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.
It’s kinda hilarious watching billionaire owned media try to suppress the fact that absolutely no one feels bad for the CEO. The same thing happened when some billionaires decided to visit the Titanic, and after the Trump assassination attempt. The memes afterwards were top notch
Everyone is so fed up with this country and the shit is this close 🤏🏼 to the fan
I’m still absolutely flabbergasted at how quickly we all moved on from Trump literally getting clipped in an attempt on his life.
They tried to muster some outrage and solidarity, but most of us just shrugged and went, “Damn. Oh well, maybe next time.”
What was it the IRA told Thatcher? “You have to be lucky every single time. We only have to be lucky once.”
You know I’m honestly not sure. Mostly good I think?
Sidestepping the issue entirely of the act itself - strictly speaking more about the news cycle around it. I don’t know that it needed much more extensive, exhausting coverage. Just given the nature of the news currently, you gotta admit, surprising right? I’m not even trying to imply any sort of conspiracy about why it wasn’t more popular. I’m just saying, I think news cycle would’ve latched on harder if they could have, but the public gagged and said no thanks, we’re simply not interested, causing them to shift focus.
He didnt get clipped. He cut his hand on glass, on the ground, and didnt realize it, then transfered the blood to his head. Thats why his ear was miraculously fully recovered like a week later when he was caught on camera without bandages.
No, it was just his superior genetics that allowed him to heal quicker than a normal person would.
Weird, since I didn’t see blood on his hands (especially his right hand).
Are we really starting conspiracy theories that are already going the direction of “yeah, but was it really an assassination attempt???”
I don’t have any love for the guy, but holy shit, I don’t need Lemmy starting conspiracy theories. Back to reddit if you do.
r/all is covered with positive press for the shooting. Anything getting removed would have to be pretty egregious.
I think the only thing stopping people from posting even worse inflammatory shit about it is not wanting to show up on an FBI watchlist or something later on.
It’s not worth it. No matter how hot the meme would be. Let it sizzle in your mind meatball. Drinking in the basement and playing Factorio is more important
I think it makes more sense to use the 🤏 emoji in that context, rather than the Italian gesture.
where are the bot writers when you need them. We need italian-accents-as-a-service bot.
Its also hilarious that lemmy.world admins/mods did the same thing with early threads about this yesterday, nuking individual comments celebrating Thompson’s death and 24 hr instance wide banning the users that made those comments, then within 2 hrs they undid the bans, and by today seem to have just given up trying.
Taking a look at the recent modlog, as well as other comments around here, it looks like they’re trying to find the right balance for what’s okay and what has crossed the line.
There are an alarming number of comments that are actively encouraging murder and the amount of upvotes that even the worst of those comments receive is sickening.
Something something “kill the billionaires… in minecraft” /s
There are an alarming number of comments that are actively encouraging murder and the amount of upvotes that even the worst of those comments receive is sickening.
Can you really blame people, though? The poor and middle class been screwed and driven against each other by ultra-rich assholes for decades. Murder might not be the most ethical solution from a moral purist standpoint, but at least it has people talking and agreeing about the underlying problem.
I’m only seeing one upvote and one downvote lol
I think people are having a hard time deciding whether to celebrate your comment or not
I mean it’s pretty obvious most people are in favor of making yesterday a National Holiday. It’s not like the more outspoken people were in the minority in their feelings.
Even the most vile MAGAs have probably been screwed over by insurance companies, or at the very least had to spend valuable hours of their life fighting for something they should have already had.
I mean it’s pretty obvious most people are in favor of making yesterday a National Holiday.
Brought to you by my being awake when I don’t want to be:
Remember, remember!
The fourth of December,
A U-H-C CEO shot;
I know of no reason
Why the U-H-C season
Should ever be forgot!
The US mocked Trump for being shot at, then failed to keep him from being elected again.
Pretty good sign that people are not going to direct that anger towards actually fixing the problems.
My empathy for America was lost decades ago when literal children were gunned down in Sandy Hook.
We didn’t collectively mourn as a nation and do anything. Instead, some went to defend guns. Others went to blame the victims, the parents who are literally holding their lifeless child in their hands.
Lol, I appreciate that final line in your comment. So many of us were that close back in 2020… Now things are slated to be worse, and I think I speak for at least millions of Americans when I say we are just fucking over it.
When we’ve tossed out any semblance of justice in our country at the highest levels, literally ruling that the president is immune from all prosecution (you know, like a fucking king), then asshole corpos that indirectly murder countless people getting gunned down doesn’t exactly concern us. In fact, this sort of thing genuinely seems more just than what our highest courts are allowing.
Shit is fucked up in this country, and I don’t think many of us want to pretend otherwise any longer. I’m not advocating violence, but I definitely don’t think I’ll lose sleep over this situation.
I disagree. I think it just hit it. Think about how shooters crave noteriaty. Think of how this assain is seen as a hero. No. This is just the beginning.
I think too many people saw this as a kind of justice that the courts have never and will never provide.
I don’t advocate violence. I also don’t think this has a different outcome.
I actually agree (with you.) This could be the start of a movement.
Hopefully this hero is protected and makes a clean escape. The response from law enforcement is disproportionate because it was a rich person that died instead of someone like us.
Remember, they wouldn’t bat an eye if any of us were killed in this manner. It happens all the time and goes unsolved all the time because law enforcement primarily exists to protect rich people.
Nah dude, this shit finally hit the fan. Just wait. Terrorism works. Look at what bin Laden did to this country - is it not obvious to everyone alive before and after that he won? He wanted to destroy America and he did. What this was is an act of terrorism, and it’s going to work. Corrupt leaders all over the spectrum are getting nervous. Americans are armed to the teeth and pissed. It only takes a couple of lone wolves with intelligence and gun skills to do some major damage. And who doesn’t wanna be famous these days? I mean who doesn’t like this guy? I’d put him on the cover of time as person of the year. This is just the beginning of some very interesting times. I can’t believe it took this long.
And even more uplifting, this isn’t politically divisive. There isn’t going to be right vs left retribution over this. The entire political spectrum save for a few uppity pearl clutchers (mostly lib elites) are celebrating this.
School shootings are just a matter of course now, they’re not even newsworthy anymore unless there’s an Uvalde-level of utter incompetence involved. And even then, what happened? Nothing, nothing happened to the cowards who were complicit and accomplices to the murder of children by actively preventing people from around the killer. We’re told to get over it.
So, you know, if I had to choose between school children being murdered as a matter of course and evil profiteers who revel and flourish on the pain and suffering of everyday people being murdered as a matter of course, I’d definitely chose the latter. I wouldn’t then tell people to get over it, I’d tell people the system obviously need to be dismantled and rebuilt entirely.
My real preference would be that there are no evil profiteers who revel and flourish on the pain and suffering and that systems be functioning for the people in the first place, but unfortunately that’s not an option.
That’s gonna Streisand Effect like crazy.
That’s typical Redditard mentality.
https://www.specialolympics.org/stories/impact/why-the-r-word-is-the-r-slur
One medical doctor, whose identity the Daily Beast confirmed, commented with sympathy for Thompson’s family and said the killer should be charged with murder, but then wondered about the damage the CEO had done.
“I cannot even guess how many person-years UHC has taken from patients and their families through denials,” they wrote. “It has to be on the order of millions. His death won’t make that better, but it’s hard for me to sympathize when so many people have suffered because of his company.”
“What has bothered me the most is people that put «fiduciary responsibility» (eg profits) above human lives, none more so than this company as run by him," wrote another medical doctor, who also spoke to the Daily Beast to confirm their identity. “When other’s human lives are deemed worthless, it is not surprising to have others view your life of no value as well.”
These doctors know what’s up.
The level of greed is so much worse than any normal person understands. They do NOTHING. They aren’t medical field professionals, they don’t need to ever step foot in a hospital or clinic, they only inflate the cost, catastrophelicly with no insurrection, only horribly when you’re with them, create endless loopholes to deny coverage with, and use non medical, non trained or consulted opinions and reasoning to justify it, and they are all too educated to not know full well they are lying to get out of paying any bill ever.
Denying someone with crippling medical issues access to treatment with lies and misinformation to shave one more sliver of profit for a parasitic middle man is so many orders of magnitude above evil it’s breath taking.
Greed is common throughout history. One might say it’s human.
I disagree. The worst monsters wear human faces. At the top, you have the dragons with their hoards. The billionaires. The owner class. The ones who just accumulate. Then you have the dragon’s monsters. They may well be far worse than the Dragons themselves, but the dragons just demand more, they don’t care how. These monsters line up to take a bit of the hoard. The more they can deliver the dragons and their fellow monsters, the more they get themselves.
And what do the monsters do? They lie. They cheat. They swindle and con. They budge their way into things in the phrase of “efficiency” and “improvement.”
Denying someone with crippling medical issues access to treatment with lies and misinformation to shave one more sliver of profit for a parasitic middle man is so many orders of magnitude above evil it’s breath taking.
Well said. Really wish people understood this better and how utterly psychopathic and heartless the entire idea of “maximizing profits” in this context is.
Put another way - a for-profit insurance firm is a weird kind of company that does better when it refuses to provide what its customers pay for. It’s not some surprising or counterintuitive result, it’s baked into the business model, on purpose. That’s deeply malignant just at a glance, and it’s all we really need to know when deciding whether it should be involved with healthcare.
You know what’s really insane? Before the ACA was passed, there was no federal requirement for how much insurance companies had to pay out on healthcare costs. The ACA set a minimum of 85%, so no less than 85% of premiums has to actually go toward paying for medical services.
Before that, they could literally just pocket 75 cents for every premium dollar if they wanted to with zero legal repercussions. I guarantee we’d be on our way there if the ACA were never passed.
For-profit health insurance should be illegal. Same thing with for-profit hospitals. I’ve read stories about doctors whose hospitals were bought by for-profits or VCs and turned into patient mills where they’re forced to push unnecessary elective surgeries and provide the bare minimum of care to maximize profits.
A healthy population is good for society and it should be something we invest in. We shouldn’t make a business out of someone getting sick, and then another business out of charging then exorbitant amounts of money for getting treatment, and then ANOTHER business to harass them because they can’t pay that exorbitant amount.
Addressed to an unnamed applicant—following “a careful review of the claim submitted for emergency services on December 4, 2024″—it informs them they are being rejected for coverage because “you failed to obtain prior authorization before seeking care for the gunshot wound to your chest.” “If you would like to appeal the fatal gunshot, please call 1-800-555-1234 with case # 123456789P to initiate a peer to peer within 48 hours of the fatal gun shot,” wrote one user.
Does this sound LLM generated to anyone else? I mean I’ve seen other LLM generated articles summarizing top Reddit posts, and this reads a lot like that.
