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Question: is it depressing, or is it a wake up call for just how much the average American hates health insurance executives? There seem to be a few people onl

Question: is it depressing, or is it a wake up call for just how much the average American hates health insurance executives? There seem to be a few people online who mirror your sentiments about being shocked, what defenders of the crime would call pearl clutching. I'm fascinated. From my perspective, the idea of a vigilante being so burned by health insurance companies he tracks down and kills the CEO is not a shocking premise _at all_. Yet some (particularly health insurance industry workers / professionals on LinkedIn) are so shocked by this that it makes me wonder if there's an insulated echo chamber effect going on here.

Muromec 2y ago
It's a classic Robin Hood kind of hero, an established trope that everyone likes. I don't get how anybody can be surprised by this happening in a country which is obsessed with comic books and made hero movies it's main cultural export.
- krapp 2y ago
  And guns. I mean - this is the country that literally has a whole Amendment in their Constitution dedicated to the right of the people to shoot other people, and which defines that capacity for popular violence as a necessity for a free state. The archetype of the hero patriot "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants" goes all the way back to the guy who made that quote. And I would bet money (if I had it) that a significant number of people expressing outrage over this were defending Kyle Rittenhouse and that guy who shot climate protestors in Panama, or making excuses for the killings of Jordan Neely and George Floyd, or gleefully hoping Trump would send troops in to shoot BLM protestors in the streets. Because the "problem" here isn't the normalization of gun violence or the lionization of such violence as heroism - that's been normal for centuries, it's an intentional design feature of the American system. The "problem" here is that gun violence was being used on the wrong kind of people, and creating the wrong kind of hero.
  - pixxel 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    In the full quote Jefferson argues that arms are necessary to preserve a spirit of rebellion. I wouldn't ascribe it as inherently linked to any particular cause.
  - karmakurtisaani 2y ago
    People with authoritarian beliefs clashing with people with anarchistic beliefs, just like in the examples you mentioned.
rvnx 2y ago
(not American here, but curious about the situation because healthcare is broken in so many countries). Money is a weapon of vote too, if you don't subscribe to UnitedHealthcare, in the long run the corporate should eventually disappear as a whole no ? If you dislike Uber, then don't buy Uber. In Switzerland they have such capitalistic system where you can pick your private insurance provider. So the most expensive / worse ones, gets less revenue. In France, they have a socialo-communist monopoly, no choice, only one choice, and you have to be happy with it, no matter what. I guess that's the main promise of capitalism; voting with your money (money that is supposed to come proportional to your efforts, though it is warped by crime, cryptos, inheritance, etc). For example, if you stop buying meat, and convince others to stop buying meat, then there will less people investing into meat. EDIT: Users explained (thanks!) that it was not really a free choice.
- Muromec 2y ago
  >In France, they have a socialo-communist monopoly, no choice, only one choice, and you have to be happy with it, no matter what. It sounds very offending to my anarcho capitalistic world view, where poor people should suffer more than I do, but does it actually produce more suffering than US or less?
  - sam_lowry_ 2y ago
    Popular wisdom says that medical care in France is the best in the world. Neighbouring countries are trying to match )
    - rvnx 2y ago
      If you don't pay taxes it's an incredibly great value and offering. This is why if you are poor France and can get state help is an excellent choice. Once you start to pay taxes, or you fit in-between the criterias for eligibility to state help, the costs are much higher than in the neighboring Switzerland for example.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  > Money is a weapon of vote too, if you don't subscribe to UnitedHealthcare, in the long run the corporate should eventually disappear as a whole no ? The problem is often that there is no really good option. And in places like Switzerland, there is often much more regulation to prevent all options from becoming bad. For example, the E.U. has many consumer rights laws that the U.S. does not have. The problem is unregulated capitalism. At a large scale, over time, people will find ways to take advantage of the system and exploit the people due to their greedy nature. And insurance is an industry that naturally tends to that end without regulation. In no place does unregulated capitalism give good results at scale.
tzs 2y ago
> Question: is it depressing, or is it a wake up call for just how much the average American hates health insurance executives? Americans dislike the American health care system as a whole, but actually tend to like their particular insurance company and doctors. I checked United on the ACA marketplace in my state and United is rated 4 out of 5 stars, which is the same as pretty much every other offering except Kaiser (5 out of 5) and new plans that have not yet gotten ratings. This is not actually surprising because most people only actually use their insurance for routine things like physicals, vaccinations, lab tests, common illnesses like flu, physical injuries like sprains and broken bones and household cuts and burns, and fairly common prescription drugs. Even the most extreme cost cutting insurance company is usually going to pay for those without question.
salawat 2y ago
I can give you an ex-insiders perspective. There tends to be a bit of a divide in the people who drift into staffing these companies. Most are highly intelligent, and at least have an appreciation for the logistics behind the business process. There's going to be a functional piece somewhere sitting in the midst of the datasets, and making the best decisions possible. The dividing line I personally witnessed though was the finance first vs. patient outcome first people. The patient outcome first people tend to congregate in areas like CS, clinical, QA, compliance, etc... They realize it's a complex space, a lot of data to sift through and learn from, but are constantly working to make sure people ultimately get what they need. The finance first group are sort of the opposite. They're doing everything they can to target Fraud/Waste/Abuse, not necessarily to the exclusion of patient outcome, but the priorities are 100% different. The problem is the output of their analysis tends to turn into inputs for the Prior Auth, formulary management, and claim denial logic, which, lets call that what it is: population scale social engineering to the end of nudging people to save money for the company. The "surprised pikachus" are probably the finance first/raw number crunchers who have never had a number bite back in their life. The people who are actually concerned with patient outcome already know exactly what's going on, and are completely unsurprised. It's really Upton Sinclair's wisdom at work: It is hard to get a man to understand that which his salary depends on him not understanding.

Muromec 2y ago

It's a classic Robin Hood kind of hero, an established trope that everyone likes. I don't get how anybody can be surprised by this happening in a country which is obsessed with comic books and made hero movies it's main cultural export.

krapp 2y ago
And guns. I mean - this is the country that literally has a whole Amendment in their Constitution dedicated to the right of the people to shoot other people, and which defines that capacity for popular violence as a necessity for a free state. The archetype of the hero patriot "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants" goes all the way back to the guy who made that quote. And I would bet money (if I had it) that a significant number of people expressing outrage over this were defending Kyle Rittenhouse and that guy who shot climate protestors in Panama, or making excuses for the killings of Jordan Neely and George Floyd, or gleefully hoping Trump would send troops in to shoot BLM protestors in the streets. Because the "problem" here isn't the normalization of gun violence or the lionization of such violence as heroism - that's been normal for centuries, it's an intentional design feature of the American system. The "problem" here is that gun violence was being used on the wrong kind of people, and creating the wrong kind of hero.
- pixxel 2y ago
  [flagged]
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  In the full quote Jefferson argues that arms are necessary to preserve a spirit of rebellion. I wouldn't ascribe it as inherently linked to any particular cause.
- karmakurtisaani 2y ago
  People with authoritarian beliefs clashing with people with anarchistic beliefs, just like in the examples you mentioned.

rvnx 2y ago

(not American here, but curious about the situation because healthcare is broken in so many countries). Money is a weapon of vote too, if you don't subscribe to UnitedHealthcare, in the long run the corporate should eventually disappear as a whole no ? If you dislike Uber, then don't buy Uber. In Switzerland they have such capitalistic system where you can pick your private insurance provider. So the most expensive / worse ones, gets less revenue. In France, they have a socialo-communist monopoly, no choice, only one choice, and you have to be happy with it, no matter what. I guess that's the main promise of capitalism; voting with your money (money that is supposed to come proportional to your efforts, though it is warped by crime, cryptos, inheritance, etc). For example, if you stop buying meat, and convince others to stop buying meat, then there will less people investing into meat. EDIT: Users explained (thanks!) that it was not really a free choice.

Muromec 2y ago
>In France, they have a socialo-communist monopoly, no choice, only one choice, and you have to be happy with it, no matter what. It sounds very offending to my anarcho capitalistic world view, where poor people should suffer more than I do, but does it actually produce more suffering than US or less?
- sam_lowry_ 2y ago
  Popular wisdom says that medical care in France is the best in the world. Neighbouring countries are trying to match )
  - rvnx 2y ago
    If you don't pay taxes it's an incredibly great value and offering. This is why if you are poor France and can get state help is an excellent choice. Once you start to pay taxes, or you fit in-between the criterias for eligibility to state help, the costs are much higher than in the neighboring Switzerland for example.
vouaobrasil 2y ago
> Money is a weapon of vote too, if you don't subscribe to UnitedHealthcare, in the long run the corporate should eventually disappear as a whole no ? The problem is often that there is no really good option. And in places like Switzerland, there is often much more regulation to prevent all options from becoming bad. For example, the E.U. has many consumer rights laws that the U.S. does not have. The problem is unregulated capitalism. At a large scale, over time, people will find ways to take advantage of the system and exploit the people due to their greedy nature. And insurance is an industry that naturally tends to that end without regulation. In no place does unregulated capitalism give good results at scale.

tzs 2y ago

> Question: is it depressing, or is it a wake up call for just how much the average American hates health insurance executives? Americans dislike the American health care system as a whole, but actually tend to like their particular insurance company and doctors. I checked United on the ACA marketplace in my state and United is rated 4 out of 5 stars, which is the same as pretty much every other offering except Kaiser (5 out of 5) and new plans that have not yet gotten ratings. This is not actually surprising because most people only actually use their insurance for routine things like physicals, vaccinations, lab tests, common illnesses like flu, physical injuries like sprains and broken bones and household cuts and burns, and fairly common prescription drugs. Even the most extreme cost cutting insurance company is usually going to pay for those without question.

salawat 2y ago

I can give you an ex-insiders perspective. There tends to be a bit of a divide in the people who drift into staffing these companies. Most are highly intelligent, and at least have an appreciation for the logistics behind the business process. There's going to be a functional piece somewhere sitting in the midst of the datasets, and making the best decisions possible. The dividing line I personally witnessed though was the finance first vs. patient outcome first people. The patient outcome first people tend to congregate in areas like CS, clinical, QA, compliance, etc... They realize it's a complex space, a lot of data to sift through and learn from, but are constantly working to make sure people ultimately get what they need. The finance first group are sort of the opposite. They're doing everything they can to target Fraud/Waste/Abuse, not necessarily to the exclusion of patient outcome, but the priorities are 100% different. The problem is the output of their analysis tends to turn into inputs for the Prior Auth, formulary management, and claim denial logic, which, lets call that what it is: population scale social engineering to the end of nudging people to save money for the company. The "surprised pikachus" are probably the finance first/raw number crunchers who have never had a number bite back in their life. The people who are actually concerned with patient outcome already know exactly what's going on, and are completely unsurprised. It's really Upton Sinclair's wisdom at work: It is hard to get a man to understand that which his salary depends on him not understanding.