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.
People right here on Lemmy often complain when murderers are executed. For good reason.
People complain when the state executes people. There’s a big difference.
If the state had executed the CEO, why would you complain?
Because the state wouldn’t just not execute the CEO. It gives them no repercussions, and even encourages them.
They wouldn’t, because he’s rich.
The state has other methods of dealing with people. A vigilante really doesn’t.
Neither do lynch mobs. Should we cheer them on?
Lynch mobs generally don’t target mass murderers.
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OK, suppose lynch mobs started forming in your city to hang drug dealers. Would you cheer them on?
Well, that depends. Is the law actively defending those drug dealers and do the drug dealers own the politicians in charge of writing those laws so that they can never be held legaly accountable?
If drug dealers are on the streets, then they obviously aren’t being held accountable by the law. So is lynching them OK?
Are you really comparing drug dealers to a health insurance magistrate directly responsible for the deaths of countless people? Fuck entirely off
Yes, I am.
Because in their pursuit of money, drug dealers are also directly responsible for the deaths of countless people. I’m surprised I have to spell it out for you.
Total false equivalency.
A single drug dealer may be adjacently responsible for a couple of people killing themselves with drugs, but a health insurance magistrate is directly responsible for millions of people suffering and dying.
Likewise, most drug dealers are just doing what they gotta do to survive. Corpos with millions in their bank are actively killing people for what equates to pennies for them.
Go cry in your corner. I’ll be helping sharpen the guillotine
An insurance CEO is not responsible for millions of deaths. Drug dealers cause suffering to a lot more than just a couple of people.
And drug dealers are not forced to do what they do to survive. Every drug dealer has friends or family who survive without dealing drugs.
You can sharpen guillotines for the CEOs, while Kyle Rittenhouse wannabes load their assault rifles for street criminals. You’re ultimately indistinguishable to the rest of us.
State execution is wrong, but stopping someone during a murderous rampage is rigtheous.
But nothing has stopped. UHC will do the same thing tomorrow it has been doing all year.
Maybe they will.
Or maybe the next guy won’t be so quick to deny a cancer patients claim because he doesn’t want to be the next one ambushed.
If the next guy doesn’t want to make money for shareholders, the next guy will be fired.
And there are plenty of guys who are willing to risk a bullet if the money is good, including bodyguards and mercenaries.
Good thing bullets outnumber CEOs
That’s like saying “Now maybe kids will stop bullying their weird classmate” after a school shooting.
Followed by an ominous “There’s more bullets than school bullies”.
False parallel. A school bully isn’t directly responsible for the death and suffering of millions of individuals.
School shootings do not change bullying for the same reason CEO shooters do not change corporate policy.