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Hit men aren't what you think
141–150 of 311 posts
Re: Hit men aren't what you think
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know why I don't work for a trapping and pest control company? Because structurally they kill animals. They go around with tools of destruction and end the lives of animals. Its the function of their existence. Do you know why I don't work for a _for profit_ health insurance company, who's stated goals are explicitly to make profit by slicing out some amount of premiums that are not spent to provide healthcare in…
By this same logic, you are responsible for the death of every person who could have been saved by you donating all of your income beyond basic living expenses (your personal "profit", if you will) to pay for their medical care. You monster! How many people could you have saved! Instead you spend your money on vacations, television, computer games, music, movies, coffee, whatever. Oh, what's that you say? _You_ (who,…
This is a ridiculous reduction. It's clear that the numbers matter here, and that one family's decisions are nothing compared to the harm this CEO can create or prevent.
Re: Hit men aren't what you think
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personal income, that which sustains someones family, is vastly different then the billions made by United off the backs of those suffering. What, are you some healthcare exec or something? This is not the own you think it is.
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…
UHC does not provide care, they are a leach on society, as all health insurances companies are.
Re: Hit men aren't what you think
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to who? It changes the calculus for me. I pay my health insurance because it covers the services I need. I could absolutely opt out if I wanted to, but I don't.
Except we're not talking about the choice of being a customer or not. We're talking about the design choices of the system.
The system wasn't designed. There were no design choices. The entire thing is a legacy result of expectations and costs that all started snowballing from the moment FDR decided wage caps were a good way to stop inflation.
We're not in the situation we're in because anyone thought it was a good idea. We got here incrementally over ~80 years.
Re: Hit men aren't what you think
#145Earlier 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…
You know why I don't work for a trapping and pest control company? Because structurally they kill animals. They go around with tools of destruction and end the lives of animals. Its the function of their existence. Do you know why I don't work for a _for profit_ health insurance company, who's stated goals are explicitly to make profit by slicing out some amount of premiums that are not spent to provide healthcare in…
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Re: Hit men aren't what you think
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
The maxim, applied here, is an obtuse oversimplification of the problems with the health insurance system, and the barriers to changing it. Yes, if we could wave a wand and delete the fact that it ever happened, that would be ideal. But the problem is more difficult to solve now, because we have the problem of the health insurance system, and the problem of drastic systematic and economic change.
In my experience, choices to label opposition as either reductive or overly complex are largely rhetorical. They don't pass the validity test. Perhaps we should ask borrow the "magic wand" that seems to exist for every other country. Maybe they can lend us theirs since that's apparently how realistic a system that does not bankrupt people is. Sadly, it doesn't seem equally possible or realistic to build a system wher…
Precisely zero countries have dismantled a 1.6 trillion dollar, 80 year old health insurance system.
That's not to say it's impossible to do, or that we shouldn't. But, an economic, political, and social mass of this magnitude doesn't turn on a dime.
Other places had the luxury of solving the problem much earlier and on much smaller scales.
Re: Hit men aren't what you think
#147Earlier 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.
Purpose is intent. Your post here is just sophistry.
Re: Hit men aren't what you think
#148I suppose everyone assumes that being high profile and earning a multi-million dollar salary involves such risks naturally so it's not shocking when it happens. Why didn't he have security? In NYC? TBH, I'm kind of shocked it doesn't happen more often in a nation with over 300 million people and insanely high inequality... Especially in terms of media exposure, not just money.
There is a reason why most humans are naturally afraid of public speaking. Introversion is a survival trait. This trait was useful to survival 100+ years ago. The fear of the public lost much of its utility, but did it lose all utility? The kind of scale and centralization of human awareness we have today is unprecedented in human history. Are populations THAT much more passive as humans compared to before? Or do people just have a bigger fuse which takes longer to pop?
I come from a small state with a small half-a-million population where there is high inequality and I have had extended family members (who were among the elites of that society) who were shot and killed. Our house would get robbed 4 to 8 times a year. It's just normal when you live in an unequal society. As a comparison, my grandparents said they would sleep with their windows open back in their day (same country, just different times). It's not just inequality BTW; it's also about expectations. High inequality is fine if those who have nothing have low demands and accept their position in society. It's a real problem when they don't. People in the street of the capital would give you a death stare if you looked privileged. This may be the reality that America is heading for if inequality continues to get worse.
Re: Hit men aren't what you think
#149Earlier 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.
off topic but what is the difference between functionally isomorphic and isomorphic?
Re: Hit men aren't what you think
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know why I don't work for a trapping and pest control company? Because structurally they kill animals. They go around with tools of destruction and end the lives of animals. Its the function of their existence. Do you know why I don't work for a _for profit_ health insurance company, who's stated goals are explicitly to make profit by slicing out some amount of premiums that are not spent to provide healthcare in…
By this same logic, you are responsible for the death of every person who could have been saved by you donating all of your income beyond basic living expenses (your personal "profit", if you will) to pay for their medical care. You monster! How many people could you have saved! Instead you spend your money on vacations, television, computer games, music, movies, coffee, whatever. Oh, what's that you say? _You_ (who,…
You’re being facetious, but Peter Singer made this exact point about “ordinary people being evil” in a famous philosophy essay in 1972.