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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)

#331

Post by peitho_pls »

lijok wrote: post #210
peitho_pls wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The insurer is a business, its ultimate priority is the make money. Same as the hospital, the drug producer, etc. I am sure they all want to prioritize client care but that have to ration it by cost at some level.

Insurance firms have the unique benefit of being able to offload their costs to their customer base in the form of premiums. That and excess would be the appropriate level to ration in the cost. Is that not verbatim how insurance works?

I look at it as Insurers generate float from upfront premium payments to invest in the market and generate returns and also cover future payouts.

Then an insurer can go about negotiating the prices of treatment with health care providers to determine payouts.

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

#332

Post by sershe »

griomnib wrote: post #6

No jury will convict the shooter, I suspect he’ll “resist arrest” and never make it to a court room for that reason.

Is that so? For myself, I can say that if he was caught, turned out to be a vigilante, and was convicted to death, I'd pay good money to be assigned as an executioner.

Most people are probably somewhere in the middle.

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

#333

Post by sangnoir »

mrangle wrote: post #327
sangnoir wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thompson is not responsible for the existence of the insurance industry Surely he bears some responsibility for making UHC the worst to deal with and the having the highest rejection rate? > What I do see is a strong push by media ... Why would the media push a narrative against any executive if it wasn't already part of the zeitgeist? The media has consistently exhibited strong class solidarity in my experience. >…

>Surely he bears some responsibility for making UHC the worst to deal with and the having the highest rejection rate? If so, and barring subjectivity and narrative, then not responsibility with a penalty of death. Very obviously. >Why would the media push a narrative against any executive if it wasn't already part of the zeitgeist? The media has consistently exhibited strong class solidarity in my experience. Extraju…

> Trump supporters are not remotely supportive of this

So, the guys who brought/assembled gallows to the capital and were chanting "Hang Mike Pence" are not supportive of extrajudicial killings? We're not on the same plane of existence, you and I.

> People who sympathize with this type of thing are, at the least, domestic terrorism adjacent

I remember a chyron at a national convention stating "We are all domestic terrorists" - perhaps stoking that flame was not a great idea now, was it? What's your take on those who refuse to take any action on mass shootings at schools?

> You should be monitored.

You'd love that, wouldn't you? The Stasi would be proud. Establishing a police state with dragnet surveillance is a fantastic tool for fighting disaffection and will surely improve morale.

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

#334

Post by therealdrag0 »

griomnib wrote: post #44
threemux wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so sure. It's interesting how quickly the places where this ghoulish view is proliferating (Reddit) have forgotten what they learned a month ago. The Internet is not reality and online posts are not a representative sample of the population. Instead, every survey of Americans shows around 80% are satisfied with their health coverage.

If they aren’t sick and haven’t had to use the system for life saving care, then the numbers from the same surveys you cite are VASTLY different. Please don’t cherry pick misleading data.

The context is about how the jury would feel about it, which includes people who aren’t and haven’t been sick. So the other commenter’s data is more correct and your attempt to partition out a subset of demographics is what is misleading.

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

#335

Post by wat10000 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #312
wat10000 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds an awful lot like “don’t have opinions, because other people will have different opinions.” Ok, someone will take pleasure in the murder of someone I think doesn’t deserve it. So what? Obviously I don’t like that, but people think all kinds of stuff I don’t like. Why should this particular opinion change mine? Virtually everyone would take pleasure in someone’s murder. Osama bin Laden, say. Hitler, if we…

> sounds an awful lot like “don’t have opinions, because other people will have different opinions.” Not at all. Our healthcare system is corrupt. That doesn’t excuse murder. Bin Laden was offed by a state. Depending on your morals, that is or isn’t different. But those who equate a serial killer with a soldier are in the stark, stark minority. > little surprising to find out that so many Americans consider this guy…

Sorry, who’s the serial killer and who’s the soldier in this equation?

I don't plan on going out and killing anyone, but I don’t see what’s wrong with thinking it’s good if it happens to certain very bad people. I suspect you have some people you’d think that of too. Maybe not, but most people do.

Since I’m not acting on it, my judgment counts for essentially nothing. I don’t understand this strong reaction to it.

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

#336

Post by kelseyfrog »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #279
wiml wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You imply that you have access to some unvarnished truth, unlike the other commenters who are trapped in their bubbles. What is your justification for this belief? Is it possible for other people to have access to this higher truth, or is it something innate to you?

My justification I guess is repeatedly seeing various commenters on certain sites espousing the same things in almost the same language. Then some event happened in the real world and they all start asking themselves "how could this happen", again, commonly in similar language. Meanwhile, I'm shocked that those people didn't see X. Sure, it's possible to acquire my magnificent skills, by just going out and interactin…

But you could say that about anything including the opposite.

I see a bunch of people who say that "CEO-killing is wrong. Therefore they must be in an internet bubble." I think we should both admit that the consistency of a message isn't actually a good signal for "bubbleness" and that something like randomized polling on personal beliefs and perceptions or a similar study actually would be.

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

#337

Post by plagiarist »

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 insurance model is for catastrophic care. It is completely failing us for long-term care, but has inserted itself in that process anyway. You can indeed see prices on elective procedures are at least adjacent to sanity, because insurance refuses to pay a cent for that.

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

#338

Post by wat10000 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #308
wat10000 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To paraphrase the Joker: when tens of thousands of people die because their health insurance denies needed care, nobody panics. But kill one little insurance CEO and everyone loses their mind. I’m personally much more interested in why people are so uncaring about a bad system that kills a ton of innocent people, than in why people don’t care about the murder of someone who got wealthy making it happens.

> kill one little insurance CEO and everyone loses their mind A narrow slice of social media is losing its mind. It’s New York. It’s unusual. But there are a lot of gun deaths in America every month.

The NYPD seems to be losing its mind over this too.

You’re right, it’s not unusual. So not unusual that this wasn’t even the only murder in Manhattan that day. There was at least one other. Only one is getting a massive manhunt and media coverage for some reason.

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

#339

Post by peitho_pls »

plagiarist wrote: post #322
peitho_pls wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is about someone getting cutting edge care beyond medical literature from the one of the leading experts in the world. I've got to imagine most health funds would simply not be able to cover that type of care for an individual?

The article notes this particular healthcare fund made billions of dollars in profit for the year and one of the parties interviewed speculates that this individual's care would represent a few minutes of that. The gastroenterologist is not the expensive part, either, the expensive part was the manufacturing process for the drug. It would be super cool to invest the billions of profit for this insurance company into…

Absolutely, the insurer could sacrifice some profitability to pay for this case, but eventually health care costs have to be rationed somewhere. I don't think any health care system can afford this level of treatment for as often as it is needed, and I don't think capping the profit in the industry solves that problem.

Also I would agree the insurer is absolutely making medical decisions with its own definition of medical necessity. But the Doctor is also making financial decisions when he recommends a drug that pays him significant consulting fees every year. There's warped incentives all over.

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

#340

Post by plagiarist »

slt2021 wrote: post #205
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...

not true, Insurance Pharmacies Doctors and Hospitals all work together. The high list prices you see are only exist there to scare uninsured/underinsured Americans and to force them to buy/pay more expensive insurance. As soon as you get treated, these list prices magically get reduced on the backend by factor of 2-3x. Doctors themselves cannot price gouge patients, but they can price gouge via middleman (insurance).…

> Also insurance literally FORCES americans to work, because thats the only way to get affordable health insurance.

This is really important. This system is artificially lowering the cost of labor and preventing people from immediately leaving workplaces where they are treated poorly by the employers or the customers.

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