Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
I hope that was a mugger
United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson was killed on Wednesday in New York City. Written on the shell casings left by his killer were the words “Deny,” “Defend,” and “Depose,” which suggests this was not a random killing. NYC police have been investigating the fact that UnitedHealthcare has been under attack recently from People’s Action Institute — a leftist organization with a leftist name whose website describes their goals thusly: “Advance a long-term agenda for racial, economic and gender justice by investing in powerful state and local organizations and campaigns that win real change in people’s lives.” Why can’t leftists just come out and say what they want? I can think of only one possible explanation, and it’s not good.
Anyway, People’s Action Institute released the following statement recently about Medicare patients getting denied coverage. They mentioned no specific cases, but said:
“Despite having health insurance coverage, people are experiencing barriers to receiving care. The largest barrier to receiving care is the private health insurance corporations themselves refusing to authorize or pay for care.”
These people have apparently never heard of Canadian or British healthcare systems. They have also never heard of Obamacare, apparently, in which millions of people have health insurance but can’t get health care. They’re shocked. SHOCKED!
Leftists demand that government pay for health care. So we get Medicare. Today, Medicare has a $1 trillion dollar budget, 75% of which is deficit spending. And even with that, Medicare can’t come close to meeting the health care needs of elderly Americans. So it allows them to buy secondary insurance, to help cover that which Medicare just can’t afford. And even with that, the private insurance companies can’t cover everything, either. We eventually run out of other people’s money. And guess who leftists get mad at? Private insurance companies.
That really is amazing. If Medicare worked, we wouldn’t need private insurance companies to be involved at all. Medicare begs them for help, and hands them a problem which they can’t solve. But leftists still love Medicare. Even though Medicare doesn’t work. Because it can’t work. Medicare borrows 3/4 of a TRILLION dollars a year, and it’s not enough. Perhaps Medicare doesn’t work? Because it can’t work?
And that’s the fault of private insurance companies.
Imagine private insurance companies seeing this and thinking, “This is not worth the trouble. We’re not going to do Medicare plans.” Imagine Medicare without secondary insurance. It doesn’t cover anything. The Canadian system sort of works because when Canadians get sick, they come to America.
Where would we send our sick people? Mexico?
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Government programs don’t work because they can’t work. If that inevitable outcome leads to violence from its proponents, then this becomes a Mobius Strip of resentment and destruction.
Was this killing in NYC the act of a left-wing organization that blames private companies for the problems that result from their own irrational faith in government?
I really hope not. Because if that’s true, then this is just the beginning.
Political violence nearly always comes from the left. Were the Black Lives Matter riots just a sample of things to come? Is American society actively tearing itself apart? Has our government and its supporters developed an open adversarial relationship with the American people?
Source: Shutterstock, 1794791080
I really hope not.
This could get ugly quickly.
I hope that was just a mugger on a NYC sidewalk.
Because if this was a politically targeted killing, planned by angry leftists, then this could get ugly really, really quickly.
Published in General
I completely, 1000% agree.
People are making all kinds of unfortunate life choices so they don’t have to worry about this like staying at a company or in a union or whatever.
I suppose insurance could be seen as something like a “union” for patients. And the bigger problem on the lawyer side is that if you need a lawyer, it’s probably because of another lawyer, likely on the government payroll whose funding is essentially unlimited. I’ve never heard of a lawyer representing a broken leg or something. “No, my client refuses to be healed unless it costs at least $10,000!” Although I probably shouldn’t be giving them ideas.
The dynamics of all of this is terrible unless you get wealthy.
Your report regarding attorneys keeping insurance out of their business life versus the medical establishment that didn’t is a most important one.
This is why the medical world has gone from employing a trusted group of people to now being considered by the public as that of over prescribing, mis-diagnosing bamboozlers.
With the high cost of the med malpractice insurance that a young physician faces were that individual to attempt to have their own practice, most newly graduated MD’s join a clinic. The clinic owners are usually all about profit. So patients are to be seen for ten minutes or so. That gives the doctor some time to stress the importance of the patient being up to date on their vaccines, as well as their need for statins and blood pressure meds. If it is a younger individual, even under the age of 18, the need for psych meds will be covered.
If the patient is even asked what health concern of theirs brought them to the clinic that day, it is nothing short of a miracle.
Things were so very different before malpractice insurance began determining how doctors view and operate in their practice of medicine.
If the medical industry doesn’t block it, technology is going to make medical care much more efficient. We are going to have AI systems that know more about medicine than 99% of doctors and know more about you than you do. We rent a device for $14.99/month that will take all kinds of measurements and manage our health. Occasionally, it well tell you to go to an imaging center located a few miles away where AI (and outsourced doctors) do all the diagnostics. This “clinic” can also dispense you medicines that you cannot wait for a few hours home delivery. Surgeons still have a job for now, but there are people trying to do remote surgery to save money.
The response to this is “You can have quality healthcare, cheap healthcare, or readily accessible healthcare. Pick two.”
As with:
In other nations people don’t need to make these choices.
Of course other nations did not take it as their responsibility to destabilize the middle east, fight two wars against the people of Iraq, also undertake a 2 decades’ long a war against Afghanistan, a nation which we bequeathed with 80 billion bucks of military gear we didn’t take even as we surrendered, have a military budget each and every year which is the equivalent of the total of the ten next largest military forces combined. Etc.
BTW when Obama Care takes up more than someone’s discretionary income, that person doesn’t view it as being cheap. And then despite paying out of pocket for the insurance, when their needed medical situations aren’t even covered, they are understandably pissed.
It also is odd than many here whimpered not even once over the 2 Cares Act packages passed by Congress and signed by both Trump and Biden to supposedly alleviate the pain of the COVID era. These packages eventually totalled 8.4 trillions of dollars. That amount could have covered every man woman and child in the US for at least 6 years of real health care, rather than the risky vaxxes, ventilation and remdesivir policies as well as hospital kidnappings and murders of supposed COVID patients.
I don’t think that is true. It’s not how they calculate when the government health care system will provide statins, anyway. Maybe in some cases it amounts to the same thing, but that’s not the criterion that is used.
I read about it in this recent article, which seems to have been motivated by the question of whether Germany should change to a system whereby statins would be prescribed more easily than they are now.
We need more inflation and government. lol
Health insurance companies are, in my experience, a special kind of evil. They have destroyed the market for health care in America and rigged the resulting system to fleece both providers and consumers of healthcare. How do I feel about this UHC CEO getting whacked? The same way I feel when they find some Mafiosa dead and stuffed in the trunk of his car in Howard Beach.
The whole purpose of free markets is to handsomely reward those few who manage to do what most cannot – deliver better, faster AND cheaper. Example … there is more computing power in the phone I’m typing this on than was available for millions of dollars 25 years ago. But because there is no longer a market for healthcare we never get that,
I disagree with most of your points here. Other nations have most definitely decided (by electing their “representatives) and most of them in the West have chosen cheaper and less accessible with moderate quality. Brits just love the NHS until they get seriously ill or need surgery. They also have worse outcomes for breast cancer, for example, because they perform less early screening than the US. Dr. Trink retired from one of the largest breast care practices in the country in northwest Ohio and a large portion of their patients were coming over the border. He’s also met Canadian radiologists at conferences who are envious of the technology available to US doctors. Need an MRI in Canada? Good luck in a country that has 5 machines total where Dr. Trink had to decide which MRI facility to send you to — in his city! This was maybe 10 years ago, so hopefully things have gotten better for Canadians.
While I agree the US engages in unnecessary conflicts and with poor leadership with no plan for victory, the “discretionary” nature of military spending is misleading, as defending the nation’s interests is one of the very few legitimate purposes of government (unlike the redistributive “entitlement” programs — we’re never going back though). There are definitely abuses of military spending, but that’s not why people are denied healthcare coverage. And it’s also not why we have insane deficits and debt levels (see “entitlements” and interest on the debt).
Obamacare was intended to move us to the Canadian/European system of supposedly “cheaper” (“Affordable” Care Act, my a$$) and quality healthcare. Americans and their doctors are used to providing some of the best healthcare in the world, so it’s a difficult transition to cheaper and good quality while maintaining accessibility. I think Obama may have broken the mold (as he did so many other things) and will end up making our healthcare more expensive, poorer quality, and less accessible. His work here is done.
And plenty of conservatives are unhappy about the Cares Acts as they are probably the main cause of inflation. Inject that much funny money into the economy while supply and demand remain stable and inflation happens.
So you have every right to be upset about poor quality, more expensive, less accessible healthcare. Just pin the blame on the government takeover. Our government is too damn big.
So, healthcare might get cheaper if people were made smaller?
That’s the kind of thing that led to the death of actress Natasha Richardson after a skiing accident in Canada in 2009.
I have a friend who is a recent transplant from Germany to the US and she could not believe the emphasis that she and her spouse noticed whenever they go in for a doctor visit. Doctor after doctor have tried to convince them of their need for statins, even though both of them have cholesterol in the range that once was considered normal.
Again the Means duo explains this phenomena very well. According to them, it is all about numbers. If a drug is found to reduce the numbers that a large group of people have on their health record for being in the high blood pressure category, than it is likely the new high blood pressure drug has a better chance of being approved. Then the same industry that brought forward the new drug decides to push the advisory numbers of blood pressure readings downward so that more people will be cautioned by doctors to take this medicine.
For instance, it used to be that drs were concerned if your blood pressure started to be something like 145/79.
Now I am hearing that 135/65 might necessitate a need for a blood pressure medicine.
Soon I suspect even people like me with reading of 122/65 might be considered to need the new drug.
@zafar, this was long enough in the past that I don’t have a clue if insurance even entered the picture. But I’m pretty sure not as I think they were all self employed and fairly well heeled.
Sorry.
Natasha Richardson was fairly well heeled too, but that didn’t save her from Canadian healthcare in 2009.
Dr Bastiat, I hope you remember I am only the messenger when it comes to mentioning Americans and the growing mistrust of doctors:
University of Massachusetts Hospital study: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/americans-trust-doctors-hospitals-plunged-during-pandemic-survey-suggests
Americans’ trust in doctors, hospitals plunged during pandemic, survey suggests
Mary Van Beusekom, MS
July 31, 2024
Trust in US physicians and hospitals fell from 71% to 40% during the COVID-19 pandemic in across sociodemographic groups, a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)–led survey study suggests.
For the study, the scientists parsed data from 24 waves of an online non-probability survey fielded to US adults in all 50 states from April 2020 to January 2024. The survey asked about trust in physicians and hospitals, as well as COVID-19 and influenza vaccination status. Respondents were offered incentives such as cash, airline miles, gift cards, or vouchers SNIP
The researchers said the observational study couldn’t determine the cause of the trust erosion. But they said that, when considered in the context of previous studies with similar results, the study “raises the possibility that the decrease in trust during the pandemic could have long-lasting public health implications. If so, effective interventions aimed at restoring trust could have benefits, not only for future pandemics, but for health in the US more generally, at least in terms of vaccination.”
######################################
As far as expert opinion about the sad state of Americans getting statins pushed on them when their cholesterol is not high, here is the opinion of “The British Medical Journal” —
BMJ offer the following bottom line:
Published on https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/articles/how-modern-medicine-shot-itself-in-the-foot
“Statin therapy in low risk people does not reduce all cause mortality or serious illness and has about an 18% risk of causing side effects that range from minor and reversible to serious and irreversible… Broadening the recommendations in cholesterol lowering guidelines to include statin therapy for low risk individuals will unnecessarily increase the incidence of adverse effects without providing overall health benefits.”
This is just a look at the health situation of over prescribing statins. There is also the cost to MediCare and MediCaid budgets when people who do not need a med are Rx’ed it.
The problem is that Americans expect healthcare without paying and that healthcare is 20% of GDP. Those things cannot both be. We need to fix the expectation of Americans. About half of Americans are reasonable and half are socialists that just want it “free”.
No foresight.
You can do better, if you try. Health insurance companies are just the middle-man between employers (payers) and healthcare providers and both ends like having them. There are few healthcare providers that have posted prices and take cash payments, but the market for a market is limited, because Americans expect “free” healthcare. The best-case scenario I see is a two-tier system of government-provided healthcare for the socialist Americans a viable fee-for-service for the very few folks that are willing to pay for they get.
And TANSTAAFL.
I suspect one reason providers don’t post cash prices is that the insurance companies and regulators don’t allow it.
I’ve also seen statements by pharmacists that once they find out a patient/customer has some kind of insurance, they’re not allowed to point out that the cash price for a medication – especially a generic – might be lower than their “insurance” copayment. I don’t know if that’s a state thing, or a federal thing, or something required by the insurers they deal with.
I explained a huge part of the problem that I thought people here would catch on to.
Our health costs as “consumers” are astronomical.
But those of us who have an overview of what could be trimmed back to our benefit in a way that could cut our health costs back by what? Fifty percent? Seventy percent? realize that this aspect is ignored. One reason that this is ignored is because of the hold that Pharma holds over Congress, through its armies of lobbyists, as well as lavish incentives offered to medical people if they drum up extra business for Pharma.
I offered up the example of statins in this discussion, in comment # 25, to point out that they are not needed for a good many of the people who are now taking them. Over the past summer, reports came out revealing that the American Heart Association is promoting a new heart disease risk calculator, called PREVENT. If this becomes the methodology followed by doctors, those being prescribed these meds would go from the from 45.4 million to 28.3 million people. This would significantly reduce the number of people facing serious risks from statins, which include headaches, muscle weakness, muscle pain, headaches, insomnia, chronic stomach problems, memory loss, kidney ailments, liver damage and ALS. The medication also might bring about type 2 diabetes. If the risks outweigh the benefits to certain people, that group should not have them foisted on them.
But also there would be a monetary savings for the budgets of people who pay out of pocket, for health insurers who pay the statin cost, and a significant savings for the nation’s MediCare and MediCaid’s budget. (It should also be noted that there is not definitive proof that the statins are as successful as being health aids as doctors make them out to be. The individual still has to cut back on food intake and to exercise more to achieve results.)
And this is just one medication out of many many over prescribed medications. Think of the savings if over prescribing meds ended, as it became a priority that only people who really need pills for this and that condition got them.
One reason RFK Jr is targeting the removal of food additives & artificial dyes in foods in because at least 6% of all our school aged kids are currently prescribed psych meds to offset attention deficit and learning problems and hyper-activity. These conditions have been shown to come about because of food additives. So if we have healthier processed food, we’d also need fewer meds.
RFK Jr talks about how the current vaccine program ends up being as huge win/win for Pharma because for every penny that Pharma loses by keeping vaxxes for kids at minimal costs, as well as having the annual flu vax for everyone for cheap & even free is because whatever that amount is, Pharma makes five times that on the infections, illnesses and disabilities due to the side effects of the vaxxes. (Today on Meet The Press, President Trump handled quite forcefully the idea that something is going on as far as the health of America’s children, and that his belief is that the we must determine the safety of the vaccines. RFK Jr has already won his lawsuit against the CDC or FDA that they failed in their mandated duty to determine through safety studies the risks vs benefits to the vaccines that are injected into us. The agency never completed one single safety study on one single vaccine, which is of course a massive fail.
And it also strikes me as odd that in commenting on the astronomical aspect of our health payments, again which can be out of pocket, through big insurers or through the government, that we are now facing the effects of the 8 trillion dollar plus cost of COVID Cares’ ACTs One and Two, how I am the only person I notice on Ricochet complaining about this. It is on my mind today for one huge reason: Over the past week, the Congressional Oversight Committee released the finalized report that concluded that COVID was little more than a hoax, and that most guidelines had been brought about in an arbitrary manner, including masks, lockdowns and the vaccine program. Our economy in many places was bought to a halt through the lockdowns, and the on going casualty count the public has endured and continues to endure due to the mRNA vaccine program present us with unfortunate repercussions that our society will have to deal with for decades.
Translation: Got drunk in Oaxaca, woke up on a pirate ship steaming through the Gulf of Northern Aggression, er, the Gulf of California, and got traded off the boat in a negotiating mixup involving avacados.
Except that the dollars earned by Mexicans living in the US, sent back to Mexico, are in the billions, and if people aren’t paying taxes, someone else is covering the bill regardless of location.
Maybe we should extend Obamacare to cover Earth, because health care is a human right.
You missed the one big lurking elephant. The government, through Medicare and Medicaid, completely wrecks any normal market mechanisms, and reimburses below the cost of treatment for patients covered by those two political train wrecks.
That’s one of the drivers for the insurance rate increases, historically – the reimbursements gap created by the gov’t is why private insurers’ rates go up quickly, annually. I think less than college tuition annual increase rates, but there ya go.
Statins are super cheap and effective.
But I get your point.