Steve StrezaIt really cannot be overstated enough: "For-profit health insurance" is fundamentally incompatible with keeping people healthy. UnitedHealthcare did not deny 1 out of every 3 claims because they thought they weren't medically valuable, they did it because they knew they could get away with it. The entire system cannot ever provide health as a meaningful outcome. It must be eliminated and replaced with taxation and a single-payer institution built on care, not resource hoarding.
Proto Himbo EuropeanInsurance lobbyists have terrified us with visions of "welfare queens" wasting taxpayer money.
Thompson made $24M in 2022. I guarantee that came from the pockets of taxpayers.
That's $48K each to 500 welfare queens. Please give 500 welfare queens that money instead of a CEO. I don't care if those 500 people really are goldbricking leeches on the system. Those $24M would make 500 people's lives better and nobody's life any worse than the simple fact of paying a few bucks toward something that didn't benefit them personally. The CEO of a company like United makes tens of thousands of people's lives worse, and who knows how many people's lives infinitely worse by existing--his entire job is to funnel money to shareholders no matter who that hurts.
Waste money on 500 people committing small-scale fraud or one mega-rich person committing fraud and (arguably) bodily harm and murder on a much larger scale? No contest. Burning those $24M would be better for the world than giving it to the CEO of a health insurance company.
The "waste" in the system will always exist. If I get to choose where healthcare money is wasted, I want it wasted on 500 poor people a year who--at worst--simply make the money disappear into their lives, not on one rich sociopath who uses that money to hurt thousands of other people.
StuartB