"Healthcare" in the US

[Ming]

the shell casing messages are amazing, this is the best thing to happen since the Titanic sub went down, and infact it's even better than that.

Tough choice right?

 

[Ming]

I'm quite surprised by it, I must admit. Even made it onto the BBC news that people were less than totally sympathetic.

IMO it's an example of the banality of evil, wherein bureaucrats make bureaucratic decisions that they know are going to kill people and justify it to themselves by hiding behind some nonsense about 'responsibility to shareholders' or something, and are quite happy to enjoy the rewards (I'm sure he was a millionaire) and be good spouses and good parents and all the rest of it. We see it again and again.

Institutional roles innit. Making monsters out of people.

 

[Yata]

all the usual post shooting misinformation would be great right about now, hopefully loads of it

 

[Ming]

Penalising patients and anaesthesiologists for what surgeons do - or do not do - is a particularly twisted kind of logic.

If insurers are concerned by how long a surgical procedure takes - it doesn't take a genius to work out that the person to challenge is the surgeon and not the patient, or the anaesthesiologist.

It also shows a total lack of regard or understanding of the complexity of some surgeries and it should be borne in mind that speed does not necessarily equate to safe or satisfactory outcomes.

But safety or satisfactory outcomes aren't first on the list of rational 'business decisions'.

 

[Orang Utan]

all the usual post shooting misinformation would be great right about now, hopefully loads of it

Well the suspect was on a bike

 

[SpookyFrank]

I'm finding the reaction to this fascinating... people are having a really hard time having sympathy with the dead guy here and I suspect not just hard lefties. I'm wondering if this will make more people face up to just how bad the system is.

Everybody knows how bad it is. But there's nothing to be done because the cunts running the show have unlimited resources with which to bribe politicians.

United healthcare spent millions trying to smother Obamacare in its crib IIRC.

 

[bluescreen]

Just seen on Bluesky.



The responses to the post are something to behold too.

 

[SpookyFrank]

From wikipedia:

In July 2024, the Wall Street Journal concluded that UnitedHealth was the worst offender among private insurers who made dubious diagnoses in their clients in order to trigger large payments from the government's Medicare Advantage program. The patients often did not receive any treatment for those insurer-added diagnoses. The report, based on Medicare data obtained from the federal government under a research agreement, calculated that diagnoses added by UnitedHealth for diseases patients had never been treated for had yielded $8.7 billion in payments to the company in 2021 – over half of its net income of $17 billion for that year.

TLDR: Half their income comes from imaginary medical conditions that nobody ever treated.

This is how companies behave when they know there is zero prospect of meaningful accountability for their actions. Hard to see what else people are supposed to do when confronted with evil of such ferocity and scale besides taking the law into their own hands. In fact you can see why someone might come to the conclusion that in reality, there was no law at all.

 

[Orang Utan]

Just seen on Bluesky.



The responses to the post are something to behold too.

This is going to be like that Simpsons’ episode on who shot Mr Burns, isn’t it?

 

[Cloo]

I'll be interested to see the political allegiance of the shooter, if we find it out. Kind of assuming Republican leaning if only for the willingness to go out and kill someone.

 

[existentialist]

Farage is a big fan of importing the US system to the UK. Would like to imagine he's now wondering if a milkshaking is not so bad as what awaits if he gets his way...

He's not that clued up. "It'd be different, here..."

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I'm finding the reaction to this fascinating... people are having a really hard time having sympathy with the dead guy here and I suspect not just hard lefties. I'm wondering if this will make more people face up to just how bad the system is.

Yeah, interesting contrast to a lot of the media reaction which has the implicit assumption that a rich US businessman is someone we should all be concerned about.

 

[Cloo]

The stories that are coming out on social media of Private Healthcare horrors are truly hair-raising. Insurance companies that don't want to fund oxygen for premature babies after 2 months. Taking a ventilator away from someone who needs them to breathe (but backtracking when he told them to go ahead, but his wife and daughter would be livestreaming them taking it away)...

100% this is the sort of thing Farage wants to bring here.

 

[Kaka Tim]

 

[MickiQ]

This is the kind of inhumane shit is why nobody is sad that a health insurance CEO got shot to death:

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/05/nx-s1-5217617/blue-cross-blue-shield-anesthesia-anthem

Pulling anaesthesia mid-procedure. It's at this point it's fucking sadism.

I would imagine they would carry on as normal but after the op, the patient would be told he has to fork out $50k or whatever that he thought his insurance company was going to cover and the hospital will sue for it.
It's going to be another thing putting people off seeking treatment which will save the insurance companies even more dosh.

It appears that way, yes. Spooked by the Commie Kamala jibe.

Healthcare should be an open goal to any politician serious about reforming it. The majority of Americans are ripped off and they know it. They spend far more money per capita than any other country on earth on healthcare yet lead indicators like life expectancy, infant mortality, etc, are woeful.

I mean we moan and with good reason about our crumbling services, but they are at least there for us when we need them and do the best they can with their limited resources. To refuse to treat when you have all the facilities to do so and the treatment is likely to be effective is, well, evil. No other word adequately captures it.

Even though I suspect a lot of Americans would be willing to vote for some kind of public healthcare system (more likely something like Canada rather than the NHS) no US political party is actually offering it so there is no option to vote for it.
The Democrats aren't left wing even the most liberal of them are basically moderate Tories.

 

[spring-peeper]

Even though I suspect a lot of Americans would be willing to vote for some kind of public healthcare system (more likely something like Canada rather than the NHS) no US political party is actually offering it so there is no option to vote for it.
The Democrats aren't left wing even the most liberal of them are basically moderate Tories.

Could you expand on how the Canadian and UK systems differ?

 

[MickiQ]

Could you expand on how the Canadian and UK systems differ?

I understand the Canadian system to be single payer ie hospitals etc are still privately owned and managed but bills are paid by a Govt department funded by taxation rather than insurance companies..
The UK is true socialised medicine with hospitals directly owned (mostly) by the state.

 

[spring-peeper]

I understand the Canadian system to be single payer ie hospitals etc are still privately owned and managed but bills are paid by a Govt department funded by taxation rather than insurance companies..
The UK is true socialised medicine with hospitals directly owned (mostly) by the state.

I'd never really considered our hospitals like that. I know they all fundraising, two of the major hospitals sell raffle tickets giving the winner a really nice house in a expensive neighbour. Locally, our local hospital will entice local community groups to raise money for new equipment. It's considered a community hospital, and we support it. Several of the new machines allow patients to be treated locally, no longer traveling for hours for tests.

So, what I'm understanding, your hospitals do not fundraise. If they want a new piece of equipment, they just ask the government. Then it is sent to the hospital - just like that. Nice!!!

But, if the government decides you can't have one. you will never get one. Local patients would have to travel distance to have access to the machine. Our system lets us, the community, collect money and help buy the machine.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I'd never really considered our hospitals like that. I know they all fundraising, two of the major hospitals sell raffle tickets giving the winner a really nice house in a expensive neighbour. Locally, our local hospital will entice local community groups to raise money for new equipment. It's considered a community hospital, and we support it. Several of the new machines allow patients to be treated locally, no longer traveling for hours for tests.

So, what I'm understanding, your hospitals do not fundraise. If they want a new piece of equipment, they just ask the government. Then it is sent to the hospital - just like that. Nice!!!

But, if the government decides you can't have one. you will never get one. Local patients would have to travel distance to have access to the machine. Our system lets us, the community, collect money and help buy the machine.

It depends. We tend to have regional centres specialising in whatever (in my city we've got burns, eye, cancer, etc.) that serve a pretty wide area. More local hospitals provide more general services and you'd be sent to a regional centre if needed.

Hospitals do have charities to raise funds but I'm not sure how much they raise compared to the capital costs of major equipment.

It helps that the UK is pretty small so you're not that far away from a specialist unit if you need to go, compared to the size of Canada. Might be a bit different in Scotland given the concentration of population in the Central belt.

You can often have x-ray and MRI scans in car parks as they have them in lorries that travel around - these are contracted out services though.

There's perpetual arguments about funding, including rebuilding knackered hospitals. A local one here dates mostly from the victorian era. And of course the tories run the system into the ground every time they're in power so it's falling apart at the moment.

 

[Chz]

If you want particularly dark humour, the Nursing sub-reddit has quite the sarcastic, unforgiving take on it. The people who deal with the fallout being unsympathetic not terribly surprising.

I'd meant to come back and link the main thread but forgot. Here you go.

 

[Rompipalle]

I'd meant to come back and link the main thread but forgot. Here you go.

Thank you. I was hoping someone might post the link.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Can you give us an idea of how many need to be shot before things start to improve?

I'm going to guess that it would be far less than the number of people who die every year in the US due to lack of medical care.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I think a big part of the problem the Democrats have with messaging (and the Labour party here, plus a load of other centrist types elsewhere) is that that idea of sensible, common sense management based politics is so deeply embedded it's like they don't even know what they stand for, let alone have the ability to communicate it. It's not just that it's supporting the sort of things this guy practiced, it's that they're not even able to advocate for that, even though everyone else can see that's what they're supporting.

Yeah, it's just not as exciting as forming a militia to fight tyranny. You get to wear camo and run around in the dark with guns to pretend you're a tough guy.

 

[gosub]

Too bad some of those Trumpazoids have voted for their own deaths.

Could be worse ...turns out I voted for someone who decided watching crumpet adverts was bad for my health

 

[gosub]

Could be worse ...turns out I voted for someone who decided watching crumpet adverts was bad for my health

I fucking hope Samuel L Jackson has something to say on the matter

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Everybody knows how bad it is. But there's nothing to be done because the cunts running the show have unlimited resources with which to bribe politicians.

United healthcare spent millions trying to smother Obamacare in its crib IIRC.

I'm currently getting my healthcare through the Obamacare exchange. I'm wondering how long that will last. Without that access I won't be able to afford insurance since my current employer doesn't provide it.

 

[skyscraper101]

Couldn't see if done already but South Park did a very good take on the American healthcare system

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I would imagine they would carry on as normal but after the op, the patient would be told he has to fork out $50k or whatever that he thought his insurance company was going to cover and the hospital will sue for it.
It's going to be another thing putting people off seeking treatment which will save the insurance companies even more dosh.

Even though I suspect a lot of Americans would be willing to vote for some kind of public healthcare system (more likely something like Canada rather than the NHS) no US political party is actually offering it so there is no option to vote for it.
The Democrats aren't left wing even the most liberal of them are basically moderate Tories.

I'm an advocate for the mutual insurance model. It's what the US had before Ronald Reagan repealed the law that all insurance companies had to be non-profits. In the mutual model, the policy holders are the stockholders in a non-profit company. At the end of the year, if the company made a profit it was distributed to the policy holders/stock owners. It mostly worked but wasn't perfect. It still left a lot of people out in the cold. Even so, I was working retail back then, and I was provided with health insurance because it was comparatively a cheap way to provide a benefit. Retail jobs are all parttime now and don't offer health insurance. As usual, all of the modern ills of American society we deal with today were decisions made by the Reagan administration.

 

[VivaE]

I'm finding the reaction to this fascinating... people are having a really hard time having sympathy with the dead guy here and I suspect not just hard lefties. I'm wondering if this will make more people face up to just how bad the system is.

Could be to do with so many aspects of the case - the utter callousness and the greed combined. Neither one is likely to generate much in the way of sympathy for him:

Thompson, 50, was one of three UnitedHealth Group executives named in a class action lawsuit filed in May that accused them of dumping millions of dollars worth of stock while the company was the subject of a federal antitrust investigation, which investors say wasn’t immediately disclosed to shareholders.

“UnitedHealth was aware of the DOJ investigation since at least October 2023. Instead of disclosing this material investigation to investors or the public, UnitedHealth insiders sold more than $120 million of their personally held UnitedHealth shares,” the suit filed by the City of Hollywood Firefighters’ Pension Fund alleges. Nearly $25 billion in shareholder value was erased once the investigation was publicly revealed in February. Thompson was able to sell off more than $15 million of his own UnitedHealth shares before the value dropped, however, the suit states.

Slain UnitedHealthcare CEO Was Accused Of Insider Trading Amid DOJ Probe

Brian Thompson dumped more than $15 million in stock before a federal antitrust investigation into the insurance giant was publicly revealed, a lawsuit claims.

www.yahoo.com

 

[Oriole]

Speaking of which:

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Won’t Pay for the Complete Duration of Anesthesia for Patients’ Surgical Procedures

In an unprecedented move, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield plans representing Connecticut, New York and Missouri have unilaterally declared it will no longer pay for anesthesia care if the surgery or procedure goes beyond an arbitrary time limit, regardless of how long the surgical procedure takes...

www.asahq.org

This one is a bit more complicated than it looks - I don't want to stray in Devil's advocate territory, because the Devil is the Devil, he doesn't need help but on this one consider the source and accept that it's a case of 2 things being bad.

The people massively reporting it with very emotive language is the trade body for anaesthetists and for all the talk of "arbitrary length" it's not entirely picked out of nowhere. the HMO is planning to use the tables already in place with Medicare.

Because the system is a bit bonkers, it often happens that the anaesthetists is out of network even if the hospital where the patient is getting their operation done is in network and it leads to all sorts of billing shennanigans.

It's one of those consider the source moment - a bit like how the pharma PR machine was nudging journos to write articles about how asthmatics where destroying the ozone layer