The Internet is not reality and online posts are not a representative sample of the population. Instead, every survey of Americans shows around 80% are satisfied with their health coverage.
Please don’t cherry pick misleading data.
https://www.kff.org/private-insurance/poll-finding/kff-surve...
There's nothing misleading about the KFF data, which has been going for quite some time now. If you recall (I know it seems like a lifetime ago), Obama got in trouble for lying that people could keep their plan if they liked it. If so many hated their plan, why did he pay such a heavy political price? Why would he even have to lie in the first place?
Everyone I have spoken to has no sympathy for him as a CEO but sympathy for him as a human. He is wrong and the healthcare system is broken. But this was also murder. If your sense of empathy is so fucked that you’re pro murder, you need to speak to a professional.
(If you’re struggling with this and don’t want to let hate turn you into a monster, consider the difference between believing someone deserved what was coming to them and supporting that which delivered it.)
One, it doesn’t. Two, this applies in loads of cases depending on your individual morality. (Intentionally-spicy takes: abortion providers. Medical researchers who experiment on animals. Farmers. Meat eaters. Anyone American because of our foreign military interventions.)
https://apnews.com/article/anthem-blue-cross-anesthesia-insu...
Healthcare PR is in overdrive right now because people want this story. In truth, the anaesthesia debate started a few days before the shooting.
A quote comes to mind - “I do not wish death upon another human, but I have read some obituaries with great delight”. This is one of those instances.
I have more sympathy for his family than him - he did not have to choose this line of work. Do people have sympathy for Bin Laden or other terrorists? If they don’t, do they need to see a therapist?
Anecdotally, the only people that I’ve spoken to who has sympathy are other extremely well off individuals who have questionable ethics. I also think it’s interesting that because the victim is an elite, there’s a sense of justice from other elites that is not there when a common man is shot and killed.
The whole thing is a double standard on multiple levels.
Not really. The double standard is in excusing murder as a political tactic because you don’t like the victim.
In this case, the Twitterati will hold their court. And then a real court with real people on the jury will convict. There may also be an inquiry into UnitedHealth, but it will be able to be bludgeoned into partisan death by the law and order bloc.
> only people that I’ve spoken to who has sympathy are other extremely well off individuals
The ones I’ve seen who sympathise with the killer are largely college educated, urban, active on social media and make more than the median wage. If you’re only seeing one side of this, you’re in a bubble, because the truth is it’s not top of mind for most of America.
I do see both sides but the opposite of what you mention though - the ones that sympathize with the CEO are wealthy people who believe almost any method to make money is legitimate, or support the existing healthcare system because it hasn’t screwed them yet. If you think the healthcare system is messed up then you tend to support the killer.
People of all classes sympathize with the victims. Nobody cheers on the school shooters.
What would taking meaningful action to solve the issue mean to you in each case?
Everyone who has stepped in a hospital as provider or patient knows an insurance executives job is to quietly kill hundreds to thousands of people a year and profit from it.
Of course there's oil companies, cigarettes, alcohol, guns, weapons, and a lot of other industries that do this.
Because the real quiet part of capitalism is that its valuation of human life is very very very small unless they have money. Have many criticisms of economics, but this is the biggest one. Capital owned/controlled by a human is all that is valued, otherwise you are zero or negative.
You have the incentives backwards. Nobody is thinking of the collective. The story that sells today is David v Goliath. If you want a speaking gig on cable television, you need to help turn this murder into a symbol. (And no judgement. Media is media.)
I love this dismissive attitude that anyone who fails to empathize with someone who makes tens of millions a year AND denies health insurance claims is somehow mentally ill. Get real.
I’m not saying feel sorry for him. I’m not even saying don’t indulge in schadenfreude. Where you should know it crosses the line is in celebrating the killing and the killer. Because I promise you that someone with equal or more conviction in their righteousness would similarly take pleasure in the murder if someone you find, if not virtuous, not deserving to be murdered.
Ok, someone will take pleasure in the murder of someone I think doesn’t deserve it. So what? Obviously I don’t like that, but people think all kinds of stuff I don’t like. Why should this particular opinion change mine?
Virtually everyone would take pleasure in someone’s murder. Osama bin Laden, say. Hitler, if we were in a different time and he hadn’t done the job himself. There are some people so principled they really wouldn’t feel that way for anyone, but for most of us it’s just a question of who falls into that category. Is has been a little surprising to find out that so many Americans consider this guy to be worthy, but just a little.
Not at all. Our healthcare system is corrupt. That doesn’t excuse murder. Bin Laden was offed by a state. Depending on your morals, that is or isn’t different. But those who equate a serial killer with a soldier are in the stark, stark minority.
> little surprising to find out that so many Americans consider this guy to be worthy
Worthy of wealth != worthy of life. If you think you can judge life or death for other humans, sure, fine. We are very, very different people.
I don't plan on going out and killing anyone, but I don’t see what’s wrong with thinking it’s good if it happens to certain very bad people. I suspect you have some people you’d think that of too. Maybe not, but most people do.
Since I’m not acting on it, my judgment counts for essentially nothing. I don’t understand this strong reaction to it.
My insurance doesn't cover it.
I’m personally much more interested in why people are so uncaring about a bad system that kills a ton of innocent people, than in why people don’t care about the murder of someone who got wealthy making it happens.
A narrow slice of social media is losing its mind. It’s New York. It’s unusual. But there are a lot of gun deaths in America every month.
You’re right, it’s not unusual. So not unusual that this wasn’t even the only murder in Manhattan that day. There was at least one other. Only one is getting a massive manhunt and media coverage for some reason.
Yes. It’s a lower Manhattan daytime shooting of a non-New Yorker. It’s where rich New Yorkers are. It’s where most New Yorkers are. It’s where most of New York City’s economy—including vastly most of its tourism—is. (And it will keep the media’s attention because the killer is photogenic.)
My point is that there is a big fuss being made, it’s not just a narrow slice of social media. The suspect’s apprehension is the top story on every American news outlet I checked just now. And my secondary point is that the disparity is deeply fucked up.
There’s a huge difference between how people view health care in general, and their own health insurance. According to the linked survey, in 2023 it was notable that only 72% of people had a favorable view of their own health insurance. In recent decades that has indeed sat around 80%, as OP claimed.
Again, that’s their _own_ insurance, while views of health insurance in general are quite worse, similar to how most people think congress is a shitshow yet rank their own representatives much higher.
It’s an interesting dissonance.
https://news.gallup.com/file/poll/654047/2024_12_06%20Health...
On page 5 you can see 79% are dissatisfied with the cost of health care.
Still, that’s a huge dissonance between personal experience and opinion on the nationwide state of things, and I find that interesting because I doubt we can fix it unless a significant majority of people find it enough of a personal priority to vote that way.
I want to see a poll specifically on “how much do you like your health insurance company?” Not your coverage, not your insurance, but specifically the company.
I'm pretty well-off, so I can just throw money at my problems, and avoid dealing with insurance nonsense (denials and delays). So I'm fine with my health care coverage.
I'm not at all fine with my insurance company. And I'm actually in a very privileged position because I helped select this insurer for my company.
Weird how heath coverage is the only thing in America 80% of the people are satisfied with. It's such a nice round number, too. I'm assuming it's men only, or were women polled before Roe v. Wade was dumped?
I'm assuming this is like calculating unemployment rates, where you need to play around with your definitions. Like, services no longer being available can't factor into "satisfaction" in any way.
More concretely, if you have two pharmacies in town and one of them closes, will polling accurately reflect the 0% satisfaction rate engendered? Or is this where we start splitting hairs.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/3870943-americans-large...
> Although personal life satisfaction varies based on income, age, marital status and education level, between 81 percent and 90 percent of Americans are satisfied with their own family life, current housing situation, job, education, community and personal health.
> Slightly lower levels — between 71 percent and 77 percent — said the same about the amount of leisure time they have, their household income and standard of living.
So, ya know, lots of things that aren't super politicized.
> Why didn't this number change after women's healthcare took a massive hit?
(1) This question is asking about the quality of healthcare you received, not your perception of healthcare for others. A minority of women are directly impacted through the healthcare system by Dobbs (2022) (as opposed to indirect or non-healthcare effects).
(2) Some of the novel abortion restrictions post-Dobbs happened later? The most recent point on this graph is 2022. So it may just not show up yet until 2023/2024 numbers.
(3) The 2022 satisfaction number is slightly lower than the 2021 number (72% vs 76%). You could plausibly attribute some of that to Dobbs.
Ahh ok, there’s the hair we’re splitting. Can’t be unsatisfied with a service that doesn’t exist I guess.