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UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

bloomberg.com

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Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#241

Post by nxobject »

This is unjust. I don’t want to know what sick conspiracy mindset led to this - I wouldn’t be surprised if the murderer’s only motive was terror and a ill-defined, horrifying blanket desire to target “the establishment”.

In a just world, sadly, this man would have been slapped with a class action case with a 1000 times the ferocity the ex-CEO of Steward Health is getting, and both he and UnitedHealthcare would be painstakingly charged for the tens of thousands of manslaughter cases he would be liable for, that families of victims would happily testify to, whether due to denied care, or the stress or unsustainable and unjustified medical debt.

That would be justice, and that would the be the only way the insurance industry would have been seriously pushed to reform.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#242

Post by vundercind »

busterarm wrote: post #240
vundercind wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also large amounts of crime in NY goes unreported because people mind their business and/or don't trust the cops. Yes, crime stats are a mess for a bunch of reasons. The most-reliable are murder stats, because they rarely go unreported or otherwise unnoticed, and are the hardest to "juke the stats" on, especially if you try to do it for more than a brief span of time. Those are better in scary ol' Manhattan than in…

per-capita. NYC still has like 400-500 murders a year. That's a small area. That's as many as happen in my whole state.

... but per-capita is 100% of what matters when assessing risk...?

[EDIT] Assessing risk based on course crime stats, I mean. Of course individual context and situations matter a lot, too.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#243

Post by nameless912 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #165
criddell wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.npr.org/2017/01/10/509164679/from-the-start-obam...

> Sarah Palin coined the phrase "death panel" in a widely shared Facebook post. Does not support the claim > we let insurance companies label government triage as "death panels"

I would be fascinated to see to who was donating to Sarah Palin's campaigns at the time.

In the US, all political speech is bought and sold on the open market. Especially statements made by (most) politicians.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#244

Post by r00fus »

vundercind wrote: post #209
Kye wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a propaganda machine trying to make Manhattan look dangerous, so I don't think anyone thought this was random.

There's an ongoing "all the big liberal cities are scary" vibe in much media that's been internalized by a large proportion of the population. I know multiple people (and have myself experienced this) who've been greeted with warnings and concern from relatives when traveling to major cities... when those cities have violent crime rates far lower than the places they/we live. Like, a fifth as much or lower. It's stil…

Anecdotally one of my colleagues recently moved from W. Va to the CA and his entire family are constantly fearful for his family because they have been conditioned to think liberal cities (and even CA in general) is a crime-infested cesspit. Like his whole family is praying for him weekly - even many months after the move.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#245

Post by mostlysimilar »

oceanplexian wrote: post #176
jredwards wrote: post #78

[flagged]

[flagged]

What planet do you live on? Are YOU getting your information and worldview from "TV pundits"?

Corporate greed is a race to the bottom and CEOs are the avatars of that greed. Nobody needs a pundit to tell them that, they're experiencing it first hand for themselves, and you're playing a losing game defending them. You will never convince a man who struggles to pay rent and buy food that a CEO deserves millions of dollars. You will never convince a woman that she deserves to be in thousands of dollars of healthcare debt so that the CEO can buy extra houses and cars.

Human nature will never accept this, no matter how much you wish your libertarian philosophizing about the world was representative of reality. Corporations and billionaires continue to gain power and working class people are getting exploited more and more. There's a breaking point and we're racing towards it fast.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#246

Post by ryandrake »

antisthenes wrote: post #205
s1artibartfast wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People demand justice, whether they're right to is a secondary concern, as is the methodologies they choose to seek it. Some become activists. Some become politicians. Some pick up guns. That is a true, but We should discourage and condemn them picking up guns. There is a feedback loop at play

> That is a true, but We should discourage and condemn them picking up guns. Nonsense. They will and should pick up guns if the entrenched systems no longer serve the purpose of the majority. Sure, it's not ideal. But sometimes it's the only way to enact change. Some of the most important rights we have today were won with violence.

It's one of the so-called "Four boxes of liberty[1]". When the soap, ballot, and jury boxes are no longer effective, we should not be surprised when people increasingly reach for the ammo box.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#247

Post by busterarm »

vundercind wrote: post #242
busterarm wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

per-capita. NYC still has like 400-500 murders a year. That's a small area. That's as many as happen in my whole state.

... but per-capita is 100% of what matters when assessing risk...? [EDIT] Assessing risk based on course crime stats, I mean. Of course individual context and situations matter a lot, too.

Not really. Proximity is important. It influences how many people are going to be affected by it.

Getting murdered on my front lawn is a lot different than getting murdered in the lobby of a housing complex with 1000 people living in it.

Density is even more important when considering random crime because you have even more people who will be potential victims when someone is targeting an area.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#249

Post by dboreham »

yyuugg wrote: post #188
oceanplexian wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This CEO, in particular, has almost certainly taken actions that resulted in preventable suffering and death. To some degree, that's the nature of running health insurance companies, but if he put profits ahead of patient outcomes, I think we could have a very reasonable discussion on the morality of letting people die at scale vs murder.

The CEO has bosses, and was presumably doing what they wanted him to do.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#250

Post by joshmanders »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #245
oceanplexian wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What planet do you live on? Are YOU getting your information and worldview from "TV pundits"? Corporate greed is a race to the bottom and CEOs are the avatars of that greed. Nobody needs a pundit to tell them that, they're experiencing it first hand for themselves, and you're playing a losing game defending them. You will never convince a man who struggles to pay rent and buy food that a CEO deserves millions of doll…

The wealth gap is higher now than it was during the French Revolution, if anyone was interested in "history repeating itself" insights into the future.
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