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andrelaszlo

"No industry malfeasance could ever excuse murder.

Period."

Murdering a murderer to save many innocents could be considered ethical by some?

(Not saying that's the case here, but nypost made an interesting categorical statement.)

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It is funny that the sentiment that nothing excuses a murder is being circulated in the US - a country that still carried out death sentences.

It's a little different when a jury of your peers convicts you of a crime which was democratically passed by a legislature, versus a lone gunman who feels he is the judge, jury, and executioner.

The point here is that "democratically passed legislature" is not at people's service.

It's the least bad system.

It's legalized corruption to the max. It's the worst implementation of the least bad system.

If the U.S. is leading the world's economy with high standards of living, maybe it is only a bad implementation in some aspects but not all.

An elected legislature is a pipe dream in a country with gerrymandering.

Forget gerrymandering, a representative government is impossible as long as the Senate still gives the same weight to the 15 people in North Dakota as it does the 40 million in California.

Why? Apparently something excused murder in the death row case?

So expressing the sentiment that nothiong excuses murder and still having a death row is just I congruent and wrong.

In the death row case, the capital punishment isn't murder if you use classic definitions. If you change the definitions then it's only murder if you equate all homicide to murder.

And yes, both the will of the people and tradition can justify capital punishment.

That's fair. And in that vein the current killing of the ceo can not rightfully be deemed a murder as no one have been convicted of such.

But then again, the society apparently defines the quality of a killing - only future history will tell if this is a murder, and thst can go back and forth a lot depending on public sentiment.

America is the land of stand your ground laws in which a citizen may legally take a life if they feel endangered. Let's not forget the 1000 or so police kill every year.

It's justified when the committee is large enough and regulated enough?

I understand what you're saying.

But a murder carried out by a random citizen is still worse than a death sentence after a fair trial and convicted by a jury of your peers.

It was not the justification of murder I was talking about. Simply the fact that murder as a solution is absolutely accepted in the US.

Murder isn't the same as homicide. By definition the death penalty isn't murder, because it's state sanctioned. Self defense, another example of legal killing, also isn't murder and most people who are against murder would consider a death in self defense to be justified and not murder.

Self defense can give mitigating circumstances in some legal systems, but it’s not an ethical joker to kill whoever we self-decreed feels as representing a threat.

For example, we can go into treacherous schemes that pushes our neighbors into paths where the only obvious option they can still perceive as a way to escape our shenanigans is an attempt to kill us, and as they come with this very real intention to kill us, press the button we had prepared to trigger some mortal trap.

When all the acceptable solutions are taken off the table, people start turning to unacceptable solutions. It's not good, because the erosion of social institutions will worsen the situation for everyone, but the only way to deal with this is to put the acceptable solutions back on the table. If we don't want to live and die through the inevitable consequences, our government needs to stop the corporate abuse of power that has led to this.

Worse... how? Shouldn't it depend on context a LOT? Like a mass murderer getting off on a technicality for example.

Considering that a lot of innocent people are murdered by the state via jury and trial in the US the distinction isn't very clear imo.

> Considering that a lot of innocent people are murdered by the state via jury and trial in the US the distinction isn't very clear imo.

~211 people were killed via trial sentence in the US in the last 10 years [0]. Presumably some of them weren't innocent. In the same time period (conservatively) 8500 were killed by law enforcement outside of the legal process [1].

Both are problematic, but calling <20 people/year (out of a third of a billion people) "a lot" is missing the forest for the tiny sprig of moss.

[0] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/database/executions?year=2024&y...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...

The Doctor Who meme here applies.

Is 5 a lot?

Depends. Potatoes? No. Murder? Yes.

Maybe. But do you have an example of a society that do both death sentence and provide fair trial plus peers conviction?

Making prevailing the idea that some humans can reach a level of certainty that is high enough to put a death sentence on some people they didn’t even knew before that is telling a lot. Like, we humans never make errors, we don’t have any kind of cultural and idiosyncratic biases, we never have conflict of interest and we can’t be manipulated by miscellaneous social forces.

Murder is bad, and murder en masse committed through institutionalized legitimating mechanisms is thus extremely bad, as as many times as bad as how many people it kills.

Legal murder through institutions never prevented a society to have "random" citizen going awry and kill other people, but it never missed to add supplementary threats to all their citizen.

You could easily argue the opposite is also possible to be true - if by "murder" you mean "killing" in general.

It's quite possible for someone to hold that a killing in self-defense is much more defensible than the deliberate execution even after a conviction and trial of someone who is "no longer harmful to society" because they're locked up.

In the 20th century, I think the death sentence was only ever applied for first-degree murder and for treason.

A claim denial that results in denial of life-saving treatment could never be counted as either of those charges.

> A claim denial that results in denial of life-saving treatment could never be counted as either of those charges.

First-degree murder is when you willingly, and with forethought, plans and carries out the killing of a human. Which seems to me to be 100% what you described.

Denying a claim can not kill someone. Disease and injury killing a person. Claim denial prevents financial support for intervention in resolving a disease or injury. That is not the same thing, and equivocating them is sophistry.

I’d say that not equivocating them is sophistry. In both cases, someone takes a deliberate action that they know will result in an innocent person’s death. I fail to see why the exact mechanism should be so important.

If you’re shot, and I pull up a chair and watch you die without saying a word or helping in any way, especially if I get paid extra for refusing, I’m not sure if I’d call it murder, exactly, but I bet your family and friends would describe me as a killer.

Pulling a trigger can not kill someone. Bullets kill people. /s

And which is currently fighting multiple wars around the world, or justifying support of many proxy wars which are killing thousands daily.

This. The cognitive dissonance is jarring. And no "that's different!" is no argument. Like it or not, our government leads by example. And the example is not a good one.

The act of killing a human being is not inherently murder. It specifically communicates an unlawful killing, which the death penalty inherently is not.

This is because the US is not one homogenous system of thought, but rather a mosaic of people with differing views. (This goes for any other country or population for that matter.)

A more constructive observation would be to consider the overlap in groups of people who (1) hold that murder is indefensible in any case, and (2) hold that death sentences are appropriate for crimes. While not sharing that view myself, I could think of a few factors that may lead others to espouse it, such as:

- an implicit trust in authority and deterrents (follow rule, "or else");

- feeling of being mostly immune to errors in the justice system ("this would never happen to me");

- a propensity to desire revenge but only when it pertains to "others" ("I'm a good person, we must punish the bad people")...

Murder is by definition an unlawful homicide. This isn’t just pedantry; it’s the most parsimonious explanation for why someone would support the death penalty and object to something like the assassination.

It becomes pedantry of the law is not right. Eg. If the law is based on an oligarchy over a democracy.

Until the day we can point to a country that implements a direct democracy with a fair way to obtain citizenship for whoever is involved in its society, all laws will always remain a tool of a minority to arbitrarily rule a majority.

The concern is not whether laws are rights or wrongs, but which privileges and which hurts they reinforce for which classes in the society where the national myth is eager to present them as the applied rules.

> Until the day we can point to a country that implements a direct democracy with a fair way to obtain citizenship for whoever is involved in its society, all laws will always remain a tool of a minority to arbitrarily rule a majority.

There's Switzerland.

Switzerland definitely shows interesting political paths, they nonetheless don’t pretend to be a direct democracy.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/swiss-democracy-in-an...

Why the mixup of a well functioning democracy and a direct democracy?

For the same reason we might want to distinguish between well functioning government and direct democracy.

First, direct democracy is kind of a pleonasma, that is in its core democracy has to put equals duties and means to all its citizens. It's clear probably why such a system can easily attract masses, as it promises to maintain political power in the hands of those who have to obey it. Note that this definition insist more on duties and means, which is a very different promise from a populist statement on "righteous rights for everyone thanks to a turn key plan you don't even need to investigate on applicability". People certainly are interested with more democracy, so their slavers scam them with all kind of system under the label democracy which never give them these duties and means that you can expect to see attached to an effective democratic citizen.

The initial proposition was that it is pedantry to distinguish between the quality of the killing when the form of governance is not a well functioning democracy - something that would appear to be well established as the US has no issues going into other countries and kill leaders under the argument that it is not democracies.

The question is not so much the quality of the US democracy but to what extend it can even be classified as a well functioning democracy.

The US resembles an oligarchy, and when the laws are written by the rich and profit seeking that will affect how killings are perceived such as killing in the name of corporate profits will become alright.

Not to mention that we happily do extrajudicial assassinations outside of our borders, and the news falls all over themselves to celebrate them.

Everybody knows that plenty excuses a murder, we live in murderous states and in murderous times. The question is whether this murder is excusable, and one's opinion on it is probably dependent on whether one wishes they had that guy's job. Most people wouldn't do it for any price, but plenty would.

I'm trying to figure out if these deaths caused by insurance denials could actually be considered murder. I think they would definitely qualify as being premeditated, but can you consider them "killing"? They are causing death due to omission of expected care, but can the omission of something like medical care be considered the cause of death?

Ask yourself this question again when it's your partner/parent/child in the casket.

I am not a lawyer, but I would assume that death due to omission of expected care fits pretty neatly under "negligent homicide".

Duty of care?

It is weird—I would expect only the folks who make decisions as to which procedures are medically necessary (just doctors ideally) to have a duty of care. But insurance companies are bouncing back procedures are not medically necessary, so maybe we’re due for a re-adjustment in the expectations as to who has that duty.

It is surprising if insurance companies what to sign themselves up for this sort of obligation. But obviously they’ll take all the privileges of the decision making process if we don’t also hold them to the responsibilities.

There is legal precedent establishing healthcare providers' obligations in life-threatening situations. The same moral responsibility should exist when insurers deny lifesaving care, it's just hidden behind bureaucracy.

There are direct measures: someone needs a transplant or something of that nature, refusal is effectively shortening their life and some aggressive prosecutors might craft a case. There are less direct things, I expect a lot of them. say people dealing with long recoveries from things, there are good days and bad days and bouts of depression aren’t uncommon; could antidepressants prevent depression on related suicides? That’s an entire can of worms, people have fallen into depression because they’ve become addicted and can’t kick it, what if it was medical pain killers you’re addicted to? Then suppose some company spent half the funds on ED pills and breast augmentation and some more medically things were denied, you can spin that both ways as they might be doing what the bulk of their customers want. That one is interesting, you could break a bone and have surgical reconstruction and hopefully get a full recovery or maybe you just set it and naturally heal and maybe it’s not 100% fixed, only 85%, there is a substantial cost difference there…

For profit medicine and for profit health insurance is just riddled with moral hazard.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01651...

The doctor / hospital that refuses to treat when insurance declines is also involved in the “omission of expected care”. Would they also be guilty of premeditated murder?

Yeah.

Depends on your philosophy I suppose. For example, Christianity teaches that failing to do good is itself a sin. So that suggests that an omission could be considered to make someone guilty.

I suspect that all modern legal systems have the concept of negligence which could result in someone being considered guilty for someone's death. I imagine in that case whether that's "murder" would come down to whether you mean a legal definition (which might call it something else like "manslaughter") or the colloquial definition.

And guilt isn't a single bucket or item to be handed out to one person. Most if not all moral systems and laws admit of varying degrees of responsibility and culpability and work within that framework (see situations where a bank robbery goes wrong and one robber kills someone and the getaway driver is also charged as an accessory to the killing).

Also without this murder, we could imagine that the NYPost would have never written this article to alert on the malfeasance of healthcare providers...

Why wouldn't they do their part as a news org, and why did they wait for the murder to publish such an article, if that murder was not "needed" for things to change, then?

If a cancer patient is denied a claim for life-saving medication because they're 'not sick enough' then dies, is it murder?

Yes, in my opinion. It's homicide at the very least.

One issue is that if denying medical care is murder then every healthcare system is guilty.

In the US it’s insurance companies (or the government through Medicare or Medicaid) but in the UK it’s NICE, in Canada it’s CADTH and the provincial health authorities.

Since there are finite resources spent on healthcare, trade offs are made all the time. If spending $10M on treatment A saved 10,000 lives and $10M on treatment B saves 1,000 lives, then treatment A gets funded and treatment B doesn’t.

The difference is that patients in the US have an up close and personal experience with denial.

In Canada and the UK they don’t because doctors knows what is covered and what isn’t so never bring up life saving options if they aren’t paid for.

In rare circumstances like cystic fibrosis in the UK, patients become aware that they are being denied a life saving drug and protest, but generally it’s pretty rare because patients just don’t know the option exists.

Your argument is completely bogus for multiple reasons. Firstly, people are paying here for insurance, a lot. Secondly, it's the FDA's job to approve treatments which it does. Thirdly, we do not have a uniform privatized determination across the country of what is approvable or not by insurance companies. They deny numerous legitimate treatments and procedures at their whim.

I’m not sure how that makes my argument bogus.

Plenty of treatments are denied in other countries. Not to mention most other countries have private insurance layered on top of public and it’s the same issue - private insurers denying a treatment through their own process.

If US insurers are guilty of murder than most of the worlds insurers are too.

The difference is that patients in the US are being denied by people lining their own pockets with the savings. In sane countries, there’s at least some basis of trying to do the most good with the resources at hand, which sometimes means denying care for person A because those resources would be better spent on person B. With private insurers in the US, it means denying care for person A because they think they can get away with it and it will increase their profits.

If you actually trace the cashflows, the "people lining their own pockets with the savings" are mainly not the insurers but rather the executives and shareholders for other large companies with self-funded employee health plans. Most insurance companies no longer provide much real insurance but rather primarily administer health plans on behalf of self-funded employers. Due to the minimum medical loss ratio rule, insurers actually make more profit the more claims they approve.

https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/private-health-insurance/med...

If employers wanted it, insurers would be happy to offer health plans that fully paid every claim with zero denials. This would be enormously profitable for the insurers because they could run those health plans with minimal work. But instead, most employers are constantly looking for ways to cut employee health benefit costs. This means incentives aren't aligned.

> With private insurers in the US, it means denying care for person A because they think they can get away with it and it will increase their profits.

The person at the insurer who denies a claim is not making more money because they denied it. The company as a whole might, but not the person denying it.

Right, the ones who profit are just setting up the rules, policies, and incentive structures that those people work under.

This is a really simplistic approach and you're never going to fix it.

There are numerous stakeholders who setup the rules - the government, insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, billers, etc.

All of them profit from the current system, but there is no single stakeholder who decides the overall rules.

My only point is that there are people with a lot of power to decide who gets what treatments who profit from denying treatment. That’s 100% true.

Fixing it is another matter. Of course that’s not easy.

The US spends the most budget per patient for the least amount of care, the rest goes into inefficiency and profit (a second kind of inefficiency).

Medicare per-capita spending is more than NHS per capita spending, but the NHS covers everyone.

Of course healthcare is denied in any system (in other systems this is triage), but nowhere to the level United Health does it: over 30%, it's on a completely different scale.

Executing a murderer can be defended. “Industry malfeasance” leading to death is indefensible.

You would need to prove that murdering a health care CEO will save many innocents, first.

K. So step 1. murder health insurance CEO (no healthcare involved there), check. Step 2. watch UnitedHealth's refusal rates closely, ongoing.

It got Anthem to immediately reverse a horrible decision: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/anthem-blue-cross...

Violence works.

Zeitgeist graffiti, anyone? "When they wage war, we wage war."

Well, if a killing is ethically justified, it isn't murder. So yes, they're at least begging the question with that statement for sure.

>Well, if a killing is ethically justified, it isn't murder.

Are you saying this as an opinion, or is this an established thing? I thought murder was an "unlawful killing without justification or valid excuse" (paraphrased from Wikipedia), whether one finds it ethical or not is sort of beside the point. Especially because there is no objectively correct ethics.

But, I'm not a lawyer, this is just my understanding.

I would say you have to be careful and specific - as "murder" is usually the domain of the law and "ethically justified* is the domain of ethics.

It's quite easy to come up with situations where the law declares a killing as unequivocally murder yet everyone agrees it was ethically justified. The opposite can happen too.

Even if you accept that, it still doesn't excuse it being done by companies or individuals.

The point is also orthogonal to what the insurance industry does.

"Murdering a murderer to save many innocents could be considered ethical by some?"

This is a heavy statement.