United Healthcare CEO shot and killed | 1st Degree murder charges ordered dropped



There are two embedded TikToks in the linked story - check those out as well.
 
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OGtruthhurts said:
No said everyone would take it. The very large majority of Americans would not turn down tens of millions a year. You are living in a holier than thou fantasy land if you have convinced yourself of this.
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The person that posted that originally wrote 99.9%.

Which is believe is high.

I'll agree a majority think they would love a job that pays that much, but that's because most don't understand the job.

I wouldn't want that job, but for $24M I'd take it and hope i could last 6 months, then I'd have plenty for retirement.

I don't agree that with Los that i wouldn't want a job where my cost cutting decisions directly impacted families.
 
Willy said:
Looking at the reddit, twitter comments ("eat the rich", etc.), it certainly would be a way to further divide American society.
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Some of the responses I've seen/heard are concerning. Some are kind of humorous. Something along the lines of "Sending thoughts and deductibles. Sorry, prayers are out-of-network."
 
ChapelHillSooner said:
to control premium prices.
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This is a bad thing? I would think we would all want premiums as low as possible. That doesn't mean "deny every second claim so that people are paying not very much money for insurance that is worth even less" but it's odd to see this described as a negative.
 
superrific said:
I posted a thread on this. Care to contribute and bring these thoughts over there so as to not derail this one? I disagree with you about for profit insurance, btw.
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The high cost of health care in the USA compared to Canada and Western European countries is the result of relying on for profit insurers to cover Americans under the age of 65yo
 
heelinhell said:
The high cost of health care in the USA compared to Canada and Western European countries is the result of relying on for profit insurers to cover Americans under the age of 65yo
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This is false, and I am 100% confident in that assessment. Insurance companies are not the main drivers of high health care costs. They are barely drivers at all. I mean, just look at the claims here:

1. For profit insurers deny claims too often and people die as a result;
2. For profit insurers are causing medical care to be too expensive.

These are contradictory statements. The only way that both can be true is for the effects to be quite small. And indeed, for-profit insurance's effects on overall costs is small. Administrative costs traceable to for-profit insurance adds maybe 5-7% of overall cost, at most (and that's before accounting for any savings generated).

A much more important source of administrative costs comes from the problems of a) the ridiculous inefficiency and non-interoperable EMR systems and b) procedure coding. So much money is spent in implementing EMRs that suck, so then they have to be replaced, and some companies build their own, which still suck, and nobody can talk to each other. And then physician practices spend a lot of time upcoding procedures to maximize reimbursements, and then the insurers want to fight against upcoding, so we get appeals processes, etc.

Neither of those categories of costs is traceable to for-profit insurance. I won't say that for-profit insurance doesn't in some cases aggravate them -- I wouldn't really know either way. But upcoding is a direct result of how Medicare reimbursements work, and I do not think a private insurance system would continue to use this technique if the entire field wasn't built around it. And I don't even know what to say about EMRs, the suckiness of which is almost incomprehensible to me, except that it seems to be a provider thing, and in particular large providers like hospitals.
 
superrific said:
This is a bad thing? I would think we would all want premiums as low as possible. That doesn't mean "deny every second claim so that people are paying not very much money for insurance that is worth even less" but it's odd to see this described as a negative.
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I think you misunderstood my point.

I said, “What UHC is doing goes beyond [controlling cost to controlling premium prices].”

I meant the part in brackets to be take together as in you control costs to control premiums which is good. I meant that they go beyond all of that. Maybe should have said “go beyond controlling premiums prices to maximizing profit for the company at the expense of member’s healthcare.”

Apologies if I wasn’t clear enough.
 
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superrific said:
This is false, and I am 100% confident in that assessment. Insurance companies are not the main drivers of high health care costs. They are barely drivers at all. I mean, just look at the claims here:

1. For profit insurers deny claims too often and people die as a result;
2. For profit insurers are causing medical care to be too expensive.

These are contradictory statements. The only way that both can be true is for the effects to be quite small. And indeed, for-profit insurance's effects on overall costs is small. Administrative costs traceable to for-profit insurance adds maybe 5-7% of overall cost, at most (and that's before accounting for any savings generated).

A much more important source of administrative costs comes from the problems of a) the ridiculous inefficiency and non-interoperable EMR systems and b) procedure coding. So much money is spent in implementing EMRs that suck, so then they have to be replaced, and some companies build their own, which still suck, and nobody can talk to each other. And then physician practices spend a lot of time upcoding procedures to maximize reimbursements, and then the insurers want to fight against upcoding, so we get appeals processes, etc.

Neither of those categories of costs is traceable to for-profit insurance. I won't say that for-profit insurance doesn't in some cases aggravate them -- I wouldn't really know either way. But upcoding is a direct result of how Medicare reimbursements work, and I do not think a private insurance system would continue to use this technique if the entire field wasn't built around it. And I don't even know what to say about EMRs, the suckiness of which is almost incomprehensible to me, except that it seems to be a provider thing, and in particular large providers like hospitals.
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What about liability and resultant malpractice insurance as a cost driver (a la John Edwards)
 
ColdBlueSteel said:
What about liability and resultant malpractice insurance as a cost driver (a la John Edwards)
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To a first approximation, this has no impact. Malpractice insurance doesn't affect prices, for a number of reasons (including that it's not a variable cost).

A stronger case can be made if you include "defensive medicine" in this category, if defensive medicine can actually be shown to exist. It still wouldn't make a big difference, but as a utilization driver, it would have some impact. To the best of my knowledge, economists and health policy people consider defensive medicine to be a subset -- a particular type -- of supplier induced demand.
 
ChapelHillSooner said:
I think you misunderstood my point.

I said, “What UHC is doing goes beyond [controlling cost to controlling premium prices].”

I meant the part in brackets to be take together as in you control costs to control premiums which is good. I meant that they go beyond all of that. Maybe should have said “go beyond controlling premiums prices to maximizing profit for the company at the expense of member’s healthcare.”

Apologies if I wasn’t clear enough.
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I see. I definitely read it as "goes beyond (controlling costs) to (controlling premiums)"

I'm not sure how to evaluate your statement. Health insurance is a competitive market (even more competitive than people usually realize, because many employers self-insure but turn to companies like UHC to administer their plans -- meaning that an insurer is in competition not just with other insurers but also large employers). The only reason for UHC to cut reimbursements to the bone would be to lower prices. In the short term, I suppose, an insurer can jack profits by denying care. But if it's not passing those savings on, their business will dry up. What employer wants to pay the same to UHC for a worse product?

A market should sort this problem out (unlike some other of the more difficult issues). To the extent that it doesn't, it's because we run health care payments through employers, as I noted on the other thread.
 
superrific said:
I see. I definitely read it as "goes beyond (controlling costs) to (controlling premiums)"

I'm not sure how to evaluate your statement. Health insurance is a competitive market (even more competitive than people usually realize, because many employers self-insure but turn to companies like UHC to administer their plans -- meaning that an insurer is in competition not just with other insurers but also large employers). The only reason for UHC to cut reimbursements to the bone would be to lower prices. In the short term, I suppose, an insurer can jack profits by denying care. But if it's not passing those savings on, their business will dry up. What employer wants to pay the same to UHC for a worse product?

A market should sort this problem out (unlike some other of the more difficult issues). To the extent that it doesn't, it's because we run health care payments through employers, as I noted on the other thread.
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I don’t know. I suspect it could be a combo of lower premium prices and greater profit margins. UHC rejects claims at twice the industry rate. That is hard to justify.

At some point, the insurance has to be pretty crappy before the employers care. Their first concern is the cost to them. They only care about the rest if they start to lose employees because the insurance is so bad. When a lot of your workforce is 22-40 year olds, insurance coverage isn’t the employee’s main concern. If the older people bolt, well some corporations might see that as a benefit.

Also for some large companies it’s the companies who pay out medical costs as the insurance provider only administers the plan.
 
tarheelbillie said:
Well, if true, maybe FBI does need a good review.
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A fair number of mass casualty events have seen the perpetrator talking about plans prior to the event. Not always clearly but sometimes hints are a bit more obvious than not.

Your suggestion that the FBI (and the other letter agencies) should not be monitoring message boards is surprising. If someone on this board were to make a credible and detailed threat against either Biden, Trump or their VP's, there is a decent chance they would get a once over from the FBI/SS and maybe even a visit.
 
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