This is the last warning. One more post in the meme thread and that gets locked till the shooter is caught and the trial is over.
To kick things off: the CEO forgot the Golden Rule. Treat others how you would like to be treated.
Discuss. Here. In this thread and no others.
Doesn't look to be a grieved policy holder, more of a nutter who hates corporate america.
Well, the first has happened, according to recent news (shooter caught in Altoona).
On the wider front, I'm in the "It's terrible someone died, it always is. Also, this is a symptom of an unequal system where those at the bottom feel they have less and less recourse to hold those at the top accountable and to the same standards as everyone else. I'm not surprised, and I expect it will happen again." camp. Maybe we should look at why 95% of society isn't mourning the guy and do something about the reasons why.
In reply to j_tso :
I was going to guess there's a good chance (even if the guy they have now isn't him) that the shooter is actually more of a neo-marxist-ararchist type, rather than an aggrieved person. His age is bit of a clue to that I think. The messaging on the bullet casing is another.
Which, considering, the motivation would seem to be more of a "change the system" kind of thing. Which means, change the system through intimidation or threat (e.g. get shot). This clearly is far more a terrorist (pretty much the definition) than a vigilante.
As noted, my primary concern with this whole thing is the general support for the action (not necessarily here):
So.... Yeah Terrorism?!?
(one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter / rebel / revolutionary?)
Many want want lower taxes... should they go kill a tax collector to make a point? (NOT SERIOUS BTW). Will people cheer for that?
In reply to aircooled :
Terrorism is one hell of a spin, especially when the "victim" makes a living torturing and killing people for profits by denying them care.
The courts won't touch these cases and neither will politicians, because they know where their money comes from, so what are citizens supposed to do, just keep rolling over and take it because it's good for the shareholders?
The only negative thing about this situation is only one was killed, and he didn't suffer. Unlike the thousands of people a year denied coverage that pad his $10 million+ salary.
Because of who the major ad buyers are in this country, I fully expect the media to smear this guy until something new comes along to divert attention away. Just like they always do.
The person they like for the shooting (innocent until proven guilty) wrote this review of the Unabomber's book
Flynlow said:On the wider front, I'm in the "It's terrible someone died, it always is. Also, this is a symptom of an unequal system where those at the bottom feel they have less and less recourse to hold those at the top accountable and to the same standards as everyone else. I'm not surprised, and I expect it will happen again." camp. Maybe we should look at why 95% of society isn't mourning the guy and do something about the reasons why.
All of this.
The CEO was doing his job (maximizing shareholder profit). But if doing that means people are treated in such a way that a giant chunk of society appears to feel that this murder is justified, its clearly an indication that the system needs to change.
For every hour I spent in chemo (and there were many, 3xBEP for stg IIB metastatic seminoma, ask j_tso how weird I look without a beard!), I spent about 3 on the phone sorting out the hospital and UHC. It made a horribly stressful time even worse.
11 years hence, and I still get a prickly feeling on the side of my face when I think about it.
I won't hang my whole bottom out here on the internet and say what many have on social media, but I'm also not going to cry about what happened.
I don't know. This seems like a really precarious thread. Do we want to go there? Or are we following the direction of Corner Carvers. com, which went from a really outstanding site to the same couple dozen guys complaining constantly?
OK, so another angle to consider (just trying to gauge things here):
Say this is the guy (or the guy is eventually captured). What is should the punishment be? He should be super easy to prosecute. This seems to be very clearly a death penalty case (lay in wait, planned, someone who did not personally aggrieve the shooter probably etc). NY does not have the death penalty, but, for discussion sake, it does.
Should he be put to death (LWOP in NY or course)?
Should he be released for "doing the right thing"?
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:I don't know. This seems like a really precarious thread. Do we want to go there? Or are we following the direction of Corner Carvers. com, which went from a really outstanding site to the same couple dozen guys complaining constantly?
I trust the people on this forum to be civil in discussions. I trust them to not be shiny happy people to each other. I trust them to know where the line is.
That being said, apparently I can't trust 'em to not post this stuff in the Meme Thread. All this is, is an outlet to discuss something that apparently needs to be discussed that isn't the meme thread.
If there are enough bad actors that betray the trust above, I'm sure Margie or others will step in and have a talk with 'em.
The health insurance companies own our Congressmen. Write a letter to one and find out. You will probably be ignored and at most get a nice form letter in response.
The health insurance companies own a lot of our media. Every once and a while a story gets out about how somebody is denied coverage and dies. They interview the relatives, some of them cry, and they they go on to the sports and weather. Nothing ever gets done about it.
One CEO is shot and an insurance company decides to withdraw a policy that puts a stopwatch on anesthesiologists during surgery.
This could be the start of something, if only that health insurance companies are going to spend a lot more of those profits on security for their own people.
Or it could just fade away when our next news celebrity takes the stage. Some TikTok influencer jumps out of a window or another Pro Football Player gets accused of rape.
How many people even remember who Ted Kaczynski is?
And the beat goes on.
aircooled said:OK, so another angle to consider (just trying to gauge things here):
Say this is the guy (or the guy is eventually captured). What is should the punishment be? He should be super easy to prosecute. This seems to be very clearly a death penalty case (lay in wait, planned, someone who did not personally aggrieve the shooter probably etc). NY does not have the death penalty, but, for discussion sake, it does.
Should he be put to death (LWOP in NY or course)?
Should he be released for "doing the right thing"?
There has been a lot of discussion about Jury Nullification online.
Combined with who the victim was, I honestly don't know that there will be any sort of fair trial for this guy.
aircooled said:Many want want lower taxes... should they go kill a tax collector to make a point? (NOT SERIOUS BTW). Will people cheer for that?
Is there a (recent) case of tax collectors causing the deaths of those they are collecting from? Cause that's where the main limit seems to be with this, to the point where I'm not even sure why anyone would make the case of "what if x was killed?" other than to try and introduce a slippery slope argument.
aircooled said:OK, so another angle to consider (just trying to gauge things here):
Say this is the guy (or the guy is eventually captured). What is should the punishment be? He should be super easy to prosecute. This seems to be very clearly a death penalty case (lay in wait, planned, someone who did not personally aggrieve the shooter probably etc). NY does not have the death penalty, but, for discussion sake, it does.
Should he be put to death (LWOP in NY or course)?
Should he be released for "doing the right thing"?
No death penalty in New York State. He will probably get life in prison and write a book. Women will send him love letters and pictures. Hey. He's a good looking guy. Ted Bundy got em.
In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :
The memes have already started with how he is good looking.
The internet, she moves fast.
Physicians have the hypocritic oath. UHC's systems and actions are in direct conflict with said oath. They shouldn't allowed to be licensed when their businesses practice is in direct conflict with the entities they're to supposedly serve.
I'd love to be able to state more but I shouldn't be commenting publicly with regards to this case as it is.
Every year starting in September my phone rings off the hook with "licensed agents" trying to push me to move to Medicare Advantage. I get four to five phone calls every day on my office phone and three or four more on my cell phone going home. How did they get my office phone? They seem to know when I go to work. When I am on Facebook or on anthing with Google Ads, the Medicare Advantage Ads follow me all over the Internet. They flood my e-mail box, they text me over and over again and fill my mailbox at home. They are worse and more aggressive than the house flippers and the hookers on Harry Hines.
I hate health care companies.
Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:
One CEO is shot and an insurance company decides to withdraw a policy that puts a stopwatch on anesthesiologists during surgery.
This is what I really want to talk about, honestly.
The actions of this shooter did more to move policy than an innumerable amount of lawsuits.
Shooting CEOs and board members, hopefully, isnt the solution but what do we have to bridge that gap? What else works? Cause regulations and laws haven't.
aircooled said:OK, so another angle to consider (just trying to gauge things here):
Say this is the guy (or the guy is eventually captured). What is should the punishment be? He should be super easy to prosecute. This seems to be very clearly a death penalty case (lay in wait, planned, someone who did not personally aggrieve the shooter probably etc). NY does not have the death penalty, but, for discussion sake, it does.
Should he be put to death (LWOP in NY or course)?
Should he be released for "doing the right thing"?
I hope our justice system is as hard on him as it would be on any billionaire CEO who can afford a team of lawyers to fight their battles for them and is a member of the same country club as the appellate judge. How's that?
The problem the health insurance industry has is that they are directly affecting people - the damage is not abstract like "BP dumped millions of gallons of oil into a body of water a thousand miles from me". It's personal, and that's why there was such a lack of empathy for the victim. I really expected the shooter to have a dead or damaged loved one as the result of denied coverage. Many people do.
A few years ago, the taxi drivers in Ottawa were protesting Uber coming in and taking their jobs. They had the same problem - EVERYONE has a story about a Blue Line taxi running bikes off the road or behaving badly in traffic or being rude. So there was no sympathy for the taxi drivers at all. They'd burned all the possible good will at an individual level, one person at a time.
I saw a comment that referred to the psychology thought problem of "If you press this button, you will get $1 million, and someone far away that you don't know will die", basically saying the victim's career was pressing that button as often as possible. And that has consequences.
I have 3 in-laws that are doctors (well, one is a dentist). They have horrible experiences with insurance also from the billing side, and what is most sad/amusing to me is the dentist says she never pays her kids' medical bills and that we should always send them to collections. Apparently according to her, (and her husband is a lawyer but I wouldn't put them in the savvy category) the collections agency will always negotiate and settle for 30% and it doesn't hit her credit as long as they settle. I debate how she feels about her own patients doing this... My wife also gets much better returns billing counseling clients directly rather than going through insurance. It's almost like the system is designed to allow for big buildings to be build and stocks to gain value more than to help people.
Sidebar, while murder (as this most certainly is) is not something I would condone, in the vein of aircooled I would say the founding fathers and patriots were certainly terrorists in the eyes of the lawful government, and did kill tax collectors. A slippery slope indeed, and the victors write the history books. Let's take a look at Syria for potential slides down the slope.
In reply to Flynlow :
You know that somebody, somewhere is going to start a Go Fund Me account for his legal fees and a million dollars will be raised to pay for his legal team. He will have OJ level representation.
Mr_Asa said:Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:
One CEO is shot and an insurance company decides to withdraw a policy that puts a stopwatch on anesthesiologists during surgery.
This is what I really want to talk about, honestly.
The actions of this shooter did more to move policy than an innumerable amount of lawsuits.
Shooting CEOs and board members, hopefully, isnt the solution but what do we have to bridge that gap? What else works? Cause regulations and laws haven't.
I am really having a hard time processing all of it, and am glad we're having a discussion. I see the same thing, as well as the bias of the media coverage about both this case, and the recently passed election, and it is chillingly confirming how dangerous it is to let .001% of the population have such an outsized influence on the rest of us.
The only sort-of example that comes to mind is when you buy a car and you deal with salesman, the sales manager, the finance guy, the finance manager, the warranty guy, the general manager, etc. They all sit you down at a table and try to screw you, then tell you how fair the sales process is. No, fair would be if I had my own team of experts sitting in the room on my side of the table who would work for my benefit. The same happens in health care, the same happens in politics. A team of professionals who do this all day everyday run right over you while admonishing you that, "if you want things to improve, you (powerless citizen with no experience) should change things!", while completely ignoring the stacked decked.
This person decided to change things with the tools they had available. It's too early to know whether the change is for good or for ill.
bbbbRASS said:Sidebar while murder (as this most certainly is) is never correct, in the vein of aircooled I would say the founding fathers and patriots were certainly terrorists in the eyes of the lawful government, and did kill tax collectors. A slippery slope indeed, and the victors write the history books. Let's take a look at Syria for potential slides down the slope.
Strongly worded letters were written the last time Assad used sarin gas on his own citizens and of course when that got out in the media he lost the last election to....oh wait.
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