I am no more sympathetic than I am towards the many people killed each day in the US, but I think the assassination and the subsequent justification of it because he was a small cog in the system is abhorrent. And I hope that the majority of the country feels the same way.
I'm not sure I agree with you there. The indifference in some quarters, celebration in others, across either side of the political divide insofar as I've seen, leads me to believe that in some cases, the well of sympathy is running dry – or, worse, has run dry.
From what I've seen, 99% of feedback is of "scumbag deserved it" flavor.
Well, there’s always the chance of claiming the shooter got away, and be lying in a ditch somewhere
A trial should be about setting forth the law and the facts and letting the jury handle any relevant "leaky abstractions".
It's fairly clear that the act was illegal. If the facts conclusively show that J. Random Somebody pulled the trigger, then conviction should be the non-leaky return from the jury() function.
But, then, IANAL, and our legal system has seemed less than water-tight of late, so we'll see.
IMO a lot of the discourse on this topic is based more on vibes that reality.
UnitedHealthCare's profits are down YoY- both in absolute #s and in terms of their operating margin. (from 6.6% down to 5.6%). But if you frame the assassination as "CEO who has reduced the degree by which his company profits from sick people", you end up with a whole different batch of theories and motives.
(note that UnitedHealthcare is a subset of UnitedHealthcare Group, so you have to dig into their filings to see UHC's numbers broken out)
Honestly I bought into the 'private sector is more efficient' quite a bit. In healthcare this simply isn't the case. In my country, depending on the year, for every 100€ the state give to our public insurance, between 88 and 93€ go to pay for medical expenses.
Health Insurance Companies Take Down Leadership Pages Following Murder of UH CEO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42335775 - Dec 2024 (2 comments)
Moderators Delete Reddit Thread as Doctors Torch Dead UnitedHealthcare CEO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42332347 - Dec 2024 (47 comments)
United Healthcare CEO Shooting: Message May Have Been Left on Bullets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42328207 - Dec 2024 (6 comments)
Americans React to UnitedHealthcare CEO's Murder: 'My Empathy Is Out of Network' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42327272 - Dec 2024 (399 comments)
UnitedHealthcare CEO fatally shot in midtown Manhattan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42317968 - Dec 2024 (1 comment)
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42317604 - Dec 2024 (444 comments)
Why does this article remain flagged?
Ever wonder why only one country has these healthcare companies making such huge profits, and it's a country whose health outcomes are so much worse than its peers? It's not because their people are greedier than others, or more alienated, or individually less moral. It's because their health system is set up to reward that behaviour.
(And if you want zip code to be less of a predictive feature, maybe legalise building housing. Or let your data analysts talk honestly about race, either would work.)
Somebody is going to be appointed new CEO, and I think it's hard to deny that "if you produce too many bad health outcomes that reduces your own life expectancy" isn't a powerful motivator, no matter what the rest of the system rewards.
Policy change would be a better tool towards that end. But even the tiniest steps in that direction like Obamacare/ACA get heavy opposition.
In the unlikely event that they appointed a CEO who felt sufficiently at-risk to issue orders to improve health outcomes at the expense of profit, how much effect would those orders have? Most likely the people below him would just ignore that CEO, find ways to rationalise that he didn't mean what he was saying. If necessary the board would go around the CEO and talk to the layer below him directly.
Leaders misinterpret decades of bloodlessness as peace, and as license to exploit even harder.
But when the exploiters rig the legal system and the political system to deny people justice, eventually there will be blood.
This is how it has always been. The ancient cycles of exploitation and payback are not about to stop now.
Some fallout: https://www.axios.com/2024/12/05/blue-cross-blue-shield-anes...
Rather, it's an encouragement for people who are paid to build software and data systems that shape people's lives to take a moment to reflect on that impact.
Other insurance companies have already started taking down personal information about their leadership teams. I guess they're afraid of copy-cats.
But will it change anything related to their scummy business model, or will the state assert itself to maintain the status quo?
In my Glorious Future of Applied Handwaving, the system would trade some economies of scale for smaller organizations with more individual interactions. This involves some mechanism alongside the almighty dollar as an organizing mechanism. I don't know what that is.
When the Leaky Abstractions happen, the flooding would be less severe.
