Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but I suppose it's because the article is an opinion piece and there have been several major threads about the story already.
Expecting individuals to hold a large organisation back from doing the things its incentivised to do solely through their personal morality is never going to work, and killing one dude doesn't change that. The entity interprets integrity as damage and routes around it. Railing against "greed" is an easy way to avoid doing anything that might actually change things.
Ever wonder why only one country has these healthcare companies making such huge profits, and it's a country whose health outcomes are so much worse than its peers? It's not because their people are greedier than others, or more alienated, or individually less moral. It's because their health system is set up to reward that behaviour.
(And if you want zip code to be less of a predictive feature, maybe legalise building housing. Or let your data analysts talk honestly about race, either would work.)
If such shootings became more common then they would provide an incentive for change. As a tool for punishment they are flawed, as a tool for change they are crude but potentially effective.
Somebody is going to be appointed new CEO, and I think it's hard to deny that "if you produce too many bad health outcomes that reduces your own life expectancy" isn't a powerful motivator, no matter what the rest of the system rewards.
Policy change would be a better tool towards that end. But even the tiniest steps in that direction like Obamacare/ACA get heavy opposition.
> Somebody is going to be appointed new CEO, and I think it's hard to deny that "if you produce too many bad health outcomes that reduces your own life expectancy" isn't a powerful motivator, no matter what the rest of the system rewards.
In the unlikely event that they appointed a CEO who felt sufficiently at-risk to issue orders to improve health outcomes at the expense of profit, how much effect would those orders have? Most likely the people below him would just ignore that CEO, find ways to rationalise that he didn't mean what he was saying. If necessary the board would go around the CEO and talk to the layer below him directly.
I don't think the shooter could get a fair trial in the US because I'm not sure they could find a jury to convict them. I don't think I've seen a shooting that's been so devoid of any sympathy for the victim. Looking inward, though, I find myself more intrigued at the reaction than horrified by the killing.
The loudest opinions surface. I wouldn’t take lack of public sympathy to mean that the average American condones this type of behavior.
I am no more sympathetic than I am towards the many people killed each day in the US, but I think the assassination and the subsequent justification of it because he was a small cog in the system is abhorrent. And I hope that the majority of the country feels the same way.
Whether or not the assassination is justified, I don't think it makes sense to call him a small cog. He's the leader of one of the largest health insurance companies in America.
As much as I hate to point it out, it’s not so simple.
He had a legally enforceable mandate to maximize shareholder value. There’s some wiggle room in how that’s accomplished, but not as much as it seems from the outside.
That does make him, much as I hate to say it, a small cog.
It’s funny to me that so often on HN we have discussions about making ethical choices in who we work for and which projects we contribute to, yet the sentiment on this CEO is honestly the most sympathetic I have seen in any comment section
He chose to take the role. He profited from it massively and did more to perpetuate it than any other single individual at the company.
If we were talking about a developer who was writing software for drone bombs wiping out families, yeah maybe that’s a cog. But still there would be no shortage of judgement on that choice of profession
It’s plainly obvious that insurance companies are not good faith actors working to help people. They lobbied for this system, they are the beneficiaries of it, and they are reaping what they’ve sown
But no less deserving of being executed. His decisions led to the deaths of thousands. Justice — in the true sense of the word — demands an answer for this. If the systems we have in place won’t do it, then extrajudicial means are justified. And encouraging to see, frankly.
Just because his crimes were legal does not mean he should not face punishment.
> The loudest opinions surface. I wouldn’t take lack of public sympathy to mean that the average American condones this type of behavior.
I'm not sure I agree with you there. The indifference in some quarters, celebration in others, across either side of the political divide insofar as I've seen, leads me to believe that in some cases, the well of sympathy is running dry – or, worse, has run dry.
If the shooter is ever caught he will probably die while "resisting arrest". A trial gives him a platform, and as you say a jury of his peers is unlikely to convict him.
A trial should be about setting forth the law and the facts and letting the jury handle any relevant "leaky abstractions".
It's fairly clear that the act was illegal. If the facts conclusively show that J. Random Somebody pulled the trigger, then conviction should be the non-leaky return from the jury() function.
But, then, IANAL, and our legal system has seemed less than water-tight of late, so we'll see.
This sentiment reminds me of the movie Law Abiding Citizen. Gerald Butler's role Clyde Shelton could've single-handedly avenged his family from the get-go, yet he chose to also take his vengeance on the justice system as well. Yet somehow many viewers still think that Clyde was righteous and it was a pity that Jamie Foxx's role Nick Rice didn't get punished enough.
>So when UHC’s CEO was assassinated yesterday morning, on his way to brag to his shareholders about record profits
IMO a lot of the discourse on this topic is based more on vibes that reality.
UnitedHealthCare's profits are down YoY- both in absolute #s and in terms of their operating margin. (from 6.6% down to 5.6%). But if you frame the assassination as "CEO who has reduced the degree by which his company profits from sick people", you end up with a whole different batch of theories and motives.
(note that UnitedHealthcare is a subset of UnitedHealthcare Group, so you have to dig into their filings to see UHC's numbers broken out)
What really triggers me is that private healthcare operation costs are so high in the US. Ok, 5% operating margin. So for every 100 dollars paid to private insurance, you should expect what, 80 dollars to be paid for medical expenses ? It's less than 70.
Honestly I bought into the 'private sector is more efficient' quite a bit. In healthcare this simply isn't the case. In my country, depending on the year, for every 100€ the state give to our public insurance, between 88 and 93€ go to pay for medical expenses.
Healthcare is private in name and profits only. You are required to buy their product by law, they set the amount they pay for healthcare, whether or not they will pay that amount, and they decide on a whim whether or not you need a lawyer to get what you paid for. That is not a private company.
My understanding is that HHS under RFK (The next administration's intended US Health Director) will drop government contracts with device or drug manufacturers selling medicare-covered goods abroad, at a fraction of the US medicare rate.
That way the Medicare dollars from a grocery clerk worker in Delaware is not subsidizing the cheap lifestyle drug of someone in germany, for example.
Do you have a particular drug in mind or are there details of this plan somewhere? Most drugs are cheaper in other countries because single payer systems have stronger negotiation power and can buy in bulk. The VA is similar in this regard and often gets drugs cheaper than the rest of the US. Think of it like how if you buy in bulk at costco vs buying something at the corner store, it's cheaper per unit because costco is buying direct, in bulk, from the manufacturers & there's fewer middlemen between you and the products.
So, the grocery clerk worker in Delaware isn't subsidizing someone in Germany or our vets, they're just paying extra because of inefficiencies in the system. If the US moved to a similar single payer system, we could reap these benefits, too.
Nope. Its not "inneficiency" . ITs regulation. Literal dollars extracted from all US classes (including the poor on medicare and medicaid) and shifted to healthcare R&D due to the healthcare market regulations that permit monstrosities such as coverage mandates, payment for new drugs with marginal benefit, or Medicare non-negotiation with manufacturers.
So, France may offer Pfizer $1 for drugs that take $100M to research. And Pzifer may calculate its advantageous to sell for that price if they plan to recover R&D cost from selling it in the US for $1000. That's not efficiency, that's a subsidized opportunity.
The US can (and hopefully will) break that game by quitting to subsidize it. If France wants cutting edge devices for $1, France can make their own. Spend their own taxpayer R&D millions. Pfizer will need to make price decisions affecting all buyers, not just US taxpayers.
I am more concerned on whether he will be allowed to do what must be done.
He's running head-first into very, very powerful interests in industrial Food, forever drugs, and media (whose major revenue source is the former 2 groups).
Its not a coincidence his mere nomination caused a bit of a ruckus already. There's been documented meetings from all major lobbyist groups getting together to plan how to take him down already.
There's nothing sinister, to be clear. Its just status quo. When people's expensive DC mortages depends on whether you have a job, and whether you have a job depends on whether your client can sell even more missisipi children lucky charms and ozempic via SNAP food assistance, the lobbyst do what must be done, from their perspective.
He screws the missisipi poor children and the tax payer, no 2nd thoughts needed.
Hey folks. I know this one is a touchy subject. It is in no way intended to pile on those who are gleefully mocking a murder, and I should have probably included the subtitle ("Towards Ethical Data Science").
Rather, it's an encouragement for people who are paid to build software and data systems that shape people's lives to take a moment to reflect on that impact.
I submit that human beings are the Leaky Abstraction, and the techo-fetishing involved in reducing society to a series of spreadsheets and AI models is the Orwellian bugaboo.
In my Glorious Future of Applied Handwaving, the system would trade some economies of scale for smaller organizations with more individual interactions. This involves some mechanism alongside the almighty dollar as an organizing mechanism. I don't know what that is.
When the Leaky Abstractions happen, the flooding would be less severe.
WTF? You can't do this here. I've banned the account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Seems like an overreaction. Which specific rule did revscat violate? "Don't be snarky?" "Eschew flamebait?" Because it seems to me that all they did was thoughtfully state an opinion that you had an emotional reaction towards.
The GP comment doesn't count as 'thoughtful' in any sense I recognize. What I see there is: (1) celebration of a murder; (2) denunciatory rhetoric; (3) a major assumption about what happened (in reality, none of us knows yet what happened there); and (4) a barrage of clichés ("justice has been served", "flag away", etc.).
While correct, i wonder when the car insurers, home insurer CEOs etc will suffer the same fate. Answer: they won't. Because they provide a valuable service.
The problem is that healthcare insurance is no longer connected to the value of protection against accidents and extreme, unforseen situations.
Until and unless we recognize that medical insurance only turned into an all you can eat medical buffet in the last 70 years due to government intervention, we will be doomed to continue to bankrupt society with money transfers to captive markets dominated by AETNA, CIGNA, UHC , etc
Double check your home owner's coverage. Based on a conversation with my home insurer, when there is damage to my home, they will only pay out in cases where there I have clear evidence that damage was caused by a third party physically striking my property. Weather? No. Damage caused by incorrect installations? No. Damage caused by ground shaking from reckless construction next door? No. They would have to literally ram some piece of their equipment into my home for me to have grounds for a claim. In this situation, they're just a middle man for a lawyer taking up an easy civil case.
The ACA mandates that insurers spend 80-85% (depending on the particulars) on healthcare. If they don't meet that target, they have to issue rebates until they do.
What, exactly, should this man have done differently? I guess you could say he should have gone above & beyond the law, maybe pushed that up to 90%, but how do we know that this would have been enough to solve the problems people are complaining about?
Try flipping the question and asking yourself: given all of that, why did UHC have a false-denial rate more than double the industry average?
For example, perhaps the issue here is that UHC was undercutting competitors knowing that the vast majority of their fraudulent denials would go unchallenged -- they still meet the requirement for minimum spending on payouts, but they attract more customers[0] and in so doing distort the health insurance market.
[0]: Customers in this case are primarily businesses buying policies for their employees, rather than end users of the product.
This thinking is exactly what the article is talking about.
The CEO sits in his office, looks at bunch of abstract spreadsheets saying that 80% of spending is going on healthcare, and pats himself on the back for doing a good job.
But what about the single mom of 3 whose claim was falsely denied by the AI he rolled out? Whose responsibility is that, and the thousands of other cases like it?
People understand the trolley problem as a thought experiment. Here, we have a big, fat, man who switched the tracks to let the train roll over as many people as he could in order to save a bag of cash.
About 1% of VFIAX is UnitedHealthcare. This is my main mutual fund holding. Product idea: auto short selling in proportion to your holdings for companies you dislike.
> The opinions that are permitted here are narrow.
It's important to remember that HN isn't a monolith and most important of all, we all share in the virtue of "curious" discussion. Arguably this post was flagged because the discussion isn't curious enough and leads us down the same discussion lines that we've had previously.
Not my own viewpoint, FWIW, but definitely the sentiment shared by the moderation team here.
I'm certainly disappointed that none of the discussion is touching on the culpability of technical teams in building these systems.
I'm still struggling with my desire to surprise people with the conclusion instead of including it at the front of the piece. Which tends to lead to people discussing the setup rather than the punchline.
On the left? This issue has been uniquely bi-partisan. From the article:
“ So when UHC’s CEO was assassinated yesterday morning, on his way to brag to his shareholders about record profits, not many people were confused about the motive. What was surprising was the gleeful re-unification of a divided internet - from MAGA twitter threads to progressive BlueSky conversations to the entire nursing subreddit - over a man’s brutal death on a midtown sidewalk. Vaccine skeptics and physicians who have been at each other’s throats since 2020 found the one medical issue on which they are passionately on the same side.”
Health Insurance Companies Take Down Leadership Pages Following Murder of UH CEO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42335775 - Dec 2024 (2 comments)
Moderators Delete Reddit Thread as Doctors Torch Dead UnitedHealthcare CEO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42332347 - Dec 2024 (47 comments)
United Healthcare CEO Shooting: Message May Have Been Left on Bullets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42328207 - Dec 2024 (6 comments)
Americans React to UnitedHealthcare CEO's Murder: 'My Empathy Is Out of Network' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42327272 - Dec 2024 (399 comments)
UnitedHealthcare CEO fatally shot in midtown Manhattan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42317968 - Dec 2024 (1 comment)
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Manhattan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42317604 - Dec 2024 (444 comments)