Is the US a dystopia?

This thread's been on fire the last 24 hours. Thanks, y'all. It will help focus my responses when I hang out with one of my best friends this weekend, a low-level Preferred Care Partners employee who will probably get weepy about this death.

That's an interesting analogy, and maybe the reason that the Sacklers are more clearly evil to me is that there has been a long-running campaign to publicize the Sacklers as evil.

― jaymc,

I've seen plenty of stories since at least 2018 about United's perfidious activities. Is it because until the last two days it was harder to make insurance CEOs into Marie Antoinettes?

the Sacklers fucked up by essentially acting like a drug cartel. One thought I had about the reaction to this guy's murder was to wonder if the scolds would also object to gleeful reactions to the murder of a mob boss.

The sun turned cold over Wall Street and the town of Manhattan mourned
They said a mass in the old church near the house where he was born
And someday if God’s in heaven overlooking His preserve
I know the man that shot him down will get what he deserves

i will say that another positive thing about this is that it makes apparent who the craven bootlickers are—

Health insurance and healthcare companies quite literally make decisions about who lives and who dies -- they should be seen as forms of government.

Remember when the slogan against Obamacare was that it would include - gasp - death panels, who would decide who lives and who dies? Good times, good times.

I've seen plenty of stories since at least 2018 about United's perfidious activities

Huh, guess I haven't been paying attention.

The CEO isn’t powerless in the slightest but the gestalt entity that is the corporation over which they preside can oftentimes do whatever it wants regardless of the CEO’s wishes, plus the CEO often has to answer to a board that has a financial interest in keeping the corporation as financially evil as possible.

In conclusion, I don’t think anyone on this board is wrong, you’re all just looking at different vectors of the same problem.

― DJP

Absolutely. The non-corporeal-ness of the corporation makes it impossible to hold anyone responsible and yet somehow the total system is too big to stop, too big to fail, too big to blame. That's the dystopic part. Bureaucracy substitutes for and neutralizes any possible solutions.

If this partic CEO didn't personally "deserve" to be targeted for violence (although cf gyac and Daniel et al arguably by some moral calculus he does but whatever), he's as much a random victim of the system as much as VAST numbers of people who suffered or even died bc their healthcare was denied or they were financially ruined. The system didn't care who they were or that their lives had meaning....well, welcome to the same standard being applied at 1/100,000,000th of the scale.

I don't know how many more ways to say the same thing.

I don't know how many more ways to say the same thing.

Yeah I feel you on that, it’s part of why I have been quiet/lurking here

Damn that’s horrible https://t.co/lihibcMpsU

— People's City Council - Los Angeles (@PplsCityCouncil) December 6, 2024

btw On the other end of this spectrum--hung jury in the Subway Murderer trial

calling in tips to NYPD suggesting various Hanna Barbera characters did it

This thread's been on fire the last 24 hours. Thanks, y'all. It will help focus my responses when I hang out with one of my best friends this weekend, a low-level Preferred Care Partners employee who will probably get weepy about this death.

Yeah, I want to say I appreciate that the discussion here has helped me think through my complicated feelings. Contra Dan's post upthread, I wouldn't say I have a "thesis" about any of this, just some instincts that could certainly stand to be interrogated and refined.

This interview with a corporate security guy is interesting.

It was remarkable how much fury this story unleashed at the health-care system. Are there certain industries where you have to tell your clients, “You guys have to be extra careful because people don’t like you?”
Health care is at the top of the list. It’s emotionally charged. When people are engaging with the health-care system, it’s not usually on their best day. In the threat-management industry, we talk about red-flag indicators that can indicate if somebody might be traveling along the pathway toward violence. These include financial hardship, the loss of a loved one, degradation of health, the potential loss of a home. A lot of the time, when people intersect with the health-care system, four or five of these things are already stacked up against them.

...

Your clients are potentially targets of violence, but they also have the power to affect the environment. If there’s public anger toward this class of people, this class of people has the ability to lower the temperature.
There may be some elements of truth to that. The CEO obviously has an ability to impact the way that people are cared for under their umbrella. We’re talking with our clients about the organizational duty of care to protect executives from this type of harm. In an industry-leading executive-protection program, itineraries are reviewed, venues are assessed, topics are dissected, and public sentiment is analyzed on a daily basis in order to understand whether the principals are entering an environment that could be dangerous.

Is part of your duty of care to try to change the temperature of the room? Could your clients say to themselves, “We are very powerful people. We are the ones who deny care. Do we change how we interact with our customers and the public?”
I think that takes a very, very mature executive and a team that really understands the human condition. I don’t know that those types of themes dominate boardrooms. I do know there are companies out there that do care for people in that way and understand that caring for people properly is one of the better ways to de-escalate situations.

I’ll say that in order to inform that type of a process, you have to be consuming a tremendous amount of information and intelligence to learn about the room that you’re in and leading, and to learn about your clients and your customers. And a lot of that comes from places where a lot of companies don’t like to look.

I do think there's a wide acceptable range of personal reactions to news like this, tbh. The issue is when, similar to the submarine incident, someone barges into the thread suggesting the understandably flippant remarks are fucked up, like we're all press secretaries or something. Which is why Nabozo rightfully got clowned for being a scold but others that merely shared their personal feelings didn't.

It's a private message board full of people that know each other well, none of us bought a billboard saying LOL CEO U DED or burned insurance cards in effigy.

Mom just said to TV the Anthem Blue Cross CEO better watch out (not out of concern) and I just about choked laughing.

This used to be a reserved lady who went to church and voted for McCain and Romney

Even a friend of mine who is very, very anti-gun and gets really emotionally tied to gun violence and it's impacts responded to this with a, "well, maybe they shouldn't deny so many claims and cause so many deaths".

Health care is at the top of the list. It’s emotionally charged. When people are engaging with the health-care system, it’s not usually on their best day.

reminds me that in china there is a long history of violence against or murder of doctors by the families of patients who blame the doctors for any deterioration in the patient, whether or not it's justified

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_doctors_in_China
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3271288/fatal-stabbing-chinese-doctor-fuels-calls-stronger-laws-protect-medical-staff

on the whole doctors are not the crux of the problem and people in the USA do not tend to blame a doctor when they recommend a treatment or therapy and the insurance company denies coverage.

yes, thanks for refuting the point that i did not make

I find it odd when companies give money to both presidential candidates

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/unitedhealth-group/summary?id=D000000348

why? they’re trying to assure that they will continue to reap financial benefit for shareholders no matter which administration comes into power. it’s not that hard to figure out.

Good Guardian article about online rage over the insurance industry:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/05/unitedhealthcare-brian-thompson-killing-online-reaction

meanwhile

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:c6k2ozisr2bbitsafwwyistf/bafkreifmptkav4fug3zcesj3mujo6f7vplxto5no2h7qymuxuhhbrigyxq@jpeg

Where is that?

S Korea?

ya

i definitely blamed doctors for the whole oxy epidemic. they are the only defense people have against dangerous/too strong medicines and people will take anything a doctor tells them to take. and doctors used to be really careful about pain medication. most doctors anyway. and then all hell broke loose. who do i blame? walgreens? the sacklers? well, yes, them too. but you need a prescription to get the stuff.

x-post

xp I think that actual image was 8 years ago during the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, but they are saying bring it out again for the current President.

ah thanks my bad

theyre actually going with bread this time

https://i.imgur.com/NhGwPHT.png

xp to lagoon.

No worries. It ties in to this thread because the coverage of the recent South Korean martial law/failed coup mentioned how S. Korea, as another one of the richest countries in the world, like the US also has a failing health care system due to corruption and mismanagement.

People are fed up, these are broken systems.

https://i.imgur.com/d50wdu4.png

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/video-united-health-ceo-laments-offensive

United Health Group CEO Andrew Witty made no secret of his displeasure with the media scrutiny in the wake of the murder of former CEO Brian Thompson, according to an internal company address yesterday provided to me.

“You’ve seen a lot of media interest in this situation with a huge amount of misinformation and frankly offensive communication,” Witty said in the address, complaining about what he called the “aggressive, inappropriate and disrespectful” coverage. “People are writing things we simply don’t recognize,” he added.

“I’d like to give you a little bit of advice around the media…My strong advice and request to everybody is just don't engage with the media. If you're approached, I would recommend not responding and, if necessary, simply refer them to our own media organization.”

Meet the new boss

I saw a picture of a letter posted by a father where this company had denied the child a wheelchair of a specific type despite the child’s doctor recommending it for various reasons. I cannot conceive of the pent up anger out there from people who’ve had treatment denied or delayed for cancer, for a child’s care, for anything that is manageable or treatable if caught early.

It doesn’t shock me that insurance companies would remove their photos from their websites. Even the richest of these guys are a lot easier to encounter than your true superrich who may as well exist on a different planet (and who are much more responsible for how bad things are in the world).

It's confusing but I think Witty has been the over-boss for a while? His supposed salary in 2023 was like $24 million whereas Thompson's was $10m. I haven't bothered to look into it because I have standards for myself but I assume there are CEOs of various sub-corporations that are all owned somehow by United Health Group but called 82743 different things in order to do evil more profitably.

yeah Thompson was the CEO of the insurance division

It's going to be hilarious when it turns out this was a personal hit and the message on the bullets was a decoy strategy.

An investor who was mad he didn’t work harder at setting up automatic claim denial systems.

ilxor who was mad about his opinions on Tusk

shareholder pressure groups whacking CEOs to keep them on their toes>>ppl that start ilm album polls

TS: Greatest Hits v. Greatest Hits

EXCELCEOR

in orbit otm, andrew witty was thompson’s boss. united health’s other big division outside of united healthcare is called optum which has its own set of CEOs

its own set of CEOs

Collect 'em all!

Their heads I mean

nicely done, oliver barnes of the financial times

https://i.imgur.com/hSHd9P0.jpeg

better to lose it that way than by becoming CEO