this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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Summary

Rising frustrations with the U.S. healthcare system have been amplified by increasing insurance claim denials and mounting costs.

Patients report prolonged battles to access doctor-recommended care, with surveys showing one in five privately insured Americans faced denial in 2022.

Anger has intensified following the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, spotlighting issues like AI-based claim reviews and profit-driven practices.

While Trump’s upcoming administration proposes deregulation and privatization, critics warn this could worsen access.

Public distrust persists, but significant reforms appear unlikely as partisan debates stall progress in Washington.

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[–] orclev 132 points 2 days ago (5 children)

What the fuck do they mean privatization, it's already fucking private! Did we suddenly get a socialized healthcare system when I wasn't looking?

Could have saved a lot of time by just saying Trump plans to make one of the worlds worst healthcare systems even worse in whatever way he can. We're well on track for a healthcare system collapse in the US if Trump actually implements the things he's said he will. It will make a matched set with the economic collapse he's also working on.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 2 days ago

The US already spends more per person on socialized healthcare than most countries that have universal socialized medicine. Our current system just inserts grifty billionaires into the money stream before the money gets to actual healthcare.

[–] quixotic120 53 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (7 children)

Yes, we’ve had socialized healthcare for ages. You just aren’t allowed to have it unless you’re old, very poor, disabled, or a vet. So they mean privatizing Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA

[–] bassomitron 20 points 2 days ago

Also active military get universal healthcare, too. Damn communist service members...

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[–] Mateoto 8 points 2 days ago

Privatization means getting rid of Obamacare/ACA. Trump and GOP see that as socialised health care and have "concepts" to replace them.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just imagine if we brought the efficiency of the insurance that tries to keep you from getting healthcare to the systems that want to give you healthcare but are grossly underfunded, like medicare or the VA! Why, we could ensure that almost no one gets a covered doctor's visit while doubling prices.
The only part they won't gut is the part that mandates that everyone must have insurance.
Nothing better than being legally required to pay for a service that exists to fight to provide no value to you whatsoever in return for the money.

[–] dual_sport_dork 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The only part they won’t gut is the part that mandates that everyone must have insurance.

Uh, that's the part that already got axed during Trump's last term, in 2019.

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[–] jaggedrobotpubes 3 points 2 days ago

Even more expensive, even more denials.

[–] Nuke_the_whales 15 points 2 days ago

Become a Luigi. That's really what needs to happen. A Luigi every week until this shit is fixed

[–] cabron_offsets 57 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sounds like a problem for a green plumber.

[–] WindyRebel 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

When your sink is trouble, you call them on the double! They’re faster than the others, you’ll be hooked on the plumbers!

[–] WoodScientist 9 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Can you imagine the timeline where Luigi gets off through jury nullification, and then he does it again? That would be something to see.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I don't think we'll have to wait that long. You know the guy in the footage of the shooting? The one without a monobrow? He's still out there.

And I really hope his name is Mario.

[–] WoodScientist 8 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Yeah I agree, I'm not even convinced it is Luigi. The killer deliberately dressed in a way that hundreds of people in NY are dressed as at any given time. I'm skeptical of the trail they've pieced together from video camera footage. It's unlikely they have continuous shots of him going from one side of the city to the other.

And the thing is, I'm extremely skeptical of anything the NYPD says. They just recently had a case thrown out when they were caught on camera planting evidence. How many times do you have to plant evidence before you get caught on camera doing it?

I don't know if Luigi did it or not. But if he didn't do it, here's one plausible scenario for how he didn't do it that would still account for all the evidence we've seen publicly:

He's reportedly bisexual and from a wealthy and likely conservative family. And he hadn't talked to his family in months; they were actively looking for him. He got some severe back injury, and maybe he decides to just get away from unaccepting and overbearing family, perhaps for awhile, perhaps permanently. He wants to get away and find himself, just walk the Earth for awhile. So he's been living out of various hostels and homeless shelters for awhile in various cities. To keep his family from tracking him down, he gets a fake ID and travels under an assumed name. He wears a hoodie and mask almost everywhere, as he doesn't want his family to track him down. And he is genuinely worried about covid living in a hostel.

He's staying in NYC. A few days after the shooting, to his horror, he sees his own picture on the news listed as the killer. He freaks out and flees the city. He eventually gets picked up by the cops in Pennsylvania.

Unbeknownst to him, he was struck with the combination of terrible luck and a corrupt police department. Luigi happened to be dressed like the killer, and he happened to be near the scene of the crime within a few hours of the killing. A camera catches him placing a wrapper or bottle in a trash can. And his DNA is on it. The cops falsely conclude the killer is the one that put the wrapper in the trash, and they now are certain they have the DNA of the killer. (Another possibility is that the actual killer stood by a public trash can and waited until someone dressed like him happened to drop a wrapper in the trash, and then deliberately planted it near the scene.) They do some detective work, and find that Luigi has been living in an assumed name with a fake ID in a hostel.

So the cops are 90% certain they have the guy. They have a guy that vaguely looks like the killer, is using a fake ID, and whose DNA was found near the scene. In their minds, that's an airtight case, and they convince themselves that this makes it OK to fake further evidence to seal the deal. When they arrest Luigi, they plant the untraceable gun on him along with that manifesto, that was conveniently had written, and not published electronically like you would expect a software engineer to do.

And moreover, if the cops were going to just pick a convenient scapegoat, who better than Luigi? He's a young kid, estranged from his family, living in hostels and homeless shelters. He was basically living as a drifter. That's the exact kind of low social status person that cops would be tempted to foist something like this on.

I can't prove any of this obviously. But the one thing that sticks with me is Luigi's only public statement. He hasn't issued any public statement. But there was that one time, before he started working with his lawyer, where he shouted to the crowd of reporters. He didn't shout, "this was for the the innocent victims of Brian Thompson!" Or "I apologize for nothing!" Or some other statement that you would expect a proud martyr for a cause to make. Instead, he shouted, "this is an insult to the intelligence of the American people!"

That's the kind of thing an innocent man would shout. That's the kind of thing one would shout if you had just been framed by the NYPD. That is the cry of a young man who knows he is being framed and faces literal execution for a crime he didn't commit. I would be enraged too.

And again, this isn't outlandish, the NYPD has been caught faking evidence many times before. If they already had a decently strong case due to the DNA at the scene, I could absolutely see them trying to wrap it up quickly by planting the gun and manifesto on him.

People like to share these "Saint Luigi" memes. But if he actually is innocent, literally not the man who pulled the trigger? If he were to be still convicted, executed, and later the truth come to light? He would be a completely innocent martyr. That's the kind of thing that actually could get some one canonized as literal official Saint of the Catholic Church.

I of course can't prove any of this, and it is possible that Luigi really did do it. Cameras and lighting can make people look very different. Or maybe the cops have a lot stronger evidence that they just haven't released yet. But this is the kind of theory of the case I could see the defense making. And ultimately, they don't have to prove Luigi didn't do it. They just have to show reasonable doubt. And based on the entirely circumstantial evidence we have, combined with the NYPD's predilection for fabricating evidence, at least right now with the publicly available evidence, I think reasonable doubt absolutely exists.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 days ago (4 children)

They're only talking about this because of Luigi, they're scared, and billionaires only think about sharing when they're scared, Sadly they're only THINKING about it

Deregulation and privatization? For something that's already a racket that can kill to save money? Might as well start pulling a Canada and pass around the Vault-Tec Plan D's

[–] capital_sniff 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well, we got a group of Trumpers that are so hell bent on making sure other people's lives are worse. So they are taking us all down with them. These guys have managed to put a professional anti-vaxxer in our federal healthcare system. Then they wonder why their healthcare is shit, costs much money, and don't work good.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Indeed.

I've heard MAGA explained to me as a "Reverse Cargo Cult" of sorts.

If you're not familiar with Cargo Cults, there are isolated places all over the world with no real contact with the outside world. I understand "Isolated" and "No real contact" are saying the same thing, but I wanna drive the point home that these are places that have had no interaction with anyone but themselves.

Sometimes that's for a damn good reason as quite a few of them are outright hostile to visitors.

Anyway, a phenomenon has happened where people in these areas will see planes in the sky and believe them to be Gods. Sometimes for one reason or another these planes crash or drop their cargo. The people in these areas will then examine these and try to recreate or restore radios they find, believing they can fly or contact the Gods, if only they build these devices correctly and pray to them enough. This never happens of course because they're trying to build complicated machinery out of sticks and stones, but you get the idea.

There's actually one that believes the King of England is a God simply because they found photos of him, and actively worship them.

They don't know why their version of technology doesn't work and the ones they find from above do, but they believe that if they keep trying and praying surely it will happen one day.

Well MAGA is a Reverse Cargo Cult; They know they're taking us down with them.

Essentially, MAGA looks at the planes in the sky and says. "When we built our own it didn't work, so the ones in the air don't work either. It's some kind of illusion and we should punish them for lying to us!"

It's why they rejected Biden and Kamala for saying they've been fixing the economy, even though it's obvious from prior behavior that Trump will outright wreck it. They've given up on anything getting better, and just want to use Trump as the brick they wanna throw at the man behind the curtain pretending that planes can fly.

I don't know if I believe this explanation, but I figured I'd voice it in the hopes of creating a discourse.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 days ago

It boggles my mind that any American can look at their healthcare system and look at the rest of the world and think more privatization and deregulation is the way to go.

If ANTHYING absolutely must be regulated it’s healthcare.

[–] Valorie12 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well we just voted in probably the worst person to "fix" our healthcare and who only has a "concept of a plan" regarding it. Sooo what can really happen?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you were hoping to vote on healthcare reform, neither candidate supported a real change. Biden campaigned in 2020 on wanting to lower medicare to 60... mostly everyone supported healthcare for all from 2016-20', and they all stepped back from that quickly.

[–] Valorie12 9 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Yeah but trump is unarguably worse on healthcare than anyone else on the ballot. We're turbo fucked.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

"If you take government bureaucrats out of the healthcare equation and you have doctor-patient relationships, it's better for everybody," House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a video obtained by NBC News last month. "More efficient, more effective," he said. "That's the free market. Trump's going to be for the free market."

The myopathy here is mind boggling.

I bet things would change if Mike Johnson ever had a claim denied.

"Whether the murder will strengthen appetite for reform remains to be seen."

Yes, this is actually a sentence in a current article about the American health insurance industry.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (1 children)

these free thinking line toeing dickheads don't seem to realize that america has paper pushing dickheads AND death panels standing in the way of us ever getting the treatment we need. their arguments against soviet style healthcare are the problem with hypercapitalist healthcare. all we want, the left, is healthcare without linking it to power. we should recieve treatment because we are worthy of it because we have dignity as people and as beings who are loved. that we do not is an indictment that this system that kills us is a sham

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago

That's your problem. You didn't work hard enough to earn your allotment of love.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (3 children)

rising frustrations

How long do these frustrations have to rise? I remember reading about this shit over two decades ago.

When is it enough, exactly?

[–] agent_nycto 3 points 2 days ago

Literally expressed in a kid's movie 20 years ago

[–] Coreidan 4 points 2 days ago

As long as rich people give enough food and basic necessities to the poor you all will never be uncomfortable enough to fight back. That is the whole point.

[–] bitjunkie 1 points 2 days ago

That's the problem, there's no such thing as "enough" to the people who already have all the power

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The answer to the tagline is: no. The CEO, Andrew Witty, of UHC Group (owner of UHC) wrote an article saying the healthcare system is broken and needs to be fixed. It was all PR garbage. No identification of WHAT people are frustrated with or how they will work to fix it. He also said that no employee should have to live in fear but the examples he gave of employees were RNs and call center employees. Last I checked, people were not angry enough at those groups to kill them in the street.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

If you go on the subreddit for nurses there's actually a pinned post reminding people that they'll be banned for advocating for murder because the very day that headline first broke their were multiple posts and numerous comments to the effect of "good" and "who do we hope they get next?" A significant portion of the compassion fatigue (read: PTSD for people with empathy) affecting nurses these days is watching our patients suffer and die due to various health problems that they cannot afford to treat. ER nurses in particular are constantly bogged down with treating chronic conditions that have only become emergencies by being grossly undertreated. They got into this to save people from heart attacks and instead they're getting wave after wave of demented nursing home residents with pressure ulcers full of maggots.

The fact that Healthcare executives are trying to lump themselves in with nurses is even more disgusting when you realize that most of the reason we get our asses beat is because we're usually physically standing the closest when the health insurance system fucks people over the hardest. They don't know what to do, they don't know who to turn to, and their life is at stake so they start swinging at whoever is closest and 9/10 times that's a nurse (or nursing assistant). Healthcare executives are hands down the #1 root cause of the physical abuse of nurses; they ARE the ones getting us hit, and they don't get to claim they're one of us now that somebody finally came after the real culprit.

[–] expatriado 28 points 2 days ago

there are 40 countries that fit the developed criteria, you may look at any of them for references

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Americans have got to learn how to vote for their own interests.

When one candidate as actively campaigning on the basis of ripping apart a healthcare system put in place by the previous one (Trump with Affordable Care Act) and then wins, twice, it's hard to understand why they're surprised that they're in this situation.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod 6 points 2 days ago

Maybe if people weren't still going bankrupt because of medical bills despite the ACA they wouldn't be so excited to blow up the entire system.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

No American presidential candidate ever represents Americans' best interests. It is not possible to vote in your best interests here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Really? None. I suspect one or two of the literally 100s of non partisan candidates were actually there to do good? I think the point being made (and this goes for all democratic systems), is that 99% of the population could not name more than 5 names on the ballot. Let alone consider voting for them.

People vote for parties and ALL of the parties are funded by someone. Ultimately, we do it to ourselves.

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[–] Buffalox 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Anger has intensified following the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, spotlighting issues like AI-based claim reviews and profit-driven practices.

Really? Americans are surprised that a for profit healthcare system, has profit driven practices?
They can't be THAT supid?
But some Americans refuse to accept a socialized healthcare system that is not profit driven, and could cost about half what they pay now, if implemented at the average efficiency of other countries that have it.

Americans voted for Trump, and he will probably give them the deregulation the ignorant asked for, and the healthcare hellhole they are living in will get even worse. Deregulation will make it even easier for insurance companies to legally cheat their customers, and increase their profits.
Hurray for deregulation. /s

[–] LordWiggle 7 points 2 days ago

Monthly fees will go up, because the security details for the CEO's won't be paid out of their own pockets. That would be ludicrous, those poor CEO's having to cut into their profits to keep themselves safe from those barbaric peasants.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Don't they mean "who's" next?

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