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Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

nytimes.com

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Re: Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

#41

Post by tptacek »

apsec112 wrote: post #39

Political operative here. If you're wondering why healthcare reform has been so hard to get and so piecemeal, even though most Americans want it, the big reasons are: 1) any reform has to get past the Senate, and the Senate gives a lot of extra weight to states with conservative electorates. In 2009, this meant the pivotal Senators were right-wing Blue Dogs, an independent (Lieberman), and a former Republican (Specte…

Single-payer proposals have failed in state referenda in non-conservative states.

Re: Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

#42

Post by vdupras »

tptacek wrote: post #34
vdupras wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me more of Chris Dorner. The manifesto is shorter, but this sense of injustice felt by the perpetrator is similar. Back in the days, mainstream media had enough control over the narrative to water down the "manifesto" part and avoid copycats. This time, "rogue" social medias are much more prevalent, so there's not much of a barrier to prevent the perpetrator from becoming a hero. We can think that copyca…

And, in case we all need a reminder: Chris Dorner was an actual monster, and his brief casting as a cause celebre a pretty big embarrassment in retrospect.

[flagged]

Re: Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

#43

Post by s1artibartfast »

vundercind wrote: post #35
tptacek wrote: post #29

It's mostly not rational. For instance, much of the conversation over the last day has been about Anthem pushing back on anesthesiology pay on the East Coast. That's people angry about their insurers working to make surgeries cost less by employing the literal guideline Medicare uses, and yet people online were overtly suggesting Anthem's CEO be murdered over it. Incoherent. This won't win me any points in this parti…

> At any rate: there's no serious theory of change that begins with murdering health care industry people. I dunno. This is the most publicly-united I’ve seen people against the industry maybe ever. Usually they’re separately-angry at the industry in their partisan silos (everyone hates it, more or less—hence the amazingly consistent and widespread reaction) but this has been the closest thing to a bipartisan healing…

I think it is the most disgusted I have been with a broad swath of the public in a long time. I dont think anything productive will come of it.

Re: Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

#44

Post by jmull »

mkmk wrote: post #4

[flagged]

> health insurance companies to spend 80-85% of their premiums on claims and healthcare

I don’t really know what narratives you’re objecting to. But I want to point out the existence of that regulation doesn’t make healthcare companies passive bystanders in the cost of healthcare in America. e.g., notice it collectively incentivizes them to drive the overall cost of healthcare up as much as possible, to maximize the size of their slice of the pie.

The fundamental problem is running healthcare as a profit-driven system. The incentives operating the system cannot possibly be aligned with the people the system is ostensibly meant to serve. (Not that it’s not going to be unraveled, short of literal revolution.)

Re: Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

#45

Post by triceratops »

vundercind wrote: post #25
evanjrowley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list of things at the end of your comment are all basically drivers for GDP. Our economic policies seem to incentivize the construction of Kafkaesque dystopias. I just can't see how such a leviathan could ever be dismantled.

It was reported in The Nation (and nowhere else that I ever found when I went looking—so, grain of salt) that Obama said that all the totally unnecessary jobs that’d be eliminated are exactly why he wouldn’t push full single payer. It’s a regressive-tax-funded white collar makework jobs program. JFC.

He didn't have the votes to get single payer through Congress. Simple as.

Re: Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

#46

Post by apsec112 »

tptacek wrote: post #41
apsec112 wrote: post #39

Political operative here. If you're wondering why healthcare reform has been so hard to get and so piecemeal, even though most Americans want it, the big reasons are: 1) any reform has to get past the Senate, and the Senate gives a lot of extra weight to states with conservative electorates. In 2009, this meant the pivotal Senators were right-wing Blue Dogs, an independent (Lieberman), and a former Republican (Specte…

Single-payer proposals have failed in state referenda in non-conservative states.

Yeah, the median voter position is not all the way to single payer but is still left of the status quo

Re: Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

#47

Post by User23 »

mkmk wrote: post #4

[flagged]

> require health insurance companies to spend 80-85% of their premiums on claims and healthcare

> enormous increase in administrative overhead

Do you see the problem here?

As an outsider it's hard to say, but clearly there is some ginormous loopholing going on here.

I haven't found much in the way of details, but apparently one of the reasons why insurance companies are buying up medical practices is because it enables accounting dipsy-doodle to avoid the healthcare spending requirements.

Re: Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

#48

Post by vundercind »

tptacek wrote: post #33
maybelsyrup wrote: post #22

> But that did not stop social media commenters from leaping to conclusions and from showing a blatant lack of sympathy over the death of a man who was a husband and father of two children . The journalists' tone and choice of words here, which I've italicized, isn't helping the overall feeling many Americans have of "the people running the show have active and unceasing contempt for us", which of course is what's dr…

There's a distinction to be drawn between challenging norms of discourse like not speaking ill of the dead, and actively cheerleading murders, like "we should boycott Starbucks for providing evidence about the murderer to police", or Taylor Lorenz calling for the assassination of Anthem's CEO by name.

The incoming President told his supporters that if he lost they’d still have to the option of shooting his opponent, when he ran in 2016. Instead of being ejected from politics forever by an outraged public, he went on to win that election. Then another one more recently.

What’s this norm you mention?

Re: Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

#49

Post by justinclift »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #30
maybelsyrup wrote: post #22

> But that did not stop social media commenters from leaping to conclusions and from showing a blatant lack of sympathy over the death of a man who was a husband and father of two children . The journalists' tone and choice of words here, which I've italicized, isn't helping the overall feeling many Americans have of "the people running the show have active and unceasing contempt for us", which of course is what's dr…

I dont find the "lack of sympathy" to be an issue. What I do find disappointing is the lack of concern over people being gunned down in the street, and the not so subtle glee some people are expressing. Murder should not be normalized or endorsed. It isn't healthy for a society and doesn't lead to progress.

> Murder should not be normalized or endorsed.

Sure. That includes the US health care system too.

The company that person was the key decision maker for has apparently been murdering people for years legally.

So, karma?

Re: Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

#50

Post by maxerickson »

vundercind wrote: post #12
mkmk wrote: post #4

[flagged]

I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what drives such high costs in US healthcare, some years back. My conclusion is everything does. This conveniently makes it easy to dismiss criticism of any one part (all of which are responsible) because “well they’re just increasing it a little—go look at these other things, they’re bad too, and if you add up all of that, they’re worse!” Right, but if you keep not ad…

We heavily regulate the supply and heavily subsidize payments.

Like a major premise of US healthcare policy is that preventing investment reduces costs. Good luck when that's the starting condition.

For example, reducing costs is the justification for limiting how many doctors are trained. Fortunately, our planning has been perfect rather than disastrous.

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