize that a lot of Americans (most? nearly all?) simply don't have a choice in health insurance. If you are on United, it's probably because that's what your employer has offered as a benefit. As a non-American, this was indeed a big surprise when someone here recently replied to me to make that exact point. All the disadvantages of a monopoly, none of the advantages of a free market. Kinda like the UK rail network and water systems, neither of which the British hold in high regard.
  - VyseofArcadia 2y ago
    > All the disadvantages of a monopoly, none of the advantages of a free market. Just wait until someone tells you about Comcast.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      Comcast executives would be in real danger if their customers got working internet.
  - phkahler 2y ago
    >> All the disadvantages of a monopoly, none of the advantages of a free market. Yes. One thing I hate is the coupling of insurance and employment in the U.S. These things don't belong together. Most employers offer different "plans" but all through the same insurance company. A good question to ask in an interview is "who is your insurance provider?" Some really are better or worse. But again, it's wrong that this can even be a consideration in finding work.
    - maxerickson 2y ago
      Keep in mind that many/most medium size and larger companies will self insure and pay for administration of the plans. I suppose the management contract probably won't really include terms about how aggressive the manager should be in rejecting terms (so you get what you get).
- 2y ago
stego-tech 2y ago
The thing is, even though I know where I stand on this issue as someone with a chronic condition that’s required routine care and occasional intervention since birth… I can see how they think they’re right. Our institutions built them to only equate success with income, and flooded their social networks with others of the same mind. They fought to join the ranks of the elites, and believe themselves to be deserving of every fortune and success associated with their status. Their entire world is an echo chamber, where money can - quite literally - isolate them from the rest of the world. They never have to see the people they fire, or know their hardships, or understand their grievances. They are, in effect, a completely different society separate from our own, yet dependent upon us and our sacrifice for their fortunes. If it weren’t for the fact the ruling class are literally killing us to increase profits for themselves, I’d pity them for willingly staying within Plato’s cave, ignorant of how the real world works.
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fullshark 2y ago
What can they do, they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, that's the system as designed. They offloaded any and all moral scruples in order to become effectively cogs in the machine, and will be replaced by someone who's willing to ignore those pings of guilt to get the line moving up and to the right if necessary.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  10/10 no notes, well done, indeed.
kenjackson 2y ago
It's really not that hard to do. There are huge portions of the population that hate police officers, athletes, teachers/professors, politicians, etc... I think their ability to seemingly not look inward is because they fundamentally believe that people aren't trying to even understand what they're doing. I'm sure the execs at health insurance companies feel like they are doing good work within the context of a for-profit business. The first thing to note is they acknowledge they are for-profit. And within that context they probably feel like they're trying to do the right thing against overzealous hospitals, doctors, fraud, and people don't sloppy work filing claims (even if not fraudulent). I just don't see how you can't do trade-offs in a for-profit where costs can be almost effectively unbounded. So I think in aggregate all of these things can convince themselves that they're doing the best they can and the market will help ensure they do a good job.
- nradov 2y ago
  Costs are bounded. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) imposed an 85% minimum medical loss ratio on most health plans. Many commercial health insurers are non-profit. That includes such large organizations as many of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association licensees, HighMark, EmblemHealth, etc. Their coverage and claim processing policies are pretty similar to the for-profit companies.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    The way I read it is that costs are unbounded, not profits are unbounded. The health insurers are responsible for negotiating, checking and denying costs. If not them, you would have a state bureaucrat in charge of denying claims. Many will argue this is better, but it still isn't a blank check. As you point out, health insurance companies make money as a percentage of bills approved, not bills denied. The vast majority of Americans don't understand this. The completely different and more insidious problem is that this provides an incentive to approve claims, but drive their prices up, like any government regulated cost plus contractor. Cost Plus contracting only works when there is a competitive market and high transparency. Government laws tying healthcare to employers mean there is almost no competition, and healthcare costs are inherently opaque due to their complexity.
MrMcCall 2y ago
Selfishness is the opposite of compassion, and when one has chosen to prioritize money over human beings, they have left the Path of Loving Wisdom. The heartless CEOs of these corps are chosen for a deliberate set of reasons and after serious backgrounding. For that kind of money, they're not taking any chances, those selfish, callously cruel fools. So long as they don't kill anyone or break any laws, we must let our local criminal justice systems perform their duties. Our criminal justice system here in America has all the processes we need to justly maintain society, where each person can be prosecuted for their crimes in an honest and honorable system without regard to station in society or wealth. That is all possible and it's the stated design. Remember that until one decides to improve oneself's capability and desire to be compassionate, one only sees others in a predatory way, either with selfish desire or callous disregard. But we are not lions of the Serengeti, we are human beings with the capability for humanity, being a humanitarian, caring for others, as our highest human potential. If only our economic system rewarded such people with positions of influence and power, then the world could change for the better, but under democracy -- the best system we know of -- the govts always reflect the amorality of the populace, often shrunk down to a very select group of citizens. I believe in a person having to earn my trust, just as I believe the same for me with respect to them.
rich_sasha 2y ago
> are we the baddies? https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY?si=4qjTyltGXoq0mkJZ https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY?si=4qjTyltGXoq0mkJZ
tzs 2y ago
A majority of the public are dissatisfied with the American healthcare system in general, but a majority are satisfied with their insurance provider and doctors.
SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
I don't think it's particularly fascinating and I'm incredibly confused why anyone would expect a different response. If a public figure you support got assassinated, is there even the slightest chance that you would take it as an opportunity to introspect on whether their critics might have a point?
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Exactly! Feeling simply doesn't trigger introspection and it is an absurd expectation.
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ugh123 2y ago
Because to most of the people who work there - it's a job. It's their livelihood and most people will set aside a good chunk of their morals for a paycheck which is sad.
duped 2y ago
My spiciest take is that "executives being gunned down in the street" is the natural consequence of the philosophy that corporations are amoral and have no duty but distributing profit to their shareholders.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  My spicy cake is that it is the natural consequence of several decades of telling Americans that they have no Democratic agency and any policy or laws they disagree with are clearly illegitimate.
devjab 2y ago
It’s as the old punk lyric goes, “the guilty don’t feel guilty, they learn not to”. It’s wild how much of the cyberpunk we read in the 80ies and 90ies are coming to pass though. This assassination was done in person, but how long will it take before someone flies a drone into their target instead?
nradov 2y ago
The hatred is largely misdirected, based on an outdated misunderstanding of how the health insurance industry works. A lot of people still have the mental model that health insurance works something like auto insurance, where they pay in premiums every month and the insurer bears financial risk for paying claims — and thus has a financial incentive to deny claims. But most health plans no longer operate that way. The bulk of the industry has now moved to large self-funded employer-sponsored plans in which the health "insurance" companies no longer provide any real insurance or bear any risk. Instead they act as administrators, constructing provider networks and processing claims. The actual risk has been transferred to employers who pay the claims. Large employers prefer this model because it ends up being cheaper for them. In the short term at least, health insurance companies have no direct financial incentive to deny any claims. In fact, due to the minimum medical loss ratio imposed by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) they actually make more profit by approving more claims. The coverage policies which lead to denied claims, step therapy, and prior authorization are really set by employers in order to hold down their costs. In other words, health insurers are really just doing the bidding of their customers. If you don't like your health coverage then the fault most likely lies with your employer's HR department. To explain it another way, if a large company wanted to they could ask a health insurer to offer a custom plan which would pay every claim for any service, no questions asked. This would be enormously profitable for the insurer, but no employer wants to pay that much. This is one of the reasons why tying healthcare access to employment via tax incentives was a bad idea. Unfortunately, for historical reasons it's politically difficult to move away from that coverage model.
- capybaraStorm 2y ago
  This is a fascinating insight. Can you walk me through, at what point the HR department has the power to delay and deny claims for medical care covered under the insurance contract? It is my understanding the hatred doesn't extend so much in the denial of claims but rather the denial of claims for covered events.
  - nradov 2y ago
    HR departments generally have no authority over individual claims. Rather they work with insurers and independent employee benefits consultants to construct a health plan with certain benefits and coverage rules which they think will minimize costs (based on predictive analytics) without hurting employee retention too much. Large insurers offer employers a menu of options with various provider networks (narrow versus wide), negotiated rates, deductible / co-insurance / co-payment amounts, carve outs, special extra benefits, etc. Once the plan rules are set at the beginning of the year, the insurer just enforces the rules as written and passes the claim charges on to the employer. Of course, sometimes health plans just make errors in claim processing and deny a claim that should have been approved. Or the provider makes an error and submits a claim with incorrect codes or lacking the necessary documentation to establish medical necessity as per coverage rules. Or there are gray areas where it's not always clear whether a certain service should be covered or not, and it comes down to a judgment call by a nurse or doctor employed by the insurer (medicine is still more art than science and the best treatment plan isn't always clear). This can be a huge hassle for patients dealing with serious medical conditions.
cyanydeez 2y ago
Looking at trumps nominations of billionaires theyre rightfully confused. Didnt america just elect business super heroes...
xyzzy123 2y ago
I am struggling to come up with a way you could run a health insurance company and NOT be hated. Can anyone come up with examples of successful, beloved health insurance companies? Their role in the system is to more or less to do rationing / make resource allocation decisions (or at least be the "administrative face" of rationing policies) and this is always going to be unpopular. While "look inward" is always good advice, I think these companies understand that some percentage of customers will hate them simply because that is the nature of the business. They have to say "no" to some things. The more things they say "yes" to the higher your premiums are. If they say yes to way too many things (like public health care systems will tend to do) then you will see rationing by waitlist rather than price. They are also subject to the laws of large companies and so will make both random and systemic mistakes (just like every other large organisation) for the usual bureaucratic reasons. Even if major systemic change is made, whatever entity is left with the responsibility of saying "no, you don't get that care" will still be hated.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  > I am struggling to come up with a way you could run a health insurance company and NOT be hated. Perhaps this is a sign that a health insurance company is inherently a poor way to provide health care to a country. > Their role in the system is to more or less to do rationing / make resource allocation decisions And they increase their profits by rationing more. And as is so often pointed out to me, the highest priority of a private company is profit.
  - nradov 2y ago
    That is simply false. Due to the minimum medical loss ratio, rationing care doesn't increase health insurer profits. Rather the opposite. https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/private-health-insurance/medical-loss-ratio https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/private-health-insurance/med... Every country's healthcare system rations care. Demand is effectively infinite and resources are limited. Socialized systems tend to ration by restricting supply, forcing patients to wait for expensive treatments or simply not offering certain treatments at all. That might be a net improvement over private insurance but there are certainly some downsides. https://peterattiamd.com/saumsutaria/ https://peterattiamd.com/saumsutaria/
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jaredklewis 2y ago
To me, it feels facile, even cruel, to put so much blame on the the insurers when US laws and regulations have created every incentive for insurers to behave exactly as the they do and no incentive not to. Their behavior is entirely predictable. Why is there not more criticism and blame put on our legislators and regulators who have done so little for the suffering public? Is there any area of the market where we would expect that participants will all routinely act against their own self-interest and for the benefit of others? Markets have to be structured and regulated so that participants are incentivized to behave well. The US has not done that.
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  I'd be more inclined to sympathy if it were not for the well-documented fact that the overwhelming majority of healthcare-related legislation is drafted by lobby groups working on behalf of the health insurance industry. They literally designed the legislative framework that incentivizes shit medical outcomes. Hell, the mere existence of their business model creates moral hazard.
  - jaredklewis 2y ago
    It is par for the course that businesses will lobby for their interests. That doesn't excuse our representatives for selling us out for a steak dinner and a first class flight to the Bahamas or whatever. We must holder our leaders to a higher standard than that. The anger here on HN seems focused on the greed of the insurance companies, but that corporations tend to optimize for profit should surprise exactly no one. Where's the anger at our corrupt government? To be be 100% clear, I'm not saying don't blame or criticize insurance companies executives. I'm saying that only blaming the insurance companies implicitly gives a free pass to our representatives who pass laws written by lobbyists. That is both unfair and counter productive, since the government is actually in a position to fix these issues.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      We're in violent agreement here.

schmidtleonard 2y ago

> I would recommend not responding and, if necessary, simply refer them to our own media organization. > I provided their communications department with an opportunity to tell their side of the story, is that they simply didn’t respond They have nothing to say in their defense. That says a lot.

aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
I think it says that they don't respect Ken Klippenstein, nor should they. I like some of his stuff and he's a good snooper, but of course UnitedHealth won't respond to his questions: he is a ginormous asshole who was openly gloating about the death of their CEO! He's completely unprofessional, he has a long history of dishonest trolling and sexist bullying, and AFAICT the only reason he left The Intercept was that he got tired of editorial standards and wanted that sweet Substack money.
- computerthings 2y ago
  Dishonest trolling? As opposed to honest trolling? Talk about padding the list. And people who are fine with hundreds and thousands of people suffering horribly or even dying, so they can have some more money they have no real use for, draw the line at sexist bullying? Or is the issue is that he wasn't gloating behind closed doors, as professionals would? (note the "long laugh" bit) https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-insurance-denial-ulcerative-colitis https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-i... > On the 2021 phone call, which was recorded by the company, nurse Victoria Kavanaugh told her colleague that a doctor contracted by United to review the case had concluded that McNaughton’s treatment was “not medically necessary.” Her colleague, Dave Opperman, reacted to the news with a long laugh.
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pixelatedindex 2y ago

Ironically, their denial of insurance is also aggressive, inappropriate and disrespectful. It’s unbelievable how tone deaf these people are. Instead of being introspective, other insurance companies are simply removing leadership pages, and calling for armed guards.

SoftTalker 2y ago
> their denial of insurance is also aggressive, inappropriate and disrespectful It's not. Objectively, people get sick and die and there's often not anything that can be done about it. Throwing money at treatments that will not help does nothing but raise costs for everyone. Individuals (understandably) get very emotional when grandma can't get the $100,000 therapy that might prolong her life for a few months because the big bad insurance company denied it, and it makes a great story to promote on social media. Do insurers sometime err in their denials? Probably. But so do public health plans, and there is no health care system in any country that does not draw the line at some point and say "no, we are not going to pay for that."
- tivert 2y ago
  I think it's pretty well established that UHC denies care that people actually need. It's not just long-shot end-of-life stuff. e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/nyregion/delay-deny-defend-united-health-care-insurance-claims.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/nyregion/delay-deny-defen...: > The Stat investigation noted specific instances that troubled United employees, like when an older woman who had a stroke was only covered for half the nursing days typically required for recovery.... > A 2023 story from ProPublica dived deep into the experience of one United patient, a college student who racked up $2 million in medical claims a year to treat a severe case of ulcerative colitis. The story showed United disregarding an internal report finding the expensive treatment to be necessary. The patient eventually sued United and received an undisclosed amount in a settlement. > Insurance denials are rarely appealed, with some studies finding appeal rates of roughly 1 percent.
- deleted 2y ago
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deadbabe 2y ago

[flagged]

will-burner 2y ago

It's crazy that insurance companies are (rightfully) viewed so negatively that the killing of a CEO is responded to positively in a lot of circles. No doubt the jokes on twitter have been great, and it is a good release like I've heard people say about breaking a window with a brick during a protest. It (edit: represents) a lot more than just property damage. It's unlikely but maybe some good will come of this from insurance companies.

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flerchin 2y ago

I assume it went much like Downfall. https://youtu.be/xBWmkwaTQ0k?t=11 https://youtu.be/xBWmkwaTQ0k?t=11 for anyone who hasn't seen it.

siquick 2y ago
For some reason my brain thought you meant Falling Down with Michael Douglas (which also feels pretty apt for the situation) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/

martythemaniak 2y ago

America sure is funny. They just happily elected an oligarchy that can't wait to very aggressively cut anything social spending they can (most government spending is pensions and healthcare, ACA subsidies are also expiring in 2025 and there's 0% chance they get extended), but they're also kinda gleeful about the murder of a CEO that is merely operating a company within the environment they so happily voted back in? It's just an absurd situation all around.

chrisco255 2y ago
You can't elect an oligarchy. They have a four year term, and almost no one in the incoming administration has a long-term career in government. It's literally the opposite of an oligarchy, it's a republic. Also, United Healthcare has no place in the incoming administration. Bobby Kennedy Jr is Trump's selection for Health Secretary, if anything is a spurn to the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance industry.
- theossuary 2y ago
  Growing up in a very conservative household, I was always told to look at what people do, not at what they say all my childhood. Now those same people are ranting about what Trump and his cronies say, completely ignoring what they do. It'll always amaze me how easy it was to convince people to ignore actions, and only pay attention to words. RFK will only be able to propose plans within what Trump will allow; the overlap between their ideas is only bad things. If he tries to go any further he'll just end up like Tom Price did, and resign in six months.
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  You might benefit from a closer examination of what an oligarchy is and how the US political system functions in the context of campaign finance, lobbyist groups involvement with drafting legislation, and the conveyor between the legislative branch and private industry jobs. If you have the constitution for rummaging through tweedy academic thickets you might also consider reviewing the Princeton papers that deconstruct the US political apparatus and indicate pretty vividly that the US is, in fact, an oligarchy. Lastly, given the combination of wealth inequality in the US and the Supreme Court rulings on money == speech and political influence == speech it's pretty trivial to conclude that money == political influence and the top 0.1% has more of both. To be clear, this is an indictment of both major political parties in the US, as they operate functionally identical campaign finance strategies.

thot_experiment 2y ago

[flagged]

s1artibartfast 2y ago
Society is made up of the individual people. It makes little sense to blame it without looking at ones self. Almost everyone who holds society to blame, holds themselves blameless.
- thot_experiment 2y ago
  Can you expand on why you think this is a relevant point to make in response to my anecdote? Did I come across as trying to blame society here? That's not at all the point I was trying to make.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Sure. I saw you say that society had failed the other person, and that society had failed the main character of the story. Accusations of failure are generally viewed as accusations of blame. Many people use the concept of society to externalize fault. This isn't always the case, so I tried to frame my post as a point of clarification not necessarily one of negation
    - thot_experiment 2y ago
      Ahhh, yeah I mean I think everyone holds some of the blame, both in my story and in the real world assassination situation. My hope was to provoke people who would read my hypothetical story and think "that's justified" but also believe that killing a CEO is horrible and bad to rethink whether those things are really so far apart and who is to blame. As a society we should strive to eliminate situations where people are dying, both from lack of healthcare and as retaliation for profiting off denying people care. Great power should come with great responsibility, and shirking of that responsibility should come with great consequences. We shouldn't be letting people stab eachother in the streets (or assassinate CEOs) but to profit off denying care to people should aslso have consequences. Assassination is an overcorrection, but it is perhaps closer to justice than a Manhattan penthouse. FWIW I regret saying that I would expect the jury to acquit. I don't really. I just think that the context here is complex and we have to wrestle with it in order to be consistent in how we judge the act of killing.

noobermin 2y ago

The public reaction around this reminds me a lot like shinzo abe's assassination given the reaction, although the former ceo wasn't a political figure. The public really seems gleeful around it, to be frank. The abe analogy is the general public reaction is sympathy towards the assassin and antipathy to the murdered.

OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago

Humans really struggle with identifying fault past one step. If you shoot a CEO, it's national headlines, but thousands die due to denial of proper treatment and there's no outrage. It seems this shooting made bridging the gap a mentally easier task for many people - Hence why there is very little public support for the late CEO.

forgetfreeman 2y ago
That there is no outrage is a deeply questionable proposition. Folks generally don't get whacked in broad daylight for no reason. Social media turning one's murder into a block party likewise signals pretty deep seated animosity.
tines 2y ago
Anecdotally I find this to be the case with team-based online gaming. For example, if you fail to secure your lane in a Moba because your support left you to fight against two of the enemy alone, people will blame you, when the blame should rest on the shoulders of the person who abandoned you. Or, if one of your team decides not to play, which makes you 4v5 against the enemy, and you make a mistake that loses you the game, people will blame you, rather than the teammate that put you in the 4v5 situation. Very frustrating.
always_imposter 2y ago
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nemo44x 2y ago

One of the best examples of bad policy and misplaced incentives is how the Affordable Care Act limits the amount of profit as a percentage of premiums that health insurance companies are allowed to make. Sounds great, right? If they make too much as a percentage (profit margins) they have to give money back to customers. However, all it has done is incentive costs to up for them so they can charge higher premiums (since they have to now) and pocket the same percentage of premiums which is of course a larger number overall. How could an insurance company ever even consider lowering premiums by striking better deals with providers? The dead CEO is a symbolic thing for people to direct their anger at, and with some justification (anger, but not wishing death), but really the frustration is with how bad policy and regulations of the healthcare industry in general is. There's a reason there's very few startups in the space as regulatory capture is all over the space. Between tort law, regulations, and poor policy it's no wonder the space is a mess.

polemic 2y ago
Countries with functional and affordable healthcare didn't there with startups and less regulation.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  Countries with functional and affordable healthcare got there by making a policy judgment that healthcare ought to cost less. In the US, any cost reduction that might reduce payments to providers is a political non-starter, so we end up nibbling around the edges and staring at the most abusive insurers.

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furyofantares 2y ago

I'm shocked by all the comments in this thread. Dude was assassinated. Of course that's not going to lead to introspection. Especially not immediately. Assassination is wildly inappropriate! When was the last time you were egregiously, drastically wronged and thought to yourself "maybe they have a point"?

abnry 2y ago
This week I have learned that murder, not justice, is wildly more popular than I thought.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Vigilante justice has always been popular. It's one of the handful of themes at the core of most popular movies and TV shows.
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- srj 2y ago
  I think the animosity is some indication people feel justice was not being served.
cruffle_duffle 2y ago
I too find people celebrating some dudes assassination pretty gross. It’s not justice. The dude who did it slunk away never to be seen again. At least man up and turn yourself in.
- always_imposter 2y ago
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mullingitover 2y ago

I would expect that, politically, the insurance companies are just entering their time in the barrel. The mantle of populist, anti-establishment hero is up for grabs now that the group who campaigned as anti-establishment are the establishment. Their stated position is that private insurance companies are good, actually, and we should be moving more people out of government funded health care and into the waiting arms of UnitedHealthcare and other private insurers. This shooting, and popular acclaim for it, are a bright red signal that there is a huge tailwind for anyone who campaigns to burn these companies down, and the new establishment is going to be forced into opposing that popular demand.

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
The problem is that populism doesn't have to be ideologically consistent. Supporters of privatized healthcare can and do simply agree that there's a problem and insist that more privatization will fix it.

mmooss 2y ago

Many people, especially in a certain political class, have confused their movement's rhetoric with reality. The rhetorical tactic is to make yourself the victim, always, all the time. If you're criticized or prosecuted or bad news comes out, you're being persecuted. You can see it all the time, yet few seem to notice the pattern. It also fits other rhetorical tactics: 1) Always stay on the offensive, no matter what; keep the intiative. Attacking the critics is the offensive; responding to criticism is not. 2) Attack the opposition with your own weakness: If you're a liar, call them liars; if you persecute people, call them persecutors. This confuses the issue and disarms them. Rationally and factually, the victim narrative is usually BS. There is all the difference in the world between bad news, etc. based on facts and that based on falsehoods, and especially there is all the difference between attacks on established powers and attacks on the vulnerable. Punching up is an essential social function, to protect society and hold the established powers accountable; punching down is oppression (and true victimization). But the rhetoric works because everyone has embraced the post-truth way, abandoning post-modernism (which is fundamentally a distrust of power) and its tools, and have very effectively disarmed themselves.

srameshc 2y ago

They know that eventually this will fade from the news and people will forget how bad the company is. They probably want to keep quiet until then. Hopefully, this attention will lead to some positive changes so that Americans can get better health insurance.

jfengel 2y ago

I had expected this to come down to "Hey, a guy is dead, could we take a moment here?" But no, they really seem to be complaining about the attention paid to policies that really should have gotten attention a long, long time ago. He is right, though: refer journalists to the media department. If you're not authorized to speak on behalf of the company, don't. Even if you are, deflection is the safe thing to do, because the press is not your friend and dealing with them is best left to the people who make a living at it. His company is going to get beat up for a few media cycles. And then it will go away. His media department knows this, because that's what they do.

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exabrial 2y ago

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criddell 2y ago
The shooter is being hailed as a hero by a lot of people on Reddit (shocking, I know). When they catch him, if he puts up a gofundme for his defence, he's going to collect millions. There's lots of speculation out there that the shooter was motivated by some failure at United. If so, UHC's PR people are probably in for some long hours during the trial when their dirty laundry gets aired.
- tivert 2y ago
  > There's lots of speculation out there that the shooter was motivated by some failure at United. If so, UHC's PR people are probably in for some long hours during the trial when their dirty laundry gets aired. I kinda doubt a judge would let the murder trial turn into a trial of UHC's policies.
  - criddell 2y ago
    I'd be surprised if none of the particulars of the person's case come out (if there are any relevant details). There's the trial in the courtroom and then there's the trial in the court of public opinion. There are people on Reddit calling for potential jurors to know about jury nullification because they seem to think the killing was justified. There's a lot of very angry people there.
    - tivert 2y ago
      > There's the trial in the courtroom and then there's the trial in the court of public opinion. And the judge is going to want to keep those as separate as possible. > There are people on Reddit calling for potential jurors to know about jury nullification because they seem to think the killing was justified. What people say on Reddit doesn't really have any significance. IIRC, the entire legal system is pretty hostile to the concept of jury nullification, and I'm pretty there will be giant roadblocks in front of what those Redditors want.

capybaraStorm 2y ago

Someone just showed (on national TV) it is possible to murder a CEO of one of the top 10 companies in the US, during broad daylight of downtown New York, and get away with it well long enough to escape the country. Columbine inspired all sorts of copycats despite far worse social signals from the public and much quicker demise of the instigators. Every health insurance executive is shitting bricks right now.

throwaway48476 2y ago
They're trying to delete all pictures of themselves and remove their wiki pages.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  How will they delete the wayback machine?

tschellenbach 2y ago

Things that seem weird to me: - Why are employment and insurance connected? - Why can't you select an insurance company? - Why are there no standardized 3 levels of insurance with a legal mandate for the coverage to be the same across all insurers (so they cant play games with denies). You can't have an efficient and competitive market if nobody understands what they are buying - Costs are inflated due to legal and administrative fees... - Costs are inflated due to high educational fees... - Why are we effectively subsidizing research and medicine for the rest of the world? - Food and health is a major part of what increases the costs Hope someone fixes it one day

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nradov 2y ago
Yes, the system is weird. Obviously if we were designing a healthcare system from scratch it wouldn't look anything like what we have today. What everyone needs to understand is that the system was never really designed as a cohesive whole but instead evolved over time under what economists call "path dependence". It's not even really a "system" at all in the sense of a unified entity working towards a common goal, but rather a collection of disconnected entities each pursuing their own interests. In particular tying healthcare access to employment seems crazy but it's mainly a result of wage controls that were imposed during WW2. Fixing this is politically difficult because due to economies of scale it actually gives larger corporations a competitive advantage over their smaller rivals. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235989/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235989/

asdefghyk 2y ago

10 Million a year remuneration, is like $50,000 a day. Probably more than lots people earn more than a YEAR

asdefghyk 2y ago

Seems there was lots turmoil at the CEO's company Resentment for Thompson was widespread at the company, the employee said, citing an internal company announcement about his death that only garnered 28 comments despite being seen by 16,000 employees. Also accusations? of insider trading by CEO in the linked pages. And complaints these accusation's are not mentioned by most media

asdefghyk 2y ago

Several other media articles about this murder, mention the book , that details the problem. I've just started reading it.... Jay M. Feinman - Delay, Deny, Defend_ Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claim and What You Can Do About It (2010, Penguin Group US)

keernan 2y ago

Many people forget the history of health insurance in America. Prior to 2010, you could be a good and loyal customer, always paying your premiums, but if you had a heart attack or got cancer, your health insurance company would refuse to renew your policy - for any amount. Then, once your policy lapsed, they would agree to issue you a new policy that excluded from coverage the very condition you developed that caused them to refuse to renew. Laws were passed (in the 1990s I believe) to appease the public that banned the insurers from refusing to renew a policy just because the policy holder got sick. However, the law was a joke because it permitted the insurer to set the premium on the renewal at any price they wanted. So, it was effectively the exact same situation. You have insurance. You have a heart attack or get cancer, and when it comes time to renew your policy, the health insurance company raised the premium so high that nobody could possibly afford to renew. The policy would then lapse and the insurer would immediately offer the insured a brand new policy that excepted from coverage the medical condition in question. It wasn't until the Affordable Care Act in 2010 that health insurers were finally required to keep offering the insured coverage after they got sick. They can no longer raise your rate just because you get sick (after all, what good is health coverage if it doesn't cover you when you get sick?). But health insurers HATE the Affordable Care Act and are paying lots and lots of money to elected officials to change the Affordable Care Act so insurers can once again refuse to renew policies if the insured gets sick with an expensive illness. So, hold onto your hats everyone.

nradov 2y ago
Nonsense. Health insurers LOVE the Affordable Care Act. Major parts of that legislation were basically written by industry lobbyists. It essentially mandated that everyone get coverage, which greatly expanded their customer base and revenue stream. Now that most employers have self-funded health plans the insurers no longer sell much insurance (in the sense of bearing financial risk) and mainly just provide administrative services while passing the bills on to employers. This is guaranteed stable profit. Zero large health insurers are lobbying to repeal the ACA. Why would they kill the golden goose?
- dragonwriter 2y ago

throwaway48476 2y ago

What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. -Jefferson

tjpnz 2y ago

Please. The media have been nothing but sympathetic and have continued to push the bullshit narrative that this came entirely out of the blue. My favorite quote was from Fox: "as so many try to process the why of it all". Why? I'll give you one guess.

taimurkazmi 2y ago

"Stop pointing out our atrocious behavior!"

normanwilliam 2y ago

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normanwilliam 2y ago

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