No it isn't, go find any reddit thread where people are discussing the death of loved ones. Are you already going to say that the largest health insurance company, with a 32% denial rate, that illegally used an AI program as a doctor second opinion, with a 90% failure diagnosis rate, didn't have a direct hand in the premature death over years of hundreds of people, if not thousands?
Considering the near universal reaction of people, the mass telling of horror stories I'd say it's bang on at least and may well be an understatement.
At the risk of sounding unempathetic, which I am accused of frequently, you can’t just read horror story threads and make emotionally based judgements upon that. People be dying from illnesses. Under any healthcare system.
You guys seem to forget that insurance companies are by definition and by design
supposed to minimize pay outs. It’s not part of their function to be altruistic. Don’t get me wrong, I think the concept of insurance and health care being married is completely fucked for this reason. But I wouldn’t go as far as to blame the companies and call them cold killers. They’re doing what they are supposed to do.
A lot of you were swayed by that chart that had Kaiser at a 7% denial rate and UHC at 32%. It was a very misleading chart. Yes, UHC is awful, but they’re not really that much more awful than all the rest of the companies listed.
People also ignored the fact that 80% of claims that are denied then appealed actually are granted and paid out. There’s laws that ensure this.
Kaiser has a low denial rate because it’s a fully integrated company and HMO — the doctors already know not to refer or recommend any treatment/diagnostics/specialists that will not be approved by Kaiser. So of course the denial rate is freakishly low — they never get to the point of even making a request. It’s controlled at every stage by Kaiser. Kaiser is fine for everyday medical issues and check ups. But for the big scary events they’re going to fuck you over too.
UHC has a completely different business model. UHC isn’t integrated like Kaiser. As far as I can tell the most evil thing UHC did was target seniors and fuck them over. They actually pandered to them really hard. Poor old folks, I know.
Again at the risk of sounding cold, it’s possible the UHC insurance powers that be thought seniors would be the logical place to deny payouts, because they were old and about to die anyway. Idk. But it seems highly possible.
Public healthcare “denies” us here in Canada for many many things too. It’s just it is more invisible. It is not “free” and waiting until someone says you can get the medical treatment you need is exactly the same as getting denied by an insurance company. We are just less indignant about it because we believe it’s free in some way. My dad got booted out of the hospital while dying of cancer — I could write that in tragic Reddit horror story format too, and it would look functionally identical.
A big problem with calling any of this “killing”, is the degrees of separation between the acts of the accused “killer” and the deaths. You’re placing CEO at the beginning of some causal chain leading to the deaths. But that’s faulty reasoning — obviously we could go further and regress infinitely into who he was answering to, what caused insurance to exist and so on, forever… so this isn’t a great way to attribute moral responsibility.
By that logic you could be like Peter Singer and call me (and probably everyone here) morally responsible for not trying to save third world children from starvation. Just by placing us on the causal chain by knowing we could help and choosing not to. We killed them through conscious inaction. This is not a tenable path of moral reasoning to follow.
All that’s left is to consider intent. Did he intend to
kill these people? No. Denials simply happen when something isn’t shown to be medically necessary. And in truth? 80% of denials that are appealed are granted pay outs. Repeated for emphasis.
Not choosing to rescue someone isn’t killing them. There are many reasons someone in his position or whoever was working for him might not choose to rescue a person. None of them involve murder or a desire to end a person’s life.
I’m not saying it’s okay! But it’s not
killing. I think insurance+healthcare is a recipe for disaster. I prefer universal healthcare.
BUT
The average Ontarian pays something like $8500 a year for public healthcare I think? Not so different from the average American. I prefer public but it’s really only marginally better. I still can’t find/see a good family doctor after moving downtown and it’s been 8 years. I have one who is only available a couple hours a week sporadically. I pay out of pocket for private services these days.
