From the New York Times this morning:
This is pretty disturbing. Are we really at the point in our Trumpesque anti-establishment fervor that we celebrate the deliberate murder of corporate executives we dislike? The story continues with this:
The dark commentary after the death of Mr. Thompson, a 50-year-old insurance executive from Maple Grove, Minn., who was also a husband and a father of two children, highlighted the anger and frustration over the state of health care in America, where those with private insurance often find themselves in Kafka-esque tangles while seeking reimbursement for medical treatment and are often denied.
Now I'm curious. It's certainly true that insurance companies deny a lot of claims, but that's always been true. Or has it? Here are the results of Experian's latest survey of providers (i.e., doctors):
"Claim denials are increasing" is way up from 2022. I can't find any long-term data about this, but perhaps claim denial and Kafka-esque tangles with insurers really are up a lot over the past decade. Health insurers are certainly performing well for some reason—even better than the red-hot S&P 500:
Politically, the big reason liberals have never been able to sell universal health care is that people are satisfied with their insurance and don't want the government to take it away. And obviously this is all a moot point for the next four years. But after that, if insurers keep getting greedier and greedier, I wonder if the tide has finally turned?
Certainly on various blogs I find comments that I would say are incompatible with a decent human reaction to someone's murder.
The man is being called a ghoul. The industry may be ghoulish, but he did not create our healthcare system.
This may be true, and murder is definitely wrong, but…
Your argument never worked for anybody else in a ghoulish industry. “Well I was just an entry level Nazi, I didn’t personally create the entire system of concentration camps and gas chambers, I merely helped process the paperwork,” wasn’t a great defense in Nuremberg.
"Guys, I swear, I just ran the camp and signed paychecks and reported to the bosses, I didn't actually order anybody under my command to do anything." -guy who chooses to be part of systematic murder instead of objecting
Yeah.
This is a really weird comparison. Doing a big genocide is obviously categorically different than doing a crappy health insurance.
I have my opinions on health insurers and their c-level folks, but they don't come anywhere near what I think about Nazis.
That said: there are 20,000 homicides in this country every year. This is *one* of them. It's not enough data for conclusions about anything.
Sure, it's an exaggeration, but it's still a good reference point to understand that some people have strong feelings of dislike towards people whose job it is to inflict mental and physical suffering on others.
We can pretend this isn't a big part of the health insurance C-Suite job, but why pretend?
While you are all having a good time in your "Goebbels' moments", I'd like to simply offer this: Two months ago I required a heart cauterization. Based on my symptoms and prior history, my doctors suspected a blockage. I've had stents placed 20 years prior, but I've never had a heart attack nor any other cardiac damage. I was denied the procedure. It took heaven and earth, but I finally got the okay from the insurance company to pay for it. I had a stent that replaced a collapse of 80% in my widow-maker.
There's not enough data, period. One theory I find plausible -- or at least don't see why I should dismiss it out of hand -- is that this homicide was for the usual tawdry reasons, but it occured to the murderer that making it about health care was a dandy way to vastly dilute the usual pool of the usual suspects. One never knows. But my opinion at this point is that I have no opinion due to the lack of data.
Umm...a Hitler he wasn't. United Healthcare is a behemoth, which marches forward denying claims regardless which figurehead is its face.
The big picture here is that insurance companies are not in the business of providing healthcare; they are in the business of denying healthcare. We don't like this? We need to start looking at a different system.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/murdered-insurance-ceo-had-deployed-175638581.html
+1.
The man was the CEO of perhaps the most despised health insurance company in the US. As CEO, he bears the main responsibility for the conduct of the corporation he was running. If the company acted ghoulish, it's a legitimate inference that the CEO was a ghoul.
How are decent people supposed to react when it is immediately understandable why the murder happened?
In my case, with Schadenfreude.
I always find it funny that the media and politicians always cite "people love their private insurance" when telling us why we can't have universal healthcare while, at the same time, whenever people are asked about their insurance they express nothing but anger and frustration.
People being against universal healthcare is almost always a political/partisan choice. It's never about people who really love fighting claim denials, and traveling 20 miles to the nearest covered lab, and jumping through hoops for referrals.
Better the devil you know perhaps.
Possibly. The American people have shown over and over again that they will choose something that they know, but is terrible, rather then something new, even though it may benefit them. We're a risk-averse nation which is why progress, when it does come, is usually small and in constant danger of being taken away.
"We're a risk-averse nation which is why progress, when it does come, is usually small and in constant danger of being taken away."
No, we have a political system that gives more power to minorities than does most of our peer democracies (which don't have, for example, a Senate in which the 39,000K people in California get the same amount of say as the 584K people in Wyoming). It has nothing to do with some sort of inscrutable innate risk aversion among Americans; we're culturally nearly identical to Canadians, after all.
Indeed. Those crazy Rhode Islanders and other small colonies should have just taken it and gone along with whatever Virginia and Pennsylvania wanted.
I totally understand how it happened back in the 18th century--RH were willing to blow up the Constitution at the outset if they didn't have outsized say in the government, and the other delegates decided that a compromise was better than nothing--but that is a piss-poor reason to, today, in 2024, nearly two-and-a-half centuries later, give a small number of people crazy outsized power in Congress simply because they happen to live in states with small populations.
Not least because, even in 1787, the ratio of people in the most populous state (Virginia) to the least populous (Rhode Island) was a bit less than ~12:1, instead of 67:1, like it is now. If the deal was barely palatable in 1787, it's five times worse now.
Not just risk averse, but averse to learning ANYTHING from other countries.
I don't know about that. All Americans usually switch insurance carriers when they turn 65 and get Medicare. New policy. Perhaps switching from PPO to and HMO or vice versa. The primary issue is keeping your doctor and hospital. We all end up with a new insurance card and I know dozens of people who had no problem with this change. It just goes with the territory.
Well, yeah, but most Americans get their insurance from their employer so, when they turn 65 they are either retiring (so they'll need to find new insurance anyway) or they are anticipating retirement and decide to switch as soon as they are eligible. The choice is forced on them eventually, it's just a matter of when they make that change.
Yeah, I don't personally know anyone who is "satisfied" with their healthcare situation. There are people who tolerate it and people who actively dislike it.
I actually do like Kaiser Permanente. Everything except emergencies and I guess really serious care, eg chemotherapy, is in-house and there are no bills at all for in-house stuff (at least not in my specific plan which only has a $10 copay for any visit or service). They also suck at mental health care I hear from a friend covered by them, but all insurers (and national health systems) suck at that I hear from other friends.
But I recognize that KP is the second-closest thing to the NHS - where the provider is also the insurer - that anybody in America will ever experience. (The closest thing is probably the VA, although I personally have not experienced it.)
We like KP also. As someone with a Chronic condition, it was a nightmare before we were with Kaiser. Having all the records on one platform is worth it alone.
The doctors seem less stressed as they don't have to work late or on weekends.
The VA gets shit talked all the time but my experience (with my dad who suffered and eventually died with Alzheimer’s) was that I liked the Drs there better than I liked his private practice Dr..Also, all of the staff were very courteous and respectful, treating patients as honored veterans. Also, the other patients treated each other as brothers. I’d never experienced anything like it in a hospital.
Maybe not this place. Hilarious.
https://www.aol.com/news/congressional-probe-va-facility-uncovers-150827114.html
A congressional investigation into sexual misconduct allegations at a troubled Veterans Affairs facility in Tennessee revealed that at least 12 officials who worked there took part in an orgy — and one employee had sex with 32 different co-workers.
You spent time pointing people to this? That some co-workers had sex with each other? That is the horrifying thing you just had to tell people?
My doctor/conglom are bad but they are stellar compared to Kaiser. If you want to see the bottom 5% of medical school grads, that's where they'll be. Of course, as the joke goes, they're still called 'Doctor.'
The only people I know who regularly praise their healthcare situation go to the VA.
I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield and have always been pleased with the coverage and their service. Aside from I would like to pay less for it (who wouldn't), I think it's dandy.
And further, I personally know essentially nobody who has had major non-payment gripes with their insurers. People talk about it like it's an epidemic or something, but really, I must know some lucky people or people are using anecdotes to judge rather than data.
Just keep the government out of my Medicare.
👍👍👍😄
This is too complicated.
People want health care that helps maintain their health.
Instead, they get a complicated system that puts them on the short end of the stick over and over, with hidden charges and denials. They have doctors offices with nearly as many people handling the complexities of billing insurance companies as providing direct care.
you think consumers and providers are angry now, just wait for trumps deregulation. I worked for Wellpoint, which is now relevance, during the ACA implementation and we had names and pictures of disgruntled subscribers or family members who threatened health plan staff.
My husband’s boss’s boss’s boss gets 6x his salary…as a bonus.
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
Not at all surprised. The other CEOs and their executive staffs will get private protection above and beyond whatever they already get. The front-line workers will bear the brunt of future anger. Insurers and big medical congloms have played the pandemic like a fine violin. I currently use Providence Medical Institute a supposed non-profit. Their outgoing CEO made $9M not reported on their non-profit tax form. Other execs who are reported on the form make some eyewatering multi-$M salaries on top of whatever bonuses and kickbacks are the norm. Meanwhile, they provide less-and-less in the clinic when one can get in.
They have a mildly religious bent. I guess Jesus loves the execs and smiles the lucre on them.
Why do I stay with PMI? The level of medical suck in my relatively affluent area is pretty uniform. Lots of practices set up shop because they'll get paid. Quality of diagnostic and other care is crap and will only get worse.
Private protection can’t guarantee 100% of bullets will be stopped. No security company or agency can.
Watch for public spaces to get commandeered when they're nearby as they are now for heads of state. Lots of MAGAbillies would love to be private security.
Just FYI, ProPublica recently did a piece on the outsourcing of claim denials. Yes, it's an industry, and one that in some instances is paid on the basis of how many claims it denies. Coincidentally, just after reading the article, my insurer denied a procedure based on the recommendation of one of the companies mentioned in the article:
https://www.propublica.org/article/evicore-health-insurance-denials-cigna-unitedhealthcare-aetna-prior-authorizations
https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-insurance-denial-ulcerative-colitis
Specific to UHC, mostly overlapping with Thomas’s term.
For what it's worth, NPR actually has a running series, titled something like "My Outrageous Medical Bill" where folks are billed tens or hundreds of thousands beyond what makes any kind of sense, and insurance, of course, won't touch the bill.
For what it's worth, nobody really wants "medical insurance": they want medical care when they need it and at low cost. The whole "insurance" scam is largely a way to discourage people from seeking care. And forget the idea of "promoting good health".
United Healthcare is one of the big offenders. It is not unreasonable to assume that its CEO has something to do with its policies and actions. Murder may be a little extreme, not to mention currently illegal, but aren't the Republicans always yelling about "holding people accountable"? Except for CEOs and upper management, and other white collar criminals, of course.
Yep, seems like a prime example of those second amendment solution they're always alluding to.
I don't want anybody getting killed, and I feel bad/empathetic for the people who may have cared for this guy, but I have nothing but crocodile tears for him personally and oligarchic cheerleaders more generally. They're the ones who've been seeding resentment and fostering a culture of interpersonal danger, on purpose, in furtherance of ever greedier greed, and they can reap what they sow. Zero sympathy.
I have zero empathy for this guy. Who cares that he was a husband and father of two? If the perp has a legal defense fund, count me in.
For him, it's sympathy.
For people who cared about him, it's empathy. I assume that even terrible people have people in their lives who love them. I do feel bad for them. Nobody deserves to have loved ones taken from them, even when those loved ones are terrible people.
Liberals have to get over that easily exploited weakness. I don't give a rat's ass for the CEO or his wife and future generations who will never have to work thanks to the misery he has inflicted.
In the three years since he was named CEO was there any change in UHC’s denial rates? Was he maintaining status quo?
I'm confused.
How is being angry at vampire companies that have no reason to exist except to slurp up as much profit as they can, at the expense of the common person, "Trumpesque"? That's literally the opposite. Trump stands FOR those things, not in opposition to them.
It's grotesque that there are Brian Johnsons making $10M annually on the entire premise of denying people coverage for medical procedures. I'm not condoning the killing, but I'm approximately 0.00% surprised that somebody decided to murder the CEO of the largest, most coverage-denying health insurance company.
Fucking nobody deserves a $10M annual salary for a goddamn office job. Nobody. Even less so when their job is at best a necessary evil and at worst, as in UHC's case, enthusiastically evil.
I mean, even single payer and national universal health care systems have people denying care claims. No country can afford to give everyone every single medical procedure they ask for, and no country can spend endless sums on fraudulent claims either. (Do you want your insurer to pay any claim Rick Scott files, for example? Or to pay for people to get duck face lips for better instagram posts?)
And as long as either remains true, someone somewhere will be tasked with denying some claims.
But I agree, nobody needs to get $10m to do that task. And nobody should make more money by denying more claims. The process should be transparent, fact/science-based and impartial, all opposite from what is happening at UHC.
Yeah, that's the crux of it: you shouldn't make more money by immiserating as many people as possible. Hence my use of the "evil" descriptor. It's wrong, and seeing it as wrong is pretty universal.
I don't disagree with stories and data about how nationalized/socialized health care results in poor quality of care in some cases, especially special/uncommon needs (my spouse has T1D and her care would potentially be worse in some ways, but better in others). But the floor is much higher - if you NEED something, it (ideally) wouldn't be denied or force you to get multiple authorizations from your doctor(s) for the same thing, over and over.
Continuing to use T1D as an example, why the flying fuck should you need to get prior authorization for the same insulin prescription that you've had for years? It's not like you stopped needing insulin. The disease doesn't just go away. You have it for your entire life. It's literally Kafka-esque. At least under a universal health care regime, those sorts of things would be alleviated even if it came with fewer options being covered.
A key difference is that universal health care systems may make it difficult to obtain certain medical procedures but they never refuse to pay for procedures that have already been done. No Canadian is ever stuck with an enormous surprise bill because the attending physician was out of network or the procedure wasn't covered by his policy.
Who are these people who are satisfied with their private health insurance? I want names. Sure, maybe folks with W2 jobs and reasonable employee-provided health plans might be happy - I didn't have a problem with my plan back in the day - but what about people who foot their own bills*? Those are the folks I want to hear from.
* - Yes, I know that employer-provided benefits are compensation, just as wages are, but most folks don't think that way.
I was satisfied with mine--United Healthcare. I had three significant health events when I was covered by them, and no problems. Now I have traditional Medicare, as does my wife.
Thanks Franklin I guess, where during WWII there were wage controls but employers could compete for workers by offering health care. Which, if my understanding is correct, is how Kaiser Permanente got its start.
Amazing how cruel people on the far right as well as the far left can be. But also, a lot of people who are not political can be cruel just because they battled with an insurance company over coverage. When people think you are harming them financially, they can get vicious. After all, we just got the viscous Trump because people thought he would do better with the economy. To many people, nothing else really mattered. Screw the world, just fatten my wallet.
We got Trump 2.0 because a lot of people were furious that Obama even got a 1.0. White rage not economics.
Things like this should be responded to with a push for a Medicare for all type of health insurance. Healthcare as a human right instead of a privilege for those that can afford it.
But look at the guy's photo,
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/04/health/brian-thompson-unitedhealthcare.html
It's like James Cordon and John Wayne Gacy had a baby.
He must have been a nice guy!
In the late 70s I cut my finger pretty bad right at the knuckle. I went to the emergency room and they called in a hand specialist to sew it up. I had private insurance I was paying for myself (pretty sure it was Blue Cross/Blue Shield.) I believe the policy had no deductible for accidents.
So, they denied the claim. I resubmitted (becasue it made no sense that it wasn't covered!) It was denied. I do not remember how many times I submitted the claim, but it was several. Then they finally paid.
Have hated (and not trusted) insurace companies ever since.
I doubt you can find anyone who doesn't have an insurance horror story. I can relate half a dozen. Yet there's hardly anyone who is not happy with Medicare. If that was the salient issue we'd have had Medicare for all years ago. Insurance companies and their proxies have waged a diversionary war, making up all sorts of fictitious arguments. Remember "Death panels"? Remember all the easily-debunked stories circulating when ACA was passed about people having to pay exorbitant premiums? Theses stories weren't meant to be believed literally. They're just supposed to muddy up the water to make people think the ACA was bad. And proponents of ACA were spending all their time debunking lies instead of promoting the benefits. It's the "flood the zone with shit" tactic. Unfortunately, it works.
"Yet there's hardly anyone who is not happy with Medicare."
Well, traditional Medicare. Medicare Advantage? Not so much.
I have a Medicare Advantage and I've had zero problems. YMMV
Medicare Advantage is fantastic!! As long as whatever you have wrong with you is treatable by a doctor and facilities in your network. If it isn't, well, I hear it gets rather nightmarish.
So does 20% of a bill under traditional Medicare.
It's a neat trick that the healthcare providers have pulled off in passing on all the blame for our terrible, profit-based system to the insurance companies.
And Kevin has it wrong. No one loves their insurance. Or if they do they live with the knowledge that from year to year, everything single thing about it can and probably will change.
It's their doctors that people supposedly love.
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.
Why is health care so expensive in the US? Doctors and lawyers. Doctors make more in the US than anywhere else in the world. And lawyers add to the cost of healthcare. But people love their supposedly great doctor, but are mad at their insurance company for the price.
Doctors make a lot more than elsewhere because we've created a such a system. I don't know anyone who doesn't think they're worth every penny they get paid. Lawyers have little to do with it. The whole malpractice thing is a bogeyman. It accounts for only a few percent of the total cost of health care. The fundamental problem with the current system is that all the incentives are in the wrong places:
1. Insurance companies have an incentive to deny claims.
2. Health care does not work like a free market, so people can't be expected to seek out the best value.
3. The entire fee-for-service model encourages overconsumption.
Single-payer systems also have their problems, but they mostly avoid the perverse incentives of our current system.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Government in the US already spends enough to fully fund a single payer system once you consider the huge cost savings that can result. $700B to $800B/yr by eliminating the insurance companies and reducing the overhead of providers trying to deal with thousands of different policies. $300B/yr or so by paying drug companies the same thing they charge in other developed nations, and maybe a few hundred billion/yr more if we went after fraud.
By the way, the earnings of practicing MDs only account for around 6 to 8% of our healthcare costs. If they earned what European doctors do it still wouldn't save us big money. We've intentionally created a system where we have a shortage of doctors and where anyone who wants to become a doctor takes an enormous financial risk. Risk takers expect to be rewarded if they succeed. If you want to pay doctors less, the system needs to dramatically change.
What has me scratching my head is why businesses aren't pushing for Medicare for All. They still pay the bulk of the costs to cover their employees. You'd think they'd be all in on a system where they just pay a tax (likely the same or less than what they're paying now), rather than shoulder the burden of uncertainty in their costs. Especially the companies that are self-insured. Am I missing something?
It doesn't make sense to me either. Maybe they figure that having good insurance tied to the employer will make employees less mobile and they can pay them less. The current system sure makes it hard for most people to risk going into business for themselves.
Doctors in the US graduate with more debt than anywhere else in the world, too.
True, but there's an easy fix for that. But we don't want gummint involved, damn it!
No, it's not the lawyers. For starters, it's just asinine to have a middleman between you and your doctor whose function is to make money by making sure that you pay them more than they have to pay the doctors. Universal healthcare gets rid of the middleman, and that saves you money right there. Think about this: The amount of money a hospital charges depends on who negotiated coverage. Two people with the exact same condition and covered by the same provider, but working for different companies, pay different rates for the same procedure. And the poor schmoe with no insurance pays through the nose. For the same procedure. How does that make any sense?
The wrong UHC executive was executed. Stephen J. Hemsley, chairman of UHC, was CEO when delay and deny became the strategy for primitive accumulation by health insurance companies. The inscription of depose on one of the shells is odd because it is commonly used to mean giving evidence. Depose also means to remove from office via coercion. Obviously the shooter knew these shell casings would be discovered and revealed. Would an aggrieved customer of UHC because of denial of benefits put 'deposed' on a shell casing?
When he was going to depose the CEO with extreme prejudice, yes.
I think it's more of a reaction of the media's incessant coverage over the death of a single guy.
After all, his life is worth no more and no less than another white male age 50. But his value to society might be measured by the likelihood that his life was probably responsible for the deaths of hundreds or thousands of people who were denied coverage for a needed procedure. (Whether or not it is true, it surely is the reasoning for people.)
And for that, there is no love lost.
I’m sure there’s a movie deal already in the works! True crime podcasts too.
+1.
We don't know how many deaths he's responsible for, but it's certainly a number greater than 1.
I forget, do you also support the death penalty in other situations?
I never said I supported this man's death.
I don't support the death penalty except for insurrectionist leaders.
The only thing worse than fighting arbitrary claims denials is being denied needed care in the first place. Sometimes women and older patients are the most likely to experience this.
It may not make the news as an individual event, but lots of Americans die because our health system is too expensive and doesn't cover everyone. Sometimes it is a direct death, like an uninsured person who can't get their cancer diagnosed and treated. Sometimes it is indirect, such as medical debt making a person homeless and the attendant poor living conditions shorten their life.
Insurance companies, because they skim so much money out of the system, directly deny claims, and are a real pain to deal with, often are the focus of the ire.
I think most Americans just can't imagine a better system. They fear that expanding access will just make the wait times even worse. And they believe the horror stories about other systems. It's not like you can't find Canadians or Brits quick to complain about their systems.
Americans have put themselves into a corner. They are mad, but see no constructive way out. Schadenfreude is all they've got.
My father-in-law currently has gastric cancer, stage IV. He probably only has a few months left.
My wife and her sister have spent countless hours on the phone with his insurance company, fighting their way through the company's firm resolve to deny as much care as possible, and to slow-walk those procedures which must, annoyingly, be approved. I have seen my wife hang up the phone after fighting another round, and then immediately burst into tears.
When she saw the news about this guy getting shot in the face, she understood perfectly.
Anthem thought they'd set a time limit on anesthesia recently to give but one gross example of the types of things these CEO types approve:
https://news.google.com/read/CBMitAFBVV95cUxOZUVfckI2NE9oNlZRTm5rT1VMVFZfVWdyeXZ5c1BORzU0MktoZDh2MUc1QWxnTC1LZXRnOGVzLUM4eEVpZzBYZnVpMWc4UEljVUtwZW13OHUxb0xtbWRmS3pvdlo2eEdIekc1VzA1ZXgyTXdJQzV4Q3FLTjQtVkVPcjZuUU5qTmtya25yM3M4dFFMU2lGNkxjM0pDSEhNeU9sS3VMbVpCaUR6VFdjb0R6TG85bV_SAVZBVV95cUxQWVVrU25sVjN0QWJLalRpZkh4WjNCSHhDYVRVLXhPb3JRaUprX3p5aVIxMWd5RGlWcFR3SkZnZjB4b0tNRUlyVmdQUjBhZWdnTnA1UWZJdw?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
The oligarchs are, you know, sort of the enemy. Even Putin whacks them! And that crooks fellow who nearly got trump? Hero! So close. When you look around at the super rich and the corrupt political class you have to occasionally think they suck. So when some lowly person strikes a blow against them, well, too bad so sad thoughts and prayers.
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!
Otherwise, it’s a rough world. No one gives a moment’s consideration to this…
Two boys, ages 5 and 6, are hospitalized in “extremely critical condition” after they were shot at a religious school in the community of Palermo by a suspected gunman who then took his own life, according to the Butte County Sheriff.
That survey data surprises me a little. I would have thought that the Medical Loss Ratio provision in the ACA would have curbed the worst of non-claim-paying behavior. I wonder if some of the survey responses don't reflect reality exactly as it is? (We've certainly seen that happening in other survey responses recently ...) I can't know, but perhaps someone should look into it.
Wealth shown to scale,
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Hold down the right arrow. This is the best illustration of massive wealth inequality I've seen.
Thanks!
A doctor’s letter to United Heathcare for denying nausea meds for a child on chemo,
https://old.reddit.com/r/MurderedByWords/comments/1h770le/a_doctors_letter_to_united_heathcare_for_denying/
Well, I have to say I'm not surprised at the lack of sympathy; my FB feed is flooded with denial stories, some of them truly outrageous.
That is no way to run a business.
The good will of your customers actually does matter. Or, like Scrooge and the ghost of Christmas past, you die without anyone mourning your loss.
(The most interesting post noted that the poster hoped that his widow and children did not require grief counseling, it was not among the benefits the United Healthcare's insurance policies covered.)
Customer goodwill isn't particularly relevant when the customer doesn't have a choice and the customer is required to buy. So if they all do it (thus saving money AND making more!), the poor customer's opinion has no effect on their business.
I saw a facebook post (so I don't know if it was accurate) that showed denial rates for various insurers. KP was lowest at 7% and UHC was hightest at 32%. Maybe Kevin can find this info. Also saw that Thompson died -maybe the ER had to get a prior auth before they could initiate treatment.....I know, it's not nice
It’s not a tragedy, it’s entertainment!
“Wednesday's shocking murder in Manhattan of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson - what police called a targeted killing - brought out a bevy of sleuths and true-crime fans across social media looking for clues about the killer's motivation and how he managed to flee from the scene and seemingly disappear into the city of more than 8 million people.”
True crime fans! Game night! Hilarious
They are so angry that they just re-elected Rick Scott as Senator. He was the CEO of Humana who distinguished himself by leading Humana to the largest Medicare Fraud in history. the company was fined 1.7 billion dollars. He left the company with a 300 million dollar golden parachute.
The company was recently fined another 90 million for another instance of some sort.
The public doesn't connect the dots very well and until now the 'CEO's of these companies simply collected millions in salary and benefits and the public paid. We don't have a health care system we have a revenue generating system that does healthcare.
1. People are damn well NOT satisfied with their insurance. But they ARE terrified of not having any at all if changes are made.
2. Today, Blue Cross announced they would no longer pay for anesthesia if a surgery takes longer than they would like. The outcry caused them to backtrack quickly, but that's the shit they do when they think they can get away with it.
3. Why are they doing so well? BECAUSE the S&P 500 is red hot. Did you think they stuck your premiums under a mattress until you needed a payout? They invest it. When their investments are doing well, price increases are moderate. When the economy tanks and their investments go south, you make them whole with price increases that go through the roof.
4. My stepson is an orthopedic surgeon. My wife works in his office. Her job is to identify bills that insurance did not pay and make them pay up. This isn't even claim denial. They didn't deny anything. They just don't pay and hope doctors are too busy to notice. She keeps meticulous records because they always stonewall by saying things like "We didn't receive the fax." Fax? WTF? Yes, insurers are the only companies that still do business solely by fax. She can always show proof that it was received. It takes weeks to collect each bill but there are so many that she can bring in $10,000 or more every month.
No, people don't like their insurance company. People think insurers are the scum of the Earth. Everyone has a story, like the time Blue Cross refused to pay for treating pre-cancerous tissue on my face. I had to pay out of pocket to avoid disfiguring cancer.
People do not like these monsters at all. They're just afraid of not having anything. This is a well know principle of behavioral economics -- losses loom larger than gains.
Like I said.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/unitedhealthcare-ceo-shooting-opens-floodgates-of-americans-insurance-frustrations
https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-insurance-denial-ulcerative-colitis