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.
From a mod of /r/medicine:
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.
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.
Yes, and also all these companies are evil and they all are more than worthy of the UHC CEO treatment.
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
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.
And that resulted in actual consequences for a change that other CEO’s will actually care about not facing.
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.
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.
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 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
In so much as they are “operating as expected” yes.
In so much as they are trapped in the job? Obviously not. I guarantee that if this dude enacted policy to the likes of folks here, minimal to zero denial of service, he’d be out in a week.
It’s the system that is the root of the problem, and the politicians who build it.
This dude is a cog.
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.
Karmas a bitch I guess.
Oh well
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.
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.
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
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 didn’t create or control the gas chambers I just operated them!
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.
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.
they’re scared of losing their tiny amount of power
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
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.
Ikr?
Oh you’re struggling? Lock the sub until the heat dies down, it ain’t rocket science 🤷♂️
Bullets outnumber CEOs, and guillotines can be resharpened
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.
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:
Not if this sort of thing keeps happening to them.
Maybe scaring the insurance industry ghouls to change their ways by radical actions is a systemic solution?
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.
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.
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.
And shit on the mods, cancer to all of them