It’s not really “greedy CEOs” as individuals that are the core of the problem, but rather the system that fiducially forces health insurance companies to increase profits by denying care and in turn incentivizes hospitals to price-gouge at every corner.
I feel like single-payer healthcare should be THE biggest and most obvious bipartisan issue we should all be fighting for. But it seems this policy conversation is just not really being taken seriously.
It’s part of the problem. The United Healthcare CEO made $10MM last year. No one adds that much value to a corporation so it’s part but not all of the problem.
Our healthcare is broken and single-payer is an obvious solution. But the same people opposing this policy are in the same group that is pricing housing out of the range of many Americans.
The United Healthcare CEO made $10MM last year. No one adds that much value to a corporation so it’s part but not all of the problem.
If the CEO ran the company to maximize efficiency from a standpoint of subscribers getting the best possible care from their premiums paid, I would have no problem with him making $10 million per year.
Instead, he runs the company in a way that hamstrings subscribers from getting care and stealing premiums for “profit.” In that way, he is no different from a nazi bureaucrat killing people via pen-stroke. The banality of evil.
How can you say no one adds $10MM value to a corporation? Even just directing or writing the Barbie move very likely added well over $10MM of value to WB.
"In July 2024, the Wall Street Journal concluded that UnitedHealth was the worst offender among private insurers who made dubious diagnoses in their clients in order to trigger large payments from the government's Medicare Advantage program. The patients often did not receive any treatment for those insurer-added diagnoses. The report, based on Medicare data obtained from the federal government under a research agreement, calculated that diagnoses added by United Health for diseases patients had never been treated for had yielded $8.7 billion in payments to the company in 2021 over half of its net income of - $17 billion for that year. "
The health insurance are themselves practicing fraudulent claims. They're pure evil.
The deeper issue goes beyond healthcare. Everything you've said basically boils down to the way corporations must steadily increase their profits. No matter what the industry, they do this by lowering their costs and maximizing their earnings, things like fair play and ethics mean nothing. They only care about such things as legal boundaries, things imposed on them by regulators. In the absence of proper regulation, the most rapacious corporations are the ones rewarded with more investment and more dominance. Nestle wanting to own the rain makes sense to a corporation, it's up to the rest of us to make the rules that say they can't. You're right in the sense that it's exactly what you described with healthcare, but it's a little disingenuous to say there aren't individuals who are responsible for the decisions made by their company. It's like saying there's really no difference between a company that denies every claim and one that operates more fairly, they're both corporations playing in the same arena, but the players don't all behave the same despite their equal incentives. Anyway, I think the flipside of the "individuals" argument, is that those same people sure seem to take credit for running the company when they're discussing how much they're worth.
You can solve this problem with any universal healthcare model.
Single-payer itself is not necessary. Problem is that universal healthcare is apparently a controversial thing in America. Look at what happened with Obama and his initial plan for ACA.
It's almost as if indulging people's greed to the exclusion of literally everything else is harmful to society. This goes far beyond the health insurance industry.
Government is the root issue for sure and the only way to get systemic change is through them. And while they aren't the root problem executives have a role in making things worse (I mean United denies far more claims than the rest of the industry) and as recent events have proven people have little sympathy for people who chose to profiteer from an unjust system. Corporate corruption is also huge in the US and I don't doubt that the health insurance industry spends huge amounts (United has spent nearly $6m this year alone) on lobbying to not just maintain the status quo but so they can make more profits.
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u/outwest88 15d ago
It’s not really “greedy CEOs” as individuals that are the core of the problem, but rather the system that fiducially forces health insurance companies to increase profits by denying care and in turn incentivizes hospitals to price-gouge at every corner.
I feel like single-payer healthcare should be THE biggest and most obvious bipartisan issue we should all be fighting for. But it seems this policy conversation is just not really being taken seriously.