Cory Doctorow's Prescient Novella About Health Insurance and Murder (theguardian.com) 169
Five years ago, journalist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow published a short story that explored the radicalization of individuals denied healthcare coverage. As The Guardian notes in a recent article, the story "might seem eerily similar" to the recent shooting of UnitedHealthcare's CEO. While it appears that the alleged shooter never read the story, Doctorow said: "I feel like the most important thing about that is that it tells you that this is not a unique insight." Doctorow continued: "that the question that I had is a question other people have had." As an activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, it's important to note that Doctorow advocates for systemic reform through collective action rather than violence. Here's an excerpt from the The Guardian's article: In Radicalized, one of four novellas comprising a science fiction novel of the same name, Doctorow charts the journey of a man who joins an online forum for fathers whose partners or children have been denied healthcare coverage by their insurers after his wife is diagnosed with breast cancer and denied coverage for an experimental treatment. Slowly, over the course of the story, the men of the forum become radicalized by their grief and begin plotting -- and executing -- murders of health insurance executives and politicians who vote against universal healthcare.
In the wake of the December 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which unleashed a wave of outrage at the U.S. health system, Doctorow's novella has been called prescient. When the American Prospect magazine republished the story last week, it wrote: "It is being republished with permission for reasons that will become clear if you read it." But Doctorow doesn't think he was on to something that no one else in the U.S. understood. [...]
In one part of the story, a man whose young daughter died after an insurance company refused to pay for brain surgery bombs the insurer's headquarters. "It's not vengeance. I don't have a vengeful bone in my body. Nothing I do will bring Lisa back, so why would I want revenge? This is a public service. There's another dad just like me," he shares in a video message on the forum. "And right now, that dad is talking to someone at Cigna, or Humana, or BlueCross BlueShield, and the person on the phone is telling that dad that his little girl has. To. Die. Someone in that building made the decision to kill my little girl, and everyone else in that building went along with it. Not one of them is innocent, and not one of them is afraid. They're going to be afraid, after this."
"Because they must know in their hearts," he goes on. "Them, their lobbyists, the men in Congress who enabled them. They're parents. They know. Anyone who hurt their precious children, they'd hunt that person down like a dog. The only amazing thing about any of this is that no one has done it yet. I'm going to make a prediction right now, that even though I'm the first, I sure as hell will not be the last. There's more to come."
In the wake of the December 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which unleashed a wave of outrage at the U.S. health system, Doctorow's novella has been called prescient. When the American Prospect magazine republished the story last week, it wrote: "It is being republished with permission for reasons that will become clear if you read it." But Doctorow doesn't think he was on to something that no one else in the U.S. understood. [...]
In one part of the story, a man whose young daughter died after an insurance company refused to pay for brain surgery bombs the insurer's headquarters. "It's not vengeance. I don't have a vengeful bone in my body. Nothing I do will bring Lisa back, so why would I want revenge? This is a public service. There's another dad just like me," he shares in a video message on the forum. "And right now, that dad is talking to someone at Cigna, or Humana, or BlueCross BlueShield, and the person on the phone is telling that dad that his little girl has. To. Die. Someone in that building made the decision to kill my little girl, and everyone else in that building went along with it. Not one of them is innocent, and not one of them is afraid. They're going to be afraid, after this."
"Because they must know in their hearts," he goes on. "Them, their lobbyists, the men in Congress who enabled them. They're parents. They know. Anyone who hurt their precious children, they'd hunt that person down like a dog. The only amazing thing about any of this is that no one has done it yet. I'm going to make a prediction right now, that even though I'm the first, I sure as hell will not be the last. There's more to come."
Luigi (Score:5, Insightful)
Is not a threat to me or anyone I know.
The state is even trying to use the death penalty and terrorism charges. They don't even give that to people who shoot up schools or churches.
They know how he's dangerous to the ruling class and an example has to be made.
I pray he gets a series of mistrials and the charges dropped.
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Is not a threat to me or anyone I know.
Anybody who can just walk up to somebody they've never met and shoot them in the back is probably not the kind of person you want loose on the street anywhere.
The state is even trying to use the death penalty
Federal government, and they haven't decided.
and terrorism charges.
That one is the state, and this case does meet the legal definition of it in that state. So as a matter of law, it is correct.
They don't even give that to people who shoot up schools or churches.
Depends on a few things:
1) Did they survive the incident? Often they don't.
2) What was the legal definition of it in that jurisdiction?
3) Did their actions meet the legal definition?
Re:Luigi (Score:4, Insightful)
Special operations commandos would like a word [unilad.com].
I think Luigi has the same internal controls as a commando. This wasn't a robbery, or for other personal gain, like a simple criminal. This was violence for a greater mission.
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Re:Luigi (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Luigi (Score:4, Informative)
You're a sick, petulant trumper that is perfectly ok with murdering others as long as your side does it.
False across the board.
Those 2 trump loving cowards were never in any danger at all and you know it, you sick bastard.
I haven't read into the subway case at all, so I can't comment on it. All I know is that the jury found him not guilty. For Rittenhouse, multiple witnesses testified that Joseph Rosenbaum instigated the entire incident. Gaige Grosskreutz testified that Rittenhouse wouldn't have shot him if Rittenhouse wasn't being threatened. In other words, by his own admission Grosskreutz brought it onto himself. You can't get a more clear-cut case of justifiable use of lethal force than that.
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It's from PBS, I hope that isn't "fake news" to you.
You do know what "acquitted" means, I hope. That is what is in the PBS headline, after all.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/s... [pbs.org]
A more serious manslaughter charge was dismissed last week, due to a deadlocked jury.
A deadlocked jury isn't cause for dismissing any kind of criminal charges.
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Who was stalking whom?
Re:Luigi (Score:4, Interesting)
*Actually, the UK is a poor example now because they're in the midst of a long, drawn out, secretive process of privatising healthcare in the NHS (John Pilger outlined the process & the probable motives in a documentary released in 2019: https://johnpilger.com/the-dir... [johnpilger.com]). As a result, the system is under so much strain & under resourced & demoralised that they struggle every day to care for their patients. Parts of the NHS are on the verge of collapse. In most countries, public healthcare is good, in some cases, e.g. where I live, it's excellent. I have a friend whose daughter is coming over here for medical treatment because the NHS is so bad now.
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So what you're saying is that in the UK*, where the idea is to allocate resources & medical according to need, they wouldn't have given you your unnecessary surgery,
Nobody, anywhere, said it was unnecessary. The NHS too would have determined it medically necessary. But they would have determined it too trivial of a matter to pay for. The resources, in terms of the medical staff, equipment, drugs, etc, were still there in either case. The option to pay out of pocket remained, even in the UK. The reason the NHS would deny it is simply because it doesn't have the money for it.
whereas is the USA, where resources are allocated according to profit, you did.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. In the US, those in more urgent need of care will ultimately
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You're so far away from reality that you're not even wrong. Please join a conversation where you have some idea of what you're talking about. You're wasting everyone's time.
Watch out, ArmoredDragon is a nutjob.
Re:NHS privitisation - a bugbear of the left (Score:5, Informative)
Re: "My father died in a private hospital - on the NHS - forty years ago because the NHS bought beds there for the relevant speciality." - That'd be 1984, 5 years into the radical neoliberal Tory govt's push to privatise everything at knock-down prices. Yes, that's how it all started, 45 years ago. The Tories & then Labour, under Tory-Tony Blair, forced public services into "Public-private partnerships" (PPPs), which have been catastrophic drains on tax payer money & have substantially reduced the cost-benefit ratio of public spending for public services. Apparently, for you this is "the least bad solution." PPPs have been shown time & time again to make poor use of public money as they are essentially obfuscated Ponzi schemes.
Local knowledge versus partisan ideology (Score:2)
My father had a long term lung condition. As a result when he retired in 1975 my parents choose to move to Midhurst to be eligible to be treated at the private / charitable King Edward VII hospital which had a focus on lung diseases but was not a nationalised hospital, instead NHS patients were funded to go there if they were local to it. This arrangement preceded the Tory government of 1979 onward.
Labour in 2023 promised to set aside money to double the number of MRIs and CAT scanners
https://fullfact.org/g [fullfact.org]
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Although you're technically right (which is the best kind of right) I would plead the third.
That is the third option: "jury nullification"
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The evidence against him is overwhelming, you're going to need a lot more than thoughts and prayers
I pray I don't need a lot more than thoughts and prayers...
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I don't know. But how does that change the fact that resources are limited?
Re: Luigi (Score:5, Informative)
Because we don't get a choice in our employer's health care company, and personal insurance is way more expensive.
There is an extremely limited selection and individuals have no power to affect what they charge. Treating it like a free market is just libertarian fantasy with absolutely no basis in reality.
Re:Luigi (Score:4, Insightful)
He stalked and murdered a guy in cold blood. He deserves to be convicted of first-degree murder.
Re:Luigi (Score:5, Insightful)
To which I will add that if people normalize and applaud cold-blooded assassination, then they're going to be shocked when they turn out to be the next one targeted. Because here's the thing: by someone's well-intentioned standards, most of us deserve to die. A society where murder is rationalized and excused is not one that leads to a good outcome for any of us.
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I’m fine. Not like I routinely deny sick and dying people coverage to make shareholders happy.
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Re:Luigi (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that denial of healthcare is not really much different from assassination if it leads to death. People know trust killing someone at the stroke of a pen for money isn't naturally different from pulling the trigger yourself. This incidentally is why commissioning a murderb is also a crime.
As people see it, cold blooded murder at a large scale is already normalized, and this is just one small scale murderer whacking a bigger one.
Re:Luigi (Score:4, Insightful)
It's kind of astonishing that you think that fighting against paying money you are legally obligated to pay is equivalent to "not helping someone". I think you have your head so far up corporate ass that you have forgotten that the sky is not brown.
This is not a "crime of omission" is it fraud with deadly consequences. These companies are taking huge amounts of money to insure people should the worst happen and are then fighting with and nail to avoid holding up their side of the bargain, which does result in deaths.
And they are doing it simply for profits. It does not get much more cold blooded than that. They are paid to provide cover when people get sick and they are not paying because it's cheaper to not provide the service you just charged for.
I think a lot of people feel that shooting someone isn't really much worse than pulling the delay, deny, defend act that leads to someone's death. You're just as dead if someone stabs you through the heart or intentionally delays life-saving treatment you paid them to provide so they can pocket the difference.
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But where *exactly* do you draw the moral and ethical line between the one who pulls the trigger and the one who sets the policy and gives the order? To avoid the Godwin aspect, I'll use other examples. When we talk about people like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, bin Laden, and the like; we usually say "Stalin murdered 5 million Ukrainians with the Holodomor." or "Mao killed 40 million people in the Great Leap Forward." or "Pol Pot killed everyone with an education or who wore glasses." But that's all co
Re:Luigi (Score:4, Interesting)
If Luigi had murdered me or you the police would not have deployed drones, dogs, divers, and countless man hours. Why was no measure spared on this single case?
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It was high-profile and shocking. I think you're wrong about saying that the police wouldn't expend energy if the victim had been someone else.
Re:Luigi (Score:5, Informative)
This also happened in Manhattan that week:
Migrant teen killed, another injured, after being asked if they spoke English: New York police
https://abc7chicago.com/post/m... [abc7chicago.com]
Obviously this isn't getting near the same level of effort as the CEO case.
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He stalked and murdered a guy in cold blood. He deserves to be convicted of first-degree murder.
I agree.
But the level of vitriol towards the victim should be eye opening.
And recall the victim was infamous for drastically increasing denials of insurance claims. He made a calculation, implied or explicit, that meant people suffered and died in order to increase the stock price.
I do feel sympathy for the victim, he was essentially just doing the job the system demanded of him. But that system is extraordinarily broken.
And if you feel so strongly about that system that you're willing to murder someone ove
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For one thing, the circumstances aren't even remotely comparable.
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Bryan Thompson did no such thing. The coverage review boards are themselves made up of actual doctors who make the decisions about whether the claim is medically necessary. Based on what information is available to the public, and from what I've seen, it doesn't look like Luigi's case even made it that far. Instead he was told by the actual doctor that he went to see that not only would he not perform the surgery, but he also told Luigi that no other doctor's would unless he was at least 40 years old. Why t
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It's just a fact. Really you sound no different from people who bomb abortion clinics
LoL, now I bomb abortion clinics. It's ok, bud. You lost. You can't justifiy murder, no matter what deer do. You left the door open for Luigi to walk free and I thank you for that.
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Jordan Neely had a long rap sheet for prior crimes, including four assaults; one of those landed him in jail for a year because he punched a 67-year-old lady in the head. Brian Thompson probably never denied coverage to anyone, and denying coverage is not what kills someone.
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had a long rap sheet for prior crimes
It's ok to murder someone because they committed a crime in the past? It's ok to say your allowed to commit murder as long as your team is the one doing it. We understand the hypocrisy.
Hopefully, CEO Brian Thompson didn't shoplift when he was a kid then Luigi was justified.
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Neely was threatening others. Restraining him was defense is self and others, not murder. But my point was that the AC was blatantly lying about Neely. Jist like you're being a toxic asshole. By your own argument, you deserve to be killed. Fortunately, the rest of us are better people than you.
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Neely was threatening others. Jist like you're being a toxic asshole. By your own argument, you deserve to be killed. Fortunately, the rest of us are better people than you.
Dude, you just threatened to kill me in a roundabout way. You are threatening people. I should be able to strangle you to death for 6 minutes now, watch out!
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Dude, you just threatened to kill me in a roundabout way.
Not even close. To put it another way, he said that if you applied your own reasoning, then you're making an argument in favor of your own death at the hands of another person. That doesn't even begin to constitute a threat. It's nothing more than an argument.
I should be able to strangle you to death for 6 minutes now, watch out!
Now THAT is a threat. If you were in the same physical room as him when you said it, that could land you at the wrong end of a criminal charge. Though something tells me that you're no stranger to having been on the wrong end of the justice system more
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WTF are you talking about? Word salad!
You're the one who can't even answer a very direct question.
Manslaughter and murder are both forms of unlawful killing. Both killings happened in New York City.
And New York City isn't run by people like you; i.e. with the mental capacity of a 5 year old.
WTF does Minnesota & deer have to do with anything?
It's called an analogy.
According to New York Penal Law 15.05(3), acting "recklessly" as used in the manslaughter in the second degree statute is defined as being aware that your actions present a substantial risk that someone could be killed and disregarding that risk.
And a jury of his peers determined that this wasn't the case. You have your answer. What's really telling about your mental capacity is here you have a case of a guy lying in wait and intentionally killing another person by shooting him in the back and then in the head, and you've got it in your head that is an "apples to apples" com
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And New York City isn't run by people like you
If I'm on the jury of a certain CEO killer, he will be as free as the hobo strangler. It is run by people like us.
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intentionally killing another person by shooting him
Again, how do you unintentionally strangle someone to death for 6 minutes? Did the hobo strangler know that Jordan Neely held the world record for holding his breath at 6 minutes and 1 second?
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Ask the jury.
I would but they have no opinion on the matter, because they were deadlocked. Daniel Perry can be tried again because he wasn't found innocent.
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Are you huffing paint fumes or something? Daniel Perry's jury wasn't deadlocked. He was found guilty. You have the wrong person.
As for Daniel Penny, the guy in the subway case, the case cannot be retried. Whether a case can be retried depends on whether a mistrial was declared. The jury did in fact reach a verdict of not guilty of criminally negligent homicide. The prosecution motioned for the manslaughter charge to be dismissed, which the judge granted. So yeah, you can ask them why they decided he was not
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LEARN HOW TO FUCKING READ.
A jury deliberating over Daniel Penny's trial in a NYC subway chokehold death is reportedly deadlocked on the charge of manslaughter.
the jury deliberating Daniel Penny's case sent a note on Friday saying it is deadlocked on the manslaughter charge
Gone ahead and dismissed the manslaughter charge in the Daniel Perry trial after the jury was hopel
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The jury was deadlocked most of the day Friday on the other more serious charge Penny faced. His defense asked for a mistrial, but the judge sided with prosecutors' request to drop the second-degree manslaughter charge entirely.
The defense moved for a mistrial, but the judge granted the prosecution's request to dismiss the charge, clearing the way for the jury to decide on criminally negligent homicide.
Imagine that you're full of shit again.
When a crimin
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Are you fucking retarded? Can you not read? What don't you understand about deadlocked jury? Is this your "fake news" bullshit you pull?
I never made any claims about fake news. That's all you. All of the evidence here suggests that you can't read.
A jury deliberating over Daniel Penny's trial in a NYC subway chokehold death is reportedly deadlocked on the charge of manslaughter.
It doesn't matter because that charge was dismissed. There never would have been a conviction on both counts; the choice always was one or none. Retrying this would have been pure madness anyways -- how would you convict on manslaughter when a jury already made a finding of fact that it didn't even qualify as criminally negligent homicide? This would have even been admitted as evidence to a future
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Dude, I don't listen to you(ArmoredDragon). You're(ArmoredDragon) a fucking retard.
I'm talking about you.
I'm not going to spend 20 minutes looking up sources and refuting every lie you tell. Go away. Go lie to someone else. Go talk about Minnesota and the deer to some other sucker. You live in some fantasy land where facts don't matter.
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Once a jury is empaneled, double jeopardy attaches to the charge, so dismissing the charges means they are dismissed with prejudice. There was not a hung jury, so the manslaughter charge against Daniel Penny cannot be brought again. See Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184 (1957). And from https://patterico.com/2024/12/... [patterico.com]:
If [dismissal] happens, the greater charge is gone forever. It is functionally the same as an acquittal.
(Note that Patterico wrote that between the dismissal and the jury verdict, so it wasn't swayed by the ultimate verdict.)
ihavesaxwithcollies is just trolling.
Re: Luigi (Score:2)
"Innocent until proven guilty" means he's clearly innocent.
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Once a jury is empaneled, double jeopardy attaches to the charge, so dismissing the charges means they are dismissed with prejudice. There was not a hung jury, so the manslaughter charge against Daniel Penny cannot be brought again. See Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184 (1957). And from https://patterico.com/2024/12/... [patterico.com]:
If [dismissal] happens, the greater charge is gone forever. It is functionally the same as an acquittal.
Unlike you and your multiple accounts, I don't just lie freely. I also admit I'm not a lawyer and what you posted is false. If you did research instead of just lied repeatedly, you would know that.
Jurors on Friday said they were deadlocked on whether Penny “recklessly” caused the death of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway, Your Honor put it correctly. Removal of the top count, with prejudice, takes that concern away. I'm not a liar like you, oops laywer, so I'm not sure what's what, but If they have to say with prejudice that means your statement is unequivocally false. Why attempt to tell the truth, when you can mislead and lie?
(Note that Patterico wrote that between the dismissal and the jury verdict, so it wasn't swayed by the ultimate verdict.)
ihavesaxwithcollies is just trolling.
I guess I have to explain to you what trolling is.
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And conveniently you can't even explain how or why.
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Trolling is when you approve of murder as long as the right white guy does it.
You're the only one here doing that.
Again, I don't celebrate murder.
You've repeatedly created a false equivalency of unintentional homicide and blatant planned murder not once but repeatedly. You've made a direct threat to strangle another person here merely because of an argument that he put forth. You've plainly stated that you'd point blank acquit Luigi of any wrongdoing, and that's despite having no knowledge of the specifics of this case. The only reasonable explanation for that is you've at the very least rationalized, if not justif
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Daniel Pinny murdered, committed homicide, manslaughter on a homeless man. Whatever your tard brain wants to call it. That's not a false equivalency. You celebrate murder as long as your side does it. It's perfectly ok and you'll rationalize anyway possible. So whatever. Your a retarded troll, fuckoff.
CEO shoulda paid for the (Score:3)
Irregularities of the US Medical System (Score:5, Informative)
From the standpoint of most of the rest of the developed world, the US medical system is... weird.
TL;DR - we have doctors in places that make it easier to get high end medical care but much more difficult to get routine medical care, and a system that incentivizes people not to spend money, to the benefit of the insurer. The supply shortage is not getting better (due to the long lead time to training medical professionals), and there's a lot of friction that makes it more advantageous to get paid more to do specialist care for the same amount of time worked, because the overhead involved makes it much harder and much less rewarding to do basic care, beyond the issue with paying back student loans.
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First, let us look at cost. The US has a reputation of having really good specialist care - so good that apparently well heeled people from other countries regularly come here to have cutting edge procedures done, or to do routine scans that are booked up in their home country.
"These hospitals and clinics are offering inbound medical tourism services to patients who come to the U.S. for higher quality than they can receive in their home country, access to procedures that are not available in their country’s healthcare facilities, freedom from long wait times or the rationing of procedures because of national governmental regulations, because of the ability to combine tourism opportunities in the U.S., and/or (believe it or not!) because the price differential- paying for services in cash in the U.S. may be less expensive than in their home country."
https://www.magazine.medicalto... [medicaltourism.com]
"For many Canadians, the prospect of enduring prolonged wait times for medical imaging, such as MRI scans, prompts them to explore alternative avenues. This has led to a growing trend of Canadians venturing south of the border to the United States to secure expedited MRI appointments."
https://www.cmimri.ca/navigati... [cmimri.ca]
Paradoxically though, we have the opposite happening within the US, where some patients resort having procedures done overseas. We also have long lines in order to get seen by general practitioners. In other cases, US citizens forego basic care due to cost.
"Medical tourism is a worldwide, multibillion-dollar market that continues to grow with the rising globalization of health care. Surveillance data indicate that millions of US residents travel internationally for medical care each year. Medical tourism destinations for US residents include Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Germany, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Singapore, and Thailand. Categories of procedures that US medical tourists pursue include cancer treatment, dental care, fertility treatments, organ and tissue transplantation, and various forms of surgery, including bariatric, cosmetic, and non-cosmetic (e.g., orthopedic)."
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/y... [cdc.gov]
"Opponents of universal health care often predict it would lead to long waits to see a doctor, but patients in the U.S. already face unacceptable delays in getting routine care.
Jam-packed appointment schedules have endured for years. Check out this Business Week story from 2007: “The Doctor Will See You—In Three Months.” However, the lack of a national reporting system to track and disclose wait times to the public — a feature in some other countries — has largely obscured the problem here.
With no comprehensive data, journalists rely on a hodgepodge of studies that suggest patients often wait a month or more for a slot on a doctor’s schedule."
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Medical tourism is not really a good argument. Rich medical tourists go where they think they can get better treatment, not necessarily where they actually can. Basically, most first world countries had their share of rich medical tourists from other first world countries.
Where do you want your doctor's priorities? (Score:2)
Pfft... (Score:4, Insightful)
I was anticipating something like this with the 2008 crash.
People lose their life savings and only bankers are made whole? You'll at least get 3 squares and a cot in prison (and free healthcare).
As long as law excessively favors business (arbitration, outright theft as "billing errors", slap on the wrist penalties as the cost of doing business, etc.), people will make their own justice with the means available to them as there is no recourse coming from institutions.
Tax payer profits from repairing the plumbing (Score:2)
The actual net cost of the bailout in 2008 is remarkably low, or may have been a profit to the taxpayer
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas... [mit.edu]
The consequences of an uncontrolled meltdown of the financial system would be been horrendous. So no, whinging about the 'cost' of 2008 is a factual mistake.
Social contract violators (Score:5, Interesting)
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Part of the problem is competition.
Paradoxically, the individual mandate under the ACA creates a situation where you don't actually need to deliver better service to get customers. For those who correctly point out that the ACA individual mandate was removed as of 2019 ( https://www.healthinsurance.or... [healthinsurance.org] ), there are those of us in states that enacted their own mandates who are subject to similar provisions (minimum $900 or 2.5% of your yearly income penalty in California. Good luck if you just become une
Insurance⦠(Score:2)
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Well they're not going to cover shit that isn't proven to work if that's what all of your claims have been for.
I've made some pretty big claims myself, and no big claim has ever been denied. Usually when something is denied, it's something like the insurance won't cover an MRI until something cheaper like an x-ray or ct-scan has been performed first. So the doctor orders the cheap one first, doesn't find it in that image as he was already certain he wouldn't have, so the insurance company pays for both the
Not Quite The Same Thing (Score:5, Informative)
So The Fine Summary says:
In Radicalized, one of four novellas comprising a science fiction novel of the same name, Doctorow charts the journey of a man who joins an online forum for fathers whose partners or children have been denied healthcare coverage by their insurers after his wife is diagnosed with breast cancer and denied coverage for an experimental treatment. Slowly, over the course of the story, the men of the forum become radicalized by their grief and begin plotting -- and executing -- murders of health insurance executives and politicians who vote against universal healthcare.
"joins an online forum for fathers whose partners or children have been denied healthcare coverage by their insurers after his wife is diagnosed with breast cancer and denied coverage for an experimental treatment."
The UnitedHealthcare CEO was shot by someone who had never been covered by UnitedHealthcare - not a radicalized customer denied coverage. He wasn't grieving, he wasn't denied coverage, in fact after his surfing accident, he was covered by his insurance and had by all accounts a successful treatment and was not in any pain at the time he decided to kill someone's son, someone's husband, someone's brother and a couple kids father that happened to be the CEO of a healthcare company.
And about the denied coverage in Cory's novella, "after his wife is diagnosed with breast cancer and denied coverage for an experimental treatment."
In Cory's story she was denied "experimental treatment", not (presumably) conventional treatment - Few, if any, health insurance plans cover experimental treatments. Being denied coverage for an experimental treatment is not justification for murder.
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Bin Ladden was somebody's son, somebody's brother...etc. He didn't directly kill anybody but without him a few thousand people would have lived.... He wasn't a CEO of an American company that made money off the death of 10s of thousands of people...
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That's why I think the terrorism charges against Luigi will probably stick - he earned it.
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Well, merely two decades ago downloading mp3s was terrorism, hence you are probably right.
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and there's video of him doing it.
You mean video of a person doing it. At no point in the video does it id anyone. But who needs facts? Innocent until proven guilty, only applies to Trumpers.
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Not the point that I am making. My point is that since the start of the war on terror the "terrorism" accusation has been used rather liberally. The murder charge is good enough in this case.
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Bin Ladden was somebody's son, somebody's brother...etc. He didn't directly kill anybody but without him a few thousand people would have lived....
In his view, this was justified because:
- Palestine. (Ironically, Luigi's supporters also mostly believe that Hamas was justified in the mass kidnapping and murders of October 7th.)
- Banks charge interest on loans
- Homosexuality isn't a crime
Honestly I think you would have been better off making this argument about Ted Kaczynski. He was a nutter as well, though unlike Bin Laden, his victims were targeted, which is far more analogous to Luigi Mangioni. If you substitute "modern technology" with "bean counter
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There is a big difference between business leaders who knowingly kill people for profit; it's about time they at least earned that high salary with some actual risk and some actual consequences. At least in China if you poison children due to your greed they execute you; in the USA, at worst they get a scandal and then if they openly praise and donate to Trump they'll get appointed to something. We allow almost any crime if you mask it behind a corporate system.
I remember just hearing a Trump appointment p
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Mr. Dragon, you should never consider moving to a place where they actually kill monsters; stay in the USA where they even elect a monster if he plays stupid well enough.
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We're not monsters, we're just sluts.
https://youtu.be/RlVlY6QAKpc [youtu.be]
Death panels (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Death panels (Score:4, Interesting)
However they are completely correct in thinking that removing insurance companies from the picture will create an enormous pool of resources because it can be trivially proven by looking at other OECD countries - how much they are spending vs health outcomes. The simple truth that US medical system is incredibly inefficient, mostly because you have a big, fat parasite sitting in the middle of it. Insurance companies provide no added value in the medical system beyond sucking out money and transferring it to shareholders.
So yes, maybe 10 people will be denied experimental therapies that cost $10 million a month, but millions of people won't be afraid to call ambulance when they are bleeding all over the floor or have their finances ruined because they were taken to 'out of the network' hospital.
Star Trek did it 24 years ago (Score:2)
The ST:V episode Critical Care [wikipedia.org] was a very thinly veiled metaphor for the USA's for-profit healthcare industry. People with a low Treatment Coefficient (another thinly veiled metaphor, this time relating to how valuable a person is to their society, i.e. how successful they are) are denied proper access to healthcare. That episode ends with the Doctor intentionally infecting the medical facility's lead administrator with a deadly disease and hacking the facility's database to give the administrator a low "
As if (Score:2)
Doctorow seems to have come up with the idea to the story without having read it first. Ancient aliens with time travel and drones must have told him.
Everything wrong with the US healthcare system (Score:5, Insightful)
Millions remain uninsured or underinsured, tied to an employer-based model that leaves people vulnerable during job loss. Powerful lobbying by pharmaceutical companies and insurers ensures policies favor corporate profits, such as inflated drug prices and restricted Medicare negotiation powers. Opaque pricing, conflicts of interest, and financial incentives lead to exploitative practices like predatory billing, aggressive debt collection, and biased treatment decisions.
These issues disproportionately affect marginalized communities, exacerbate health disparities, and undermine public trust, making the system not only costly but fundamentally inequitable and unsustainable.
What are we? (Score:2)
As harsh as it sounds violence (terrorism?) against the ruling class is the only thing they understand.
Unemployment, housing crisis, poverty, etc are issues that affect the society in general but are alien to politicians.
The fact that for example terminal cancer patients denied of healthcare aren't blowing themselves up in front of the congress speaks volumes of us as a society.
I don't think it's just related to "capability" or "access to guns"; we're an extremely polite and afraid group of people who may t
"Not a unique insight" (Score:3)
Yeah I'm pretty sure I saw it on Law and Order about twenty years ago.
Funny plea? And money != health (Score:2)
Really disappointed there's no Funny here. Seemed like a rich target, especially for dark humor.
Can't help much, though maybe someone will think this is a joke?
I don't think he can plead guilty by reason of insanity. But maybe he should try for a plea of too much sanity in a world gone insane? Somehow resulting in his insane and unjustifiable actions? (A real comedian would find the joke...)
Other half of the Subject involves the insanity of overvaluing monetized life, but that's about to be corrected by the
Corporate tyranny and its offspring, terrorism (Score:2)
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Sure, you may or may not get experimental treatment under universal healthcare, but you're more likely to get it in a system that isn't motivated by profit.
I know this is anecdotal, but... my sister has a chronic disease and she was living in the USA. She moved back to Canada 9 years ago and was given an experimental treatment that turned out to be extremely effective and that allows her to live a normal life. The treatment is very expensive, but she does not have to pay anything for it.
I do not think h
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Sure, you may or may not get experimental treatment under universal healthcare, but you're more likely to get it in a system that isn't motivated by profit.
You imagine single-payer healthcare systems have money/resources to give patients, for example, not only conventional cancer treatment, but all the experimental treatments researchers are working on? Really?
Single-payer healthcare systems are notorious for having limited resources - for example, up north in Canada, the gold standard of single-payer healthcare basic treatments like an MRI or a CAT Scan can take months to schedule once your doctor orders one.
The profit motive makes MRIs and CAT Scans trivial
Re:"universal" may not mean what you think it mean (Score:5, Informative)
In countries with functional healthcare (every developed nation except USA) you can still choose to pay for a private option if you wish, and the fun part is it is still cheaper than the American system.
Re:"universal" may not mean what you think it mean (Score:4, Informative)
I live in Canada, so I'm aware of the problems with our system. It's still light-years ahead of the American system and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Knowing I can never be bankrupted by a medical emergency is worth more than anything the USA could offer me.
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My sister owned a business in the USA, so she had private healthcare insurance.
Of course I'm biased against the USA healthcare system. Who wouldn't be? The USA spends far more than any other industrialized country per capita on health care, and has middling-to-poor results. You can easily search to find the stats on costs and outcomes [pgpf.org].
The issue is not the availability of the treatment in the USA. It's the question of whether it would be covered and the answer to that is very likely not.
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He wanted to kill someone, its that simple, and he came up with a reason he thought might gain him some sympathy/street cred. He will very likely spend the rest of his life in prison
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He will very likely spend the rest of his life in prison
As short or as long as that may be.
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Perhaps, except apparently this guy came up with the idea on his own. Others have no doubt had the same idea. They just weren't unbalanced enough to carry it out.
The shock of his action is already forcing an open public debate about the state of the health insurance industry and its effect on our health. There is a reason the United States had more people die of COVID than any other country. It is just one more example of the most expensive (and profitable) health care in the world producing the worst re
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There is a reason the United States had more people die of COVID than any other country.
By what metric?
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/da... [jhu.edu]
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By what metric?
Shear numbers and it wasn't even close. As your link shows, only Peru had more deaths per 100,000 population.
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They just weren't unbalanced enough to carry it out.
It does happen every once in awhile. Like that guy who built a home-made armored vehicle and drove it through a few buildings in his town. In the end though, they're just remembered as some nut who went postal. Heck, even that expression itself is its own great example of how the most memorable thing about someone completely losing it and taking a few folks with them is the fact that they went nuts, not a clear recollection of whatever situation lead them to go nuts in the first place.
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Cory Doctorow literally wrote the book about doing what Mangione did. Did he think nobody would put it into practice?
Write enough fiction and eventually some of it will come true. Just ask the writers for The Simpsons.