4 ms·

>It's so fun how corporations are protected from individual liability They're not. If you hire a hitman through a corporation it doesn't magically become legal

by gruez 4mo ago

>It's so fun how corporations are protected from individual liability They're not. If you hire a hitman through a corporation it doesn't magically become legal.

khriss 4mo ago
Yeah, but the trick seems to be to kill thousands rather than one. Then you have the full might of the law out to protect you. Exhibit A is the Sacklers family.
- gruez 4mo ago
  Again, no. If some drug company killed a single person with a weird side effect that they buried, do you think it'll be discovered, much less prosecuted? The Sacklers got prosecuted because the opiod epidemic was huge, not because they passed some magical threshold so it's magically fine.
  - b3ing 4mo ago
    But you can deny life saving treatments if you are a health insurance company
    - gruez 4mo ago
      That's their job? It's not even limited to private insurance companies. Public health systems have lists of what is considered good value for money too, even if the treatments themselves are theoretically life saving. The US is the biggest market for new and rare drugs specifically because other countries consider the prices too high.
      - slg 4mo ago
        >That's their job? I mean you're the one who brought up hitmen. What's their job?
        gruez 4mo ago
        If you think that denying a specific treatment (justified or otherwise) is comparable murder for hire, then I don't think there's anything worth discussing between the two of us.
        slg 4mo ago
        Yeah, in my opinion an unjustified and profit motivated refusal to save a life is the same as intentionally taking that life. It's just the trolley problem and you're arguing that there is some innate nobility in refusing to touch the switch.
        snootypoot 4mo ago
        100% agree. this greed and shareholder supremacy can be traced back the the precedent set in the case of dodge brothers vs ford motor company
        jst1fthsdys 4mo ago
        Says a lot about your morals that you think they are so far apart.
        vict7 4mo ago
        Morals? On Hacker news? But seriously, happy to see some pushback against such inane takes as that which you replied to.
      - autoexec 4mo ago
        > That's their job? Denying their customers claims for healthcare coverage they are entitled to under the plans they pay for is the opposite of their job. Healthcare companies just keep doing that anyway because it makes them more money when their customers are too sick, stressed, exhausted, or eventually dead to fight the wrongfully denied claims. People die because of this, but the insurance companies don't care because it makes them more money when they refuse (at least initially) to provide the services they were paid to deliver. United Healthcare alone was wrongfully denying claims over 90% of the time. The health insurance industry is filled with serial killers who are happy to kill in exchange for money.
        gruez 4mo ago
        >Denying their customers claims for healthcare coverage they are entitled to under the plans they pay for is the opposite of their job. Can you provide some examples? The examples I heard of are never straightforward like "person has a broken hip, insurance refuses to pay for a hip replacement". There's always some complication like "the doctor thinks they need some special procedure/drug that costs extra". If it's in the area where there's a plausible judgement call to be made, I don't see how it's any different than a public healthcare system denying care due to cost reasons, even if theoretically taxpayers are "entitled" to some vague standard of care, and without the care the patient might actually die. >United Healthcare alone was wrongfully denying claims over 90% of the time. AFAIK that claim was claimed by plaintiffs with no supporting evidence, and denied by the defendants.
        autoexec 4mo ago
        > The examples I heard of are never straightforward like "person has a broken hip, insurance refuses to pay for a hip replacement". There's always some complication like "the doctor thinks they need some special procedure/drug that costs extra". There are a couple examples in the legal complaint (https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/class-action-v-unitedhealth-and-navihealth-1.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/class...) where the insurance company denied extremely typical things like physical therapy and skilled nursing facilities (the most common form of post-acute care). Nothing special there. Here's another one for you: Deirdre O'Reilly's college-age son, suffering a life-threatening anaphylactic allergic reaction, was saved by epinephrine shots and steroids administered intravenously in a hospital emergency room. His mother, utterly relieved by that news, was less pleased to be informed by the family's insurer that the treatment was "not medically necessary." (https://kffhealthnews.org/health-industry/denials-of-health-insurance-claims-are-rising-and-getting-weirder/ https://kffhealthnews.org/health-industry/denials-of-health-...) Now, I don't have all the details of this case, but neither epinephrine shots or steroids are a special procedure/drug. That would be considered the standard treatment for life-threatening allergic reactions depending on the circumstances and how long ago this occurred. I can't think of any reason why they'd ever deny epinephrine, and although steroids have fallen out of favor in recent years as standard treatment in every case, they are still called for in common situations like when epinephrine alone isn't doing the job, or when the reaction has triggered an asthma attack. The article that came from links to https://www.npr.org/series/651784144/bill-of-the-month https://www.npr.org/series/651784144/bill-of-the-month which is filled with all kinds of examples including one where the insurer eventually relented after phone calls, appeals were filed, a complaint was made to state agency, and letters were sent to elected officials ( https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/25/1226552799/the-colonoscopies-were-free-but-the-surgical-trays-came-with-600-price-tags https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/25/1226552...) Social media is full of outrageous examples (https://www.buzzfeed.com/morgansloss1/stories-of-healthcare-claims-being-denied https://www.buzzfeed.com/morgansloss1/stories-of-healthcare-...) but you're probably going to get the best examples from news segments like that Bill Of The Month series. Evaluating these can be challenging. Even though many people are sharing their stories of how they've been screwed over online (and publicly exposing their private medical matters in the process), there's often a lack of hard details. Both government regulations intended to protect patients and insurance industry policy intended to protect the corporations can make independent verification of these complaints difficult. The best source for examples will be lawsuits against insurance companies which can surface instances collected through the discovery process and used as evidence at trial, but that can take many years and may never come to light if those lawsuits get settled first with the victims and their surviving loved ones paid off and silenced.
  - khriss 4mo ago
    > The Sacklers got prosecuted because the opiod epidemic was huge Sure, but which one of them is in prison? Now compare the prison time an avg person would get for theft.
    - gruez 4mo ago
      >Now compare the prison time an avg person would get for theft. Probably 0 if it's the first offense.
  - pessimizer 4mo ago
    > The Sacklers got prosecuted because the opioid epidemic was huge No, the Sacklers didn't get prosecuted or even hindered, but aided at every turn, therefore the opioid epidemic got huge. Eventually it became so expensive for society as a whole that it couldn't be allowed to continue, and then the Sacklers were stopped. They weren't "prosecuted," though. Tens or maybe hundreds of thousands dead, no criminal charges, and they're all still impossibly wealthy. I was once prosecuted for sitting on a sidewalk, and spent the night in jail. No Sackler has spent the night in jail, or missed a massage appointment. Why? Because they passed some "magical" threshold that makes it "magically" fine. If you go pick up the heroin that you and a friend later do together, and the friend overdoses, you will likely be thrown into prison for murder or manslaughter if you take them to the hospital. The Sacklers still get to own pharmaceutical companies, as long as they don't sell opioids. https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2025/01/the-sackler-family-legacy-power-and-the-opioid-crisis/ https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2025/01/the-sackler-family-le... They literally had to be taken to the Supreme Court to lose civil immunity (barely, 5-4) granted by lower court bankruptcy judges. The criminal immunity is not official, it's simply because of their class as owners. The law is written in an intentionally childish way so that to prosecute them criminally means you have to prove that they had murderous intentions, rather than it being enough that they were top-level opioid dealers who ignored and buried anything that would lose them money. As long as they just wanted to make money, it's A-OK. They can only be charged if their goal was to murder people, regardless of money. This logic somehow does not apply to lower-level drug dealers who have failed to become "magical," to your best friend who gave you half their heroin for free and rushed you to the hospital when you started looking bad, or to Matthew Perry's dealers.
ginko 4mo ago
The person doing the hiring would be criminally liable and probably go to prison. The corporation itself would at best pay a fine.
margalabargala 4mo ago
They are protected from individual liability in a limited fashion. Not blanket
lelandfe 4mo ago
It does permit something individuals don’t have: the internal investigation. The internal investigation has determined that our CEO had no knowledge of this, and that the bloody pig mask was all the idea of the people who make less money, and also we fired the CEO for unrelated reasons.
- gruez 4mo ago
  >The internal investigation has determined that our CEO had no knowledge of this, and that the bloody pig mask was all the idea of the people who make less money, and also we fired the CEO for unrelated reasons. That's exactly how the criminal justice system should work? If you can't prove a particular person is responsible, you don't have a case. That's exactly why they prosecuted the company as a whole instead, because easier to prove the company as a whole did something, rather than a specific person.
  - jackb4040 4mo ago
    No one can prove the CEO did anything, but whatever it was it was worth 500x as much as the average employee.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - tombert 4mo ago
    The issue is that an internal investigation is not an impartial source. I agree, in this hypothetical if there's no evidence the that the CEO committed a crime he/she shouldn't go to jail. But considering that "internal investigators" are likely hired (directly or indirectly) by the CEO, are likely shareholders in the company, they have little incentive to fully investigate. The police certainly aren't perfect, but they at least have less of an incentive to lie about this.
    - gruez 4mo ago
      > But considering that "internal investigators" are likely hired (directly or indirectly) by the CEO, are likely shareholders in the company, and so they have little incentive to fully investigate. Right, but no prosecutor is like "well the CEO had an internal investigation so we're not going to investigate"

by gruez 4mo ago

>It's so fun how corporations are protected from individual liability They're not. If you hire a hitman through a corporation it doesn't magically become legal.

khriss 4mo ago

Yeah, but the trick seems to be to kill thousands rather than one. Then you have the full might of the law out to protect you. Exhibit A is the Sacklers family.

gruez 4mo ago
Again, no. If some drug company killed a single person with a weird side effect that they buried, do you think it'll be discovered, much less prosecuted? The Sacklers got prosecuted because the opiod epidemic was huge, not because they passed some magical threshold so it's magically fine.
- b3ing 4mo ago
  But you can deny life saving treatments if you are a health insurance company
  - gruez 4mo ago
    That's their job? It's not even limited to private insurance companies. Public health systems have lists of what is considered good value for money too, even if the treatments themselves are theoretically life saving. The US is the biggest market for new and rare drugs specifically because other countries consider the prices too high.
    - slg 4mo ago
      >That's their job? I mean you're the one who brought up hitmen. What's their job?
      - gruez 4mo ago
        If you think that denying a specific treatment (justified or otherwise) is comparable murder for hire, then I don't think there's anything worth discussing between the two of us.
        slg 4mo ago
        Yeah, in my opinion an unjustified and profit motivated refusal to save a life is the same as intentionally taking that life. It's just the trolley problem and you're arguing that there is some innate nobility in refusing to touch the switch.
        snootypoot 4mo ago
        100% agree. this greed and shareholder supremacy can be traced back the the precedent set in the case of dodge brothers vs ford motor company
        jst1fthsdys 4mo ago
        Says a lot about your morals that you think they are so far apart.
        vict7 4mo ago
        Morals? On Hacker news? But seriously, happy to see some pushback against such inane takes as that which you replied to.
    - autoexec 4mo ago
      > That's their job? Denying their customers claims for healthcare coverage they are entitled to under the plans they pay for is the opposite of their job. Healthcare companies just keep doing that anyway because it makes them more money when their customers are too sick, stressed, exhausted, or eventually dead to fight the wrongfully denied claims. People die because of this, but the insurance companies don't care because it makes them more money when they refuse (at least initially) to provide the services they were paid to deliver. United Healthcare alone was wrongfully denying claims over 90% of the time. The health insurance industry is filled with serial killers who are happy to kill in exchange for money.
      - gruez 4mo ago
        >Denying their customers claims for healthcare coverage they are entitled to under the plans they pay for is the opposite of their job. Can you provide some examples? The examples I heard of are never straightforward like "person has a broken hip, insurance refuses to pay for a hip replacement". There's always some complication like "the doctor thinks they need some special procedure/drug that costs extra". If it's in the area where there's a plausible judgement call to be made, I don't see how it's any different than a public healthcare system denying care due to cost reasons, even if theoretically taxpayers are "entitled" to some vague standard of care, and without the care the patient might actually die. >United Healthcare alone was wrongfully denying claims over 90% of the time. AFAIK that claim was claimed by plaintiffs with no supporting evidence, and denied by the defendants.
        autoexec 4mo ago
        > The examples I heard of are never straightforward like "person has a broken hip, insurance refuses to pay for a hip replacement". There's always some complication like "the doctor thinks they need some special procedure/drug that costs extra". There are a couple examples in the legal complaint (https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/class-action-v-unitedhealth-and-navihealth-1.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/class...) where the insurance company denied extremely typical things like physical therapy and skilled nursing facilities (the most common form of post-acute care). Nothing special there. Here's another one for you: Deirdre O'Reilly's college-age son, suffering a life-threatening anaphylactic allergic reaction, was saved by epinephrine shots and steroids administered intravenously in a hospital emergency room. His mother, utterly relieved by that news, was less pleased to be informed by the family's insurer that the treatment was "not medically necessary." (https://kffhealthnews.org/health-industry/denials-of-health-insurance-claims-are-rising-and-getting-weirder/ https://kffhealthnews.org/health-industry/denials-of-health-...) Now, I don't have all the details of this case, but neither epinephrine shots or steroids are a special procedure/drug. That would be considered the standard treatment for life-threatening allergic reactions depending on the circumstances and how long ago this occurred. I can't think of any reason why they'd ever deny epinephrine, and although steroids have fallen out of favor in recent years as standard treatment in every case, they are still called for in common situations like when epinephrine alone isn't doing the job, or when the reaction has triggered an asthma attack. The article that came from links to https://www.npr.org/series/651784144/bill-of-the-month https://www.npr.org/series/651784144/bill-of-the-month which is filled with all kinds of examples including one where the insurer eventually relented after phone calls, appeals were filed, a complaint was made to state agency, and letters were sent to elected officials ( https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/25/1226552799/the-colonoscopies-were-free-but-the-surgical-trays-came-with-600-price-tags https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/25/1226552...) Social media is full of outrageous examples (https://www.buzzfeed.com/morgansloss1/stories-of-healthcare-claims-being-denied https://www.buzzfeed.com/morgansloss1/stories-of-healthcare-...) but you're probably going to get the best examples from news segments like that Bill Of The Month series. Evaluating these can be challenging. Even though many people are sharing their stories of how they've been screwed over online (and publicly exposing their private medical matters in the process), there's often a lack of hard details. Both government regulations intended to protect patients and insurance industry policy intended to protect the corporations can make independent verification of these complaints difficult. The best source for examples will be lawsuits against insurance companies which can surface instances collected through the discovery process and used as evidence at trial, but that can take many years and may never come to light if those lawsuits get settled first with the victims and their surviving loved ones paid off and silenced.
- khriss 4mo ago
  > The Sacklers got prosecuted because the opiod epidemic was huge Sure, but which one of them is in prison? Now compare the prison time an avg person would get for theft.
  - gruez 4mo ago
    >Now compare the prison time an avg person would get for theft. Probably 0 if it's the first offense.
- pessimizer 4mo ago
  > The Sacklers got prosecuted because the opioid epidemic was huge No, the Sacklers didn't get prosecuted or even hindered, but aided at every turn, therefore the opioid epidemic got huge. Eventually it became so expensive for society as a whole that it couldn't be allowed to continue, and then the Sacklers were stopped. They weren't "prosecuted," though. Tens or maybe hundreds of thousands dead, no criminal charges, and they're all still impossibly wealthy. I was once prosecuted for sitting on a sidewalk, and spent the night in jail. No Sackler has spent the night in jail, or missed a massage appointment. Why? Because they passed some "magical" threshold that makes it "magically" fine. If you go pick up the heroin that you and a friend later do together, and the friend overdoses, you will likely be thrown into prison for murder or manslaughter if you take them to the hospital. The Sacklers still get to own pharmaceutical companies, as long as they don't sell opioids. https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2025/01/the-sackler-family-legacy-power-and-the-opioid-crisis/ https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2025/01/the-sackler-family-le... They literally had to be taken to the Supreme Court to lose civil immunity (barely, 5-4) granted by lower court bankruptcy judges. The criminal immunity is not official, it's simply because of their class as owners. The law is written in an intentionally childish way so that to prosecute them criminally means you have to prove that they had murderous intentions, rather than it being enough that they were top-level opioid dealers who ignored and buried anything that would lose them money. As long as they just wanted to make money, it's A-OK. They can only be charged if their goal was to murder people, regardless of money. This logic somehow does not apply to lower-level drug dealers who have failed to become "magical," to your best friend who gave you half their heroin for free and rushed you to the hospital when you started looking bad, or to Matthew Perry's dealers.

ginko 4mo ago

The person doing the hiring would be criminally liable and probably go to prison. The corporation itself would at best pay a fine.

margalabargala 4mo ago

They are protected from individual liability in a limited fashion. Not blanket

lelandfe 4mo ago

It does permit something individuals don’t have: the internal investigation. The internal investigation has determined that our CEO had no knowledge of this, and that the bloody pig mask was all the idea of the people who make less money, and also we fired the CEO for unrelated reasons.

gruez 4mo ago
>The internal investigation has determined that our CEO had no knowledge of this, and that the bloody pig mask was all the idea of the people who make less money, and also we fired the CEO for unrelated reasons. That's exactly how the criminal justice system should work? If you can't prove a particular person is responsible, you don't have a case. That's exactly why they prosecuted the company as a whole instead, because easier to prove the company as a whole did something, rather than a specific person.
- jackb4040 4mo ago
  No one can prove the CEO did anything, but whatever it was it was worth 500x as much as the average employee.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- tombert 4mo ago
  The issue is that an internal investigation is not an impartial source. I agree, in this hypothetical if there's no evidence the that the CEO committed a crime he/she shouldn't go to jail. But considering that "internal investigators" are likely hired (directly or indirectly) by the CEO, are likely shareholders in the company, they have little incentive to fully investigate. The police certainly aren't perfect, but they at least have less of an incentive to lie about this.
  - gruez 4mo ago
    > But considering that "internal investigators" are likely hired (directly or indirectly) by the CEO, are likely shareholders in the company, and so they have little incentive to fully investigate. Right, but no prosecutor is like "well the CEO had an internal investigation so we're not going to investigate"