> That law abiding citizen openly cheered for the murder of the people as a business method.
I think you've drank the Kool aid straight from the firehouse.
The general reaction to the assassination of a health insurance exec in protest to depriving people from life-saving healthcare treatment is not endorsing it but completely understanding and even sympathizing why anyone would do it.
The very fact that you're framing this issue as "murder of the people" instead of wondering why anyone would cheer when someone targets a health insurance exec speaks volumes to how effective the propaganda around this has been.
Do you have proof of that? Look I know insurance companies are rarely eager to pay out. If they were, they would quickly go out of business or else have to charge you so much as to make the coverage pointless. Nobody would be allowed to be a CEO of a health insurance company for long if they "openly cheered for the murder of people" as you claim. The business involves tough decisions affecting the lives of people who are often deathly ill and/or mentally unstable. It's really easy to blame businesses for things that really aren't their fault.
This it no run of the mill insurance company. This is the absolute worst insurance company, putting it mildly. I would really recommend looking into it first before trying to downplay what they did and continue doing.
>HealthPartners, a major health care provider (...), has announced its decision to leave UnitedHealthcare's Medicare Advantage network (...), HealthPartners says the decision stems from the insurer’ high rates of coverage denials and payment delays, which adversely affect patient care. (...) The health system highlights that
>UnitedHealthcare's denial rate is up to ten times higher than other insurers in the market. [0]
Different source:
> in 2023 UHC claim denial rate was flat out highest in the industry, 1.2x more than the second highest rate, and twice as high as industry average. [1]
https://qz.com/unitedhealthcare-denied-claim-1851714818
Denial rate went from 10% to 22% between 2020 to 2022. Furrher, the CEO has said he saw this as good for business, and seemed to imply it’d be a good thing to deny more.
The headline of your link says that nobody knows how often insurance companies deny claims, but it also includes some percentages which you reproduced in this comment. Do you understand the reason for the apparent contradiction between those two statements? Turns out, the answer is interesting!
> Do you have proof of that? Look I know insurance companies are rarely eager to pay out. If they were, they would quickly go out of business or else have to charge you so much as to make the coverage pointless.
That's not how it works.
Insurances charge monthly payments in return to providing access to healthcare services for free or reduced cost. This means the bulk of their customers is people who do not need the service right away, and instead are investing in assuring they will get the treatment they need when and if they need it.
Those who do not get access to healthcare services and die will not be able to vote with their wallets. They are gone. The same holds if you are bankrupted by having to pay your treatments out if your own pocket, specially if you lose your livelihood in result of your health issues.
On top of that, there's the question of whether there's a free market on healthcare insurance. Big if.
>Those who do not get access to healthcare services and die will not be able to vote with their wallets. They are gone.
While I agree with most of what you said, if the insurance company lets a person die, then that person no longer pays them for insurance and never will again - essentially "voting with their wallet", even if not directly. While that may be an insignificant amount of money to the insurance company, if their policies led to many people not getting the treatment they needed, the people would either die or seek other insurance, and either way stop paying the company for insurance. Though this can be problematic if the insurance is supplied by an employer, as they don't always offer a choice of insurance companies.
But the real problem with the US medical system is the medical treatments costing far, far far more than is reasonable. In other countries medical care costs are way more reasonable. People don't get bankrupted by medical expenses. And there's too many stories out there about hospitals and doctors billing insurance ridiculously high costs, and if the bill isn't being paid by insurance companies then the price is lowered substantially.
It's a fucked up system, through and through. Many/most hospitals are for-profit ventures, and they really do try to extract the most money that they can, however they can get it - and that usually means sending a ridiculously high bill to the insurance company and then insurance tries to negotiate it down. A routine operation should not cost over $100,000, but that is often what the insurance company gets billed.
But if their basic business model is to collect premiums while denying coverage as much as possible (which evidence suggests is the case), that's basically murdering and bankrupting people for money.
And it's hard to say it's not the case when you're denying claims at 2x the industry norm.
You do understand several countries have solved this, right? Several "third world" countries even. This business argument reeks of the inability to understand how shitty healthcare has been planned and executed in this country.
Are you willfully ignorant, or arguing in bad faith?
Private health insurance exists as a pure "middle man", and hence 100% of their profits are at the cost of less health care being delivered by the actual supplier of medical help. Hint: Not them.
Imagine if a car insurance company simply refused to pay for a third of all accident claims!
"I see that you car was totalled, but you can clearly see a scratch in a previous social media post you made, so that's a pre-existing condition, and based on that we're required to reject your insurance claim. Have a nice day!"
PS: The USA is the only western country with this kind of madness going on. Whatever your follow-up argument will be, just consider that nobody else in the modern, developed world is so stupid as to simply give a bunch of billionaires 15% of all money expended on medical services.
