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https://mas.to/@MikeBeas/113666556469008087
EDIT: I think you should get the service you pay for, just so that's clear.
Without realizing it, Mike Beasley makes a great argument for why private, for-profit health insurance shouldn't exist.
It's like all the media that think they are defending Brian Thompson by saying he was less horrible than the average healthcare CEO. Sometimes I wonder if they are making an argument for resurrecting the guillotine industry.
As some who has no clue who Mike Beasley is, that seems like a perfectly legitimate Interpretation. A lot of people, like the one he is replying too, knowingly or not are defending the existing system and the existence of health insurances companies.
I mean, forget about health for a second: we all know insurance companies fucking suck, and they are essentially just a symptom of a shitty system. So why are we fighting/wishing/hoping for them to be run better/more empathetically instead of wanting a different system?
I think the his comment can be seen as a call-out of how some people are missing the root of the issue.
"It's a business" is not a justification for evil, and yet that's always how the phrase is used.
it's a business that helps you pay your bills
Quite the opposite, it's a business that makes your bills expensive.
The very concept of paying for health care through insurance is evil.
Why do we even allow a profit motive to deny health care? Should be straight up illegal.
Mike is not wrong. In fact, he's very clearly laying out why insurance companies should not exist.
I'm not sure that was the argument he was trying to make though.
he’s very clearly laying out why insurance companies should not exist.
He's laying the case for why insurance must either operate as a public loss-leader or a privatized scam. But I don't think he really understands the bottom layer of the argument.
All I'm seeing is "Insurance is business. Business need to make money. Therefore denying claims is good aktuly." There's no "ah ha" bit at the end where he recognizes their predatory nature.
Do you guys think politicians have a duty to adhere to their campaign promises? They're not under oath. They have no responsibility to improve anyone's life. They're a business to win votes to alter policy in their favour.
It’s my understanding that health insurance companies hire doctors, who have taken the hypocritical oath, to review claims and deny them.
UnitedHealth Group is so vertically integrated that, in fact they do own doctors, hospitals and pharmacies under the Optum brand. So yes, they do have a duty to take care of people even if they act like they don't.
Yeah, similarly, Burger King doesn't have to give you the whopper you've paid for. BK employees didn't take an oath to feed you whoppers. They only have taken an oath to the managers, who have taken an oath to the CEO, who has taken an oath to Friedrich Hayek and the shareholders to make shitloads in dividends, as is their social responsibility. Everything is working just fine in our society thanks to these nice concepts.
Burger King doesn’t have to give you the whopper you’ve paid for.
The analogy breaks down because BK has an immediate cash-for-commodity relationship with the clients. If you had BK a $5 and they don't give you a sandwich, you stop going.
But insurance takes your $5 up front in exchange for assuming the risk that you might need care in the future. You keep giving UHC $5 day after day and week after week, receiving nothing tangible in exchange. It is only when the risk materializes, at the moment you need care, that you ask UHC for money back and they say "No".
This leads some people to advocate for health savings accounts as a replacement for private insurance. But then you have to deal with the possibility of a medical claim that exceeds your balance. So you get conversations about risk-pooling. But that just takes you back around to insurance companies again.
All of this is in an effort to discourage people from implementing public free-at-point-of-use health care (a la the NHS). The idea that we would simply have hospitals you can go to when you're sick, in the same way we have elementary schools to go to when you're young or fire departments to go to when you are on fire, is so totally alien to the hyper-individualist profit-fixated neoliberal capitalist that it never seems to come up in conversation.
This gaslighting won't work anymore
Not giving you the coverage you pay for is theft. When are we going to normalize that and start putting CEOs in jail?
Only after revolution, share holders run the country, they wont allow us to cut into their grossly unnecessary wealth, they would rather we die.
That why insurance should not be for profit.
insurance is a fucking scam that preys on the most vulnerable segment of the population in order to enrich themselves and their shareholders. and the vast majority of people think that's just the way things are in america, therefore it's the best possible way for things to be. what's not to understand?
The free market is excellent at producing, at a reasonable cost, myriad voluntary luxuries like large televisions and speedy cars. These prices are naturally constrained by the consumers' willingness to do-without. When the consumer cannot rationally choose to do-without, the elegant self-regulation intrinsic to the free market evaporates.
We should stop calling it "insurance", it doesn't ensure anything. We should call it what it is - a protection racket. Either that, or we could refer to it as "medical loans" - of course, it's all paid in advance, in many installments. Oh wait. That's just defining a protection racket again, isn't it?
Funny how life insurance always pays, no problem. Because if they get a bad rep, people will go elsewhere. We can't do that with employer-covered healthcare!
It doesn't have to be a solemn vow. The definition of insurance is that it's a guarantee. If it's denying claims it's technically not even providing insurance.
Insurance is defined at its core as a transfer of risk. Its that simple. If insurance denies everything I send their way while I am paying them, its no longer a transfer of risk, I am simply paying someone to tell me 'no'.
That out of the way, the whole health insurance industry does not follow the concept of transfer of risk. The insurance companies rather follow the concept of transfer of action. Basically I am not going to spend all day negotiating with a hospital. That said, them denying is because they do not want to do the work still, so in other words, I am still paying someone to tell me 'no'.
In both concepts, the insurance companies are not doing what they ascribed to. Along with the laws that congress stripped away affordable care to its basics that we all are required to have it - read an extra tax but to corporations who give kick backs to their congressional lackeys - and the fact that insurance companies basically are price fixing all the rates and such, it becomes a lose (you)/lose (you)/lose (hospitals)/only ones who win are the companies.
Late stage capitalism hard at work.
You know... that kinda vow would be a great idea! Doctors take an oath like thing too, right?
Worse than that they staff doctors in name only. The type of quacks who couldn't make it in the real medical world. I really don't understand how they can't be sued for malpractice when they argue a diagnosis with your doctor. At that point they are acting as your doctor.
That's why you have to request the documentation and proof of specialty to confirm whether they're acting out of scope.
I don't care what that guy thinks.
... This dude needs to understand how other types of insurance work
Insurance is a racket. Is that what Lil Mikey is saying?
I think that if money exchanges hands, it's part of a deal that must be honored by the other party.
They're getting very close to saying the quiet part aloud, and the quiet part is...
"Everyone except for the .0001% exists for the service of said .0001%, and the fact that you have any self-respect or value for your lives is a failing on your part peon!"
If that's the tack he wants to take with his argument, than in fact that opposite is true.
They're a business. You provide them money and they provide a service. So in that respect, there should be no such thing as denial of service for ANYTHING because you've already paid for it.
Not a fan of the smug liberal aura this post has.
I feel like every time someone uses the word "liberal" on lemmy, the meaning of the word shifts slightly to the right.
Liberals are right wing. They're comparatively further left than conservatives but both ideologies favour capitalism as the economic system which is inherently on the right -- in opposition to a more controlled market.
You can point out someone is wrong but still agree with the spirit of what they're saying...
It rarely goes over well, but I do it all the time. And I'm pretty fucking progressive.
Like, if people honestly thinks their insurance took a vow to protect them, it needs to be corrected. They're not saying it shouldn't be changed, but the first step to fixing it is understanding where we're at.
Like this guy has a point they dont have a duty of care, they didnt take an oath, they are a private for profit company with shareholders. They will absolutely take as much as they can, give you as little as they can and be as cunty about it as they can get away with.
Its fucking WRONG but its not surprising.
I would assume that I actually get a coffee when I go to Starbucks and pay for it.