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Notes -
Re: United Health CEO, I feel that I'm among the extreme minority of the population that thinks it's bad to celebrate political assassinations and also that it is a social good for companies to offer insurance in the US. I am astounded by how relatively unprofitable being an insurance company is and also why anyone would go into this industry and put up with the abuse and general scorn.
Imagine being at a party and saying you work at a health insurance company. Total hatred from almost everyone.
It's amazing that people do this at all?
The assassination isn’t celebrated online because he worked in insurance, or because he worked in health insurance specifically, but because the company is accused of violating a life-or-death contractual commitment by “delaying” and “denying” the promised coverage, in order to extract money from people who are sick and dying. This was literally written on the bullets (now stained with the CEO’s blood), based on a title of a book about these practices. The salary, industry, etc are all side points. United was apparently the worst offender in the industry. Read the exchanges between Vinay Prasad and the numerous doctors who disagree with him and single out United as the worst offender.
A thought experiment is helpful here. Let’s say you and I become stranded on an island. I promise to hold the heavy medical supplies in case one of us is injured, and in turn you provide me with more of your rations. You gash your leg, and I renege on my commitment to provide you the promised medical supplies. If you have a weapon, what would you do? The ethical intuition of normal people is that certain things become permissible.
Now, the greatness of civilization is that you don’t need to resort to weapons because you can take a large company to court. But that’s not a silver bullet! Because our third bullet reads defend: healthcare companies can hire the best lawyers and lobby better then you. So it’s an open question whether today’s civilization provides a remedy that is sufficient to stop someone from taking the less civilized remedy. It seems most people have no problem with the less civilized remedy in this particular, very unusual instance.
Yes I understand why the general public is mad, and bloodthirsty, and titillated.
I am in the minority because I also have the curse of basic education in economics and also have worked in a different financial services industry that was widely hated, but from the inside it was clear that most of the hatred was based on magical thinking and ignorance.
They might actually be evil! But my default is to not trust these narratives.
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