United Healthcare CEO Shooter

[Bobcat]

Look, we get you are not that sharp but if your are going to try and sell an assassination attempt at least have the common courtesy to be honest and admit that 100% of the "rioters" were not armed with guns. You know, those scary black weapons of war you clutch pearls over 24/7/365

How stupid do you think America is? We know your department of education is doing everything it can to get us where you need us to be to believe this bullshit lie you are selling

You're projecting ...


100% is a pretty strong statement and you can't back it up:
- Mario Mares
- Christopher Alberts
- John Banuelos
- Jerod Bargar

The DoE has done an excellent job of doing everything it can to get people to believe bullshit lies that are being sold. Just look at all the suckers who believe trump's lies for evidence.

What whackadoodle MAQA yahoo conspiracy theory are you going to push next?

Its common sense thats why you don't relate.

Only murders on Jan 6th were cops murdering unarmed people. If they wouldn't have done that, nobody would have got violent. If you attack me and threaten my life Im gonna try and kill you. Thats how it works. It would have been a lot better for everyone if the protesters were armed which they sadly were not.

[clenz]

How significant is the impact of the cost of malpractice and other insurance on healthcare costs?

I'm also guessing the number of behind the scenes bureaucrats has ballooned in comparison to the number of people on the front lines actually providing care (doctors, nurses, etc.) and that has significantly impacted the cost of care.

I don't have enough knowledge regarding the impact malpractice, and other, insurance have on hospital costs. I can only speak to my experiences with the billing I did and the practitioners I know/spoke with so it may not carry over to larger hospital systems 1:1. Malpractice insurance is generally carried/paid for by the practitioner. I'm sure the hospital also has its own blanket policies they pay for beyond the medical provider's private insurance. I have no idea what rates have done, but I'm guessing they have followed a similar trend to any insurance premium the last however many years you want to look at. I would not be shocked to hear those policies outpace general insurance rates given how litigious we are as a society and the shift toward greater monetary compensation for the plaintiff. People are sick of health care, be it hospital admin or health insurance companies, bending people over, and while only a single person has killed a CEO (to this point) people are taking actions they can to punish those parties. Judgments against them are their one "real" path to do so.

As for if the cost of malpractice insurance caused the providers themselves to increase the rates they charge the patient? In my experience, no. That isn't to say it doesn't happen, even at a fairly high rate. Every provider I came across built their malpractice insurance into their yearly operating expenses just as they do rent, utilities, other BOP policies, etc.

The behind-the-scene bureaucrats have ballooned in number and cost, which is why I said the hospitals are also evil. The practitioners are not. The people you interact with day to day are not. The C-Suite and senior-level execs? Absolutely. They need their massive paychecks. They need to return enough profit to their investors and board. To make both of those happen they have to jack prices up even more. To go along with that the more they lobby for more control and more ability to do what they want they need to add more staff in the back office to manage all the red tape, regulations, and claims. That adds more costs which eats into their profits, which hurts their reports to the board and investors and cuts into their own pay. So they charge more to get the financial statements they want.

This is all why I cared enough to actually jump into a thread for the first time in months, maybe a year or more. "The doctors are charging it. The insurance companies only do what doctors say. They are innocent". Fuck all of that. The entire fucking thing started because they started demanding discounts and larger cuts for people using hospitals that their company was oh so gracious to cover for the patient.

[SeattleGriz]

So far this doesn't smell right. Don't know what it is.

[UNI88]

So far this doesn't smell right. Don't know what it is.

What does qanon tell you happened?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[BDKJMU]

Insurance works by simply spreading the risk pool. It doesn’t have to be for profit to accomplish this. And there’s also the well reported efforts by insurers to increase denials via things like AI and creating a nightmare of hoops to jump through and labyrinthine customer service departments to even get care or have an appeal heard.

EG: I had to go through a year of nerve studies, pain management clinics, PT, 3 denials for referral from my PCP and two sports medicine docs before they finally approved a referral for an MRI from a surgeon that showed my shoulder and arm pain was not bursitis but 3 herniated disks in my neck.

I sure would hate some CEO to not get their pay bumped from 42.5 million to 43 million because their profits were just a little bit less due to people actually getting covered.

United is the largest healthcare insurer in the country and this guy had a 1 million base salary, with a reportededly total comp of 10.2 million, which is LOW for a ginormous company with several hundred k employees.

[Caribbean Hen]

“The government, to repeat Thomas Sowell’s observation, can reduce the amount Americans spend on health care in only two ways: Either the government must provide health care more efficiently than the private sector does or it must ration health care.”

The first is impossible

The second is unthinkable

[kalm]

“The government, to repeat Thomas Sowell’s observation, can reduce the amount Americans spend on health care in only two ways: Either the government must provide health care more efficiently than the private sector does or it must ration health care.”

The first is impossible

The second is unthinkable

This is a great example of Sowell’s shallow thinking.

And this is at twice the expenditures. None of this recently discovered either.

[Caribbean Hen]

“The government, to repeat Thomas Sowell’s observation, can reduce the amount Americans spend on health care in only two ways: Either the government must provide health care more efficiently than the private sector does or it must ration health care.”

The first is impossible

The second is unthinkable

This is a great example of Sowell’s shallow thinking.

And this is at twice the expenditures. None of this recently discovered either.

Where do you get your medical care?

[kalm]

This is a great example of Sowell’s shallow thinking.

And this is at twice the expenditures. None of this recently discovered either.

Where do you get your medical care?

Kaiser Permanente, Providence Medical, Northwest Orthopedic, and several other out of network providers.

Why?

How about you?

[clenz]

I sure would hate some CEO to not get their pay bumped from 42.5 million to 43 million because their profits were just a little bit less due to people actually getting covered.

United is the largest healthcare insurer in the country and this guy had a 1 million base salary, with a reportededly total comp of 10.2 million, which is LOW for a ginormous company with several hundred k employees.

Sure, his base was one million. However, it is problematic when people making coverage decisions for people's health are handsomely based on profit and stock goals.

His compensation, based on 2024 numbers, was set to cross 20 million. So he, and others, are incentivized, to put pure profit over the people their company is supposed to be helping. That is what I have a problem with. The low base salary is a great talking point for those who want to dick-ride insurance companies, exactly the way you are doing it.

In 2021, UHC posted a $12 billion profit. That rose to $16 billion in 2023. Over about the same timeframe, denials for claims for post-acute care rose from 8.7 percent in 2019 to nearly 23 percent in 2022. And, according to one source, UHC denies 32 percent of claims, compared to an industry average of 16 percent.

Under Thompson’s leadership, UHC stock roughly doubled in price. But this was amidst increasing complaints related to denials, overwhelming bureaucracy, and increased premiums. At the shareholder meeting Thompson was to attend before being fatally shot on a New York City sidewalk, UHC was expected to announce expected sales for 2025 in excess of $450 billion. That’s the equivalent of $100/month for every person in the U.S. for a year.

This all occurs while insurance CEOs seem to reap significant rewards. Thompson’s salary (not total compensation) is reported as $10 million. Other CEOs receive similarly generous total compensation, such as those heading Centene at $18.5 million, Elevance at 21.8 million, CVS Health at $21.6 million, Cigna Health at $21 million, and Humana at $16.3 million.

https://icd10monitor.medlearn.com/ceos- ... re-system/

We should also remember we have companies that have admitted to denying claims without ever even opening them. They are creating AI models to review cases, and those AI models will most certainly be trained to approach everyone looking for a denial 1st through 10th. So now they can continue to deny but not have to pay people to deny. They can have computer programs do it for them, thus increasing their profits even further.

The fact he (or anyone in that world) can/would 20x his salary by shifting his company to deny claims of people trying to live is an issue.

[UNI88]

You're projecting ...


100% is a pretty strong statement and you can't back it up:
- Mario Mares
- Christopher Alberts
- John Banuelos
- Jerod Bargar

The DoE has done an excellent job of doing everything it can to get people to believe bullshit lies that are being sold. Just look at all the suckers who believe trump's lies for evidence.

What whackadoodle MAQA yahoo conspiracy theory are you going to push next?

Its common sense thats why you don't relate.

Only murders on Jan 6th were cops murdering unarmed people. If they wouldn't have done that, nobody would have got violent. If you attack me and threaten my life Im gonna try and kill you. Thats how it works. It would have been a lot better for everyone if the protesters were armed which they sadly were not.

15 yard penalty and loss of down for moving the goal posts.

You said "100% of the "rioters" were not armed with guns" and I provided proof that you were wrong so you switched to the "only murders on Jan 6th were cops murdering unarmed people. If they wouldn't have done that, nobody would have got violent" which is also FAKE NEWs. The violence started before the rioters even entered the Capitol. You're also conveniently ignoring the reality that several people died after and as a result of the riot.

And before you try to argue that there is no proof of a correlation between those deaths and January 6, that correlation is significantly stonger than any correlation between liberals calling trump a fascist/Hitler and attempts on his life but you have made that claim several times.

You continue to push MAQA yahoo FAKE NEWS bullshit about January 6 and more. trump and MAQA yahoos spread as much or more FAKE NEWS than anyone.

[Bobcat]

Agree to disagree, you obviously have a bias that effects your ability to be fair and balanced. You should be like CH BDK Seattle and I. It doesn't hurt to admit things can be wrong on both sides like we do so well.

[UNI88]

Agree to disagree, you obviously have a bias that effects your ability to be fair and balanced. You should be like CH BDK Seattle and I. It doesn't hurt to admit things can be wrong on both sides like we do so well.

Fair and balanced? Things can be wrong on both sides?

I've stated that biden has been a horrible President, that harris was a bad candidate and more. What have you said that was truly negative about trump?

I'm not as unbiased as Ganny or Ibanez but I think I'm closer to them than you, CH, BDK or DARVO.

[Bobcat]

A friend of mine in Montana sent me this. His wife was one that had this doctor. This is unbelievably sick and twisted. How is he not in jail?

https://www.propublica.org/article/thom ... jMta1UYgaw

[Caribbean Hen]

Where do you get your medical care?

Kaiser Permanente, Providence Medical, Northwest Orthopedic, and several other out of network providers.

Why?

How about you?

Why don’t you get it in Canada?

[kalm]

Kaiser Permanente, Providence Medical, Northwest Orthopedic, and several other out of network providers.

Why?

How about you?

Why don’t you get it in Canada?

Because 1). You need to be a Canadian citizen or have permanent residency and a Canadian health card to receive anything beyond emergency services.

(Why don’t you think/research questions through before posting?)

2). I can sometimes average 1-2 office visits or procedures in a week for a couple months at a time.

3). People with chronic illness have complications traveling 3-4 hours one way. Especially with any frequency.

[kalm]

Agree to disagree, you obviously have a bias that effects your ability to be fair and balanced. You should be like CH BDK Seattle and I. It doesn't hurt to admit things can be wrong on both sides like we do so well.

You’re disagreeing with facts.

[Caribbean Hen]

Why don’t you get it in Canada?

Because 1). You need to be a Canadian citizen or have permanent residency and a Canadian health card to receive anything beyond emergency services.

(Why don’t you think/research questions through before posting?)

2). I can sometimes average 1-2 office visits or procedures in a week for a couple months at a time.

3). People with chronic illness have complications traveling 3-4 hours one way. Especially with any frequency.

I didn’t think it through because I knew you already did

I know damn well I don’t want to go to Canada for healthcare

[houndawg]

My favorite was 4 months ago when my insurance decided to start denying my insulin because they deemed it was no longer medically necessary because I had my A1C at 6.3. I mean, my A1C was 6.3 because my dead pancreas started working again, and not because the insulin was working/saving my life. Right? Right?

That's what I was told. My endo, PCP, and I spent countless hours on the phone, sending letters, records, etc. trying to figure out how they just decided to stop covering my insulin.

After about 2-3 weeks they changed their reason for denial to "Treatment considered too invasive/advanced. Must try lesser treatments first to determine their efficacy."

Thankfully my endo office were real ones and during one of my visits trying to figure things out went "I'm just going to leave these 3 boxes of fast-acting insulin and 3 boxes of long-acting insulin on this desk. I will forget I put them there once I walk out of this door. So if they aren't there when I come back I won't even know they aren't there. If they are there I'll think I must have forgotten to put them away".

Turns out insurance companies figured out it's more profitable not to cover insulin, have a Type 1 decline in overall health for a few months, end up in DKA, spend a week in the hospital in kidney/liver failure and die than it is to keep them on insulin and alive/healthier for years more.


I sure would hate some CEO to not get their pay bumped from 42.5 million to 43 million because their profits were just a little bit less due to people actually getting covered.


End of story kicker - finally got my insulin reapproved but they denied the needs that connect to the pens. So I had my insulin, just no way to get it in me. Thankfully those are cheap enough and can be grabbed basically anywhere but I couldn't help but laugh at that one.

Sadly, a way more common story than the media or those who haven’t gone through it yet realize.

Motherfucking leeches.

Glad you’re finding the work arounds and that some pancreatic function has come back, brother. It’s amazing how related the pancreas, liver, kidneys, and gall bladder are so related, ain’t it?

Every claim denied expands the bonus pool.

[kalm]

Because 1). You need to be a Canadian citizen or have permanent residency and a Canadian health card to receive anything beyond emergency services.

(Why don’t you think/research questions through before posting?)

2). I can sometimes average 1-2 office visits or procedures in a week for a couple months at a time.

3). People with chronic illness have complications traveling 3-4 hours one way. Especially with any frequency.

I didn’t think it through because I knew you already did

I know damn well I don’t want to go to Canada for healthcare

You knew I did what?

[BDKJMU]

The same people on the left that cheer this guys murder because of denied claims causing thousands of deaths a year in the US would go apoplectic at the murder of an abortion doctor because of abortions killing over a million babies a year in the US..

[UNI88]

The same people on the left that cheer this guys murder because of denied claims causing thousands of deaths a year in the US would go apoplectic at the murder of an abortion doctor because of abortions killing over a million babies a year in the US..

You're not wrong. The reverse is also true.

Thank you for continuing to help me show the similarities between the extreme left and extreme right.

[Caribbean Hen]

A friend of mine in Montana sent me this. His wife was one that had this doctor. This is unbelievably sick and twisted. How is he not in jail?

https://www.propublica.org/article/thom ... jMta1UYgaw

You need to question the crap out of these doctors on everything

[clenz]

Yes, they do over charge an insane amount

Do you realize they set costs based on what insurance states they are willing to cover?

The chargemaster is a person/document that lists all prices hospitals use to "charge us what they want".

Not all that long ago, within the last century, hospitals worked like anywhere else "Cost of procedure/medicine/etc. + a small percent to make money.

As insurance companies grew, and lobbied for more power, billing got far more complicated. Why? Well, largely because the insurance companies started demanding discounts because of "all the business they send to the hospital". This would have/did result in hospitals losing large amounts of money because thy weren't even getting to keep the cost of whatever it is they did. To ae up for it the hospitals (and this is where they get evil in this) started creating artificial and inflated prices at astronomical rates so that they could go back to the insurance company and go "Here is our price on things, and here is what you need to cover. Look at the incredible discounts we are giving you!!"

As time has gone on those prices have only continued to skyrocket for hospitals to profit more (yes, the admin side of hospitals is also just as evil as how I view insurance administrators) insurance companies have started taking bigger cuts for themselves. They have also started to deny more and more claims as they started realizing if we don't cover things we make more money, and if the person dies we don't have to cover anything anymore. Hell, they discovered they can make doctors out of network because they are "too specialized" and don't want to cover any of it. Hospitals continue to charge those fake prices to everyone regardless of insurance prices It's why they are so willing to negotiate if you tell them you will pay them cash.

So you get hospital admin and health insurance admin both lobbying the government to make it harder for the public to actually get access to the care they need, and be able to pay for it. The healthcare industry spends more on lobbying that the oil and defense industries combined.

It's not the doctors charging those rates. It's the admin.

I did billing for a private practice for a few years. I know a thing or two about how it all works on the backend and all the fighting providers do with insurance companies. It's not the providers. Well, maybe some I can't make a blanket 100% statement like that. Providers and nurses hate insurance as much, if not more, than the general public. There are significant numbers of providers in a private practice, whom are paid directly by insurance who sets the rates they can charge, and it can take months for insurance to pay out a claim to the provider. Let's say you see a provider on 8/1 and bill through insurnace. The chances that provider gets paid for that appointment before November, at the extreme earliest, is significantly lower than the declination rate of UHC. Most are will be waiting until December if not January to get paid for the appointment slot

How significant is the impact of the cost of malpractice and other insurance on healthcare costs?

I'm also guessing the number of behind the scenes bureaucrats has ballooned in comparison to the number of people on the front lines actually providing care (doctors, nurses, etc.) and that has significantly impacted the cost of care.

Update to this since my last reply to this said I didn't have the information on admin costs. I came across some information from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation that looked at the administrative cost per capita compared to OECD countries. It wasn't brand new information. I believe the report was published in 2022 and the most recent data at that time was as of 2020. I can try to find the actual graphic if you'd like, but I did copy down the dollars

Japan $82
UK $97
Sweden $97
South Korea $126
Australia $152
Canada $196
Belgium $198
Netherlands $240
Austria $240
Switzerland $297
France $299
Germany $306
Average $194

The US is $1,1055

That data doesn't give me an "actual answer" to the question of it's direct impact on cost of premiums, impact on rate of denial, etc. though it doesn't take anything more than a room temperature IQ to be able to put together spending that much, per capita, on just administrative costs is going to cause premiums and denials to go up to ensure profits get returned and stock prices go up.

[UNI88]

How significant is the impact of the cost of malpractice and other insurance on healthcare costs?

I'm also guessing the number of behind the scenes bureaucrats has ballooned in comparison to the number of people on the front lines actually providing care (doctors, nurses, etc.) and that has significantly impacted the cost of care.

Update to this since my last reply to this said I didn't have the information on admin costs. I came across some information from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation that looked at the administrative cost per capita compared to OECD countries. It wasn't brand new information. I believe the report was published in 2022 and the most recent data at that time was as of 2020. I can try to find the actual graphic if you'd like, but I did copy down the dollars

Japan $82
UK $97
Sweden $97
South Korea $126
Australia $152
Canada $196
Belgium $198
Netherlands $240
Austria $240
Switzerland $297
France $299
Germany $306
Average $194

The US is $1,1055

That data doesn't give me an "actual answer" to the question of it's direct impact on cost of premiums, impact on rate of denial, etc. though it doesn't take anything more than a room temperature IQ to be able to put together spending that much, per capita, on just administrative costs is going to cause premiums and denials to go up to ensure profits get returned and stock prices go up.

I posted this in the Miscellaneous Items thread ...

Seven reasons why Americans pay more for health care than any other nation

1. Lack of price limits - U.S. hospitals have more specialists than do medical facilities in other nations. Having access to 24/7 specialty care, particularly for hospitals in major metro areas, drives up costs, said Michael Chernew, a health care policy professor at Harvard Medical School. Patients have more elbow room and privacy here. U.S. hospitals typically have either one or two patients per room, unlike facilities abroad that tend to have open wards with rows of beds, Chernew said. He said differences in labor markets and regulatory requirements also can pack on costs.
2. Hospitals and doctors get paid for services, not outcomes - Doctors, hospitals and other providers are paid based on the number of tests and procedures they order, not necessarily whether patients get better. Critics of this fee-for-service payment method says it rewards quantity over quality. Health providers who order more tests or procedures get more lucrative payments whether the patients improve or not.
3. Specialists get paid much more ‒ and want to keep it that way - Some see that as a system that rewards doctors who specialize in caring for patients with complex medical conditions while skimping on pay for primary care doctors who try to prevent or limit disease.
4. Administrative costs inflate health spending - One of the biggest sources of wasted medical spending is on administrative costs, several experts told USA TODAY.
5. Health care pricing is a mystery - Patients often have no idea how much a test or a procedure will cost before they go to a clinic or a hospital. Health care prices are hidden from the public. And because consumers with health insurance often must pick up a portion of their bill, health care prices matter.
6. Americans pay far more for prescription drugs than people in other wealthy nations - There are no price limits on prescription drugs, and Americans pay more for these life-saving medications than residents of other wealthy nations.
7. Private Equity - Wall Street investors who control private equity firms have taken over hospitals and large doctors practices, with the primary goal of making a profit. The role of these private equity investors has drawn increased scrutiny from government regulators and elected officials.

Health insurers often require doctors and hospitals to get authorization before performing procedures or operations. Or they mandate "step therapy," which makes patients try comparable lower-cost prescription drugs before coverage for a doctor-recommended drug kicks in.

These mandates trigger a flurry of communication and tasks for both health insurers and doctors, Cutler said.

Although medical records are computerized, too often medical computer systems don't communicate with outside organizations such as health insurers, Cutler said. That results in extra administrative tasks, when doctors attempt to get authorization from an insurer on behalf of a patient.

Such communication could be more seamless − and result in less busywork − if insurers could track patients records electronically, Cutler said

Instead, they often turn to calls and throwback technology such as fax machines.