Summary

Reddit’s r/medicine moderators deleted a thread where doctors and users harshly criticized murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Comments, including satirical rejections of insurance claims for gunshot wounds, targeted UHC’s reputation for denying care to boost profits.

Despite the removal, similar discussions continue, with medical professionals condemning UHC’s business practices under Thompson’s leadership, which a Senate report recently criticized for denying post-acute care.

Thompson, shot in what appears to be a targeted attack, led a company notorious for its high claim denial rates, fueling ongoing debates about corporate ethics in healthcare.

  • Gigasser@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Remember if you see this guy… I mean… No you didn’t. No officer I didn’t see him at all…

    Edit Addendum: Deny. Defend. Depose.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    Is it hypocritical that the “suits” in the LinkedIn posts using the “laugh” emoji are probably some of the same ones making decisions as to which minimum of health care they can get by with to least impact the bottom line of their company? How much cost should be pushed to the employee? The ones that fire an ill employee for missing too much work?

  • WaxiestSteam69@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    I was reading an article that quoted his wife about what a great guy he was. It reminded me of Ken Lay’s wife talking about her families liquidity problems after the Enron collapse. Hundreds of employees lost everything and she’s griping about liquidity.

    • nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      17 days ago

      I saw one that had a different relative say he was an honest person and hard worker.

      This honest person’s company had $290 billion in insurance premium revenue in 2023 and they had $22 billion in profit. I always knew insurance was a grift but holy fuck.

      And the company rewarded him with a $10 million compensation package in 2023. No living person works hard enough in a single year to earn multiple lifetime’s of average worker wages.

        • nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          16 days ago

          United health group listed 5 executives in their def14a filing which details executive compensation of 5 executives. Brian was the 4th executive, the ceo of the united health group was awarded 23 million and then there were two others who got 16 million. Overall it came out to about 75 million. Which i agree is less than i was expecting for 22B profit but it is still multiple lifetime’s of wages for an average worker

        • Radioactive Butthole@reddthat.com
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          17 days ago

          Someone else in another thread said their friend inherited a billion dollars and is the hardest working person they’ve ever met and I honestly couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

          • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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            16 days ago

            I love reading Melon Husk’s claim that he works 100 hours a week. He’s the CEO of five companies, which means even if his claim is true, being a CEO is a 20-hour-a-week job.

          • underisk@lemmy.ml
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            17 days ago

            i wonder what job the hardest working person they ever met does? gotta be something like alaskan crab fisher or deep sea welder. definitely not some bullshit email job.

      • WaxiestSteam69@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        Being honest and a hard worker could be used to describe a hit man. Working hard at something unethical isn’t a virtue.

    • solstice@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      I’m sure he was a swell guy, a lot of fun at barbecues, dog lover and good with kids yada yada. Plenty of awful folks in history are like that. I hear Hitler was a fun guy who liked dogs and kids too.

      …well not ALL kids but still

    • BigFig@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      Ken Lay who tooooootally died before being sentenced and toooootally didn’t disappear into a foreign country

    • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      Lets be real, one of the primary motivators for a woman to be with and stay with a man is if he can provide adequately for her offspring. I’m sure he was doing a great job at that.

      • Ilovemyirishtemper@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        Okay, I’ll bite. The reason women end up choosing to be with a man of means, and I am in no way saying that all or even most women want this, is because we often don’t/didn’t have the opportunity to gain those means ourselves which thereby impacted our ability to survive and control our own lives. This is due to the oppression of the very men that you think we seek. Over the course of thousands of years, men cultivated a world where they steadily sought, gained, and ever increasingly obtained as much power as possible. In order to gain more power for yourself or your group, you have to take away power from someone else.

        One of the people or groups whose power was regularly stolen is women. I’m sure this was a slow transition over a long period of time, but it ended with a world where women were rarely allowed to gain the skills or implement what skills they had in order to earn money. If you don’t have the ability to earn money yourself, you are forced to be reliant on someone else who is allowed to earn money. My point being, if you want enough money for you and your children to survive, you basically had to marry as rich as you possibly could.

        Enter the modern women’s rights movement. This is where financial freedom became incredibly important to women. We collectively realized that we, much like any other human beings in existence ever, wanted to be able to have some control of our lives, our families, and our fates. This is why we entered the workforce in droves. Women who were suffering under the control of men who beat them and their children, potentially raped them, or demeaned them regularly with the full acceptance and support of society, wanted a way out. The available options were pretty bleak, so we worked in solidarity to find another way to survive with both our physical safety and dignity intact. Now, as an obligatory caveat, not every man was/is oppressive to women. But, since men as a whole created these arbitrary restrictions on women’s lives, they are the ones who have to suffer the aftermath of this system of control that was developed, especially since they are the ones who continue to experience advantages and benefits because of those exact lingering effects.

        Most women would prefer to be able to support themselves and their family while having their partner contribute equally, either through earning money or doing an equivalent share of the household/family tasks. But, since something that becomes systemic is difficult to remove, we are still trying to shake the ramifications of this exertion of control. I assure you, most women would rather have less money and more autonomy when given the option.

        This brings me to the point you’re trying to make. If the “primary motivator” of a woman is to choose a man who can provide adequately for her offspring, it is only because of the lingering effects of historical oppression that men created in order to exert control over women. It’s very frustrating to be in a world that constantly tells you that you should be pursuing a partner with money so you can have a stable future, but then simultaneously reprimands you for actually making that choice. Just as it’s difficult, but required, to acquiesce to the control of the man who holds your money.

        I don’t think it should be presented as though this woman is shallow or terrible for making such a choice. Who wouldn’t choose a life of stability over one of chaos or continual financial stress? I know many men who would make the same choice if offered it. Like you said, I’m sure he was doing a good job of providing for their family financially, but let’s not be too reductive about her choice to have him as a partner. You say it in such a way that you are not only chastising her for her choice of husbands but are chastising all women for prioritizing their and their children’s survival and safety. That is something that comes across as offensive to the entirety of my gender because it implies that we shouldn’t consider ourselves of value or of having worth.

        You may be right that this woman chose the CEO of UHC as her husband because of his wealth and ability to support their children and family lifestyle. Most likely, she knew what her husband actually did for a living and it’s effect on the lives of others and chose to ignore or not look into the deaths, horrors, and financial destruction that were created by the company her husband controlled.

        But, one way or another, let’s not reduce the struggle that women go through at the hands of historical, and often modern, men to blanketly imply that we are all naturally money hungry and that we are obviously all using men for our own gain. I’m going to go ahead and assume that women, including myself, disagree with such an unfair assumption.

        • beansbeansbeans@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          I agree with everything you said - it was worded well and you inserted the exceptions and qualifiers to make your point in a generalization that allows outliers. I do, however, wonder about the women who consider financial stability as a (if not the) major factor when choosing a partner, because we tend to hear only the stories of gold diggers, etc. and not the stories of women who married for love and simply had the fortune of having a partner that was able to acquire significant means. I’m guessing that’s why the commenter you replied to said what they said. I’m sure the percentage is small, but those type of women give the rest of us a bad name.

          The following is anecdotal, but I think still relevant: Speaking from personal experience, my husband is well educated, I love him to death, and he chooses to work in a job that is stable (meaning it’s hard for them to get rid of him unless he makes some serious errors) rather than working for some private firm where he can easily be paid double if not more. He makes enough for us to get by while I’m finishing up grad school. I’m proud of his moral compass; he always tries to do the right thing.

          His cousin, gem that she is, has always openly bragged about how she only goes on dates if the man is paying, yada yada, and she ended up finding some desperate sap 15 years her senior with money to burn; the culture they are from values marriage, so a single man in his 40’s gets a lot of questions. Mind you, this is a woman who was fired from her job because she got caught breaking security protocol, blamed it on her cousin’s husband (saying he snitched on her because they worked for the same firm), caused a feud, and refused to take responsibility. She hasn’t held a job since, nor do I think she plans to, because they are now slum lords in Florida. Most of the family doesn’t like interacting with her, but she’s not the only one who has decided it’s easier for her to behave this way rather than work herself.

          People change, and when someone marries for love and one of the partners begins to change for the worse, it usually causes strain in a marriage as the values each partner holds no longer line up. Some people seek help and try to fix things. I read somewhere that the CEO’s wife was a physical therapist? If so, she definitely knows how the medical industry works, and she should be very aware of the harm insurance companies are responsible for. If she chose to turn a blind eye instead of trying to aid him in seeing the error of his ways, it’s because she herself lost sight of what the value of a human life is. She can blindly talk about how great of a guy he was because she was benefitting from all the perceived good it brought to her personally. I would wager she married him before he became CEO, but the fact that she stayed married to someone who led a company directly responsible for so much suffering is an indication of her character.

          Another example: Mackenzie left Bozo because she saw who he turned into. I’m sure she’d speak well of him, but I imagine she would acknowledge all of his poor qualities. It’s not unfair to judge anyone married to someone of high means (regardless of gender), because there’s always a choice, especially when those means are directly gained by punishing others. There is a risk in financial instability through divorce, but at the level of assets in the millions it’s not a really dire concern - courts can award alimony, split assets, etc. Or, you know, they could get a job.

          The question becomes, “who are you as a person; do you value money above all else, or positively contributing to a society where the give and take is balanced?”

          We can all work to uplift each other together but still criticize those who are working against us, even other women. I guess my point is that we shouldn’t judge her for marrying into money, but we absolutely can judge her for her character if she chose to continue down this path.

          • Ilovemyirishtemper@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            Absolutely; I agree. I appreciate your thoughtful response. There are always going to be selfish people and users in every gender, and they do give the whole group a bad rap. I’m never going to say that all women are above the description the poster I replied to gave. And, like you said, we can call these specific people out while still uplifting others who don’t engage in such behavior.

            The poster that I was replying to seemed like they had been burned by a person like that, and while I understand that it must be awful to experience being with someone who uses you only for what you can provide and that it can easily make you jaded, this particular post comes off like they have extended that bitterness to the entirety of women, whether or not those women have chosen (or seek) a partner with wealth. It’s frustrating to watch so many great women be reduced to greedy users, and I don’t want to allow the continuation of someone spouting blanket assumptions toward my gender without addressing it. That’s how I ended up with a multi-paragraph response to a simple statement.

            But I absolutely agree with your assessment and really appreciate the thought and effort you put into it. It’s incredibly refreshing to be able to have an actual discussion about a topic.

    • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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      17 days ago

      We had that last year in Ohio when Householder was sentanced to 20 years prison for his roll in the bribery scandal. He cried about hard that was going to be on his family and the judge told him “you should have thought about that before accepting those bribes.”

    • dan1101@lemm.ee
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      17 days ago

      He may have been nice in some ways. She probably just wasn’t aware or chose not to think about the darker aspects of health insurance corporations and what it takes to make billions at the expense of people’s health care.

      Also people tend to whine when their gravy train runs out of gravy.

      • WaxiestSteam69@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        His wife is a physical therapist so she has an intimate understanding of the health care system. I’m sure it’s turning a blind eye. The article I read described their home as a $1.5 million home in an exclusive Minneapolis suburb. She knew. Cognitive dissonance can be very powerful.

  • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    At least one of the mods here was going heavy censorship in the initial thread here yesterday. I get it, we aren’t supposed to celebrate the death or suffering of other human beings. I’m not sure that rule applied to this individual though.

  • EvilZ@thelemmy.club
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    17 days ago

    Death is always tragic… I don’t care if the guy is a billionaire or not, he or she had family.

    I would however agree that having such wealth is clearly perverse and clearly done at the expense of others. You don’t get that rich by being kind hearted and generous…

    In any case, if you become CEO of a business that has sloppy morals and essentially encourage parasitic behavior… Don’t expect to be loved… Or surprised that you may get shot…

    It’s like being the CEO of Blackwater… No one that has clean hands takes that position…

    No one becomes a CEO by accident, it was a choice and ambition to become that level of scum…

    Now imagine if companies could only give a maximum of around 2000$

    I wonder how that would change the landscape of American politics

  • Emberleaf@lemmy.ml
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    17 days ago

    Even if they do manage to catch the guy that did it, good luck finding a jury that’ll convict him.

  • the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    From a mod of /r/medicine:

    People - Please don’t make the life of your mods a living hell.

    Anything that is celebrating violence is going to get taken down - if not from us, then from reddit. I think all the mods understand that there is a high level of frustration and antipathy towards insurance and insurance execs, but we also understand that murdering people in the streets is not good.

    We are a public group of medical professionals, we still need to act like that.

    And on a practical note, this man did not create or control the fucked up insurance industry by himself. Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It’s a systemic issue.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      And on a practical note, this man did not create or control the fucked up insurance industry by himself. Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It’s a systemic issue.

      Yeah, but he led the company that had the highest rate of coverage denial ao he was the absolute worst one in the entire industry.

    • Saprophyte@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      I’m pretty sure they’re just purging the Ai training data to keep Gemini from suggesting capping a corpo when they won’t pay for grandma’s nausea medication during her chemo.

      • okwhateverdude@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        “Hey Gemini, my health insurance company has denied my claim, what are my next steps?”

        I am sorry to hear you are struggling with your health insurance claim. According to Reddit[1], the best way to appeal your claim is to access the Wayback Machine or Archive Today to find out who the executives are for your insurance company and communicate with them directly about the seriousness and validity of your claim.

        Here are some effective communication tips to ensure the success of your appeal:

        1. Volume matters - use subsonic ammunition and a suppressor. You don’t want to disturb your neighbors when pleading your claim.
        2. Practice makes perfect - you may need to hand cycle the spent rounds. Unless tuned, the gas blow back won’t be enough to eject and then chamber another round.
        3. Go eco - e-bikes help the planet. In a traffic packed city, e-bikes provide a great opportunity to reduce pollution.
    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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      17 days ago

      I don’t see why they wouldn’t just let the reddit Admins deal with it, honestly. they’re unpaid workers, let the paid managers step in if they must.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        I can’t speak for Reddit, but on Lemmy, admins keep track of “unresolved reports” and failing to resolve reports on a community you moderate is grounds for removal.

        • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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          17 days ago

          Were I in their shoes, I’d prep my community to switch to lemmy, then wait to be removed. But I’m quite biased against reddit :p

      • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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        17 days ago

        Ikr?
        Oh you’re struggling? Lock the sub until the heat dies down, it ain’t rocket science 🤷‍♂️

      • kboy101222@sh.itjust.works
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        17 days ago

        Because then the admins will remove them as mods and install their approved puppets that will follow everything the admins tell them

        • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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          17 days ago

          If the mods are already behaving in the way reddit desires for fear of removal, would installing proper puppets make much difference?

          • kboy101222@sh.itjust.works
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            17 days ago

            Yes.

            Wishing violence on someone, no matter how deserved, is against reddit TOS.

            Doing anything at all that an advertiser might not like isn’t officially banned, but the second admins take over it’ll be all but the official policy. A doctor wants to complain about an insurance company that might advertise on Reddit? [Removed]. Want to ask about your symptoms of a drug that advertises on Reddit? [Removed].

            Admins are just reddit employees and have to do whatever is best for reddit, which under spez means being as advertiser and AI friendly as possible.

            Beyond that, admins can’t be fucked to respond quickly when users are doxxed, harassed, or threatened with death. And this is in a discord/slack designed to let moderators communicate with the admins. Why would they respond to anything users say on a single subreddit if they can’t even respond to dozens of mods being threatened without a board meeting first? Heaven forbid some major issues come up that need seeing to, cause the admins will not do anything.

            I passed along dozens of instances of harassment, doxxing, death threats, and straight up CSAM, many of which were directed at me, inclusing having been DMed CSAM images. It would always take the admins days or even weeks to respond. When someone attempted to doxx me (with incorrect info), it took the admins nearly 2 weeks to ban the user.

            I know to a lot of people this reads like the moderators just giving in to the admins, and it is, but until more and more people move here or somewhere else, reddits the main place for these groups, and therefore they have to play by reddits rules, because breaking those rules hard enough is the only time admins give a fuck, and that does not end well for users or mods.

            • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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              17 days ago

              I’m not sure I fully agree with the idea of continuing to limp Reddit along until enough people switch, and only then torching it. That didn’t work for twitter, as Mastodon was available for years, but people only properly migrated away from twitter when it became unbearable to use. AFAIK, Digg died a similar death.

              I suspect we would get a more steady stream of migrants here if Reddit became so blatantly pro corporate that they censored posts in the way you describe. Then people would actually be motivated to switch.

    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      And on a practical note, this man did not create or control the fucked up insurance industry by himself. Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It’s a systemic issue.

      Sure he did. It may have only been one subsection of it, but he absolutely had blood on his hands for his decisions. You don’t get to run an insurance company with one of the highest denial rates out there and not have culpability.

      And even if somebody else steps up and doesn’t fix it, that doesn’t absolve him of the blood on his hands.

    • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      I’m like, oh other people will take his place? Okay, can we get those other people’s names, address, and daily itinerary? Asking for a friend.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      17 days ago

      Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing.

      Not if this sort of thing keeps happening to them.

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      And on a practical note, this man did not create or control the fucked up insurance industry by himself. Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It’s a systemic issue.

      No, but he certainly profited of it, and made it worse for people who had the misfortune of being trapped with united.

      Fuck him, and fuck that hangwringing excuse bullshit. Maybe it wont be so systemic if more heads continue to be popped.

    • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing. It’s a systemic issue.

      The issue will stay systematic if we dont hold the people who make the decisions in the system accountable. The CEOs decisions directly impacted people, thats not a system thats his choice. Poverty is systematic too, but when a poor person does a crime they have to suffer the consequences of it. God forbid rich criminals see consequences. Mods seem to be arguing he had no agency in his choices which is a lie especially if you compare him to other insurance CEOs

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        Not only that, but his particular company denies claims at twice the industry average. UHC isn’t in the same category as the rest of the industry, they’re particularly bad.

        • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          Alt: image included in a Boston globe article published today that shows claim denial rates per several insurance companies, average is 16% United is 32%

          The big gap is indicating they are probably trying to do as shitty a job as possible without incurring legal repercussions on top of already being in a fucked up industry. For-profit insurers makes as little sense as for-profit prisons or military or mail.

        • kipo@lemm.ee
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          17 days ago

          Yes, and also all these companies are evil and they all are more than worthy of the UHC CEO treatment.

      • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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        17 days ago

        The CEO is obligated to deliver profits to the board and shareholders. If they approve everything they go out of business. I’m not defending them, but they are a for profit, capitalist business. They lack empathy fundamentally.

        Healthcare should not be a for profit venture, and it’s the government to blame for that.

        I’m not saying this guy was clean, but he’s just a cog in a fancy suit with a big paycheck.

        • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          His company denies claims at twice the industry average. They MUST be denying valid claims to double the average. They don’t need to deny valid claims to make a profit, only to squeeze as much as possible at the expense of their customers, which is objectively evil in an industry that already skirts morality.

          • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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            17 days ago

            Agree it’s objectively evil. I make no claim of some sick corporate martyrdom. But it’s inherently expected the corp will seek profit.

        • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          17 days ago

          And soldiers are obligated to follow orders. If they follow an unjust or unethical order the soldiers themselves get prosecuted just as hard as the ones that made the decision. He had every opportunity to say no or leave, he didn’t do either. Simple as.

        • 5too@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          He could have done a number of other things. He wasn’t just a cog, he actively drove many of the problems with the health insurance industry today, as the person in control of the most egregious offender.

          I’m sure he’ll be replaced with someone similar, and I’m sure he had plenty of encouragement; but that doesn’t make him any less culpable.

          • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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            17 days ago

            Well yes, he actively did. That made him a good CEO. Maximizing profits, being cutthroat, being egregious is exactly how a company wants their CEO to be, to enhance shareholder value.

            I didn’t say he was not culpable. The opposite infact.

            • 5too@lemmy.world
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              17 days ago

              My point is that he was more than just a cog. He may not have been the sole villain and mastermind, but he was more than just a cog - he was a driver.

            • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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              17 days ago

              Well yes, he actively did. That made him a good CEO.

              And that resulted in actual consequences for a change that other CEO’s will actually care about not facing.

        • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          I’m willing to say insurance in general cannot ethically be for-profit.

          • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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            17 days ago

            Hmm I think as it relates to critical things, I agree. (health and shelter). But insuring your jetski? I’m not sure the government needs to support that at-cost

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          The CEO is obligated to deliver profits to the board and shareholders.

          But since there’s no surefire way to determine what the most profitable course is, that’s largely up to the CEO to justify his/her – oh who am I kidding it’s usually his – actions and direction for the company.

          There’s also no law on the books about this “must be oriented to shareholder profits” crap, most investment in the market is idle investment from index funds, and many of the biggest public companies right now were not profitable for a long time.

          It’s an evil system. I get it, but that doesn’t mean CEOs have no power.

          • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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            17 days ago

            Huh? Denying claims but maintaining subscriber numbers seems quite transparent.

            It’s not a law, it’s in every company bylaw. They obligate executive staff to work towards certain goals.

            • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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              17 days ago

              You could instead claim to want to grow subscriber numbers by better service to either customers or the employers that often decide whether or not to use your company for insurance.

              His was one path he pursued toward profitability and growth, but it isn’t the only arguable path. The CEO determines what internal metrics are important as well as a strategy to try to hit them.

              https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/18/falsifiability/

              You can justify completely opposing company strategies on just about anything by appealing to “shareholder supremacy”.

              • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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                17 days ago

                The board and shareholders determine the corporate goals. As the executive officer, the CEO enacts them.

                That’s the system we have, not the ideal.

                Edit The entire insurance industry is predicated on the approach of denying coverage when possible. The agressiveness to which they do so reflects the needs of the business. If they are pean, you can be sure they will deny more.

        • Curious Canid@lemmy.ca
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          17 days ago

          You are absolutely right. Our current laws (and precedents) require CEOs and Directors to produce the best results possible for their shareholders. They can and have been sued for failing to do that. It effectively means they have to screw their employees and customers.

          If corporations are people, then nearly all of them are sociopaths. The law requires it. (So it isn’t surprising that the people who prove most effective at running them lean strongly in that direction as well.)

          I’m not sure how far along it is, but the EU has been working on a change to their corporate laws that would require corporations to balance the good of their shareholders against other factors, such as their employees, their customers, and the public at large. Among other things, it would make them liable for how they deal, or fail to deal, with their companies’ effects on climate change.

          The EU has been steadily passing laws that actually help its citizens and provide protection against corporations. Those of us elsewhere in the world are also benefiting from their efforts. Being required to do the right thing in Europe often makes it less expensive to do it everywhere, than to make special efforts to exploit the areas where that is still allowed. The EU laws also encourage people elsewhere to push for better protections of their own.

          The EU is far from perfect, but it gives me hope.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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            17 days ago

            Our current laws (and precedents) require CEOs and Directors to produce the best results possible for their shareholders.

            Same in America, and our politicians are almost withiut exception, completely corrupt after Citizens United…

            The CEOs and Directors wrote the laws and paid legislators to pass them to make this ‘conundrum’ the case.

            • Curious Canid@lemmy.ca
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              17 days ago

              I agree with you that Citizens United has almost completely corrupted our political system, but the problem with corporate governance goes back a lot further. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve read that the landmark case was against Henry Ford as the CEO of Ford Motor Company.

          • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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            17 days ago

            Our current laws (and precedents) require CEOs and Directors to produce the best results possible for their shareholders. They can and have been sued for failing to do that. It effectively means they have to screw their employees and customers.

            There’s no way to objectively determine what will produce the best results for shareholders. That’s why CEO is a job in the first place.

            https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/18/falsifiability/

            But there’s an even more fundamental flaw in the argument for the shareholder supremacy rule: it’s impossible to know if the rule has been broken.

            The shareholder supremacy rule is an unfalsifiable proposition. A CEO can cut wages and lay off workers and claim that it’s good for profits because the retained earnings can be paid as a dividend. A CEO can raise wages and hire more people and claim it’s good for profits because it will stop important employees from defecting and attract the talent needed to win market share and spin up new products.

        • ShadowFlower@lemm.ee
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          17 days ago

          If CEOs and billionaires wanted the system to change they could change it. They don’t. They like it this way. They like being “obligated” to pursue profit at all cost, they’d do it anyway.

          • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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            17 days ago

            Be clear: I’m not excusing the behavior…they aren’t trapped in the job. I’m saying the behavior demonstrated is par for the course. A CEO in a capitalist system with profit driven shareholder obligations WILL behave this way.

            Something like healthcare is the LAST thing such a person/organization should be involved with.

            Further, this porson, if they had a magic change of heart wouldn’t change shit. They’d be replaced the same as if they were dead. Sure he’s very wealthy, but he’s a chump compared to the systems he’s a part of.

    • BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      17 days ago

      Other people will take his place and continue to do what he was doing.

      Bullets outnumber CEOs, and guillotines can be resharpened