UHG had $22B in profits last year. They did it in part by having the highest claim denial rate of any major insurer, and things like (allegedly) using an AI based claim evaluation tool with a 90% error rate. UHG also includes other "middleman" companies that are purely extractive, like Optum.
"Profiteering" doesn't seem like that tough a claim to make here...
Yea... "complicated resource allocation issues" is a really, really charitable way of describing "massively profiting from denial of health care, leading to the suffering and death of one's customers."
I'm actually kind of pleasantly surprised at the raw "FAFO" comments we're seeing. I was truly expecting the mainstream media to circle the wagons and treat this thing like a hero-has-died tragedy, with "respect the dead" and thoughts and prayers and everything, but the public's cynicism actually seems to be overtaking all the corporate whitewashing. This was a truly evil person, and although nobody should call for someone to die, one is allowed to "read an obituary with great pleasure," as the saying goes.
Considering insurance companies are bound by Medical Loss Ratio rules, if they approved all those claims, all it would do is cause everyone's premiums to skyrocket.
With revenue of $372B that is a profit margin of 5.9%. Which is frankly terrible.
I suppose ideally they would have 0% margin, but 5.9% is a shitty business to be in. The owners could just buy treasuries and get 4.5% with no work and no risk.
Where are you seeing that the UHG executive team still held their meeting the same day? Everything I've read said they cancelled it.
"Thompson, 50, led UnitedHealthcare, the largest private health insurer in the U.S. He was on the way to UnitedHealth Group’s investor day set for Wednesday at 8 a.m. ET at the Hilton, the NYPD said. The company canceled that event after the shooting."
In the U.S. there is a whole lot that is going in the wrong direction. This direction isn't new, but more and more 'regular people' are sliding into the 'desperate' category.
That, in my mind, is why there is a visible amount of schadenfreude or even glee from seeing suffering of the people who make millions running the companies that bankrupt them or prevent them from getting treatment they need.
It is a waste of time to argue whether those feelings are right or wrong. They are a result of a broken and exploitative system that is benefitting only the perpetrators of it.
Few things are as worthy of time as arguing whether feelings are right or wrong. If you can't tell right from wrong, you totter perilously close to becoming a beast, and it's worth trying to save people from that.
> Few things are as worthy of time as arguing whether feelings are right and wrong
Sorry, but no. Feelings are not right or wrong, they just exist. What we do with those feelings can be right or wrong, and I agree that if one wants to live an ethical life, one needs to evaluate whether their actions are just.
My original point stands: debating whether others feelings are right or wrong is a waste of time. Its far better to understand why, especially if you want to influence that reality.
And yet here you stand, spending your time trying to convince me that it is a waste of time to convince me that you are wasting your time in trying to change my feelings.
You should really take a look at the 10 year stock price history of UNH. It's price is up around 650%. IBM has gone up 12% in that same time. Gold metal up 60%.
UNH is the third highest earning issue I have in this 10 year old strategy test portfolio beat out only by NOW and MPWR.
It was all selected by automated strategy in 2014. This one was built by looking for particular price signals, inside a market cap range, with a favorable ratio of insider buys vs sells or option exercises.
> I'd much rather see that worked through legislative means than through targeted assassinations..
I believe the voters and their politicians have tried, repeatedly. Usually healthcare organizations inject just enough turbulence into the legislative process such that legislative bills don't lead to any kind of reforms. Meanwhile, average life expectancy in the US is still falling.
In terms of being able to affect political change, yes. If the wealthy were targeted in assassinations using firearms, the 2nd amendment would mean very little. When the political will of the country is reflected in a small group of people it becomes increasingly possible to affect politics by affecting that group.
This is what I was thinking. You can kill thousands of schoolkids and nothing will change, but gun down a few CEO's and suddenly there'll be hard conversations about control.
>> the very simple solution of universal healthcare
Umm no. Even if we force insurers to be nonprofit there are still huge problems. Treatments can cost arbitrarily much - even in labor costs, so there will always be a limit to what can be covered. "Patients" will still use excessive amounts of service. Doctors will suggest extra tests so long as they are covered. Referral bonuses will happen behind the scenes. Price gouging is ongoing.
Universal care only addresses a little of the problem, and eliminates some of the checks on others.
I don't have a solution, but just wanted to refute the idea that there is a simple one.
One thing I speculate is that elimination of insurance entirely might be good in some ways. Along those lines, only catastrophic things should be covered. Passing reasonable costs on to patients directly will put downward pressure on costs while also eliminating middle men. But that has downsides too.
I don't have a solution, but just wanted to refute the idea that there is a simple one.
Having a public insurance option to put downward pressure on existing insurance carriers was the most sensible strategy. Both Republicans and Democrats were on board too but exactly one Democrat torpedoed that idea…
I mean literally every other developed nation has a solution: universal healthcare. Some have far better healthcare systems than the US too. So saying that this is an unsolved and possible unsolvable problem is clearly disingenuous.
Now, the process of transitioning to universal healthcare for such a large system is something that is likely unprecedented. But that’s not what you are talking about.
When you actually look into the details, you'll find that "universal healthcare" doesn't have a universal definition and there are incredible numbers of negative outcomes in other developed nations. People from every developed nation will complain about how much their health system sucks as long as there isn't an American in the room. Reality and Reddit are rarely the same thing.
Oh I have been waiting for you! Thank you for this comment, now let’s see every single thing that’s wrong with it:
First let’s break down why your argument of “people complain when Americans aren’t in the room” followed by “Reality and Reddit are rarely the same thing” is ironically flawed. The number of people unhappy with any given system is measurable. That number is not proportional to the number of complaints about said system. For example if you have 100 people, and 20 of them are unhappy but 3 will talk to everyone of the 100 about how unhappy they are the number of complaints will be 100. See how the math doesn’t math? And whether people complain on Reddit or “in a room” doesn’t matter here. Lastly, “incredible numbers” is an amazing summation of what you are saying here. You are right, they are not credible.
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s look at what does matter: metrics. With so many people, so many cases, so much money the law of averages lets us make conclusions about which system on average does better. There are two metrics I can think of: cost and outcomes. You can’t of course optimize for two variables at once: what if for nearly infinite cost you could have perfect outcomes? But let’s look anyways and see if we can spot a pattern.
Notice that on any of these charts the US is not number 1. It is number 2 for one of them but the rest are far worse, including 31 out of 45 for cervical cancer!
Go to that link, sort in descending order and see how the US has total per capita spending at 50% higher in 2022 than the next most expensive country (Switzerland). The WHO estimate isn’t quite as dramatic but it still is a huge jump from Switzerland (you’ll need to look at 2021 since more recent data isn’t available).
In other words countries that objectively beat the US in outcomes ALL have cheaper per capita healthcare than the US. You cannot argue that because you have heard people complain that it means other systems are worse. But I can argue that given this data the US clearly is doing something very wrong. It pretends like the solution doesn’t exist and when the people point to the 30 countries that beat us at things like cervical cancer at a half to a third of the cost while also providing the peace of mind that you won’t go bankrupt due to medical bills, our politicians stuff dollar bills they got from insurance company lobbyists into their ears and keep yelling “la la la we are the greatest country in the world”.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk on my particular area of interest. Enjoy the rest of your evening.
Health insurance companies have reasonable margins and it's really tough to make the claim they're profiteering off the system.
Health insurance doesn’t need to be second-guessing doctors. I understand that someone needs to pool the money before it is needed and distribute it out to the needy once the emergencies happen but that’s as far as they need to exist.
If you really want to conserve resources from wasteful doctors, there are strategies for making that happen but putting a private profit-driven firm in charge of second-guessing every treatment is the worst by far.
Certainly someone needs to be second-guessing doctors, because they routinely make decisions that fail to adequately consider both costs and risks. I grant that the insurance companies don't do a good job of it, but don't fall for the ridiculous trope that doctors would make great decisions without insurance companies.
