If a mafia boss orders a hit, he is no less guilty than the one who pulls the trigger. If a CEO orders vital funds to be withheld from those who are entitled to them, knowing many will die, he is similarly guilty of murder. The mafia boss can be sent to jail, the CEO won't. The corporate veil may keep you pristine inside the cynical circles of power, but all the people see is impunity. When murderers act with impunity, what redress is there but counter-violence?

It is unfortunate, but many people have lost hope the system can change, so revolution is getting more likely, and revolutions are seldom peaceful.

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DecoySalamander 5 days ago | parent [-]

The CEO of a healthcare insurer is not involved in "withholding" funds. At best, he sets up policies that distribute a limited amount of funds among millions of claimants who are all in need of help to some degree, but he does that job poorly. If this juvenile logic is applied further, aren't you guilty of the same crime? There are people in need of life-saving drugs and treatments, yet you're just sitting behind your computer withholding funds.

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ImPostingOnHN 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

This sounds like airlines saying they have a right to bump people who paid for a ticket because the airlines couldn't figure out a business model that earned them an acceptable amounts of money without doing it. UHC does that, except instead of denying you the seat you paid for, they deny you care you paid for, and you suffer and die.

The problem is the conclusion that we must allow this so that their business economics can be sound, so that they can continue to exist. We should instead conclude that being horrible to people is bad, and any business model that requires it should not exist.

Brian saw a company that he knew ahead of time was horrible to people, that he knew ahead of time decided that many of their customers must die, and indeed this was critical to the company's economics and business model, and thought, 'You know what? I want to be a part of that. I like that so much that I want to be the one in charge of it.'

Why that job, instead of the millions of others? Well, we can take a gue$$. He had to make his nut, no matter who he hurt along the way, right?

Meanwhile, as an arguably less-horrible person, I see a job posting for startups that use AI to scan terminal cancer patient records for timely funeral business leads in exchange for offering crypto credits that can be applied towards a coupon for palliative care AI chat or whatever, or makes drones and AI systems for tracking and identifying government critics for later persecution, and I have to click 'next' because my soul is worth more than the salary. What a fuckin' chump I am.

	▲	AceyMan 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Airlines operate under completely different optimization (game) theory, which makes for an absolutely horrible choice in your analogy.

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lores 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

1/ There is no "distribute a limited amount of funds". There is even less a "distribute a limited amount of funds after shareholder profit and massive executive paychecks". Customers have bought coverage; if the company overissued policies, they make a loss, or they go bankrupt and their own insurers cover the existing claims. Anything else is privatised profit and socialised losses, which even a callous teenager just blown away by their first glimpse at Ayn Rand should find objectionable.

2/ I carefully said "entitled to" to avoid a debate about personal responsibility and limit the conversation to "paid for a life-saving service they did not receive", which everyone will agree is wrong.

3/ If you think the CEO did not issue orders to make it as difficult to claim as possible, and drag the process as much as possible, you are a fool.

Denying help to a human is one thing. Denying them help after they paid for the help so you can buy a yacht another thing entirely.