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

propublica.org

381–390 of 394 posts

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

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bubbleness isn't about the viewpoint, it is about the difference between bubble perception vs global perception.

If you read reddit/twitter, a common statement was something like "The police will never be able to find him - no one will cooperate". "Must be hard to find someone when there are 150million suspects". Basically, treating him like a modern day robin hood.

When, back in real life, the news of the day seems to be that he was caught at a McDonalds after two random employees noticed him and called the police on him.

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

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bubbleness isn't about the viewpoint, it is about the difference between bubble perception vs global perception. If you read reddit/twitter, a common statement was something like "The police will never be able to find him - no one will cooperate". "Must be hard to find someone when there are 150million suspects". Basically, treating him like a modern day robin hood. When, back in real life, the news of the day seems…

If you want to make a statement about bubbles, then you have to ground it in global perception which is operationalizable and empirically verifiable - speculation isn't epistemologically responsible.

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

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a good idea. Not no idea. And we know exactly how people are responding to the killing, regardless of motive, so we don't have to split hairs on that at all.

We know how people chronically on social media are responding to the killing

Do you not have friends? A social network of your own? People I know are responding in a similar fashion to what we are seeing all over the entire spectrum of online media.

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

#384
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nobody is happy with corporate profits returning to shareholders at the expense of workers and customers, at least not as transparently as it is done now. How can you return anything to shareholders that's not "at the expense of workers and customers"? Each dollar paid to shareholders is going to be one less dollar that can be paid to workers/customers, so almost by definition paying anything to shareholders is goin…

> Is this supposed to be a thinly veiled attempt at stating marxist ideology? Hardly. The Friedman doctrine didn't exist prior to 1970; does that make every business venture prior to that a statist-collectivist enterprise? Are privately-owned companies the expressed goal of Marxism? Of course not. The whole "if you don't have a bunch of free riders participating in an equities market, it's Marxism" bit is an intentio…

>Hardly. The Friedman doctrine didn't exist prior to 1970; does that make every business venture prior to that a statist-collectivist enterprise? Are privately-owned companies the expressed goal of Marxism? Of course not.

>The whole "if you don't have a bunch of free riders participating in an equities market, it's Marxism" bit is an intentionally obtuse argument.

To be fair, Marxism can roughly be summarized as "workers should own the means of production, capitalists are exploiting workers by leeching off what they produce", and what you've said so far about shareholders being "free riders" and that "corporate profits returning to shareholders at the expense of workers and customers" isn't too far off from that. The fact that you refuse to directly answer my question of whether shareholders should get any money doesn't help your case either. In light of all of this, I feel like asking whether you're arguing for Marxism was totally justified.

>Current schools of thought essentially dictate that management and investors treat that share as if it can be unlimited. Anything that could possibly limit returns (taxes, regulations, labor movements, consumer rights, etc.) is an externality or to be eliminated. Otherwise, it gets in the way of profit, and since most economist types have a limited ability to understand anything beyond the absolute simplest of abstractions, profit has to be the ultimate measure of social good. Therefore, those things stand in the way of social good.

Capital and labor are both trying to get as much share as possible. I don't see how either side is any different. If anything, labor has actually been more successful, because their share is currently above 50%, and actually got their share to 100% in a few places (ie. communism). Meanwhile I'm not aware of any instances where capital's share is 100%, except maybe some edge cases where capital and labor is the same person (ie. self employment).

>We should make it higher.

Why? More to the point, what do you think is an equitable split?

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know how people chronically on social media are responding to the killing

Do you not have friends? A social network of your own? People I know are responding in a similar fashion to what we are seeing all over the entire spectrum of online media.

I'm going to guess all of your friends and social network use the same sites and are in the same echo chamber as you. And please don't delude yourself into thinking that if you poll everyone on the spectrum of social media, that you will have any idea what the general American public think about a topic.

Neither here nor there, but were you surprised by Trump winning in the fashion he did?

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

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bubbleness isn't about the viewpoint, it is about the difference between bubble perception vs global perception. If you read reddit/twitter, a common statement was something like "The police will never be able to find him - no one will cooperate". "Must be hard to find someone when there are 150million suspects". Basically, treating him like a modern day robin hood. When, back in real life, the news of the day seems…

If you want to make a statement about bubbles, then you have to ground it in global perception which is operationalizable and empirically verifiable - speculation isn't epistemologically responsible.

I'm not particularly worried about verification or epistemologically responsibility when something is manifestly obvious. The same reason I'm not jumping out of an airplane without a parachute even if I haven't read a study on the relative effectiveness of parachutes vs no parachutes when jumping out of an airplane.

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

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Only one is getting a massive manhunt and media coverage for some reason Yes. It’s a lower Manhattan daytime shooting of a non-New Yorker. It’s where rich New Yorkers are. It’s where most New Yorkers are. It’s where most of New York City’s economy—including vastly most of its tourism—is. (And it will keep the media’s attention because the killer is photogenic.)

I understand the reasons why this murder gets so much time, attention, and effort, while the other Manhattan murder that day (that I know of) gets so little.

My point is that there is a big fuss being made, it’s not just a narrow slice of social media. The suspect’s apprehension is the top story on every American news outlet I checked just now. And my secondary point is that the disparity is deeply fucked up.

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments you see on the Internet are not a random sample! If there's one lesson I could drive home to everyone about media literacy, this is it. Everything you see online is intensely, competitively selected for its ability to drive engagement, and celebrating murder drives a ton of engagement precisely because it transgresses well-established and widely agreed norms. Indeed, as we've seen here, the murder drives so…

He ran the health insurance company that holds the record in denied claims in the US. I think that's why hardly anyone sheds a tear. Right now, the culturally transgressive thing to do is, say, make youtube videos about how shocking it is for the public to have no love for this CEO, and then getting ratio'd, everywhere, all the time. What do find troubling is the glorification of the killer. We know nothing about his…

So I "checked", so to speak, instead of just going by the random things I saw, and yes, it's everywhere. Where people can speak freely, this is what they say. There is nothing wrong with any of these people. The only noteworthy thing here are the attempts to smear or silence them.

CNN: "Some social media users seem to lack sympathy for the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s death"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcY38-ILjos

top voted 10 comments as of now:

> A "civilized society" doesn't allow its citizens to suffer and die needlessly so that insurance CEOs get filthy rich.

> CNN doesn't get to dictate how people should feel.

> How many people died to fund the CEO's lifestyle?

> You can see how fox and cnn suddenly have the same opinion when it comes to safety of elites

> Shut up, CNN. Your days of being relevant are running out anyways. The people have spoken.

> I love how the media, complicit in the war against the poor, tells the poor how they can and cannot express their anger.

> We're giving back the same sympathy that was given to us.

> No. You’re not going to tell me I need to have sympathy for someone who spent his life and career without sympathy for others. Not being sad a bad person died does not mean something is wrong with me.

> Finally, something all Americans can be UNITED against

> You're morale grandstanding for a mass murdering pyschopath. The CEO was a monster.

MSNBC: "What the online reaction to CEO's killing reveals about America"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zY1phtEuT4

top voted 15 comments as of now:

> So the problem is social media? Why aren't they talking about the real problem? The appalling US healthcare system.

> Celebrate murder?? normalizing insurance companies is celebrating murder, you hypocrites.

> His $10 million salary was $10 million of healthcare that was denied. How many people had to die for that $10 million. Healthcare should not be for profit. Do you get it now?

> This clip is all the proof we need that corporate media is more out of touch with the average person than ever before.

> 3:50 So you want to censor valid public opinion rather than address the root issues leading to such opinions? Good to know.

> These elite people sitting at a round table discussing how the peasants are behaving! Not once did the hint at that just maybe the insurance companies should evaluate their policies

> The only people who are surprised by this reaction are the talking heads. The media is more out of touch than ever.

> We keep being told that the deaths of poor and middle class people (old and young) is not a problem for the system. Then a fat rich man gets killed because of his greedy actions and the upper class is shocked that we say “it is not a problem”. That is part of the problem.

> So the lesson we learned is to silence people online? Get a grip. People aren’t upset that he was murdered, because he runs a company that denies care that leads to people’s deaths. “We’re normalizing murder”… well we’ve already normalized it for companies like UHC, why is this so different? Because we don’t have it on video?

> this woman says we should be outraged at the murder of a human being, ok, then why are we not equally outraged at the murder of thousands caused by the frivolous denial of life saving care by these insurance companies? Where is the outrage at that and why are those deaths acceptable?

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

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to make a statement about bubbles, then you have to ground it in global perception which is operationalizable and empirically verifiable - speculation isn't epistemologically responsible.

I'm not particularly worried about verification or epistemologically responsibility when something is manifestly obvious. The same reason I'm not jumping out of an airplane without a parachute even if I haven't read a study on the relative effectiveness of parachutes vs no parachutes when jumping out of an airplane.

Sorry, I hate to burst your bubble, but social facts ESPECIALLY need to be tested before being assumed because humans are particularly susceptible to typification, legitimization, and reification.

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

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change the term "the need for healthcare reform" with "the need to stop insurance executives from killing my mother" and you may have an easier time understanding it. It's personal. Make it personal for thousands of people and some of them will inevitably be radicalized.

> Make it personal for thousands of people and some of them will inevitably be radicalized. I fully understand the motive and can empathize with the alleged assailant but that doesn’t mean I am celebrating the fact somebody got murdered. Being able to empathize and understand the motives doesn’t make what the person who shot that dude morally or ethically right.

> Being able to empathize and understand the motives doesn’t make what the person who shot that dude morally or ethically right.

Never said it does bro.

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