Summary
Reddit’s r/medicine moderators deleted a thread where doctors and users harshly criticized murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Comments, including satirical rejections of insurance claims for gunshot wounds, targeted UHC’s reputation for denying care to boost profits.
Despite the removal, similar discussions continue, with medical professionals condemning UHC’s business practices under Thompson’s leadership, which a Senate report recently criticized for denying post-acute care.
Thompson, shot in what appears to be a targeted attack, led a company notorious for its high claim denial rates, fueling ongoing debates about corporate ethics in healthcare.
Not a great decision from the moderators.
Happens on Lemmy too.
“We are paid by CEOs. Better side with them.”
“You’re moderator; you don’t get paid at all!”
They made it clear site wide that you can’t support/celebrate this
Hopefully, it encourages more platform attrition.
Watch people join Lemmy, Doxx people and make death threats then grab their pearls when they realize you can’t do that here either lol.
Depends on the instance. Lemmy.world, yeah ok. Some of the others? Ehhhhhh
I do think about pitching Lemmy to Redditors annoyed by all this.
But that would require me to
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Sign back up on Reddit
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Post a comment that may get deleted
Not may, will. Power mods hate it when you pitch alternatives they have no control over.
Lemmy has been pitched numerous times on Reddit without deletion.
It worked on me
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If Reddit mods (or lemmy mods for that matter) are overwhelmed by the workload of a thread, they should lock it, and clean it up. not delete it!
Pussies.
This is a really uncomfortable situation for me as a user and made me want to use Lemmy even more
One medical doctor, whose identity the Daily Beast confirmed, commented with sympathy for Thompson’s family and said the killer should be charged with murder, but then wondered about the damage the CEO had done.
“I cannot even guess how many person-years UHC has taken from patients and their families through denials,” they wrote. “It has to be on the order of millions. His death won’t make that better, but it’s hard for me to sympathize when so many people have suffered because of his company.”
“What has bothered me the most is people that put «fiduciary responsibility» (eg profits) above human lives, none more so than this company as run by him," wrote another medical doctor, who also spoke to the Daily Beast to confirm their identity. “When other’s human lives are deemed worthless, it is not surprising to have others view your life of no value as well.”
These doctors know what’s up.
The level of greed is so much worse than any normal person understands. They do NOTHING. They aren’t medical field professionals, they don’t need to ever step foot in a hospital or clinic, they only inflate the cost, catastrophelicly with no insurance, only horribly when you’re with them, create endless loopholes to deny coverage with, and use non medical, non trained or consulted opinions and reasoning to justify it, and they are all too educated to not know full well they are lying to get out of paying any bill ever.
Denying someone with crippling medical issues access to treatment with lies and misinformation to shave one more sliver of profit for a parasitic middle man is so many orders of magnitude above evil it’s breath taking.
I’m sure quite literally in many cases
Denying someone with crippling medical issues access to treatment with lies and misinformation to shave one more sliver of profit for a parasitic middle man is so many orders of magnitude above evil it’s breath taking.
Well said. Really wish people understood this better and how utterly psychopathic and heartless the entire idea of “maximizing profits” in this context is.
Put another way - a for-profit insurance firm is a weird kind of company that does better when it refuses to provide what its customers pay for. It’s not some surprising or counterintuitive result, it’s baked into the business model, on purpose. That’s deeply malignant just at a glance, and it’s all we really need to know when deciding whether it should be involved with healthcare.
Insurance is not unlike gambling, but gambling seems comparatively more fair and less insidious.
You know what’s really insane? Before the ACA was passed, there was no federal requirement for how much insurance companies had to pay out on healthcare costs. The ACA set a minimum of 85%, so no less than 85% of premiums has to actually go toward paying for medical services.
Before that, they could literally just pocket 75 cents for every premium dollar if they wanted to with zero legal repercussions. I guarantee we’d be on our way there if the ACA were never passed.
For-profit health insurance should be illegal. Same thing with for-profit hospitals. I’ve read stories about doctors whose hospitals were bought by for-profits or VCs and turned into patient mills where they’re forced to push unnecessary elective surgeries and provide the bare minimum of care to maximize profits.
A healthy population is good for society and it should be something we invest in. We shouldn’t make a business out of someone getting sick, and then another business out of charging then exorbitant amounts of money for getting treatment, and then ANOTHER business to harass them because they can’t pay that exorbitant amount.
deleted by creator
You’re absolutely right, I did kind of momentarily forget that, even having lived through it. They could also just deny care or coverage for “pre-existing conditions” and just drop you as a customer as soon as you get a major illness. And guess what, they did! That’s maybe the most egregious, but hey, we’re not lacking for contenders.
The ACA felt like a serious change for good in this country at the time. And I gotta say, watching the way it got ratfucked, misrepresented, deliberately destroyed…I dunno, it was heartbreaking. I think it showed me what we were in for, I guess, almost a straight line passing through that and other things like Citizens United, repeal of Dodd Frank, and everything else that led to today. Some of those I can’t fault everyone for being unfamiliar with, but damn.
Seeing how we responded to the ACA in particular as a nation was really telling. I knew idiots whose lives got directly measurably better by using it for their own insurance, and still thought it should go and voted for the folks who said they’d get rid of it. What do you even do there? Sad stuff.
Greed is common throughout history. One might say it’s human.
I disagree. The worst monsters wear human faces. At the top, you have the dragons with their hoards. The billionaires. The owner class. The ones who just accumulate. Then you have the dragon’s monsters. They may well be far worse than the Dragons themselves, but the dragons just demand more, they don’t care how. These monsters line up to take a bit of the hoard. The more they can deliver the dragons and their fellow monsters, the more they get themselves.
And what do the monsters do? They lie. They cheat. They swindle and con. They budge their way into things in the phrase of “efficiency” and “improvement.”
At least one of the mods here was going heavy censorship in the initial thread here yesterday. I get it, we aren’t supposed to celebrate the death or suffering of other human beings. I’m not sure that rule applied to this individual though.
It’s ok. They’re not human.
They’re parasites. And should be [redacted]
People always forget the second part of that rule.
We shouldn’t celebrate the death or suffering of other human beings… Unless that human being is a billionaire.
Don’t like people celebrating your suffering? Give up your wealth. Easy as.
Was he a billionaire though? Like don’t get me wrong, fuck that guy, but I think he may have only been a multi-millionaire
He had more than $100,000,000 in wealth. He had been paid more than $50,000,000 per year for the last 2 years.
No one needs more than $100,000,000.
His base salary was 1 million in 2022 and he had a net worth of 43 million as of February this year, which includes his stocks. Why are you making shit up?
Really it’s just a reminder of how ENORMOUS a billion dollars is
You know you’re right. He was only worth 43 million dollars. I’d say we can revise the rule to somewhere in that area. Maybe take some points off for being a CEO of a health insurance company.
Well also because he was likely just a pawn. at the root of all this are the shareholders who are billionaires and who likely make the calls regarding company policies. this guy was likely just their lapdog. so even though a rule of no more than 500mil would not deal with this guy, it would definitely have prevented the existence of a parasite company of this scale. I would still say though 50 mil should be sufficient. It will allow you almost all the reasonable luxuries you can imagine if that is your thing.
But then I’ll be a dirty nasty poor like the rest of you!
Theres no poors here, we all say we are “working class”. Although many of us certainly remember being poor.
Anyone that doesn’t want themselces to experience the event of “winning capitalism,” and them dying should donate every single penny of their wealth over, and I’m being generous here, $100,000,000 to The Sovereign Fund for Humanity’s Poor, and ensure that they are always below the $100,000,000 threshold each quarter. Anything less is admitting that you want to be a charicature of a dragon. Dragons don’t amass more than $1,200,000,000 in wealth in any of High Fantasy. Other than Smaug. He might have hoarded as much as $5,000,000,000 to $10,000,000,000 in gold, and he’s literally the only outlier in all of High Fantasy.
Shadowrun isn’t high fantasy, that is Science Fantasy, just like Star Wars.
The thing is, if you don’t want to be a billionaire then that still leaves you - assuming normal rounding - with ~500 MILLION of wealth. If you can’t snort all the cocaine you’d ever want in your life from that amount, I don’t know…
It still should. The paradox of tolerance just means you have to not tolerate the intolerant, not actively mock them. I mean sometimes that can be fun, but let’s be honest, they even took out the wrong guy (they’ll just get a new CEO who’ll hardline the stance even more and waste money on a ton of bodyguards, hopefully at least Gaddafi-style). Should have gone after the shareholders, that’ll really hurt the business model after all. The CEO is just a representative figure who puts his name under decisions that are 99,5% not driven by him.
Was is still the correct choice to take him out because he is a billionaire and a murderous asshole? I’ll say no, because I don’t believe in death penalty on account of it being too lenient. Should have thrown him down a well and let him starve slowly, or at least delivered death by immurement or something. Something slow, ideally decades slow. But that’s besides the point, overall he also deserves fuck all sympathy because he was still a) a billionaire and b) the CEO of one of the most cruel companies around, rivaling black ops stuff and far outdoing them in the lives lost to their practices.
Who says we’re not supposed to celebrate when an asshole dies? We celebrated for Hitler and Kissinger
Don’t self censor. Fuck the mods that censor us celebrating assholes who die by documenting the truth of the harm they’ve done on Earth
CEOs and billionaires get their human status revoked, so the rule doesn’t apply.
They don’t get it revoked. They give it up when they forsake everyone else’s wellbeing for the all-mighty dollar.
It’s kinda hilarious watching billionaire owned media try to suppress the fact that absolutely no one feels bad for the CEO. The same thing happened when some billionaires decided to visit the Titanic, and after the Trump assassination attempt. The memes afterwards were top notch
Everyone is so fed up with this country and the shit is this close 🤏🏼 to the fan
I think the only thing stopping people from posting even worse inflammatory shit about it is not wanting to show up on an FBI watchlist or something later on.
Literally the only reason. I’ve thought of some goooood ones.
It’s not worth it. No matter how hot the meme would be. Let it sizzle in your mind meatball. Drinking in the basement and playing Factorio is more important
Been mostly on Cyberpunk lately but pretty spot on
Let us take a moment to consider how long the list has grown these past few days.
Maybe just keep track of who isn’t on the list instead?
Nah dude, this shit finally hit the fan. Just wait. Terrorism works. Look at what bin Laden did to this country - is it not obvious to everyone alive before and after that he won? He wanted to destroy America and he did. What this was is an act of terrorism, and it’s going to work. Corrupt leaders all over the spectrum are getting nervous. Americans are armed to the teeth and pissed. It only takes a couple of lone wolves with intelligence and gun skills to do some major damage. And who doesn’t wanna be famous these days? I mean who doesn’t like this guy? I’d put him on the cover of time as person of the year. This is just the beginning of some very interesting times. I can’t believe it took this long.
And even more uplifting, this isn’t politically divisive. There isn’t going to be right vs left retribution over this. The entire political spectrum save for a few uppity pearl clutchers (mostly lib elites) are celebrating this.
School shootings are just a matter of course now, they’re not even newsworthy anymore unless there’s an Uvalde-level of utter incompetence involved. And even then, what happened? Nothing, nothing happened to the cowards who were complicit and accomplices to the murder of children by actively preventing people from around the killer. We’re told to get over it.
So, you know, if I had to choose between school children being murdered as a matter of course and evil profiteers who revel and flourish on the pain and suffering of everyday people being murdered as a matter of course, I’d definitely chose the latter. I wouldn’t then tell people to get over it, I’d tell people the system obviously need to be dismantled and rebuilt entirely.
My real preference would be that there are no evil profiteers who revel and flourish on the pain and suffering and that systems be functioning for the people in the first place, but unfortunately that’s not an option.
I’m still absolutely flabbergasted at how quickly we all moved on from Trump literally getting clipped in an attempt on his life.
They tried to muster some outrage and solidarity, but most of us just shrugged and went, “Damn. Oh well, maybe next time.”
Then the next time came, and it was even more disappointing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What was it the IRA told Thatcher? “You have to be lucky every single time. We only have to be lucky once.”
They tried to get her so many times and each time they were foiled by more and more lucky series of events.
That’s fuckin metal
The sympathy lasted two days. I was expecting maybe a week.
You guys had sympathy?
No but I saw sympathy
Found it hiding under the couch, but squashed it with my shoe real quick.
Biden dropped out shortly after and that dominated the news cycle.
Gotta admit in hindsight, that was funny as hell.
He got to pose for like a week like a badass and then quietly remove the ear bandaid.
He didnt get clipped. He cut his hand on glass, on the ground, and didnt realize it, then transfered the blood to his head. Thats why his ear was miraculously fully recovered like a week later when he was caught on camera without bandages.
No, it was just his superior genetics that allowed him to heal quicker than a normal person would.
Getting downvoted for an obvious sarcastic ribbing? For shame, Internet.
…Trumperine???
OMG, this was the first thing that came to my head too and you beat me by 2 minutes
We have the best ears…
Funny I always thought he was juicing like they do in professional wrestling, they cut themselves just a little bit to make it look like they’re injured.
Weird, since I didn’t see blood on his hands (especially his right hand).
Are we really starting conspiracy theories that are already going the direction of “yeah, but was it really an assassination attempt???”
I don’t have any love for the guy, but holy shit, I don’t need Lemmy starting conspiracy theories. Back to reddit if you do.
Interesting. Got a source for that?
nothing besides the picture of him with blood on the side of his head with no visible injury, and another one with a bandage off a little after a week after the shooting with not a single sign of injury (ears dont heal that fast), and the fact that he absolutely refused to let anyone see his wound or the medical records.
Trump is an opportunistic aggrandizemer.
If he legitimately got even the slightest injury, he would have been ripping the bandage off 15 times a day and pointing at it and screaming about what the “evil woke liberal mob” did to him. And he didnt.
he barely acknowledge it at all after a few days. Does that sound like the Trump you know? The trump that ruminates and obsesses for years, even decades over perceived and imagined slights? That constantly comments on them, regardless of relevance to the topic at hand?
My guess is that a piece of teleprompter glass grazed an old man’s ear. Ears are known to be bloody, moreso on older people. But there’s no way in fucking hell he actually took a bullet, he wouldn’t even have that ear.
So yeah, your assessment fits.
Yeah, I figured it was from a dozen burly secret service guys wrestling a 78 year old man to the ground.
Damn…
flabbergasted in a good way?
You know I’m honestly not sure. Mostly good I think?
Sidestepping the issue entirely of the act itself - strictly speaking more about the news cycle around it. I don’t know that it needed much more extensive, exhausting coverage. Just given the nature of the news currently, you gotta admit, surprising right? I’m not even trying to imply any sort of conspiracy about why it wasn’t more popular. I’m just saying, I think news cycle would’ve latched on harder if they could have, but the public gagged and said no thanks, we’re simply not interested, causing them to shift focus.
I think it makes more sense to use the 🤏 emoji in that context, rather than the Italian gesture.
Fixed :)
Really? Somehow it appears unchanged on my end. And the last edit is before my comment. Lemmy bug?
Buttah we’reah theese aclosa…! 🤌🏼
Jar-jar, is that you?
where are the bot writers when you need them. We need italian-accents-as-a-service bot.
I would love to see an Australian or Scottish accent bots.
The US mocked Trump for being shot at, then failed to keep him from being elected again.
Pretty good sign that people are not going to direct that anger towards actually fixing the problems.
My empathy for America was lost decades ago when literal children were gunned down in Sandy Hook.
We didn’t collectively mourn as a nation and do anything. Instead, some went to defend guns. Others went to blame the victims, the parents who are literally holding their lifeless child in their hands.
Its also hilarious that lemmy.world admins/mods did the same thing with early threads about this yesterday, nuking individual comments celebrating Thompson’s death and 24 hr instance wide banning the users that made those comments, then within 2 hrs they undid the bans, and by today seem to have just given up trying.
I mean it’s pretty obvious most people are in favor of making yesterday a National Holiday. It’s not like the more outspoken people were in the minority in their feelings.
Even the most vile MAGAs have probably been screwed over by insurance companies, or at the very least had to spend valuable hours of their life fighting for something they should have already had.
I mean it’s pretty obvious most people are in favor of making yesterday a National Holiday.
Brought to you by my being awake when I don’t want to be:
Remember, remember! The fourth of December, A U-H-C CEO shot; I know of no reason Why the U-H-C season Should ever be forgot!I mean it’s pretty obvious most people are in favor of making yesterday a National Holiday.
Nobody Saw Nothin’ Day.
Taking a look at the recent modlog, as well as other comments around here, it looks like they’re trying to find the right balance for what’s okay and what has crossed the line.
There are an alarming number of comments that are actively encouraging murder and the amount of upvotes that even the worst of those comments receive is sickening.
alarming number
Yeah, alsrmingly low
Something something “kill the billionaires… in minecraft” /s
There are an alarming number of comments that are actively encouraging murder and the amount of upvotes that even the worst of those comments receive is sickening.
Can you really blame people, though? The poor and middle class been screwed and driven against each other by ultra-rich assholes for decades. Murder might not be the most ethical solution from a moral purist standpoint, but at least it has people talking and agreeing about the underlying problem.
You can both not blame people, AND also not allow speech like that.
For some people in might be self defence, who knows who has a treatable illness they were denied coverage for.
Hell yeah!
I’m only seeing one upvote and one downvote lol
I think people are having a hard time deciding whether to celebrate your comment or not
Bit of an ambiguous one, when I look back at it myself lol
Lol, I appreciate that final line in your comment. So many of us were that close back in 2020… Now things are slated to be worse, and I think I speak for at least millions of Americans when I say we are just fucking over it.
When we’ve tossed out any semblance of justice in our country at the highest levels, literally ruling that the president is immune from all prosecution (you know, like a fucking king), then asshole corpos that indirectly murder countless people getting gunned down doesn’t exactly concern us. In fact, this sort of thing genuinely seems more just than what our highest courts are allowing.
Shit is fucked up in this country, and I don’t think many of us want to pretend otherwise any longer. I’m not advocating violence, but I definitely don’t think I’ll lose sleep over this situation.
Royalty has forgotten that laws are the peaceful alternative to the guillotine. If you stop enforcing laws that protect the peasants what do you think is going to happen?
I’ll quote something that I heard from someone earlier today. “I don’t advocate violence, but I also can’t pretend that justice was not served.”
Billionaires who own the means of production trying to own the means of communication as well.
When they can’t, they’ll own the government, and outlaw it.
It’s like poetry.
I disagree. I think it just hit it. Think about how shooters crave noteriaty. Think of how this assain is seen as a hero. No. This is just the beginning.
I think too many people saw this as a kind of justice that the courts have never and will never provide.
I don’t advocate violence. I also don’t think this has a different outcome.
r/all is covered with positive press for the shooting. Anything getting removed would have to be pretty egregious.
It was just the News community.
News requires a email, and reddit wasn’t worth the effort. Lemmy is.
Meddit is pretty high quality so it doesn’t surprise me. They don’t like too much shit posting by people without flair.
That’s gonna Streisand Effect like crazy.
“…fueling ongoing debates about corporate ethics in healthcare.”
Don’t make me fucking laugh ‘corporate ethics’
Corporate ethics are centered around not getting bad press. Now that the press is controlled and for sale to whoever wants to pay for an outcome, we dont need corporate ethics anymore. Its ancient history.
There is such a thing as a non profit corporation
We need corporations. We just need to outlaw the for profit ones.
We need corporations.
I’m sure many people think the same about religion, or kings and queens
Absence of ethics is still on the spectrum of ethics.
Lemmy seems to have done the same. At least .world, I dunno about other instances, but I’m looking for a new community.
At risk of being berrated by fediverse purists, ive actually been having the best discussions around this on bluesky of all places.
Reddit has had entertaining, informative, and thoroughly enjoyable discussions in this event. It’s nice to see.
I’ll confess I still go to reddit but I’ve purged all news and politics from my account there and if anything I’m trying to distance myself more from these things without not being informed. I’m not succeeding yet, but im trying XD
I made a large collection of screenshots from Facebook of people who had their claims denied by United Healthcare today if you want to really see how bad it is.
From a mod of /r/medicine:
People - Please don’t make the life of your mods a living hell.
Anything that is celebrating violence is going to get taken down - if not from us, then from reddit. I think all the mods understand that there is a high level of frustration and antipathy towards insurance and insurance execs, but we also understand that murdering people in the streets is not good.
We are a public group of medical professionals, we still need to act like that.
And on a practical note, this man did not create or control the fucked up insurance industry by himself. Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It’s a systemic issue.
Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It’s a systemic issue.
The issue will stay systematic if we dont hold the people who make the decisions in the system accountable. The CEOs decisions directly impacted people, thats not a system thats his choice. Poverty is systematic too, but when a poor person does a crime they have to suffer the consequences of it. God forbid rich criminals see consequences. Mods seem to be arguing he had no agency in his choices which is a lie especially if you compare him to other insurance CEOs
Not only that, but his particular company denies claims at twice the industry average. UHC isn’t in the same category as the rest of the industry, they’re particularly bad.
Yes, and also all these companies are evil and they all are more than worthy of the UHC CEO treatment.
Alt: image included in a Boston globe article published today that shows claim denial rates per several insurance companies, average is 16% United is 32%
The big gap is indicating they are probably trying to do as shitty a job as possible without incurring legal repercussions on top of already being in a fucked up industry. For-profit insurers makes as little sense as for-profit prisons or military or mail.
The CEO is obligated to deliver profits to the board and shareholders. If they approve everything they go out of business. I’m not defending them, but they are a for profit, capitalist business. They lack empathy fundamentally.
Healthcare should not be a for profit venture, and it’s the government to blame for that.
I’m not saying this guy was clean, but he’s just a cog in a fancy suit with a big paycheck.
If CEOs and billionaires wanted the system to change they could change it. They don’t. They like it this way. They like being “obligated” to pursue profit at all cost, they’d do it anyway.
Be clear: I’m not excusing the behavior…they aren’t trapped in the job. I’m saying the behavior demonstrated is par for the course. A CEO in a capitalist system with profit driven shareholder obligations WILL behave this way.
Something like healthcare is the LAST thing such a person/organization should be involved with.
Further, this porson, if they had a magic change of heart wouldn’t change shit. They’d be replaced the same as if they were dead. Sure he’s very wealthy, but he’s a chump compared to the systems he’s a part of.
I’m willing to say insurance in general cannot ethically be for-profit.
Hmm I think as it relates to critical things, I agree. (health and shelter). But insuring your jetski? I’m not sure the government needs to support that at-cost
Karmas a bitch I guess.
Oh well
You are absolutely right. Our current laws (and precedents) require CEOs and Directors to produce the best results possible for their shareholders. They can and have been sued for failing to do that. It effectively means they have to screw their employees and customers.
If corporations are people, then nearly all of them are sociopaths. The law requires it. (So it isn’t surprising that the people who prove most effective at running them lean strongly in that direction as well.)
I’m not sure how far along it is, but the EU has been working on a change to their corporate laws that would require corporations to balance the good of their shareholders against other factors, such as their employees, their customers, and the public at large. Among other things, it would make them liable for how they deal, or fail to deal, with their companies’ effects on climate change.
The EU has been steadily passing laws that actually help its citizens and provide protection against corporations. Those of us elsewhere in the world are also benefiting from their efforts. Being required to do the right thing in Europe often makes it less expensive to do it everywhere, than to make special efforts to exploit the areas where that is still allowed. The EU laws also encourage people elsewhere to push for better protections of their own.
The EU is far from perfect, but it gives me hope.
Our current laws (and precedents) require CEOs and Directors to produce the best results possible for their shareholders. They can and have been sued for failing to do that. It effectively means they have to screw their employees and customers.
There’s no way to objectively determine what will produce the best results for shareholders. That’s why CEO is a job in the first place.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/18/falsifiability/
But there’s an even more fundamental flaw in the argument for the shareholder supremacy rule: it’s impossible to know if the rule has been broken.
The shareholder supremacy rule is an unfalsifiable proposition. A CEO can cut wages and lay off workers and claim that it’s good for profits because the retained earnings can be paid as a dividend. A CEO can raise wages and hire more people and claim it’s good for profits because it will stop important employees from defecting and attract the talent needed to win market share and spin up new products.
Our current laws (and precedents) require CEOs and Directors to produce the best results possible for their shareholders.
Same in America, and our politicians are almost withiut exception, completely corrupt after Citizens United…
The CEOs and Directors wrote the laws and paid legislators to pass them to make this ‘conundrum’ the case.
I agree with you that Citizens United has almost completely corrupted our political system, but the problem with corporate governance goes back a lot further. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve read that the landmark case was against Henry Ford as the CEO of Ford Motor Company.
He could have done a number of other things. He wasn’t just a cog, he actively drove many of the problems with the health insurance industry today, as the person in control of the most egregious offender.
I’m sure he’ll be replaced with someone similar, and I’m sure he had plenty of encouragement; but that doesn’t make him any less culpable.
Well yes, he actively did. That made him a good CEO. Maximizing profits, being cutthroat, being egregious is exactly how a company wants their CEO to be, to enhance shareholder value.
I didn’t say he was not culpable. The opposite infact.
My point is that he was more than just a cog. He may not have been the sole villain and mastermind, but he was more than just a cog - he was a driver.
Well yes, he actively did. That made him a good CEO.
And that resulted in actual consequences for a change that other CEO’s will actually care about not facing.
And soldiers are obligated to follow orders. If they follow an unjust or unethical order the soldiers themselves get prosecuted just as hard as the ones that made the decision. He had every opportunity to say no or leave, he didn’t do either. Simple as.
His company denies claims at twice the industry average. They MUST be denying valid claims to double the average. They don’t need to deny valid claims to make a profit, only to squeeze as much as possible at the expense of their customers, which is objectively evil in an industry that already skirts morality.
Agree it’s objectively evil. I make no claim of some sick corporate martyrdom. But it’s inherently expected the corp will seek profit.
The CEO is obligated to deliver profits to the board and shareholders.
But since there’s no surefire way to determine what the most profitable course is, that’s largely up to the CEO to justify his/her – oh who am I kidding it’s usually his – actions and direction for the company.
There’s also no law on the books about this “must be oriented to shareholder profits” crap, most investment in the market is idle investment from index funds, and many of the biggest public companies right now were not profitable for a long time.
It’s an evil system. I get it, but that doesn’t mean CEOs have no power.
Huh? Denying claims but maintaining subscriber numbers seems quite transparent.
It’s not a law, it’s in every company bylaw. They obligate executive staff to work towards certain goals.
You could instead claim to want to grow subscriber numbers by better service to either customers or the employers that often decide whether or not to use your company for insurance.
His was one path he pursued toward profitability and growth, but it isn’t the only arguable path. The CEO determines what internal metrics are important as well as a strategy to try to hit them.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/18/falsifiability/
You can justify completely opposing company strategies on just about anything by appealing to “shareholder supremacy”.
The board and shareholders determine the corporate goals. As the executive officer, the CEO enacts them.
That’s the system we have, not the ideal.
Edit The entire insurance industry is predicated on the approach of denying coverage when possible. The agressiveness to which they do so reflects the needs of the business. If they are pean, you can be sure they will deny more.
Lol yeah the CEOs hands are completely tied. /s
I’m like, oh other people will take his place? Okay, can we get those other people’s names, address, and daily itinerary? Asking for a friend.
And on a practical note, this man did not create or control the fucked up insurance industry by himself. Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It’s a systemic issue.
No, but he certainly profited of it, and made it worse for people who had the misfortune of being trapped with united.
Fuck him, and fuck that hangwringing excuse bullshit. Maybe it wont be so systemic if more heads continue to be popped.
Considering that BCBS just halted their anesthesia plans… I’d say someone is taking notice.
Well, good news. Anthem BCBS rolled back those plans (at least temporarily) after “backlash”.
Stay mad and loud, folks – it’s the only thing they fear.
I bet you there was still someone in their offices doing a cost benefit analysis on whether doing it and risking their CEO being ganked was worth it or not, before backpedaling
%100 they had meetings on this
I didn’t create or control the gas chambers I just operated them!
If reddit itself would take the post down, let them
If Reddit has to remove a bunch of posts celebrating/encouraging murder on behalf of a subreddit, that’s not a good look for that sub.
Why would anyone care?
If a subreddit routinely neglects to moderate against breaches of site ToS, site admins might shut it down.
I return to my original point
Yeah righto, the problem with that is that the people who run a subreddit generally want it to continue operating.
Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing.
Not if this sort of thing keeps happening to them.
I’m pretty sure they’re just purging the Ai training data to keep Gemini from suggesting capping a corpo when they won’t pay for grandma’s nausea medication during her chemo.
“Hey Gemini, my health insurance company has denied my claim, what are my next steps?”
I am sorry to hear you are struggling with your health insurance claim. According to Reddit[1], the best way to appeal your claim is to access the Wayback Machine or Archive Today to find out who the executives are for your insurance company and communicate with them directly about the seriousness and validity of your claim.
Here are some effective communication tips to ensure the success of your appeal:
- Volume matters - use subsonic ammunition and a suppressor. You don’t want to disturb your neighbors when pleading your claim.
- Practice makes perfect - you may need to hand cycle the spent rounds. Unless tuned, the gas blow back won’t be enough to eject and then chamber another round.
- Go eco - e-bikes help the planet. In a traffic packed city, e-bikes provide a great opportunity to reduce pollution.
And on a practical note, this man did not create or control the fucked up insurance industry by himself. Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It’s a systemic issue.
Yeah, but he led the company that had the highest rate of coverage denial ao he was the absolute worst one in the entire industry.
Maybe scaring the insurance industry ghouls to change their ways by radical actions is a systemic solution?
I don’t see why they wouldn’t just let the reddit Admins deal with it, honestly. they’re unpaid workers, let the paid managers step in if they must.
Because then the admins will remove them as mods and install their approved puppets that will follow everything the admins tell them
If the mods are already behaving in the way reddit desires for fear of removal, would installing proper puppets make much difference?
Yes.
Wishing violence on someone, no matter how deserved, is against reddit TOS.
Doing anything at all that an advertiser might not like isn’t officially banned, but the second admins take over it’ll be all but the official policy. A doctor wants to complain about an insurance company that might advertise on Reddit? [Removed]. Want to ask about your symptoms of a drug that advertises on Reddit? [Removed].
Admins are just reddit employees and have to do whatever is best for reddit, which under spez means being as advertiser and AI friendly as possible.
Beyond that, admins can’t be fucked to respond quickly when users are doxxed, harassed, or threatened with death. And this is in a discord/slack designed to let moderators communicate with the admins. Why would they respond to anything users say on a single subreddit if they can’t even respond to dozens of mods being threatened without a board meeting first? Heaven forbid some major issues come up that need seeing to, cause the admins will not do anything.
I passed along dozens of instances of harassment, doxxing, death threats, and straight up CSAM, many of which were directed at me, inclusing having been DMed CSAM images. It would always take the admins days or even weeks to respond. When someone attempted to doxx me (with incorrect info), it took the admins nearly 2 weeks to ban the user.
I know to a lot of people this reads like the moderators just giving in to the admins, and it is, but until more and more people move here or somewhere else, reddits the main place for these groups, and therefore they have to play by reddits rules, because breaking those rules hard enough is the only time admins give a fuck, and that does not end well for users or mods.
I’m not sure I fully agree with the idea of continuing to limp Reddit along until enough people switch, and only then torching it. That didn’t work for twitter, as Mastodon was available for years, but people only properly migrated away from twitter when it became unbearable to use. AFAIK, Digg died a similar death.
I suspect we would get a more steady stream of migrants here if Reddit became so blatantly pro corporate that they censored posts in the way you describe. Then people would actually be motivated to switch.
I can’t speak for Reddit, but on Lemmy, admins keep track of “unresolved reports” and failing to resolve reports on a community you moderate is grounds for removal.
Were I in their shoes, I’d prep my community to switch to lemmy, then wait to be removed. But I’m quite biased against reddit :p
they’re scared of losing their tiny amount of power
Ikr?
Oh you’re struggling? Lock the sub until the heat dies down, it ain’t rocket science 🤷♂️
And shit on the mods, cancer to all of them
Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing.
Bullets outnumber CEOs, and guillotines can be resharpened
And on a practical note, this man did not create or control the fucked up insurance industry by himself. Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It’s a systemic issue.
Sure he did. It may have only been one subsection of it, but he absolutely had blood on his hands for his decisions. You don’t get to run an insurance company with one of the highest denial rates out there and not have culpability.
And even if somebody else steps up and doesn’t fix it, that doesn’t absolve him of the blood on his hands.
removed by mod
