The Manifesto
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Worth noting that denial of care isn't a particularly American issue, or one tied exclusively to "for-profit" medicine. Care is extensively rationed in government run health systems.
Private medicine has to have gatekeepers because of the "flat of the curve" problem in a 3rd party payer system. The doctors/hospitals and the patients have the incentive to use care out to the point where the marginal benefit is zippo, because they (the hospitals and patients) don't bear the costs of that kind of excessive treatment. So in our system the insurers act as gatekeepers to make sure that there is enough benefit to the procedure to justify the coverage. In other nations, many procedures are simply out of the question from the get-go, and decisions are made by bureaucrats.
Our system has many problems, especially with distribution of care between the haves (well insured) and the have nots (poorly or non-insured). Having a 3rd party (not the physician, not the patient) make decisions about what is justifiable is not one of them.
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As someone who suffered as badly from neuropathy for a few years as this man's mother, I truly empathize with her agony. And I also faced claims denials by our insurance. And I didn't have a choice of insurers--we went with Mr. Pique's employment policy because that's all we had. And when he went to work for the county, they were self-insured, and they were exempt from oversight from the state insurance commissioner, so we had zero recourse when they turned down my claims. Pretty outrageous. (There was one smug asshole in the insurance administrator's office I would have loved to have seen die, at times.)
So this is a hot button issue for many, many people, and I haven't seen much empathy for the CEO who lost his life, or for his wife, or for his children. People have had enough. I can't say I am surprised by the reaction, though I think it is unfortunate.
From reading the manifesto, I'm surprised by this man's obvious intelligence and education. He threw himself on his own sword. To his credit, it has sparked a lot of serious discussion about the abomination that is the American insurance industry. But, I think he certainly could have achieved that notoriety and attention without killing another human being. However much you might revile the CEO of United Healthcare, his death is not the appropriate remedy.
Being on Medicare (original, not the joke that is Medicare Advantage, which United Health Care is a huge purveyor of) has been relief. What they cover and what they don't is clearly defined. I have never faced a denied claim. The biggest problem now with Medicare is that doctors are dropping it because they get only pennies on the dollar for Medicare claims. My own excellent doctor will no longer take Medicare patients after the first of the year. "We aren't a charity," he told me, apologetically.
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Medicare Advantage is a nightmare that I recognized immediately and shied away from. They have every financial incentive to deny coverage and I've seen my brother have to fight with them for months to get needed care. Their approach seems to be deny and see if you will go away. That's not just UHC. It's baked into the Part C program.
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Well, I've said I don't think his thoughts are original. It follows from my premise that nobody here could make choices similar or dissimilar to the ones he made. If my theory is correct, he has been the victim of psychological torture. I think all of it, the entire situation, is an indictment of the ways our society addresses healthcare. I've always tended to think we could and should do better. Yet when I think about it, I don't think there is any other aspect of the ways society addresses basic human needs that is any more fair, just, or logical. I've said this before but I think an individual's opportunities and achieved outcomes in life are much more random than most people believe. This wouldn't be surprising given we are all told by society that such opportunities and achievements aren't random at all.
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To make this situation even more complicated, in fairness, we have to consider the possibility that this was a set up,:
Link to videoTyson Delacruz commentary.
We have to remember that he is the alleged perpetrator, legally innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
There's definitely something about this situation that seem very strange and disconcerting to me.
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The State of Florida took a fall in the George Zimmerman case. Every member of law enforcement and of the judiciary involved in that case deserves nothing but infamy and contempt imo.
I'm not sure if we agree or not but I think we agree. This homicide is different from most others in the sense it meets the definition of an "assassination" imo.
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I’m seeing calls for the release of Luigi based on the Zimmerman case.
Yikes!
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Smerconish’s opening commentary this morning.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/14/us/video/smr-commentary-on-tragic-deaths-after-ceo-death
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I think he's a patsy. This isn't the same person.
Link to video
