• LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    For profit industries are required to put out projections for growth. Those projections are what intices investors to buy their stock raising demand/value. If you do not hit those growths the company will be seen as failing and investments will slow. There are a couple ways insurance companies can increase revenue, one is raising premiums which will often price users out of purchasing coverage and therefore they would potentially lose revenue to other companies or simply by more of the population not having insurance. The other way is to insure people at the same rate, but limit their plans coverages and slowly take out bits and pieces upping copays here, lower maximum coverages, but standardly they want to avoid raising the deductible as it will turn away people from signing up. Kind of like shrinkflation if you will, but for insurance. Then they “had” to get more competitive, and they found that they can just deny coverage on situations and users often can’t afford to fight these denials, so they make more money off denying them then they do fighting court cases against the few that can, also they can just give in settle and pay for those who do try to take them to court. Paperwork paperwork paperwork, 6 months later it didn’t get approved still. Since they are a for profit company, they are held accountable by their shareholders. Which means they can actually be sued by their own shareholders if they don’t show they are doing everything they can to make the bottom line go up. Does Charlie need the $65,000 treatment vs the $14,000 treatment, shareholders say $14,000. He has higher odds of survival on the $65,000 treatment, and will have a better quality of life, no thank you. Line needs to go up. So Charlie dies on the table because that $41,000 was needed to be thrown into our $16 billion profit for the year. Or you know, maybe Charlie died because he had to wait those 6 months for approval for the treatment and by that time his issues had progressed to a point that made his chances much lower.

    For profit healthcare is not for the health of the people.

    • null@slrpnk.net
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      16 hours ago

      That’s an interesting little fantasy that’s brings us nicely back to the question you dodged, since you’re clinging again to this $16B number:

      And how much did they take in from premiums in 2024? How much of what they took in did they pay out to claimants?

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Not a fantasy, it happens all the time. As for how much they “paid out” is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how much Apple pays for their products. The point is simple. For Profit healthcare is just that, for Profit. Not for Health. Anyone with a moral compass would want a For Health, healthcare system. Profits should never be put above lives. The reason why Americans pay more than twice what Canadians pay and have to do so out of pocket while having a lower ranked healthcare system on many metrics is because of that for Profit system.

        Your question is to put simply, How much of the people’s money did they give back to the people when they needed it? And the answer is always, less than the people paid in. If the number is less than what people paid in, there should never have been a single denial or wait period.

        • null@slrpnk.net
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          10 hours ago

          Not a fantasy, it happens all the time.

          Source?

          As for how much they “paid out” is irrelevant.

          Huh? It’s extremely relevant… The claim is that people are paying their premiums and then having their claims denied while the insurance company pockets the difference…

          And all of that is cute, but you’ve still failed to map your comparison to murder with a gun to prove that it was morally justified to murder Brian Thompson. Are you gonna get to that part ever?

          • coffee_tacos@mander.xyz
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            8 hours ago

            Profit (or loss) is the difference between the total revenues of a business and the total costs of a business. And although this is a somewhat simplified view of the facts, the profit in this scenario is directly representative of the amount of money people paid into premiums that was pocketed by the healthcare corporation rather than being paid out in medical coverage.

            It is impossible to be objective when it comes to ethical dilemmas (an inherently subjective matter), but let me leave you with a couple questions: How bad does a person’s actions have to be to deserve death? How many people do they have to let die for personal (or corporate) gains?

            The blame for the numerous unnecessary deaths United Healthcare played a part in can obviously not be ascribed to one person, but Brian Thompson was at least complicit in all of those deaths. He was the one with a lot of the decision-making power in all of those individual situations, and chose to strengthen a system that causes so much suffering when we have plenty of examples of a better way to handle these problems.

            • null@slrpnk.net
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              8 hours ago

              And although this is a somewhat simplified view of the facts, the profit in this scenario is directly representative of the amount of money people paid into premiums that was pocketed by the healthcare corporation rather than being paid out in medical coverage.

              I’ll give you a hint, they paid out 80% of what they took in. Whether that’s 1B or 16B, they paid out 80% of that.

              How bad does a person’s actions have to be to deserve death? How many people do they have to let die for personal (or corporate) gains?

              Certainly worse than “participation in a system that profits from people paying for healthcare”. I’m asking you to provide a morally sound justification for this specific murder.

              but Brian Thompson was at least complicit in all of those deaths

              So was the desk worker in accounting. Are you saying it’s good to murder them too?