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.
Remember if you see this guy… I mean… No you didn’t. No officer I didn’t see him at all…
Edit Addendum: Deny. Defend. Depose.
Deemed unprofitable…
Fuck Reddit and the life is cheap US healthcare system.
Reddit is a piece of shit platform, people who use it deserve the poor treatment they sign up for
Earth is a shit platform. How do I unsubscribe?!
Easy, just start a new instance and leave this one.
Oh don’t worry, earth will handle that for us.
Just be a CEO of a large corrupt corporation and someone will be along shortly to process your request.
Because Lemmy has never had a moderation problem 🙄🙄
on reddit, you have to hope an admin replaces a bad mod. On lemmy, you can create a competing community that’s well modded, and the user base will generally want to be where the mods are chill, and follow.
I don’t mean to sideline the conversation too much, but I’m only part of .world. What are some other recommendations? I’ve seen lots of complaints about moderator censorship here, though I don’t want to end up in a dark hole of violence, either.
Lemm.ee or sh.itjust.works are probably the best options right now. World is the most similar to Reddit, and a lot of subreddits were essentially replicated on world.
I choose sh.itjust.works on name alone, and I couldn’t be happier with the choice
I like where I ended up. I started on Lemmy.ml
reddthat is pretty dope
I was speaking more about Community (equivalent to a subreddit) moderation, as opposed to instance level moderation from admins, since for the most part a community mod is what users will be interacting with.
I wouldn’t worry much about .world being your home instance. The only real downside is you can’t post or comment on Beehaw, since they defederated from World due to a lack of moderation tools on their end.
.World is the largest instance, so if you wanted to help spread the load across the fediverse and prevent centralization, you could export all your subscriptions to a new account elsewhere.
If you go that route, I’d personally recommend looking for an instance that at least has Hexbear and Lemmygrad in their block list. Lemmy.cafe is a good choice for a smaller instance, while Sopuli.xyz is a solid medium sized one, both general instances. But if you’d like a more themed instance that appeals to you, by all means go for that instead. https://lemmyverse.net/ or the instance finder tool at https://join-lemmy.org/ are good places to find one. :)
This is very helpful, thank you. I will read this post over a few times as I consider and explore Lemmy.
Removed by mod
“…fueling ongoing debates about corporate ethics in healthcare.”
Don’t make me fucking laugh ‘corporate ethics’
Corporate ethics are centered around not getting bad press. Now that the press is controlled and for sale to whoever wants to pay for an outcome, we dont need corporate ethics anymore. Its ancient history.
Absence of ethics is still on the spectrum of ethics.
There is such a thing as a non profit corporation
We need corporations. We just need to outlaw the for profit ones.
We need corporations.
I’m sure many people think the same about religion, or kings and queens
Good choice by the mods to lock that first thread.
I was reading an article that quoted his wife about what a great guy he was. It reminded me of Ken Lay’s wife talking about her families liquidity problems after the Enron collapse. Hundreds of employees lost everything and she’s griping about liquidity.
I saw one that had a different relative say he was an honest person and hard worker.
This honest person’s company had $290 billion in insurance premium revenue in 2023 and they had $22 billion in profit. I always knew insurance was a grift but holy fuck.
And the company rewarded him with a $10 million compensation package in 2023. No living person works hard enough in a single year to earn multiple lifetime’s of average worker wages.
I saw one that had a different relative say he was an honest person and hard worker.
CEO
Which one was it now?!
Honestly 10M is pretty small for a CEO of a company that size (especially on 22B in profit).
United health group listed 5 executives in their def14a filing which details executive compensation of 5 executives. Brian was the 4th executive, the ceo of the united health group was awarded 23 million and then there were two others who got 16 million. Overall it came out to about 75 million. Which i agree is less than i was expecting for 22B profit but it is still multiple lifetime’s of wages for an average worker
They’ll probably have to offer more now.
cEoS wOrK tHe HaRdEsT!
Someone else in another thread said their friend inherited a billion dollars and is the hardest working person they’ve ever met and I honestly couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
I love reading Melon Husk’s claim that he works 100 hours a week. He’s the CEO of five companies, which means even if his claim is true, being a CEO is a 20-hour-a-week job.
“Hardest working” at pulling their own dick
i wonder what job the hardest working person they ever met does? gotta be something like alaskan crab fisher or deep sea welder. definitely not some bullshit email job.
Being honest and a hard worker could be used to describe a hit man. Working hard at something unethical isn’t a virtue.
I’m sure he was a swell guy, a lot of fun at barbecues, dog lover and good with kids yada yada. Plenty of awful folks in history are like that. I hear Hitler was a fun guy who liked dogs and kids too.
…well not ALL kids but still
Lets be real, one of the primary motivators for a woman to be with and stay with a man is if he can provide adequately for her offspring. I’m sure he was doing a great job at that.
one of the primary motivators for a woman to be with and stay with a man
I think you meant “female” lol.
Okay, I’ll bite. The reason women end up choosing to be with a man of means, and I am in no way saying that all or even most women want this, is because we often don’t/didn’t have the opportunity to gain those means ourselves which thereby impacted our ability to survive and control our own lives. This is due to the oppression of the very men that you think we seek. Over the course of thousands of years, men cultivated a world where they steadily sought, gained, and ever increasingly obtained as much power as possible. In order to gain more power for yourself or your group, you have to take away power from someone else.
One of the people or groups whose power was regularly stolen is women. I’m sure this was a slow transition over a long period of time, but it ended with a world where women were rarely allowed to gain the skills or implement what skills they had in order to earn money. If you don’t have the ability to earn money yourself, you are forced to be reliant on someone else who is allowed to earn money. My point being, if you want enough money for you and your children to survive, you basically had to marry as rich as you possibly could.
Enter the modern women’s rights movement. This is where financial freedom became incredibly important to women. We collectively realized that we, much like any other human beings in existence ever, wanted to be able to have some control of our lives, our families, and our fates. This is why we entered the workforce in droves. Women who were suffering under the control of men who beat them and their children, potentially raped them, or demeaned them regularly with the full acceptance and support of society, wanted a way out. The available options were pretty bleak, so we worked in solidarity to find another way to survive with both our physical safety and dignity intact. Now, as an obligatory caveat, not every man was/is oppressive to women. But, since men as a whole created these arbitrary restrictions on women’s lives, they are the ones who have to suffer the aftermath of this system of control that was developed, especially since they are the ones who continue to experience advantages and benefits because of those exact lingering effects.
Most women would prefer to be able to support themselves and their family while having their partner contribute equally, either through earning money or doing an equivalent share of the household/family tasks. But, since something that becomes systemic is difficult to remove, we are still trying to shake the ramifications of this exertion of control. I assure you, most women would rather have less money and more autonomy when given the option.
This brings me to the point you’re trying to make. If the “primary motivator” of a woman is to choose a man who can provide adequately for her offspring, it is only because of the lingering effects of historical oppression that men created in order to exert control over women. It’s very frustrating to be in a world that constantly tells you that you should be pursuing a partner with money so you can have a stable future, but then simultaneously reprimands you for actually making that choice. Just as it’s difficult, but required, to acquiesce to the control of the man who holds your money.
I don’t think it should be presented as though this woman is shallow or terrible for making such a choice. Who wouldn’t choose a life of stability over one of chaos or continual financial stress? I know many men who would make the same choice if offered it. Like you said, I’m sure he was doing a good job of providing for their family financially, but let’s not be too reductive about her choice to have him as a partner. You say it in such a way that you are not only chastising her for her choice of husbands but are chastising all women for prioritizing their and their children’s survival and safety. That is something that comes across as offensive to the entirety of my gender because it implies that we shouldn’t consider ourselves of value or of having worth.
You may be right that this woman chose the CEO of UHC as her husband because of his wealth and ability to support their children and family lifestyle. Most likely, she knew what her husband actually did for a living and it’s effect on the lives of others and chose to ignore or not look into the deaths, horrors, and financial destruction that were created by the company her husband controlled.
But, one way or another, let’s not reduce the struggle that women go through at the hands of historical, and often modern, men to blanketly imply that we are all naturally money hungry and that we are obviously all using men for our own gain. I’m going to go ahead and assume that women, including myself, disagree with such an unfair assumption.
I agree with everything you said - it was worded well and you inserted the exceptions and qualifiers to make your point in a generalization that allows outliers. I do, however, wonder about the women who consider financial stability as a (if not the) major factor when choosing a partner, because we tend to hear only the stories of gold diggers, etc. and not the stories of women who married for love and simply had the fortune of having a partner that was able to acquire significant means. I’m guessing that’s why the commenter you replied to said what they said. I’m sure the percentage is small, but those type of women give the rest of us a bad name.
The following is anecdotal, but I think still relevant: Speaking from personal experience, my husband is well educated, I love him to death, and he chooses to work in a job that is stable (meaning it’s hard for them to get rid of him unless he makes some serious errors) rather than working for some private firm where he can easily be paid double if not more. He makes enough for us to get by while I’m finishing up grad school. I’m proud of his moral compass; he always tries to do the right thing.
His cousin, gem that she is, has always openly bragged about how she only goes on dates if the man is paying, yada yada, and she ended up finding some desperate sap 15 years her senior with money to burn; the culture they are from values marriage, so a single man in his 40’s gets a lot of questions. Mind you, this is a woman who was fired from her job because she got caught breaking security protocol, blamed it on her cousin’s husband (saying he snitched on her because they worked for the same firm), caused a feud, and refused to take responsibility. She hasn’t held a job since, nor do I think she plans to, because they are now slum lords in Florida. Most of the family doesn’t like interacting with her, but she’s not the only one who has decided it’s easier for her to behave this way rather than work herself.
People change, and when someone marries for love and one of the partners begins to change for the worse, it usually causes strain in a marriage as the values each partner holds no longer line up. Some people seek help and try to fix things. I read somewhere that the CEO’s wife was a physical therapist? If so, she definitely knows how the medical industry works, and she should be very aware of the harm insurance companies are responsible for. If she chose to turn a blind eye instead of trying to aid him in seeing the error of his ways, it’s because she herself lost sight of what the value of a human life is. She can blindly talk about how great of a guy he was because she was benefitting from all the perceived good it brought to her personally. I would wager she married him before he became CEO, but the fact that she stayed married to someone who led a company directly responsible for so much suffering is an indication of her character.
Another example: Mackenzie left Bozo because she saw who he turned into. I’m sure she’d speak well of him, but I imagine she would acknowledge all of his poor qualities. It’s not unfair to judge anyone married to someone of high means (regardless of gender), because there’s always a choice, especially when those means are directly gained by punishing others. There is a risk in financial instability through divorce, but at the level of assets in the millions it’s not a really dire concern - courts can award alimony, split assets, etc. Or, you know, they could get a job.
The question becomes, “who are you as a person; do you value money above all else, or positively contributing to a society where the give and take is balanced?”
We can all work to uplift each other together but still criticize those who are working against us, even other women. I guess my point is that we shouldn’t judge her for marrying into money, but we absolutely can judge her for her character if she chose to continue down this path.
Absolutely; I agree. I appreciate your thoughtful response. There are always going to be selfish people and users in every gender, and they do give the whole group a bad rap. I’m never going to say that all women are above the description the poster I replied to gave. And, like you said, we can call these specific people out while still uplifting others who don’t engage in such behavior.
The poster that I was replying to seemed like they had been burned by a person like that, and while I understand that it must be awful to experience being with someone who uses you only for what you can provide and that it can easily make you jaded, this particular post comes off like they have extended that bitterness to the entirety of women, whether or not those women have chosen (or seek) a partner with wealth. It’s frustrating to watch so many great women be reduced to greedy users, and I don’t want to allow the continuation of someone spouting blanket assumptions toward my gender without addressing it. That’s how I ended up with a multi-paragraph response to a simple statement.
But I absolutely agree with your assessment and really appreciate the thought and effort you put into it. It’s incredibly refreshing to be able to have an actual discussion about a topic.
Ken Lay who tooooootally died before being sentenced and toooootally didn’t disappear into a foreign country
I see that a lot with out-of-touch folks, boomers especially.
He may have been nice in some ways. She probably just wasn’t aware or chose not to think about the darker aspects of health insurance corporations and what it takes to make billions at the expense of people’s health care.
Also people tend to whine when their gravy train runs out of gravy.
His wife is a physical therapist so she has an intimate understanding of the health care system. I’m sure it’s turning a blind eye. The article I read described their home as a $1.5 million home in an exclusive Minneapolis suburb. She knew. Cognitive dissonance can be very powerful.
We had that last year in Ohio when Householder was sentanced to 20 years prison for his roll in the bribery scandal. He cried about hard that was going to be on his family and the judge told him “you should have thought about that before accepting those bribes.”
Fuck that guy. The worst part, we’re still paying for his fucking corrupt bullshit.
Of course he is. It’ll only happen if he’s of some value to Trump. Everything with Donald Trump is transctional.
If Reddit mods (or lemmy mods for that matter) are overwhelmed by the workload of a thread, they should lock it, and clean it up. not delete it!
That’s typical Redditard mentality. Does anyone on that shitty platform really think that they’re free to express themselves as the site lies to them about when they sign up?
Why should anyone be sympathetic, other than shills and corporate bootlickers still thinking shit will ‘trickle down’ for them, to people who have such a stranglehold of an influence on thousands to millions of lives every day?
Who do they think they’re fooling here? “Don’t wish on death people, it’s wrong, wah!” Fuck that! I will wish death on people who’ve made countless people suffer because of their stupid, selfish and self-centered decisions.
You can shit on Reddit without being ableist.
What does Ableist have anything to do with endorsing those to express how they feel about the death of a CEO?
Nothing, that’s what. You’re just fishing for emotional arguments and being a sensationalist. Go touch grass or something.
That’s typical Redditard mentality.
https://www.specialolympics.org/stories/impact/why-the-r-word-is-the-r-slur
I made a large collection of screenshots from Facebook of people who had their claims denied by United Healthcare today if you want to really see how bad it is.
I find some comments here disturbing. The man may have been not the best example of ethical behavior, but he is still a murder victim with a family who will no doubt miss him. No one deserves to be shot in the back on a city street. If that was true, it’s not long until your number comes up.
The internet is full of false bravado, and few morals.
He’s a merchant of death. Just like a weapons dealer. Possibly even worse, because his company has the power to prevent suffering, and explicitly chooses not to. Morally, I’d say that is worse than selling weapons.
They deny claims at twice the industry average, so clearly they don’t need to, they choose to. There is zero chance he was unaware how many denials his company was sending out, and the only way a rate double his competition could be achieved was by purposely denying things that should be covered.
Extrajudicial killings are of course not good, but I don’t really care about objectively bad people getting what’s coming to them.
So guess you’re willing to play judge and jury, but not executioner. Good to know.
I would carry out the sentence for some of those fucks just fine. They don’t see us as people, so no reason I should give them the same courtesy.
So then, judge, jury, executioner and fugitive. Noice
Could say the same about the dead guy. There is a 100% chance that his decisions as CEO to maximize profits over everything else have directly led to people dying that otherwise would not have. Whether you’re willing to admit that or not is up to you.
But he can’t be a fugitive, because you know… dead.
Remember how the right kept panicking their base for easy political points until extremist thought divorced from reality took over their platform and became the new norm?
Well, it’s happening to the left now. With a second Trump term on the horizon, income inequality at an all time high, and the rich and powerful preparing for the most egregious political and economic power grab of all time, people are ready to accept anything that even remotely sounds like justice.
One murdered CEO changes nothing. Nothing will change. No other CEOs will be touched. But the Overton Window does now appear to include murdering people in cold blood over politics and economics on both sides of the aisle now, so honestly, get prepared for a nasty civil war in the next few years.
The public reaction to this murder is disturbing and a very bad omen of what’s to come, no matter how easy it is to hate this guy.
Interesting take. Agree.
Or Alex Jones goes on a podcast to call her a crisis actor.
This was front side of a city street if that makes you feel any better. Pretty sure his family can dry their tears with their millions in inheritance achieved through their sweet daddykins turning so many other children who will grow up a fuckton less well off into orphans.
I find some comments here disturbing.
He wasn’t declared dead by the ICC, so he’s still alive.
What part of “eat the rich” did you not understand?
I understand false bravado and I hope you do as well
You keep using that phrase like it’s a magic “win arguments” spell. I don’t think you’re doing yourself any favors here.
Who cares
How’s that boot leather taste?
You do apparently, enough to reply to me at least.
Faulty logic
You got me good.
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Everything they say is word salad.
This you?
The man was a mass murderer. But because he wore a suit and did it from an office it was OK. If a gunman put down any other mass murderer noone would complain.
People right here on Lemmy often complain when murderers are executed. For good reason.
The state has other methods of dealing with people. A vigilante really doesn’t.
Neither do lynch mobs. Should we cheer them on?
Lynch mobs generally don’t target mass murderers.
OK, suppose lynch mobs started forming in your city to hang drug dealers. Would you cheer them on?
(days late and all that) did you really dig for the worst non super wealthy you could come up with is the guy who sells me weed?
You must live a very sheltered life. I feel sorry for you
Well, that depends. Is the law actively defending those drug dealers and do the drug dealers own the politicians in charge of writing those laws so that they can never be held legaly accountable?
Are you really comparing drug dealers to a health insurance magistrate directly responsible for the deaths of countless people? Fuck entirely off
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People complain when the state executes people. There’s a big difference.
If the state had executed the CEO, why would you complain?
They wouldn’t, because he’s rich.
Because the state wouldn’t just not execute the CEO. It gives them no repercussions, and even encourages them.
State execution is wrong, but stopping someone during a murderous rampage is rigtheous.
But nothing has stopped. UHC will do the same thing tomorrow it has been doing all year.
Maybe they will.
Or maybe the next guy won’t be so quick to deny a cancer patients claim because he doesn’t want to be the next one ambushed.
If the next guy doesn’t want to make money for shareholders, the next guy will be fired.
And there are plenty of guys who are willing to risk a bullet if the money is good, including bodyguards and mercenaries.
Good thing bullets outnumber CEOs
So it’s not up to you to determine if he should pay the the price of his life is it?
The authorities that should be doing that won’t because the system is broken. When the law does nothing then there is going to vigilante justice. If mass murderers like that executive were actually held accountable by our laws then there would be no reason for them to be shot in the streets. The fact of the matter is that they aren’t held accountable. They can do whatever they want and all the peaceful methods of changing that failed.
So, you are calling for murder on the streets? Interesting
Calling for? No. I’m saying it’s going to happen regardless of what anyone wants. And personally I’m glad it did in this case.
So just more false bravado. Good
I’ll take that over false morality any damn day.
I also believe, that if given the chance to work for the same paycheck, lots of loud lemmings would hush up about their position real quick. Money corrupts
I have no sympathy for people who are responsible for and profit from killing people. All the people who died preventable deaths because insurance wouldn’t pay to save their lives had family too. I’m not about to go out and shoot people but I’ll damn well cheer for someone killing an evil bastard.
I’m 100% sure he’s responsible for at least the same amount of people who died in 9/11. And then add a zero or three. His decisions alone, only to increase profits.
I’m hungry, when do we eat?
Dude, literally millions of years off people’s lives.
It’s fine if you want to play judge and jury, just try not to do it with someone’s life. Thanks.
Oh fuck right off. This dude got off easy. Shot in the back, no fear, quickly passing out and passing on.
Compare that to the millions of people that suffered, not just died of preventable illness, but suffered, and so did their families. Some of them still suffering not only emotional debt but financial debt too.
You will never justify this stance, and you know it.
False bravado
Broken brain.
“Don’t be the judge jury and executioner”
We have tried time and time again to let the “legal system” figure this shit out, and time and time again, billionaires just pay their way out with fines or just postpone it indefinitely while they commit more crimes against humanity.
Idk if you get some kind of justification by being knowingly incorrect around of a bunch of other people, but we can all see through it. Be part of the solution or keep it to yourself.
He wasn’t a billionaire. I know it’s easy to just pretend that every CEO is Elon Musk, but in billions he was worth $0.04B. Elon Musk is on track to be worth 100,000x that.
If you think he was an Oligarch, you’re already doomed, because you don’t know who your real enemies are.
It’s honestly the same shit when you factor in the fact that most people are either in poverty or extremely close to it with a lot of those because of this dudes leadership.
You can make it look small by doing the .04B, you’re also missing his .02B (20M if you wanna do regular people numbers) in stock options, but that’s still an absolute fuck ton of money, and mixed with his decisions to willing fuck so many people over, I know he wasn’t a friend.
We’re only talking about publicly disclosed money here too.
Say that to the CEO of United Healthcare.
And that’s not up to you than him
Were you trying to say something?
Yes,if your strangled logic says that this guy plays judge and jury, it is exactly what you are doing.
I guess I could just repeat my question, but that would probably be pointless.
Then what’s the correct way?
My yin, if there’s anyone who’s deaths should be celebrated, it’s oligarchs. I think they should be stopped nonviolently and preferably legally, but guess what, they’ve removed all choices other than violence.
Do you also cheer when prisoners are executed? Many of them are evil bastards too.
Lmao comparing the worst person on death row to an oligarchs is like comparing a kitten to a demon, they’re not even in the same zip code of evil
I agree, but seeing someone committing that crime for personal retribution and/or as a symbolic gesture in this literally crippling, nightmarish private health insurance hell, all I can muster is, “This is perfectly normal in this moment.” This rant isn’t specifically directed at you, but just to elaborate:
He probably is a very nice person when you talk to him, and he is probably a caring husband and father. He probably has complex ways of resolving the cognitive dissonance between who he felt he was and what UHC is doing. But it’s hard to deny he was in a position with decision-making power to make millions of lives substantially better or worse, to enable or disable the worst excesses of private insurance, and the buck stops there if anywhere. This chart has made the rounds including on Lemmy, showing a 32% denial rate for claims, which is astounding.
Frankly, we all have had so many moments with health insurance where we’re basically told they cannot help us, given arcane and pretextual reasons, and given a silent ultimatum of “you want us to honor our agreement? Make us.” Then we waste so many unpaid hours of our dwindling or nonexistent free time creating paperwork pointing out the obvious injustice, and eventually they may honor a claim without admitting fault or changing their practice. Mostly they probably just ignore us and we go away, or respond with the same Kafka-esque administrative slop until we can’t eat any more. It was built that way, and who but the CEO is responsible?
This is not a situation entirely created by him, but most of us are collectively cooking on a stove and none of us have access to the controls. He did, and he turned up the temperature. Not at all surprising, and it’s very hard to have sympathy for him. I have plenty of sympathy for his kids.
Rest in piss
“Rot in poverty” -UHC policy
That’s gonna Streisand Effect like crazy.
