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UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

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Re: UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

#171

Post by criddell »

rqtwteye wrote: post #118
lenerdenator wrote: post #70

The events of the last week are just what happens when a company decides to refuse to meet its customers in the marketplace of sane ideas. You could probably have gotten away with what UNH did if the money wasn't so ridiculous. Thompson himself had a compensation package worth $10.2 million[0] a year. It's reasonable to think that other c-suiters at the company, along with those of its parent organization, made simil…

Your first sentence is already wrong. With employer based insurance the company is the customer. The patient is the product.

Tens of millions of people are buying insurance through the ACA directly from companies like United.

Re: UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

#172

Post by benmmurphy »

lenerdenator wrote: post #70

The events of the last week are just what happens when a company decides to refuse to meet its customers in the marketplace of sane ideas. You could probably have gotten away with what UNH did if the money wasn't so ridiculous. Thompson himself had a compensation package worth $10.2 million[0] a year. It's reasonable to think that other c-suiters at the company, along with those of its parent organization, made simil…

We don't have an infinite supply of health care and there is a strong demand so there is always going to be some form of rationing going on. There are always going to be people with chronic life ruining conditions that are going to get a raw deal under whatever system you propose to distribute the limited supply of healthcare. It seems like someone is always going to have a justification to kill someone whether its a CEO or some faceless bureaucrat.

Re: UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

#173

Post by tzs »

griomnib wrote: post #35
paulgb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a New Yorker and I think that most of us actually do not believe that assassinations are a net benefit to society, no matter how dissatisfied with the health care system we are.

There’s an incredibly strong argument this particular person likely killed tens of thousand of people by his decisions to deny and delay care. This was not an employee carrying out orders from corporate, it’s the guy who is directly responsible for these deaths. This CEO is as much a mass murder as any other tyrant who commanded soldiers to commit atrocities. That will be part of the defense argument presented to the…

> There’s an incredibly strong argument this particular person likely killed tens of thousand of people by his decisions to deny and delay care.

Anyone got a cite for that? I want to know how that number was measured or calculated.

Re: UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

#174

Post by peitho_pls »

mgraczyk wrote: post #161

This guy's condition is tragic, but it's crazy to me that people can read this and come away thinking the insurance companies are the bad guys. Many drugs don't work, they are expensive. If there are no voices in the room saying "we will not pay for expensive drugs that do not work", then healthcare costs will continue spiraling out of control. Single payer healthcare will "solve" this by ensuring that the medication…

Agreed. Medicine is one area where desperate people will understandably reach for any measure that offers some hope, but insurers can't be on the hook for everything.

Re: UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

#175

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

lijok wrote: post #131

What a poorly designed system. If the insurer truly prioritizes client care as they claim, why on earth would the doctors contracted to review the treatments of the insured, have access to the insurance policies? Shouldn't the output of their review simply be whether or not the treatment seems appropriate, period? Why are the doctors weighing their review against the insurers policies? Honestly, this just seems like…

> What a poorly designed system. If the insurer truly prioritizes client care as they claim, why on earth would the doctors contracted to review the treatments of the insured, have access to the insurance policies? Shouldn't the output of their review simply be whether or not the treatment seems appropriate, period? Why are the doctors weighing their review against the insurers policies?

All healthcare systems ultimately have to make cost-benefit tradeoffs, and in the US system those tradeoffs are generally represented as insurer coverage policies. I don't mean to suggest that this justifies the story in the article, where it really sounds like the treatment did fit the policy and UHC worked hard to avoid seeing that. But there's no system where a doctor dreams up an arbitrarily expensive treatment protocol and a patient gets it with low out-of-pocket costs and no questions asked.

Re: UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

#176

Post by ndriscoll »

dragonwriter wrote: post #113
griomnib wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) You literally cannot have a murder trial without presenting a motive or evidence of reckless negligence/behavior (eg drunk driving). This is not drunk driving, ergo motive will be central to prosecution and defense alike. B) His lawyers will be the best of the best. C) Jury nullification.

> A) You literally cannot have a murder trial without presenting a motive or evidence of reckless negligence/behavior (eg drunk driving). You literally can, You have to, of course, prove the elements of the offense, but iif the defense wants to introduce evidence whose only legal relevance is proving an element of the crime, the prosecution will be more than happy to stipulate to the legally relevant fact and render…

> Jury nullification exists, but evidence whose only purpose (given the facts in dispute) is to promote it is, ipso facto, legally irrelevant and will be excluded for that reason.

What's interesting about this is it places jurors into a position where they need to decide whether to make an adverse inference against the state. If they have reason to believe that the defense may have wanted to present such facts but the state disallowed it, then it makes sense to refuse to convict (even if they wouldn't otherwise be in favor of nullification) so as not to participate in a show trial. But they can't actually know whether this happened because explaining why you committed a crime is usually a terrible idea, so you'd usually expect it to not happen.

Re: UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

#177

Post by klysm »

breadwinner wrote: post #138

Insurance companies are hardly the only ones at fault here. Hospitals and Pharma companies are guilty of price gouging [1]. When insurance pays hospitals hike up the prices. When the patient pays (such as for cosmetic or plastic surgery) the prices charged by hospitals and doctors are more reasonable. [1] https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2022-05-31-hospital-price-gougi...

The price hikes are enabled by our insurance structure

Re: UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

#178

Post by DougN7 »

benmmurphy wrote: post #172
lenerdenator wrote: post #70

The events of the last week are just what happens when a company decides to refuse to meet its customers in the marketplace of sane ideas. You could probably have gotten away with what UNH did if the money wasn't so ridiculous. Thompson himself had a compensation package worth $10.2 million[0] a year. It's reasonable to think that other c-suiters at the company, along with those of its parent organization, made simil…

We don't have an infinite supply of health care and there is a strong demand so there is always going to be some form of rationing going on. There are always going to be people with chronic life ruining conditions that are going to get a raw deal under whatever system you propose to distribute the limited supply of healthcare. It seems like someone is always going to have a justification to kill someone whether its a…

That’s true, but UHC alone has $6 BILLION in profit each _quarter_. A whole lot of that could be going towards health care. In my opinion health insurance providers should not be for-profit.

Re: UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

#179

Post by tossandthrow »

henry2023 wrote: post #95
spondylosaurus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UHC also has the highest claim denial rate in the healthcare industry, and they're notorious for stiffing doctors on payments as well. If there was ever a health insurer who'd stoke the kind of grudge that drives people to violence, it's UHC, because they're the worst among the worst.

32% of claims are denied. I don't know how is this legal.

We might be entering an era where what's legal and what's right is diverging more and more - with these things happening as a result.

Re: UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023)

#180

Post by standardUser »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #163
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're viewing "Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, news articles, et al", that's usually not so. Each of these platforms optimize their default views to show you the content they expect will be most engaging, although the first three apply some algorithmic filtering to try and make the content engaging to you in particular rather than the average viewer. Equally importantly, the content that gets produced is subject to thi…

Let’s not forget if you go against the grain and post “people are celebrating murder, which is gross” you are probably going to get downvoted—even on this site! This whole celebration of murder thing is so bizarre. The fact it seems to be the default “way to get upvotes” and speaking out is “downvote city” is… well… disconcerting to say the least.

It speaks to the deep and broad frustration among Americans towards our healthcare system. This isn't just executives or politicians "screwing people over" like we see in so many other realms. There's a significant number of Americans who love someone who has actually died or suffered severer/permanent physical distress for the sake of insurance company profits.

When someone's family gets blown up from the sky and that someone becomes a terrorist willing to use violence against the party they blame for their family members death, we may not like it but we don't pretend to not understand it. Similarly we can't pretend to not understand this phenomenon.

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