Health insurers remove executive bios, images from websites after CEO killing
healthcaredive.com
healthcaredive.com
Maybe we should try to fix that. They must be trying to hide other costs in those ridiculous bills to be. That’s not fair to me.
There's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centene_Corporation
You mentioned Kaiser Permanente who acquired Geisinger Health System's network of hospitals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Permanente
See also: https://pahealthaccess.org/promises-made-promises-broken-wha...
https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/ten-things-to-k...
The partnership of Kaiser and Reagan are largely responsible for the healthcare system America has today.
Do not give them a pass.
I’m a physician that works at an ultra specialized hospital.
Even if that were true that KP deny the least, it ends up meaning nothing if they also own the hospital who they graciously never deny claims from.
Ugh.
UHG denies.
KP delays.
Both can lead to disastrous consequences.
Edit: And by delay, I don’t mean delay in seeing a specialist, I mean delay getting the most modern and up-to-date care. They have a tendency to practice population based treatment (and fiscally responsible), which may not be what is the most up to date. I understand it as an hospital administrator, but I can see the consequences as a physician.
Insurance carriers like low risk and thrive on people not fighting adverse decisions either because of a lack of time and resources or knowledge.
The variables matter. My insurance carrier has also never denied a claim, but I’m in more or less good health for my age, have an HSA (at a bank owned by the insurance company) with a significant annual contribution from the issuing employer, and I don’t have anything going on (at the time I write this) that would end up in medical review. And if I did have to deal with that, theres financial cushion available to me to rely on while I fight it out with insurance.
Why is there a lack of supply of doctors? Because the ama deliberately lobbied congress to decrease available residency.
You sound like one of those Malthusian cultists. :P
Fortunately for us all, Thomas Robert Malthus was wrong in 1798 or none of us would be here today. That he would continue to be wrong today should be no surprise. Relevant criticism of his rather gloomy take on population growth abounds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Criticism
It seems to me like he didn't factor in the effects of the development and widespread application of new technologies to old problems.
And no, I am not wromg. Houston has no zoning and was able to keep growth going and build lots of new houses. Of course they did so in a flood plain. Because growth cultists are willing to sacrifice everything, even lives for growth to continue just a little longer no matter the cost.
Setting your spelling aside for the moment... You haven't said anything Malthus didn't say in 1798.
I think it's fair to say standards of living have increased since.
>standards of living have increased since
Everywhere or just in some places? There are more slaves today than in malthuses time.
People usually cite the green revolution as the refutation of malthus. I see it as an engineering tradeoff. Every 2nd order effect was sacrificed for a single KPI. An economist would call them unpriced negative externalities.
He absolutely wrote about land use and the planning thereof.
> There are more slaves today than in malthuses time.
By total number of individuals, maybe (though ChatGPT seems to think otherwise). By percentage of world population, not even close.
> I see it as an engineering tradeoff.
I see some of that. I see both negative feedback loops and virtuous cycles of positive feedback. Constructive and destructive interference. I also see an incredible explosion of education, information availability, flexible automated manufacturing, advanced material sciences, driving of food calories toward $0, lifting of disease which robbed humanity of unfathomable time and energy, and on and on. I see world solar panel production supplying world electric demand sometime in the 2030s. I see us getting better at regenerative agriculture. Mars has as much land area as Earth, and I think we can go farther if we put our minds to it.
There literally aren't limits. Except the ones we place on ourselves.
This is the most delusional take I've ever seen. Limitations are built into the universe as entropy. No limits is only a locality mirage that exists only because you don't live long enough to see the limit get hit.
That being said air is free because it's a mirage, the sun powers plants and animals to continuously recycle it but once that source runs out then we hit a limit. As a local phenomena we can treat air as if it's free even though it's not.
But air is like one of the few things that are like this. The next thing, water, people pay for water. And people pay for water because there is a limit on it. On top of that the fact that we pay for everything else means that even as a local phenomena there are limits. If you think humanity has been on a continuous quest of breaking barriers and jumping over limitations, that's false. All humanity has been doing is optimization. Best utilizing what we already have to delay the impending termination of when humans hit the final limit.
> And people pay for water because there is a limit on it.
Both exist in massive quantity in the asteroid belt. Europa has larger oceans than Earth. Your personal financial limitations aside, I was talking about what the human race can accomplish as a whole when we set our minds to it.
> All humanity has been doing is optimization. Best utilizing what we already have to delay the impending termination of when humans hit the final limit.
Final limit? Never heard of it. Is that a band name? The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale considers a type III civilization capturing and using all of the energy emitted by an entire galaxy. And folks have proposed larger more capable civilizations yet.
Then move to europa. I for one will stay here and enjoy the abundance of n-1.
I'm sure humans or something descended from us will, in time.
> I for one will stay here
Looks like your limits are self-imposed after all.
So for all intents and purposes, water is limited for you and your limited life time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicians_in_the_United_State....
Depending on where you live, it can take months to see a specialist.
Pick any major city in the US and tell me how an ordinary consumer can compare prices for a simple procedure like a chest xray. It’s not possible. Now how does one shop around for a cancer doctor or an ER visit?
Medicine is not a classical marketplace. Homo economicus doesn’t play his part.
There’s not enough supply. Not enough competition such that all doctors can pull off this bs.
UK national railway is sort of free market. The state runs the network, sells the tickets and decides the routes, but provides are chosen in open tenders - lowest price wins. They get paid for operating the route for the state-owned network.
But it then usually turns out that the only operator who can bid on the new tender for the route is the existing one. After all, they have a ready supply of trains meeting the technical spec! And if, say, the drivers go on strike demanding yet another pay rise, the providers shrug their arms and ask the state for a top up. After all, the state doesn't have an alternative either.
Free markets lead to maximizing corporate profits, but it's not a given that these correlate to a positive outcome for the society.
Doctors are not part of a free market. Supply is regulated like a cartel.
Network Rail - the gov owned infrastructure, rails etc.
Rolling Stock - privately owned trains
Operators - lease rolling stock, employ staff, sell tickets
The problem we have is that the operators are barely profitable so always cutting quality/service because there is this other layer of private rolling stock company acting as landlords which are sucking all the profit out.
We have a similar problem with energy. There are the customer facing providers which are basically a brand and a call centre which are selling the power from energy generation companies. When they get trapped in some bad contract as a gamble on the energy market, they go bust.
It feels like a deliberate con that the customer facing providers, the brands the public knows about, keep going bust and earn public ire from their crap services but they are really scapegoats for a less visible layer of private company which are doing the real profiteering as landlords.
The thing is, your doctor is likely not making that much in the end. Because he needs to keep a staff of "offensive coders" who make sure that the insurance company actually pays for the correct procedures, and a couple of helpers to deal with all the paperwork.
Then they also need to deal with patients with poor insurance who can't pay. Trying to get payments from these patients is soul-crushing, and doctors typically just don't bother.
$440 for a quick call is also unusual.
what defines "that much" a hundred bucks? a thousand? a million? a hundred million? a hundred bilion?
> Medicare physician payment has decreased by 26% since 2001. Additionally, a recent Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study found that physician reimbursement per Medicare patient decreased 2.3% between 2005 and 2021 when accounting for inflation. And this was despite a 45.5% increase in physician services to each patient. Again, less pay and more work.
And to give some context, UnitedHealthcare has a payday service. For doctors. To help them borrow against future claim reimbursements. At the 35% rate.
Nice, ain't it?
That's why nobody shed a tear for that guy. His company was among the worst.
I assume you work for a pr cleanup team and are attempting to railroad the discussion.
I encourage you to seek therapy. Life can be happier.
Wife's position is that the free market works fine for non essentials but when it comes to essentials that you don't have a choice but to pay (water, medicine, housing, food) the market can be dangerous. Telling someone that their life saving cancer treatment comes to 500k isn't far from putting a gun to their head and saying "gimme 500k or you're dead". It's why I support ideas like the British NHS (it's not perfect but it's free), zero water charges for homes (paid through income tax, with surcharges for heavy usage like swimming pools).
Housing and food are free market because they are easy to get substitutes for in most of the western world (move to a different neighborhood, buy different food). Those two categories don’t really belong with water and healthcare.
The barrier to entry to provide tap water or provide healthcare is very high.
Yes, food is a free market right now, and in addition, it's subsidised (well, production is). Wait 20 years though, if climate change driven storms and floods destroy whole crops, that could change things dramatically.
In the US, a very small number of corporations own nearly all the supermarkets.
You can move all you want, it is the same stores (possibly under different brand name, but same ownership).
- they require deep discounts to put you in network, so providers increase their prices such that they end up whole after the mandatory discounts, that is why you can very often get your bills slashed to a fraction of the original if you pay crash
- obtrusive insurances means offices waste hours working on insurance instead of medical duties and many need to hire dedicated clerks
Usually health insurance 'negotiates' the price down to what it should cost and then you pay the full 'true' cost.
When I had my wisdom teeth out my insurer negotiated the price down from $4k to $700, of which I paid 100%.
And insurance creates the disconnect that allows a price to have no feedback control.
They are happy to collect their income and benefit from the system they create, so they should not be granted any excuses for it's failures.
The poor insurance companies are not the abused parties here.
You think the names of _the CEOs_ of some of the _biggest_ corporations on this planet are going to be hard to find on the internet?
I looked at this guy's LinkedIn and he was the "SVP, External Affairs" for the UnitedHealth Group from 2015 until 2023.
Sorry, those thoughts and prayers are out of network.
When you’re talking a population as large as that of the USA, there is a lot of murder. It’s seen an an option regularly at the moment.
Murder for your cause is already viable and profitable, UHC used it to great effect by rejecting enormous numbers of legitimate claims.
why is it extreme for the CEO to die, but not for hus customers?
Now make the insurance a for-profit business trying to maximize shareholder value and you get what you get.
A regretable mistake. from her side to not think about retirement.
Will the powerful be able to meet in an extravagant fashion like this ever again?
Will they ever be so brash as to say stuff like this[0] in public again?
What happens when the first billionaire is taken down by a $1000 drone?
They can take down whatever online presence they want but it won't be enough to hide from a motivated person or group of people.
What comes next?
[0] https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/tim-gurner-austr...
I doubt this is going to be copied soon. But the temperature of discontent is being raised, and fhe extraction of rent by our oligarchs along with the cost pollution forced into all of American life will jar loose a few more events over time. [https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-assassin-showed-just-h...] which was posted elsewhere on HN today highlights human nature as why the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is a good idea.
Nothing will change, have you seen the security apparatus of G20? They literally turn any place into a fortress.
Visit Canary Wharf or City of London and most of the infrastructure for barricading or lock down is already there.
What is unexpected to me is that this starts with Healthcare when my expectation would have been Oil and Gas first.
> What comes next?
A. They find him and he gets accidentally murdered during arrest so that he never sits in front of a jury.
B. They never find him and a copycat trend begins.
After 9/11 all major wealth epicentres really started taking security a lot more seriously beyond just plain robbery.
Comparing them to out dated and corrupt armed force is selling them short.
But let's say that it isn't. Just for the sake of argument.
Will it still hold against $100 drones? $50 drones? $10 drones?
History is replete with examples of lessons of the eternal struggle between offense and defense. While we have come of age in a time where defense has conquered offense there is no guarantee that this will remain the status quo.
If we are entering a period where offense exceeds the capabilities of defense how will the wealthy respond? In the age of technology destroying the status quo is there any reason to believe that this will extend to the status quo of the wealthy having an advantagous defensive posture?
What does the future where anyone can fuck someone elses shit up without regard to their social status look like?
Even if you think that this can somehow be circumvented with improvements in drone technology, think about who has an easier time using it - the state or would-be assassins.
https://apnews.com/article/unitedhealthcare-delay-deny-depos...
It's hard to feel any sympathy for these CEOs and companies. They've had it coming for a long time, and I bet people see the killer as a vigilante hero bringing justice to those normally immune to it.
I asked my ex (an endocrinologist), and he told me that if the shooter stands trial before the jury made of doctors, the deliberations will be done in 5 minutes. And the shooter will go free.
That's how much doctors hate the insurance CEOs. I also highly recommend this clip (also from an actual doctor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWA2aQYXDbo - and it's not actually a joke. The policy lampooned in this video was real, BCBS walked it back after the assasination.
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There are many other CEOs and a billionaires that could be targeted too!