Insurance Companies kill no one. The denial of claims kills no one. No one is assassinated, executed, or condemned to die because an insurance company refused to write a check. And yet, millions of otherwise well-educated, highly-cultured, and well-meaning individuals have enthusiastically swallowed the Big Lie that, as Glenn's friend put it, "the health insurance industry is killing people'. We bear baffled witness to the 'Yabbut' of politically Progressive clueless adolescence.... (Picture a discussion in the high school library of 'The Breakfast Club'): 'Well, yeah, it's too bad that the guy got killed....but...like, ya know, insurance companies are killing millions of innocents every single day....so yeah, like, I mean, whaddya expect?!'
No. No. No. Absolutely not. This purblind, tone-deaf asinine assertion is utterly and completely untrue. (And Glenn, a word to the wise, you shouldn't be spending time with any 'dear friend' who believes in such mindlessly cruel homicidal nonsense, no matter how cute she may be. Perhaps she'd like to explain her perspective to the widow and her children??)
It is not the refusal to write any given claim coverage check, by a company which in 2023 wrote $307B worth of such checks which kills people. Rather it is THE DISEASE the client suffers from....the injury which has maimed them... these are the horrible & deadly things which end innocent lives, not the company which holds the policy that these people bought hoping their coverage would allow the avoidance of an onerous financial burden.
So let us consider...
Every insurance contract excludes certain things, certain treatments, in certain kinds of situations. This is a given. We're not paying our minimal monthly premiums for infinite coverage for every conceivable circumstance. (We might like to pretend we are, but we're not). So claim exclusion is a given.
And yes, it is true that approximately 17% of 'questionable' claims are initially refused.... keeping in mind that these refusals are not directed at the defined treatments which drive a $307B annual claim payout. Rather they are most typically associated with experimental / high risk / inappropriate (outside of protocol) therapies , and/or situations that are -- by definition -- beyond the policy parameters as defined by the underwriters. But it is also true that about 50% of those refused claims which are appealed are overturned and eventually paid, anyway.
So we're left with about 7-8% of the hundreds of millions of claims submitted annually which are legitimately refused.
This is to be expected, isn't it?
Insurance companies wouldn't exist if they paid every single claim submitted by every single one of us who would prefer a $0 medical bill 100% of the time.
And yes, it is equally true: 'there are a million stories in the Naked City'. And among that million there's always one more tragic case in which a wonderful individual is denied a request for payment for a treatment that they're sure would 'save their life' by an implacable, bureaucratic, Kafkaesque blob of an insurance company....and the denial is upheld upon appeal and even upon lawsuit. The audience in these cases always cries, along with the suffering family.
But that does not mean the insurance company was wrong, or evil, or cruel...it simply means the policy the individual bought was insufficient when measured against the disease or the injury. It also means that they haven't been denied the treatment they wish to pursue; it simply means the Bureaucratic Blob isn't paying for it.
As for the idiotic and exceedingly barbarous Luigi-mania ... it's just another part of the simplistic Progressive cartoon in which Capitalist Oligarch Henry Potter Scrooge McDuck (sitting on his piles of gold & jewels) is trying to drive George Bailey and his sweet little daughter Zuzu off the metaphorical Bridge into abysmal death & poverty because Potter's insurance company won't pay a claim . Mr. Potter Scrooge spends a lot of time talking about 'reducing the surplus population'. Is anyone surprise that we find the big-smiled Mangione compelling in such a comic book drama filled only with good looking heroes, dastardly villains, and dying innocents.
It's pathetic, immoral, and soulless....but what else should we expect from the Chattering Class.
The people who are celebrating are generally people who attended 4-year colleges, and many have advanced degrees, just like Mangione. We need to seriously question why we are funding higher education, and what we should be expecting from the upper classes. Notice who all of the Progressives view as heroes: Lenin, Stalin (Pete Seeger still defended him till his death), Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, and all of the other murderers. Their idolization of dictators is horrifying, and it needs to be rooted out.
Your comment that we need more equitable healthcare suggests that more government intervention is needed. I hope I’m misunderstanding your meaning. There can be no doubt that the high cost of “healthcare” is due to Obamacare and other government regulations in this domain over a long period of years. What we need is a healthy dose of deregulation not more government medicine.
The sure way to get rid of "greedy" and "heartless" private insurance companies that deny patients' claims is to transition to government run single payer universal healthcare with no private options. But then patients would have to argue with government bureaucrats over what treatments they are allowed to access. Progressives/socialists might claim that under their healthcare system everyone would receive all the healthcare they need, and so no such disputes would arise. But as a more-or-less libertarian/freemarketeer, I don't think that's even remotely plausible.
The truth is that since people still get sick and injured and old and die even under the most generous healthcare systems, it's not possible to give everyone all the healthcare they need. In fact, there is no limit to the amount of money that could usefully be spent on healthcare, whether publicly, via a government-run system, or privately, via free enterprise, or by some combination of the two. There are always potential ways to improve the treatment of cancer or diabetes or heart disease, or possibly even to retard the aging process, if people are willing to spend enough money to discover and provide it. So people are stuck having to fight over the rules for the provision of healthcare, and still accept disability or death from illnesses or injuries that might be treatable in some way somewhere given sufficient incentives.
Glenn says: "Too many people are forced to choose between health and penury". But the only way to save people from that dilemma is to make those unpleasant choices for them.
The whole issue of healthcare provision is quite complex, involves tradeoffs that can't make everyone happy, and deserves more thoughtful discussion than it generally receives.
But let's extend that truth a bit further. Not only will a Single Payer Universal Health Plan not give everyone what they need...it will not give everyone what they want. And this distinction becomes more and more important as 'designer drugs' (for lack of a better term) built to provide pharmaceutical 'solutions' for normal, expected human weakness and vice are marketed & sold.
It's one thing to say that insulin or seizure medication, for instance, needs to be priced fairly & universally covered...another to say that weight-loss drugs (at $1K/shot) need to also be covered...along with a seemingly endless number of mood-altering psychotropics for the anxiety-ridden, depressed, and attention challenged.
To add to that, the implacable actuarial tables that tell us that spending $1M on medical therapies for a 93 yr. old with multiple co-morbidities is not really a good investment....and you arrive exactly where you indicated: the only way to save people from any of these dilemmas is to make these choices for them.
Good points. I would also add in the "DEI factor", which I believe contributes (unfortunately) to the opinions on healthcare policy of many people. DEI ideology blames the lower socio-economic status (including health) of "oppressed" racial, gender, ethnic, etc. groups almost entirely on the policies of what it conceives of as the ruling white and white-adjacent power structure. So any system that permits patients to purchase healthcare services (or insurance) with their own money could be classified as "racist", particularly but not only by DEI adherents, since it would allow the wealthy to access better healthcare than the poor, and race, ethnicity, gender, etc. correlate with wealth. Of course those with more money don't always spend it wisely, but it's reasonable to guess that on average they will. By DEI standards, even the UK, with its beloved NHS, is insufficiently progressive, since the UK also has a system of private doctors and clinics (e.g. on London's "Harley Street") that provide services in exchange for "cash on the barrel head", and sometimes can do so better and/or faster than the NHS even for patients of modest means.
Besides the racial considerations, many people believe in the socialist notion that health care is a human right and a public good, and should be provided to people according to their needs, not according to how much wealth they possess. Thus it shouldn't be possible to "buy" healthcare from some private entity; since all healthcare is provided "free" by the government, attempting to buy healthcare would be like trying to bribe a public official.
Thanks BDarn1 for the link to "The Corruption of Medicine" article. I don't remember having read it before, although I've certainly read other articles in City Journal and by Heather Mac Donald. The article is well-written and pretty much echoes my own sentiments. Some people are claiming that the reelection of Donald Trump as U.S. President, together with Republican majorities in Congress, signals the impending end of DEI. But I don't think we've seen the last of those policies. It's going to take a concerted effort to roll back DEI's influence, which has gained a foothold in many public and private institutions. And in my opinion there are still lots of "true believers".
If you look up the term “healthcare” in the Oxford Dictionary, you will find actually what the left thinks that term means: “the organized provision of medical care to individuals or a community”.
However, if you look up the two concepts that make up this compound term, you find:
“health /hɛlθ / ▸ noun [mass noun] the state of being free from illness or injury: he was restored to health
▪ a person's mental or physical condition:”
And:
“care /kɛː / ▸ noun [mass noun] 1 the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone”.
So “healthcare” joins “the state of being free from illness or injury” with “the provision of what is necessary for health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone”.
The synthesis of these meanings reduces to the following statement:
Individuals who value being healthy must act and take the necessary steps to maintain and protect their personal welfare-“the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group”. (Definition of welfare, Oxford Dictionary)
Three questions for those who celebrate the murder of Brian Thompson:
1) What if someone shot Fauci on the presumptive grounds that his help in funding GoF research led to countless premature deaths? Fair game?
2) If you're opposed to the death penalty, are you OK with private citizens committing public executions of those they consider "guilty" of some perceived (or real) crime? In other words, do you advocate vigilantism?
3) What if Mangione had missed and instead shot and killed a 4-yr old girl nearby? Would you express admiration for his "noble intentions"?
Let us be perfectly clear:
Insurance Companies kill no one. The denial of claims kills no one. No one is assassinated, executed, or condemned to die because an insurance company refused to write a check. And yet, millions of otherwise well-educated, highly-cultured, and well-meaning individuals have enthusiastically swallowed the Big Lie that, as Glenn's friend put it, "the health insurance industry is killing people'. We bear baffled witness to the 'Yabbut' of politically Progressive clueless adolescence.... (Picture a discussion in the high school library of 'The Breakfast Club'): 'Well, yeah, it's too bad that the guy got killed....but...like, ya know, insurance companies are killing millions of innocents every single day....so yeah, like, I mean, whaddya expect?!'
No. No. No. Absolutely not. This purblind, tone-deaf asinine assertion is utterly and completely untrue. (And Glenn, a word to the wise, you shouldn't be spending time with any 'dear friend' who believes in such mindlessly cruel homicidal nonsense, no matter how cute she may be. Perhaps she'd like to explain her perspective to the widow and her children??)
It is not the refusal to write any given claim coverage check, by a company which in 2023 wrote $307B worth of such checks which kills people. Rather it is THE DISEASE the client suffers from....the injury which has maimed them... these are the horrible & deadly things which end innocent lives, not the company which holds the policy that these people bought hoping their coverage would allow the avoidance of an onerous financial burden.
So let us consider...
Every insurance contract excludes certain things, certain treatments, in certain kinds of situations. This is a given. We're not paying our minimal monthly premiums for infinite coverage for every conceivable circumstance. (We might like to pretend we are, but we're not). So claim exclusion is a given.
And yes, it is true that approximately 17% of 'questionable' claims are initially refused.... keeping in mind that these refusals are not directed at the defined treatments which drive a $307B annual claim payout. Rather they are most typically associated with experimental / high risk / inappropriate (outside of protocol) therapies , and/or situations that are -- by definition -- beyond the policy parameters as defined by the underwriters. But it is also true that about 50% of those refused claims which are appealed are overturned and eventually paid, anyway.
So we're left with about 7-8% of the hundreds of millions of claims submitted annually which are legitimately refused.
This is to be expected, isn't it?
Insurance companies wouldn't exist if they paid every single claim submitted by every single one of us who would prefer a $0 medical bill 100% of the time.
And yes, it is equally true: 'there are a million stories in the Naked City'. And among that million there's always one more tragic case in which a wonderful individual is denied a request for payment for a treatment that they're sure would 'save their life' by an implacable, bureaucratic, Kafkaesque blob of an insurance company....and the denial is upheld upon appeal and even upon lawsuit. The audience in these cases always cries, along with the suffering family.
But that does not mean the insurance company was wrong, or evil, or cruel...it simply means the policy the individual bought was insufficient when measured against the disease or the injury. It also means that they haven't been denied the treatment they wish to pursue; it simply means the Bureaucratic Blob isn't paying for it.
As for the idiotic and exceedingly barbarous Luigi-mania ... it's just another part of the simplistic Progressive cartoon in which Capitalist Oligarch Henry Potter Scrooge McDuck (sitting on his piles of gold & jewels) is trying to drive George Bailey and his sweet little daughter Zuzu off the metaphorical Bridge into abysmal death & poverty because Potter's insurance company won't pay a claim . Mr. Potter Scrooge spends a lot of time talking about 'reducing the surplus population'. Is anyone surprise that we find the big-smiled Mangione compelling in such a comic book drama filled only with good looking heroes, dastardly villains, and dying innocents.
It's pathetic, immoral, and soulless....but what else should we expect from the Chattering Class.
The people who are celebrating are generally people who attended 4-year colleges, and many have advanced degrees, just like Mangione. We need to seriously question why we are funding higher education, and what we should be expecting from the upper classes. Notice who all of the Progressives view as heroes: Lenin, Stalin (Pete Seeger still defended him till his death), Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, and all of the other murderers. Their idolization of dictators is horrifying, and it needs to be rooted out.
Your comment that we need more equitable healthcare suggests that more government intervention is needed. I hope I’m misunderstanding your meaning. There can be no doubt that the high cost of “healthcare” is due to Obamacare and other government regulations in this domain over a long period of years. What we need is a healthy dose of deregulation not more government medicine.
The sure way to get rid of "greedy" and "heartless" private insurance companies that deny patients' claims is to transition to government run single payer universal healthcare with no private options. But then patients would have to argue with government bureaucrats over what treatments they are allowed to access. Progressives/socialists might claim that under their healthcare system everyone would receive all the healthcare they need, and so no such disputes would arise. But as a more-or-less libertarian/freemarketeer, I don't think that's even remotely plausible.
The truth is that since people still get sick and injured and old and die even under the most generous healthcare systems, it's not possible to give everyone all the healthcare they need. In fact, there is no limit to the amount of money that could usefully be spent on healthcare, whether publicly, via a government-run system, or privately, via free enterprise, or by some combination of the two. There are always potential ways to improve the treatment of cancer or diabetes or heart disease, or possibly even to retard the aging process, if people are willing to spend enough money to discover and provide it. So people are stuck having to fight over the rules for the provision of healthcare, and still accept disability or death from illnesses or injuries that might be treatable in some way somewhere given sufficient incentives.
Glenn says: "Too many people are forced to choose between health and penury". But the only way to save people from that dilemma is to make those unpleasant choices for them.
The whole issue of healthcare provision is quite complex, involves tradeoffs that can't make everyone happy, and deserves more thoughtful discussion than it generally receives.
Very true.
But let's extend that truth a bit further. Not only will a Single Payer Universal Health Plan not give everyone what they need...it will not give everyone what they want. And this distinction becomes more and more important as 'designer drugs' (for lack of a better term) built to provide pharmaceutical 'solutions' for normal, expected human weakness and vice are marketed & sold.
It's one thing to say that insulin or seizure medication, for instance, needs to be priced fairly & universally covered...another to say that weight-loss drugs (at $1K/shot) need to also be covered...along with a seemingly endless number of mood-altering psychotropics for the anxiety-ridden, depressed, and attention challenged.
To add to that, the implacable actuarial tables that tell us that spending $1M on medical therapies for a 93 yr. old with multiple co-morbidities is not really a good investment....and you arrive exactly where you indicated: the only way to save people from any of these dilemmas is to make these choices for them.
And no one will like that either!
Good points. I would also add in the "DEI factor", which I believe contributes (unfortunately) to the opinions on healthcare policy of many people. DEI ideology blames the lower socio-economic status (including health) of "oppressed" racial, gender, ethnic, etc. groups almost entirely on the policies of what it conceives of as the ruling white and white-adjacent power structure. So any system that permits patients to purchase healthcare services (or insurance) with their own money could be classified as "racist", particularly but not only by DEI adherents, since it would allow the wealthy to access better healthcare than the poor, and race, ethnicity, gender, etc. correlate with wealth. Of course those with more money don't always spend it wisely, but it's reasonable to guess that on average they will. By DEI standards, even the UK, with its beloved NHS, is insufficiently progressive, since the UK also has a system of private doctors and clinics (e.g. on London's "Harley Street") that provide services in exchange for "cash on the barrel head", and sometimes can do so better and/or faster than the NHS even for patients of modest means.
Besides the racial considerations, many people believe in the socialist notion that health care is a human right and a public good, and should be provided to people according to their needs, not according to how much wealth they possess. Thus it shouldn't be possible to "buy" healthcare from some private entity; since all healthcare is provided "free" by the government, attempting to buy healthcare would be like trying to bribe a public official.
DEI ideology is very seductive, and I fear it will not be easy to overcome. See my May 8 2023 comment on Stanley Goldfarb's The Free Press article "How America's Obsession with DEI Is Sabotaging Our Medical Schools": https://www.thefp.com/p/how-americas-obsession-with-dei-is/comment/15771376.
Totally agree. DIE (my preferred acronym!) is the Death Spiral of Mediocrity...eventually it kills everything.
Thanks for the Goldfarb article. You may have already seen the MacDonald article (different angle on the same thing): https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-corruption-of-medicine-2
Thanks BDarn1 for the link to "The Corruption of Medicine" article. I don't remember having read it before, although I've certainly read other articles in City Journal and by Heather Mac Donald. The article is well-written and pretty much echoes my own sentiments. Some people are claiming that the reelection of Donald Trump as U.S. President, together with Republican majorities in Congress, signals the impending end of DEI. But I don't think we've seen the last of those policies. It's going to take a concerted effort to roll back DEI's influence, which has gained a foothold in many public and private institutions. And in my opinion there are still lots of "true believers".
“Healthcare”
If you look up the term “healthcare” in the Oxford Dictionary, you will find actually what the left thinks that term means: “the organized provision of medical care to individuals or a community”.
However, if you look up the two concepts that make up this compound term, you find:
“health /hɛlθ / ▸ noun [mass noun] the state of being free from illness or injury: he was restored to health
▪ a person's mental or physical condition:”
And:
“care /kɛː / ▸ noun [mass noun] 1 the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone”.
So “healthcare” joins “the state of being free from illness or injury” with “the provision of what is necessary for health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone”.
The synthesis of these meanings reduces to the following statement:
Individuals who value being healthy must act and take the necessary steps to maintain and protect their personal welfare-“the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group”. (Definition of welfare, Oxford Dictionary)
Personal Responsibility
“You are what you eat.” This could not be a truer principle of good health. I was recently reminded that if you look back at the 1960s and 1970s, you will be hard pressed to find more than a handful of extremely overweight, let alone obese, adults. (Check out https://www.prageru.com/video/america-is-fat-but-you-dont-have-to-be?utm_source=app&utm_medium=share)
What, no mention of the veneration of George Floyd?
I’m not even going to bother watching this, I’m so put off with any chats with John after his suggestion that someone should kill Trump.
In fact, I imagine killing insurance CEOs may be palatable to Mr McWhorter too.
Three questions for those who celebrate the murder of Brian Thompson:
1) What if someone shot Fauci on the presumptive grounds that his help in funding GoF research led to countless premature deaths? Fair game?
2) If you're opposed to the death penalty, are you OK with private citizens committing public executions of those they consider "guilty" of some perceived (or real) crime? In other words, do you advocate vigilantism?
3) What if Mangione had missed and instead shot and killed a 4-yr old girl nearby? Would you express admiration for his "noble intentions"?
Outstanding response!