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"No industry malfeasance could ever excuse murder. Period." Murdering a murderer to save many innocents could be considered ethical by some? (Not saying that
by andrelaszlo 2y ago
"No industry malfeasance could ever excuse murder.
Period."
Murdering a murderer to save many innocents could be considered ethical by some?
(Not saying that's the case here, but nypost made an interesting categorical statement.)
- no_wizard 2y agoGiven the NY Posts leanings I’m not surprised they walked that line by putting it in there. Media seems to be on an agenda setting tear to disavow the murder, but I think it’s a frankly boot licking response to what is going on here. I think this spooked a lot of executives (re: “elites” if you will) and there is pressure to ignore the nuance of what the murder means to people and why it isn’t the same as say, stabbing a tech CEO in SF like what happened last year
- tossandthrow 2y agoIt is funny that the sentiment that nothing excuses a murder is being circulated in the US - a country that still carried out death sentences.
- xyzzy4747 2y agoIt's a little different when a jury of your peers convicts you of a crime which was democratically passed by a legislature, versus a lone gunman who feels he is the judge, jury, and executioner.
- mrbungie 2y agoThe point here is that "democratically passed legislature" is not at people's service.
- xyzzy4747 2y agoIt's the least bad system.
- analog31 2y agoAn elected legislature is a pipe dream in a country with gerrymandering.
- SauciestGNU 2y agoForget gerrymandering, a representative government is impossible as long as the Senate still gives the same weight to the 15 people in North Dakota as it does the 40 million in California.
- tossandthrow 2y agoWhy? Apparently something excused murder in the death row case? So expressing the sentiment that nothiong excuses murder and still having a death row is just I congruent and wrong.
- xyzzy4747 2y agoIn the death row case, the capital punishment isn't murder if you use classic definitions. If you change the definitions then it's only murder if you equate all homicide to murder. And yes, both the will of the people and tradition can justify capital punishment.
- tossandthrow 2y agoThat's fair. And in that vein the current killing of the ceo can not rightfully be deemed a murder as no one have been convicted of such. But then again, the society apparently defines the quality of a killing - only future history will tell if this is a murder, and thst can go back and forth a lot depending on public sentiment.
- mdanger007 2y agoAmerica is the land of stand your ground laws in which a citizen may legally take a life if they feel endangered. Let's not forget the 1000 or so police kill every year.
- foul 2y agoIt's justified when the committee is large enough and regulated enough?
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- jimbokun 2y agoI understand what you're saying. But a murder carried out by a random citizen is still worse than a death sentence after a fair trial and convicted by a jury of your peers.
- tossandthrow 2y agoIt was not the justification of murder I was talking about. Simply the fact that murder as a solution is absolutely accepted in the US.
- tedivm 2y agoMurder isn't the same as homicide. By definition the death penalty isn't murder, because it's state sanctioned. Self defense, another example of legal killing, also isn't murder and most people who are against murder would consider a death in self defense to be justified and not murder.
- psychoslave 2y agoSelf defense can give mitigating circumstances in some legal systems, but it’s not an ethical joker to kill whoever we self-decreed feels as representing a threat. For example, we can go into treacherous schemes that pushes our neighbors into paths where the only obvious option they can still perceive as a way to escape our shenanigans is an attempt to kill us, and as they come with this very real intention to kill us, press the button we had prepared to trigger some mortal trap.
- philipov 2y agoWhen all the acceptable solutions are taken off the table, people start turning to unacceptable solutions. It's not good, because the erosion of social institutions will worsen the situation for everyone, but the only way to deal with this is to put the acceptable solutions back on the table. If we don't want to live and die through the inevitable consequences, our government needs to stop the corporate abuse of power that has led to this.
- boxed 2y ago
- TimTheTinker 2y agoIn the 20th century, I think the death sentence was only ever applied for first-degree murder and for treason. A claim denial that results in denial of life-saving treatment could never be counted as either of those charges.
- boxed 2y ago> A claim denial that results in denial of life-saving treatment could never be counted as either of those charges. First-degree murder is when you willingly, and with forethought, plans and carries out the killing of a human. Which seems to me to be 100% what you described.
- seneca 2y agoDenying a claim can not kill someone. Disease and injury killing a person. Claim denial prevents financial support for intervention in resolving a disease or injury. That is not the same thing, and equivocating them is sophistry.
- wat10000 2y agoI’d say that not equivocating them is sophistry. In both cases, someone takes a deliberate action that they know will result in an innocent person’s death. I fail to see why the exact mechanism should be so important.
- kstrauser 2y agoIf you’re shot, and I pull up a chair and watch you die without saying a word or helping in any way, especially if I get paid extra for refusing, I’m not sure if I’d call it murder, exactly, but I bet your family and friends would describe me as a killer.
- harimau777 2y agoPulling a trigger can not kill someone. Bullets kill people. /s
- joejohnson 2y agoAnd which is currently fighting multiple wars around the world, or justifying support of many proxy wars which are killing thousands daily.
- drweevil 2y agoThis. The cognitive dissonance is jarring. And no "that's different!" is no argument. Like it or not, our government leads by example. And the example is not a good one.
- seneca 2y agoThe act of killing a human being is not inherently murder. It specifically communicates an unlawful killing, which the death penalty inherently is not.
- athenot 2y agoThis is because the US is not one homogenous system of thought, but rather a mosaic of people with differing views. (This goes for any other country or population for that matter.) A more constructive observation would be to consider the overlap in groups of people who (1) hold that murder is indefensible in any case, and (2) hold that death sentences are appropriate for crimes. While not sharing that view myself, I could think of a few factors that may lead others to espouse it, such as: - an implicit trust in authority and deterrents (follow rule, "or else"); - feeling of being mostly immune to errors in the justice system ("this would never happen to me"); - a propensity to desire revenge but only when it pertains to "others" ("I'm a good person, we must punish the bad people")...
- ahupp 2y agoMurder is by definition an unlawful homicide. This isn’t just pedantry; it’s the most parsimonious explanation for why someone would support the death penalty and object to something like the assassination.
- tossandthrow 2y agoIt becomes pedantry of the law is not right. Eg. If the law is based on an oligarchy over a democracy.
- psychoslave 2y agoUntil the day we can point to a country that implements a direct democracy with a fair way to obtain citizenship for whoever is involved in its society, all laws will always remain a tool of a minority to arbitrarily rule a majority. The concern is not whether laws are rights or wrongs, but which privileges and which hurts they reinforce for which classes in the society where the national myth is eager to present them as the applied rules.
- Dracophoenix 2y ago> Until the day we can point to a country that implements a direct democracy with a fair way to obtain citizenship for whoever is involved in its society, all laws will always remain a tool of a minority to arbitrarily rule a majority. There's Switzerland.
- psychoslave 2y agoSwitzerland definitely shows interesting political paths, they nonetheless don’t pretend to be a direct democracy. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/swiss-democracy-in-an-international-context_the-perfect-democracy-does-not-exist-not-even-in-switzerland/45578888 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/swiss-democracy-in-an...
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- pessimizer 2y agoNot to mention that we happily do extrajudicial assassinations outside of our borders, and the news falls all over themselves to celebrate them. Everybody knows that plenty excuses a murder, we live in murderous states and in murderous times. The question is whether this murder is excusable, and one's opinion on it is probably dependent on whether one wishes they had that guy's job. Most people wouldn't do it for any price, but plenty would.
- mrbluecoat 2y agoIf a cancer patient is denied a claim for life-saving medication because they're 'not sick enough' then dies, is it murder?
- JohnFen 2y agoYes, in my opinion. It's homicide at the very least.
- carlgreene 2y agoI'm trying to figure out if these deaths caused by insurance denials could actually be considered murder. I think they would definitely qualify as being premeditated, but can you consider them "killing"? They are causing death due to omission of expected care, but can the omission of something like medical care be considered the cause of death?
- GiorgioG 2y agoAsk yourself this question again when it's your partner/parent/child in the casket.
- ziddoap 2y agoI am not a lawyer, but I would assume that death due to omission of expected care fits pretty neatly under "negligent homicide".
- tjpnz 2y agoDuty of care?
- bee_rider 2y agoIt is weird—I would expect only the folks who make decisions as to which procedures are medically necessary (just doctors ideally) to have a duty of care. But insurance companies are bouncing back procedures are not medically necessary, so maybe we’re due for a re-adjustment in the expectations as to who has that duty. It is surprising if insurance companies what to sign themselves up for this sort of obligation. But obviously they’ll take all the privileges of the decision making process if we don’t also hold them to the responsibilities.
- psbp 2y agoThere is legal precedent establishing healthcare providers' obligations in life-threatening situations. The same moral responsibility should exist when insurers deny lifesaving care, it's just hidden behind bureaucracy.
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- technothrasher 2y agoWell, if a killing is ethically justified, it isn't murder. So yes, they're at least begging the question with that statement for sure.
- ziddoap 2y ago>Well, if a killing is ethically justified, it isn't murder. Are you saying this as an opinion, or is this an established thing? I thought murder was an "unlawful killing without justification or valid excuse" (paraphrased from Wikipedia), whether one finds it ethical or not is sort of beside the point. Especially because there is no objectively correct ethics. But, I'm not a lawyer, this is just my understanding.
- bombcar 2y agoI would say you have to be careful and specific - as "murder" is usually the domain of the law and "ethically justified* is the domain of ethics. It's quite easy to come up with situations where the law declares a killing as unequivocally murder yet everyone agrees it was ethically justified. The opposite can happen too.
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- amarcheschi 2y agoBut now you have another ceo. I'm not suggesting that to fix the issue you would need to - inaudible - again and again
- lopalimpa 2y ago"Murdering a murderer to save many innocents could be considered ethical by some?" This is a heavy statement. More I read, heavy it gets. Kill people it never the answer. The ideia that "I" have the power is weak. People, together, have power, however they don't know what to do. In his case the easiest way to win is pressuring the government, with the people, for clear changes.
- amarcheschi 2y agoKilling people is not the answer but somehow another Healthcare company backtracked on not covering anymore long anesthesia. Perhaps n = 1 is too low of a value? We should research this field more, some people may die but it's a chance I'm willing to take
- wk_end 2y agoAlthough it should be noted that the anesthesia thing was dumb and bad. So maybe policy by mob justice isn’t a good thing. https://www.vox.com/policy/390031/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shield-anesthesia-limits-insurance https://www.vox.com/policy/390031/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shi...
- amarcheschi 2y agothe article cites a study that says: "5% of practitioners reported anesthesia times greater in total than what would be expected across university, community, and specialty hospitals. Furthermore, it was found that the greatest differences in expected anesthesia times were in specialty hospitals compared with university hospitals.8 However, the authors have stressed that their findings should not be interpreted to indicate fraud because fraud involves intent, which could not be determined. Because this study was a retrospective study, the authors could not rule out the alternative but unlikely explanation that the practitioners could be rounding down. The reason for caution by the authors is that the CMS has differentiated fraud from abuse by emphasizing that fraud is intentional, whereas abuse is the result of poor medical practices.2 This differentiation is important because sometimes the rounding in digits ending in 0 or 5 minutes in anesthesia time is part of the organization culture of operating rooms in which rounding is performed systematically by the operation room circulating nurse along with the anesthesia practitioner. Sun et al8 recognized this issue as being related to institutional factors, which was one of the reasons they performed a 2-step regression analysis; long anomalous times were not sufficient to establish inappropriate discretion.8" So Anthem based on the article it might be overpaying for at worst 5% of the operations BUT the big but is that in some hospitals it is routine to round digits. So paying less workers for some rounding operations? It doesn't look as bad to me. It might be because of reasons, or might be due to media backslash. I think it's safe to assume we definitely need more research into healthcare companies rules after healthcare companies ceo related killing
- christophilus 2y agoExecuting a murderer can be defended. “Industry malfeasance” leading to death is indefensible.
- jimbokun 2y agoYou would need to prove that murdering a health care CEO will save many innocents, first.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoK. So step 1. murder health insurance CEO (no healthcare involved there), check. Step 2. watch UnitedHealth's refusal rates closely, ongoing.
- walls 2y agoIt got Anthem to immediately reverse a horrible decision: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shield-time-limits-anesthesia-surgery-rcna183035 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/anthem-blue-cross... Violence works.
- euroderf 2y agoZeitgeist graffiti, anyone? "When they wage war, we wage war."
- aaomidi 2y agoConsent has been manufactured that if you kill through indirect means then you’re good to go!
- OutOfHere 2y agoYes, mass media exists to manufacturer consent, and this shooter forced their hand.
- oulipo 2y agoAlso without this murder, we could imagine that the NYPost would have never written this article to alert on the malfeasance of healthcare providers... Why wouldn't they do their part as a news org, and why did they wait for the murder to publish such an article, if that murder was not "needed" for things to change, then?
- JohnFen 2y agoEven if you accept that, it still doesn't excuse it being done by companies or individuals. The point is also orthogonal to what the insurance industry does.
- LiquidSky 2y agoYou can't just shoot people and kill them in the street! That's barbaric! You need to do it from behind a desk through a corporate bureaucracy like a civilized person.
- refurb 2y agoOne issue is that if denying medical care is murder then every healthcare system is guilty. In the US it’s insurance companies (or the government through Medicare or Medicaid) but in the UK it’s NICE, in Canada it’s CADTH and the provincial health authorities. Since there are finite resources spent on healthcare, trade offs are made all the time. If spending $10M on treatment A saved 10,000 lives and $10M on treatment B saves 1,000 lives, then treatment A gets funded and treatment B doesn’t. The difference is that patients in the US have an up close and personal experience with denial. In Canada and the UK they don’t because doctors knows what is covered and what isn’t so never bring up life saving options if they aren’t paid for. In rare circumstances like cystic fibrosis in the UK, patients become aware that they are being denied a life saving drug and protest, but generally it’s pretty rare because patients just don’t know the option exists.
- OutOfHere 2y agoYour argument is completely bogus for multiple reasons. Firstly, people are paying here for insurance, a lot. Secondly, it's the FDA's job to approve treatments which it does. Thirdly, we do not have a uniform privatized determination across the country of what is approvable or not by insurance companies. They deny numerous legitimate treatments and procedures at their whim.
- refurb 2y agoI’m not sure how that makes my argument bogus. Plenty of treatments are denied in other countries. Not to mention most other countries have private insurance layered on top of public and it’s the same issue - private insurers denying a treatment through their own process. If US insurers are guilty of murder than most of the worlds insurers are too.
- wat10000 2y agoThe difference is that patients in the US are being denied by people lining their own pockets with the savings. In sane countries, there’s at least some basis of trying to do the most good with the resources at hand, which sometimes means denying care for person A because those resources would be better spent on person B. With private insurers in the US, it means denying care for person A because they think they can get away with it and it will increase their profits.
- lubujackson 2y agoI guess we aren't going back in time to kill Hitler any more then? The media pearl-clutching is extremely heavy this time around, painting Luigi as an unhinged lunatic and all the rest. It feels incongruent and purposefully dismissive to equate this to something like the Oklahoma City Bombing.
- kyleblarson 2y agoI hate the way the press and seemingly most people are approaching this but am completely unsurprised: "You are either a heathen who supports murder or you are a virtuous supporter of the people and this man deserved to die." Two things can be correct at the same time. 1) Murder is not OK. 2) The insurance industry is completely broken as it incentivizes terrible behavior and this CEO was a scumbag who perpetuated this behavior while possibly insider trading.
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