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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

Hey, here in America, sometimes CEOs get shot as well.

Here in America, if you or I get shot, a detective gets assigned the case along with 30 other cases on their desk. When a CEO gets shot, the largest city assigns an unlimited number of police to the case to find the person...

not by the state, however. important distinction.

Now that justice by official channels is closed, one wonders if a grieving parent will seek it out by unofficial means

Parents could file a class action? RICO? How is this any different from organized crime?

It will take a bit more in general. I don't think we're at the point of Blair Mountain yet, but if things don't change, then it's coming.

rarely

> here in America, sometimes CEOs get shot as well

No, they don't. The UnitedHealth dude who got shot had a CEO title, but Thompson was ultimately a middle manager.

The actual CEO of UnitedHealth Group–the one who signs off on its financial statements and fields quarterly calls–and the billionaire owners were fine. Which explains, in part, why nothing changed after the shooting.

You're implying that something would have changed if a different person was shot instead. Structural problems don't work like that. The individual players have the incentives created for them by the system. To change it you need to change the game, not the players.

> You're implying that something would have changed if a different person was shot instead. Structural problems don't work like that

It would have sent the message its sender (and his supporters) intended to send. Instead, both sides got a convenient totem. Luigi's supporters get to pretend he was effective. The billionaire class got to consolidate power here and there by pretending he was more than a one off, and by pretending he was competent.

You're still implying that it could have accomplished something if the target was someone else. Nobody involved with that company is the central pillar of The System the crumbling of which would allow the true revolution to finally come.

It would have changed if healthcare CEOs kept getting shot.

One getting shot is an anomaly; if one were being shot every week, then the system they operate under would be different.

(To be clear: I am not advocating for changing the system in this way. A world ruled by vigilante justice is not a good world to live in.)

If by "it" you mean the company would hire more security to prevent that from happening.

Health insurance companies don't have absurdly high margins. They offer more expensive plans and less expensive plans. The less expensive plans will cause more claims to be denied (not covered by the cheaper policy), the more expensive plans cost more.

People both can't afford the more expensive plan and can't afford to have a claim denied and then get upset, but the company can't actually fix that because it's caused by the regulatory environment. The only way for them to deny non-trivially fewer claims is to charge higher premiums. To actually fix it you have to solve the scarcity problems -- get rid of certificate of need laws, open more medical residency slots, require price transparency, etc., so that people can afford the plan that denies fewer claims. But those are all things the government would have to do rather than the company.

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