News

It's kinda hilarious watching billionaire owned media try to suppress the fact that absolutely no one feels bad for the CEO. The same thing happened when some billionaires decided to visit the Titanic, and after the Trump assassination attempt. The memes afterwards were top notch

Everyone is so fed up with this country and the shit is this close 🤏🏼 to the fan

One medical doctor, whose identity the Daily Beast confirmed, commented with sympathy for Thompson’s family and said the killer should be charged with murder, but then wondered about the damage the CEO had done.

“I cannot even guess how many person-years UHC has taken from patients and their families through denials,” they wrote. “It has to be on the order of millions. His death won’t make that better, but it’s hard for me to sympathize when so many people have suffered because of his company.”

“What has bothered me the most is people that put «fiduciary responsibility» (eg profits) above human lives, none more so than this company as run by him," wrote another medical doctor, who also spoke to the Daily Beast to confirm their identity. “When other’s human lives are deemed worthless, it is not surprising to have others view your life of no value as well.”

These doctors know what's up.

I have been following the news about Brian Thompson's assassination in New York, and I am astounded by the flood of sympathy the media has poured out for him. Why? This man spent his entire career working tirelessly to deny healthcare to millions of Americans, all in the name of lining his own pockets and enriching shareholders. Yet the media praises him for his "kindness" and "generosity." Let me be clear: pushing your company's claim denial rate to nearly double that of your most cold-hearted competitors, bankrupting families through deceptive fine print and delay tactics, is not kindness, and it is not generosity. No, setting up boiler-room style offices with denial scoreboards is one of the most inhuman things I can imagine.

I spent nearly a decade writing software to help hospital systems fight insurance claim denials, and I can tell you, these insurers are getting better at it every year. They deny even the most justified claims, banking on the fact that most people won't have the energy, resources, or will to fight back. And for the majority, they’re right. We had a team of a dozen nurses and PAs working alongside twice as many analysts. These were people who knew the system inside and out. We knew the deadlines, the bureaucratic jargon, the documentation required, and we tracked every claim meticulously. But even armed with all that knowledge and experience, we couldn’t win them all. On a good month, we might win two-thirds of the denials. That was considered a success.

What’s even worse is that for every claim we fought, there were countless others that never even made it that far, we only got denials on services that actually happened. A patient’s doctor tells them they need surgery, but an insurer like UnitedHealth says no and that’s it. The patient gives up and it is difficult to imagine they get better.

If you've ever had a serious medical condition—and I pray you haven't—you know how much it drains you, how it strips you of your will to do anything. When every moment is agony, you don’t have the strength to sit on hold for hours, fill out endless forms, or chase down a bureaucratic system designed to wear you down. All you want is to sleep, because that's the only place that pain can't find you. How many people have simply lacked the strength to fight back, and ultimately succumbed to their conditions? How many families have been driven into poverty, their lives torn apart by a single emergency, all because of these executives’ policies?

We all know someone who has been through a health insurance nightmare and we also know that while political changes could probably help this problem the reality now is that these people are making a choice to run their companies this way, knowing full well the impact of their greed and indifference.

Where are your tears, your headlines, for the thousands of people and families whose lives have been destroyed and whose loved ones have died because of these same executives?

Fuck censorship.

Corporate Ethics

I made a large collection of screenshots from Facebook of people who had their claims denied by United Healthcare today if you want to really see how bad it is.

https://imgur.com/a/yczbSDa

I was reading an article that quoted his wife about what a great guy he was. It reminded me of Ken Lay's wife talking about her families liquidity problems after the Enron collapse. Hundreds of employees lost everything and she's griping about liquidity.

Fuck Reddit and the life is cheap US healthcare system.

This is a really uncomfortable situation for me as a user and made me want to use Lemmy even more

Not a great decision from the moderators.

At least one of the mods here was going heavy censorship in the initial thread here yesterday. I get it, we aren't supposed to celebrate the death or suffering of other human beings. I'm not sure that rule applied to this individual though.

Death is always tragic.... I don't care if the guy is a billionaire or not, he or she had family.

I would however agree that having such wealth is clearly perverse and clearly done at the expense of others. You don't get that rich by being kind hearted and generous....

In any case, if you become CEO of a business that has sloppy morals and essentially encourage parasitic behavior.... Don't expect to be loved... Or surprised that you may get shot....

It's like being the CEO of Blackwater.... No one that has clean hands takes that position....

No one becomes a CEO by accident, it was a choice and ambition to become that level of scum...

Now imagine if companies could only give a maximum of around 2000$

I wonder how that would change the landscape of American politics

If Reddit mods (or lemmy mods for that matter) are overwhelmed by the workload of a thread, they should lock it, and clean it up. not delete it!

Remember if you see this guy... I mean.... No you didn't. No officer I didn't see him at all....

Edit Addendum: Deny. Defend. Depose.

Lemmy seems to have done the same. At least .world, I dunno about other instances, but I'm looking for a new community.

https://lemmy.world/comment/13815531

From a mod of /r/medicine:

People - Please don't make the life of your mods a living hell.

Anything that is celebrating violence is going to get taken down - if not from us, then from reddit. I think all the mods understand that there is a high level of frustration and antipathy towards insurance and insurance execs, but we also understand that murdering people in the streets is not good.

We are a public group of medical professionals, we still need to act like that.

And on a practical note, this man did not create or control the fucked up insurance industry by himself. Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It's a systemic issue.

"...fueling ongoing debates about corporate ethics in healthcare."

Don't make me fucking laugh 'corporate ethics'

That's gonna Streisand Effect like crazy.

Is it hypocritical that the "suits" in the LinkedIn posts using the "laugh" emoji are probably some of the same ones making decisions as to which minimum of health care they can get by with to least impact the bottom line of their company? How much cost should be pushed to the employee? The ones that fire an ill employee for missing too much work?