Summary
Reddit’s r/medicine moderators deleted a thread where doctors and users harshly criticized murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Comments, including satirical rejections of insurance claims for gunshot wounds, targeted UHC’s reputation for denying care to boost profits.
Despite the removal, similar discussions continue, with medical professionals condemning UHC’s business practices under Thompson’s leadership, which a Senate report recently criticized for denying post-acute care.
Thompson, shot in what appears to be a targeted attack, led a company notorious for its high claim denial rates, fueling ongoing debates about corporate ethics in healthcare.
I find some comments here disturbing. The man may have been not the best example of ethical behavior, but he is still a murder victim with a family who will no doubt miss him. No one deserves to be shot in the back on a city street. If that was true, it’s not long until your number comes up.
The internet is full of false bravado, and few morals.
I have no sympathy for people who are responsible for and profit from killing people. All the people who died preventable deaths because insurance wouldn’t pay to save their lives had family too. I’m not about to go out and shoot people but I’ll damn well cheer for someone killing an evil bastard.
I’m 100% sure he’s responsible for at least the same amount of people who died in 9/11. And then add a zero or three. His decisions alone, only to increase profits.
I’m hungry, when do we eat?
Dude, literally millions of years off people’s lives.
Do you also cheer when prisoners are executed? Many of them are evil bastards too.
Lmao comparing the worst person on death row to an oligarchs is like comparing a kitten to a demon, they’re not even in the same zip code of evil
It’s fine if you want to play judge and jury, just try not to do it with someone’s life. Thanks.
My yin, if there’s anyone who’s deaths should be celebrated, it’s oligarchs. I think they should be stopped nonviolently and preferably legally, but guess what, they’ve removed all choices other than violence.
Oh fuck right off. This dude got off easy. Shot in the back, no fear, quickly passing out and passing on.
Compare that to the millions of people that suffered, not just died of preventable illness, but suffered, and so did their families. Some of them still suffering not only emotional debt but financial debt too.
You will never justify this stance, and you know it.
False bravado
Broken brain.
“Don’t be the judge jury and executioner”
We have tried time and time again to let the “legal system” figure this shit out, and time and time again, billionaires just pay their way out with fines or just postpone it indefinitely while they commit more crimes against humanity.
Idk if you get some kind of justification by being knowingly incorrect around of a bunch of other people, but we can all see through it. Be part of the solution or keep it to yourself.
He wasn’t a billionaire. I know it’s easy to just pretend that every CEO is Elon Musk, but in billions he was worth $0.04B. Elon Musk is on track to be worth 100,000x that.
If you think he was an Oligarch, you’re already doomed, because you don’t know who your real enemies are.
It’s honestly the same shit when you factor in the fact that most people are either in poverty or extremely close to it with a lot of those because of this dudes leadership.
You can make it look small by doing the .04B, you’re also missing his .02B (20M if you wanna do regular people numbers) in stock options, but that’s still an absolute fuck ton of money, and mixed with his decisions to willing fuck so many people over, I know he wasn’t a friend.
We’re only talking about publicly disclosed money here too.
Then what’s the correct way?
Say that to the CEO of United Healthcare.
And that’s not up to you than him
Were you trying to say something?
Yes,if your strangled logic says that this guy plays judge and jury, it is exactly what you are doing.
I guess I could just repeat my question, but that would probably be pointless.
Looks like they had a stroke… hope they have good insurance 👀
The man was a mass murderer. But because he wore a suit and did it from an office it was OK. If a gunman put down any other mass murderer noone would complain.
People right here on Lemmy often complain when murderers are executed. For good reason.
People complain when the state executes people. There’s a big difference.
If the state had executed the CEO, why would you complain?
Because the state wouldn’t just not execute the CEO. It gives them no repercussions, and even encourages them.
They wouldn’t, because he’s rich.
The state has other methods of dealing with people. A vigilante really doesn’t.
Neither do lynch mobs. Should we cheer them on?
Lynch mobs generally don’t target mass murderers.
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OK, suppose lynch mobs started forming in your city to hang drug dealers. Would you cheer them on?
Well, that depends. Is the law actively defending those drug dealers and do the drug dealers own the politicians in charge of writing those laws so that they can never be held legaly accountable?
If drug dealers are on the streets, then they obviously aren’t being held accountable by the law. So is lynching them OK?
Are you really comparing drug dealers to a health insurance magistrate directly responsible for the deaths of countless people? Fuck entirely off
Yes, I am.
Because in their pursuit of money, drug dealers are also directly responsible for the deaths of countless people. I’m surprised I have to spell it out for you.
State execution is wrong, but stopping someone during a murderous rampage is rigtheous.
But nothing has stopped. UHC will do the same thing tomorrow it has been doing all year.
Maybe they will.
Or maybe the next guy won’t be so quick to deny a cancer patients claim because he doesn’t want to be the next one ambushed.
If the next guy doesn’t want to make money for shareholders, the next guy will be fired.
And there are plenty of guys who are willing to risk a bullet if the money is good, including bodyguards and mercenaries.
Good thing bullets outnumber CEOs
That’s like saying “Now maybe kids will stop bullying their weird classmate” after a school shooting.
Followed by an ominous “There’s more bullets than school bullies”.
So it’s not up to you to determine if he should pay the the price of his life is it?
The authorities that should be doing that won’t because the system is broken. When the law does nothing then there is going to vigilante justice. If mass murderers like that executive were actually held accountable by our laws then there would be no reason for them to be shot in the streets. The fact of the matter is that they aren’t held accountable. They can do whatever they want and all the peaceful methods of changing that failed.
So, you are calling for murder on the streets? Interesting
Calling for? No. I’m saying it’s going to happen regardless of what anyone wants. And personally I’m glad it did in this case.
So just more false bravado. Good
I’ll take that over false morality any damn day.
What part of “eat the rich” did you not understand?
I understand false bravado and I hope you do as well
You keep using that phrase like it’s a magic “win arguments” spell. I don’t think you’re doing yourself any favors here.
Everything they say is word salad.
Who cares
You do apparently, enough to reply to me at least.
Faulty logic
You got me good.
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How’s that boot leather taste?
This you?
I agree, but seeing someone committing that crime for personal retribution and/or as a symbolic gesture in this literally crippling, nightmarish private health insurance hell, all I can muster is, “This is perfectly normal in this moment.” This rant isn’t specifically directed at you, but just to elaborate:
He probably is a very nice person when you talk to him, and he is probably a caring husband and father. He probably has complex ways of resolving the cognitive dissonance between who he felt he was and what UHC is doing. But it’s hard to deny he was in a position with decision-making power to make millions of lives substantially better or worse, to enable or disable the worst excesses of private insurance, and the buck stops there if anywhere. This chart has made the rounds including on Lemmy, showing a 32% denial rate for claims, which is astounding.
Frankly, we all have had so many moments with health insurance where we’re basically told they cannot help us, given arcane and pretextual reasons, and given a silent ultimatum of “you want us to honor our agreement? Make us.” Then we waste so many unpaid hours of our dwindling or nonexistent free time creating paperwork pointing out the obvious injustice, and eventually they may honor a claim without admitting fault or changing their practice. Mostly they probably just ignore us and we go away, or respond with the same Kafka-esque administrative slop until we can’t eat any more. It was built that way, and who but the CEO is responsible?
This is not a situation entirely created by him, but most of us are collectively cooking on a stove and none of us have access to the controls. He did, and he turned up the temperature. Not at all surprising, and it’s very hard to have sympathy for him. I have plenty of sympathy for his kids.
He’s a merchant of death. Just like a weapons dealer. Possibly even worse, because his company has the power to prevent suffering, and explicitly chooses not to. Morally, I’d say that is worse than selling weapons.
They deny claims at twice the industry average, so clearly they don’t need to, they choose to. There is zero chance he was unaware how many denials his company was sending out, and the only way a rate double his competition could be achieved was by purposely denying things that should be covered.
Extrajudicial killings are of course not good, but I don’t really care about objectively bad people getting what’s coming to them.
So guess you’re willing to play judge and jury, but not executioner. Good to know.
I would carry out the sentence for some of those fucks just fine. They don’t see us as people, so no reason I should give them the same courtesy.
So then, judge, jury, executioner and fugitive. Noice
Could say the same about the dead guy. There is a 100% chance that his decisions as CEO to maximize profits over everything else have directly led to people dying that otherwise would not have. Whether you’re willing to admit that or not is up to you.
But he can’t be a fugitive, because you know… dead.
Remember how the right kept panicking their base for easy political points until extremist thought divorced from reality took over their platform and became the new norm?
Well, it’s happening to the left now. With a second Trump term on the horizon, income inequality at an all time high, and the rich and powerful preparing for the most egregious political and economic power grab of all time, people are ready to accept anything that even remotely sounds like justice.
One murdered CEO changes nothing. Nothing will change. No other CEOs will be touched. But the Overton Window does now appear to include murdering people in cold blood over politics and economics on both sides of the aisle now, so honestly, get prepared for a nasty civil war in the next few years.
The public reaction to this murder is disturbing and a very bad omen of what’s to come, no matter how easy it is to hate this guy.
Interesting take. Agree.
This was front side of a city street if that makes you feel any better. Pretty sure his family can dry their tears with their millions in inheritance achieved through their sweet daddykins turning so many other children who will grow up a fuckton less well off into orphans.
Or Alex Jones goes on a podcast to call her a crisis actor.
He wasn’t declared dead by the ICC, so he’s still alive.
I also believe, that if given the chance to work for the same paycheck, lots of loud lemmings would hush up about their position real quick. Money corrupts