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It’s quite obvious that making money has trumped ethics in US companies for a long time now. Look what united healthcare does to its “customers” to make more mo

It’s quite obvious that making money has trumped ethics in US companies for a long time now. Look what united healthcare does to its “customers” to make more money.[1] Every last one of them should be rotting in jail, but that ain’t good for the ol GDP which is more important that peoples lives. [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/unitedhealths-alleged-plan-to-cut-costs-just-let-the-elderly-die/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/unitedhealths-alleged-plan-t...

lostlogin 9mo ago
> Every last one of them should be rotting in jail Even if it happened, they’d get pardoned.
- pixl97 9mo ago
  First it was 'Greed is good'. Now it's 'Fraud is fine'.
  - malfist 9mo ago
    Trump has twice pardoned the same woman, Adriana Camberos, for defrauding people
    - pixl97 9mo ago
      You mean the same Trump that was found guilty on all counts in the NY fraud trial... what a coincidence.
emilsedgh 9mo ago
If it was about GDP it'd have "some" moral defense: That this leads to overall wealth growth of the population. But it's not about GDP. It's about shareholder value which is absolutely not representative of the whole population. Extreme greed is now part of US social contract, top to bottom, and has driven the whole society to madness sadly.
- estearum 9mo ago
  GDP does not measure “the overall wealth of the population” in any semantically meaningful way But otherwise your point is correct
pixl97 9mo ago
And why shouldn't it when there is zero negative ramifications for being completely fucking unethical? It's like a video game where the more depraved your thinking is, the more money you make off it, and the rest of the characters sit around like NPCs and just let it happen. Well, maybe they don't, but when they pull a Super Mario Brothers trick the entire state apparatus is used to track them down and imprison them.
- glitchc 9mo ago
  Never liked GTA 3 onwards for this reason.
- nine_zeros 9mo ago
  > And why shouldn't it when there is zero negative ramifications for being completely fucking unethical? This is at the crux of everything in America. There are zero punishments for corporations and executives but there are bureaucratic lock ins for "customers". And the answer is not merely regulation. Why shouldn't I be able to switch health insurance at ANY time? If I am unsatisfied with United Healthcare, I should be able to get anything else right away. Why impose laws on me?
  - lotsofpulp 9mo ago
    Health insurers are required to accept all insureds without pricing the insured’s risks. It would increase premiums a lot if people could bounce around, as it would make already difficult to forecast medical loss ratios even more volatile. This really is a problem only the government can solve, by continuously auditing coverage decisions at random, and sufficiently penalizing the companies that understaff at best, and intentionally deny or delay payment at worst. Currently, years might go by until CMS audits the company, and even then, there are no consequences. Try arguing for a higher budget for more $400k doctors and $200k pharmacists in this environment. The current situation is because one company can lower premiums by reducing quality of service, all the other ones have to also, and the buyer rarely buys on anything but price since it’s usually a third party buying it, like an employer.
slibhb 9mo ago
[flagged]
- b40d-48b2-979e 9mo ago
  Tech companies in the US have generally been good actors ethically. That is a hell of a response to an article showing the misdeeds of one of the biggest tech companies in the US.
- pepperball 9mo ago
  How much did they deposit you for that lie lmao.
- ericjmorey 9mo ago
  You're going to need to explain how all of the unethical actions of Tech companies don't count for your statement to make sense.
  - slibhb 9mo ago
    There are few unambiguous bad actions by US tech companies. Certain people just hate them for various reasons that have more to do with their size/success than their actions. Facebook in particular has been a scapegoat for years now.
- JohnFen 9mo ago
  > Tech companies in the US have generally been good actors ethically. I think you could make this argument many years ago (before Facebook existed), but that ship has long since sailed.
monideas 9mo ago
Making money and other types of material gratification has trumped ethics, notions of virtue and honor, and responsibility towards posterity in the general US population, the US ruling class, and US elites. Ascribing this to just "US companies" is a cop-out or a cope. The US is in complete social collapse across the entire spectrum of society. I am coming at this from a right-wing perspective.
autoexec 9mo ago
Facebook had zero ethics to start with. It's worked out very well for them so far so there's no surprise that they're keeping with a winning formula. It falls on governments to step in and tell them that enough is enough. Until that happens, don't expect them to start to act ethically on their own.
kwanbix 9mo ago
This is not only in the US. It might be more pronounced in the US. This is mostly everywhere.
mschuster91 9mo ago
> Look what united healthcare does to its “customers” to make more money. Hold short. They already lost a CEO to an act of revenge at the end of '24... and still didn't think that maybe they should stop, reflect on themselves and cut down on the BS before the next CEO catches a bullet? I'm not sure if it's audacity, ignorance or stupidity that's at play here.
- testing22321 9mo ago
  Greed
- NickC25 9mo ago
  No, they don't care. They have shareholders to please. Why anyone thought that applying laws of shareholder capitalism to health insurance was a good idea is beyond me.
  - mschuster91 9mo ago
    > Why anyone thought that applying laws of shareholder capitalism to health insurance was a good idea is beyond me. The idea itself of using the one thing capitalism is actually good at - achieving the lowest possible cost in the short term - isn't that bad. But while that may work out for consumer goods... it's not a good thing to have in healthcare, because here are actual human lives at stake.
rapatel0 9mo ago
This is exactly the sensational take (devoid of nuance and information) that we should collectively push back against. You should read the actual guardian article that Vice links to and investigate the actual reality. If you actually look at the data, the vast majority of expenditures in medicine are the last few months of life. Paying ~500K to 1M to extend life ~6 months so you can spend the time hooked up to tubes and passing in and out of consciousness to deal with the pain is NOT HUMANE.
gambiting 9mo ago
US Nurses are more and more using an "uber for nursing" apps which buy US credit data to change the rates they offer nurses - the more debt they have, the lower rates they get because they are judged to be more desperate. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/uber-for-nursing/ https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/uber-for-nursing...

lostlogin 9mo ago

> Every last one of them should be rotting in jail Even if it happened, they’d get pardoned.

pixl97 9mo ago
First it was 'Greed is good'. Now it's 'Fraud is fine'.
- malfist 9mo ago
  Trump has twice pardoned the same woman, Adriana Camberos, for defrauding people
  - pixl97 9mo ago
    You mean the same Trump that was found guilty on all counts in the NY fraud trial... what a coincidence.

emilsedgh 9mo ago

If it was about GDP it'd have "some" moral defense: That this leads to overall wealth growth of the population. But it's not about GDP. It's about shareholder value which is absolutely not representative of the whole population. Extreme greed is now part of US social contract, top to bottom, and has driven the whole society to madness sadly.

estearum 9mo ago
GDP does not measure “the overall wealth of the population” in any semantically meaningful way But otherwise your point is correct

pixl97 9mo ago

And why shouldn't it when there is zero negative ramifications for being completely fucking unethical? It's like a video game where the more depraved your thinking is, the more money you make off it, and the rest of the characters sit around like NPCs and just let it happen. Well, maybe they don't, but when they pull a Super Mario Brothers trick the entire state apparatus is used to track them down and imprison them.

glitchc 9mo ago
Never liked GTA 3 onwards for this reason.
nine_zeros 9mo ago
> And why shouldn't it when there is zero negative ramifications for being completely fucking unethical? This is at the crux of everything in America. There are zero punishments for corporations and executives but there are bureaucratic lock ins for "customers". And the answer is not merely regulation. Why shouldn't I be able to switch health insurance at ANY time? If I am unsatisfied with United Healthcare, I should be able to get anything else right away. Why impose laws on me?
- lotsofpulp 9mo ago
  Health insurers are required to accept all insureds without pricing the insured’s risks. It would increase premiums a lot if people could bounce around, as it would make already difficult to forecast medical loss ratios even more volatile. This really is a problem only the government can solve, by continuously auditing coverage decisions at random, and sufficiently penalizing the companies that understaff at best, and intentionally deny or delay payment at worst. Currently, years might go by until CMS audits the company, and even then, there are no consequences. Try arguing for a higher budget for more $400k doctors and $200k pharmacists in this environment. The current situation is because one company can lower premiums by reducing quality of service, all the other ones have to also, and the buyer rarely buys on anything but price since it’s usually a third party buying it, like an employer.

slibhb 9mo ago

[flagged]

b40d-48b2-979e 9mo ago
Tech companies in the US have generally been good actors ethically. That is a hell of a response to an article showing the misdeeds of one of the biggest tech companies in the US.
pepperball 9mo ago
How much did they deposit you for that lie lmao.
ericjmorey 9mo ago
You're going to need to explain how all of the unethical actions of Tech companies don't count for your statement to make sense.
- slibhb 9mo ago
  There are few unambiguous bad actions by US tech companies. Certain people just hate them for various reasons that have more to do with their size/success than their actions. Facebook in particular has been a scapegoat for years now.
JohnFen 9mo ago
> Tech companies in the US have generally been good actors ethically. I think you could make this argument many years ago (before Facebook existed), but that ship has long since sailed.

monideas 9mo ago

Making money and other types of material gratification has trumped ethics, notions of virtue and honor, and responsibility towards posterity in the general US population, the US ruling class, and US elites. Ascribing this to just "US companies" is a cop-out or a cope. The US is in complete social collapse across the entire spectrum of society. I am coming at this from a right-wing perspective.

autoexec 9mo ago

Facebook had zero ethics to start with. It's worked out very well for them so far so there's no surprise that they're keeping with a winning formula. It falls on governments to step in and tell them that enough is enough. Until that happens, don't expect them to start to act ethically on their own.

kwanbix 9mo ago

This is not only in the US. It might be more pronounced in the US. This is mostly everywhere.

mschuster91 9mo ago

> Look what united healthcare does to its “customers” to make more money. Hold short. They already lost a CEO to an act of revenge at the end of '24... and still didn't think that maybe they should stop, reflect on themselves and cut down on the BS before the next CEO catches a bullet? I'm not sure if it's audacity, ignorance or stupidity that's at play here.

testing22321 9mo ago
Greed
NickC25 9mo ago
No, they don't care. They have shareholders to please. Why anyone thought that applying laws of shareholder capitalism to health insurance was a good idea is beyond me.
- mschuster91 9mo ago
  > Why anyone thought that applying laws of shareholder capitalism to health insurance was a good idea is beyond me. The idea itself of using the one thing capitalism is actually good at - achieving the lowest possible cost in the short term - isn't that bad. But while that may work out for consumer goods... it's not a good thing to have in healthcare, because here are actual human lives at stake.

rapatel0 9mo ago

This is exactly the sensational take (devoid of nuance and information) that we should collectively push back against. You should read the actual guardian article that Vice links to and investigate the actual reality. If you actually look at the data, the vast majority of expenditures in medicine are the last few months of life. Paying ~500K to 1M to extend life ~6 months so you can spend the time hooked up to tubes and passing in and out of consciousness to deal with the pain is NOT HUMANE.

gambiting 9mo ago

US Nurses are more and more using an "uber for nursing" apps which buy US credit data to change the rates they offer nurses - the more debt they have, the lower rates they get because they are judged to be more desperate. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/uber-for-nursing/ https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/uber-for-nursing...