Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 304 posts

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

#151

Post by tbrownaw »

tptacek wrote: post #110
cs702 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I almost added a comment about that too. In my experience, all doctors, nurses, and other caregivers with whom I have interacted at hospitals have told me they feel treated like "factory workers" who must meet stringent "quality of care" KPIs, set by hospital executives far removed from actual patient care.

So why are we putting jerseys on and taking the field against the insurers when virtually all of the actual money is going to providers? We could zero out all insurance costs, putting insurers into literal de jure indentured servitude, and get nothing more than a grocery store circular coupon discount on health costs, because insurers are not in fact where the costs are.

Shooting the messenger is a rather common hobby.

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

#153

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

tptacek wrote: post #116
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with our health insurance system is that it's insidious. Our doctors spend ~25% of their time filling out information that only gets filled out to try to get insurance to not deny the claims, and hospitals have entire billing departments whose only job is dealing with the billing of our stupid ass system. The problem isn't just the ~15% that the insurance companies take directly, it's that since their per…

Is that why they make as much as 3x what doctors in other G20 countries make? Hazard pay for the paperwork?

That's not all of the reason (some of it is higher cost of living, compare G20 vs G7 and the gap narrows a bunch). Some of the reason is because of US education costs, and immigration policies that make it harder for people to come and work in healthcare.

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

#154

Post by s1artibartfast »

bdangubic wrote: post #144
s1artibartfast wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I disagree. We have a system of laws and courts to decide what is criminal. People should not kill law abiding citizens they disagree with because everyone has a different opinion.

I pay around $20k/year for health insurance for myself, my wife and my daughter. I need insurance coverage to save my life and it is denied and I die. Under what US Statute (any state or federal) can a prosecutor charge the people responsible for my death? surely on the system of laws and courts you say we have there is something… I’ll wait… also people should most definitely NOT kill law abiding citizens! we do have…

I guess this is the crux of it. The law does not hold anyone responsible for your death, and nobody is responsible for providing you life saving services.

These are the laws that your fellow citizens have chosen and established.

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

#155

Post by vundercind »

defen wrote: post #111
jjj123 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When deciding who deserves my scorn, I genuinely do put those who are in power and commit atrocities at scale (like healthcare CEOs) above one-off violent criminals. Even if you’re a few levels removed from the deaths you’ve caused, you still have blood on your hands imo.

Would you rather have had this guy around you / your loved ones, or one of the people in the other groups I named?

Wasn’t the topic scorn?

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

#156

Post by atmavatar »

defen wrote: post #111
jjj123 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When deciding who deserves my scorn, I genuinely do put those who are in power and commit atrocities at scale (like healthcare CEOs) above one-off violent criminals. Even if you’re a few levels removed from the deaths you’ve caused, you still have blood on your hands imo.

Would you rather have had this guy around you / your loved ones, or one of the people in the other groups I named?

What precisely is your point?

I'd rather have the Sackler family show up for a dinner than the Manson family, but if we're being honest, the former is responsible for several orders of magnitude more deaths than the latter.

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

#157

Post by yongjik »

So, private insurance companies ripping off patients is such an injustice that we are arguing that a literal murder could be (somewhat) justified - in HN of all places, where "it's the evil billionaires" was never a popular position - as if we are in total desperation and everything is on the table.

...when it is simply a consequence of America's system and the solution (public health insurance) is implemented in every other places.

Have we all got drunk on libertarianism until we would rather see CEOs murdered on the street than admitting maybe, sometimes, government managing its own citizens' welfare is an acceptable solution?

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

#158

Post by justinclift »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #143
vouaobrasil wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way. Humanity since the dawn of time has always had the potential to mob when things became dire. We still have it today, only it is more controlled via technology and rationality. This killing will not start anarchy. But it does have the capability to start a resistance against existing power structures, and that is what everyone is actually (consciously or unconsciously) worried about. We are only conditioned to…

Yes, and mobbing often leads to mass deaths and people worse off than the state before. I dont think this is the straw that breaks the camel's back or anything. It just seems like one more incremental step in the wrong direction. Maybe I'm sensitive because I have been reading about the french revolution, and how mob rule lead to mass murder which left everyone worse off.

> mob rule lead to mass murder which left everyone worse off.

From your point of view was the "everyone left worse off" a short term thing, or did it eventually come good for most, or something else?

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

#159

Post by tbrownaw »

WorldWideWebb wrote: post #88
cs702 wrote: post #71

Health "insurance" companies in the US are not actually, primarily insurers. For the most part, they are not in the business of insuring rare events. Maybe they were primarily in the insurance business at some point in the past, but today they are mainly in the business of entrenching themselves in the middle of all interactions between patients, doctors, and hospitals, and extracting rents from all of them. Health "…

Accurate. They are literally middle men taking a cut without offering anything to the process. Switch to single payer, dump the middlemen, and have our taxes pay for essential services (keeping us alive and healthy). Seems simple enough but…

> Switch to single payer, dump the middlemen, and have our taxes pay for essential services (keeping us alive and healthy). Seems simple enough but…

... But you still have group A (patients) paying group B (doctors) with group C's (taxpayers', or currently insurers'/policyholders') money.

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

#160

Post by joe_the_user »

tptacek wrote: post #110
cs702 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I almost added a comment about that too. In my experience, all doctors, nurses, and other caregivers with whom I have interacted at hospitals have told me they feel treated like "factory workers" who must meet stringent "quality of care" KPIs, set by hospital executives far removed from actual patient care.

So why are we putting jerseys on and taking the field against the insurers when virtually all of the actual money is going to providers? We could zero out all insurance costs, putting insurers into literal de jure indentured servitude, and get nothing more than a grocery store circular coupon discount on health costs, because insurers are not in fact where the costs are.

The entire health care system is broken but insurance companies tend to be the pain people experience so that's what people lash out at.

But you don't expect someone dying from losing health care to shut up until they come up with rational cost management system? The point isn't that the average person needs to how to portion blame but that the health care system needs to stop treating people in the fashion it does.

Post reply on HN