Leaked video shows UnitedHealth CEO saying insurer will continue practices that combat 'unnecessary' care
Leaked video shows UnitedHealth CEO saying insurer will continue practices that combat 'unnecessary' care
UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty said in a leaked internal video that the insurance company plays an important role in guarding against "unnecessary" and "unsafe" care.
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Nobody goes to get Healthcare just because they 'want it' but don't need it.
No doctor prescribes things that aren't medically necessary.
Health insurance as it exists in the US is a social cancer.
The fact that a licensed doctor has to make a case to an insurance company about what a patient needs is mind boggling to me. Every doctor I've talked to has told me that this is the worst part of their job.
Emergency services should never be privatized. Imagine firefighters having to ask some insurance company to cover the water they need to put your house out.
Imagine firefighters having to ask some insurance company to cover the water they need to put your house out.
It literally used to be like that. Firefighters would refuse to put out the fire if you didn’t have evidence that your fire insurance covered them.
Yeah, I believe the motivation for moving to public fire departments wasn't even a moral decision. Fire from uninsured burning buildings has an extremely high risk of spreading to an insured one, so putting out all fires minimizes risk to paid subscribers.
My takeaway is: The only way to get American systems to care about the poor is if the rich might receive some collateral damage.
This is true of health care too and was a major driving factor behind the ACA. If you (if everyone) goes in for a yearly or twice yearly checkup and health screening, then dangerous conditions like cancer, disease, injury, and so on get caught sooner. The sooner you catch a problem, the easier and cheaper it is to fix.
If you dont get regular screenings, then people find out they have cancer too late, usually after an emergency (an ER visit), when cost of care is very expensive. The ACA made the case that getting everyone more preventative care would reduce overall health costs.
Another factor is that hospitals do help the uninsured, then pass those costs along to the insured. There are so many hidden costs in our system due to cruelty and inefficiency that would go away if we had universal health care. But the key difference is that the current system funnels all the benefits/value (all the money) into the hands of a small number of people, while actually universal healthcare spreads the benefits out over all of society.
Which makes the price tag of not having free healthcare all that more astronomical.
How many people ignore pain, bumps, growths because they're BARELY getting that rent paid every month? Go to the doctor? Shit if it's a choice between having FOOD AND SHELTER and spending possibly quite a lot to get this funny new mark on your skin looked at guess what people are gonna choose?
I've lived that shit. Fuck I'm living it now. I pretty badly need dental work done and if I keep ignoring it it's probably gonna get badly infected, possibly quite dangerously. But it stopped hurting so bad (probably not a great sign) and everytime I check what my coverage and copays are I check my bank account and say "on maybe in a few months I can think about it"
Private healthcare KILLS. On a massive scale. And it's killing the poor/working class more by a long shot.
Oh, didn't you know? People in America get uneeded medical operations all the time! That's what this whole abortion fight has been about. Women all over the country, just loving getting abortions! It doesn't physically and emotionally devistate you at all! They LOVE getting these ticklish abortions!
And for guys? They are quite frankly addicted to getting colonoscopies, and double heart bypass surguries. Have you seen how often men get those? Can't get enough of it! And then there's this other thing they do. It's called an "annual health checkup". Serves no purpose. Makes no sense. It's just a friendly chat with these busy doctors. Just wasting their time!
And kids??? Don't even get me started on kids! It's always headlice this, and chicken pox that! Running snot out of their mouth, and coughing.....
Speaking of coughing! What the hell was that whole Covid-19 trend all about, eh? Just a fad. Just a bunch of people all claiming to be sick.....deny them all I say!
...........ok, all sarcasm aside, it really does feel like this is how our countries insurance claims handlers think. And then sometimes politics gets involved, and the whole thing is just innocent people suffering for some other asshole to buy a yacht. And it's not even the doctors that get the yachts. I'd actually be FINE with a doctor being rich. They're the ones out there who actually help people. No, it's not the doctors who get rich. It's these useless fuckclowns in suits, who deliver no benefit to society whatsoever. Sitting at a desk, in charge of peoples lives, and deciding that operation, or that treatment is just being done for no reason.
Which is why America has cheered on the act of murder. Myself included. Luigi murdered that CEO, and the world is a fractionally better place for him having done that. One of the other companies even just said they're "rethinking" their plan for placing limits on anastesia. So as a direct result of this murder, there other probably thousands of people who will go through surgury, who otherwise would have been in great pain, who now WON'T be. All because this CEO got shot, and these other CEOs are having a cause/effect on rethinking the concept of saving money at the expense of people's suffering.
THIS is why we're cheering Luigi. Yes, he murdered someone. Did it right in broad daylight. Witnesses around. Zero chance to say he didn't do it. And yet the country is BEGGING for jury nullification for Luigi. We WANT to see him set free, without consequence. The CEOs need to learn that these aren't just numbers on a line graph. These are people. These are human beings with physical and emotional feelings that their decisions affect. We empathize with Luigi because we understand he's been affected by this same shit system. We understood it LONG before he was identified. I even posted this comment days ago, before he was identified.
CEOs should take notice before it's too late. Because sometimes you don't get the chance to learn the lessions of cause and effect. Brian Thompson learned no lession. He just got shot, and never even knew who was shooting him or why. And while I'm not specifically advocating for that kind of violence, I am saying it IS the natural logical outcome from the situation these CEOs have created. I will cheer the next shooter, just as I have cheered Luigi. Until these guys learn that people are numbers, and earth is not a playground, I will not feel empathy for the consequences of their actions coming back to bite them. I may never be the one to pull the trigger, but I will openly support those that do.
Adding to that: I'd like to see the top dogs at insurance companies go through the same thing they put us through. No MRI or CT scan for you. You get ibuprofen and PT because nothing else is necessary. Maybe in a few years you'll get surgery, when the problem is almost hopelessly bad. You get to shell out 5 or 6 figures for it, and no, you don't get to use your millions. You have as much money as someone who absolutely can't afford it. Oh, and that time off work? Unpaid.
And make them pay for the consequences of their actions. How many people like Wilfredo Engalla have there been and will there be? He had lung cancer, but it was misdiagnosed as colds and allergies for 5 years. When he found that out, he sued Kaiser. They forced him into arbitration and dragged out the case so nothing happened until he died, because they thought they would only have to pay half as much that way. In the end, his family got $150,000 (minus tens of thousands in costs to get that far).
Do that to enough people for enough years, and eventually you find out people have a breaking point. Who would have thought.