Right, because most people recognize that the US has become sufficiently polarized and radicalized that "If enough people are mad at you, a complete stranger might shoot you" is not a theory of change we want to encourage. Yes, even for causes we agree with, most adults in the room understand that "people being mad at you" is pretty independent of how righteous your cause is, and even how civil and thoughtful you are in pursuing it.
Are you claiming that the most likely proximal cause for his murder was the legal ability to print a gun rather than any concerns or grievances the shooter may have had related to the healthcare industry or United Healthcare specifically?
>because most people recognize that the US has become sufficiently polarized and radicalized that "If enough people are mad at you, a complete stranger might shoot you" is not a theory of change we want to encourage.
God forbid individuals and organizations not choose paths of action that "low level piss off" millions of people such that their chance of being at the business end of some outlier who will actually do violence upon them is non-trivial.
It's not hard to not be "the thing" in any given crazy's life they choose to go out with a bang over, especially if you're not something they deal with every day. If that means that the default amount of screwage your organization applies needs to be dialed back, or that you must clean house a little better or more often then cry me a river.
>most adults in the room understand that "people being mad at you" is pretty independent of how righteous your cause is
Except it's not. The "budget" you have to wrong people and cause despair before people would be apathetic to violence done upon you is pretty directly coupled to the amount of good you do to offset your harm.
>It's not hard to not be "the thing" in any given crazy's life they choose to go out with a bang over
> The "budget" you have to wrong people and cause despair before people would be apathetic to violence done upon you is pretty directly coupled to the amount of good you do to offset your harm.
I can't find the detailed breakdown for 2025, but in 2024, they took in $308bn in premiums and paid out $264bn in medical costs. So even ignoring all of the downstream and systemic problems caused by insurance existing as a for-profit entity, they're taking 14% off the top just to exist as a middle-man.
Highlighting that was actually part of my point. What utility does insurance add to justify its existence as a middle man? How are we better off with a middle man taking a cut vs nationalizing the industry? And that 14% is at best, given the other externalities of the existence of insurance and its perverse incentives.
You're saying "how is that worse than other industries", but I'm saying, why is there an industry there at all?
The government would still need employees to basically do everything that the people at insurance companies do. Theoretically it could be more efficient, realistically it would not.
The real problem with our system is that for anyone who is going to hit their deductible, or especially their out of pocket max, the costs no longer matter at all. Sure, that cancer drug can be $500,000. GLP1 drugs for $1,000 a month? Why not?
Of course, there's no free lunch on this. In a single payer system you get things like the UK not approving certain cancer treatments for people over a certain age, certain medications just aren't available, etc.
Otherwise you could make every plan a very high deductible plan, possible just not cover medications at all, etc. But then people will complain about people not being able to afford things, especially in the short term.
If you’ve had UHC you’d know very well that Optum is intimately tied to their insurance business. UHC just “administers the plan” while Optum controls plan decisions. So when there’s a problem, which there always is with every claim more complicated than a PCP visit, you get bounced between both companies for hours until you find someone willing to take responsibility for answering questions.
EDIT: I think you mean "allegedly"