So I have a close family member dying right now from cancer. Had stage 4 for almost 10 years, and then insurance started denying scans (which in medical terms, cost next to nothing) and delaying surgeries (which led to the state getting involved). These months-long delays on surgeries, coupled with lack of information about the tumor due to not having scans, led to them getting the wrong surgery for a tumor (it had grown too big, which they didn't find out until they went in). Now it's blowing up and inoperable, when they could have taken care of it with a simple laparoscopic procedure when it was <1cm. This is a gold private plan, too, and they had paid premiums for decades.

I'm absolutely disgusted in the US medical, insurance and legal systems after this. Nobody's going to jail for this. There's not even a fine. In fact, the system is working exactly as intended. Insurance just got sick of paying so they delayed everything so that this person would die and they could report higher earnings.

What's really upsetting is seeing doctors and nurses discussing stories like this in the wake of Luigi Mangione, and these conversations just getting deleted from places like reddit. We're allowed to talk about the death of a health insurance CEO (as long as we aren't happy about it) but when the conversation shifts to the people who died prematurely due to him and his company's practices, it gets censored. Absolutely disgraceful.

I don't believe in things like "deserve" (not after cancer anyway), but Brian Thompson should have got much worse than what he did.