One story that we couldn’t keep out of the press and that contributed most to my decision to walk away from my career in 2008 involved Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old leukemia patient in California whose scheduled liver transplant was postponed at the last minute when Cigna told her surgeons it wouldn’t pay. Cigna’s medical director, 2,500 miles away from Ms. Sarkisyan, said she was too sick for the procedure. Her family stirred up so much media attention that Cigna relented, but it was too late. She died a few hours after Cigna’s change of heart.
Ms. Sarkisyan’s death affected me personally and deeply. As a father, I couldn’t imagine the depth of despair her parents were facing. I turned in my notice a few weeks later. I could not in good conscience continue being a spokesman for an industry that was making it increasingly difficult for Americans to get often lifesaving care.
One of my last acts before resigning was helping to plan a meeting for investors and Wall Street financial analysts — similar to the one that UnitedHealthcare canceled after Mr. Thompson’s horrific killing. These annual investor days, like the consumerism idea I helped spread, reveal an uncomfortable truth about our health insurance system: that shareholders, not patient outcomes, tend to drive decisions at for-profit health insurance companies.
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it took an impromptu visit to a free medical clinic, held near where I grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee, to come face to face with the true consequences of our consumerism strategy.
At a county fairground in Wise, Va., I witnessed people standing in lines that stretched out of view, waiting to see physicians who were stationed in animal stalls. The event’s organizers, from a nonprofit called Remote Area Medical, told me that of the thousands of people who came to this three-day clinic every year, some had health insurance but did not have enough money in the bank to cover their out-of-pocket obligations.
That shook me to my core. I was forced to come to terms with the fact that I was playing a leading role in a system that made desperate people wait months or longer to get care in animal stalls or go deep into medical debt.
What a frustrating article. We have an author that admits to being part of an effort to decrease access to healthcare and refers to the death of a monster in a human suit as a tragedy. He also admits he fucked up and has gone on to work with organizations that advocate for the right to healthcare.
I think I’m frustrated with this piece because it feels so lukewarm. Maybe that’s by design so that it reaches a wider audience. I’m just tired of seeing the insurance industry and its executives handled with kid gloves. It is unambiguously evil to make the kind of money they make off of healthcare.
In his own example his company literally killed a child with leukemia and the tone is still so weak.
He cannot escape in his narrative that he got his. He did the damned work and was able to move on with his conscious. He quit, the company replaced him, nothing fundamentally changed. He feels better, kids still dead.
The article isn’t a tale of redemption: it is about deflecting blame from executives to shareholders.
Which is just a subtle way of portraying a publicly traded company as less desireable than a fully privatized company that apparently would make different decisions about how to profit off dying people.
And yet he still calls the death of Brian Thompson “tragic.”
The death of a mass murderer is cause for celebration.
I hate this “He had a family that loved him!”
Because while I’m sure that’s true… ya know who else had families that loved them?
The various people who died of treatable illness because this assclown denied the healthcare THAT THEY PAID INTO in order to save a couple of dollars despite wiping his ass with Benjamins on the regular.
To his co-workers, Brian Thompson was just another suit and tie who punched out at 5 and met up with the boys for drinks before seeing the Mrs.
To his customers, he was the man responsible for the deaths of fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters.
Ban For-Profit healthcare
Stalin and Hitler had families too, doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop being happy they dead
It’s an unfortunate reality of our condition that a few rich people have to die so that the rest of the biosphere may be saved
To be fair, Hitler did have some admirable traits. I mean he did kill Hitler after all.
I wish more fascists would follow the example Hitler left for them in that bunker of his…
His wife lived separated since 2017.
He got DUI last year.
He wasn’t a saint, he was an asshole in private, like we all knew. The media lied about him.
It kind of meets classical definition of tragic in that his downfall was the result of his own actions.
It is tragic that it takes an assassination to bring the deplorable condition of our healthcare system to the front of the public consciousness, and also tragic if that’s what it takes to effect change. The karmic justice itself doesn’t have to be tragic for the event to be “tragic”.
I’m gunna go out on a limb and predict this guy doesn’t get shot unless he goes hunting with the Cheneys regularly.
This is exactly why healthcare cannot be a private service. Companies will optimize the patients out of the equation in search of more profit.
The only way it could not be devastating if there was a competing service that had no profit incentive like a public healthcare system.
The only good exec is an ex-exec.
Thankfully, since this one retired of his own volition, it is no longer necessary to retire him.
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hm. yeah. i’m still cool with him being exempted from Claims Adjustment.
We call it playing Mario Party over here
oh man i love that
when luigi wins by doing nothing XD
Your whole argument that every execs deserve to die got disproved as you can not generalize like everyone as part of this group and your response that this Individuum is like the one to get an exception? How does killing executives change anything? In the current system its a post that needs to be filled and in don’t think its an outrageous statement to say self-justice and murder shouldn’t be used unless they’re last resort and its not like a CEO is the owner of a company that can do whatever they want to steer it. Although they have quite a bit of leeway
all generalizations are false, including this one
it is normal to refine a position over time
technically non-profit organizations have executives too
also hyperbole is a thing that exists - a shortcut to loosely sketch out one’s vibe before getting lost in the nitty gritty details. Because we are mortal and do not have perfect recall or perfect communication. My perception of even the color “red” might differ from yours. At some point we all have to either accept that we’re working with sloppy and imprecise tools and have to improvise with what we have or just not do anything at all.
you COULD chill. that IS an option. just in case nobody ever informed you.
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Hi, I think you underestimate how much extra effort it takes to read your comment with that excessive level of self censorship.
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The corporal structure itself makes people with certain traits and low empathy rise through the ranks. It a systematic issue. I would not call a person that is doing their job outright evil unless their whole own wish is to kill, torture and emotionally destroy others. Violence can lead to change. One murder cannot. Killing all healthcare CEOs will not. You’d need to replace the government. But that would be really violent and probably cause more suffering in the process. In a democracy if you can actually convince the masses you can shape a country. I like the current public debate, just not the way it was sparked.
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Maybe it should be illegal for certain industries to be publicly traded companies. The pursuit of profit to please faceless investors is a recipe for blind and insatiable pursuit of profit. The stock market is basically a ponzi scheme at this point with so many layers separating humans on one end from the humans on the other end of the profit/product dynamic, that it becomes a system that blindly drives itself.
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reveal an uncomfortable truth about our health insurance system: that shareholders, not patient outcomes, tend to drive decisions at for-profit health
For any diabetics on Lemmy this is the exact same sentiment I hate about dexcom. My son has autism and cannot manage his own diabetes, this his G7 is a lifesaver literally for my ex and I to manage his diabetes for him.
Numerous interactions with the company, and his Endo, have made is very clear that diabetics are second to making money in all their decision making at dexcom. It’s disgusting. For the record I’m a Canadian as well, and because of the autism we get the G7 via a government subscription at no cost. That doesn’t mean we don’t still have to deal with dexcom on all bullshit issues like sensor failures.
It is exactly as I expected.
Quitting before you make CEO could be a smart career move.
Smart staying alive move
The conclusion of this essay should be neither surprising nor outrageous. A corporation is a machine specifically designed for the sole purpose of maximizing shareholder value. If that’s not what it’s doing, it’s malfunctioning.
We the people have, via our elected representatives, chosen to have a system where corporations control what healthcare we can receive. If you want to blame someone (which isn’t productive) then blame the fellow Americans whose votes have supported and continue to support the current system. They’re the ones whose job is to make decisions guided by morality.
Blaming corporations is particularly unproductive because they can’t make decisions guided by morality. If they appear to do so, it’s because creating that appearance is expected to maximize shareholder value and the appearance will be maintained only as long as it continues to maximize shareholder value.
People laugh at the products with warnings on them against doing something that should obviously be a bad idea. Well this thing says “aim away from face” and the public keeps aiming the thing at its face. Whose fault is that?
How can you blame millions of people and feel content to leave it at that?
I cannot help but ask why a bear steps into a bear trap. And when I learn why the bear steps into the bear trap, I cannot help but stop blaming the bear.
I think it’s ironic and even darkly funny that people maintain a system that most of them hate, and that they blame the part of that system that has the least ability to do anything other than what it does, but I don’t blame anyone. As I said, blame isn’t productive in this situation. (What would it even mean to blame “fellow Americans”?)
Blame doesn’t even provide the satisfaction of knowing who to hate, despite what some confused people think. The responsibility is so diffuse that it isn’t even responsibility anymore. Each person is just a snowflake in an avalanche.
I do support attempts to improve the system, although so far that has meant only that I voted for Democrats. I’m just a single snowflake too.
I was an intake rep for an insurance site. It sucked. I was so disenfranchised that I chose a new career. Now I work at an elementary school, and it’s awesome!
Having said that, the glee that I see people projecting about Mr. Thompson’s murder is horrible.
The fact that so many instances on Lemmy celebrate murder–especially .world–disgusts me.
UnitedHealthcare sucks. The insurance industry sucks.
Murder is never the way to solve those issues though.
He basically facilitated mass murder… Most people will feel good when such a person is killed.
Murder of high level people has always been a very effective way for the lower classes to fight back when the elite has taken too much for themselves. It’s often the only way to affect change if the elite is corrupt enough.
The problem is it’s not good for stability which hurts the stock markets and the elites.
I hope Luigi spends the rest of his very long life in prison. He’s a fucking scumbag murderer. I don’t give a fuck what Lemmy thinks.
The thing is, Brian Thompson himself is a murderer, and now he can never kill again.
So if you think murder is ok, then what Brian Thompson did isn’t wrong either. So insurance execs can just think, “Well, they murder us, it must be ok to murder them!”
See how that works?
So no, murder isn’t the answer. And I hope Luigi spends the rest of his very long life in prison.
It’s sad that you’re getting down voted. That does not bode well
Right? Lemmy is rapidly approaching a mindset where they think that it’s ok to murder people they don’t like. CEO’s now. Anyone they don’t agree with, next.
Doesn’t matter though. Society is NOT Lemmy, and the majority of society doesn’t agree with Lemmy’s views. Thankfully.
Luigi is going to prison, no matter how mad Lemmy is about it.
Please stop interacting with children you are awful
you are awful
Because I don’t advocate murder?! Say what?!
Too myopic to be a good caregiver.
You’d let a kid run into traffic because “grabbing their arm would be against the rules”
I don’t give a fuck how you frame it. Or try to bully me. I don’t and I won’t advocate murder.
And Luigi is going to prison. And I can’t wait until he gets sentenced, and then I’ll come on here and watch you all bitch and moan about it.
Lol
He’s going to prison. Accept it. :)
There’s a difference between being in jail and being morally in the wrong 🤡
