I mean, we need to look at the overall picture. If we’re going to say that it’s shocking that people have a flippant attitude towards the cold-blooded murder of 1 human being, then we equally have to say that it’s shocking that these CEOs and insurance companies are flippant about the cold-blooded killing of thousands of human beings.
The only difference between Mangione and the CEOs is that Mangione did his killing with a gun while those CEOs/companies did it with a pen. And those companies ran up a far higher death toll.
For Germany, the UK, and Canada, they brought in their plans at a time when health insurance was not a huge business and not so deeply entrenched in the public economy as it now appears to be in the US.
C’mon, how bad can United Healthcare be? This website (quoted by US News and World Report) uses federal data to calculate denial rates for various US insurance companies. Here they are. I calculate statistical averages and measures of dispersion:
UnitedHealthcare
32%
Medica
27%
Anthem
23%
Aetna
20%
CareSource
20%
Molina
19%
Cigna
18%
BCBS
17%
Ambetter
14%
Oscar Health
12%
Kaiser Permanente
7%
mean
19%
median
19%
stdev
6.9%
Yup, United Healthcare is the worst. They are 1.7 times worse than the industry average, and almost 2 standard deviations worse than the average for those with some statistical background. That’s… bad. Kaiser Permanente is a large operation. They have a complicated structure where branches are for-profit, while the overarching organization is not-for-profit. Anyway, 7% is a reasonable baseline for quality care: United Healthcare is over four and a half times worse.
The Anthem Blue Cross data is separated out form other Blue Cross data.
Fun fact: Truman proposed a socialised healthcare system when he was in office (about the same time the NHS was launched in the UK). It got shot down not because the healthcare industry didn’t like it, but because it would have resulted in desegregated hospitals.
Well, here’s an interesting development, and a pair of odd bedfellows: Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Josh Hawley have announced that they will introduce a bill to require health care insurance conglomerates to divest of their pharmacies, citing the conflict of interest between the insurance companies and the pharmacies over drug costs.
It’s really quite true. If the US was a monoracial country I’m quite sure it’d have universal health care now. But the fear of Black people getting benefits White folks think they shouldn’t will always be in the way.
I suspect that what the health providers with lower denial rates are doing is promising less and charging more for coverage to begin with, to obtain about the same average of payouts versus profitability. IOW, UHC’s business model is simply to lie more about how good their plans are.
Well, “tout de suite” after Thompson was gunned down. The plan had been announced a couple weeks earlier, to not much fanfare. It wasn’t until people started explicitly connecting Anthem’s policy and the murder before they changed course.
IIRC, Richard Nixon proposed a socialised healthcare system when he was in office. I think it was squashed by the Teamsters Union because they thought they could get something better.
EDIT:
That outlines the plan. According to this page (also Nixon Foundation), it was Ted Kennedy who killed the plan, because he wanted a single-payer system. I’m sure I read that the Teamsters were involved, but it’s been years since I read about it.
Why wouldn’t it hold up? It would be a very specific type of anti-monopoly legislation, similar to the Sherman Act and Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting.