Maybe the courts are too inefficient to handle these disputes, but that’s an argument for reforming the courts, not for shooting executives.
This is what these health insurance companies are doing routinely. Murder by inaction and calling it anything else is playing in their hands.
The fact that courts are costly and slow is exactly why these companies use them to "delay".
So everyone in said countries is guilty of murder because they're not donating 100% of their time and energy to helping cure cancer?
That's not at all how this works. You can't just legislate infinite resources into existence. And infinite resources is exactly what it would take to give everyone a 100% perfect standard of care.
Deciding what's covered and what isn't is literally the whole job of an insurance company. Otherwise we could just put money into a pot and let anyone take out any amount they feel like, whenever they feel like it, for whatever purpose they deem necessary at their sole discretion. (And if that sounds like a good idea to you, I'd urge you to think things through a bit more carefully before you waste your money by trying it.)
That's the case in US as well? If you show up to an ER they have to at least stabilize you.
Certainly not murder, involuntary manslaughter maybe. In any case, what is the basis for this obligation? You would concede that, as a consequence of imposing involuntary obligations on their citizens, these countries are less free? And you would also concede that reasonable people can disagree about the priorities of their values, and that valuing personal autonomy over collective well-being is a reasonable position?
> Murder by inaction and calling it anything else is playing in their hands.
What about doctors and nurses who refuse to work for free? Should we also shoot them? What about pharmaceutical companies that refuse to invest billions into drug development, or hospitals that refuse to purchase expensive facilities and equipment, without without a reasonable expectation of a return on their investment? Are they murderers too?
This worldview of holding people accountable for failing to intervene is simply not tenable. People are responsible for their direct actions. If you injure someone, you are responsible for your actions and the outcome they produced. If you simply come across an injured (or sick) person, you are in no way more obligated to them than you are to such a person on the other side of the world.
You also seem to be operating from the presumption that insurance companies do not add any value to the system, and that careful scrutiny of claims is motivated only by greed. I beg to differ. I want to be insured alongside other people with a similar risk profile to myself (eg. no drinking/drugs/smoking, daily exercise, good sleep, healthy body composition) to the exclusion of others. I want my insurance company to carefully scrutinize its applicants and claimants, on my behalf, to ensure that my interests are being well-represented. Insurance does not mean absolution from personal responsibility.
The mess is deeper, but starting an insurance company is not easy either, one could blame the regulations. And then one cannot blame regulations either, it's the regulators/govt who are ultimately voted/allowed by the people. It's a case where every one passes the buck, and so no one single entity is responsible for the mess.
Look at even small groups of common people, the most power hungry get to the top, common people vote for the most charismatic/popular, not the most competent. Blaming the powerful evil people is self defeating and absolves personal responsibility.
Common people are also a divided lot. Petty issues, bickering and entertainment keep them engaged. As the saying goes: divide and rule.
-- Hannah Arendt
> Maybe the courts are too inefficient to handle these disputes, but that’s an argument for reforming the courts, not for shooting executives.
You do realize that these companies lobby to make sure that it stays inefficient, right?
In the cases where they don't use the court system, they use arbitration, which is usually tilted in the favor of insurance companies.
If you want a fair shake at getting the benefits you paid for, you have to go through the courts. Given the nature of the subject of the lawsuit, there's a real chance that you'll be dead or bankrupt before you get your day in court. That's not a system that works. And when there are systems that don't work, there are on occasion people who will go outside the system to make their own. There is no scenario in which vigilantism is completely eliminated when you have people making massive sums of money off of refusing to do business in good faith.
More people need to read the cautionary tale of Ken Rex McElroy and the town of Skidmore, MO.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but my health insurance makes it very clear what the benefits I paid for are. There’s guidance after guidance and tool after tool to help minimize any surprise costs.
...and how has it gone when you tried to use them? Just as a personal anecdote: I once tried to get UHC to partially reimburse me for an out-of-network mental health expense. My policy explicitly covered such reimbursement (at a lower rate, of course). I tried for months to get the claim reimbursed. My employer at the time retained the services of a "healthcare concierge", and one of the main things they did was fight insurance companies on your behalf. That concierge service tried for six months to get a single claim reimbursed.
We all gave up.
It was such a small dollar amount; UHC likely spent more time and effort denying the claim than it would have cost to reimburse. It boggles my mind, to this day.
Just because your health insurance "makes it very clear what the benefits I paid for are" has no relation to whether or not they will actually pay those benefits out to you. If you haven't really experience this yet in America, I can only conclude that you are either rather healthy (and haven't used the benefits much), very lucky, or possibly both.
This is crazy. Maybe it's not "murder" in the traditional sense but you are making a choice on whether someone gets life-saving care, or lives in immense pain for the rest of their lives until they commit suicide. Again, this kind of normalized violence is justified when it's a business making choices to increase profits. We are so disconnected from our humanity that rounding errors in an Excel sheet mean actual lives are being ended, but that's okay.
Furthermore, absent major life events (job change, marriage, new child, etc) there is only one time of year when health insurance changes can be made, a time of year called Open Enrollment.
Finally, if you are self employed and you don't live in a state with a well functioning Obamacare market, your health insurance options are often quite limited.
And why doesn't the employer switch? Because health care plans typically have doctors that they like more than other doctors ("in network" vs "out of network"), so most people gravitate toward the preferred doctors. ("Like" means "cover better", so the patient pays less.) If your company changes health care insurers, then many people would have economic pressure to switch away from their current doctors, which is a hassle.
TL;DR: There's a lot of friction in various forms here. That's why. Yes, people can switch, but it's expensive and painful, so most don't, even though the option is technically there.
Surely you are not that naive, please carry yourself in these conversations with a modicum of self-respect.
In other words, it is frequently made impossible, by law, to switch providers.
They budget differently, but they won't use unlimited resources on every situation.
Key traits associated with psychopathy include: 1. Affective Traits: • Lack of empathy (emotional detachment from others’ suffering) • Shallow emotions (restricted emotional range) • Absence of guilt or remorse • Callousness 2. Interpersonal Traits: • Superficial charm • Grandiosity (inflated sense of self-worth) • Manipulativeness • Deceptiveness or pathological lying
People defend planetary scale psychopathy because it’s quite literally business as usual.
Is the care life-saving or pain-preventing?
There is an additional option: the person pays for it. Or someone else pays for it. Since the 1980s U.S. emergency rooms have been required to provide life-saving care regardless of whether someone can pay.
> normalized violence
It is not violence to fail to reimburse someone.
If someone cannot pay his bills, then he declares bankruptcy, the debts are wiped out, his creditors take a haircut and he moves on with his life. In many/most states he will get to retain his home and perhaps his vehicle. It’s not the end of the world?
Is it ideal? No, of course not. It’s better than dying, and of course it’s not murder.
Those can be the same thing for some people. Chronic pain patients have a dramatically worse mortality rate.
> If someone cannot pay his bills, then he declares bankruptcy, the debts are wiped out, his creditors take a haircut and he moves on with his life.
I’ve done this. Due to medical expenses, in fact. It costs money up front, and was difficult to navigate as a well educated person with family support.
The idea that this is an easy option for a single person with no supports and a disabling condition is insane.
Many doctors won’t see you after, either. Bankruptcy doesn’t mean people you burned have to keep doing business with you.