Summary

Reddit’s r/medicine moderators deleted a thread where doctors and users harshly criticized murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Comments, including satirical rejections of insurance claims for gunshot wounds, targeted UHC’s reputation for denying care to boost profits.

Despite the removal, similar discussions continue, with medical professionals condemning UHC’s business practices under Thompson’s leadership, which a Senate report recently criticized for denying post-acute care.

Thompson, shot in what appears to be a targeted attack, led a company notorious for its high claim denial rates, fueling ongoing debates about corporate ethics in healthcare.

  • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    At least one of the mods here was going heavy censorship in the initial thread here yesterday. I get it, we aren’t supposed to celebrate the death or suffering of other human beings. I’m not sure that rule applied to this individual though.

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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      22 days ago

      Who says we’re not supposed to celebrate when an asshole dies? We celebrated for Hitler and Kissinger

      Don’t self censor. Fuck the mods that censor us celebrating assholes who die by documenting the truth of the harm they’ve done on Earth

    • josefo@leminal.space
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      22 days ago

      CEOs and billionaires get their human status revoked, so the rule doesn’t apply.

      • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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        22 days ago

        They don’t get it revoked. They give it up when they forsake everyone else’s wellbeing for the all-mighty dollar.

    • gerbler@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      People always forget the second part of that rule.

      We shouldn’t celebrate the death or suffering of other human beings… Unless that human being is a billionaire.

      Don’t like people celebrating your suffering? Give up your wealth. Easy as.

      • rothaine@lemm.ee
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        22 days ago

        Was he a billionaire though? Like don’t get me wrong, fuck that guy, but I think he may have only been a multi-millionaire

        • gerbler@lemmy.world
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          22 days ago

          You know you’re right. He was only worth 43 million dollars. I’d say we can revise the rule to somewhere in that area. Maybe take some points off for being a CEO of a health insurance company.

          • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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            22 days ago

            Well also because he was likely just a pawn. at the root of all this are the shareholders who are billionaires and who likely make the calls regarding company policies. this guy was likely just their lapdog. so even though a rule of no more than 500mil would not deal with this guy, it would definitely have prevented the existence of a parasite company of this scale. I would still say though 50 mil should be sufficient. It will allow you almost all the reasonable luxuries you can imagine if that is your thing.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          22 days ago

          He had more than $100,000,000 in wealth. He had been paid more than $50,000,000 per year for the last 2 years.

          No one needs more than $100,000,000.

          • AlDente@sh.itjust.works
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            22 days ago

            His base salary was 1 million in 2022 and he had a net worth of 43 million as of February this year, which includes his stocks. Why are you making shit up?

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        Anyone that doesn’t want themselces to experience the event of “winning capitalism,” and them dying should donate every single penny of their wealth over, and I’m being generous here, $100,000,000 to The Sovereign Fund for Humanity’s Poor, and ensure that they are always below the $100,000,000 threshold each quarter. Anything less is admitting that you want to be a charicature of a dragon. Dragons don’t amass more than $1,200,000,000 in wealth in any of High Fantasy. Other than Smaug. He might have hoarded as much as $5,000,000,000 to $10,000,000,000 in gold, and he’s literally the only outlier in all of High Fantasy.

        Shadowrun isn’t high fantasy, that is Science Fantasy, just like Star Wars.

        • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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          22 days ago

          The thing is, if you don’t want to be a billionaire then that still leaves you - assuming normal rounding - with ~500 MILLION of wealth. If you can’t snort all the cocaine you’d ever want in your life from that amount, I don’t know…

        • kreskin@lemmy.world
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          22 days ago

          Theres no poors here, we all say we are “working class”. Although many of us certainly remember being poor.

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      It still should. The paradox of tolerance just means you have to not tolerate the intolerant, not actively mock them. I mean sometimes that can be fun, but let’s be honest, they even took out the wrong guy (they’ll just get a new CEO who’ll hardline the stance even more and waste money on a ton of bodyguards, hopefully at least Gaddafi-style). Should have gone after the shareholders, that’ll really hurt the business model after all. The CEO is just a representative figure who puts his name under decisions that are 99,5% not driven by him.

      Was is still the correct choice to take him out because he is a billionaire and a murderous asshole? I’ll say no, because I don’t believe in death penalty on account of it being too lenient. Should have thrown him down a well and let him starve slowly, or at least delivered death by immurement or something. Something slow, ideally decades slow. But that’s besides the point, overall he also deserves fuck all sympathy because he was still a) a billionaire and b) the CEO of one of the most cruel companies around, rivaling black ops stuff and far outdoing them in the lives lost to their practices.

      • zergtoshi@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        Speaking of the pradoxof tolerance, Karl Popper realized that intolerance often involves violence.
        I, for one would argue that health insurance denying claims arbitrarily asserts violence in some way - even worse to especially vulnerable people.

        So how do you imagine not tolerating this kind of intolerance?
        Writing stern letters and emails? That seems to have happened.
        Starting a legal battle that might be decided in your favour after you’ve died from not receiving health care due to denied claims?
        What would you suggest?

        Popper also draws attention to the fact that intolerance is often asserted through the use of violence […]

        Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance#Proposed_solutions