Complications: The Ethics of the Killing of a Health Insurance CEO | Hacker News Reader

Complications: The Ethics of the Killing of a Health Insurance CEO

dailynous.com

3 pointschimpanzee18 comments

It's not a 'moral debate'. One side is insane for thinking it's justified to kill someone over perceived injustices. I saw this lunacy for years on the left. I'm just glad America finally woke up and voted it out of our government in November.

Perhaps you’re confusing candidates?

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029...

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-01/don-t-... | https://archive.today/kFDNO

No. You are the one confused.

So a 3rd-hand conversation that was most likely a joke is compared..to..actual..murder? More insanity.

You do realize Lefists tried to murder president trump three times and it's been memory-holed. Right? Throughout history, leftists have always been the violent ones...and currently, it's no different.

> Throughout history, leftists have always been the violent ones

This is an obvious and shameless lie.

One attempt definitely by somebody, once probably by somebody, no shot fired but no better explanation for stalking with a weapon. "Third" time not. 2nd Amendment Trump supporter arrested for carrying in a more highly-armed place.

Please don't fall into their victimhood narrative. Please don't misrepresent. Truth is bad and good enough.

Yitzak Rabin was not killed by a leftist. America was not freed from England by petition.

This line of argument appears to ignore the morality of acting rationally. No matter how repugnant its actions appear to be, UHC is acting rationally when it squeezes more profit from people. It is even acting rationally when it denies claims fraudulently knowing that the penalty is less than the profit. Calling it immoral when they don't do the 'right thing' is the real problem. Think of this from another direction, do we want a company trying to define what actions are 'right' and 'wrong' and then follow them? Because that is what we are doing when we argue that they shouldn't take every possible step to make a dollar. A company's only incentive is profit so allowing them to change the rules in their favor is the only irrational, and therefore immoral, action that has been made, and that action was taken by society, not UHC. We should assume that any company will, and should, take the most profitable move. Asking that they make any other move is to ask them to act irrationally and that is immoral. In short, I argue it is moral to act rationally, that society sets the framework for commerce and and that it is irrational, and therefore immoral, that we give them any voice or influence and further that it is irrational and immoral to have delegated the definition of what are 'good' or 'bad' actions to companies. That means that the only real argument that UHC is immoral is that they, or any company, makes an effort to change the rules or guide legislation. Or put even more bluntly, society is to blame here, not UHC, so any argument that violence against UHC by an individual is justified is misplaced.

> UHC is acting rationally when it squeezes more profit from people

A company is not acting rationally if it knowingly and willingly creates enemies that can and will act against it.

“Unless it is more profitable to do so because…”

Rinse and repeat.

Yes, that calculus is probably happening right now, but my point was that we are to blame for this so violence against UHC is unacceptable. I see people that are mad at healthcare, and I am one of them. The industry is clearly evil, but we let them get there. We voted in the people that enabled them, that allowed lobbyist to wield influence in changing regulations. We voted in people that opposed the obvious solution of universal healthcare that works orders of magnitude better in nearly every other country out there. UHC is an evil company and their acts are despicable, but the system we keep voting in demands that a company like them will exist. If UHC disappeared today there would be a new company just as bad to take its place very quickly. Even if UHC were to be well regulated, the rest of the healthcare system in the US is just as bad. My core point is that we are to blame so, yeah, get mad but get mad at the actual source of the problem. Vote against people that help this industry. Write your reps. Tell people that they are stupid for voting to block universal healthcare and support those that do support it. Get mad at fake news sites that confuse and lie about this issue and tell people they are harming themselves and others by listening to them. We are to blame and we are the ones that need to change.

You use the word “we” quite often, but “we” are not all hurt equally. Nor do we have equal say or power despite the rhetoric.

10% of the populace owns 66% of the wealth and the trend is worsening.

This same 10% is relatively homogenous in race and creed and education compared to the remaining 90%.

This 10% is far more likely to have been born into wealth.

This 10% also has more access to the tools required to understand, manipulate and abuse human nature for their own purposes. Very handy for the rare election or referendum.

None of this is to say Mangione had the right to kill. If I were in his position, I wouldn’t. But I still don’t judge him for it.

And within such a society, “the right” doesn’t matter. That’s a religio-philosophical concept that is of little consequence to a truly stressed individual. When stresses increase, the stressed will react however their nature and nurture dictates.

Point being, rhetoric is only useful for true believers and those who are not stressed.

And a rational, intelligent ruling class wouldn’t let themselves become targets unless they believed they could get away with it and simply didn’t care about those reliant on them.

—-

Numbers alone makes this all clear. It’s easier to get 10 people to cooperate for their own benefit than to get 90 people to do the same. And if it’s a competition with unclear boundaries, then those 10 would be wise to split themselves into two camps to persuasively divide the other 90 while still acting in unison when it comes to maintaining power and wealth.

Granted the scale here is far greater and the cohesion is far less, but the principle remains.

There's more than one way to run a company, including one that is not maximally short-sighted.

Maybe UHC is regularly getting ripped off by doctors or pharma and they're distrustful? They have a share of the facts and can be open about this.

Laughing in the face of people relying on you in critical situations to make a quick buck is simply indecent and certainly not sustainable. More than one monopoly that got greedy has faltered.

So much this. I get if the system incentivizes health insurers to act this way, and I get that it's unreasonable to expect unilateral disarmament of anyone.

But FFS, surely they have to realize this situation is unsustainable? Shouldn't we, at a minimum, expect them to be sharing their insight into why they (feel they) are forced to act this way, and what reforms would fix it?

If all they ever do is cynically game a system that they know can't last, and which they know is creating people with an extreme grudge against them ... yeah I'm fine with calling that some combination of irrational/evil.

Rationality is also running a business in a way that you don't risk your employees to be shot.

Actually, no, it is rational in this context. And until we realize that, and vote to ensure companies can't get to that point, this kind of business will keep happening. I will say it very clearly, companies do not care about people, they only care about money. That means rational moves all relate to money, not to the welfare of people and that is the point. We want to get mad and we want to be happy this happened because healthcare really is evil, but change will only happen when we attack the real problem, us. We keep acting irrationally. We keep voting in ways that are clearly not in our self interest. We keep believing that a company will act irrationally and do something 'good' that looses them money. Until we deeply understand that companies have zero interest in the outcomes of people unless they can make money off that outcome then this will keep happening.

Your wall of texts are very hard to read.

Anyhow, you juxtaposition of moral and rationality justifies the murder.

You say that it is the publics responsibility to out pressure on law makers to align moral and rationality.

In an oligarchy, like the US, this is really hard to do through the normal channels.

So your line of thought must be to use channels that transcend normal channels, such as murder.

last sentence:

But we may yet get to the point where it becomes clear that the government will never be willing or able to regulate these industries in the ways that morality requires and that the people demand.

So then what?

It is easily arguable that the US just voted, with a clear majority, to continue to support the policy makers directly responsible for keeping this system in place. The government is doing what we are asking for and we are arguably getting exactly what we deserve.

I look around the US and I see a lot of people point fingers and saying 'its their fault' but the truth is pretty clear to me. It is our fault. You want to get the government to change? Vote. Convince your neighbors to stop voting against their self interest. If healthcare is so evil then look at who voted for the current system and vote them out. Write to your reps and tell them that their support of this system is unacceptable. Get informed and look around the world at what works and encourage adopting that. Figure out why people are not voting in their self interest and lobby to change that. When I look at the US I keep thinking the same thing over and over again, all people are created equal but some (companies) are more equal than others. Get mad that the corporate freedom of speech is more equal than yours and vote out people that try to increase company influence.

We tried voting...

Bill Clinton had campaigned heavily on health care in the 1992 United States presidential election...On September 26, 1994, the final compromise Democratic bill was declared dead by Senate majority leader George J. Mitchell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_19...

Reading nexus, Yuval Noah talks about these things.

He establishes a hirarchy of checks and balances well functioning democracies have, but conviniently stops at the media and how they can cover stuff like this.

The natural next step would be civil disobedience, which should be the point where law makers swiftly takes things seriously as not to have a society go from a democracy to an anarchy.

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