I don’t know how you can work for these companies and sleep at night, especially at the executive levels. Utter psychopathy.
I was listening to the Acquired episode on Epic and they touch on the severe cost overruns in our healthcare system. They make a point to share that hospitals aren’t the ones making a killing. It’s insurance companies.
They make a compelling argument that if you add up the total that you pay to insurance, taking into account what your employer pays, there’s no way you get that much value out of your health insurance annually.
It’s a metaphorical gun to the head. It’s not designed to help. The purpose of the system is what it does.
That’s kind of interesting because I used to work in health insurance (mental health specifically, so it has its own quirks), and it felt like things were always in financially dicey territory. It must be different in medical.
The costs are inflated for sure, but compared to to cost of paying for cancer treatment entirely out of pocket, it’s still cheaper. That’s the whole point of insurance, to cover the event of a catastrophic cost.
I’m not as sure about that. If you paid your premiums, etc. into a low yield savings account, especially when you start when you’re young, I think the value proposition would be more than insurance where you have no way to control payment decisions.
Please do not read this as me saying don’t get insurance. Read it as our insurance is failing to provide the value that we pay into it and need something better.
The Acquired episode goes into detail how we ended up with a private payer system and it’s so infuriating. Our health system was being set up around the same time as the UKs and they show how different incentives lead to where we are.
Why do you think the cost of paying out of pocket is so high? Private insurance bears a significant part of the responsibility for causing that problem.
Structurally, yes, you need a system that amounts to healthy people saving, and sick people being taken care of from those savings, whether it’s individual or social. But our current system of private for-profit insurance is about as bad as such a system could be while still technically sorta working.
I imagine it’s something like this that helps:
:(
Even with the amount of money they earn I don’t think I’d be able to sleep at night anyway.
They have pills and alcohol for that. Or they don’t actually sleep and are on a coke binge instead.
One of them is taking a dirt nap
Only one, though.
So far…
Literally nobody in their social circles holds them accountable for what they’re a part of.
It’s like ignoring your friends are part of the Nazi Regime because they’re “just doing it for the money.”
Thank you for the opening, I have a very true story to tell about that very subject.
I met my wife on vacation in the 90’s, and after a few long distance months, she decided to move to where I lived. As a trained, experienced secretary from NYC, she used her own tried-and-true method of getting a job - she signed up with a good temp agency, and worked a series of temp jobs until she found a job where she fit in, hoping they would want to keep her.
She went through a series of bad employers, until she ended up working a temp job with the state’s biggest healthcare company. She sat outside the office of a corporate lawyer whose sole job was to look through the files of people with the most expensive treatments, and find some excuse, any excuse, to cancel them, no matter how flimsy. Usually it was some pre-existing condition, like allergies. For example, if someone was getting expensive cancer treatments, this lawyer would find some evidence that they knew they had allergies when they got their insurance, and the lawyer would cancel their insurance based on that small unrelated issue. People who had paid premiums for years, were cancelled at the very moment they needed their insurance the most. They also didn’t refund the thousands of dollars they’d paid in premiums, they kept it all, despite refusing to provid the service that had been paid for. Her refusal of treatment DEFINITELY led to the deaths of people, and this lawyer was nothing short of a Corporate Serial Killer.
My wife worked the job for three months, becoming increasingly uncomfortable and unhappy as she realized what she was assisting this Corporate Serial Killer in doing (and so did I), and was planning on having the temp agency find a a new position for her.
Before she was able to do that, she came home and told me “They offered me the job.” It was a good opportunity, with better pay and good benefits. Normally, it would be time to celebrate, but she was clearly heavily conflicted. I asked what wanted to do, and she reluctantly said she was going to take the job, because we needed the money.
I told her we didn’t need the money that bad, that it wasn’t worth destroying her soul over (we aren’t religious, I meant it in a more metaphorical way). I had already been concerned about the psychological toll the job had been taking, so I also told her that she was never going back there, and to call the temp agency tomorrow for a new position. Let them tell the company that she was never going back. We’d get by for a while longer, until something better came along.
I still remember her look of relief when I told her that I didn’t expect her to work that soul-sucking job any lomger. She got a new temp job that developed into a permanent position that she held for years.
Years later, when Sarah Palin started talking about “death panels” associated with Obabacare, my wife said “Death Panels already exist at healh care companies, I personally worked for that company’s one-woman death panel.”
I know personally how psychopathic these health care companies are, and they should be run out of business for their fraudulent practices. They are Serial Killer Corporations, murdering people for profit. We need to put health care in the hands of an entity without a profit motive, and the only thing like that is the government. I was already thinking along the lines of Universal Health Care before my wife’s experience cemented my firm belief in it.
My wife’s experience is why I support Luigi 100%, even though he is totally innocent of all charges.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicko
This is a major part of this documentary. I’m glad she got out. I hope life is much better now.
Record profits help
Sorry, we can only afford another layoff.
I wonder that a lot
You answer your own question.
I don’t know man, I ended a friendship with someone when I realised they couldn’t figure out that the insurance company they worked for was abusive to them and everyone else. I realised we lived in completely different realities and it was affecting my mood too. It’s also what made me realise that marketing should be borderline illegal. These companies are so utterly toxic to their own employees I don’t know why there haven’t been more Luigis from the inside. Ironically, I think it was UC too!! She and her colleagues had to reapply for their jobs 3x+ in one year.
Healthcare is the number one reason I won’t return. It is also the reason America will continue to crumble. If you nationalise healthcare, you have to regulate business to not burden the healthcare system and this affects all sectors. America loves bombing brown people more than it loves it’s own children. Despicable.
America occasionally bombs its own brown children. See: Philly
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I assume the DOJ will pursue the death penalty for the claims adjuster.
No, the judge just gets another Caribbean vacation.
Will the oligarchs seek the death penalty for this company killing a civilian child?
No
But they’ll seek the death penalty for a civilian killing one of them.
One Luigi wasn’t enough, i see.
Reminds me of a scene in Fight Club when Robert Paulson accidentally becomes a martyr. The crew partially took his death as, “we are all Robert Paulson,” we are all this martyr.
There is a nation of Luigis, and it’s everyone. Everyone just has to stop waiting to die. It need not be violent or deadly, either. One way would be merely: Everyone just has to stop. Doing everything. At the same time.
Probably a good time would be around when the supply chains completely collapse in 10 or so days from now.
Hol up I’m OOTL why are supply chains collapsing in 10 days or so
People need to get off the consumer bandwagon in order for this to happen.
Whenever we’re on the brink of radical change, all it takes is a new hollywood movie to come out to distract everyone.
With supply chains halted, we’re all going to be thrown off the consumer bandwagon soon. With no choice in the matter.
Plant your victory garden this year. Hunt. Fill the freezer. Go solar. Build a network of mutual aid.
Fuck were going to need a pumped up kicks for ceos if we keep needing more Luigi. Some music to keep us pumped.
Another manslaughter for a US health insurance scheme’s tally.
Always remember: it’s only terrorism if poor people do it.
Oligarchs vs their Consumers. Both now killing each other openly. The opening of true class warfare.
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I wonder what the previous could have written.
Surely the comment wasn’t removed because he was encouraging people to demonstrate their displeasure regarding their denied claims directly to the health insurance’s CEO, as that would be perfectly legal.
It’s what Healthcare CEOs call Durable Savings.
The family premiums won’t go down with one less child, but costs are saved.
Win-win for shareholders!
I wonder if they’ve appointed a new CEO yet.
They appointed a new one (a Tim Noel) back in late January.
DENY
They need to stop murdering people.
This is clearly a case of terrorism and we need to send a message that we will not negotiate with terrorists. Give the current CEO the death penalty.
my wife just went to help her estranged mother come home from the nursing home the hospital had put her in after her surgery. she said they tried to get her to sign her entire life away to united healthcare before releasing her, and probably would have if she hadn’t been there to stop it.
they wanted to milk her for everything they could, racking up massive medical bills by keeping her there, and then have her sign her life and possessions over to UHC to recoup expenses. when my wife took her home they said it was against medical advice, which allows them to deny coverage for the bills she incurred.
fucking vultures. free luigi.
Another death their CEO is responsible for.
Are they going to be arrested and stand trial next to Luigi? No right? Yeah, totally fair and balanced government we have here. Fucking psychos.
