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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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".
Oh I've read his book he's great. I see a lot of people here debating his morality but the important aspect of his book is that he describes the actual tactics in detail.
I'm gunna go out on a limb and predict this guy doesn't get shot unless he goes hunting with the Cheneys regularly.
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.
TBF he is still an exec. Just not an insurance exec.
Wendell Potter, a former vice president for corporate communications at Cigna, is the president of the Center for Health and Democracy and writes the newsletter “Health Care Un-Covered.”
The Center for Health and Democracy(CHD) is a non-profit organization led by renowned healthcare expert and insurance industry whistleblower Wendell Potter that works to transform America’s system of health coverage. The organization’s core belief is that healthcare should be driven not by industry profits and greed, but by the needs and rights of every American to get the quality care they need without concern for cost.
hm. yeah. i'm still cool with him being exempted from Claims Adjustment.