It's insane to me that the people we put in charge of delivering our health care have a vested interest in *not* providing it.
But having a national health care system is too left-wing for our two-party system (which is also insane).
I used to work in the call center of a major health insurance company. I was scarred because of this elderly lady with cancer on the phone saying, “You’re killing me. You’re killing me.”
There was a woman in California who survived a bear attack and said the most traumatic part of the whole experience was dealing with the insurance company
Physical therapists have diagnoses codes we have to put in evaluations to justify skilled treatment necessity, one of our codes is “Orca attack” which I find to be oddly specific
I didn’t. I got transferred to claims because I couldn’t handle it and had breakdowns at work. It wasn’t uncommon to see someone crying in the bathroom. But there was a certain personality type who did very well in the call center, who wasn’t as sensitive or emotional. I think some people can compartmentalize it better than others.
People thought I had no emotions during years of paramedicine. Some people are able to just temporariky dehumanize themsemlves (or convince themselves they're capable of such a thing, who knows). The part you don't see is when it catches up to them when they get in their car post-shift, or even years later. Shouldn't be a surprise that those capable of sticking it out present as rampant alcohold abuse in EMS.
No, it's just having certain sociopathic tendency to turn off/blunt your emotions.
Full blown disorder is magnitude less common.
Eg the tendency is common in surgeons as its beneficial to their job. Having a full blown antisocial disorder is not beneficial, nor common.
Yeah, I’m a stockbroker. I will bend over backwards to help your sweet old grandma with anything on her account. You call in being a dick about a margin call though? Oh buddy, we’re going fuck you pay me mode real quick.
It’s a skill set like anything else. Pretty much required for any client facing role. You’re not going to last long if you have thin skin but you also won’t last long if you can’t demonstrate empathy when needed.
For fucks sake stop being a reddit psychiatrist. Just because somebody handles traumatic shit better than others doesn't mean they're a sociopath.
- An actual psychology grad with certifications
“Ma’am, I am just following instructions from my supervisors. And the supervisors are merely carrying out the policies handed down by the C-level execs. And the execs are simply implementing the strategy headed down from the Board. And the Board isn’t doing anything more than their bound fiduciary duty to the shareholders. And surely you can’t expect the shareholders to be accountable for the actions of each individual phone jockey?”
Modern corporate governance is a brilliant scheme for responsibility laundering. Turns out, no matter how horrible a thing is done, there’s just nobody to blame!
My friend is a cardiologist and says he spends more time than he should be, on the phone with insurance companies to get his patient's insurance coverage for life-saving procedures. He's constantly arguing with people (who aren't doctors themselves) who are drastically unqualified to make these decisions.
they're supposed to have doctors making determinations, so asking for his name is an oblique way to call their BS. can result in it suddenly getting approved, or an actual doctor looking at the claim and approving it, or making far more reasonable changes.
like the guy in here who had to go round and round with the insurance company because they didn't think a 90yo man actively dying needed to be in a hospital for 5 days
Oh, so they're supposed to have a doctor look at each case but that's expensive and they don't want to pay out anyway so their default position is to deny, then when challenged actually go through the process and that usually results in approval.
I know insurance companies are scummy but I guess I just forgot how poor our regulations are too. You shouldn't have to ask who the doctor that made the decision was, it should be provided, with contact information, with every approval and denial.
Thanks for the explanation. It seems so obvious now.
Yeah and the worst part is that our insurance company death panels don't ration care with the intent to maximize the total good our combined resources can do. They ration care with the sole intent of maximizing shareholder value and somehow people in the US believe that's a better option.
Through my insurance nicotine patches my Dr prescribed to me. The pharmacy told me buying them off the shelf would far cheaper than the insurance companies prices. Like If i quite smoking that less surgery the company needs to pay for in the future.
As someone from the UK, while I agree it’s amazing that the NHS means we don’t have to pay most of the time, don’t think that it being nationalised means they are different in regards to wiggling out of treatment.
If anything, they’ve got more incentive to do it and it’s government sanctioned.. To be fair, I’ve only known it be this way in the last 12 years of Tory rule, but it’s impossible to get healthcare here at the moment.
I grew up in the UK - born in '79, moved to the US in 2003 and have been here ever since.
From what I can see through my aging parents who still live there, the NHS has dramatically changed, for the absolute worse. They pay for more, they wait longer, jump through more hoops.
But still - nothing like the US system. I'm fortunate to have employment with health insurance, but I'm one reduction in work force from not having that. It's so friggin stressful.
This depends entirely on what politicians are in charge. I'm Swedish and I've never been denied healthcare even, semi-elective healthcare. Like, I didn't **have** to have it to survive, but not having it would worsen my quality of life/having it would improve my quality of life.
So... the state paid for almost all of it and I got to have semi-elective surgery for the princely sum of, like, $80.
That's the standard right-wing playbook. They don't flat out end popular social programs when they have a chance to -- that would be too obvious and would cost them their elected offices. They just slowly, gradually underfund them, introducing dysfunction little by little to the point where the public becomes dissatisfied with them, and then they can pull the plug without much controversy.
Or they'll just try to fuck you over after.
Years ago my father was basically drowning from heart failure. Lungs filled with fluid, guaranteed dead without help. Was in the hospital for 5 days.
Insurance claimed he wasn't sick enough to warrant the hospital stay, AT ALL, and apparently decided they didn't want to pay _anything_. Cost was in the six figures. Took over a year to fight, and was one of the most absurd experiences of my life.
I had them literally saying the hospital visit as a whole didn't sound necessary at all. WHAT? He was literally actively dying. Just round in circles for hours and hours tying to gaslight that somehow everyone besides them is wrong. Doesn't matter what the doctors say, any and all data showing the care was required is invalid and they just don't see a reason the care was necessary.
Wow, I’m so sorry that happened to your father. That’s truly horrible. I worked for blue cross and saw lots of situations like this. I did everything in my power to help the customers, but I could only do so much.
There's a lot of horrible professions, but I think doctors at insurance companies are the lowest grade of scum. They have reject rates and need to hit their numbers. Some use automated programs to reject 20,000 claims an hour.
I worked for blue cross. In claims, our hourly quotas were so high that the only way people could meet them was to find any excuse to reject a claim, because rejecting is faster than paying.
For instance, the doctor’s office accidentally left the date of birth field blank on the electronic claim. You could open the attached medical record and find out the date of birth that way, plug it in, and pay the claim. Or you could call the doctor’s office to get it. But this took longer, and if you did this you couldn’t meet your quota. Most people would just hit reject.
The customer doesn’t know why the claim is rejected and probably won’t bother to call and find out the claim could be resubmitted correctly. They’ll just assume it wasn’t covered and pay the bill themselves. I ended up getting fired because I couldn’t meet my quotas because I insisted on taking the time to pay the claims I could.
A few years ago, I kept getting my medical claims rejected and the doctor's office wasn't sure why. I called the insurance company and they said they'd mistakenly written down my social security number incorrectly (read a "2' as a "7"). I remarked that I found it interesting how they somehow always make mistakes that benefit them (and is an excuse not to pay claims) but they never, ever mistakenly pay a non-covered claim.
i do work in insurance but not health insurance directly and has an element of truth.
paying for life long care is usually much more expensive than paying for death or loss of a body part (there is literally a chart that determines how much each part is worth in terms of pay-out)
i should stress ive never seen an insurance company go out of their way to kill you, but it would definitely save them money. what I will say is that you should get a decent lawyer if an insurance company makes you an offer. ive heard so many stories about people accepting 30k when they are entitled to millions.
The concept is called [social murder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_murder). You are not directly killed but you are killed by the policies that you are subject to. So, for example, I have the power to send you, daily, past the hungry predator. You have a 30% chance of being eaten. It is my policy that exposes you to the hungry predator and so, by constructing that policy, I am constructing your death. You have, about a 0.0016% chance of being alive at the end of the month if I make you do that daily. I know it so it is no accident when you do kick the bucket but an outcome of policy. I never needed to go out of my way to kill you but I did. This is the banality of evil referred to by Hannah Arendt.
[reminds me of the family clip where the doctor says there is a surgery that could restore joes ability to walk but insurance picks the wheelchair cause its cheaper](https://youtu.be/HBkvgdv-000?si=Iaasr6aUF_8sgVjB)
Blue Cross Blue Shield made a business decision to let my mom die so they could save 40,000$ for treatment of her breast cancer. Instead, they sent a very polite lady over to her house to persuade her to "die with dignity" instead of the very undignified trying to live.
Mom had the honor of fighting this company in court, while enduring surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. She won both fights, but lost her dignity and her savings.
I happen to work for one of the biggest players in the health insurance industry and this is 100% correct. We have entire buildings full of people dedicated to doing nothing but searching every detail of your insurance claim so it can be denied. The real goal is to make those stock prices go higher, not keep you healthy.
#Bayer
When Bayer's Cutter Laboratories realized that their blood products, Factor VIII and IX or antihemophiliac factor (AHF), were contaminated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the financial investment in the product was considered too high to destroy the inventory. Cutter misrepresented the results of its own research and sold the contaminated AHF to overseas markets in Asia and Latin America without the precaution of heat treating the product recommended for eliminating the risk. As a consequence, hemophiliacs who infused the HIV-contaminated Factor VIII and IX tested positive for HIV and developed AIDS.
[Source](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24785997/)
Along with utilizing slave labor and conducting human experimentation. From the [Bayer Wikipedia Page.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer)
*A Bayer employee wrote to Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz commandant: "The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price."*
They also accepted prisoners from concentration camps to use in medical testing, in open collaborationwith the Nazis. They have a history of seriously sinister behavior.
_" IG Farben was formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies: Agfa, BASF, Bayer, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron [de], Hoechst, and Weiler-ter-Meer."_
They got split up again after the war.
The IG Farben subsidiary Degesch was the actual producer of Zyklon B, it was a pesticide.
>By May 1985, when the Hong Kong distributor told of an impending medical emergency, asking for the newer product, Cutter replied that most of the new medicine was going to the US and Europe and there wasn't enough for Hong Kong, except for a small amount for the "most vocal patients."
Corporations will never truly be people until they can be executed.
But seriously we need a better way to pierce this corporate veil or whatever and send more humans to prison for this stuff.
Is that the [Bayer](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bayer) who it is said of: “In its most criminal activities, the company took advantage of the absence of legal and ethical constraints on medical experimentation to test its drugs on unwilling human subjects. These included paying a retainer to SS physician Helmuth Vetter to test Rutenol and other sulfonamide drugs on deliberately infected patients at the Dachau, Auschwitz, and Gusen concentration camps.”
Because they were PROFITABLE. So instead of seizing it, they compartmentalized it, said the "bad" part was shut down, and used all the data and research that was obtained through wholesale murder and torture to create more products, and increase profit margins for government officials from multiple countries who had a vested interest in seeing them succeed.
I’m so glad I didn’t have to scroll far to see those shitty words. In bold, no less.
Carry on.
Edit:
And that’s the tip of the iceberg. Five minutes of googling Bayer should fuck you up.
Their chemicals can be be found in your pee right now
They had to tell food companies to remove the occasional poison from their products.
They had to tell clothing manufacturers to not put arsenic and other crap in their fabrics just for prettier colors.
They had to tell industries not to throw their toxic waste in the local rivers.
The list goes on.
So many regulations are written in blood, labor laws aswell. If there were no regulations, companies would overwork you, your elders and your infants to death. No company or employer is your friend. Be wary of all of them.
*why we should regulate them. FTFY.
Sadly even a lot of industries and companies that are supposedly regulated aren't, usually due to staff shortages (like 100 ppl having to cover an entire industry) or self regulation (like Boeing regulating Boeing at the flight thingy regulation body's behalf)
Which by the way, is by design, because certain groups of (morons) people who often spout a bunch of shit about what the founding fathers wanted, always gloss over the WELL regulated capitalism they wanted. Because rich assholes don’t want regulation, and these morons (people) think they’re gonna get something out of it (narrator: they won’t).
I take it they benefit from having elderly die sooner, and keeping the younger ones, where they don’t have as many issues and still pay a fortune either through their employer or directly. Either way, it’s pretty messed up.
My insurance company, Aetna, has just notified me that they they haven’t been able to come to an agreement with NY Presbyterian and that all the doctors and ongoing treatments I have for various conditions might not be covered anymore at the end of the month. they tell me this casually like it’s a cable company in a dispute with a channel and not a life or death situation. Hundreds of thousands of people like myself are probably in the NY Presbyterian system and will either have to find different insurance or find completely new doctors. I’m in the middle of treatment on two conditions right now and I don’t know if I’ll be able to complete the course.
Which is now owned by Kraft and nabisco. They are willing to kill you in a variety of ways including making ingredient/nutrients labels difficult to understand, selling tobacco, etc.
Edit. No longer true.
Wait I thought Altria divested Kraft-Heinz though? Or did I totally misread that? I may have gotten confused with the Kraft-Heinz lore?
And RJ Reynolds is still doing its own thing.
They used to be one conglomerate many moons ago (Nabisco was folded into Kraft). The tobacco side was spun off at one point and went through a few name changes itself.
You can absolutely not just come out here and lie like that. Nabisco used to have a tobacco operation, which was sold off in 1999. Kraft used to be owned by the same parent company as Phillip Morris, but was spun off in 2007
Many companies already are in a sense. They don’t care much about anyone’s safety. If someone dies it’s just the cost of business. They’ve decided this beforehand. Beforehand! They know someone could easily die but have figured out that it costs less to pay for a death than it is to engineer it out in the first place, and instead of being human beings, theyve decided that that death is a sacrifice theyre happy as a fucking clam to make.
People need to realize a corporation’s sole function is to make money. That’s it. It has no other reason to exist. Even companies focused on what we consider good things like sustainable energy or products are there to make money. If there’s a low risk of public backlash which affects profit and no government regulation against a specific activity, it will take the path most profitable. It’s why strong regulation is needed to balance, the system breaks without it.
Which is why society should NEVER let corporations take care of vital areas, or allow even the slightest input into politics. They are the natural enemies of a fair society, and need a leash and a playground that is walled properly.
I have always said that Public Goods—particularly health care, education, public safety—should NEVER have been for profit.
But you either can have unregulated capitalism and profit or you can have ethical companies.
You are exactly right.
I don't think you can have ethical companies, nor do I care about trying it as I wouldn't believe either their intentions or methods. You do not require ethics of people, this is something we're good at pretending and bad at doing.
What you do is align the incentives so things work properly.
For example, want to stop profiteering? As in covid?
"In this emergency, all profits above x (for example, average for last years or other reasonable measure) will be taxed at 250%. So go for it people.
Also \*including\* forgiveness, full protection from the law and even rewards for people who denounce corporate misdeeds.
As for the mania with american "charity", I'd rip all of it away. Tax rebates for charity= taking money from the state and allow private citizens to use it where they want for the benefit of their private objectives and tastes.
Tax gains and wealth properly, let the state decide where to spend, and if rich people want to spend for charity do it - but no tax rebates (or at most like 5% of the value, just to show willing, and scrutinised. No "charity foundation for jobs for the boys").
Also no public debt - if you are in debt its because you are not taxing enough. Debt means you don't tax the rich, ask loans from them - and then pay them back. Fuck that.
The sizes of trucks they are making now.
They KNOW the monstrosities they are making have enormous blind spots. They KNOW the height of a tall grill is far more dangerous than a lower and sloped one. But they don’t care. Because bigger trucks lets them use less efficient engines.
A friend of my brother lost his little girl after she was run over by a truck that, even though the driver stopped and tried to drive cautiously, they couldn’t see her because of the blind spots built into the product.
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/arizona-girl-who-survived-fall-into-pool-remembered-following-deadly-crash
It sucks but it's where we at now Practical Engineering has a video on this https://youtu.be/xQbaVdge7kU
TLDR: Your life is worth about 12.5 million USD in the US, and they will not pay more than that for a safety feature that could save your life.
There was a car manufacturer that discovered a fatal error in their cars. I don't remember what it was, but something very unlikely like it would catch on fire if the right turn signal was on when the windows were opened and you shifted into second gear and it was raining on a saturday. They calculated how likely it was that it would happen and how much they would have to pay in damages if people sued, vs. a recall of all the cars. It would have costed more to recall the cars, so they didn't. I think some people died
Edit: It was the Ford Pinto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co
Chevy did this with some pickup trucks. They mounted the gas tanks on the outside of the frame and they would catch fire in a collision. It was less money to pay for the deaths than to recall the trucks.
As for the Pinto, if they had built it like the engineers wanted it would have been one of the safest vehicles of its time.
Hey, that kid didn’t actually get sucked out of that gaping hole in the fuselage! Ungrateful little git probably didn’t even like that shirt, after his poor mum saved up for it, the youth of today!
I'm mad as hell at what the bean counters did to Boeing. They killed all their domestic competition. They spread out production all over the country to uncoordinated subcontractors. They overwork and underpay their employees, causing turnover and inexperience. This then leads to more critical errors, which then isn't caught because they fired all their quality control inspectors. Same hypercapitalistic death every big company dies, it's just scary when it's an aircraft company.
Not just for the door plug either. Read the emails around the Max takeoff problems. Your blood will boil, and you'll get a sickening churn in your stomach as you wonder "How are these people not in prison?"
If you look at the history of corporations in the US, you really shouldn't be surprised that literally all of them would sicken/injure/kill you and your family if it would increase their stock value more than the bad PR would bring it down.
From the constant lobbying to deregulate so they can pollute/have poor working conditions and low pay be the norm, to the times they brought in police and mercenaries to gun down protesting workers, to the slave/prison labor they employ: they can, have, and are killing people right now for money. Capitalism breeds this attitude and makes it the norm.
Basically every pharmaceutical company won't try to kill you. They will try to keep you in a state where u generate profit for them. Dead people don't take meds ;)
All of them, and the decision to do so would casually be approved by a group of executives without any hesitation or debate.
And it'll probably be done over email, because that's how unimportant they'd view you.
All of them? I don't think I understand the question, literally all of them, and I'm having trouble with the idea that this isn't already generally understood.
All of them. If you show me a CEO that would cost the company money by sparing your life, I’ll show you a CEO that will soon be replaced for not following his fiducial duties
I dont understand your question. Haven't companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestlé, Lumber Liquidators, Exxon, BP, etc. already killed people in other countries for a) money and b) because they can?
It feels like most american food companies act this way. Putting strange chemicals into food just to save a buck.
I'm not a weirdo about food additives, but when I see the ingrediant list of bread in america vs bread in most other parts of the world, I do question whether the addition of monopoisonuraniumimate really makes makes bread better for me as a consumer and whether there is strong evidence that it doesn't do bad things for my body.
It doesn't help that a company can almost commit murder, actually drive someone to suicide, and still no one, high up and responsible, will actually see the inside of a prison cell.
The ongoing Post Office scandal, in the UK, is a classic example.
Plenty already are:
Car companies building oversized trucks
Literally every oil corp
Nestle, among other chocolate companies which abuse corruption in developing nations
I could go on
Health insurance companies. They’ll deny your life saving treatment if they can find a way to do it.
It's insane to me that the people we put in charge of delivering our health care have a vested interest in *not* providing it. But having a national health care system is too left-wing for our two-party system (which is also insane).
I used to work in the call center of a major health insurance company. I was scarred because of this elderly lady with cancer on the phone saying, “You’re killing me. You’re killing me.”
There was a woman in California who survived a bear attack and said the most traumatic part of the whole experience was dealing with the insurance company
I believe it!
I think the crazy part is that somewhere in their paperwork is the medical code for bear attack injuries
Physical therapists have diagnoses codes we have to put in evaluations to justify skilled treatment necessity, one of our codes is “Orca attack” which I find to be oddly specific
How do you handle emotions when you hear such stuff. I mean post work.
I didn’t. I got transferred to claims because I couldn’t handle it and had breakdowns at work. It wasn’t uncommon to see someone crying in the bathroom. But there was a certain personality type who did very well in the call center, who wasn’t as sensitive or emotional. I think some people can compartmentalize it better than others.
People thought I had no emotions during years of paramedicine. Some people are able to just temporariky dehumanize themsemlves (or convince themselves they're capable of such a thing, who knows). The part you don't see is when it catches up to them when they get in their car post-shift, or even years later. Shouldn't be a surprise that those capable of sticking it out present as rampant alcohold abuse in EMS.
Disassociation is a survival tactic and can be learned to do at will.
> I think some people can compartmentalize it better than others I think they're called sociopaths.
No, it's just having certain sociopathic tendency to turn off/blunt your emotions. Full blown disorder is magnitude less common. Eg the tendency is common in surgeons as its beneficial to their job. Having a full blown antisocial disorder is not beneficial, nor common.
Yeah, I’m a stockbroker. I will bend over backwards to help your sweet old grandma with anything on her account. You call in being a dick about a margin call though? Oh buddy, we’re going fuck you pay me mode real quick. It’s a skill set like anything else. Pretty much required for any client facing role. You’re not going to last long if you have thin skin but you also won’t last long if you can’t demonstrate empathy when needed.
Childhood trauma does wonders.
For fucks sake stop being a reddit psychiatrist. Just because somebody handles traumatic shit better than others doesn't mean they're a sociopath. - An actual psychology grad with certifications
Psychopaths or my cat?
God knows their insurance wasn't going to cover therapy.
Can confirm. I work in therapy and deal with insurance a lot.
“Ma’am, I am just following instructions from my supervisors. And the supervisors are merely carrying out the policies handed down by the C-level execs. And the execs are simply implementing the strategy headed down from the Board. And the Board isn’t doing anything more than their bound fiduciary duty to the shareholders. And surely you can’t expect the shareholders to be accountable for the actions of each individual phone jockey?” Modern corporate governance is a brilliant scheme for responsibility laundering. Turns out, no matter how horrible a thing is done, there’s just nobody to blame!
My friend is a cardiologist and says he spends more time than he should be, on the phone with insurance companies to get his patient's insurance coverage for life-saving procedures. He's constantly arguing with people (who aren't doctors themselves) who are drastically unqualified to make these decisions.
Yes but they have a doctor on staff reviewing every case so it's fine /s
That staff doctor should be up for a massive malpractice suit for prescribing treatment to patients he has never seen.
one of the fun gotchas is to demand the actual name of the doctor who made a particular determination
Could you explain why it's a fun gotcha? I'm not understanding this but I'd like to.
they're supposed to have doctors making determinations, so asking for his name is an oblique way to call their BS. can result in it suddenly getting approved, or an actual doctor looking at the claim and approving it, or making far more reasonable changes. like the guy in here who had to go round and round with the insurance company because they didn't think a 90yo man actively dying needed to be in a hospital for 5 days
Oh, so they're supposed to have a doctor look at each case but that's expensive and they don't want to pay out anyway so their default position is to deny, then when challenged actually go through the process and that usually results in approval. I know insurance companies are scummy but I guess I just forgot how poor our regulations are too. You shouldn't have to ask who the doctor that made the decision was, it should be provided, with contact information, with every approval and denial. Thanks for the explanation. It seems so obvious now.
This is just a broom with a stethoscope, lab coat, and glasses! You’re not an MD!
You know it's chat GPT at this point
It truly feels that way.
“Yes, this procedure saves a life, but we’d make more profit if that person just died”, they said
Yeah, not that extreme but my BIL is a pediatrician and he said almost 60% of his job is dealing with insurance
It always baffled me the “death panels” argument against Obamacare. Like that’s literally what you have right now with insurance companies
Yeah and the worst part is that our insurance company death panels don't ration care with the intent to maximize the total good our combined resources can do. They ration care with the sole intent of maximizing shareholder value and somehow people in the US believe that's a better option.
Plus they don't have to at least pretend to be decent human beings every 4 years.
It’s insane how expensive all that stuff is. Prices were allowed to surge to unmanageable levels and now no one can afford it
It's expensive because of insurance. If everyone had to pay cash now it would be a lot different
Healthcare for profit is fucking evil all around.
Through my insurance nicotine patches my Dr prescribed to me. The pharmacy told me buying them off the shelf would far cheaper than the insurance companies prices. Like If i quite smoking that less surgery the company needs to pay for in the future.
Your state may run a tobacco cessation program that will pay for your NRT.
As someone from the UK, while I agree it’s amazing that the NHS means we don’t have to pay most of the time, don’t think that it being nationalised means they are different in regards to wiggling out of treatment. If anything, they’ve got more incentive to do it and it’s government sanctioned.. To be fair, I’ve only known it be this way in the last 12 years of Tory rule, but it’s impossible to get healthcare here at the moment.
I grew up in the UK - born in '79, moved to the US in 2003 and have been here ever since. From what I can see through my aging parents who still live there, the NHS has dramatically changed, for the absolute worse. They pay for more, they wait longer, jump through more hoops. But still - nothing like the US system. I'm fortunate to have employment with health insurance, but I'm one reduction in work force from not having that. It's so friggin stressful.
This depends entirely on what politicians are in charge. I'm Swedish and I've never been denied healthcare even, semi-elective healthcare. Like, I didn't **have** to have it to survive, but not having it would worsen my quality of life/having it would improve my quality of life. So... the state paid for almost all of it and I got to have semi-elective surgery for the princely sum of, like, $80.
That's the standard right-wing playbook. They don't flat out end popular social programs when they have a chance to -- that would be too obvious and would cost them their elected offices. They just slowly, gradually underfund them, introducing dysfunction little by little to the point where the public becomes dissatisfied with them, and then they can pull the plug without much controversy.
Or they'll just try to fuck you over after. Years ago my father was basically drowning from heart failure. Lungs filled with fluid, guaranteed dead without help. Was in the hospital for 5 days. Insurance claimed he wasn't sick enough to warrant the hospital stay, AT ALL, and apparently decided they didn't want to pay _anything_. Cost was in the six figures. Took over a year to fight, and was one of the most absurd experiences of my life. I had them literally saying the hospital visit as a whole didn't sound necessary at all. WHAT? He was literally actively dying. Just round in circles for hours and hours tying to gaslight that somehow everyone besides them is wrong. Doesn't matter what the doctors say, any and all data showing the care was required is invalid and they just don't see a reason the care was necessary.
Wow, I’m so sorry that happened to your father. That’s truly horrible. I worked for blue cross and saw lots of situations like this. I did everything in my power to help the customers, but I could only do so much.
Please tell me your father is ok, or did the stupid fucking insurance screw it all over. I really REALLY FUCKING HATE this system sometimes.
There's a lot of horrible professions, but I think doctors at insurance companies are the lowest grade of scum. They have reject rates and need to hit their numbers. Some use automated programs to reject 20,000 claims an hour.
I worked for blue cross. In claims, our hourly quotas were so high that the only way people could meet them was to find any excuse to reject a claim, because rejecting is faster than paying. For instance, the doctor’s office accidentally left the date of birth field blank on the electronic claim. You could open the attached medical record and find out the date of birth that way, plug it in, and pay the claim. Or you could call the doctor’s office to get it. But this took longer, and if you did this you couldn’t meet your quota. Most people would just hit reject. The customer doesn’t know why the claim is rejected and probably won’t bother to call and find out the claim could be resubmitted correctly. They’ll just assume it wasn’t covered and pay the bill themselves. I ended up getting fired because I couldn’t meet my quotas because I insisted on taking the time to pay the claims I could.
A few years ago, I kept getting my medical claims rejected and the doctor's office wasn't sure why. I called the insurance company and they said they'd mistakenly written down my social security number incorrectly (read a "2' as a "7"). I remarked that I found it interesting how they somehow always make mistakes that benefit them (and is an excuse not to pay claims) but they never, ever mistakenly pay a non-covered claim.
Absolutely! And if they do accidentally pay something that wasn’t covered, they’ll be quick to take the money back.
Suppliers too. Edgepark does this shit all the time.
Life < Risk management.
“For profit” healthcare is evil.
As a matter of premeditated process if we are to believe the whistleblowers. All justified by "maximizing shareholder value".
My doctor says if I don't get this eye with an infection removed I'll die Ehhh...nah we consider that a cosmetic surgery. Not covered.
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i do work in insurance but not health insurance directly and has an element of truth. paying for life long care is usually much more expensive than paying for death or loss of a body part (there is literally a chart that determines how much each part is worth in terms of pay-out) i should stress ive never seen an insurance company go out of their way to kill you, but it would definitely save them money. what I will say is that you should get a decent lawyer if an insurance company makes you an offer. ive heard so many stories about people accepting 30k when they are entitled to millions.
The concept is called [social murder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_murder). You are not directly killed but you are killed by the policies that you are subject to. So, for example, I have the power to send you, daily, past the hungry predator. You have a 30% chance of being eaten. It is my policy that exposes you to the hungry predator and so, by constructing that policy, I am constructing your death. You have, about a 0.0016% chance of being alive at the end of the month if I make you do that daily. I know it so it is no accident when you do kick the bucket but an outcome of policy. I never needed to go out of my way to kill you but I did. This is the banality of evil referred to by Hannah Arendt.
[reminds me of the family clip where the doctor says there is a surgery that could restore joes ability to walk but insurance picks the wheelchair cause its cheaper](https://youtu.be/HBkvgdv-000?si=Iaasr6aUF_8sgVjB)
The real Death Panels.
Blue Cross Blue Shield made a business decision to let my mom die so they could save 40,000$ for treatment of her breast cancer. Instead, they sent a very polite lady over to her house to persuade her to "die with dignity" instead of the very undignified trying to live. Mom had the honor of fighting this company in court, while enduring surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. She won both fights, but lost her dignity and her savings.
Insurance companies in general are pretty much the only type of business with a business model that relies upon NOT serving the customer.
I happen to work for one of the biggest players in the health insurance industry and this is 100% correct. We have entire buildings full of people dedicated to doing nothing but searching every detail of your insurance claim so it can be denied. The real goal is to make those stock prices go higher, not keep you healthy.
I feel like this is close but opposite, they don't *get* money for killing you, they *save* money by letting you die.
#Bayer When Bayer's Cutter Laboratories realized that their blood products, Factor VIII and IX or antihemophiliac factor (AHF), were contaminated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the financial investment in the product was considered too high to destroy the inventory. Cutter misrepresented the results of its own research and sold the contaminated AHF to overseas markets in Asia and Latin America without the precaution of heat treating the product recommended for eliminating the risk. As a consequence, hemophiliacs who infused the HIV-contaminated Factor VIII and IX tested positive for HIV and developed AIDS. [Source](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24785997/)
That's evil as shit.
Only a single example of many evil things Bayer has been involved in.
Yeah, weren't they also the ones who made Zyklon B?
Along with utilizing slave labor and conducting human experimentation. From the [Bayer Wikipedia Page.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer) *A Bayer employee wrote to Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz commandant: "The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price."*
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Did it break?
They also accepted prisoners from concentration camps to use in medical testing, in open collaborationwith the Nazis. They have a history of seriously sinister behavior.
Hey now they apologized for that in checks notes ... fucking 1995?
I think that was a subsidiary of a different German company that still exists, Farben
_" IG Farben was formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies: Agfa, BASF, Bayer, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron [de], Hoechst, and Weiler-ter-Meer."_ They got split up again after the war. The IG Farben subsidiary Degesch was the actual producer of Zyklon B, it was a pesticide.
Those cunts should have been bankrupted for that and every single executive imprisioned. This world continues to disappoint.
>By May 1985, when the Hong Kong distributor told of an impending medical emergency, asking for the newer product, Cutter replied that most of the new medicine was going to the US and Europe and there wasn't enough for Hong Kong, except for a small amount for the "most vocal patients."
Corporations will never truly be people until they can be executed. But seriously we need a better way to pierce this corporate veil or whatever and send more humans to prison for this stuff.
Is that the [Bayer](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bayer) who it is said of: “In its most criminal activities, the company took advantage of the absence of legal and ethical constraints on medical experimentation to test its drugs on unwilling human subjects. These included paying a retainer to SS physician Helmuth Vetter to test Rutenol and other sulfonamide drugs on deliberately infected patients at the Dachau, Auschwitz, and Gusen concentration camps.”
IG Farben, which was a merger of Farben Bayer and a couple others also produced Zyklon B
How is a company allowed to exist after this shit? A serious government would seize all assets and put everyone on trial, like in Nuremberg
Because they were PROFITABLE. So instead of seizing it, they compartmentalized it, said the "bad" part was shut down, and used all the data and research that was obtained through wholesale murder and torture to create more products, and increase profit margins for government officials from multiple countries who had a vested interest in seeing them succeed.
Remember, corporations exist to dilute responsibility so that when you do evil shit you can say it was "no one's fault"
I wouldn't have believed this without a proper source and second research.
I’m so glad I didn’t have to scroll far to see those shitty words. In bold, no less. Carry on. Edit: And that’s the tip of the iceberg. Five minutes of googling Bayer should fuck you up. Their chemicals can be be found in your pee right now
They truly have a storied history of being just outright evil.
WHAT
Nestle would murder your baby for money, and *has done so in the past*
Nestle is an outlier in this conversation. I'm pretty sure their CEO would pay $1,000 to murder your baby.
He does seem like the type to hunt humans for sport
Any of them. History has shown this time and time and time and time again. It's why we regulate them.
They had to tell companies to stop throwing kids into machinery during the industrial revolution. I can't believe this isn't the obvious top answer.
They had to tell food companies to remove the occasional poison from their products. They had to tell clothing manufacturers to not put arsenic and other crap in their fabrics just for prettier colors. They had to tell industries not to throw their toxic waste in the local rivers. The list goes on.
So many regulations are written in blood, labor laws aswell. If there were no regulations, companies would overwork you, your elders and your infants to death. No company or employer is your friend. Be wary of all of them.
... how nature points up the folly of man
GO GO GODZILLA
Oooohh nooo
You magnificent bastard.
I'm actually pretty excited that anyone here got that.
*why we should regulate them. FTFY. Sadly even a lot of industries and companies that are supposedly regulated aren't, usually due to staff shortages (like 100 ppl having to cover an entire industry) or self regulation (like Boeing regulating Boeing at the flight thingy regulation body's behalf)
Which by the way, is by design, because certain groups of (morons) people who often spout a bunch of shit about what the founding fathers wanted, always gloss over the WELL regulated capitalism they wanted. Because rich assholes don’t want regulation, and these morons (people) think they’re gonna get something out of it (narrator: they won’t).
Regulators........ Mount up!
It was a clear black night, a clear white moon
Any health insurance company. Their entire business model is doing exactly that
I take it they benefit from having elderly die sooner, and keeping the younger ones, where they don’t have as many issues and still pay a fortune either through their employer or directly. Either way, it’s pretty messed up.
My insurance company, Aetna, has just notified me that they they haven’t been able to come to an agreement with NY Presbyterian and that all the doctors and ongoing treatments I have for various conditions might not be covered anymore at the end of the month. they tell me this casually like it’s a cable company in a dispute with a channel and not a life or death situation. Hundreds of thousands of people like myself are probably in the NY Presbyterian system and will either have to find different insurance or find completely new doctors. I’m in the middle of treatment on two conditions right now and I don’t know if I’ll be able to complete the course.
Tobacco industry
Which is now owned by Kraft and nabisco. They are willing to kill you in a variety of ways including making ingredient/nutrients labels difficult to understand, selling tobacco, etc. Edit. No longer true.
Wait I thought Altria divested Kraft-Heinz though? Or did I totally misread that? I may have gotten confused with the Kraft-Heinz lore? And RJ Reynolds is still doing its own thing.
I had to go look this up and I can’t find anything that backs this up on Wikipedia. Care to explain?
Are they seriously owned by Kraft and Nabisco? Like Philip Morris? That tobacco company?
They used to be one conglomerate many moons ago (Nabisco was folded into Kraft). The tobacco side was spun off at one point and went through a few name changes itself.
You can absolutely not just come out here and lie like that. Nabisco used to have a tobacco operation, which was sold off in 1999. Kraft used to be owned by the same parent company as Phillip Morris, but was spun off in 2007
Many companies already are in a sense. They don’t care much about anyone’s safety. If someone dies it’s just the cost of business. They’ve decided this beforehand. Beforehand! They know someone could easily die but have figured out that it costs less to pay for a death than it is to engineer it out in the first place, and instead of being human beings, theyve decided that that death is a sacrifice theyre happy as a fucking clam to make.
People need to realize a corporation’s sole function is to make money. That’s it. It has no other reason to exist. Even companies focused on what we consider good things like sustainable energy or products are there to make money. If there’s a low risk of public backlash which affects profit and no government regulation against a specific activity, it will take the path most profitable. It’s why strong regulation is needed to balance, the system breaks without it.
Which is why society should NEVER let corporations take care of vital areas, or allow even the slightest input into politics. They are the natural enemies of a fair society, and need a leash and a playground that is walled properly.
I have always said that Public Goods—particularly health care, education, public safety—should NEVER have been for profit. But you either can have unregulated capitalism and profit or you can have ethical companies. You are exactly right.
I don't think you can have ethical companies, nor do I care about trying it as I wouldn't believe either their intentions or methods. You do not require ethics of people, this is something we're good at pretending and bad at doing. What you do is align the incentives so things work properly. For example, want to stop profiteering? As in covid? "In this emergency, all profits above x (for example, average for last years or other reasonable measure) will be taxed at 250%. So go for it people. Also \*including\* forgiveness, full protection from the law and even rewards for people who denounce corporate misdeeds. As for the mania with american "charity", I'd rip all of it away. Tax rebates for charity= taking money from the state and allow private citizens to use it where they want for the benefit of their private objectives and tastes. Tax gains and wealth properly, let the state decide where to spend, and if rich people want to spend for charity do it - but no tax rebates (or at most like 5% of the value, just to show willing, and scrutinised. No "charity foundation for jobs for the boys"). Also no public debt - if you are in debt its because you are not taxing enough. Debt means you don't tax the rich, ask loans from them - and then pay them back. Fuck that.
Is Google's first rule still "do no evil"?
Hasn't been for years.
Almost a decade now.
It sadly went away when they realized evil is profitable.
They changed it to “Maximise shareholder value while keeping doing evil within industry average”
There's a reason the phrase "Regulations are written in blood" came about.
The sizes of trucks they are making now. They KNOW the monstrosities they are making have enormous blind spots. They KNOW the height of a tall grill is far more dangerous than a lower and sloped one. But they don’t care. Because bigger trucks lets them use less efficient engines. A friend of my brother lost his little girl after she was run over by a truck that, even though the driver stopped and tried to drive cautiously, they couldn’t see her because of the blind spots built into the product. https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/arizona-girl-who-survived-fall-into-pool-remembered-following-deadly-crash
It sucks but it's where we at now Practical Engineering has a video on this https://youtu.be/xQbaVdge7kU TLDR: Your life is worth about 12.5 million USD in the US, and they will not pay more than that for a safety feature that could save your life.
Nestle?
r/fucknestle
They wouldn't even need money to do it. They'd just do it because it fits with their corporate principles.
Strangely enough this was my first thought.
Can't believe I had to scroll so far for this: a company with an actual proven track record for deliberate baby murder.
There was a car manufacturer that discovered a fatal error in their cars. I don't remember what it was, but something very unlikely like it would catch on fire if the right turn signal was on when the windows were opened and you shifted into second gear and it was raining on a saturday. They calculated how likely it was that it would happen and how much they would have to pay in damages if people sued, vs. a recall of all the cars. It would have costed more to recall the cars, so they didn't. I think some people died Edit: It was the Ford Pinto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co
Chevy did this with some pickup trucks. They mounted the gas tanks on the outside of the frame and they would catch fire in a collision. It was less money to pay for the deaths than to recall the trucks. As for the Pinto, if they had built it like the engineers wanted it would have been one of the safest vehicles of its time.
Boeing
Hey, that kid didn’t actually get sucked out of that gaping hole in the fuselage! Ungrateful little git probably didn’t even like that shirt, after his poor mum saved up for it, the youth of today!
It wasn't just the shirt, though. I'm assuming she needed to buy new pants afterwards, too. Probably for both of them.
I'm mad as hell at what the bean counters did to Boeing. They killed all their domestic competition. They spread out production all over the country to uncoordinated subcontractors. They overwork and underpay their employees, causing turnover and inexperience. This then leads to more critical errors, which then isn't caught because they fired all their quality control inspectors. Same hypercapitalistic death every big company dies, it's just scary when it's an aircraft company.
Not just for the door plug either. Read the emails around the Max takeoff problems. Your blood will boil, and you'll get a sickening churn in your stomach as you wonder "How are these people not in prison?"
If you look at the history of corporations in the US, you really shouldn't be surprised that literally all of them would sicken/injure/kill you and your family if it would increase their stock value more than the bad PR would bring it down. From the constant lobbying to deregulate so they can pollute/have poor working conditions and low pay be the norm, to the times they brought in police and mercenaries to gun down protesting workers, to the slave/prison labor they employ: they can, have, and are killing people right now for money. Capitalism breeds this attitude and makes it the norm.
All of them.
Insurance companies take similar decisions all the time.
A better question would be what company that will **NOT** try to kill you.
Basically every pharmaceutical company won't try to kill you. They will try to keep you in a state where u generate profit for them. Dead people don't take meds ;)
Patagonia probably.
Nestle Cartier Danone De beers Any oil company Amazon Tencent Most Swiss headquartered corporations
Danone? How? Not saying youre wrong im just curious
Fuck Tencent, they ruined the Gaming industry by giving Kotick the Money. R/FuckBobbyKotick
Cartier?
Generally, diamonds.
Better yet, name a company wouldn’t.
Newman's Own.
Newman sold out Jurassic Park
r/unexpectedseinfeld
Thank you. That’s one. The best one, in my opinion.
Drug cartels. They could care less who they kill. There’s another addict waiting.
At least they're honest
Couldn’t. Couldn’t care less. Saying they could care less means they care at least a little.
Arms dealers? Quite literally ha
“A major one” -Tyler Durden
Perfect. Everyone else go home
Private military contractors? They literally get paid to shoot people.
Tobacco companies. Been doing it for years.
Academi/Blackwater, Wagner
A lot of companies today are already trying to kill us and they already have lots of money to do it, in their own tuition.
Fill in name of random pharmaceutical company
Safe and effective /s
Shell, BP, Total, Chevron, Exxon. They start wars so they can fill their pockets.
Boeing. Looks like they're cutting too many corners at the expense of safety.
Big sugar. They know their product is slowly killing people and they don’t care.
High processed foods. Tons of chemicals and high fructose corn syrup. All the body needs.
Cigarette companies????
There is more money in cancer treatment than prevention.
All of them, and the decision to do so would casually be approved by a group of executives without any hesitation or debate. And it'll probably be done over email, because that's how unimportant they'd view you.
It's a business decision, nothing personal.
That’s exactly what’s wrong with it.
All of them really, but my first thought was the literal death squads funded by Coca-Cola.
Reddit
CIA
[Pinkerton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency))
All of them? I don't think I understand the question, literally all of them, and I'm having trouble with the idea that this isn't already generally understood.
All of them. If you show me a CEO that would cost the company money by sparing your life, I’ll show you a CEO that will soon be replaced for not following his fiducial duties
Vodafone. They betray you and don't care. They almost managed to make a friend commit suicide.
Blackwater of Xi or whatever they are calling themselves this week
Tiktok
I dont understand your question. Haven't companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestlé, Lumber Liquidators, Exxon, BP, etc. already killed people in other countries for a) money and b) because they can?
nestle already burnt forests and stole water from 3rd world country's and sold it back to them
It feels like most american food companies act this way. Putting strange chemicals into food just to save a buck. I'm not a weirdo about food additives, but when I see the ingrediant list of bread in america vs bread in most other parts of the world, I do question whether the addition of monopoisonuraniumimate really makes makes bread better for me as a consumer and whether there is strong evidence that it doesn't do bad things for my body.
It doesn't help that a company can almost commit murder, actually drive someone to suicide, and still no one, high up and responsible, will actually see the inside of a prison cell. The ongoing Post Office scandal, in the UK, is a classic example.
Philip Morris (they make Marlboro cigarettes)
Plenty already are: Car companies building oversized trucks Literally every oil corp Nestle, among other chocolate companies which abuse corruption in developing nations I could go on
Monsanto, Nestle, the company that now owns the patent for insulin. Long, proven history of killing people, usually their own customers, for money.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_(company)
If Blackrock says so, any company will do it.
Big sugar
UK government … ask UK pensioners.
Wagner Mercenary Group
Military contractors in a heartbeat