Hit men aren't what you think
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Am I supposed to know what a "scale-up insurance company" is?
Fraudulent claims are a tiny percentage of claims, and are rejected after human review, usually involving detectives. In the countries we operate, fraudulent claims are about 6-8% of all claims, and that's usually the level we aim to detect. Being able to absorb some false negatives is usually cheaper than going for the full 100% detection rate. It is definitely more customer oriented than rejecting due to false positives.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-intervenes-fals...
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-intervenes-seco...
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/medicare-advantage-ov...
https://medtrade.com/news/billing-reimbursement/medicare-adv...
I see stats like these: https://i.redd.it/7aa6zytdox4e1.jpeg
If the company is denying so much claims (32%), and they have quarterly profit around $6B on $100B revenue (and they had less profit in earlier quarters, even a loss in Q1), I think they would need to raise prices to stop denying most claims that they deny. And what then? Someone would kill the CEO because they can't afford the insurance?
Instead of, "the human beings that we serve matter, and our duty to them comes before all else. We will profit by being the best in the market"
I think monopoly and MBAification of every leadership position at every company in at least America. Some of the curriculum is disgusting, anti human propaganda. It's absolutely not a given that shareholder profits come above everything else no matter what. The buck does not stop with fiduciary duty, the buck stops with the actual human beings you're company "serves", as we've just seen. Shareholder profits didn't order that person dead. Humans did.
It's insane that you can let your company perform so terribly, so catastrophicly evil for the public that it becomes impossible to know which of the millions of people who've has their lives damaged or destroyed would've actually decided to order your ceo dead rather than just gleefully commiserate about it at their mothers funeral. I think we get there by destroying the real market. I don't get to choose which insurance my job provides me! I don't know how that would work but all they have to do is pay more large companies to choose them and bam, locked in audience, disgusting parody of a free market, death for thousands of sick people and one CEO. Antitrust needs to block every merger for the next 10 years and obliterate any company that's powerful enough to capture over 20,000,000 customers while the vast majority of them _actively despise you_.
What do you mean enter? This was always the model of capitalistic acquisition. Early industrial revolution was not known for it's blue skies, labor friendly laws and preventing children from working in the mines.
The moment you have inflation, which you need to suppress wages of people living from wages (i.e. labor), is the moment you entered the magical roundabout of infinite growth.
The only time capitalism had to placate labor was when communism was a credible rival.
Except for "blue skies", the other things you've listed are the default state of nature. Children worked the moment they were able. Even without a capitalist boss, people worked their asses off during the planting/harvest season under the threat of starvation. The other rest of the year might be more lax, but you're still desperately praying that drought or disease won't wipe away your hard work and leave you starving regardless.
That depends on what you consider to be the default. If you're talking about pre-agricultural man, the difficulty of life varied based on population density. A band of human beings that found an isolated island wouldn't have practiced child labor. They'd do a little bit of work to maintain comfortable living standards and spend most of their time on leisure activities. An area with many competing tribes, on the other hand, would see harsh and sometimes brutal social practices. Again, in a pre-industrial agricultural society, the difficulty of life also varied based on population density. Shortly after the invention of some new agricultural technique or tool, there would be abundance, peace, and easy living. Once that technique had caused a population boom, there would be scarcity, war, and hard living.
>Even without a capitalist boss, people worked their asses off during the planting/harvest season under the threat of starvation.
So, yeah--this isn't true in general.
Not sure if bait or that uneducated. But during early days of industrial revolution was well known for exploitative practices like: children dying in mine collapses, children dying of black lungs, losing their limbs in various machinery.
If you can find these all-natural looms, mines, and labor laws in nature, I'd love to see it.
> Even without a capitalist boss, people worked their asses off during the planting/harvest season
So because it was worse before, we shouldn't strive to improve the system?
The Federal Reserve (or central banks in general) has a dual mandate to stabilize prices and maximize employment. The Fed uses monetary policy to manage inflation and attempt to keep a slight amount of inflation without having too much inflation or any deflation. If your profit growth is lower than the rate of inflation, you’re be making less money every year this is the case. Shareholders generally want to achieve a return that is higher than the rate of inflation, aka a ‘real return’.
Tl;dr - Central banks using monetary policy to achieve a constant low rate of inflation is why profit must keep growing forever to remain in business.
The other thing to remember is that people don’t get healthcare for recreational purposes. The American healthcare system delivers quite poor outcomes because so much money is being pulled away by various levels of middlemen. Each layer of people second guessing your doctor, processing claims, negotiating rates, etc. is a lot of professional jobs taking money away from actual medical treatment. If people actually need care, that’s a negative savings they’re simply shifting to society.
The major factors driving increased morbidity and mortality for Americans are mostly outside the healthcare system. Overeating, trauma, substance abuse, sedentary lifestyles, etc.
https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/cancer-survival...
That’s also a hard comparison because incidence rates are not equal, with age and environmental factors playing a significant role. For example, is a 1% savings worth spending 2-3 times more money versus, say, reducing our fossil fuel usage which will significantly reduce our cancer incidence rates as well as saving billions of dollars?
What I have observed is that starting about 8-9 years ago any retail insurer that uses a mascot in their advertising, is difficult/slow to pay a claim. Both to other insurance companies who are being forced to subrogate to make their own customers whole, but also to their own policyholders. The sarcastic part of me is saying: "If they spent less on marketing, they'd have deeper reserves"
Of course, much of what you hear is {dramatic}"I can't believe it's taking this long to fix my car" - which is natural. But then you hear stories about a company using a customer's photos from the accident scene to build up a repair estimate, and not sending an adjuster to look at the car once it is at the shop and on a lift. There is always going to be additional damage, commonly from the tow. But there may be damage that shows up once a bumper skin or other cover is removed.
The insurance companies are also low-balling the repair shops. An hourly rate on repairing a Mercedes is (perhaps) $200/hr. If the insurance company is only willing to pay $50/hr ("That's our standard rate") the shop is either going to turn down the work, or take shortcuts like using low-quality parts or junior technicians to make up the difference.
https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/private-health-insurance/med...
When insurers tighten their claim approval policies it's usually due to pressure from those self-funded employers to control costs. If employers wanted it, insurers would be happy to sell custom health plans that would pay every claim with zero denials; this would be enormously profitable for insurers because they wouldn't have to do any work.
Claim approval or denial rates don't have much direct impact on consumers being able to afford insurance. Most of the cost is borne by employers, and low-income consumers who buy individual policies through the exchanges receive government subsidies. But of course that indirectly impacts all of us through lower wages and higher taxes.
If this is true, why do several of the larger companies deny so many claims? I can't imagine they would do this if what you were saying were true; the board would have leadership's heads.
Payers do make errors in claims processing and improperly deny some claims, but the majority of denials are due to errors on the provider side. They often fail to code claims correctly or don't obtain required prior authorization or don't follow step therapy or fail to attach enough clinical documentation to establish medical necessity. Many of those initial denials are later approved once the provider corrects the errors and resubmits the claim. But in fairness to the providers, it's hard to get everything right the first time because every payer has different rules and they're sometimes ambiguous.
But even if it did mean prices went up... so what? That's the point of insurance. You pay in an average amount and the insurance covers you if you are on the wrong side of the cost distribution. If I am buying insurance then I want insurance. I don't want to get lower premiums by having a fun game of "maybe actually you'll not be able to get that cancer treatment" based on somebody other than my doctor deciding that I don't really need it.
I adore the Russian sense of humor.
Also they are going to track and investigate thousands upon thousands of social media normies who decided to let some schadenfreude slip for a sweet meme opportunity
There is a reason why most humans are naturally afraid of public speaking. Introversion is a survival trait. This trait was useful to survival 100+ years ago. The fear of the public lost much of its utility, but did it lose all utility? The kind of scale and centralization of human awareness we have today is unprecedented in human history. Are populations THAT much more passive as humans compared to before? Or do people just have a bigger fuse which takes longer to pop?
I come from a small state with a small half-a-million population where there is high inequality and I have had extended family members (who were among the elites of that society) who were shot and killed. Our house would get robbed 4 to 8 times a year. It's just normal when you live in an unequal society. As a comparison, my grandparents said they would sleep with their windows open back in their day (same country, just different times). It's not just inequality BTW; it's also about expectations. High inequality is fine if those who have nothing have low demands and accept their position in society. It's a real problem when they don't. People in the street of the capital would give you a death stare if you looked privileged. This may be the reality that America is heading for if inequality continues to get worse.
Your point about income inequality is important but NYC is one of the safest cities in the country:
https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/nyc-ranks-safest-among-big-...
It gets covered a lot because it’s a massive media hub and also a tempting political target for Republicans but the average person in NYC is more likely to need to worry about getting hit by a car, especially if they’re not engaging in high-risk activities. Muggers target drunk people leaving clubs at 3am in dodgy parts of town. They’re not gunning tourists down in Manhattan because that guarantees a police response.
Brian Thompson wasn’t born rich - according to Wikipedia his father worked at a grain elevator - and he probably retained that middle class sensibility of not feeling targeted even as he got wealthy. People don’t want to think of themselves as targets, and they don’t want to give up the privacy and independence which having a security detail involves. If he wasn’t involved with one of the most hated companies in the country, that almost certainly would have been fine.
1) it is not hard to get a silencer. You can make one in under an hour with cheap parts from a hardware store and a drill.
2) the CEO was at a conference. It's not surprising that this person "knew he would be there", it's interesting that this interviewee stresses this point like it is some big one to be made. The CEO of a big company in an industry will of course be at a big industry conference. You can say "how did he know he would be exiting that door" or something, but it's not like he was sneaking out the back exit. Hes probably coming out the door where the limo is parked or whatever.
I agree this was probably not a professional hit, but this was very clearly well planned out with limited knowledge. I don't think it's as simple as a disgruntled family member of a medical patient or something. It's likely this was something much more serious, but not billionaire behind the scenes business politics or something. Those kind of guys, while we like to pretend would be the last guys to know where to find professional killers, they all know where to find professional killers. I'd guess this guy was into something he shouldn't have been into with some unsavory people.
You need to get connections by ensuring the person recommending you a pro-killer has incentive to ensure you are not discovered.
“Everyone has a price” or something.
In the US Amazon pays their SDE1s around $100k/year,with $160k total compensation that is actually relocation bonus bundled with vested stock paid in 4 years.
Elsewhere, salaries are even lower.
So, definitely not entry level FANG engineer money.
On the other hand, if you're wealthy and already a crime figure, working with and having work for you people who know you have organized crime contacts and resources, then yes, you could find "fixers" and assistants who would do just what you describe, probably for less money too.
They'd already be part of the same world and comfortable with requests like these while also knowing that you're not just some schmuck rich guy who can't really retaliate against them if they squeal or fuck up. Your anger over a mistake would have more weight.
Even then however, many lower-rung people in organized crime are also quite stupid and reckless, and think here too of the many wealthy criminals who also wind up in court because they were ratted on by their now protected, cooperating witness underlings.
What motivation would be more serious than e.g. losing a spouse or child etc. because of their bullshit...?
That's exactly the scenario I find not just most plausible, but draws from the largest pool from which stochastic terrorism is prone to emerge.
This is not meaningfully different from another mass shooting except for the nuance and specificity of the target.
Take the Vegas shooting as an example. The planning and prep he put into it show competence, expertise, logistical planning, etc. All because he was (likely) disgruntled about an erosion of high roller perks being given to him by the casino.
Given how controversial the American heathcare system is, the idea that someone affected by it would be the right combination of fanatical and competent enough to plan and execute a symbolic killing doesn’t surprise me at all. It seems like everyone wants there to be a plan from “the people in power”. The idea that one random person could strike such a powerful target makes people feel uncomfortable with a world so chaotic.
I had thought it was either (a) professional hit or (b) disgruntled family member.
There is also option (c) a professional hit hired by a disgruntled family member.
Still, I believe some variant of option (b) is the most likely scenario—unless the whole thing has been intentionally orchestrated to look like (b).
When I say some variant of (b), I'm also including someone who hypothetically wasn't even personally affected but felt a strong political motivation to perform the shooting in solidarity. I can absolutely imagine the profile of the kind of person who would meticulously plan this and carry it out out of sheer political motivation.
But if I have to speculate (who doesn't love that) - could have been a disgruntled veteran. Most of them have some serious health issues, and imagining situation where he isn't treated anymore but feels he should have been isn't that hard for such bad public healthcare system as US has. Or hardcore NRA member with same motivation. On youtube some gunsmith videos go up to (tens of) millions of views.
In rural US, people can just shoot in their back yard or public land away from people entirely. At a range (rural or not) where other people are around, you'll get attention if you have anything unusual.
> But if I have to speculate (who doesn't love that) - could have been a disgruntled veteran. Most of them have some serious health issues, and imagining situation where he isn't treated anymore but feels he should have been isn't that hard for such bad public healthcare system as US has.
I'm guessing you're not super familiar with the US healthcare system. The person murdered isn't responsible for the healthcare that veterans or others in the public healthcare system receive. They were the CEO of the largest private insurer, which is the health insurance many of us would rely on through any non-government job. One of the common frustrations with private health insurers is that they deny care that people feel that they need, but the insurer doesn't agree. The public opinion here (and suggested by the words written on the cartridge casings) is that this is related to this.
As you can to construct an entire gun, if you want a crude option. But this isn’t Japan. Obtaining a commercial silencer doesn’t require someone to smuggle them through international customs, just across state lines. They’re harder to get than a handgun, but not hard enough to get that a determined and capable assassin couldn’t get.
I think the point was, they’re hard enough to get that common street criminals don’t use them. They’re not something a criminal can just have their girlfriend straw-purchase from the local sporting goods store.
You can print a fully workable 9mm suppressor on nearly any 3d printer in 8-10 hours or less with no post finishing necessary. No, common street criminals may not use them yet, but I don't think this shooter is a common street criminal, or a professional either.
1. Traveled on a Greyhound bus from somewhere between Atlanta to New York in the past 5-10 days
2. Used a fake New Jersey driver's license to register at the hostel he was staying at
3. reportedly wore a mask indoors consistently while staying in the hostel
4. paid cash for everything
You could, may even still can, buy them on Amazon.
For a while there was a big market on Amazon for "lawnmower mufflers" that were pretty blatant nudge nudge wink wink:
"This muffler fits lawnmowers with a 9mm exhaust. I was able to use my lawnmower all morning long and my neighbor could barely hear a thing!"
When evaluating a mystery you need to be careful not to sell yourself on the one that is more titillating, all things being equal. The story that involves unbelievable sadness and anger is usually more likely than the one the involves deception and intrigue.
Other powerful people, who know they are just as greedy and evil, desperately want to change that narrative because they know how weak their position truly is if we collectively decide we're done with the capitalistic status quo.
Bringing in an "expert" to explain to how it's probably something else, without any evidence to support that hypothesis, and while completely ignoring the observer bias of the chosen expert, is a good example of trying to subvert the story.
Where in the article do you get that impression? All I see is the expert saying it is unlikely to have been a contract killing, as the MO doesn't fit with that of a professional hitman.
I'm sure there are higher end and higher cost options, but I don't think every hitman out there is going to be as put together as the villain from a Bond or Bourne movie.
But I also don't believe it is particularly relevant to the point, either way - surely you understood the intent of the reference?
It is clear that violence was used in this instance. We don't like violence.
Killing someone is an act of violence. That is easy. But how about ruining someone financially? Is this an act of violence? Could it be an act of violence under certain conditions?
How about letting someone die in order to make more money? Let's say the decision is about the price for a certain treatment and you are balancing profit expectations from investors. Is this an act of violence? I'd imagine that the outcome of deaths could probably estimated quite reliably in this instance. And you would need to justify the various salaries and profits along the way and weighing it up against the number of people suffering. Does this sound violent to you?
EDIT: And I'm particularly keen to hear from the downvoters about this. Always keen on good arguments. Thanks :)
Do we? The term "violence" centers around the idea of using physical force. If you mean that certain acts are just as morally contemptible as violence, or equally likely to cause harm, just say that directly.
Please don’t dilute the term “violence,” or we’ll have to find another word to describe intentional harm using physical force.
It absolutely doesn't. Historically we judged laws as violent. Germany stands as an example.
> Please don’t dilute the term “violence,” or we’ll have to find another word to describe intentional harm using physical force.
Causing intentional harm is a pretty good definition of violence, don't you think?
EDIT: for instance paying someone to do physical harm. How would you assess this?
And then the next step is diluting the meaning of the word “harm.” Is hurting someone’s feelings causing harm?
Tell me, if I outsource the physical act of harm, say by paying someone to beat someone else up, would you say I am not violent?
So assuming that you are saying that hiring a hit man isn't violent, but the hit man doing the deeds is:
We are now looking at a definition of "violence" that apparently includes the tantrum of a four year old (physical attack with the intent to do harm) but does not capture hiring killers or the actions of most dictators of the last 150 years.
To be honest this doesn't sound like a useful definition and certainly doesn't match the emotional reaction the word "violence" evokes. What is the word meant for then?
Give me some leeway here, by the way—I am allowing myself to be “socratized”…
Destroying someone's livelihood is nothing else than asking someone to give up the resources they collected over time under the threat of force: if they refuse, they will have the police to talk to.
And if they do not listen to the police, the police have guns.
That is violence.
There is no sane reason to restrict sane to mean of sound mind. It should also mean blue. How sane the sky is today!
Much better.
Of course it is. This topic has already been covered ad nauseum by philosophers and social critics, e.g. Slavoj Zizek, Mark Boyle, etc.
The ultimate aim for a primitive society really is relative order and safety. The ultimate aim of modern technological society is the advancement of technology and the creation of a large workforce to keep the unsustainable machine going. That is what mutates custom into violence and law into subjugation.
It's an absurd point system. And yes, it is underpinned by an absurd amount of hidden violence. I'm certain that it will change, since it is absolutely unsustainable. The amount of propaganda though is insane and we need to push back against it.
After all, the reason we have capitalism is because it is the most efficient system to exchange goods for technological creation. But now that we are developing AI, a new centralized control may eventually emerge as more efficient. However, we will become even more expendable and while the transition may be beneficial in the short term for some, I doubt it will be very pleasant for humanity since technological development itself is inherently unsustainable (requires mining, energy usage, habitat destruction, etc).
Why not? Violence is a tool like any other, and our entire western society is predicated on it. We are cogs in a corporate-run state and if we don't like it, there is the police force. If we get evicted, the police is there to tell us to stop sleeping on the bench. If we don't listen, they have the guns. The underlying systemic violence of our society is rampant.
Personally, while I neither like nor dislike violence, it can be a useful tool in revolutions where the state has become incompatible with the needs of the majority.
The narrative is that we decide on rational reasons (which doesn't excludes violence as such) mixed with a moral superiority (which excludes violence).
I think saying that we don't like violence is just sharing the moral common sentiment and hoping that it leads to some understanding/highlighting of the contradictions. The reality is that people will fight for life when you push them. What is "violent" is generally defined by those who are more powerful I'd say.
I think the hidden war of words is over the definition of "illegitimate violence" (like premeditated murder) and "legitimate violence" (like getting tazed, kettled at a protest, or shot dead by police at a traffic stop). The latter is generally not defined as "violence" at all by those with power.
There was an interesting article that analyzed usage if the word "violent"/"violence" in mass media reporting on college campus protests in the US. Going by the reporting, when police were bashing heads, the protests were not violent, but became "violent" when protestors were fighting back against counter-protestors who got physical. Violence meted out by the government is not called that.
We still struggle with the life and death decisions related to allocating capital do healthcare. Even single payer systems have this problem.
We can start by looking at what profit margins and administrative expenses are reasonable for health businesses. The free market generally solves these questiins, but it's notoriously deficient when it comes to healthcare.
Then we can find out how to best allocate the remaining money to maximize health outcomes while ensuring that the businesses are sustainable.
Can you please elaborate on this part? I don't see how this could be solved by market forces.
EDIT: Making healthcare for profit, would always put someone's life against someone else's new yacht. Is this how we want to assess these situations?
Are we sure of the weapon type?
I've heard that there was live ammunition recovered at the scene, and that basically means the action was manually cycled to clear a jammed round.
At this point it's hard to rule out a janky weapon with homemade suppressor, or a rare specialized weapon as you suggest.
Here is a video of someone firing it (not the killing):
It looks to me like a subcompact with no booster in the can. He is already dropping the gun to rack after the first shot, he knew it would need it, but it isn’t the welrod’s twist and pull.
Good for B&T sales though.
If you are firing subsonic ammunition, to avoid the loud supersonic crack, then you typically get less recoil[1] compared to a firing supersonic ammunition due to the reduced speed of the bullet.
In some firearms you can replace parts such a recoil springs to get the weapon to cycle reliably with subsonic ammunition, but if that is not done you will need to manually operate the action[2].
A few firearms even supports disabling the semi-automatic action, as the sound of the action cycling can actually be quite loud in comparison to a suppressed subsonic shot.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum#Classical
[2]: This can be more error-prone, if the action partially cycles.
Typically, though, you don’t necessarily get less recoil with subs. You get different recoil.
A 115gr 9mm at 1300fps as a sharp recoil. More than enough to run the gun.
A 147 / 158 / 160+ 9mm at 1000fps, has a lot of of the same energy, and typically a slower burning powder is used. It’s also enough to run the gun, the recoil is a lot longer and pushier instead of snappy.
I don’t know. If it was me, I would have my ammunition ready to cycle the gun. Yes, it’s a little bit louder, but the chance that I need to fire more than a couple of shots in order to achieve my goal and escape, outweighs the absolute sound reduction to me.
But, there is something to say that if I filled my silencer with wire, pulling gel, it was a big can, I have some ammo that I know won’t cycle, and I didn’t think I was gonna be in a place with cameras, yeah I don’t know. Maybe it was intentionally downloaded ammo.
That doesn’t mean it was a serious theory - if you have the resources of the NYPD, you might have a couple officers working on any possible angle for a case this high-profile – and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time “sources” was someone spouting off to impress a reporter.
Hilarious how bad this is.
- No, it’s not the B&T. He racks it straight back, and releases to spring pressure. The Welrod/Six is twist and pull and push. It was a compact or subcompact, with either the wrong booster or no booster in a can
- There is a puff of smoke per shot on the left side of the handgun. The Six is a locked breech gun, it doesn’t really smoke per shot at the chamber, and its chamber isn’t on the left side, it is on top. Again, this was a normal likely browning style action handgun, left side action, unlocks per shot even if it doesn’t cycle fully.
- No, the B&T Six is not British made, it is a Swiss update of the WWII British Welrod
- The original and the legal term is silencer. No quotes needed.
Stop believing the media reports on anything gun related.
Isn't this speculating as well?
The point is to speculate with things that fit vs made up nonsense that is clearly untrue.
It looks like a full-size can and a subcompact to me. And I would know, because I own all those things and have used them in that configuration.
The problem I have is that anyone would PLAN on going in to a murder with no booster. Yes, it will likely work almost every time. But sometimes it won’t, and it will stovepipe, and the only way to fix it is to drop the mag out, clear, mag back in and rack.
I’m an expert, and I wouldn’t want to rely on that path.
It is more likely that this is a semi-automatic pistol which will not cycle properly for one reason or another and the shooter has to manually complete the cycle by racking the slide.