moochedit
I'm not feeding seagulls
Until they get something major like cancer
Insurance company CEO assassinated in New York
- Thread starter Spymaster
- Start date
Boris Sprinkler
Dont be scared
To be against the status quo, is to be a terrorist or mentally ill.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
He ostensibly had everything to live for..
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
The NY charges against Mangione have been upgraded to "first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism" - he's fucked, unless he gets a jury full of UnitedHealthcare victims
Luigi Mangione indicted on murder and terror-related charges in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing
The 26-year-old Ivy League grad charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk this month has been indicted by a grand jury in the case, the district attorney’s office announced Tuesday. Luigi Mangione stands accused of first-degree murder, in furtherance of...www.nbcnewyork.com
That was always going to happen. Correctly so.
No way was this ever going to have been a 2nd degree murder prosecution.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Has there been any folk or country songs about him yet? He certainly fits the outlaw tradition wonderfully.
Yossarian
Get thee behind me, Santa
moochedit
I'm not feeding seagulls
I think i did see something like that somewhere.
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
I’d treat that with suspicion because it seems to have been written by someone who is semi-illiterate.
That’s not to say that United aren’t scumbags who’ve made similar denials though.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Fair point. I checked the reddit thread though and people were saying they'd received similar - certainly similar reasons for refusals of claims. Suggestions it was written by AI
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
AI is better at writing than that.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Yeah, just strikes me on someone a low wage following process.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yes. It might present nonsense reasoning but it will do so with perfectly formed sentences.
Tbh I find semi-literate letters from an insurance company all too believable.
smmudge
i know the smudge is true
Lots of stuff on Tiktok from women saying they took a specific healthcare provider to cover pregnancy and birth costs, as they were looking to start a family. Then after miscarrying, all the healthcare costs up to that point are no longer covered and retroactively become due, because it's not a normal pregnancy any more.
Think if I lived there I'd try to leave!
Think if I lived there I'd try to leave!
cupid_stunt
Merry fecking Christmas.
This statement by Michael Moore is worth a read.
‘Yes, I condemn murder’: Michael Moore responds to Luigi Mangione’s manifesto
In full here. He's put Sicko up on Youtube for free too.
A Manifesto Against For-Profit Health Insurance Companies — by Michael Moore
I hereby give you my Oscar-nominated Documentary on the Killer Health Insurance companies like United HealthCare —SICKO — for FREE… and let’s end and replace this so-called “health care system” NOWwww.michaelmoore.com
Well, you're a bit of a bastard for posting that!
I've just watched 'Sicko', at various points I found myself welling up and holding back tears, then when they got to Cuba with boats full of sick Americans, including 3 that had worked on the 911 site, and had struggled getting proper treatment in the US, but got it for free in Cuba, I could not hold the tears back any longer.
FFS, what a fucked-up health system in the US, how the hell do people up with it?
8ball
Merr xmas...
Yep, and high-profit unnecessary procedures of all kinds are rife.
Also, their hospitals buy stuff like our old CT scanners so patients end up paying through the nose for things like scans using outdated, low resolution equipment. The scams go way further than just the insurance companies.
When I changed my Facebook avatar briefly to a “Free Luigi” meme I got likes from a substantial number of former colleagues from a company which has relatively extremely good healthcare coverage for its US employees.
Even then, I had a conversation with one of them once where she was talking about feeling trapped in the company - she was having a bad time but didn’t feel she could afford to leave given the good coverage and one of her children’s health conditions.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yeah tyranny of the boss. Relying on your job for basics like your children's health gives them enormous power over you. It's a loss of an important aspect of freedom.
story
Changing the facts
Well, up to a point, sure. Bottled water, potted plants, shiny receptionists, landscaped entrance areas…. But they do get sent for unnecessary tests, which can lead to unnecessary interventions. At point of use, they think they’re getting exemplary care, they feel like they’re getting top notch attention and treatment, but some percentage of that is window dressing and arselicking, and a greater percentage is asset stripping at the myriad interfaces between different parts of the system
ETA And as 8ball says, they’ll also strip out the profit from the actual necessaries at the actual point of use.
When I try to engage in this discussion in South Carolina they usually seem to feel like they’ve won the argument when we get to waiting lists and waiting times. (These are wealthy white people.)
Personally, I’ve never been on a waiting list so long that it caused problems, though I know that this does happen (a friend’s wife died before she got to the top of the list). And I always take a book when I have a hospital appointment and never arrange anything for the remainder of the day, cos while it does seem to be better, I’ve sometimes had to wait a while for the appointment.*
I’d wager that more people die as a consequence of not getting proper health care in the States than do from shitty waiting list issues here.
Telling them it’s free at the point of need and that I’ve never been billed for [ list of expensive treatment ], including cosmetic stuff, is so bizarre to them that it apparently barely registers with them. Those with whom it does register find it almost impossible to believe, despite their being one of the very few developed nations on the planet who doesn’t take care of their citizens’ health, with falling longevity, rising infant mortality etc.
They find it unfathomable that I could (theoretically) never be ill enough to warrant high-care treatment while also being perfectly happy to pay taxes, so as to support the entire system. I think this is a cultural and philosophical difference between them and others.
They hedge around the stuff about not wanting to finance people they despise; I suspect that’s partly because their prejudice is so embedded that they don’t even notice it themselves.
One woman gets enraged when I tell her (for instance) that the homeless community in California is predominately made up of white American people, not immigrants. I’ve seen her literally shudder when I told her that a lot of our health care professionals come from other countries, including Empire and Commonwealth nations.
Having been treated in County hospitals in the US myself, I know that it’s largely the poor and the disenfranchised who get treated there, and they’re gritty places for sure. When wealthy white people think of government healthcare they immediately think of the Public Hospitals: they don’t have any other model they can bring to mind. Their reflexive prejudice immediately kick in and gives them a big fat Nope.
I’ve given up trying to talk about the NHS with most of them. Their reluctance to hear how bad their own system is appears to be bare intransigence.
*It’s worth saying here that I’ve never been rushed by a consultant, and I know they’ll often willingly run over time to make sure people understand things properly. I’d far rather wait for my appointment in the knowledge that no one is being hurried out too soon. And this is an important point about the NHS: it’s our NHS. We support each other as taxpayers, so it makes sense that we also support each other at the point of use, and the nurses and doctors and ancillary workers too. All of this is being undermined and challenged by consumerism and market forces, but it’s worth preserving and I do what little I can to protect it : always saying thank you, being kind and polite to others in the waiting room, being patient, being on time, not missing appointments. Also raising legitimate complaints in the correct manner when necessary.
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story
Changing the facts
,
For all the shitty stuff America does, this is something they do well: they’re good at making folk songs about folk heroes.
For all the shitty stuff America does, this is something they do well: they’re good at making folk songs about folk heroes.
story
Changing the facts
I’m watching Sicko again this evening.
Mad how this film is 17 years old and still so relevant. I remember my cousin’s reaction when it came out, how MM was an ideologue, a propagandist, a bullshitter etc. Took the piss out of him for his looks, his accent and vocal delivery, his heritage. Never saw the movie though, and barely sat through Bowling for Columbine. Just hated MM on pure principle.
Mad how this film is 17 years old and still so relevant. I remember my cousin’s reaction when it came out, how MM was an ideologue, a propagandist, a bullshitter etc. Took the piss out of him for his looks, his accent and vocal delivery, his heritage. Never saw the movie though, and barely sat through Bowling for Columbine. Just hated MM on pure principle.
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
I love the NHS both for what it is and for what it represents. I volunteer in it. I have four elderly parents,/ in laws three of whom have dementia and are frequent fliers and the NHS has been fantastic, saving all three of their lives on several occasions.
But it’s not the only way to deliver socialised medicine. The phrase ‘Always admired, never imitated’ comes to mind. There are other ways it can be done, Almost all EU states have socialised medicine, as do many other countries.
All of them better than the train wreck in the States
But it’s not the only way to deliver socialised medicine. The phrase ‘Always admired, never imitated’ comes to mind. There are other ways it can be done, Almost all EU states have socialised medicine, as do many other countries.
All of them better than the train wreck in the States
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story
Changing the facts
But but but….
It can’t be a train wreck because America is the greatest nation on earth, the shining city on the hill, the aspiration and model for all other nations.
Does not compute. Anything other than this is too abstract to understand.
My mother is a perfect example. She fled to the USA as a refugee in her teens. America can do no wrong. She takes it very personally when I tell her anything that goes against her ideas. In fact, for her America is wounded, put upon and misunderstood by the boorish oafs who live anywhere else.
(Except Paris. She loves Paris. But not the French.)
She may be a caricature , but her attitude, though exaggerated, as is everything else in her character, is pretty normal amongst Americans.
It can’t be a train wreck because America is the greatest nation on earth, the shining city on the hill, the aspiration and model for all other nations.
Does not compute. Anything other than this is too abstract to understand.
My mother is a perfect example. She fled to the USA as a refugee in her teens. America can do no wrong. She takes it very personally when I tell her anything that goes against her ideas. In fact, for her America is wounded, put upon and misunderstood by the boorish oafs who live anywhere else.
(Except Paris. She loves Paris. But not the French.)
She may be a caricature , but her attitude, though exaggerated, as is everything else in her character, is pretty normal amongst Americans.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yes, my experience with people in the US, including mostly people at the wrong end of society, is that most had little conception of what life was like anywhere else, but assumed that it was worse than the US. In particular, people in nottheUS are less free.
story
Changing the facts
It’s part of the generalised self perpetuated brainwashing.
Their schooling is shit, really. Anyone genuinely interested in being well educated and well informed has to become an autodidact.
Recently watched some videos of Americans reacting to The Blitz. They had no clue about it. They were shocked. One of them said “this is like several 9/11s a night for three months straight”. And even watching the video, they didn’t make the next step to understanding that the Blitz wasn’t the whole story, that it happened not only during those 57 days, and not only in London.
Plenty of Americans don’t know about Dresden, Cologne, Würzburg etc. No idea about USA avoidance and capitalising during WW2.
Aleppo doesn’t matter to them, nor Rwanda or anywhere else. Don’t count as atrocities because not white.
9/11 is the worst thing that was ever done to white people, and it happened on American soil, so the worst wound ever experienced by white people ever, anywhere, happened to them. And given the awfulness of the inherent racism in the USA, that makes it the worst thing that has ever happened anywhere ever to anyone. That this isn’t recognised by everyone else everywhere else and doesn’t lead to us giving them fulsome forgiveness for any subsequent bombing, that is very bewildering and hurtful to them.
This sounds absurd, but I promise this attitude really does exist for a substantial number of American people. And it makes them hunker down even further. It’s one of the major factors feeding the Trump thing.
This kind of self pity and self aggrandisement is pervasive across American culture. This recent health care thing is like raising a rock and seeing the squiggling things. But I’m not seeing the necessary public debate and discourse, I’m not seeing the mainstream media picking it up in any meaningful way. I’m not seeing any meaningful political reaction.
They’re existentially paralysed by the mirror Luigi has held up to their collective self view.
Abu Ghraib didn’t make any difference. I doubt this will either.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
I lived and worked in the US for a while and had some of the best health insurance you could get - I was working for Big Pharma, so kind of only second to what you'd get actually working for a health insurance company.
It was shit. I could theoretically get all sorts of coverage but even a fucking GP visit was a huge pain in the arse to deal with. I had to shell out a load of co-pays for things that are actually the same price now in the UK (therapy mostly). It was worse in every single way than the NHS.
Everyone hated Big Pharma - I had to keep my job under wraps a lot of the time socially - but what they really hated was the experience of the entire healthcare system. Drug prices were just one particular aspect and really based on how your health insurance covered you, or not. Usually not. Health insurers were absolutely the most hated out of all the bullshit things that people had to pay up for. Everybody had a story, either of their own or a close friend or relative or maybe a whole bunch of them, even if they themselves had not had trouble.
_Russ_
Never not Knowingly Misunderstood
Americans can't ever employ a Universal health service as we know it because there would have to be a tax to cover it an as we all know Americans are allergic to the word "tax" as it means they might pay the same for a service as someone else who is getting more back out of it and that's tantamount to communism
_Russ_
Never not Knowingly Misunderstood
Was it fuck
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
You have misread the post if that’s your reaction
_Russ_
Never not Knowingly Misunderstood
My reply isnt directed at Story but rather agreeing that the bit he quoted is bullshit, I can see how my post could be misconstrued, sorry.
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