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Comment by johndhi | Hacker News Reader

I hate the US healthcare system but I don't support using the word murder in this context. Murder is very very different from trying to help a person but being greedy while doing it.

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I think murder is an appropriate term. There is a long history of company leadership making decisions that they know will lead to the death of thousands of people. See tobacco, opiates, leaded gas and many others. And they are not trying to help people while being greedy but they are only greedy without being motivated to help people.

Forgot insurance.

> trying to help a person but being greedy while doing it.

The doctors are trying to help people, the execs are being greedy while doing it. Leadership doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt at this point.

Plenty of docs making the better part of a million dollars.

Buddy, six figures is about 3 short of the amounts we’re talking about here.

Yea, we have to stop villainizing people who are making "a better part of a million dollars." The real villains are the ones making a better part of a billion dollars or more.

But it’s not “a person”. It’s millions of them.

I agree it's really sad and fucked up. But the way we deal with murder is long prison sentences and the death penalty. If we introduce horrible incentives for investing in medicine, we won't get compassionate care, we will just eliminate investment in healthcare.

We need really thoughtful incentives and simple policies that let doctors run hospitals. Idk it's hard - I was going to say we should reward them for providing better care but I know the pay for performance system in place also hasn't worked that well.

Single payor system would solve a lot of problems as insurance companies and the economic system/incentives they’ve created in healthcare is the root cause of a lot of the issues. Also, it’s such a large and relatively unnecessary value extraction layer (middleman) that we’d immediately have many more dollars going towards providing care than to running of insurance companies and their owners. Even the hospitals and other providers have to employ armies of people just to understand how to bill things properly in this unnecessarily complex ecosystem. It’s a massive waste of resources in the name of capitalism that does nothing to improve the care provided.

It’s even worse when considering these companies profit more by denying care altogether.

Yes, it's much worse.

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