United Health deleted all comments and disallowed commenting under their LinkedIn post mourning his death. Because it was full of people talking about their personal experiences of having their claims denied.
Focusing on peoples' insensitivity allows the company to distract from the bigger point: why do so many people feel this way? Bro was also in trouble for alleged insider trading.
Anthem just walked that back. Probably not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because their execs saw the public sharpening their guillotines and got cold feet.
Yes, I do think that the health care system is bad because of bad actors. I don't think the badness is uniquely concentrated in the health insurance side, but it's certainly there. If someone had assassinated Pharma Bro I think the outpouring of "f the drug companies" would be roughly as strong.
Other rich (and not-so-rich) countries have vastly better health outcomes than the US, and at much lower cost per capita.
If (as you point out) large US healthcare providers have low profit margins, it's because they are very inefficient, and they drastically overpay themselves. These are problems to identify and fix.
I agree that "the system" is broken, but all the evidence is that these bad corporate actors try to keep the system going to enrich themselves, in every industry. Prisons, schools, pharma, food, you name it ...
I'm a citizen of a developing nation who was a resident of a western nation for a while. The difference is drastic. Here, most regular treatments cost 50$ or less. You don't need to wait hours in emergency or days to get the doctor's appointment. (Doctor's appointments are available on a few hours notice and emergency care is near instant). Public hospitals are a bit shabby and uncomfortable, but they're a very affordable (sometimes free) and effective option for poor people. The best private hospitals have staff to accompany you around and guide you through the process. All costs are disclosed upfront and they often help you secure aid. Blood work and other tests are treated as emergency requirements and are returned to you in a few hours (except for tests like blood culture).
This is so much different from the west that we were told to take an airline back to my country if a serious medical situation arose. Even stranger is the fact that there is a new trend called 'medical tourism' where foreigners come here for affordable and quick treatments. It's a sobering reminder of how much value and affordability can be destroyed by the greed of powerful corporations.
The real story with this assassination is how broadly popular it is across political, race, sex and even class lines, and how the MSM is completely ignoring that angle.
This is clearly and obviously false, and using an acronym like "MSM" (which is so slippery as to be meaningless) suggests you don't actually care whether it's false. I hate that the internet encourages ideologically-motivated lying.
It feels like living through the 2019 Joker movie, everyone's lost a sense of what's decent and what's not. At the risk of derailing the conversation, people are even arguing whether dropping bombs on women and children is humane or not, and far too many are finding excuses to say it's fine.
Meanwhile the assassin needs a name.. the Midtown Hilton Shooter? The 3D Killer? (since there were 3 bullets found with D-words written on them).
Don't be greedy, or The 3D-Killer will go after you next!
Well I'm not saying I necessarily agree with it, but it begs the question of whether 'celebrating' (or, perhaps, simply not mourning) the death of some individuals is actually wrong? This would be different than encouraging/celebrating the murder itself.
I also think it bears consideration what 'public response' means here. Obviously I am just one person, but nobody I know (personally, or in the communities I'm in) has celebrated this in any capacity, let alone applauded the murderer. Are we basing public perception mostly on social media comments, which are a selective representation of public opinion at best, and blatantly fraudulent at worst?
> BTW thinking the comments of people outside of your bubble to be fraudulent seems... elitist.
Well I didn't say that, and I even noted that I recognize my bias in the matter, but ignoring the widespread use of bots to shape narratives online for various purposes and taking social media comments at face value to indicate actual public perception in 2024 seems... naive.
>>When your business is cost control on human life, it's not surprising that decency goes out the door.
Bingo!
Not sure why many people are missing this point. Beneath all this. The healthcare industry, doctors, pharma companies and all connected infrastructure has a simple equation. Their profits co-relate directly with human suffering. That is, the more you suffer, the more they get rich. And for some people in the chain, their very survival, like making a living depends on this.
You can't have a decent, even bearable conversation when somebody begins an argument on this premise. Notice how you refusing to suffer might appear indecent to them. I have known some doctors get angry on patients here in India for asking questions on alternate lines of treatments. Sometimes they have commissions from insurance, diagnostics and even suppliers, and they find it unfair that the patients think about their own good and not about the doctors. So you mean to say you are not willing to suffer to help me make money? So cruel of you!
There are lots of industries like these. Weapons manufacturing and Armed forces is another one. Im sure the thought of absence of wars, and some long term peace would be deeply disturbing to people in that ecosystem.
Notice how this is different compared to something like hospitality business, where profits co-relate directly with customer joy and inversely with customer dissatisfaction.
The real issue with the health care industry is their profits lie in hurting people, not helping them.
I am reminded of the right-wing cop in Oregon who burned a ballot box and added some "free Gaza" vandalism. Specifically, this is a compelling argument that the shooter likely wasn't an outside vigilante:
The thing that struck me was the fact that [the shooter] knew where [Thompson] was going to be and when he was going to be there. Generally, you get that information by observing the individual. You find their schedule and their routine, and then you intercept them somewhere along the line on their routine. This was obviously not a routine setting. So he had to have some reason to believe that Thompson was going to be coming out of that door at an approximate time to be able to lay in wait. Because it’s Manhattan, standing around waiting risks the likelihood of being challenged by a cop or security guard coming by, which suggests that he had reason to know when the guy was going to be coming out. It suggests some sort of inside information.
There must have been, but also - Thompson was in town for the Investor Conference at a hotel nearby. I'm sure UHC had hotel rooms blocked for it. Call hotels nearby, and look has no rooms available for the duration of the conference, as a starting point (if I recall correctly, people on Reddit used it to call BS on a last minute music concert/festival cancellation in Vegas. "We've just found out about this today", "So why did you release the block of rooms you were holding at the hotel last week?").
The salient point is that the shooter was hanging around early in the morning, and he probably didn’t loiter for too long because that would have drawn attention. It suggests he knew Thompson would be leaving the hotel around 6:30am, and it’s difficult to see how an outsider could have obtained that info.
Someone loitering on the street? In NYC? It's questionable how much attention that would draw.
Also, and not saying this in this case: "Annual Investor Conference Day 1 Agenda, 8am Open Breakfast". Not hard to believe someone would be leaving their hotel nearby at 6.30, 7 for that. It's not staking the place out for hours.
Apparently knowing which door Mr. Thompson planned to use, the shooter arrived outside the hotel about 10 minutes before his intended target and ignored passers-by as he lay in wait.
Yeah. Depending upon the level of prior research by the shooter, the CEO may have shown a reliable pattern before hand attending other conferences too.
I'm not exaggerating for hyperbole: literally every single time I've ever seen a comment online of the form "why isn't the MSM talking about X", I've clicked over to the homepage of the New York Times and seen X right there.
Yeah it's unfortunate that we're in this place culturally but seems like just using the phrase suggests a lack of engagement with it so I guess it makes sense in some wacky way.
I do assume his strict rules, in the healthcare company, he was the ceo of, which rejected 61% of claims, has caused numerous deaths, directly and indirectly.
Americans are learning the hard way that universal morality only works when you are utterly unchallenged in your strength. Once things start going south people who profess to believe whatever moral things won't feel a shred of sadness if hurting you benefits them and their family.
I think it is frankly insulting to compare someone being sued for maliciously denying lifesaving healthcare and causing a vast amount of wrongful suffering to innocent children being blown up.
that is most definitely nowhere near the "real story" - it is not even in the top-1000 of the "real story" not just because it is not true but because it is not a story :)
I would like to take a second to say, it is horrible for anyone to lose their life and a terrible tragedy for their family, especially around the holidays.
That being said, I think that both the assassination and the public's reaction to it show very well the shift that we have had regarding business leaders in the US. In prior times, these people were often pillars of community and something like this would be unthinkable instead of celebrated.
Edit add: Reddit's actions don't surprise me in the least as they want to appear advertiser friendly.
I am sure the response and resources will be exactly the same, and if he is caught the DA will file the same charges with the same recommendations and the Judge will apply the same standards.
Just like the man who attacked Paul Pelosi in San Fransisco had the same standards applied to him. I am glad that the state of CA is so strict on crime that a first time offender(who has mental health issues) convicted of burglary, false imprisonment, threatening a family member of a public official, kidnapping, and threatening a witness is given life in prison.
Or the police response when someone is pushed and their cellphone is stolen.
>Boxer, 80, was assaulted in the Jack London Square neighborhood.
"The assailant pushed her in the back, stole her cell phone and jumped in a waiting car. She is thankful that she was not seriously injured,"
Speculation regarding the motive might actually be correct:
“ Law enforcement officials found the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” on shell casings recovered from the crime scene”
Reddit is too easily censored by biased community moderators. Instead of a flagging model, comments and threads can be completely removed, with no evidence of their having existed.
HN seems to be doing it too (though they're just hidden, not deleted). None of the UHC posts are on the frontpage and I checked all the way to 200 posts down. I had to google just to find this one.
They should be allowed to, but their decisions should be public. Currently Reddit moderators are able to arbitrarily and secretly remove posts and comments, even when doing so goes directly against the stated goals and published rules of their community.
They should. However, they should not be allowed to misrepresent their rules. I know a few subreddits that claim to be unbiased (to attract subscribers) but engage in highly selective moderation. While it’s ok to do so, such subreddits should be forced to explicitly declare their leanings and moderation policies in the description.
This is probably easier said than done, for at least a couple reasons:
a) How do you determine which subreddits need to disclose that information?
b) How do you put something as abstract as what warrants moderation in a community into a simple description? Codes of Conduct can help with this, but as I'm sure others will inevitably point out, those can be abused by poor moderators as well.
Depending on the context of the community, such things can actually do more harm than good - many users react negatively to any display of authority, no matter how reasonable it is. I don't think community managers should have to subject themselves to the questioning of users who don't have anything better to do, if they don't feel like it adds to their community.
Of course, this does work in some places - Wikipedia is extremely transparent about its moderation actions and policies - but I don't think it should be the default for every single community.
I mean if the mods want to run their subreddit as a dictatorship that's allowed, and having a public log wouldn't stop that. It just means that you can't pretend you're not intervening if you are.
Yes and no. Like, is there a guy who decides who to kick out of the intramural softball league? Probably yes. But people will see that it's happened and talk about it, and if it was unreasonable then at some point they'll have a word with the guy, and maybe oust him or start their own splinter league or what have you. All of which is sort of possible on reddit up to a point, but those mechanisms are much less functional because the only community interaction is the subreddit itself where the moderator can just silently remove any posts they don't like.
It could go either way. If the purpose of the community is to benefit the moderators, they should have more control to censor. If the purpose of the community is to benefit the users, they should have more freedom in what they're allowed to say.
This is a rather 1-dimensional view on community moderation.
The purpose of a community is (generally speaking) to provide a place for people to engage and interact with each other, not to 'benefit' any one particular group of people. Users should have the freedom to discuss what they want, yes - within reason, as long as it doesn't jeopardize the core goal of the community. Moderators need to use their best judgement and knowledge of the community to determine what meets that criteria.
The problem isn't just the moderators, it's the administration and rules of Reddit itself.
Reddit has a rule about not celebrating the death of someone, which they very selectively enforce.
They allow people to cheer the death of the likes of Adolf Hitler or Muammar_Gaddafi and some random soldier in the Ukraine-Russia war, but they're quite picky about other stuff.
I'm sure they'd clamp down more on this one if they could but the people have spoken and there are simply too many people celebrating this death.
You know flagging automatically kills (marks as dead) posts/comments here when enough are added right? Even worse. Imagine a bunch of redditors with a downvote that deletes posts and you have HN.
What we’re seeing here is a huge disconnect between regular human morality and our legal system. Most people regarded him as a mass murderer, but the cops would not act, so a vigilante stepped in.
Interestingly, I can't find any of the threads about the UHC CEO on the HN frontpage either. I've gone back 200 posts (around 3-4 days old) and only one loosely related post up. I had to google with "site:ycombinator.com" to find anything.
