this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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One story that we couldn’t keep out of the press and that contributed most to my decision to walk away from my career in 2008 involved Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old leukemia patient in California whose scheduled liver transplant was postponed at the last minute when Cigna told her surgeons it wouldn’t pay. Cigna’s medical director, 2,500 miles away from Ms. Sarkisyan, said she was too sick for the procedure. Her family stirred up so much media attention that Cigna relented, but it was too late. She died a few hours after Cigna’s change of heart.

Ms. Sarkisyan’s death affected me personally and deeply. As a father, I couldn’t imagine the depth of despair her parents were facing. I turned in my notice a few weeks later. I could not in good conscience continue being a spokesman for an industry that was making it increasingly difficult for Americans to get often lifesaving care.

One of my last acts before resigning was helping to plan a meeting for investors and Wall Street financial analysts — similar to the one that UnitedHealthcare canceled after Mr. Thompson’s horrific killing. These annual investor days, like the consumerism idea I helped spread, reveal an uncomfortable truth about our health insurance system: that shareholders, not patient outcomes, tend to drive decisions at for-profit health insurance companies.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 17 hours ago

This is exactly why healthcare cannot be a private service. Companies will optimize the patients out of the equation in search of more profit.

The only way it could not be devastating if there was a competing service that had no profit incentive like a public healthcare system.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 16 hours ago

reveal an uncomfortable truth about our health insurance system: that shareholders, not patient outcomes, tend to drive decisions at for-profit health

For any diabetics on Lemmy this is the exact same sentiment I hate about dexcom. My son has autism and cannot manage his own diabetes, this his G7 is a lifesaver literally for my ex and I to manage his diabetes for him.

Numerous interactions with the company, and his Endo, have made is very clear that diabetics are second to making money in all their decision making at dexcom. It's disgusting. For the record I'm a Canadian as well, and because of the autism we get the G7 via a government subscription at no cost. That doesn't mean we don't still have to deal with dexcom on all bullshit issues like sensor failures.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Oh I've read his book he's great. I see a lot of people here debating his morality but the important aspect of his book is that he describes the actual tactics in detail.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

Maybe it should be illegal for certain industries to be publicly traded companies. The pursuit of profit to please faceless investors is a recipe for blind and insatiable pursuit of profit. The stock market is basically a ponzi scheme at this point with so many layers separating humans on one end from the humans on the other end of the profit/product dynamic, that it becomes a system that blindly drives itself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Quitting before you make CEO could be a smart career move.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

Smart staying alive move

[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What a frustrating article. We have an author that admits to being part of an effort to decrease access to healthcare and refers to the death of a monster in a human suit as a tragedy. He also admits he fucked up and has gone on to work with organizations that advocate for the right to healthcare.

I think I'm frustrated with this piece because it feels so lukewarm. Maybe that's by design so that it reaches a wider audience. I'm just tired of seeing the insurance industry and its executives handled with kid gloves. It is unambiguously evil to make the kind of money they make off of healthcare.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

In his own example his company literally killed a child with leukemia and the tone is still so weak.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

He cannot escape in his narrative that he got his. He did the damned work and was able to move on with his conscious. He quit, the company replaced him, nothing fundamentally changed. He feels better, kids still dead.

The article isn't a tale of redemption: it is about deflecting blame from executives to shareholders.

Which is just a subtle way of portraying a publicly traded company as less desireable than a fully privatized company that apparently would make different decisions about how to profit off dying people.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 2 days ago

it took an impromptu visit to a free medical clinic, held near where I grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee, to come face to face with the true consequences of our consumerism strategy.

At a county fairground in Wise, Va., I witnessed people standing in lines that stretched out of view, waiting to see physicians who were stationed in animal stalls. The event’s organizers, from a nonprofit called Remote Area Medical, told me that of the thousands of people who came to this three-day clinic every year, some had health insurance but did not have enough money in the bank to cover their out-of-pocket obligations.

That shook me to my core. I was forced to come to terms with the fact that I was playing a leading role in a system that made desperate people wait months or longer to get care in animal stalls or go deep into medical debt.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago (2 children)

And yet he still calls the death of Brian Thompson "tragic."

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

The death of a mass murderer is cause for celebration.

I hate this "He had a family that loved him!"

Because while I'm sure that's true... ya know who else had families that loved them?

The various people who died of treatable illness because this assclown denied the healthcare THAT THEY PAID INTO in order to save a couple of dollars despite wiping his ass with Benjamins on the regular.

To his co-workers, Brian Thompson was just another suit and tie who punched out at 5 and met up with the boys for drinks before seeing the Mrs.

To his customers, he was the man responsible for the deaths of fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters.

Ban For-Profit healthcare

[–] [email protected] 6 points 22 hours ago

His wife lived separated since 2017.

He got DUI last year.

He wasn't a saint, he was an asshole in private, like we all knew. The media lied about him.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

It kind of meets classical definition of tragic in that his downfall was the result of his own actions.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Stalin and Hitler had families too, doesn't mean I'm gonna stop being happy they dead

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago

It is tragic that it takes an assassination to bring the deplorable condition of our healthcare system to the front of the public consciousness, and also tragic if that's what it takes to effect change. The karmic justice itself doesn't have to be tragic for the event to be "tragic".

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago

I'm gunna go out on a limb and predict this guy doesn't get shot unless he goes hunting with the Cheneys regularly.

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