United Healthcare denies claim of woman in coma
United Healthcare denies claim of woman in coma
www.newsweek.com
United Healthcare denies claim of woman in coma
140 comments
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You'd think UHC would strive to behave impeccably with all the publicity around them lately. But no: they're so shameless and so greedy they even behave rotten when everybody is busy dissecting their every moves. Amazing...
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Why? “Line must go up”
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If that were the case, they'd have off'd the CEO themselves. That's multi-millions that could go back to other higher-ups. Then we have a Highlander situation.
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The CEO serves a very important role in that they get all the fallout for what the board probably wants, and then if there's enough bad publicity, they can fire the CEO and pretend that the CEO acted entirely out of their own volition.
I mean that's not to say they're not greedy bloodsuckers, but they're greedy bloodsuckers that the board needs. Because the board are even bigger greedy bloodsuckers and want to stay out of the news.
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If course, the board can also play innocent in any bad decisions, because they can just say "It's what the shareholders want!" or "It's what the consultants told us!"
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One less golden parachute. More for the rest.
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Because doing otherwise wouldn't maximize profits. There's no actual competition in the market for consumers to choose. Nearly all Americans get insurance through their work, and have absolutely no say in what companies those options are from, and those options might only change at the end of the year if the company changes their insurance partner (which I'm sure takes months to negotiate). UHC has no reason to change unless they are forced to. Customer Satisfaction in the industry is abysmal because there's no incentive for the companies to actually be good.
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"But free market and competition!!!"
🖕
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They had their underwriters run the numbers and they determined it's more profitable to continue business as usual and just invest in private security for executives.
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It is more profitable that the beatings continue.
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Of course they wouldn't try to behave well. Remember that the bosses in this organization are all incredibly selfish. They are rich, they want to get richer, and f*** everybody else. Although the company itself might benefit from a positive PR campaign, none of these people individually would, so they're not going to push for one.
It's a strange kind of honesty about bad behavior. Everyone is so selfish that they can't even pretend as an organization that they would like to do the right thing.
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In Corey Doctorow's short story (Radicalized, in the collection Radicalized) the health fund attackers typically used explosives against the entire board and their support staff
I wonder if that would be more effective
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I don't think you can pivot a 465 billion dollar company. Especially one where being unethical is a profit making feature.
They won't fix themselves, hell why even reign it in if the system rewards bad behavior?
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they know that the publicity is temporary and does not matter because a corporation is not a democracy
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The simplest explanation is they literally can't change, they've built this level of callousness into their DNA. It's useful confirmation that for-profit health insurance is beyond saving.
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CEO's come and go and one just went
The ingredients you got bake the cake you get
So, if you get sick, cross your fingers for luck
'Cause old Richard T. Burke ain't givin' a fuck
- Jesse Wells, United Health
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What incentivize do they have? The vast majority of their customers have no choice but to be their customers. They just need to keep the companies that companies contract with to set up benefits happy. That's a very small pool and most aren't customers of theirs. And especially with the anti-regulation party coming into power, there's no reason to fear government intervention. But even before that, it wasnt really a threat.
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My employer had to hire a lawyer to get their insurance company to cover us and stop denying claims. It's beyond fucked up out there.
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They're not scared enough yet.
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140 comments