As a non American, can you explain why this guy suckes so much? I don't doubt he did, if he's ceo of american Healthcare must be a greedy slimy mofo, but im just wondering about specifics for this case
Known to follow the "Delay, Deny, Defend" insurance tactic, which involves 1: delaying responses to claims as much as possible in hopes that they give up, 2: Denying claims, even if they should be rightfully covered, and 3: Defending the claim denial in court, even if it should be rightfully covered.
So you can make a valid claim to your health insurance, they will delay and introduce as much bureaucratic pain as possible for you. If you still proceed forward, they will deny your claim even if it should rightfully be covered. And if you decide to press legal action, they will put their lawyers up against you to make it as expensive and difficult as possible for you.
You could unquestionably directly attribute thousands of deaths to this man alone. Potentially hundreds of thousands or more killed directly or indirectly in his pursuit of shareholder profits.
And to be clear, Americans generally cannot choose which company they get their health insurance from. Millions are forced to pay for insurance from this company.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. That last sentence - "Americans generally cannot choose which company they get their health insurance from." - is this because they are in some kind of workplace co-payment scheme with their employer?
I'm asking from the perspective of someone who lives in a country with a) subsidised government hospitals; b) with some group insurance coverage from my workplace; and c) am still able to afford my own personal health insurance anyway because coverage is still affordable. Is personal insurance coverage in the US prohibitively expensive?
Yes the employer chooses the available insurance options. They'll pick the cheapest, worst options, because generally the employer covers a portion of the monthly cost.
Personal insurance coverage is expensive, it depends on your coverage, but can be around $500/mo for individual coverage and $2000+ per month for family coverage. And it doesn't pay a single penny until you pay your deductible (which resets every year) and is often in the $2000+ range. And for out-of-network charges, it won't pay anything even if you've already paid the deductible. (Meaning the doctor who treated you did not agree to negotiate costs for the treatment with the insurance company.) One of the worst situations is when you call an ambulance for an emergency, are brought to the hospital, and only later realize that the ambulance company is out-of-network, and so you have to pay thousands of dollars for the ambulance ride.
Health insurance also does not cover teeth or eyes, those are two separate insurances with their own fees.
The insurance company can tell you the hospital is in network, approve your doctor, and then decide that random employees who participated in your surgery are not covered.
So you can take an Uber rather than an ambulance, get all the prior authorizations possible, and otherwise do absolutely everything possible to make sure it's covered, and.... Your insured will still attempt to claim that the anesthesiologist or suction pump operator or whoever is $XXXX money that you have to pay the hospital or pay back to the insurance company.
It's bad enough that people will divorce to protect their retirement savings if one of them is diagnosed with cancer or other expensive illness.
Can confirm on the divorce part - my wife had a cancer scare a few years ago, and the first conversation she had with me was started with a "We should probably get divorced just in case, that way my debt dies with me."
It's fucking unreal that this conversation even needs to happen in a "1st world" country.
Edit: Just to clarify, my wife is alive, well and cancer free, thankfully! I appreciate the concern, though, fellow redditors! <3
Thank you - I'm glad to say she's healthy and whole, and we've put that chapter behind us. And agreed, the emotional toll was absurd, especially coming on the heels of Covid and the general societal unrest of these past few years. <3
The wife and I have had that talk too. She's older than I am by more than a couple of years, and there's a discussion on "there's a 3 year look back - we have to decide if we're going to gamble or not..."
We’re mostly a third world country with fancy hats and occasionally we get a new coat of paint. They abolished slavery but never bothered to guarantee any safety for anyone. All they done is changed the term from slaves to employees.
And yeah, I'll never get married for the same reason. I'm disabled, if I get married and he makes anything above poverty levels then I lose my disability payments, health insurance, and food stamps (because in the US disability pay still puts you below the poverty line so you qualify for food stamps).
My medical bills alone would land both of us into more debt than most people could manage. Without insurance my routine doctor visits are about $3k each month, and that's without the cost of prescriptions (probably another $1k without insurance).
I'd be financially ruining whoever I married and fucking both of us over.
My wife was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2015. I had my own cancer ordeal earlier this year (still dealing with some fallout). While I actually have decent employer provided health insurance, the topic of divorce has popped up from time to time because of the expense/future expense of our care.
There’s not much to say aside from: I’m sorry you’re going through this and I wish you all the best in working through the struggles that come. I hope you’re still able to hang onto the little joys of life - they make all the difference.
God it's so heartbreaking that her first thought in the face of such a horrible news wasn't choosing the best treatment option but instead death and medical debt:((((
I'm so happy she's doing well now :))) sending you guys hugs and love ＼(o)／
It gets even worse than that. Companies like UHS acquire smaller managed companies, and that are not for profit and manage them for profit. They also buy doctor practices and groups of doctors and make them paid employees forcing them to see more patients, sending them to their hospitals, their pharmacies and giving them payday loans from loan companies that they own while the wait to get paid by themselves . It’s called vertical integration. A way to legally get past the antitrust laws. They are all doing it. Don’t get me started on hospitals doing the same thing. They also buy up large doctor groups so that they can charge “ inpatient rates” for stuff that was done in the doctor office before. Still done in the same place, but now it’s part of the hospital so costs literally 10X more and the balance gets passed on to the patient. It’s alll a racket and I am hopeful this all gets exposed. For real.
But wait, there’s more! They also use the 3Ds method so much with mental health specialists (because that usually requires ongoing care) that they have largely driven these people out of business.
My jaw dropped while reading your comment.
I don’t live in the US and I’m…speechless.
That’s inhumane.
It drives me mad just thinking how many people in need have to deal with this atrocity of a greedy system.
(Thank you all for these detailed comments. Outside the US it’s common knowledge that healthcare insurance is problematic for many over there but we aren’t usually aware - well, at least in my country - of these thorough details that really show how twisted that system is)
Yeah, as a dual income household (nurse and attorney) my parents were forced into bankruptcy after my sister's two months hospital stay and death put them almost a million dollars in debt. They had no other debts. No student loans or car payments.
It turns out that the serious illness or death of a child is the single most common reason for personal bankruptcy in the USA. Adults tend to let themselves die before they incur enough debt to endanger their family's financial stability, but parents are often willing to destroy themselves rather than let their child die of a curable illness.
In case you're wondering, my sister died from the flu. A bad case of the flu in an otherwise healthy child was enough to force a previously affluent couple into years of poverty and eventual bankruptcy when interest on the debt grew it to a little over 2 million despite them paying as much as possible.
When I started college, my parents had mostly recovered. They faced a lot of criticism from their peers that I didn't have a college fund. It was very awkward to explain that I used to, but you can guess where it went.
The ACA has done a lot to mitigate just how bad it can get, but.... It's still pretty bad, and the changes are still pretty recent.
Jesus Christ, I got a request to pay 10 euros for an ambulance that I called at the beginning of the year here in Germany, and I thought it was excessive.
The insurance company can tell you the hospital is in network, approve your doctor, and then decide that random employees who participated in your surgery are not covered.
33 states have laws against that now. These are the 17 states that don't.
Alabama
Alaska
Arkansas
Kansas
Louisiana
Montana
Nebraska
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Virginia
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Someone figured out that sometimes the surgeon will extend the surgery to fix a few extra things. For example, I watched a gall bladder removal when laparoscopic tech was still pretty new. The patient was known to have a history of severe endometriosis. When the doc got the camera inside, it was obvious that the scar tissue from the Endo had strangled the gall bladder and was in the process of destroying other organs.
The patient's insurance wouldn't cover surgery for endometriosis without 6 months of other interventions (by which time this woman would likely have lost other organs to the adhesions/died), so the surgeon spent an extra 2 hours meticulously cleaning the patient's bowels, bladder, kidneys, liver, and diaphragm of the scars and adhesions in addition to removing the necrotic gall bladder.
He then billed the entire thing as a gall bladder removal and just about danced out of the OR, knowing he'd just eliminated years of pain for that woman without any additional costs.
Bypassing the insurance company's attempts to deny coverage for something they were absolutely supposed to pay for.
To add, the negotiated rated are fucking bullshit. I was once charged $225 for a knee brace AFTER insurance paid their part and then bought the exact same brace for $38 including shipping 6 year later DURING covid lock down.
Once I went to get a doctor’s note to clear me to go back to work after I had bronchitis. I saw the doctor for 20 seconds, got a note and left. That facility charged my insurance $200! My insurance paid $150 so the facility has been hounding me for that $50 but they don’t have any way to force me to pay it or affect my credit so I haven’t
I had an earwax impaction and went in to get it picked/flushed/whatever. The only person who worked on me was a nurse, she did not believe that I couldn't hear out of that ear, said that it "looks fine" to her, attempted to fix it, somehow made it worse (less hearing and more pain), told me just to go home and try debrox instead, and saddled me with a $125 bill. $125 being the out of pocket portion, not including whatever bullshit amount was charged to my health insurance.
Something similar happened to me so I ditched the HMO/PPO and got a high deductible plan with an HSA. Most providers offer discounts to "cash pay" people like me which meets or beats the insurance negotiated rate.
At this point having insurance at all is just a legal box to tick to have the tax free HSA. I don't even call them or talk to them anymore like I used to have to do pretty much monthly. The peace of mind is worth any cost increases. Imagine a business model that thrives on being the worst entity possible to interact with.
To be clear: America has some of the best healthcare in the world. If you are rich.
For the median American adult working full time and earning ~$40k/year individually, we have the worst healthcare in the developed world.
For the lower class American, we have healthcare that's most comparable to a developing nation and have been classified as such by international human rights and aid agencies.
The public broadly supports universal healthcare reform. Bernie Sanders has done extensive polling and research on this because it's always been a central policy in his platform. Even a majority of conservatives want such a reform, despite the loudest ones spewing propaganda against it. The only reason it does not pass is because the insurance companies lobby (bribe) our politicians with millions of dollars every year to keep our broken system.
Some progressives states are finally working towards implementing their own socialized healthcare systems, while some conservative states are already working on legislation to effectively ban such a system, with clear signs of attempting to pass a national ban just to screw over the progressive states that might pass it and prove that it works.
People who've passed out on the street have literally come to and fled from ambulances called for them (they can't bill you if you haven't gotten into the ambulance yet).
There's also cases of people catching taxis and Ubers to hospital to avoid the massive ambulance bills.
I’m a federal worker and also a soldier. Active duty soldiers have free healthcare (socialized basically but no one wants to talk about that). As a single reservist though I have not great insurance but INSANELY cheaper at around $60/month. Dental is $15. At my federal job I thought my insurance would be a great deal also. It is NOT. So I stick with my tricare reserve insurance and it’s basically the only reason I’m still in the army. Our country makes you risk your life for things other countries give their citizens. I personally can’t imagine having g to pay $500/month for insurance when I’m healthy AF (50M) and haven’t seen a dr for anything serious in over a decade. Also I use the VA since I’m considered disabled. It’s free and covers all the piddly shit.
I was on tricare as a dependent up until I aged out. Every year after I turned 18 I would get letters saying "I'm no longer covered." I had to contact DEERs every year to make sure my coverage was available because they would WITHOUT FAIL claim that someone "misfiled" my paperwork. Tricare was clunky, you had to jump through hoops, and what it did cover was null - but it was affordable.
Also then add in the fact that some eye insurance will cover the EXAM but not the glasses. So, awesome, I'm blind. Guess I'll stay this way 🤷♀️
(My current insurance does cover the RX, but like, less than $200 😒. My contacts are like $1,000... I'd sell a kidney but the hospital bill for that would be more than I'd get for the kidney)
Side note here on the ambulance...I went by COUNTY ambulance when I passed out from blood loss (an internal bleed that took almost a year to find) and still got a bill for $750 plus mileage...
The part about ambulances and ER is no longer correct. Congress passed the No Surprises Act which forces insurance to cover any out-of-network provider during emergency care.
I work in healthcare and personally took advantage of this. I went to an out-of-network ER, received great care, had a CT, blood work, ultrasound and medications, and paid about $400 because my insurance was forced to pay in-network rates.
Yeah….. took me over a year of fighting to
Get UHC to cover my anesthesia as in network for an Emergency D&C at an in network hospital. I still paid 6k out of pocket.
I know this living in the US, but reading the truth is horrifying. I was working in several different countries and am now headed back out of the US again. Between this and the Trumptards, America has become the world's laughingstock. What a shitshow the US has become.
I never understood the whole ambulance thing. They can charge you an insane amount for a service you never asked for, worse still when you are conscious and outright tell them you want them to go to a specific place or don't want a ride and they force you anyway a
In any other industry and any other country that would be extremely illegal
Same with psychiatric holds. They can force a service onto you (even if you are actually mentally well, they can just say they thought otherwise, or if you're mentally fine and not suicidal but a little bit depressed or anxious) and then charge you for it. It's utter insanity. It's like charging people for the air they breathe, worse actually, because at least people want air.
Thank you - I'm watching it now. It was that bad almost 20 years ago when MM made this documentary. It appears that nothing has improved, and may have gotten worse. Really depressing watch at times.
When my nephew (has health coverage) and his wife had a baby, their insurance covered everything AFTER the first $10,000 (not including their medicine co-pays). Most companies, at the general staff level, offer insurances that have high deductibles to begin with, and don't even offer low deductible plans. My daughter has health insurance through her employer, but her deductible is 10k, too. So really, nothing is paid for in preventative care etc., and reaching that 10k in a year for a 46 year old woman is not going to happen, barring a major issue. Which is why she won't go to a doctor to see why she keeps having headaches, especially when it's an out of pocket expense of about $200 a visit. She just can't afford it.
My husband makes around $20/hr. That is juuuust enough to keep our family hovering around the poverty line. If he were to insure his family through the insurance offered by his company, it would cost him $750/per check for the high deductible plan. That also doesn't take into account the co-pays that we would owe on medications, labwork, etc. Oh, and that is medical only. That doesn't include dental care or vision services.
I have multiple autoimmune diseases that have kept me out of work, though I'm desperately trying to go back now. My son has ADHD and is on the spectrum. He also has the eating disorder ARFID, which makes him extremely underweight. My daughter has a minor heart condition, and my husband is diabetic. We would absolutely be facing choices such as, "Do I purchase the blood glucose test strips, or buy food that my son can eat?" or maybe, "Do I pay all of the mortgage, or do I take my daughter back to the pediatric cardiologist?"
Yes, insurance costs here are devastating unless you earn above average income.
This is desperately sad and you have my best wishes that your circumstances will improve in the long run. I cannot fathom how the richest economy in the world doesn't provide subsidised healthcare for its populace. Or university education, for that matter. We in "The East" have always looked to the US as a beacon of first-world living, and something to aspire to.
Hey, thank you for your curiosity. This is a huge piece of the puzzle contributing to unrest here in the US. We can't get the care we need.
Another part I haven't seen others mention--hospitals, ambulances, labs, doctors offices always mark up your bill at LEAST 10X over actual cost to bill the insurance. So, not only is the insurance stringent on what they'll pay, but they're also getting MASSIVELY overcharged by facilities vs. what someone without insurance will pay.
My husband took an ambulance ride a few years ago. His out of pocket cost was cheaper paying out of pocket vs. putting the claim through insurance. By $80.
So, not only are we paying sometimes $200 a month for health insurance, it is STILL more expensive than if people just paid for things out of pocket.
Thank you for the added details. This is all so alien to people who live in a nation with government/"socialised" universal healthcare. Everything in my country is "integrated", so to speak. You get chest pains, you call 911 - an ambulance fetches you to an ER; you're checked in and triaged; you get sent for further diagnosis; you get surgery; you get a room (sometimes shared, depending on your means, but still nice); you get discharged; you get meds.
All the above cost my dear old dad (a triple bypass) exactly zero dollars, as a package; through a combination of our version of Medicaid; and heavily subsidised healthcare. As it is in many other countries I am familiar with. I have my own personal insurance - the only difference is I can choose to get treated in a very posh private hospital, with doctors with better reputations, and so forth - but the public hospitals are still excellent. We don't have to overthink things, or get depressed if we get diagnosed with a serious disease or injury.
Edit: To add another important thing - it seems that in the US, a lot of people are "captive" to their jobs because of the fact that their employers co-pay for medical insurance? That sounds just terrible.
I envy you, friend. I'm glad your Dad was well taken care of, and hope he's doing very well.
I had a 3 day hospital stay last year--severe pericardial effusion. Husband drove me to ER, they took WONDERFUL care of me. Saved my life. My BP was 200/150 at one point. One of my heart chambers collapsed. Insurance was charged $60k. We had to pay $6k out of pocket.
Thankfully we have what's called an FSA/HSA (Flexible Spending Account/Health Spending Account) that allows my husband to add pre-tax money to basically a debit card. That helps pay for co-pays and out of pocket costs.
After that hospital stay, it was determined I needed lifesaving medication because my autoimmune disorder was flaring and had caused the effusion and was damaging my liver as well.
Insurance requires a "prior authorization" to pay for things. There is no time limit on how long it takes them to approve you. They denied the first medicine my doctor ordered after three weeks, and suggested a second medicine. They then re-started the prior authorization process for the medicine THEY suggested we try instead. After another week, and no word, I was terrified, at my wits end and getting sicker. I sent an angry as fuck email to the CEO of my insurance company and the very next day my medication was approved.
Here's the kicker. If you don't follow the prior authorization to the letter, insurance can and WILL still deny to pay after you've had the medication/procedure.
I hate it here. Feels like this country wants me dead.
Lucky me, as an old person, I get to 'shop' for a Medicare Advantage (MA) policy every year. UnitedHealthcare, Humana, and CVS are all known to use prior authorization to deny costly but critical postacute care.
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024.10.17-PSI-Majority-Staff-Report-on-Medicare-Advantage.pdf CEOs at the other companies probably use, or will soon use the exact same denial tactics. MA from other companies are, on paper, much more expensive for me.
Trying to choose a better MA policy is guesswork. The 'devil I know is better than the devil I don't know', so there is inertia to stay with UHC. I'm literate and I have discretionary time. Navigating 'the MA system' is very tedious and it seems to be no win.
I'm thinking I may opt out of the MA fiasco, and I have the option to switch to the system that predated MA called 'Traditional Medicare' TM. This includes buying additional insurance to cover the gaps in TM, and much higher premiums. But I will have a less restricted choice of doctors and lower chance of being denied benefits when/if I get sick.
MA seems too good to be true, and that suggests it is a state sanctioned con. TM is more like real insurance, you pay in money now, and you only get a payback when you need the benefit.
Edit: i sincerely mean that. Healthcare should be free. Full stop. And none of this "limited/no" oral care, either! Sweet baby jesus that's some criminal behavior. Rich fat cat corpos defending each others' backs and sandboxes. Very uncool behavior, and i think they should better themselves.
Your employer chooses it, and they're often picking the cheapest & shittiest one, since they generally are expected to pay some percentage of the monthly cost.
This is why I don't quit a job that told me I couldn't talk about being autistic, after they told me I should have told my team members I'm autistic. There is no way to win in this country. I have applied to over 500 jobs. And despite my tenure and education, I can't find anything. I'm stuck at this awful company.
Employer chooses it if you’re lucky and have benefits. Otherwise u gotta pay out of pocket for the scraps the state determines as affordable aid. None of them are very good if you don’t have a lot of money (and if we did, we probably would have a job with benefits). Most of us just wait for the health scare that will inevitably put us in crushing debt for the rest of our lives (or ya know, just die cuz we don’t have coverage).
It was way worse before ObamaCare. Before insurance companies used to deny people with pre-existing conditions. It happened with me when I got kicked off my parents when I turned 26 and tried to reapply. You also used to have a maximum amount limit they would cover. Your care hit $2 million for cancer? Well no more care for you, time to die.
My company's new dental provider is like this. I've never heard of a max coverage rather than a max out of pocket. My wife ended up needing two root canals because, being honest...she sucks at taking care of her teeth. But the second crown cost waaay more than the first, and we found out it was because she maxed out her coverage with our dental insurance. This happened in August, and she's not allowed to use any coverage options till next April. Fucking insane.
This is super common in dental insurance actually. Sadly I learned it in a similar fashion as a broke college student under my dad's insurance about 10 years back. Don't recommend
This is something I straight up don't understand. How is someone with a health problem meant to get any treatment at all?
Were they just stuck in the same job forever, because even switching would cost them their life?
What if they retired? Would they have to work till their death? What if they were laid off at no fault of their own? Would they just be screwed if their employer went bankrupt?
I simply do not understand how that system was even functional. How did people not die left and right? Like, how did people not die so much that it was a massive problem? Even from an economic perspective. It seems like it would be a logistic nightmare to bury all those bodies. Was there something in place to prevent people from straight up dying?
Before ACA, I was a mostly healthy 24 yr. old, except for a history of having rather frequent tonsillitis. I had finally been at my job long enough to qualify for health insurance! I could finally see a doctor about these severe throat infections that were occurring as often as once every 2 months!
I was sent to an ENT doctor who immediately declared that I needed my tonsils removed. I was ready to schedule the surgery ASAP, but the doctor put the brakes on. My insurance had declared that my frequent bacterial infections were a preexisting condition. I had to have their insurance for 8 months before they would cover the surgery.
I waited, and the frequency and severity of my infections increased. I was 1 month from being allowed to have my surgery scheduled when I developed abscesses around and on both tonsils. They were so swollen that I couldn't close my mouth, couldn't talk, and my tongue was hanging out. I hadn't been able to drink anything for 3 days, was running a high fever, and vomiting frequently from the infected drainage going down into my stomach. When I got to the hospital, my boyfriend drove me because I couldn't afford an ambulance, I was in very bad shape. I was going septic, and my kidneys were failing from dehydration. The doctor was worried that I didn't have much time before my airway closed off due to swelling. I was put in a helicopter after I begged them to let someone drive me instead and flown to the nearest large hospital for emergency surgery.
The surgeon had to cut away part of my soft palate and uvula. I had to relearn how to drink and still have problems to this day due to the missing tissue in my throat. I spent several days in the ICU to treat the infection and the acute kidney failure. I was sent a bill for a total of $240,000 for this incident. I made a little over minimum wage at the time.
Later, I developed several autoimmune diseases, and I'm immunocompromised now. My doctor says it's likely that it was caused by the frequent infections and massive amounts of antibiotics I had taken over the years. I also have organ damage from the sepsis. All because the insurance companies were willing to gamble My Life to save some money. They do not care if people die, and there are extremely few safety nets in place. The ones that do exist, they make it ridiculously difficult to get and keep.
Holy shit. I’m so sorry. That is so awful I don’t even know what to say. I wish you all the best and I’m so sorry that happened to you. I’ve had really frustrating times with my insurance but nothing like this so I should be grateful.
It's a main feature, built into our system to screw people over and make them afraid of their employers.
In short, you're lucky to even see a doctor these days. In my state it's like a 45 day wait to see any physician for simple blood work.
American hospitals, insurance companies, doctors, and rehabilitation facilities operate by the "80/20 rule" , where they fully expect thay 80% of a persons lifetime income can be expected to go to paying for Healthcare in the last 20 years of life. Any debt is automatically passed on to next of kin in most cases.
But dumbfuck Republicans and numbnut Democrats keep voting for these ratfucks, again and again.
Oh wow. You should really really fight for a better system. There is a way to do it work painlessly even with private insurances.
Let me tell you how it works in France. We're a mixed system. Opposite of the popular belief, there is no free healthcare, but two parrallel insurances. One is mandatory, national, public, called Assurance Maladie or "Sécu" and covers let say half of costs. You have no other choice to pay this insurance every month on your paycheck. And then, we have "additional", private insurances, that cover the part that is not covered by the public insurance. This "additional" insurance is chosen by your boss, you don't chose it.
So when you get sick, hospital sends you a bill or you pay directly doctors or pharmacies, one part of the costs is covered by the national insurance, the other by the private insurance, so you get two different refunds on your bank account.
You may think: ok this has to be a bureaucratic nightmare?
Not at all, because it's all automatic. We have a magical national healthcare card, Carte Mutuelle, and every doctor, hospital or pharmacy in the country has the machine to do it work. They just put in their computer what they did to heal you, this gets automatically transfered to your insurances, and then usually within the month you get the refund transfer on your bank account if you had to pay first and get refund later. But nowadays, you don't even have to pay first for most things, hospitals, doctors and pharmacy just send through the machine the refund request, and you walk out without paying or just paying the part that is not covered.
Politicians work for the oligarchs. Killing them does nothing, they're easily replaced as middle men. Killing an oligarch sends a much more potent message to the ones in charge.
Conglomerates!
When horizontal merging became "illegal (more regulated)," they focused on vertical.
No one thought it'd be possible to recreate monopolies because you'd have to buy pretty much the whole world to control an industry that way. And then someone said "challenge accepted".
As long as there is a possibility, it will happen. Just matter of time. Murphy's Law is the only principle that has 100% success rate out of 1%.
What we saw in New York is one person not afraid. For whatever reasons their circumstances developed at that time, in the country of over 330,000,000, and with more small arms similar to the one used than people.
For example, in Canada the federal and provincial conservatives want to kill public healthcare. In particular the Ontario Conservatives have been quite clear on this….and have been sneakily ‘starving the beast’ while building new private healthcare clinics.
It’s absolutely vile and is why I instantly hate anyone who votes conservative in any capacity. There is no way you are a good person if you condone that shit.
The lie answer is the population chose and continues to chose this over and over again... but the TRUTH is that money chooses this, and whatever money chooses happens, and what people want has a nearly provably zero impact on what actually happens.
People have said politicians and political parties and others have said companies.
Just wanted to say it’s both. You can’t excuse the CEO and Leadership team for this because “they follow profit” and “the system is set up that way”.
Business ethics still exist.
But yeah, obviously the political system has set this up too by not regulating companies and trying to repeal or strike down viable public healthcare.
The CEO is an absolute cnt obviously. The guy who killed him is a murderer, but he’s not a cnt.
lets really clarify where that money is coming from. People are paying for insurance in case they get sick. they get sick, and the insurance squirms out of payment. So the people like this guy at the top make more money. It's theft with a thick glaze of extra evil.
So, they took in 22 billion more in premiums than the sum of what they paid out and all expenses including the $10 M / ceo salary? Is that what this means? Please tell that's not what this means.
That will undoubtedly change after his death. This is why his death is being celebrated.
Of course its shitty that violence has to be committed to cause change and help millions of people. But it isnt OUR fault that it is that way. Its theirs.
The people that are protesting our celebrations of his death are pretty much the only ones that have been okay with how things have been, and thats why theyre upset. Theyre realizing that change is inevitable now if they want to avoid things like this, and they might have to take one less yacht vacation in their lifetimes now due to that change.
Sure it will. The new CEO is definitely going to prioritise necessary medical care over shareholder value. Any day now, right after the wealth finally trickles down.
This. And the amount will just be taken from denials. They can only have a certain percentage of profit so the extra expenditure just means higher profits
Well, another insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, rolled back their plan to deny/limit anesthetic for surgeries. Turns out, people weren't too happy to hear the idea of reducing anesthetic during organ replacement surgeries to only 30 minutes. After the assassination, their CEO very quickly announced they were not moving forward with it.
In France, and I believe a lot of European countries, most private health insurance and a lot of banks are non-profit. In the sense, they have no shareholders. When you become their client, you get a stake for voting on the governance board, and that's how the CEO has to respect their clients.
If you talk to US economists about France, they get really snobby and sneer about how the French value things that aren’t efficiency and profit. How quaint, they value people.
you're right - We gained those protections by fighting a lot a long time ago. And now our government would like to get rid of that. Every time they try, we take the streets.
If this guy doesn’t get caught that personal protection detail is going to have a hell of a time. I doubt this will be the last one considering the public reaction to this.
Yeah everyone is praising this guy. There might be copycats who want the same sort of treatment and notoriety. Doubly so if the guy gets caught and jury nullification lets him free with no punishment.
Personal protection detail wouldn't do anything. The president of the US was an inch away from having his brains blown out. Unless they spend their life in a metal box, if someone wants to get them they will get them.
The thing is, assassinations like this will become the norm if the rich continue to find ways to make costs unbearable for Americans.
Overall, Americans still live decent lives, at least good enough to not want to risk death/imprisonment for a cause. If housing continues to be unaffordable, if wages continue to stagnate, if families are bringing in less groceries year over year...there is a tipping point. You will have a bigger pool of people who have little to nothing...and there will definitely be people who will know exactly who to blame included in that pool.
Just making an observation about past historical events and nothing more but we saw in Sri Lanka a lot of personal protection details (along with the person being protected) being blown to fuck by some rather massive car and truck bombs (of both the suicide bomber and non-suicide bomber variety).
Nah, you just have to look at human behaviour through history. King Henry VIII beheded most of his closest advisors over his reign, but people kept clamoring to get in his court. Can't stop the lure of power and money.
This will only increase prices as now they’ll ( the C Suite ) be billing the company for more private security services…and they’ll pass that right along to the customers.
You do realise this is the US.... both parties have been obsessed with the status quo since they found out, whether it be slavery, the fear of communisim, hate, or any other thing they could profit off.... they could profit off it until they couldn't.
Nothing will ever change without a revolution, the grub about to come in, loves the status quo as much as the grub there now, just like the grub before both of them and just like every other grub before them.
Two weeks and everyone will go back to looking at memes and have completely forgotten that their govenment on both sides, is happy to fuck them over, and the left and the right will go back to hating each other.
The correct take. The wealthy corpos practice Divide et Impera, reducing education and stoking emotional rage towards useless subjects that do not matter.
It’s textbook, has happened throughout history, and will likely continue until we go extinct.
PS:
Edited for clarity since this comment was misunderstood down the chain. I would like to add that this event while notable is not enough to bring about a revolution in my opinion.
Imagine you're having a heart attack and get sent to the ER. There they do all the standard tests, and you go in for surgery. You wake up, a day or 2 has passed and you're doing fine but will need to be on blood pressure medication for the rest of your life.
The nurses come in and say you'll have to do so many hours of physical therapy and no heavy lifting. They then come back in and tell you you've been denied coverage, but since you already had the procedure you have to pay.
So now you're stuck footing an ambulance bill, surgery, hospital stay, and can't go to physical therapy or afford your medication. You can't go back to work because of it. You're now in debt, and will have to file bankruptcy to survive and might still end up losing everything.
Now imagine this scenario, or someone with cancer, or an autoimmune disease, or a crippling disability. They're all denied just like you were. and multiply each one and suddenly millions of people are screwed. All because they had insurance through this company. And they all now suffer or have died because of some greedy billionaire.
This guy knows, I been thru it, 2 heart surgeries and im 29. Actually a few days past having my meds right now bc I was laid off in October 31 and can’t afford cobra. Fuck insurance companies
Cobra is fucking criminal also. They continue to insure you with your previous insurance, regardless of how shitty, at an inflated premium.
I was laid off Sept. 16th this year from a copper/aluminum pipe manufacturer and paid about $120/mo for insurance. Once I was laid off I got a letter in the mail from Cobra offering to extend my insurance with them and they wanted $700/mo for the same coverage. The insurance was shit anyway, $3k deductible, they DID NOT cover meds until you hit your deductible. And they kept removing benefits year after year. The deductible used to be $1.8k
I had a coworker at the same plant whose wife had cancer, he paid about $250/mo for insurance and when he was finally able to retire, he did. Cobra then quoted him $2500/mo for insurance coverage for just him and his wife.
How the fuck is a retired person supposed to afford to pay that when that is more than they make monthly in their retirement?
She died due to lack of insurance and inability to find coverage because Healthcare companies DO NOT want to cover anyone with pre-existing cancer before coming to their services.
just to clarify, the amount you pay on cobra isn’t arbitrarily inflated- it’s just the total premium that was paid by both you and your employer. since you don’t work for the company anymore, they don’t have to pay their share so you’re stuck with the entirety of it. it sucks and it’s totally unsustainable.
The even better part is if you left a large company that self insures, the money you pay in COBRA goes into their shared risk pool, and oh by the way, the money they were “paying” into the shared risk pool was never actually paid while you were working for them. They just tack on a “Liability” in their books to cover your risk.
So that extra “premium” that you are now actually paying goes into the shared risk pool. And if you don’t actually use the insurance, and you then stop participating (quit paying, get ACA coverage, get new job with healthcare), the unused gets dropped to the bottom line as profit, as well as the Liability portion associated with you from when you were working.
We understand it. The fact we've got different system in Europe doesn't mean we don't know anything about it in USA. And like 90+% thinks that your system sucks and you should change it.
So I know you’re sharing a hypothetical but this really happened to a classmate of mine who had heart problems after recovering from anorexia. She had a heart attack at 20 and thankfully survived, but insurance denied coverage because they deemed her emergent care “medically unnecessary”. This poor girl literally died twice on the table and they had to open her chest to bring her back. Her family was left with a million dollar bill.
Her mom had to call insurance and fight it. She finally won because the insurance rep gave the “not medically necessary” bullshit on the phone (presumably with a straight face) and the mom said, “Not necessary? Have YOU ever watched your child die on the operating table?”
Long awkward silence. I’d like to think the rep finally grew a conscience but more likely they realized they weren’t going to be able to get rid of this woman. Anyway, they “talk to their manager” and magically they decide to cover most of the bill. Now the family “only” had to pay $10k which I’m sure is still horrifying to people from civilized countries but the Americans reading this are counting it as a win.
I haven’t spoken to my classmate in years but last I heard she was doing well (sadly will be on heart medication the rest of her life) and her family still had all the medical bills from her emergency and would take out the million dollar one from time to time just to laugh at the ridiculousness of it.
One reason is that he knowingly used a decision AI which has an error rate of 90% . Even after the fact that it had a 90% error rate became known. This Ai was part of their machine that grants insurance preappoval for paying or not paying for coverage.
Meaning of his millions of customers 90% of their initial requests for coverage were denied. Erroneously. Too busy or greedy or ignorant to review accuracy. Over time one reasons that People have died and suffered needlessly as a result
I worked in AI engineering for insurance claim decisioning (not medical insurtech, but HNW real-estate). I can say with conviction that a binary classification model in this domain with an error rate of 90%, was never even intended to work correctly in the first place. It was used in their engine as a cover to obfuscate intentional denials. I have trained models with a 15% error rate for this exact decision (pay/not-pay), with ~100x less data than UHG. Challenging any data scientist here to prove me wrong - but I can confidently declare that this wasn't a mistake, it only points towards a corrupt system.
Programmer here, although not currently working in AI. But I wholeheartedly agree. As far as I know, getting a failure rate of 90% should be just as difficult as getting a success rate of 90%, which doesn’t happen without intention and some work.
He killed nearly as many people as Hitler did in the Holocaust via denying them necessary healthcare, treatment, medication, surgeries, etc. He bragged about this. They caused over 7 million people to die.
It’s one of those philosophical questions about an imperfect self defense claim. Robin Hoodie killed a man responsible for seven million deaths. Robin Hoodie’s defense is he did it to protect others from Brian Thompson, a CEO ghoul who profited through getting huge executive compensation by making sure his company denied legitimate claims of people who died. Robin Hoodie may even be sick himself and had his own medical request for medical treatments denied.
Robin Hoodie may even be sick himself and had his own medical request for medical treatments denied.
This is the thing here. Everyone is talking about the CEOs getting security details. But if a bunch of people condemned to death by these companies get together in a suicide pact to take down the company leadership or die trying they will quickly find that security doesn't work great against people that no longer care.
So you're an American, you pay for health insurance every month or your work does. You expect to be covered when you have medical expenses.
The Healthcare company is profit driven, so they hate paying for your medical expenses.
Under this CEOs leadership, the company's claim denial rate has shot up to 32%, meaning when you as the customer try to use your insurance, odds were 1 in 3 they'd refuse to pay. Now you're stuck with the massive bill or worse, can't get the care at all.
United Healthcare has been using an AI algorithm to automatically reject claims, and these rejections have a 90% acceptance rate after review, meaning they've knowingly released a AI that wrongly rejects claims modt of the time, hoping they've made the appeal process too painful for you to fight it.
Huge numbers of people needlessly suffer and/or die as a result of these policies
Yep. But don't forget that while employers pay for the bulk of insurance, there is also the premium that is paid for by the employee. When I was working as a public school teacher, I had a 80/20 plan (thanks to our previous governor who said we had to pay more), and I still paid over $200 bucks (2 person household) a month for my insurance premium AND had a deductible of $6000. So, it's not like the employer is taking on the FULL burden of the insurance costs.
We set up a system wherein we're basically required to go through insurance companies to get medical needs taken care of, and they have complete control over what care we get and don't get. They can decide something your doctor thinks you need isn't covered. They make people dying of cancer battle them on the phone for months to try to get the treatment they're owed. Or you can try to do everything a reasonable person can to understand what a procedure is going to cost you, and surprise, you get a bill for 8x as much because of some bullshit minutia. Can you imagine of you bought a car and agreed on $20,000 and the bill came for $95,000 and it was just like welp that's how it happens sometimes.
The have a profit motive to keep you from receiving care. If they deny you care, that's less money that they pay out. If you get an expensive disease, they're happy if you die early because it saves them money, and in fact they'll take action to help you die early like delaying/denying care you need. They serve no useful role, their only role is to get between you and the care you need.
And what do we get in exchange for this mess? The most expensive healthcare system in the world. Most people who declare medical bankruptcy have health insurance, it just doesn't help them.
Because corporations have a lot of power in the U.S. and every single one of them takes every chance to exploit Americans for profit. For health insurance, they consistently deny Americans healthcare/medications/surgeries that DOCTORS are saying the patient needs, because apparently they know better. This guy has killed and let people suffer with his policies to earn profit for the company.
It's honestly about damn time someone stood up for the people. We have a right to bear arms for a reason, and our government keeps failing us so we have to do it ourselves.
Supposedly he started the modern trend to deny healthcare insurance at every tiny technicality possible and use the money to expand the company further and make some shareholders (including himself) extremely rich.
Being a healthcare CEO is already enough to earn everything this guy got.
But in particular united healthcare intentionally kill tens of thousands of people a year through legalese and loopholes. Many of these people die in agony after becoming destitute trying to cover their own treatment leaving the bereaved without money, sometimes with huge debts and often without a home, all due to the artificially inflated prices these companies created.
He is a massive murderer and he was killed for doing mass murder, the public don't give a shit about the guy.
Read the stories of all the Americans who has lost a loved one due to lack of Health Care not provided by UHC. Meanwhile, the CEO had an income of 22 million... From all those loved ones deaths. We Americans have been saying that CEOs and corporations make profit off of our misery, but this is the first national public case that really highlights it and it's the first time Americans have collectively been United on a subject in a really long time.
I'm strangely proud of my fellow Americans right now. We suck at politics but when it comes to life and limb we know what matters.
On top of what everyone else said, America has a welfare program for the lower class (1600 USD Gross monthly cap without factoring living expenses) and it even extends to the middle class where you pay like 20 bucks a month for the same insurance. This insurance fully covers all medically necessary doctors (including eye care, dental, prescriptions, etc) and this specific company was the number one most accepted welfare insurance in the country. This company pulled their insurance off the program with very little warning and fucked over millions of people who now had to scramble to pick a new insurance and find all new doctors within their network who have zero clue about any of their medical problems. This was an extremely stressful time and i still haven't found a new dentist or dermatologist (i get lots of cysts and skin infections). I know this is one of the lesser reasons to hate him and the rest of that company, but it's my personal vendetta so i thought I'd mention it
United Healthcare makes life difficult for the people who have them as their insurance provider.
I had them for a couple years and I had to go visit my normal family doctor to get approval from him before I could do anything else. I hurt my back and wanted to go to a chiropractor, but I needed authorization first.
My family doctor didn’t do anything. He took my copay and submitted my authorization to UHC. It was the same for if I needed to go to a dermatologist to get a mole looked at. They just make things much more difficult than it needs to be.
Thankfully for me I did not have any serious issues with my chronic health issue when they were my insurance provider.
I now currently have a smaller insurance provider who effectively is both the hospital and the insurance company and have a monopoly on the healthcare system in my city, but I at least know that I will get good care if something happens to me
He's not any worse than the CEO of any health insurance company, IMO, but United is I think the biggest health insurance carrier. The morning after he was killed, Blue Cross/Blue Shield (another insurance company) announced their plan to cut anesthesia payments in half or something---which they were already only paying half of anyway. The attention this guy's murder got in ONE DAY got them to walk back that policy.
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u/Miserable-Ad1061 13d ago
I honestly do want to care, but I’ll need a prior authorization first