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UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

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Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#481

Post by s1artibartfast »

kerkeslager wrote: post #472
Clubber wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all fairness, Bernie Sanders did want to eliminate private insurance under his medicare for all proposal. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/health/private-health-ins... Warren and DeBlasio also signaled they would abolish private insurance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaTecufx8Sk

That's just the unclear messaging that the right wing is taking advantage of. I don't have a NYT subscription so I can't see the whole article, but as far as I can tell, there's nothing in that article that mentions actually preventing companies from offering private health insurance--it's just assumed (correctly) that these companies will be operating at a miniscule fraction of their current scale when people can ob…

you are wrong again! please read the article

>There are few international analogues to the Medicare for all proposals, but Canada, which provides similar doctor and hospital benefits for its residents, probably comes closest. Even there, people buy private insurance for benefits that are not covered by the government program, like prescription drugs and dental care. Most other countries with single-payer systems allow a more expansive, competing role for private coverage. In Britain, for example, everyone is covered by a public system, but people can pay extra for insurance that gives them access to private doctors.

https://archive.is/UqCOC#selection-857.0-945.254

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#482

Post by s1artibartfast »

tilne wrote: post #461
s1artibartfast wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is very close to my point. It is very easy to focus on a shady cabal and ignore the plurality of our countrymen that actively think and want something different. It is like there is a deep denial that real humans often want something different, and that we are forced to share a democratic society with them, which means losing on issues where we think we are right.

So should we as “real humans” also set up our own lobbying channels in Washington? Or are there some problems that make that somewhat unfeasible for us “real humans”?

real humans do have lobbying channels in washington and have the ballot box.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#483

Post by mindslight »

torified wrote: post #443
mindslight wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that gap exists. But that doesn't mean it explains away the whole topic the way it had been invoked. Furthermore I'm quite wary of hand waving arguments about the "will of the majority". "The majority" just complained about price inflation, while electing the former president that approved most of the monetary inflation they were complaining about, while he was actively promising even more inflation. And that i…

I wouldn't do it, but I actually do understand and respect the argument, "neither political side is going to materially help me, so why not vote for a wrecking ball that will surely change something ?"

I don't respect it because it was not an overt message being campaigned on, but rather the same 4d chess contortionism of people pulling out their own wishful signal from the noise of a double-talking con artist.

Furthermore even taking that argument at face value, it takes for granted how much we still do enjoy - even people on the shit rungs of society. The US military and world alliances making it so that we don't have to worry about military invasions, USD as the reserve currency making it so what we consider high price inflation is actually quite tame, bureaucratic authoritarianism keeping corporate authoritarianism from completely taking over, federal law enforcement keeping armed gangs in check. The economic meat grinder wealth/hope extraction machine is abjectly terrible, but also things can be so much worse.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#484

Post by MichaelZuo »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #476
MichaelZuo wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people picking are also human beings who experience the services of said company? Or are you implying the ‘pickers’ get special gold plated services completely different from regular employees?

They are monetarily and/or promotionally incentivized to pick a bad, cheaper option for employees. The other employees don't get rewarded for the decision.

They do get rewarded?

That money has to come from somewhere, so a cheaper pick means more money available for other things like nicer employee lounges, free drinks, etc…

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#485

Post by wnoise »

marky1991 wrote: post #30
telgareith wrote: post #27

[flagged]

Murder is wrong and should never be celebrated. Even if you thought someone were evil, murdering a person is inherently evil. What line of thinking led you to make this comment? Do you disagree with any of my positions? If yes, which and why?

This is true, but only by definition of murder as a wrongful killing. There are plenty of killings that aren't murder.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#486

Post by dunekid »

rich_sasha wrote: post #376
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #153

[flagged]

> The tone has shifted in a way that people who would have never be considered violent, are out buying weapons. I think that's what happens when people feel a peaceful discussion is going nowhere. The frustration only increases while available non-violent solutions appear to shrink. The Black Panthers, Palestinian terrorism... There's nothing good about it, but I find it entirely unsurprising.

Not only people feel that the non viability of peaceful dialogue doesn't exist, it is a reality that such dialogue is not going anywhere. As reiterated by the Genocidal regime's prime minister, peace in Palestine is not an option for Zionists.

The solutions are not appearing to shrink, rather the solutions are made to shrik, deliberately.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#487

Post by mrguyorama »

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…

My brother once told my mother to warn me about "Protests" in my city around the time that Portland Oregon was having it's fun. The vibe he sold her was a busy protest crowding through the streets shouting slogans and clashes with police.

The actual protest was about ten people laying on the ground in front of the police station in silence. There were a couple cops standing in front of the building, presumably slightly less bored than doing paperwork at their desk. Most people in my city didn't even know it happened.

It's insane the reality they live in. These people will see https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.... and chuckle and say how bad the "mainstream media" is and then go back to watching Fox News scream about how a liberal city is on fire with protests despite NOTHING HAPPENING. I can't understand the willful, intentional ignorance that leads people to believe watching an hour of Fox News makes them knowledgeable about a city of a million people.

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#488

Post by amyfp214 »

xnx wrote: post #340

It will always be a challenge to allocate limited healthcare resources. It's an unsettled question why the US accepts such an expensive means (private health insurance) of doing so.

That is absolutely true, even no matter the government, even a non-capitalist socialist commune must allocate and there's no right answer. It can become insidious in capitalism. We have organizations like Kaiser who say "we'll run the hospital and focus on preventative care, if we spend $50 today that avoids $50,000 a few years from now" - Kaiser notably does hospitals AND insurance in a vertically integrated manner. That's all reasonable. Then a United might see "we can spend $5,000 today and patient will be healthier-ish, or $200 yearly for a medically equivalent treatment". And so they do the actuarial math that the patient will die in a few years, they calculate revenue from that patient based on how long they might stay on the plan, and find the solution that maximizes profit. So the mentality isn't Kaiser-like "i.e. we're on the hook for this patient, let's minimize their health problems to save money", it's more like "we will minimize the cost of this patient full stop, if that means they don't get care then they don't get care"

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#489

Post by kerkeslager »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #479
kerkeslager wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Single payer literally meant that all citizens are subscribed to the same government operated health insurance. Correct, but that's a pretty big change from the propaganda you repeated in your previous comment. What you said was, "This was discussed briefly during the Obama healthcare debates, but broadly rejected by left who wanted to eliminate private options." In another now-deleted comment, you also said, "the…

I havent deleted any comments, you read it in a sibling thread that is still there. There is a big difference between supplemental insurance and alternative options, and I think you are conflating the two. the first big difference is being able to opt out of the cost of public insurance if you go with something else. I think that any puclic healthcare should carry the true price tag, and any subsidies for the poor sh…

> There is a big difference between supplemental insurance and alternative options, and I think you are conflating the two. the first big difference is being able to opt out of the cost of public insurance if you go with something else.

I don't think that's a big difference. You can't opt out of paying tax for health insurance subsidies under the plan you're proposing--the difference here is that the amount of tax you can't opt out of under single-payer is less, because you're not forced to pay the corporate middle-men.

Yes, I'm saying the combined cost of paying your own healthcare AND poor people's healthcare under single payer is lower than the cost of paying just the poor people's healthcare under corporate health insurance, because it is. The government already pays more than half of health insurance costs[1]--the total cost would go down under single payer by every estimate I've found.

In short, it's literally cheaper to pay taxes for single payer AND a private health insurance premium, than to pay taxes for subsidies to private health insurance in addition to your private health insurance premium. The inefficiency introduced by ubiquitous private health insurance is that bad.

> I think that any puclic healthcare should carry the true price tag, and any subsidies for the poor should be subsidized as a separate benefit.

Ah yes, the "we should make poor people apply for healthcare, so that we can deny people coverage and so people who can't fill out paperwork can't receive coverage" solution to lowering costs.

I'm sure there's no way that right wingers will underfund these programs for the poor and then use their failure to function as an excuse to get rid of them.

> Essentially, I am strongly opposed to funding the public healthcare with an income/payroll tax because I dont thinnk there is much incentive to actually tackle prices.

I'm glad you brought up incentives! Here's how single-payer provides better incentives than what you're proposing:

1. Politicians are motivated to tackle the price of healthcare because this allows them to lower taxes for their constituents, which keeps them office. Money isn't the only incentive that exists. How do you justify ignoring this?

2. The perverse incentive to increase the price of healthcare to line the pockets of insurance is removed, because most of the healthcare isn't provided by private insurance companies that can lobby. How does your solution address this problem?

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4880216/

Re: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan

#490

Post by kerkeslager »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #481
kerkeslager wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just the unclear messaging that the right wing is taking advantage of. I don't have a NYT subscription so I can't see the whole article, but as far as I can tell, there's nothing in that article that mentions actually preventing companies from offering private health insurance--it's just assumed (correctly) that these companies will be operating at a miniscule fraction of their current scale when people can ob…

you are wrong again! please read the article >There are few international analogues to the Medicare for all proposals, but Canada, which provides similar doctor and hospital benefits for its residents, probably comes closest. Even there, people buy private insurance for benefits that are not covered by the government program, like prescription drugs and dental care. Most other countries with single-payer systems allo…

There is nothing in what you quoted that refutes anything I said.

If you have something to say, say it--I'm not going to buy a NYT subscription so that I can speculate what you are referring when you can't be bothered to explain yourself.

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