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 that helps you pay your bills
Quite the opposite, it’s a business that makes your bills expensive.
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 a business” is not a justification for evil, and yet that’s always how the phrase is used.
To make it easier to understand for our short term minds, let’s sketch a different scenario.
You hire a bodyguard. They’re a 7"2 giant bodybuilder with armor. Then someone walks towards you with a knife, raising it up and staring you in the eyes with a frantic expression.
Your giant bodyguard steps aside, and watches are you slowly get tortured to death. Little by little, while you scream for help. The bodyguard tells you Venezuelan blood torture is not covered.
I think someone might rightfully be upset with this bodyguard company. Perhaps as much as the health insurance company that forces people to go into a year long legal battle to get cancer treatment.
At least, that’s what I’ve been hearing about the healthcare system in the usa as of recent.
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.
Oblige 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.
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.
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.
I’m launching my burger insurance company
Didn’t Domino’s do a stupid Pizza insurance thing?
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.
This gaslighting won’t work anymore
It’s my understanding that health insurance companies hire doctors, who have taken the hypocritical oath, to review claims and deny them.
Any company that promises goods and/or services in exchange for money that takes your money in exchange said goods and/or services and then doesn’t deliver services or goods is a scam
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.
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!”
