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.
I have been following the news about Brian Thompson’s assassination in New York, and I am astounded by the flood of sympathy the media has poured out for him. Why? This man spent his entire career working tirelessly to deny healthcare to millions of Americans, all in the name of lining his own pockets and enriching shareholders. Yet the media praises him for his “kindness” and “generosity.” Let me be clear: pushing your company’s claim denial rate to nearly double that of your most cold-hearted competitors, bankrupting families through deceptive fine print and delay tactics, is not kindness, and it is not generosity. No, setting up boiler-room style offices with denial scoreboards is one of the most inhuman things I can imagine.
I spent nearly a decade writing software to help hospital systems fight insurance claim denials, and I can tell you, these insurers are getting better at it every year. They deny even the most justified claims, banking on the fact that most people won’t have the energy, resources, or will to fight back. And for the majority, they’re right. We had a team of a dozen nurses and PAs working alongside twice as many analysts. These were people who knew the system inside and out. We knew the deadlines, the bureaucratic jargon, the documentation required, and we tracked every claim meticulously. But even armed with all that knowledge and experience, we couldn’t win them all. On a good month, we might win two-thirds of the denials. That was considered a success.
What’s even worse is that for every claim we fought, there were countless others that never even made it that far, we only got denials on services that actually happened. A patient’s doctor tells them they need surgery, but an insurer like UnitedHealth says no and that’s it. The patient gives up and it is difficult to imagine they get better.
If you’ve ever had a serious medical condition—and I pray you haven’t—you know how much it drains you, how it strips you of your will to do anything. When every moment is agony, you don’t have the strength to sit on hold for hours, fill out endless forms, or chase down a bureaucratic system designed to wear you down. All you want is to sleep, because that’s the only place that pain can’t find you. How many people have simply lacked the strength to fight back, and ultimately succumbed to their conditions? How many families have been driven into poverty, their lives torn apart by a single emergency, all because of these executives’ policies?
We all know someone who has been through a health insurance nightmare and we also know that while political changes could probably help this problem the reality now is that these people are making a choice to run their companies this way, knowing full well the impact of their greed and indifference.
Where are your tears, your headlines, for the thousands of people and families whose lives have been destroyed and whose loved ones have died because of these same executives?
Fuck censorship.
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.
Fuck Reddit and the life is cheap US healthcare system.
Is it hypocritical that the “suits” in the LinkedIn posts using the “laugh” emoji are probably some of the same ones making decisions as to which minimum of health care they can get by with to least impact the bottom line of their company? How much cost should be pushed to the employee? The ones that fire an ill employee for missing too much work?
It isn’t just scammer CEO’s that are worried.
Well to be fair when someone speaks in such a polite manner I tend to assume the worst of them.
As a French Canadian I do not support capitalism in its current form. I think we need to abandon our capitalist roots and create a new hybrid system which makes it more balanced but also, I would say I am. Living in a country where corporations don’t have as much power. You are right, I am not an American so I haven’t live what you have however I know that it’s current system is bull.
As a personal note I have always supported Bernie Sanders however there is a huge portion of Americans who chose to close their eyes one hat is going on. I tend to follow the George Carlin philosophy to doubt my leaders good intentions while also taking personal responsibilities for the leader we have.
It’s very easy to say that politics is shit but hard to actual do something about it.
How many time has Senator Sanders been rejected and yet he still comes back and I respect him for that, always will be user he is the type of leader America needs if the democratic party wasn’t as broken… I don’t care for the republicans either as they have become a religious cult…
Anyway, sorry if I became personal, it was not justified. All the best to you and your family. Quebec and Vermont have always shared similar vakurdt
Lol of I was with that CEO in the trolley I would have probably pushed him off a long time ago, sticks or not…
I do believe that billionaires are evidence of abuse to the extreme.
I do not see the difference between a billionaire and a slave owner because in actuality as most people have said previously, they have gained their wealth through the suffering of others.
I wish the government would tax them for at least a fifth of there salary considering no one needs a billion dollar to live, it’s pure fantasy
And yet, for someone who is so enlightened you lash out and name call me instead of actually debating with me.
That is on you, I did not personally attack you until you did.
That is as far as I well go on this discussion.
Best of luck
Life is short and filled with potential that sometimes met and other times robbed.
Having lost many members of my family, I don’t wish it on others.
Edit--------
So I would suggest that anyone actually learn to read what is written. It’s like taking to 5 year old that jump to conclusions… Seriously people, I don’t care about this Billionaire, I won’t be someone who will sya that murder is good and let’s purge all rich people. That is not constructive and I value life, not death. So many of you suffered from health insurance but when you come to vote you vote like most Americans do, not in my backyard. I don’t want socialism, governments not coming to take my money or guns…
No offence but private health care didn’t happen over night. You live in one of the greatest democratic institutions but simy chose not to use your tools. That is why corruption runs amok, none of you want to stand up and unite yourself with other Americans because you are all so bloody individualist. All other countries with universal healthcare didn’t just get it by miracle, it was work and commitment to the greater good which means not getting into hissy fights for every little thing.
How about listening to George Carlin to. Illuminate your minds… Seriously America, everyone in the world has been telling you that you have a problem, stop gaslighting us.
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 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.
I actually agree (with you.) This could be the start of a movement.
Hopefully this hero is protected and makes a clean escape. The response from law enforcement is disproportionate because it was a rich person that died instead of someone like us.
Remember, they wouldn’t bat an eye if any of us were killed in this manner. It happens all the time and goes unsolved all the time because law enforcement primarily exists to protect rich people.
I’m anxious for what happens next. If this spirals, we’re about to start living in some “interesting times”.
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.”
IIRC, the final verdict was that he smashed his ear on an agents holster. It wasn’t a bullet or shards of teleprompter glass.
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.”
That’s fuckin metal
They tried to get her so many times and each time they were foiled by more and more lucky series of events.
Reverse Archduke Franz Ferdinand
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.
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.
Blood splatters from the human shields sitting behind the sack of shit.
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.
No, it was just his superior genetics that allowed him to heal quicker than a normal person would.
We have the best ears…
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
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…
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.
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 both applaud the shooter for trying and am simultaneously pissed at him for not being a better shot.
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.
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.
Nobody Saw Nothin’ Day.
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!
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
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.
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.
alarming number
Yeah, alsrmingly low
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.
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.
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.”
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 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?
I think it makes more sense to use the 🤏 emoji in that context, rather than the Italian gesture.
Buttah we’reah theese aclosa…! 🤌🏼
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.
Jar-jar, is that you?
Fixed :)
Really? Somehow it appears unchanged on my end. And the last edit is before my comment. Lemmy bug?
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.
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 insurrection, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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Insurance is not unlike gambling, but gambling seems comparatively more fair and less insidious.
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.”
I’m sure quite literally in many cases
As do the nurses
Rest in piss
“Rot in poverty” -UHC policy
