Angry America | Hacker News Reader

Angry America

thebignewsletter.com

6 pointschmaynard8 comments

>UnitedHealth Group is one of the most toxic and unaccountable companies in America, a $400 billion behemoth that systematically denies care to millions of Americas, was smack dab in the middle of the opioid crisis, cheats the government, surveils its customers, harms independent doctor’s practices, and has executives who routinely engage in what looks like insider trading.

That sums it up for most folks.

It really amazes me that the president of one of those bad franchises like Subway or Quiznos hasn't been shot by the owner of one of their sandwich shop. Or that somebody hasn't been shot over those timeshare scams.

Those aren't covered in the article. Timeshares, they're on the spectrum. What's up with sandwich franchises?

The set of franchise owners is smaller than the set of people who've endured the timeshare pitch and even bought into one is much smaller than those who've touched the slime of the healthcare system. And health impacts go beyond money and time.

Yeah, the model has to be

  [affected people] x [events/person/year] = [event rate]

right? If the rate is one event per twenty years, and there are N=200 million customers I get 2.5x10^-10 per person per year which is very very low for a product that people have a high rate of dissatisfaction with. Compare that to rates for nuclear meltdowns per year or participating in a fatal car accident. Or for that rate the number of murders that a person experiences in a night of TV news, and police dramas not to mention movies, video games, etc.

Speaking hypothetically, that has little chance of destabilizing our society. If a foreign secret service wanted to destabilize America, adequate research would reveal the specter of medical debt predicts the mood of our spectation now.

I dont want to blame the victim here or condone the violence, but given how we know how huge for profit medical insurance works and the messages on the casings I cant help but imagine there are two victims in this tragedy not one.

As evidence: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/spotlight-health-insurance-c...

> While I really dislike a lot of these people, none of us should want to live in a country where assassination becomes a method of political expression. It’s hard to see democracy surviving if elected leaders and corporate leaders feel they might be shot at any point. And that’s why we have to actually get our laws working again.

Half of the country thinks that the incoming president got away with crimes, the other half thinks that the current president pardoning his son was corrosive. Each half thought the other half was illegitimately elected in 2016 and 2020 respectively (in 2016 because of how the electoral college is setup, which half the country thought was unfair, and in 2020 for reasons).

I'm not sure how we "actually get our laws working again", especially when a majority of the people feel that there's no equal justice system (which the Supreme Court has assented to – the President is more equal than everyone else).

One of the clearest differences in the election was medical debt policy. Measures to actively fix the system, plans to go even further. Or, the status quo after the UHC-Change merger.

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