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UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

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Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#501

Post by t-writescode »

anigbrowl wrote: post #499
sbalough wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we had more insurance companies instead of a few that dominate the market, then your employer would have more choices. More competing insurance cos would lead some to differentiate by having a reputation of honest claim handling while also not being the most expensive option. It would then at least be possible for an employer to choose better insurance companies.

Why should your employer be the buyer? It's just a way of chaining people to specific jobs. I'm constantly perplexed by people's eagerness to rationalize the structure of an obviously dysfunctional ysstem.

I think that's a valid and even __good__ question.

The historical reason for why it's tied to specific jobs is because salaries couldn't raise for a period of time in US history and so jobs started offering other perks, like paying for all or most of your health insurance.

Now, companies get group discounts and still (often) pay meaningful percentages of many employees healthcare, and so getting private insurance is a nonstarter.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#502

Post by s1artibartfast »

kerkeslager wrote: post #496
s1artibartfast wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I provided you a link to the article. Im not asking you to buy a NYT subscription.

Okay, I see the article now, but I still don't see anything that supports your claim that the left is/was fixated on taking away private healthcare options. Your claim at face value is absurd: if you want to waste your money on private insurance that is more expensive and will do everything they can to not pay out, have at it. Why would anyone on the left care? I assure you we don't. We're trying to give people healt…

Of course I dont want to waste my money. I dont think claiming I do is good faith discussion. Same with with assuming I want or support your long list of other subsidies. You seem to be arguing with a strawman instead of what I'm saying.

If you support a public healthcare option where I can choose to opt of the cost and service, then you have my support too! It is really that simple.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#503

Post by MichaelZuo »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #494
MichaelZuo wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think perks, facilities, etc., offered in a modern workplace in the US come from, if not via spending money somewhere?

Why do you think perks get better when healthcare benefits get worse? Usually they both get worse at the same time due to the same cost-cutting incentives. We'd need some data showing that savings from choosing terrible healthcare plans get redirected towards improving perks in an equal-or-more-valuable way (including for remote folks) in order to justify the former with the latter. Besides that, most companies can a…

I never said there must be a direct genuine linkage?

It could of course be very delayed or simply be used primarily as pretexts for corporate infighting with a very low probability of such a linkage.

But nonetheless even in the worst case scenario, a very low probability for the median employee is still better than zero probability.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#504

Post by 14u2c »

Teever wrote: post #367
LightHugger wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who are so sick often can't do very much, it's truly evil to scam people in that position. Maybe relatives though.

But enough people are given a terminal diagnosis from relatively minor symptoms that will lead to their death in 6 months. I think it's a really good open question as to why more unhinged Americans do school shootings than healthcare insurance executive shootings. I'd love to read a sociology paper on it.

Doesn't seems so surprising to me. Most school shootings are perpetrated by those involved in the school community in some way. Similar domestic violence, humans are a lot more likely to commit these types of crimes against those they know personally.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#505

Post by traeregan »

cpitman wrote: post #96

Just want to caution everyone to not jump to conclusions. Remember when Bob Lee was shot in San Francisco and everyone assumed it was because of how unsafe San Francisco is? And then it turned out to be another tech exec? Beyond the one motive we can think of, this person (like any person) had other things going on in their life. We have no idea what the motive was until the killer is found.

> Remember when Bob Lee was shot in San Francisco

Bob Lee was stabbed.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#507

Post by saltminer »

ryandrake wrote: post #234
vundercind wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think to some degree the problem is a combo of some overestimating among part of the population (driven in part by recall of actual historical crime rates, and by anti-"blue"-city news media) of how dangerous big cities are, but also a huge failure to appreciate how dangerous lots of non-big-city places in the US are. It's not entirely that big US cities are necessarily super-safe (they're largely not, if you compa…

Per capita tells the real story. I'd take Chicago or New York over any small town in, say, rural Mississippi or Alabama[1]. Yet [certain] media's "big liberal cities = bad" narrative continues... 1: https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-...

It's wild the tales [certain] media outlets tell. When I moved to Chicago, I got no end of suggestions to buy a gun, get bulletproof glass for my car, increase my life insurance policy...

Sure, the deep south and west sides might be not be too nice (particularly at night), but that's mostly gangs shooting at each other. My neighborhood is actually quite nice, but even if you take the city as a whole, the violent crime rate is 639.7 per 100,000 people [0] or 5.38 per 1,000 [1], depending on what source you go by (but I'll just use the 639.7 figure since that actually makes the city look worse). Compare this to Houston, TX: 11.35 per 1,000 people [2], Dallas, TX: 7.71 per 1,000 [3], or Nashville, TN: 10.95 per 1,000 [4].

So, 0.006397 (Chicago) vs 0.01135 (Houston) vs 0.00771 (Dallas) vs 0.01095 (Nashville). Hmmm...seems like Chicago is slightly more peaceful than Dallas, I'm 1.77x more likely to be the victim of a violent crime in Houston, and 1.71x more likely in Nashville. One has to wonder, if Chicago is apparently a warzone, why [certain] media outlets aren't equating Houston and Nashville to Fallujah.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Chicago

[1]: https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/il/chicago/crime

[2]: https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/tx/houston/crime

[3]: https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/tx/dallas/crime

[4]: https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/tn/nashville/crime

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#508

Post by kerkeslager »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #502
kerkeslager wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I see the article now, but I still don't see anything that supports your claim that the left is/was fixated on taking away private healthcare options. Your claim at face value is absurd: if you want to waste your money on private insurance that is more expensive and will do everything they can to not pay out, have at it. Why would anyone on the left care? I assure you we don't. We're trying to give people healt…

Of course I dont want to waste my money. I dont think claiming I do is good faith discussion. Same with with assuming I want or support your long list of other subsidies. You seem to be arguing with a strawman instead of what I'm saying. If you support a public healthcare option where I can choose to opt of the cost and service, then you have my support too! It is really that simple.

> You seem to be arguing with a strawman instead of what I'm saying.

No, I'm arguing with the reality of what you're saying. You want to block single-payer if it can't be opted out of--is that a straw man? Obviously not. I'm just telling you that the results of your ideology are not the results you're hoping for. The real results are:

1. Blocking single-payer if it can't be opted out of has resulted in private healthcare subsidies which are more expensive, and also can't be opted out of. What your ideology has achieved isn't the ability to opt out, it's simply to line the pockets of insurance companies.

2. If you want to start a larger conversation about being able to opt out of government services, why start with healthcare--a thing that people literally need to survive? Frankly, I don't believe that you're a principled believer in being able to opt out of tax: if you were, you'd start with one of the government programs which actively harms people. There are dozens, pick one of those taxes to fight for your right to opt out of instead of deciding that people in need of healthcare should die for your principled opt-out stance.

3. The most important reality of your ideology is that hundreds of thousands of Americans are financially harmed, don't receive healthcare, and ultimately, many of them die from lack of care because of right-wing extremists blocking Americans from receiving care. Your ideology literally kills people. Maybe if you got exactly what you wanted people wouldn't die, but the reality is that by opposing single-payer you're aligning yourself with murderers. No, I'm not holding you personally as responsible as a health insurance CEO, but you do bear some responsibility if you contribute to spreading this abhorrent, selfish ideology.

TL;DR: I'm all for a system where we get single-payer and can opt out of it, but that's not a realistic option that's on the table, and in pursuing that goal you're ignoring the real single-payer option and in doing so you're both failing to achieve the results you want and letting people die.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#509

Post by dredmorbius »

potato3732842 wrote: post #286
marky1991 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by this comment? Could you make your points explicit?

He means that if the state, courts and other systems don't get people justice or something you can squint at and call justice when they are wronged some fraction of those wronged will go outside the systems and seek to get even instead. The (rare, perhaps crazy) people who shoot CEOs or armor bulldozers are what check the power of the state to ignore this part of its job.

"Bulldozer man" was Marvin John Heemeyer, of Granby, CO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer>

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#510

Post by pas »

MaskedMan wrote: post #444
xnx wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There's a lot of talk about trade and other countries "ripping off he US", but almost no mention that the US pay significantly more for the same drugs sold in other countries.

The narrative that we're getting 'ripped off on trade' is a myth. In the real world, when someone says "I got ripped off" it means they were overcharged for something. In politics, getting 'ripped off on trade' means we're being undercharged by foreign countries, which is apparently less desirable than being overcharged by Americans. Seems like the only trade here is a fake rip-off for a real one. I wonder how people…

Propaganda is very effective when there's some kernel of truth behind it.

For this trade deficit question the important context is that some trade partners artificially devalue their currency (relative to the USD) to maintain strong export advantage (which therefore directly disadvantages their own people, since their wages are worth less on the global market, ie. when they are importing they have to pay more, when they are going on a vacation abroad they have to pay more, and this is a large chunk of the "missing trade" (the trade deficit), which translates to missing demand for US exporting sectors.

The other important piece of the puzzle is that US residents are also negatively affected by one distinct factor, which is the resource curse of the dollar's reserve currency status. Because due to the exorbitant privilege[1] (of the USD being the de facto global reserve currency) the financial sector is at an advantage compared to other sectors, and it slowly crowds out other economic activity.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege

[2] https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the-class-politics-...

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