They've made $ 359 Billion dollars profit in 2023 alone, increasing their revenue threefold since 2010. 80% of their revenue is from insurance premiums so clearly they're over-charging and/or not covering as many claims as they should on a HUGE scale. This is pure exploitation and abuse.
When you exploit your customers like that in health insurance, it not only ruins lives, but also kills people. They can make all the mental gymnastics as they want, but the actions they've taken to increase their profits are literally killing people.
With 53 million customers, the number of people whose lives were ruined or lost by this blatant scam is in the millions. It was only a matter of time they'd end up pissing off a vengeful enough person.
I've said it before, and it's not always well received, but sometimes the lunatic with a gun or shiv is the hero society needs. These people feel absolutely untouchable. Things like this help keep them grounded a bit.
If I were running Medica, I would retire and bribe my way into witness protection.
Or maybe I would Scrooge / Grinch Christmas morning my ass as hard as possible.
There's a lot more people hurting out there. We need to do a lot better. Specifically, billionares and private oligopoly CEOs need to do a lot better. Past generations understood that. This guy paid with his life for not understanding it.
I hate victim blaming, but I can't honestly call this asshole the victim in all this. The victims were a bunch of kids and parents and siblings whose names we will never hear in the news.
Not even a yank but I totally get this sentiment
Think of it this way - this shooting will cause grief and suffering to a dozen relatives or so
That guy is directly responsible for the grief and suffering of tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people, just so he could buy a spare yacht
Cunt got what he deserved. Handgun owners are generally the most cowardly people on earth, but at least this one used it how it should be used
I'm genuinely shocked by the public reaction to this murder. I feel naive for saying that, but it's true. I'm not surprised that people are feeling the way that they feel - I feel it too - but I didn't expect to see such open support for violence. Feels like it's only a matter of time before this happens again.
America suddenly realized that shooting a billionaire will make you an instant folk hero. Historically, there has been a learning effect in violent episodes; one school shooting inspires others. I wonder what's next.
This is of course unacceptable in any half functioning Rechtstaat. Whether America qualifies as such I'll leave for others to decide.
America loves vigilantes. Half our movies are based on the Vigilante Man trope.. Bernie Goetz, George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse...the only thing different here is the vigilante shot a white man.
It’s not murder when it’s self-defense. This guy killed sooooo many people in the name of profit.
I'm not sure I'd describe this graph as beautiful in any sense :\
In context of recent events, it's beautiful in the sense of being a poignant illustration of FAFO.
I don’t find the data nor the visualization beautiful. It’s just an “interesting” topical post that’s mediocre at best. The same kind of posts kept making it to the top of r/dataisbeautiful. IMO from observing the same thing happen on reddit, these kinds of posts will hurt this community by lowering the standards in both data and visualization.
I do think that there should be other communities that these kinds of post should be allowed in. At least until they are critiqued for being misleading, poorly sourced, or just too low quality.
I'm not surprised... my work has UHC, and every year they cancel our current plan and force work to get a new one. Then every year around april they deny me for my annual doctor's visit because they have in their system that I have a different primary insurance. And every year I have to call them and be like "who do you show as my 2nd insurance?" and they are always like "uh... no one... but we have marked you have one." and every year I have to tell them, no, we don't have 2nd insurance, just you, and then call the doctor's office back and let them know, then wait a month for the doctor's office to confirm they received payment and I'm no longer on the hook for the bill. Last year I had to do it twice, once for my medical and once for my daughter's dental plan. They also aren't even economic... they denied one of my medications, because they only cover the name brand that has a higher co-pay for me instead of the generic. They aren't even saving money on it unless they are getting a giant kickback from the manufacturer. The without insurance price of the generic to me would have been like $50, but the without insurance for the name brand they want me to take is over $1500. And instead of me paying the $20 copay for the T2 medication and them paying $30, I pay $30 for the T3 medication and they pay $1470. So if they aren't getting some massive kickbacks from the name brand, they are way worse off in this arrangement and it took me several hours on the phone, and multiple escalations, just to get someone who could tell me why I was denied coverage for my prescribed medication in the first place... Then I had to play phone tag with my doctor's office to explain to them the issue and get them to change the prescription since they used the word "generic" in the RX and the Walgreens couldn't fulfill a non-generic with that RX... If I had a choice, work would switch to a different company the next time they cancel our plan on us, but I'm a mushroom at work. (Kept in the dark and fed bullshit).
Oh boy, if it really is 50 vs 1500, then someone is obviously getting a ton of money in kickback.
I just double checked, currently the generic for my medication I used to take before UHC, can be gotten for just under $40 from CVS or Target, its $150 from walgreens for some reason (Either way, same copay to me regardless of whether its $40 or $150), while the name brand specific med shows $750 on their website, while goodRX shows I can get it from Walgreens or CVS for $650 for 30 day supply, but I have to take a double dose, so its yeah, between $1300 (GoodRX price) and $1500 (MSRP) per 30 day supply for me if I had to pay out of pocket for it.
Oh, look! A graph about how often for-profit companies are denying people access to services that are considered basic rights in most parts of the developed world!
So what you're saying is around 32 percent of all United healthcare customers, along with all their close family and friends, are potential murder suspects.
Ok that's probably a bit of an exaggeration and chances are the culprit will have a history of some kind, but as a starter suspect pool that's got to be up there with Hitler.
"The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose." - James Baldwin
As a United patient… that tracks. Cough, cough…
Hey will ya stop coughing please? I got enough of covid already. 🙃
That cough! That's a pre-existing condition!
Note that Kaiser, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Caresource are nonprofit. Also, integrated care organizations like Kaiser usually have lower denial rates in large part because the actual treating provider/doctor is an employee of the insurer, so there's not going to be that tug of war between a fee for service provider wanting to make money on a treatment versus an insurance provider trying to deny coverage on that treatment.
Personally, I think integrated care is better, and this is one of the reasons, but I also think this particular statistic isn't an apples to apples comparison between insurers.
What a fucking dystopia you guys have to live in. Every dead (ceo) of such a horrible anti-people-company is no tragedy but self-defense. Everyone who works at such a thing. Whoever puts a bit of moneyz over ethics.
My dream is creating a nonprofit healthcare insurance where money are actually used to save people's lives instead of inflating shareholders' pockets. It's good to have dreams sometimes.
That's called universal healthcare. America voted against that because we want to live in misery and despair.
No, we voted against it because too many of us were too stupid to believe a bunch of crooked bastards who said universal healthcare was a scary monster that would make us all gay socialists and take away our guns and freedom like Obama's curly light bulbs did.
Yeah luckily I don't live in America. Can't believe I've had a ride in an helicopter for free to rush to the hospital. Since then I'm happy to pay my taxes lol.
Btw until the law changes, a nonprofit healthcare insurance would be amazing I think (unrealistic of course)
bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe
mUh TaXeS!Thus there is a goddamned political seesaw for decades, where nothing meaningful and long term can get systematically adjusted for the better, things are always at Square Minus One. Then when the shit hits their fan...
iT's An OuTrAgE!
Over and over again, the ignorant and impatient electorate through pettiness and smug inaction, angrily stab themselves in the chest with a rusty knife. With no medical coverage for that.
That would last until inevitably some narcissist took over. Then it would turn into regular insurance. By regular I mean corrupted and evil.
Police are still at work on establishing a motive.
I just enrolled in United instead of Kaiser…
Kaiser is special compared to others on that list, because it also provides the facilitiea and doctors.
They can't directly impose things on doctors, but they provide bonuses for saving company money.
So while the rejection rate is low, doctors are far less likely to choose new treatments that might be better, because they cost more.
For example if you have an auto immune disease in Kaiser the doctor will see less problem keeping you on DMARD and NSAID medication instead recommending biologics than doctors in other medical groups.
Makes sense thanks for the context
Because it was cheaper?
Commiserations 💀
The funniest part of this is the "battle lines" being drawn on differing perspectives.
Usually it's a culture war thing. Liberals say X, conservatives say Y. Vice versa also happens. Big sweeping statements are made over relatively minor events.
This time the best indicator of what someone thinks of this is how establishment they are. NPR and Fox News are both reporting this as a tragedy. Meanwhile basically every single culture war influencer under the sun is just like "yeah talk shit get hit LMAO".
In real life, I have friends who aren't celebrating this. Again the demarcation isn't political, but philosophical. My friends who are inclined to follow the rules no matter what disapprove, and everyone else finds it sort of morbidly funny. Even then the disapproval is sort of a milequost "even if he had it coming, extrajudicial killing isn't okay".
That's kind of hopeful, then. The red vs. blue chapter has to end. It kind of looks like blue lost, but history isn't over (even if blue thought it was) and there will be another chapter.
Insurance companies pretend to be in business to cover health costs, but they're actually in business NOT to.
United seems like they just take money and don't actually insure anything! 🤔
I'm curious about the industry average. It seems that the majority of the larger providers deny far more than the industry average. The numbers don't seem to work unless the bulk of the industry is smaller providers that are not showing on this graph. I may be wildly misinterpreting this. Anyone have any insight here?
Each company doesn't necessarily have an equal portion of the market. The three companies below the average (and any others not shown like you noted) may have a larger portion of the market.
I was looking at this: https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/publication-msr-hb-accident-health.pdf
And the three companies (kaiser, oscar, ambetter) with lower denial rates than the national average combined have less of a marketshare than United Health. But there are a ton of smaller players in the market. I guess the lesson is the big players pretty much all suck.
They have red line to go buy it now
This isn't accurate.
In what way?
UH's denial rate is ~7.5% according to a WSJ article published yesterday.
