this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
370 points (97.2% liked)
Excellent Reads
1693 readers
43 users here now
Are you tired of clickbait and the current state of journalism? This community is meant to remind you that excellent journalism still happens. While not sticking to a specific topic, the focus will be on high-quality articles and discussion around their topics.
Politics is allowed, but should not be the main focus of the community.
Submissions should be articles of medium length or longer. As in, it should take you 5 minutes or more to read it. Article series’ would also qualify.
Rules:
- Common Sense. Civility, etc.
- Server rules.
- Please either submit an archive link, or include it in your summary.
Other comms that might be of interest:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
I mean, you are right, murder shouldn't be the way to change this. But one has to look at the whole thing and wonder, can it change through non-violent means at all? People have been long complaining about the system, there's groups advocating for universal/free healthcare for a long time. How much change did that bring? Maybe the murder will have similar small impact in the long run, we will have to see. But then actions will just get increasingly more extreme over time.
Doesn't matter. I will never advocate murder. I don't care what the argument is. If you don't like a product, then don't use it. But don't fucking murder a person walking down the street because you are pissed at the company he works for.
Thank God that most of society doesn't think the way Lemmy does when it comes to this subject!
I had a shit insurance company. They never paid any of my claims. So you know what I did? I dropped them. I went uninsured because the insurance company wasn't doing shit. So I stopped giving them money.
And you know what? If everyone did that, then the health insurance company would go out of business. You don't HAVE to pay for health insurance if you feel it's denying every fucking claim. Because if they are denying every claim, then you don't really have health insurance. So you are no worse off for not having it.
The Democrats didn't do shit about it. The Republicans didn't do shit about it. But if we all stopped paying premiums, then guess what? People would wake up.
But you don't fucking murder people to make your point. I don't give a fuck what your point is.
Luigi committed murder. The jury won't let him off just because they don't like insurance companies. I hope he gets life in prison. Lemmy can feel free to write him all the fan letters they want, but doesn't change my mind about it.
The problem with your "drop them if they don't cover you" bit is that people generally won't find out until something serious happens, and then they're screwed regardless, OR their employer pays a good chunk of their premiums, so they figure they're better off to keep that and hope something winds up covered.
Not American, but we studied this in school. The insurance/free market problem is twofold - healthcare is a captive industry, and the knowledge base required to understand what is and isn't a good plan is well beyond most of the population.
Healthcare is a captive industry in that no one can stop using it entirely. Car insurance? Never get a car, you avoid it. Arguments of car-driven infrastructure aside, that's not a captive industry. So you, at some point in your life, are going to need healthcare. But, you have no idea how bad it's going to be, what's going to be wrong with you, etc. so your needs are extremely unknown. Again, to use a car insurance comparison, your choices are fairly limited here in Canada at least. The govt has set minimum standards that all insurers must provide, and then you can choose to increase above that. But those minimum standards cover enough that you're very unlikely to be totally screwed with enormous debt after an accident no matter what causes the accident, etc.
This leads to the fact that healthcare is so ridiculously complicated that sorting out what is and isn't covered by various insurers (who regularly change their plans) is beyond the average person. They have no way of knowing how much a surgery for appendicitis might cost, and if the 2mil max Plan A covers will be enough. Now multiply that by a thousand illnesses.
Healthcare should not be left to the free market - at a minimum, there needs to be a robust, extensive, and functional public insurance to avoid stupidity like bankruptcy from basic, lifesaving surgeries.
Totally agree. Murdering an insurance CEO isn't the answer tho. Which was my original point.
I would agree, except that this has been a problem ongoing for the last twenty years with no progress made by protesting/following legal channels. From my perspective, without the threat of violence, both US parties have too much to gain by maintaining the status quo to respond to general peaceful protesting or trying to legally change things. If your perspective is that these people are causing deaths, and the legal system isn't willing to change quickly enough, an argument could be made that the slow protests/incremental change is causing more deaths.
Cool. Doesn't matter. I don't think murder is the answer, and I will never advocate it. Lemmy will be on the wrong side of history when it comes to this subject. Cold-blooded murder is never the answer.
And if Luigi would have had some Republican tattoos and history and did this, you all would be crying and memeing about how he should be in prison.