Microblog Memes

To make it easier to understand for our short term minds, let's sketch a different scenario.

You hire a bodyguard. They're a 7"2 giant bodybuilder with armor. Then someone walks towards you with a knife, raising it up and staring you in the eyes with a frantic expression.

Your giant bodyguard steps aside, and watches are you slowly get tortured to death. Little by little, while you scream for help. The bodyguard tells you Venezuelan blood torture is not covered.

I think someone might rightfully be upset with this bodyguard company. Perhaps as much as the health insurance company that forces people to go into a year long legal battle to get cancer treatment.

At least, that's what I've been hearing about the healthcare system in the usa as of recent.

Without realizing it, Mike Beasley makes a great argument for why private, for-profit health insurance shouldn't exist.

it's a business that helps you pay your bills

Quite the opposite, it's a business that makes your bills expensive.

Mike is not wrong. In fact, he's very clearly laying out why insurance companies should not exist.

I'm not sure that was the argument he was trying to make though.

Not giving you the coverage you pay for is theft. When are we going to normalize that and start putting CEOs in jail?

"It's a business" is not a justification for evil, and yet that's always how the phrase is used.

UnitedHealth Group is so vertically integrated that, in fact they do own doctors, hospitals and pharmacies under the Optum brand. So yes, they do have a duty to take care of people even if they act like they don't.

Any company that promises goods and/or services in exchange for money that takes your money in exchange said goods and/or services and then doesn't deliver services or goods is a scam

It doesn't have to be a solemn vow. The definition of insurance is that it's a guarantee. If it's denying claims it's technically not even providing insurance.

Yeah, similarly, Burger King doesn't have to give you the whopper you've paid for. BK employees didn't take an oath to feed you whoppers. They only have taken an oath to the managers, who have taken an oath to the CEO, who has taken an oath to Friedrich Hayek and the shareholders to make shitloads in dividends, as is their social responsibility. Everything is working just fine in our society thanks to these nice concepts.

The very concept of paying for health care through insurance is evil.

Why do we even allow a profit motive to deny health care? Should be straight up illegal.

This gaslighting won't work anymore

It’s my understanding that health insurance companies hire doctors, who have taken the hypocritical oath, to review claims and deny them.

Insurance is defined at its core as a transfer of risk. Its that simple. If insurance denies everything I send their way while I am paying them, its no longer a transfer of risk, I am simply paying someone to tell me 'no'.

That out of the way, the whole health insurance industry does not follow the concept of transfer of risk. The insurance companies rather follow the concept of transfer of action. Basically I am not going to spend all day negotiating with a hospital. That said, them denying is because they do not want to do the work still, so in other words, I am still paying someone to tell me 'no'.

In both concepts, the insurance companies are not doing what they ascribed to. Along with the laws that congress stripped away affordable care to its basics that we all are required to have it - read an extra tax but to corporations who give kick backs to their congressional lackeys - and the fact that insurance companies basically are price fixing all the rates and such, it becomes a lose (you)/lose (you)/lose (hospitals)/only ones who win are the companies.

Late stage capitalism hard at work.

I think that if money exchanges hands, it's part of a deal that must be honored by the other party.

They're getting very close to saying the quiet part aloud, and the quiet part is...

"Everyone except for the .0001% exists for the service of said .0001%, and the fact that you have any self-respect or value for your lives is a failing on your part peon!"

I don't care what that guy thinks.

We should stop calling it "insurance", it doesn't ensure anything. We should call it what it is - a protection racket. Either that, or we could refer to it as "medical loans" - of course, it's all paid in advance, in many installments. Oh wait. That's just defining a protection racket again, isn't it?

insurance is a fucking scam that preys on the most vulnerable segment of the population in order to enrich themselves and their shareholders. and the vast majority of people think that's just the way things are in america, therefore it's the best possible way for things to be. what's not to understand?

If that's the tack he wants to take with his argument, than in fact that opposite is true.

They're a business. You provide them money and they provide a service. So in that respect, there should be no such thing as denial of service for ANYTHING because you've already paid for it.

That why insurance should not be for profit.

Funny how life insurance always pays, no problem. Because if they get a bad rep, people will go elsewhere. We can't do that with employer-covered healthcare!

You know... that kinda vow would be a great idea! Doctors take an oath like thing too, right?

I would assume that I actually get a coffee when I go to Starbucks and pay for it.

Insurance is a racket. Is that what Lil Mikey is saying?

Worse than that they staff doctors in name only. The type of quacks who couldn't make it in the real medical world. I really don't understand how they can't be sued for malpractice when they argue a diagnosis with your doctor. At that point they are acting as your doctor.

... This dude needs to understand how other types of insurance work

Not a meme.

The customers of insurance companies are shareholders.