CEO Shot -a thread

Peabody said:

ZOO (Forum Supporter) said:

Detached retina diagnosed at 11:00 AM on a Monday.  Temporary treatment completed to minimize damage by 1:30 PM that same day.  Surgical repair completed on Thursday of that week.  All in Canada.  All at zero cost to me.  It does help that I live in a city with a university/hospital network, with one of the specialities being eyes.

But without doubt there are other areas where non-emergent care is long.  It took me 8 weeks to see a specialist about some kidney stones.  And that specialist is in a city an hour away from me.

 

Which is how it typically works, and has been my experience through many years and many medical episodes.

There's always a lot of misinformation and just pure nonsense coming from people who don't live here, but think they know how it works. And they can usually find all the evidence they need with a quick google search.

What a lot of Americans don't understand is that there are wait times and there are wait times.

If I have a medical issue that's stable and not endangering me, but you have one that is endangering you, you go to the front of the line. That's how it works, and I'm OK with that.

 

And that's the baffling part, because for all the money we spend, there are wait times down here in the states too.  Even if you have the best gold plated insurance your money can buy, you will still have to wait for some procedures.  Took me 6 months to get an eye appointment once, that was just a routine exam.  No surgery to speak of, and even after the appointment found a small hole in my retina, i still had to wait a couple of months to see a specialist to make sure i wasn't going to eventually go blind because of it.  So I tend to ignore anybody who says "well what about having to wait for care" in the Canadian or UK systems.  We're waiting here in the US anyway, and having to pay for the privilege. 

Pretty good essay on the subject here from someone who wrote a short story collection in 2018 that included one about assassination of health insurance executives:

https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-12-09-radicalized-deny-defend-depose-e2f2326f2b31

If you think insurance companies are the problem, they aren't. They are a symptom of a system that is wildly out of control. Doctors are charging thousands per hour. Hospitals hiding/wasting millions so they don't show a profit. I have sat in meetings where hospital administrators (Doctors) talk about having to spend hundreds of millions to keep the money off the books at the end of the year. I have listened to elevator talk about consults so doctors can bill more hours on each other's patients. 

And the biggest culprit is the citizens who don't care about costs until they have to pay them. Have any of you actually asked a hospital or doctor what a procedure would cost? Not what your copay is but the actual cost? If not, you are complacent and a direct cause of the out-of-control system you are complaining about. 

The system is corrupt. It's a shell game that the majority of the country plays willingly hoping they will be part of the small group that wins.

The dumb ass shot the wrong person. He should have started with himself and worked his way up to the politicians who refuse to regulate a system that owns their souls. 

What's really hilarious is some of you think the US Government could do a better job than the insurance companies we have now. That's like replacing a corrupt kid with an idiot corrupt nephew. It'll cost twice as much and still have E36 M3ty service. 

I'm thinking out loud here. A couple things I've noticed:

1. Violence *does* make changes. Think about the riots in 2020. Things happened as a result of that, some good, some bad. Results may be unpredictable, but violence does indeed disrupt the status quo. 

2. I am still confused about this tendency to present health insurance as health care. In my view, health insurance is legalized (and sometimes *mandated*) gambling. And the casinos are betting that they can make more money from premiums than they have to pay out on claims. Same with car insurance. But people aren't conflating collision centers with collision insurance. 

2.A. Maybe the above is because health care is so expensive AND we have the idea that everyone should be able to get the BEST care science allows, even if they can’t personally afford it? So rarely is anyone paying purely out of pocket for medical procedures, unlike a bent bumper cover -- or scrapping the car? (Not saying that assumption is morally right or wrong- just trying to understand)

3. Was UHC truly violating contracts and policies? Surely there's recourse??

4. I see a problem with the fact that people rely on their employer institution to provide health insurance for them. As is clear, institutions are self-seeking. So if your employer is the one buying health insurance, they're likely getting the cheapest one, not the one with the best service. So at no point along the way is anyone acting in the best interests of the patient. Which leads me to the idea:

5. We should chose our own health insurance. Employers choosing for you (based on THEIR costs) dilutes the companies' motive to please customers or risk losing customers. I declined employer-provided coverage years ago. I will grant that I haven’t had to come to brass tacks (or knuckles) with my health insurance alternative, but when I pay $850/mo for my family’s coverage, it’s pretty predictably written in the contract what they do and don’t cover. And I assume they expect a costly lawsuit if they don’t come through. 

So after writing that, I suppose that if you
A. feel like you're stuck with your insurance company because it's part of the wider ecosystem of your employer or something, and
B. they are fraudulently denying claims and
C. the insurance company has no legal punishment or financial loss (losing customers from bad service) motive,
THEN sure, patients may feel powerless enough to want to resort to extreme measures for not getting what they paid into -- whether it's health CARE or health care INSURANCE. 

But maybe someone from the car insurance industry can explain if I’m way off on my analogy; I hear car insurance is HIGHLY regulated, how is health insurance less so?

If it’s that health care insurance companies are intentionally dragging things out, maybe some requirement to fast-track arbitration should be in order, too?

And in any event, unless the murderer has AMAZING levels of empathy for those denied coverage, I’d say the murder was less one of afflicted passions and more political. And also, that’s really messed up what UHC was doing and SINCE I buy private insurance, I’m likely to look for someone with better claims rates than them. 
 

EDIT: apparently guy had a bad surgery, so maybe it is personal? Who knows. 

bbbbRASS said:

In reply to WonkoTheSane :

When looking at getting new insurance plans for my employees, they absolutely are asking about the cost of co-pays for annual visits, prescriptions, and predictable items.

Right, and you should be aware of what the routine, predictable stuff costs for sure..  The point I was trying to make is that if the worst insurance companies were known for was that the copay for an office visit has gone from $40 to $45 dollars, then they wouldn't be completely hated by the public.   >60% of Americans wouldn't favor Government/single payer health care.   But that isn't the reason they're hated.    They're hated because of all of the things outlined in this thread and (nearly) every normal American's experiences with them.

Any attempt to handwave a "private insurance is just a necessity" or "this is the best system in the world" are either willifully ignorant or their livelyhood depends on perpetrating that lie.  The rest of the world has figured out how to do it and it has saved their citizens billions of dollars per year with a higher quality of life.

bbbbRASS said:

In reply to WonkoTheSane :

I agree with what you are saying, but don't think I've ever heard someone call extended warranties good deals for the consumer. Yes you are paying for piece of mind. No, you are not saving funds vs just taking that money and actually saving it consistently

I was just trying to play along with your analogy..   In reality, it's a horrible analogy.   If my car dies, I'm not dead or incapcitated.  There's very little chance that it will cost me more than $10k, and if it does, it's time for a new car.

If I'm walking along the street and I slip and fall or I'm bit by a snake, I can suddenly wake up with $400,000 in medical debt, coming from 27 different agencies (each specalist that stopped in for 5 minutes is out of network and needs separate billing), $25k for the ambulance, etc.  The amount of damage to my and my family's life is almost completely out of control financially.  The "shield" for that is an insurance company, and often, they're outright hostile to actually helping me get back to "whole." 

In reply to Toyman! :

I think it could potentially help a lot if the consumers / customers of HC had a lot more buy in (stake) in the process.

There are always huge corruption issues when people are spending "other peoples" money.  That applies to insurance as well as government.  That is one of the primary reason why you end up with a rediculous amount of regulation/rules around such things, you just cannot trust people to "do the right thing" and even a small percentage taking advantage can cause huge issues.

I don't know, but I am pretty sure the medical insurance industry is pretty heavily regulated, if not in their direct practices, in the medical processes they have to get involved with (much of that might be medicare / medicade related which of course is wildly regulated)

In reply to P3PPY :

There are several things in this world that are paycheck deductible or rolled into the cost of goods that should not be. 

Every person should be required to write a check for their medical insurance. 

Every person should be required to write a check for their taxes. 

Until that happens most people will have no concept of the cost or concern about the price. 

Just like they have no concept of what a car costs because all they see is the monthly payment. 

In reply to aircooled :

It goes back to the shell game. 

The regulations state X. 

The medical industry changes it to Y. 

Much like the insulin that Appleseed needs. The insurance company sets a price. The pharma company changes the medication and the price soars. Then they discontinue the previous version so you have no choice but the buy the more expensive drug.

There used to be about 3500 medical codes. Now there are 155k of them they can use to confuse and obfuscate. 

Shell game. 

Over the my career I've had a very recognizable healthcare insurance company as a major tenant in several of the commercial buildings I've serviced, two of those buildings were their corporate offices at different times.  They were beyond painful to deal with as tenants but the real eye opener was the executive spaces.  A lot of money was spent in those areas and when the lease was up every 10 years or so they move on to another building and do it all again.  Exec spaces, state of the art data center, the whole show.

The customer list has also included major law firms and financial investment firms.  No question they have nice executive suites and corporate infrastructure but I haven't noticed the same pattern of replacing things on anywhere near the same frequency.  Maybe it's just me...

In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :

Again, you put words in my mouth. I wasn't complaining that an insurance company did not cover a procedure. They actually did pay for part of it. I was just showing an example of how corrupt the system is. Are you now accusing me of advocating the shooting of providers. That's kind of a wild accusation considering I haven't advocated the shooting of anybody. 

Quite honestly, after this and other interactions with you, I think you have a personal problem with me, even though we have never met. We could go around and around, but that would not be productive, and I really don't want to be a part of locking this thread. So I'm stepping out for a while. Keep trying to start a fight with me if you must, but I won't respond anymore, and maybe that will be enough to save this thread.

Have a nice day.
 

I apologize if I wasn't clear. You complained about having to pay more than you thought you should for the MRI, because the insurance didn't cover enough if it/all of it. I said didn't cover it, I should have written didn't cover enough of it. The point being that you feel that you were overcharged. This is a thread about health insurance, more specifically the justification of killing a CEO who ran an insurance company. In a thread about the murder of said CEO, you allege that the system is corrupt, and shared your story as "proof." I certainly hope you are not okay with murder. I was trying to get the point across that by posting what you did, you (and many others) appear that you are. 
 

I don't have anything against you. I'm sure you are a well meaning person. But you constantly reply to me, or quote me, often with assertions that are highly questionable. If you are uncomfortable defending your position, perhaps you should check it over before hitting "post." 

WonkoTheSane said:

 

If I'm walking along the street and I slip and fall or I'm bit by a snake, I can suddenly wake up with $400,000 in medical debt, coming from 27 different agencies (each specalist that stopped in for 5 minutes is out of network and needs separate billing), $25k for the ambulance, etc.  The amount of damage to my and my family's life is almost completely out of control financially.  The "shield" for that is an insurance company, and often, they're outright hostile to actually helping me get back to "whole." 

Agreed. And that is why I usually recomend people get the high-deductable coverage pared with a HSA. You pay for the medical services you actually use with money you actually save, but if something catostrophic comes along your exposure is limited. You are rewarded for living a healthier lifestyle, and not encouraged to just keep going to the complex to justify its existence.

In reply to dculberson :

Boost_Crazy said:

The CEO was murdered over money. So who thinks that is okay? And at what dollar amount is it okay to murder a person?

Time is money, and money is time. At what level is it OK to take years of someone's life to increase your pay package? At what point is it OK to take years off of millions of people's lives to increase your pay package? People who can not pay for medical care do not get that medical care. People who do not get urgent medical care get sicker and die. Refusing to pay for reasonable medical costs is not "just money." It's pain and, eventually, death.

That sure is an interesting stretch. By that logic, anyone that denies you the greatest health and safety items produced is killing you. If you can't afford the safest car, the manufacturer is potentially stealing your life. Same with food, housing, education, exercise equipment, etc.. Unless we are going to just give everyone everything, lines need to be drawn somewhere. And giving people more then they have earned, produced by others, is not hypothetically stealing the producers life (time,) it literally is. Where we draw these lines definitely should be open for debate. Like I said, some of you guys are so far off the rails that you have me defending a completely screwed up system. Because as screwed up as it is, nothing about it justifies murder. Period. 
 

Health care and health insurance are not the same thing. Heath care cannot be withheld. If your insurance won't cover it, you can still get it. You may have to pay out of pocket, you may go into debt, you may go bankrupt. But you won't die, unless you choose to forgo the care. If your insurance wrongly denied you, there are many, many avenues to rectify the situation. It's far from optimal, but just as far from "insurance companies are killing people." Saying they do to justify murder is misguided, irresponsible and dangerous. 

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

Should my family lose our house because my wife got cancer? Should my kids lose their mother so they have somewhere to live?

Maybe if the richest country in the world had a reasonable social safety net I could agree with you. But your argument is that we can save orphans from the crushing machine rather than asking why the crushing machine needs to exist in the first place.

Every other industrialized country on the planet has figured out that medical debt is a blight. Yet somehow it makes the US system of care better?

WonkoTheSane said:  >60% of Americans would favor Government/single payer health care.   

I had no idea the number was that high. Snippet from the link:

Healthcare insurance in the US is just a method of redistributing wealth from the working and middle classes to the shareholder class. Watching members of these lower classes defend the current system is always wild, especially when every other country in the world spends less for the same or better outcomes. 

aircooled said:

I hate to say it, but he might have a lot to do with the type of "education" (as in the unofficial part) many people are getting in Universities, in that he thought this was a good plan. Not terribly different from what was going on in the 60's, and that certainly resulted in some very violent actors (e.g. the weather underground, SLA, heck maybe even Manson)

I would be slow to categorize him as left or right, or say that his reasons were XYZ. People are complicated and sometimes contradictory.

-There is a good amount of social darwinism in his writing, both in the Unibomber review and his twitter feed

-He's re-tweeting Elon Musk's political statements on twitter

-He's very interested in AI and humanity's future. 

I'm going out on a limb here but he he may be influenced by accelerationism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

=========================================================

We know that this guy killed a man. Do we know how many people UHC killed?

In reply to The0retical :

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

Should my family lose our house because my wife got cancer? Should my kids lose their mother so they have somewhere to live?

Yes, if you failed to plan accordingly, life has consequences. That doesn't make it suck any less, and I'd feel bad for you. If you need to choose between the house or your wife, ideally you would choose the wife. You can get another house. Me, I wouldn't start with the house. I'd start with the less painfull things like Netflix and Starbucks, but I realize that doesn't sound as dramatic. But the reality of it is that you are presenting an extreme example like it is the norm. Lots of people get cancer. Very, very few lose their homes because of it. They will have bills, insurance doesn't cover everything, and may have to adjust their lifestyles to suit. Life has risks, and if anyone can eliminate that, it would be the greatest discovery in human history. 

Maybe if the richest country in the world had a reasonable social safety net I could agree with you. But your argument is that we can save orphans from the crushing machine rather than asking why the crushing machine needs to exist in the first place.

The machine exists because we built it. We have big hearts- at least when it comes to other people's money- but poor math skills. We want everyone to get the best care available. We want access for everyone, wether they paid into it or not. And we want low cost for everyone. That just isn't feasible, not at the level of care that we have grown to expect. Which might be part of the problem. The most efficient model of health care is that the individual pays for their own regular care out of pocket, and has catastrophic coverage via insurance. Like your house- you don't do a claim if your doorknob breaks. But like others mentioned, people didn't always care for themselves, leaving larger claims due to their lower health. So they started making catastrophic health insurance health care coverage. We still pay for it, but we have lost some choice and taken some competition out of our regular health care, while adding (expensive) levels of beaurocracy. The other complication of health care is that most people will need a lot of it at some point in their lives. It would be like buying house insurance when the insurer knows that your house will burn down a time or two during your life- it would be expensive. "Luckily," some people die young in accidents before they used up their share of the pool. Unfortunately, young people don't often buy insurance, since the don't get sick often. For it to work better, more young, healthy people need to be in the pool.
 

Every other industrialized country on the planet has figured out that medical debt is a blight. Yet somehow it makes the US system of care better?

Every other industrialized nation has different priorities when it comes to how they spend their money. We could do that too, but not once have I ever heard what we would give up in exchange for better/cheaper care. There are only two solutions to providing more care for more people. Spending the money more efficiently, or spending more money. There is not one single example of government spending money more efficiently, yet somehow we think the incredibly complex subject of healthcare would be the exception. 
 

But again- this is not about healthcare. I'm explaining the current system, not defending it. I completely get the desire to rail against our system, I'd just prefer we had a rational discussion instead of a bunch of feelings and hypotheticals. And no solution involves murdering people. 

In reply to CrustyRedXpress :

WonkoTheSane said:  >60% of Americans would favor Government/single payer health care.   

I had no idea the number was that high. Snippet from the link:

 

Healthcare insurance in the US is just a method of redistributing money from the working and middle classes to the shareholder class. Watching members of these lower classes defend the current system is always wild, especially when every other country in the world spends less for the same or better outcomes. 
 

The current system has been intentionally sabotaged. Many that favored single payer health care predicted that the best way to achieve that goal was to break the existing system. They created a system that had no chance of working long term, with the goal being offering to "fix it" by going full single payer. We have been played, and I'm not convinced that better health care was the goal or will be the result. 

CrustyRedXpress said:

We know that this guy killed a man.

 

Do we actually know that?  

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

I'm going to be as polite and civil as I can here. That response is one that flat out smacks of someone who has never been on the wrong side of an encounter with a health insurer. 

I truly hope you're never in a situation where you have a treatment denied by an algorithm that can't be held to account while dealing with running a business, taking care of your family, and taking care of your spouse. All within a system that you pay $12k+ a year into to prevent the catastrophe.

The US system is a quirk of history that worked well enough until the goal became infinitely increasing profit and accrued the kind of power most industrialists can only dream of.

I'm out.

Boost_Crazy said:

The current system has been intentionally sabotaged. 

What was the sabotage? 

In reply to P3PPY :

#3 - Fuzzy on details, google yourself and dont rely on me:

• UHC board were all under investigation by the FBI.
• What legal protection exists against AI denying claims?
• 9th largest ​​in terms of revenue stream or whatever the stat is.  What recourse? Any suit against them can be bought out. Any govt fine that isn't a full percentage point or more of their annual profit is just the cost of business. 

How does a corporation actually make restitution for the death of someone?

brandonsmash said:

CrustyRedXpress said:

We know that this guy killed a man.

 

Do we actually know that?  

Well he is on camera doing it, and confessed in writing, so we do.

I hear the gun he used was 3D printed, that is why it would not cycle properly.   I am no expert on those, but I am guessing he has to have an actual metal and firing chamber, but I am guessing you can get those part separate somewhat easily(?).

Seems like the guy was a pretty sneaky (underground) path.  Apparently he did have chronic back problems, so the frustrations may have more been from authorizing treatment (which seems to be the biggest grip stated here) rather than cost.  Still, it seems like his family had money, I guess he didn't want to ask, or was he just trapped in the "have to use insurance" model/thought process?  It's possible his condition was not easily curable (back problems can be very tricky) and that was part of the frustration(?)

Obviously I am guessing here, but it will be interesting to compare the guess to reality when we really know.

He is 26.  Means he ain't on parent's insurance anymore.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

No, I mean get money to pay, outside of insurance.   I think we know he had a policy with that company (?)