I legitimately cannot name a single good thing that has happened within the system since Obamacare. The Dems just voted to give the president power to label any nonprofit as a terrorist group, and passed a bill to make school kids learn that Red China is the worst country in the world and 1,500,000,000 people suffer under communism. We will not get socialized anything. We will not get better healthcare. My sister studied eco science and has been trying to do something related to climate change ever since. The closest you can get to that is a job telling HOA's what trees are safe to be chopped down, or trimming hedges for rich assholes. I've got a job at an accessibility company making products for blind people and our products are trash and anyone who buys them is making a huge mistake. I want to get another job but it's a corporate wasteland and they're not hiring anyways. I'll believe working within the system is a possibility the moment any of the thousands of people trying to do that accomplish anything, but as far as I can tell every systemic problem (climate change, wealth inequality, etc.) is not only getting worse but speeding up in how fast it's getting worse. Don't have any answers and obviously killing a CEO doesn't change anything. But it was just and it was funny and gave millions of people a tiny win and I'm not sure there's much else a TESCREAL dipshit could hope to do
You don't even see it, do you. You are so far up your own ass, so high on your own supply, that there's nothing that will make you let go of your "might as well just go shoot a CEO" teddy bear. Here's where this beatdown started: "What could he have done to improve the lots of healthcare for those with less access?" This is balanced against the task of "shoot a CEO." I'ma give you some chunks of my life so you can see stuff that doesn't involve "shoot a CEO." - We now have a lobbyist on the payroll. Because inflation is up and payments are not which means to give our staff raises we go into the red. Which means the only way to improve sustainability is to improve reimbursement which means renegotiating every contract which means juice from the state legislature. Each and every one of those people is doing more to improve outcomes than shooting a CEO. - I rebalance our "should we provide insurance" equation about every four to six months. Obamacare is good enough that depending on our staff's demographic makeup it either costs us between 40 and 70k extra not to bone the ones who work the least. "HOW DARE YOU NOT PROVIDE INSURANCE!" you say, because you don't pay any attention to anything except that which outrages you. I don't provide insurance because I have a bunch of women working 15-25 hours a week and pulling down $70k a year but every four months or so, I try. Fucking doing that is more useful than "shoot a CEO." - My wife hardly practices anymore. Mostly she writes legislation these days, increasing access to low-impact healthcare facilities with lower expenses, greater outcomes and higher minority utilization than hospitals. Doing that is more useful than "shoot a CEO." But let's talk about the fucking CEO, shall we. - Because the first part of reimbursement is dealing with the local adjuster flak, and she has no power. We talk to her all the time, all dozens of her, spread across sixteen insurance companies, and none of their positions would change an iota if we shot their CEO. - The local adjuster flak has a regional adjuster flak and they have a little bit of power. We try to get through to them, but that mostly involves leaning on friends within the corporate world who self-insure because they have more power than we do. None of them talk to CEOs. - The regional adjuster flak is responsible to underwriting and they're insulated from everyone. They ultimately report to accounting, who couldn't give the first fuck about the CEO. - Accounting ultimately puts together the annual report. It's all actuarial bullshit, after all but that annual report is what juices the stock. Because ultimately, it all goes back to the fucking shareholder. And they'll care for fifteen minutes, but not really, because let me show you just how fucked that situation is. UnitedHealthcare total shares: 923m UnitedHealthcare institutional ownership: 952m UnitedHealthcare ETF ownership: 496 Just browsing that list, United is in my portfolio at least twice. Just knowing you have a job, I guarantee United is in your 401(k) somewhere. There's 70m people out there with 401(k)s and if they didn't own UnitedHealthcare their brokers would be malfeasant. We're talking about a corporation with 400,000 employees that's up 90% in the past five years. And yeah. A whole lot of 'em are at "fuck yeah shoot the CEO." But fuckin'A, dude, I even put it in stark terms of "things that are more useful than shooting the CEO" and you still reefed back to "bu bu bu bu the only solution is violence." And whenever you are engaged on the subject that supposedly has your ire, you immediately change the subject as to why it's all hopeless because apparently the democrats just voted on something completely different so why should you be allowed to let go of your smug, self-satisified cynicism. because you're spitting in the face of everyone who ever tried, asshole.
Like half your post is agreeing with me though- It all comes back to the shareholders, who are billionares who think themselves invincible. Or regular joes with 401ks - a dastardly scheme to trick normal people into siding with the evilest corporations. Yes my 401k has UHC in it. I tried investing nothing and lost a bunch to inflation. I tried investing in green energy and very specific companies whose products I believe in and that set is down around 60%. Now I go for total market and try to maintain some distance from that because truthfully I'd prefer if every company in the S&P went bust and it feels gross to be tied to their blood money. But hey I do it anyways because its free money (free = taken from people who aren't able to invest). And if I don't do it that changes nothing too. But I feel like such an asshole for holding ETFs so yes, thanks for rubbing that in. --------------------------------------------- I don't think those two votes are so unrelated. The only real solution to UHC is via laws (killing the CEO is obviously not a solution) and the Republicans are evil (obviously) and the democrats are too busy pushing through bills to kill peace movements and promote capitalism. But as a society I think we've lost the ability to do big things. Again, my sister wants to do things to protect forests and the environment. That is basically not a thing you can do. It's impossible. You can work around the problem and improve things in minor semi-related ways and keep the system running. That's not a bad thing to do, I guess. Like - giving minorities what seems to be a legitimately very good job, and doing so with compassion. That is obviously a very good thing. It's making a big difference in their lives, I'm sure. But it's not doing anything to stop private healthcare. And closer to me - I'd like to do something with technology, but there doesn't even seem to be a papering around the problem equivalent there. Basically the only thing that can be done is to work for some big company or worse: a wannabe-big-company that will do anything to grow. There's a few projects that I like, Genode, Itch.io, Craigslist, Sandstorm, but those are tiny groups that are not hiring. By and large whenever software changes it's to make my life worse. I'm never moving to Windows 11. I would like to do something useful, to make elegant and wonderful products that empower real people. That's not even a 'change the world', 'topple power structures', 'end the evil empire' type ask. But as far as I can tell, it's essentially impossible too. -------------------------------------------------------------------- I'll ask this instead: Do you see any path towards single payer healthcare / medicare for all? Is there anything an individual can do to weaken the power of billionaires and shareholders?
ALL of my post is saying "fukkit let's shoot a CEO is counterproductive" and you can't seem to get out of your own way to hear that the threshold for change is emphatically NOT "shooting people." Look, bitch. You know what I do to feel better? I go pick up trash. I walk my neighborhood with an ikea bag and a grabber. 'cuz you know what? It's easy, it's free, and it's making the world a better place. Does the trash stay picked up? it does not. Does it solve the problem of trash? It does not. Does it discourage people from throwing shit out their window as they drive by? Negative. But it's a positive step, in the right direction, that improves things for everybody. I guess I could go shoot a CEO instead but then I couldn't pick up trash anymore. Do you see any path towards single payer healthcare / medicare for all? Would you fucking listen if I did? Because I've talked myself blue in the face about single payer. Fuckin' the comment you're replying to is about single payer - our biggest leverage is "you reimburse us less than medicaid you monsters" and the best way to leverage that is to improve medicaid payouts. I'm profitable in a single payer ecosystem, that's one reason we seek out medicaid. You're three comments deep in what I'm up to, as an individual, but you're too busy talking past me so you can keep your pessimism close to your heart. Yep, nothing to do but go shoot a CEO. If your threshold is "shoot a CEO" then "go volunteer for The Nature Conservancy" or some shit is hella below that. You see that, right? You see that there's a whole spectrum of shit that can be done this side of "shoot a CEO?"I'll ask this instead:
Again, my sister wants to do things to protect forests and the environment. That is basically not a thing you can do.
I really don't get why you don't see shooting a CEO as 'doing something' It's done more to punish that guy in specific than congress has done or will do. It's gotten more people talking about regulation than there's been in a decade. When they killed Bin Laden, people didn't ask why they didn't work from inside Al Qaeda to slowly reform them. They shoot peace activists and protestors and labor organizers because it works. When people are dead they stop doing things and the people around them get scared and sometimes change their behavior. We all protested for months to cut police budgets and after all that, I don't even know if the guy went to jail. It accomplished nothing. This was something. A concrete action happened. Justice was served. It didn't fix the system, but to be honest I see America collapsing before we get single payer and this guy got us a Win while Biden was giving corporations another trillion dollars.
This is one of the stupidest things I have ever read bin Laden was the spiritual leader of an organization dedicated to global jihad he had a direct line of tutelage to Hassan al-Banna millions of extremists hung on his every missive Brian Thompson, on the other hand, existed within a public corporation with officers, advisors, investors and Robert's Rules of Order. He'd been voted CEO by a board of directors in 2021. Prior to that he'd been in charge of United's government contracts (medicare, medicaid, VA) for fifteen years where - lemme speak from experience here - he was at the top of an organization that's no better or worse than the other seven companies we deal with that administrate Medicaid. But again - you are so far up your own ass that shooting one of a dozen functionaries heading public corporations that you own stock in is somehow as virtuous as taking out the guy who orchestrated 9/11. You're going to do me a favor. You're going to step away from the keyboard, you're going to walk into the bathroom, you're going to look at yourself in the mirror. You're going to make eye contact with yourself, so that you're really seeing yourself, and you're going to say "the assassination of an insurance CEO is every bit as virtuous and justified as the assassination of Osama bin Laden." Then you're going to report back. How do you feel? Answer carefully because this might very well be the last exchange we ever have.When they killed Bin Laden, people didn't ask why they didn't work from inside Al Qaeda to slowly reform them.
Look, you caught me - I wont say that Brian Thompson is personally more evil or more of a leader or more valuable a target than Osama. But I am willing to say that UHC and Private Insurance in general has done more harm than Al-Quaeda. Obviously the board is just going to replace him with another guy that does the same thing. Maybe that guy will remember that he too, is mortal. Something billionares seem to forget. I'm pretty sure you agree that the point of protests isnt to stand around in a large group so that people will look on and see 'wow, if I do this thirty thousand people will be very sad'. The point is that these people WILL CAUSE PROBLEMS. And it seems like it's been pretty internalized lately that this just isn't the case, you just arrest the leaders and the group disperses eventually and the world moves on like normal. So fine, obviously this assassination won't end up affecting things as much as Osama and the guy deserved it way less than Osama (but crucially, did deserve it some). If you can't see why it at least makes some sense though I don't know what to tell you. I hope that's enough of a compromise, I always like reading your posts and I promise you I do give everything you write a lot of consideration. But if not, that's OK I can leave the site if I'm not wanted here. It's pretty much just you and Am_U left and I don't want to be somewhere I'm not welcome.
I wanted you to pause for long enough to hold one of your arguments up to the light and decide for yourself whether it was one that you naturally wanted to make, or whether your internal feelings were getting away with your reason. I don't have the time or patience to write this today but I'm going to. Because I wouldn't shout until I was blue in the face if it didn't matter. And because I see something really common - hang on there's a graphic for that. It's from here, BTW. The first thing I want you to notice is that everyone's expectations are wildly out of line with reality. We've all been sold a massive bill of goods. Obviously the younger you are the worse it is - millennials make about 2/3rds that average salary and GenZ makes half (the average GenXer makes $126k as of 2022). The next thing I want you to realize is that those expectations are choices. The younger you are in America, the more you're choosing to be dissatisfied. We have a patient. She's on medicaid. She needed some tests run that aren't available to be scheduled in the next six months. So the neurologist we sent her to said "just go to the emergency room and hand them this note." THAT is a protest. She did one better, though - she lost her car keys and didn't feel like looking for them so she called an ambulance. If she were insured? It prolly woulda cost her about $25k. But she isn't so for her it was free. Now THAT is a protest. She'd probably much rather not have to deal with labs at all. Should millennials be satisfied at $40k a year? Abso-fucking-lutely not. But by assigning a mental goal of "I won't feel successful until I have five million dollars in assets" they're guaranteeing they'll never feel successful. Much like you and your sister: you've set the metric for success at "overturn the system" and you're salty that it's out of reach. We're here because I said "just another TESCREAL dipshit" and what you said next was remarkable: You didn't even begin to investigate the situation before shooting your mouth off. You are so deep in your "nothing can be done" frame of mind that an Ivy League scion of a multimillionaire family that owns a half dozen medical facilities is justified in shooting a bitch. your level of satisfaction is thoroughly unattainable, so you wallow in helplessness. Now in the first place, don't fucking feed the accelerationists. This is you and Steve Bannon, nodding and stroking your chins in sync. 'member Fight Club and how the hare-brained scheme was to take down the credit bureaus? There's a lot of air between "take down a credit bureau" and "shoot the CEO of a credit bureau" and you know it but as penance watch a trailer: You know at a cellular level that the British East India Company was terrible. You have absolutely no idea who the kings were during their heyday and you don't even know how to look up who their executives were, though. So poof. You've got a time machine. You want to make the world a better place. Is your first thought "I'ma go shoot the CEO of the British East India Company?" Because corporations, since 1600, have been about absolving individuals of guilt through collective action and restricting individuals of morality through collective restriction. Maybe Walter Raleigh? Except naaah if it wasn't him it woulda been some other schlub, just following orders, because a bunch of board members wanted the Portuguese plundered and the Irish suppressed. Brian Thompson done got got and has the world changed? But what really makes me offended is that you've convinced yourself that there's no point in doing anything short of throwing your life away and I've been out here, dozens of hours a week for like eight years now, managing a healthcare clinic that operates largely for the betterment of minorities. We fight insurance companies every.goddamn.day and you don't even realize how offensive it is for you to argue that what we're doing is pointless. You're so in love with your hopeless adolescent male fantasy of nihilistic destruction that you don't give a fuck about spitting in the face of people who are actually doing something. Now - I'm not going to argue there was no point to capping Brian Thompson. For one thing, this sort of thing gains credibility when there's violence behind it. Terrorism? Mos def. A novel way to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the system? Also that. And see, putting up a poster doesn't involve throwing your life away. Because here's the real deal, dude. Ours is a society of desperate inequality and that gets worse more often than it gets better, at least in my lifetime. And I appreciate desperate times for desperate measures. But instead of going "poof here's a time machine" I go "poof you have an ivy league degree, a state senator for a cousin and grandparents who own two country clubs and a chain of healthcare facilities what are you going to do to improve the future" and you go And fuck off, man. You can't even show me the courtesy of stopping to think before running your mouth. I deserve better. So does everyone you talk to. The purpose of discussion isn't to profess your ill-conceived emotional positions it's to dialogue and you aren't even trying to hear. It's far more important to you to wail about how hopeless everything is so that you don't have to fucking do something about it.
What could he have done to improve the lots of healthcare for those with less access?
What could he have done to improve the lots of healthcare for those with less access?
I think this will be my last post on Hubski regardless, but I figured since you were kind enough to post a long thoughtful reply that you at least deserved a response. I swear to god, everything I post here I do so because I thought it would be appreciated by either you or am_u. But even with things I post specifically for you its clear I'm only making you upset, and it genuinely feels awful. And it extra sucks because I'm pretty sure we pretty much completely agree? Or at least that's the takeaway I get so I think maybe its just that I'm bad at communicating but I think it's pretty clear that we share a ton of the same values and have similar hopes for the world. So I'm sorry again for disappointing you and I really do hope things go your way. Going through point by point: This is awesome and totally majorly improved this person's life. I think that if taking down private healthcare couldn't be done with a president and a supermajority in congress elected on the promise of taking down private healthcare, that I'm pretty justified in saying that it can't be done. I think if anything, politically we are farther from this than we've been in my lifetime, which is why I bring up the stupid things the Dems are doing as opposed to fighting private healthcare. This was the only point I was trying to make. So we totally agree, though I clearly framed it in annoying way. (I don't get what you mean by the poster, though? A poster wouldn't even make local news) I think this isn't quite accelerationism. If I understand them correctly they would work to make healthcare worse and more unaffordable to break down society or something. It's seems obviously cope for stuff that would happen anyways. And to be clear - I hope there is not a huge spree of similar things happening, to the point that the gov't, to protect the citizens it cares about most, puts up martial law or makes us more of a police state. I don't think the left is ready to capitalize on any sort of real conflict. I think this assassination was a fun treat that doesn't do a heck of a lot but is silly to be opposed to. This was the other half of my point. Again, I feel like we completely agree, just you're more upbeat about it. I say that the systems never going to change no matter what and the best we can do is paper around the issues, and you say that you can make a difference in the lives of those around you within the system and I think both are right and neither one's in conflict. Promise this wasn't my intent but again clearly I'm doing something wrong and the first thing I'll do is stop diggingWe have a patient. She's on medicaid. She needed some tests run that aren't available to be scheduled in the next six months. So the neurologist we sent her to said "just go to the emergency room and hand them this note." THAT is a protest. She did one better, though - she lost her car keys and didn't feel like looking for them so she called an ambulance. If she were insured? It prolly woulda cost her about $25k. But she isn't so for her it was free. Now THAT is a protest.
You didn't even begin to investigate the situation before shooting your mouth off. You are so deep in your "nothing can be done" frame of mind that an Ivy League scion of a multimillionaire family that owns a half dozen medical facilities is justified in shooting a bitch. your level of satisfaction is thoroughly unattainable, so you wallow in helplessness.
Is your first thought "I'ma go shoot the CEO of the British East India Company?"
If I had a time machine and was sent to destroy the British East India company I honestly don't know what the hell I would do. I don't think I possibly could. You know as much as me that one person acting alone making massive change is Marvel nonsense. I do think it's a interesting this was the example you picked though, since what little I know from history I'm pretty sure what did end up taking it down was violent revolts in every colony.Now - I'm not going to argue there was no point to capping Brian Thompson. For one thing, this sort of thing gains credibility when there's violence behind it. Terrorism? Mos def. A novel way to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the system? Also that. And see, putting up a poster doesn't involve throwing your life away.
Now in the first place, don't fucking feed the accelerationists. This is you and Steve Bannon, nodding and stroking your chins in sync.
Ours is a society of desperate inequality and that gets worse more often than it gets better, at least in my lifetime.
And fuck off, man. You can't even show me the courtesy of stopping to think before running your mouth. I deserve better. So does everyone you talk to. The purpose of discussion isn't to profess your ill-conceived emotional positions it's to dialogue and you aren't even trying to hear. It's far more important to you to wail about how hopeless everything is so that you don't have to fucking do something about it.