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Hit men aren't what you think

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Re: Hit men aren't what you think

#111

Post by kube-system »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #104
kube-system wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The purpose of a system is what it does. As if systems always do as intended? If that were the case, my code would never have downtime! The interactions between intent and results in any sufficiently large system is inherently complex.

That's the opposite of what the phrase means. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_w... If a system constantly fails to do what it was intended to do, then we should consider that what it does in reality is its true purpose. Basically this is functional structuralism.

I understand what it means. I think it is a silly maxim, because it is unnecessarily reductive. Employer sponsored healthcare insurance wasn't ever intended to be a good system for providing healthcare to people, it was popularized as a workaround for employers to raise wages during the Stabilization Act of 1942. Everything that has changed since then has been incremental changes for differing reasons. The idea that a huge system like this even has a single "intent" is ridiculous. It is made up of thousands of different actors, each in different situations with different intents and interests.

Re: Hit men aren't what you think

#112

Post by avalys »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #83
avalys wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

United Healthcare is a publicly-traded company which makes a 6% profit margin and pays a dividend, which means that those profits ultimately benefit people's retirement accounts, pensions and middle-class investments. The person who was killed made $10M last year, while UHC provided care to 52 million patients. So, the CEO was paid approximately $0.20 per patient treated last year. What part of all this do you believ…

The purpose of a system is what it does. It's functionally isomorphic to a black box where I make a deposit, every time it denies someone medical treatment I get back monetary reward and I can withdraw my deposit at any time. If we ask ourselves, "Should this black box exist?" I cannot reasonably expect people to say, "Yes." Yet, here we are.

Without the black box, no one gets any medical treatment at all!

Re: Hit men aren't what you think

#113

Post by michaeljx »

I don't understand the comments excusing the CEO of his responsibility. I work for a scale-up insurance company, and the CEOs are pretty clear with their mandate: customer service is paramount, we make money by streamlining our processes, negotiating hard with our network, and pricing properly our products. NOT by denying claims. This philosophy is enforced from the top all the way down, with Chinese walls between pricing and claims handling, proper training, and continuous NPS surveys

Re: Hit men aren't what you think

#114

Post by cogman10 »

nickff wrote: post #109
cogman10 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using binary thinking. It's not a binary. I can contend that United's denials are responsible for killing people because they are denying at 2x the industry average. To prove me wrong, you'd have to show that actually the rest of the industry isn't denying enough and that United has somehow stumbled upon the real rate of spurious insurance claims. And for the 100% of money to healthcare that makes the assumpt…

Why is the burden of proof on me? You’re the one justifying a murder! Also, I wouldn’t have to prove than increasing healthcare spending to 100% of GDP would be optimal, just proving that there is some incremental gain by spending a tiny bit more than is currently spent by a single-payer would justify the murder of one or more legislators (by your logic).

> You’re the one justifying a murder!

I'm not, nor have I ever.

And with that I think this conversation is done. If you won't engage with any point I've made and instead are just here to insult me there's no point in continuing further.

Re: Hit men aren't what you think

#115

Post by avalys »

michaeljx wrote: post #113

I don't understand the comments excusing the CEO of his responsibility. I work for a scale-up insurance company, and the CEOs are pretty clear with their mandate: customer service is paramount, we make money by streamlining our processes, negotiating hard with our network, and pricing properly our products. NOT by denying claims. This philosophy is enforced from the top all the way down, with Chinese walls between pr…

How do you avoid losing money due to fraudulent claims, claims for services outside the scope of what you're insuring against, claims for ineffective resolutions to the claimed damages, etc.?

Am I supposed to know what a "scale-up insurance company" is?

Re: Hit men aren't what you think

#116

Post by [deleted] »

cogman10 wrote: post #38
nickff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This phrase: "responsible for so many deaths" is doing a lot of work in your post. What is your theory of responsibility? Is it legal or ethical, and if it is the latter (as I would suspect), what framework and criteria is it evaluated under? The answer is easy for a serial killer (obviously responsible for willful murder), a little more difficult for a soldier in war (directly responsible, but perhaps defending them…

> What is your theory of responsibility? Ethical: He was the CEO of the company and ultimately the buck stops with him on company policies. The company he lead has the highest number of insurance denials (double most other insurance agencies). That has almost certainly lead to death as people not being able to afford treatment is a great way to die. Consider, for example, if someone has cancer and insurance denies co…

[deleted]

Re: Hit men aren't what you think

#117

Post by parpfish »

JamesBarney wrote: post #79
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the classic strategy of being vauge-but-clear with one's orders ("Can you deal with this?" "Your Honor, I didn't tell him to kill anyone!") but, disregarding that, it doesn't seem in the employee's best interest. Where does the assistant's $200k/year come from after that? What if the blackmail attempt is rebuffed and the now-former assistant becomes a target for their former employer's new assistant?

Most personal assistants are not going to go find an hire a contract killer for their 200k a year job.

yeah, that entry-level FAANG engineer money. and i'm PRETTY sure that those folks aren't paid enough that they're willing to kill for their boss

Re: Hit men aren't what you think

#118

Post by antasvara »

nickff wrote: post #109
cogman10 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using binary thinking. It's not a binary. I can contend that United's denials are responsible for killing people because they are denying at 2x the industry average. To prove me wrong, you'd have to show that actually the rest of the industry isn't denying enough and that United has somehow stumbled upon the real rate of spurious insurance claims. And for the 100% of money to healthcare that makes the assumpt…

Why is the burden of proof on me? You’re the one justifying a murder! Also, I wouldn’t have to prove than increasing healthcare spending to 100% of GDP would be optimal, just proving that there is some incremental gain by spending a tiny bit more than is currently spent by a single-payer would justify the murder of one or more legislators (by your logic).

By my cursory Google search, the successful appeal rate for claims denials is somewhere between 30 and 60 percent.

With the caveat that this isn't a representative sample (people appealing likely have the denials most likely to be overturned), 30% at the low end still feels too high.

This rate is even higher for prior authorization denials. Those get overturned on appeal more than half the time.

Probably safe to assume that if your denial rate is 2x competitors, those numbers would be even worse.

Re: Hit men aren't what you think

#119

Post by kelseyfrog »

kube-system wrote: post #111
kelseyfrog wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the opposite of what the phrase means. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_w... If a system constantly fails to do what it was intended to do, then we should consider that what it does in reality is its true purpose. Basically this is functional structuralism.

I understand what it means. I think it is a silly maxim, because it is unnecessarily reductive. Employer sponsored healthcare insurance wasn't ever intended to be a good system for providing healthcare to people, it was popularized as a workaround for employers to raise wages during the Stabilization Act of 1942. Everything that has changed since then has been incremental changes for differing reasons. The idea that…

Purpose != intent. Besides, no one is saying there is a single intent so refuting that point doesn't exactly a counter.

Re: Hit men aren't what you think

#120

Post by kube-system »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #119
kube-system wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what it means. I think it is a silly maxim, because it is unnecessarily reductive. Employer sponsored healthcare insurance wasn't ever intended to be a good system for providing healthcare to people, it was popularized as a workaround for employers to raise wages during the Stabilization Act of 1942. Everything that has changed since then has been incremental changes for differing reasons. The idea that…

Purpose != intent. Besides, no one is saying there is a single intent so refuting that point doesn't exactly a counter.

Colloquially, no, they are synonymous.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purpose

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intent

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