Luigi Mangione

Thinking on the blog's comment that the CEO was a bad target as it's actuaries that set premiums and expected payouts, and they have a narrow profit margin

That's a pretty shallow analysis

1. The CEO sets what the business's targets are, obviously United was targeting low premiums which implies low payouts which implies many incorrect rejections and/or nasty exceptions in their policies
2. This is in the environment where many health fund customers have their health fund chosen by their employer (who will choose the cheapest most of the time) or who due to their economic circumstances must choose the cheapest

So people are forced* into this bad fund so violence against the CEO should get United and other low cost, low payout funds to reposition themselves toward the more expensive, more generous end of the market

The downside is that it should make health insurance more expensive, but that'll only happen if United changes their premium/payout model to more generous

Other ways health funds can reduce premiums include trading reduced premiums for healthy activities

*I'm not in that system so don't know the details, are employees forced to take the fund their employer packages into their contract?

Ngl I've not met a person who calls others NPCs that hasn't been a chud.

"Health insurance companies don’t get rich by denying payouts for claims. As the economics blogger Noah Smith points out, UnitedHealthcare’s net profit margin is just 6.11%, which is only about half of the average profit margin of companies in the S&P 500. If UnitedHealth Group decided to donate every single dollar of its profit to buying Americans more healthcare, it would only be able to pay for about 9.3% more healthcare than it’s already paying for."

I don't think comparing supposed healthcare assistance companies to the top 500 businesses in the US (whose main objective is making a profit) is the trump card you think it is...

"Does healthcare in the US cost more than it needs to? Sure. But, according to the Harvard economist David Cutler, who has written extensively about the US healthcare system, the main reason healthcare costs in the US are high is because of administrative inefficiencies. Insurance companies and organizations that deal with them, such as hospitals, have become bureaucratically bloated to administrate a wildly unstandardized healthcare system, and this bloat now accounts for one-third of every dollar spent on healthcare in the US."

But what creates these administrative inefficiencies Gurwinder?? Could it be the bajillion of health insurance companies gunning to make a profit on people's healthcare??

"The ultimate point here is that Brian Thompson was not the problem. He was a normal, flawed, guy trying to keep costs low both for his company and his policyholders, while keeping his fiduciary duty to shareholders, whose investment his company depended on."

Oh no won't somebody think of the shareholders 😭

If only there existed some simple care system where everyone pays into and can then have their medical needs met without the need for a fuckload of middlemen...

How can someone come this close and yet miss the mark so hard...

Not only was the justification for the targeting of Brian Thompson stupid, but the targeting itself was stupid. While it’s true that UnitedHealthcare has the highest denial rate for medical claims, the CEO doesn’t set the approval rate of a health insurance company’s payouts — that’s done by the actuaries, who themselves are constrained by various considerations, such as the need to keep costs low, including for policyholders. But even if Thompson did have carte blanche to set his company’s approval rates, it wouldn’t have made a big difference.

Health insurance companies don’t get rich by denying payouts for claims. As the economics blogger Noah Smith points out, UnitedHealthcare’s net profit margin is just 6.11%, which is only about half of the average profit margin of companies in the S&P 500. If UnitedHealth Group decided to donate every single dollar of its profit to buying Americans more healthcare, it would only be able to pay for about 9.3% more healthcare than it’s already paying for.

Does healthcare in the US cost more than it needs to? Sure. But, according to the Harvard economist David Cutler, who has written extensively about the US healthcare system, the main reason healthcare costs in the US are high is because of administrative inefficiencies. Insurance companies and organizations that deal with them, such as hospitals, have become bureaucratically bloated to administrate a wildly unstandardized healthcare system, and this bloat now accounts for one-third of every dollar spent on healthcare in the US.

The ultimate point here is that Brian Thompson was not the problem. He was a normal, flawed, guy trying to keep costs low both for his company and his policyholders, while keeping his fiduciary duty to shareholders, whose investment his company depended on. He was a tiny cog in a vast and unfair system that’s controlled by no single person but by the cumulative actions of millions of people operating in their own immediate interests. Ted Kaczynski called such decentralized problems “self-propagating systems,” recognizing that they weren’t the result of human coordination, but rather, a lack of it.

If Kaczynski’s bombs and 35,000-word manifesto couldn’t destroy such a system, then a 3D-printed pistol and shoddy 262-word minifesto certainly won’t. You can’t kill your way out of a problem that’s ultimately no one’s fault.

Interesting perspective.

If you celebrate someone gunning down a defenceless person in the street, then you advocate for a world in which this is an acceptable thing for anyone to do. You in fact advocate for a world in which a stranger can decide that you’re also a bad person, and gun you down in the street. In such a world, I promise you, your health insurance would cost much more.

I would never be selected to be a healthcare CEO because i wouldn't be able to put profits over people. Batman getting the Joker is not the same as Batman killing Gotham city residents. What does a Brit know about health insurance costs? The writer is not qualified to make these claims.