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UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

• vermarish 2y ago
  (2023)
• ConspiracyFact 2y ago
  Horrifying. But also horrifying that treatment costs so much. Supposedly we have to let drug companies charge extravagant prices because it costs so much to discover new treatments, but there has to be a great deal of inefficiency there. Are we getting a 99% solution for $X when we could be getting a 95% solution for $X/10?
  • dboreham 2y ago
    > Supposedly we have to let drug companies charge extravagant prices because it costs so much to discover new treatments Big pharma disinformation? Perhaps most new treatment research is government funded (and by governments of other countries).
    • croissants 2y ago
      Do you have evidence for "most new treatment research is government funded (and by governments of other countries)"? My understanding is that the opposite is true: big pharmaceutical companies foot most of the bill for developing new drugs, then US-based insurers pay high costs, and most "other countries" enjoy much lower prices because US healthcare is effectively subsidizing their drug prices.
      • _yb2s 2y ago
        It’s both working together- the basic research, including identifying targets and new chemistry and in some cases even the drugs themselves are mostly academia. However, clinical trials, and drug development that iterates the chemical structure itself and delivery approaches is very expensive, and almost entirely done by industry. Often the academics are working collaboratively with pharmaceutical- and can have either government or pharmaceutical funding for these projects. I’m an academic PI that has discovered and patented new drugs and licensed them to industry.
        • croissants 2y ago
          Thanks. Do you have some sense of the breakdown in actual expenses incurred by the basic research and subsequent industrial development? It may qualitatively be true that many governments sponsor basic research that is later productized, but if the second bit costs 1000x more than the first bit, it's not exactly a fairly shared cost.
          • _yb2s 2y ago
            I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but most likely substantially more of the money is from industry. However, just answering that requires really carefully defining the question- because much academic research that happens to lead to new drugs or drug targets is basic medical and biology research- do you also include all biological research that does not turn out this way? On the industry side do you include all biotech startups hoping to sell to big pharmaceutical companies including the majority that do not? Clinical trials are incredibly expensive but also comparatively straightforward and require a very different set of facilities and skills from basic research. Pharma mostly could not recruit away the people with these skills from academia- they can’t offer the same freedom and job security, but the academics often found startups they work for on the side and ultimately sell to pharma if it works out. So comparing money spent isn’t the entire picture of relative contribution- as they are each doing parts the other is not equipped for.
      • loeg 2y ago
        You are correct.
    • loeg 2y ago
      The vast majority of new therapy R&D expenses are paid for by "big pharma."
  • itronitron 2y ago
    The inefficiency is that for many pharmaceutical companies in the US, their marketing budget is much higher than (~10X) the R&D budget.
    • slt2021 2y ago
      the marketing expense is a legalized lobbying. What you see in marketing, is just payback scheme to Media/TV (to shut down any criticism of pharma), and doctors (for promoting/prescribing drugs)
    • croissants 2y ago
      Where are you getting 10X? If I look at, say, Merck, their "sales, general, and administrative expenses" [1] trends at even or slightly higher than their R&D expenses [2]. Abbvie's ratio is around 2x [3, 4]. AFAIK, SG&A is the number that groups criticizing pharmaceutical companies look at, even though it includes a lot of money spent on things like paying lawyers, which any pharmaceutical company that actually wants to make back the billions spent on developing drugs will have to do. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/269499/merck-and-co-sganda-expenses/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269499/merck-and-co-sgan... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/282738/expenditure-on-research-and-development-by-merck-and-co/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/282738/expenditure-on-re... [3] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ABBV/abbvie/selling-general-administrative-expenses https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ABBV/abbvie/sellin... [4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/417068/r-and-d-expenditure-of-abbvie/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/417068/r-and-d-expenditu...
      • itronitron 2y ago
        That's how it was described to me by several R&D staff at JnJ two decades ago.
  • readthenotes1 2y ago
    We have to let drug companies charge extravagant prices because of otherwise medical care costs would not be so high. Companies providing medical Care have to spend 80% of their costs on actual medical care, not marketing and executive compensation. The only way to make the 20% that really matter to the decision makers larger is to make the medical costs larger. It is one reason people on United healthcare get $100 gift card to see their primary care provider each year. It's also the reason why there's no real pressure to reduce drug costs.
    • thfuran 2y ago
      >Companies providing medical Care have to spend 80% of their costs on actual medical care, not marketing and executive compensation. That requirement was imposed on insurers in response to already-exorbitant medical costs. It does create a perverse incentive, but it cannot be the root cause of the issue.
      • readthenotes1 2y ago
        Well, before that (and continuing), the largest customer of drugs in the United States is prohibited from negotiating price for most drugs. The exorbitant costs arose with the provision of private medical insurance in the 1940s but only really took off when Medicare and Medicaid came in the 1969s with, essentially, a blank check for cost. Things weren't improved in the 1980s when emergency rooms were required to provide care regardless on a patient's ability to pay, leading to another perversion that for a significant group of people the only way to get medical care was when it was too late and most expensive. ACA is just another example of the US government doing stupid.
        • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
          > the largest customer of drugs in the United States is prohibited from negotiating price for most drugs Note that this changed in 2022 for the most-bought drugs.
          • 2y ago
  • Dalewyn 2y ago
    >But also horrifying that treatment costs so much. My mother underwent chemotherapy for her cancer. According to the statements from her insurance company, each round of chemotherapy cost as much as a new luxury car before hospital vs. insurance negotiations. Yeah. The value of health insurance isn't just the offloading of expenses, it's also their power to tell hospitals to get fucking bent with ludicrous bills.
    • Hemospectrum 2y ago
      Health insurance price negotiation is the primary reason those prices are so high in the first place. An insurance company gets to say it negotiated a 99% discount (or whatever) and the hospitals and pharmaceutical companies still charge prices high enough to turn a comfortable profit. It's a lot like "Black Friday" sales where retailers jack up their shelf prices in the preceding days and weeks so they can mark them down and persuade the customers they're getting attractive deals.
    • spondylosaurus 2y ago
      To be fair to hospitals, some of those bills are ludicrous because of insurance. If they know that insurers will only ever pay 10% of the listed cost, they'll make the listed cost seem a lot bigger so that that 10% payout is comparatively bigger too.
    • ANewFormation 2y ago
      Insurance companies have a motivation to see high healthcare costs - it justifies higher premiums, and in a broken 'public' healthcare system that entrenches insurance middlemen, and subsidizes their costs for those unable to afford them, you're just going to see costs skyrocket endlessly. Public healthcare, of any sort, should not involve working with third party insurance companies. In any case, this is also why medical tourism is a thing - you could go get the exact same treatment, to completion, half way around for far less than what you the cost you were quoted for a single round in the US - including housing and other costs.
    • cogman10 2y ago
      The health industry is what's wrong with a captured market and few players. Every party is trying to extract maximum value for minimum input. That leads hospitals to 1000x every treatment price so when insurance companies come to negotiate they can negotiate down to 100x. It causes hospitals to understaff because is cheaper to pay for legal staff to handle malpractice claims than it is to not work your nurses and doctors to death. It causes drug companies consolidate and then charge through the nose for drugs that cost them pennies to manufacturer (for example, penicillin or insulin) drugs that, everyone should be aware, all of the R&D and FDA approval has been done. The most expensive part of drug development is done. There are solutions. It's regulations. Hospitals regulated to minimal coverage. Drug/hospitals hit with anti price gouging regulations. Insurance companies hit with coverage regulations. That's all something doable and probably with enough political will to be done. An even better idea is simply nationalizing medicine, top to bottom. That's unlikely to happen, but would result in the biggest drop in healthcare costs.
  • spondylosaurus 2y ago
    Both of the drugs listed in the article (Remicade and Entyvio) have generic/biosimilar equivalents, too, so in theory competition should drive down the price... but this is the American healthcare system so of course it doesn't. Unclear from the article, but it's quite possible that UHC was _forcing_ him to use the more expensive name-brand drugs due to an agreement that they made with their pharmacy benefits manager (PBM). Some name-brand manufacturers will see generics on the horizon and throw in a clause that obliges the PBM to continue exclusively covering the name-brand drug for X amount of time. UHC specifically fucked me over this way by refusing to cover a widely available generic drug, insisting that they'd only pay for the name-brand stuff, but no pharmacy on earth seems to carry the name brand stuff and couldn't even source it to order it, so UHC effectively denied me the drug altogether. I feel for the guy in the article because the drug that UHC fucked me over about (mesalamine/Lialda) was keeping my Crohn's in check, and after the ensuing flare I had to switch to Remicade, which isn't totally working for me—I'll be switching to something else soon. Obligatory link about PBMs and how they suck: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/inside-the-mafia-of-pharma-pricing https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/inside-the-mafia-of-pharm... And being on Remicade myself, albeit at a lower dose (and without Entyvio like he's also taking), I was curious enough to check the EOB for how much my current insurance pays for it. I have Anthem BCBS and here's the breakdown of my last infusion. For context, this is a drug where you have to go to an infusion clinic for administration because it's delivered intravenously. Doctor/facility charges: $21,420.70 Your discounts: -19,563.26 Due to your doctor/facility (max allowed): $1,857.44 Anthem paid: $1,857.44 So the "cost" was 20k for a single infusion, but Anthem negotiated that down to 2k. (I didn't pay anything since I'd met my out-of-pocket limit for the year.) Here's the itemized breakdown of that 20k cost: Drugs Provider charges: 21,020.70 Plan discounts: 19,226.20 Anthem paid: 1794,50 Infusion center Provider charges: 400.00 Plan discounts: 337.06 Anthem paid: 62.94 So the drug cost $1.8k, and they only paid $60 to have someone stick it in me. And for reference, that's name-brand Remicade too, because it's what Anthem's PBM requires. I'm on 7.5mg/kg every 8 weeks, and the highest approved dose is 10mg/kg every 4 weeks. So even if he was on, e.g., 20mg/kg every 4 weeks, that would be maybe $4k worth of drugs once a month, which is $48k a year. Unless Entyvio is way more expensive than I realized, I have no clue how that would add up to a million dollars a year in costs, unless they're sending him to an infusion center that charges crazy high prices (which, if it's part of UHC's Optum network rather than an independent clinic... maybe they do :P)
  • BeefWellington 2y ago
    Worse, in many cases you're getting an existing 100% solution repackaged for $X * 1000. Anything routine is so expensive in the US because regulation's gone completely out the window. An area I'm familiar with for example: in Canada (where I am now) Salbutamol inhalers cost about $20-25. In California I was lucky to find it less than $100. And this is for a well-known decades old generic. See also: insulin. It's making headlines[1] that companies are finally dropping prices down to roughly in line with the rest of the world (starting in 2026). And this is after other measures have already been taken -- it used to be much worse.[2] Worth repeating: this price gouging is for generic and old medication. [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/novo-nordisk-to-cut-us-list-prices-of-two-insulin-products-by-more-than-70/ar-AA1vlqI8 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/novo-nordisk-to-cu... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47491964 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47491964
  • ivraatiems 2y ago
    The reason the treatment costs so much is in large part because of insurers aggressively pricing treatments down, forcing hospitals to respond by jacking prices up. It's a never-ending cycle. See e. g. https://www.fairobserver.com/economics/why-are-us-hospitals-so-expensive/ https://www.fairobserver.com/economics/why-are-us-hospitals-... The fix here would be to remove the middlemen (insurance companies) and pay hospitals what Medicare/Medicaid pay them, which is typically a much lower negotiated amount.
  • SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    Perhaps we are, but the treatment regimen described in the article sounds like one of those 4 percentage points missing from the 95% solution. A custom-made cocktail of two drugs, each requiring a special biologic manufacturing process and each far above the standard recommended dose? It seems very plausible that this would not be economical to produce for 1/10 the price.
• griomnib 2y ago
  No jury will convict the shooter, I suspect he’ll “resist arrest” and never make it to a court room for that reason.
  • jimmydoe 2y ago
    New Yorkers will surprise you.
    • griomnib 2y ago
      As a New Yorker myself, I’m fairly confident.
      • paulgb 2y ago
        I'm also a New Yorker and I think that most of us actually do not believe that assassinations are a net benefit to society, no matter how dissatisfied with the health care system we are.
        • griomnib 2y ago
          There’s an incredibly strong argument this particular person likely killed tens of thousand of people by his decisions to deny and delay care. This was not an employee carrying out orders from corporate, it’s the guy who is directly responsible for these deaths. This CEO is as much a mass murder as any other tyrant who commanded soldiers to commit atrocities. That will be part of the defense argument presented to the jury. Intent matters tremendously in the legal system (mens rea). This isn’t random, this is very, very targeted. Likewise, the lawyers this guy can afford after his GoFundMe legal defense fund raises millions will be top tier.
          • spondylosaurus 2y ago
            Hey now, he didn't just kill tens of thousands of people by denying/delaying care! He also got filthy stinking rich in the process.
• Fizzadar 2y ago
  It’s bullshit like this that makes me realise how lucky we are in countries that have public health care. Sure it has problems but private systems seem to have zero advantage for the average person. Pay more for less effectiveness AND a bunch of people get nothing.
  • Yeul 2y ago
    There are people here on HN that no doubt make a lot of money working for Google. The idea that they are treated equally to a homeless man is not something they would want. It is no coincidence that universal healthcare was introduced during a time when the elite were recovering from WW2.
    • 77pt77 2y ago
      Most countries still have private medical care with insurance. Those "elites" woiuld still get better treatment in the private sector. I used quotes because SE at google are not really elites.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • talldayo 2y ago
      > The idea that they are treated equally to a homeless man is not something they would want. Au contraire. In America, homeless people are afraid of going to the hospital lest they accidentally recieve the same quality of care as a Google employee without the Google copay.
  • 77pt77 2y ago
    The refusal privilege goes from a private company to the state. I've had a broken bone that was visible in an xray and told to go home. Then the state tried to hide it by playing all sorts of weird games to prevent me from getting the ER xray.
    • krisoft 2y ago
      > I've had a broken bone that was visible in an xray and told to go home. Please tell us more. Which country would this be in? What bone was broken? The idea that a state engages in some grand conspiracy to spare the expense of a gypsum cast is ludicrous to me. Yes states engage in cost-benefit analysis of treatments but the contentious bits are not around broken bones. More along the lines if particular cancer treatments are worth it or not, or if the state can pay for super expensive advance treatments.
• antisthenes 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • hipadev23 2y ago
    This article is from nearly two years ago
• webdoodle 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • cratermoon 2y ago
    3-7-77 is a symbol originally used by the Montana Vigilantes, a 19th century vigilance committee in Virginia City, Montana, United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-7-77 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-7-77
  • makk 2y ago
    867-5309
• whatever1 2y ago
  I really don’t get why everyone involved is allowed to have hidden prices. It looks like a highway robbery. I had a relative visiting from Europe and they had to go to the urgent care for some blood and urine tests and consultation. They received a $2,500 bill! My relative told the hospital that they are leaving the country and offered to pay $250 or good luck collecting from abroad. Then something magical happened. The hospital just told them that they found a special discount and the deal was closed at $250. What a sh**show.
  • polalavik 2y ago
    I had to get a medication for a stomach bacteria called C. diff. It has bad relapse rates and its best to get it in check asap. What my doctor prescibed was the newest/best antibiotic for the issue, the other have worse recovery rates and way worse side effects. I have very good insurance. The price of the medication without insurance was about $5000, the price with very good insurance was about $1300. After redditing i found a thread where you can find a manufacturers coupon on the manufacturers website. After knowing this seemingly secret hidden trick the medicine was $50. My doctor didnt know about that, my insurance didnt either. Absolutely insane. Absolutely arbitrary.
    • BadHumans 2y ago
      > After redditing i found a thread where you can find a manufacturers coupon on the manufacturers website. After knowing this seemingly secret hidden trick the medicine was $50. My doctor didnt know about that, my insurance didnt either. Absolutely insane. This is GoodRx's business model in a nutshell. I used them when I didn't have insurance and saved a ton on medicine.
      • polalavik 2y ago
        i just looked up the medication on goodrx [1]. still listed as ~$5000 when there is still a $50 coupon [2] [1] https://www.goodrx.com/dificid https://www.goodrx.com/dificid [2] https://www.merckconnect.com/dificid/coupon/ https://www.merckconnect.com/dificid/coupon/
• lenerdenator 2y ago
  The events of the last week are just what happens when a company decides to refuse to meet its customers in the marketplace of sane ideas. You could probably have gotten away with what UNH did if the money wasn't so ridiculous. Thompson himself had a compensation package worth $10.2 million[0] a year. It's reasonable to think that other c-suiters at the company, along with those of its parent organization, made similar amounts of money. The company also has a 1.53% dividend yield[1]. The average American's lifetime earnings are $1.8 million for men, and $1.1 million for women[2]. That is to say, within five years, Mr. Thompson would likely have made ten times the average American's lifetime economic output, post-tax. If you're paying a significant chunk of your yearly earnings to be covered by UNH, you expect the money you paid to go towards providing you with service. Instead, tens of millions of it goes towards a handful of individuals, and regardless of how the company does financially, participants in the equities market will get some of your money, and you'll possibly be denied the service you paid for in order to make that happen. People will say that this is necessary to remain competitive, but it just isn't. People with severe health problems or loved ones with severe health problems aren't asking these executives or shareholders to live like paupers; they just expect the service they paid for. When there's something as life-ruining as chronic health conditions dogging you every single day, there's a chance you snap, and in the US, there's fairly trivial access to tools to help you do that. [0] https://www.msn.com/en-in/health/health-news/the-salary-bonuses-and-stock-options-of-unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompson/ar-AA1virIv https://www.msn.com/en-in/health/health-news/the-salary-bonu... [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/unh/dividend-history https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/unh/dividend-h... [2] https://www.theknowlesgroup.org/blog/average-american-lifetime-earnings/#:~:text=According%20to%20research%20published%20by,an%20overall%20average%20median%20lifetime https://www.theknowlesgroup.org/blog/average-american-lifeti...
  • quitit 2y ago
    >People will say that this is necessary to remain competitive, but it just isn't. In other countries there are private health funds that return all of their profits to their members by simply covering more types of care and lowering premiums, all while still giving their staff very good, very attractive pay. That is clearly a win:win setting without being a government-run entity. A person doesn't need to earn 100M-200M in a decade of company service. That is an obscene amount of money, and merely opportunistic payment from a system where the foxes are guarding the hen house. Unfortunately the US health system has this pattern repeated through it from insurers, to hospitals and beyond - the money is being funnel to those which can minimise, not optimise, care.
• lijok 2y ago
  What a poorly designed system. If the insurer truly prioritizes client care as they claim, why on earth would the doctors contracted to review the treatments of the insured, have access to the insurance policies? Shouldn't the output of their review simply be whether or not the treatment seems appropriate, period? Why are the doctors weighing their review against the insurers policies? Honestly, this just seems like incompetence at multiple levels in a highly complex system. All it takes is one bad apple paying more attention to the bottom line than client care, for the entire system to magnificently cascade into an absolute shitshow. If you read through the entire article without prejudice, most of the decisions made along the way make sense, with a couple of process failures and incompetent or indifferent individuals sprinkled in along the way, and the end result is a client who has to plan bathroom stops for a 5 minute walk, being told to take a treatment they know will kill them, or pound sound. This is the kind of systemic cascading failure that can only be addressed by the person at the top having a come to jesus moment.
  • peitho_pls 2y ago
    The insurer is a business, its ultimate priority is the make money. Same as the hospital, the drug producer, etc. I am sure they all want to prioritize client care but that have to ration it by cost at some level.
    • lijok 2y ago
      Insurance firms have the unique benefit of being able to offload their costs to their customer base in the form of premiums. That and excess would be the appropriate level to ration in the cost. Is that not verbatim how insurance works?
      • peitho_pls 2y ago
        I look at it as Insurers generate float from upfront premium payments to invest in the market and generate returns and also cover future payouts. Then an insurer can go about negotiating the prices of treatment with health care providers to determine payouts.
  • 2y ago
• breadwinner 2y ago
  Insurance companies are hardly the only ones at fault here. Hospitals and Pharma companies are guilty of price gouging [1]. When insurance pays hospitals hike up the prices. When the patient pays (such as for cosmetic or plastic surgery) the prices charged by hospitals and doctors are more reasonable. [1] https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2022-05-31-hospital-price-gouging/ https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2022-05-31-hospital-price-gougi...
  • laimewhisps 2y ago
    This is why CEO pay transparency is so important!
  • no_wizard 2y ago
    Perhaps the house cleaning has only just begun
  • klysm 2y ago
    The price hikes are enabled by our insurance structure
  • davideous 2y ago
    Setting prices by supply-and-demand and having insurance "pay for whatever is needed regardless of the cost" are incompatible. Insurance blocks the pricing cost signal back to the patient. Insurance also prevents better doctors that provide better service from charging more because the patients will pay for it. An example: about 20 years ago I had just a major medical plan and I was at urgent care for a problem. After diagnosing the likely problem and prescribing the solution, they were about to run some tests "just in case." When I told them I would be paying for the tests due to the major medical plan, they explained that the tests didn't have any benefit, so we didn't run them. I don't know of a real solution to these problems. A partial solution is exposing some of the cost to the insured to create an incentive to save (like what I had when I was paying for the tests). At my company, we fully pay for a high-deductible plan AND a give company-funded contribution to a Health Savings Account that mostly covers the per-person out-of-pocket max. If the employee does not spend the HSA money (which is their money in their account), it can be used for retirement savings... so they have an incentive to save. But once someone hits the out-of-pocket max, there is no more incentive to save.
• cowpig 2y ago
  Anecdotally, this type of corporate behaviour seems to have infected the US health industry. Doctors, Nurses, service providers, entrepreneurs, etc, all routinely have to deal with these insurance companies who refuse to pay for things, negotiate rates post-hoc, and generally engage in extremely unethical business behaviour. That seems to have become normalized and I personally won't do any work with anyone in the US Healthcare industry any more unless it's paid up-front.
• anothername12 2y ago
  Is it possible for my/my employer’s insurer to convince my employer to fire me if my or my dependent’s health needs are “too expensive”? Could they eg. Give my employer a lower rate as an incentive to do that?
  • maronato 2y ago
    Your employer wouldn’t be on the hook for the costs, so I can’t see why they’d care. The legal and social risks would be gigantic for both your employer and the insurance company. I imagine insurance companies have other easier tricks to delay or deny treatment before considering something like this.
• mgraczyk 2y ago
  This guy's condition is tragic, but it's crazy to me that people can read this and come away thinking the insurance companies are the bad guys. Many drugs don't work, they are expensive. If there are no voices in the room saying "we will not pay for expensive drugs that do not work", then healthcare costs will continue spiraling out of control. Single payer healthcare will "solve" this by ensuring that the medications this guy was taking do not exist and are never prescribed in the first place.
  • davideous 2y ago
    Agreed that sometimes it is appropriate for insurance to say no. After one round of physical therapy for tennis elbow, which made some progress but didn't completely clear up the issue, I got denied my insurer (not UHC) for the additional physical therapy that the PT recommended. The problem resolved itself on its own in a month without additional therapy. Seems like they may have been right that it wasn't medically necessary.
  • maxerickson 2y ago
    It seems the insurance company was happy to pay for treatment that wouldn't work though (the approved treatment had already been tried), they denied a treatment that was working.
    • mgraczyk 2y ago
      One costs $60/year, the other is over $2M/year and not tested and not widely used outside the US
      • maronato 2y ago
        If the doctor prescribed it, it shouldn’t be the insurance company’s decision to deny it. That’s how it works in most countries. Too bad it’s expensive, but that’s why people pay a lot more than $60/yr for insurance.
        • mgraczyk 2y ago
• AIFounder 2y ago
  [dead]
• boredatoms 2y ago
  Medical insurance should be regulated as non-profit only
• mrangle 2y ago
  Let's be super-clear. If you sympathize with or outright support this, you are either clinically diagnosable as a psychopath or are under the sway of one or many. If you are a psychopath yourself, your worldview is rejected in-full by anyone with normal psychology. Stuff your psychopathic attempts at persuasion. If you are generally a normal person but found yourself swayed by the techniques of psychopathic people, many of whom exist in society's institutions and who do not have your best interests at heart, you should take some time, deeply rethink this, and then reject it. If you do not reject this, ultimately, you belong on a number of watch lists, full stop, as you are a supporter of domestic terrorism that seeks to murder people in cold blood. But reject it. This pseudo-hysteria is a criminal trap, and beyond that its logic is complete nonsense. If this man was guilty of anything, then the law would have held him accountable. He was not guilty in terms of how he delivered service, and anything further that he may have been guilty of his murderer deprived society of finding out. Officially, he's innocent. Every time that a citizen is "removed" by psychopaths by reason of their perceived arbitrary complaints, immediately there is another person who meets the same or arbitrarily adjusted criteria. The criteria will be adjusted to target people. There will never be even-ground for the psychopaths, and their follower-victims, who are justifying this. In this discussion, I was asked if the murdered CEO didn't share responsibility for the supposed fact that UH is "the hardest to deal with and rejects the most claims". For one second, let's ignore that denying claims is a part of the root health insurance business model that every single payer advocate wants: only to be run by the government. For one moment, let's ignore that the CEO did not invent the health insurance industry, nor is he responsible for its continuity. Let's assume that UH soon "reforms" and is no longer "the worst". Immediately, there will be a new "worst". Is the CEO of than new low ranker the next target? Now model this situation across other industries. Brainless, soulless psychopaths do not serve logic, morality, nor society's interests. They serve their own bloodlust. Which can manifest in any number of ways, but sometimes it manifests in actual murder. Stop being persuaded by their nonsense. This is a crazy thread to have on HN. It's widely supportive of domestic terrorism and murder, seeks to perpetuate support for it, and the Mods should take it down. It's shameful, horrific shit and HN should be fully embarrassed to host it.
  • spprashant 2y ago
    Ok, but this article isn't saying anything you are arguing against. Unless you meant to reply against a comment.