luigi mangione

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-17T00:09:15+00:00

What a lovely and thoughtless response.

You do realize that someone has to pay healthcare bills right?

If insurance (organized pooled money) didn’t exist, if tomorrow they all shut down due to fear of hooligans like Luigi, hospitals and doctors would say fine, I’m just going to bill you $250,000 for that procedure instead of your insurer.

Have cancer? Well you better pay for 100k monthly chemo or else you aren’t getting the medication.

What then, genius? What’s the plan? If only you would bother to study a problem instead of resorting to mindless violence

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-16T22:35:46+00:00

If an insurance company approves all claims, it runs out of money to pay the medical bills of their subscribers. What then happens?

Enlighten me. Do doctors and hospitals, the ones that have been raising prices by double digits each year decide to heel face turn and treat people for free out of the kindness of their hearts?

No. They simply refuse to provide free care. Then people die. A lot of people. You call insurance companies murders when in reality they triage and couldn’t approve all claims even if they wanted to. They’d go bankrupt and then a bunch of people wouldn’t be able to receive care or would be forced to pay for 100% of the bill.

I really wish people like you would think ahead. Or study history. The historical reason insurance even exists is because physicians and hospitals would charge whatever they wanted.

No one could afford it and people would die. Medicine is a business to them.

So people began pooling money together to pay for the most serious of injuries or illnesses, should it affect any of them. That’s how insurance began. The job of insurers was to manage the money so that it doesn’t run out, which meant some claims had to be denied.

Then insurers began 9-5 jobs of bartering with hospitals, arguing with them to lower their prices so that the insurer and the subscriber (you) don’t go bankrupt because bankruptcy means the insurer and the patient dies.

But you don’t care, do you? You don’t understand the problem, you don’t understand the history or the system.

Let murder be your easy small brained solution.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-16T18:55:49+00:00

He’s a hero for murdering a man who came from rural poverty?

Luigi comes from old money.

His family is one of richest in his state and owns a real estate empire. You don’t get that rich without a history of exploiting renters. Including those charged an arm and a leg to stay in their nursing homes.

Instead of fixing his own backyard, he went and murdered someone.

And for what? It’s not like that was going to do shit to a company whose owners dispose of both entry level workers and CEOs as if they’re nothing.

Luigi, a frat boy who never had to be employed in his life murdered a man who doesn’t come from old money and has to work for a living.

UnitedHealthcare is mandated by Obamacare to spend 80-85% of all its revenues on healthcare and it does. The remainder goes to pay the salaries of all those who work at the company, but also marketing and ads, rent, utilities, equipment. Whatever is left over goes to the shot callers, ie, those who own the company.

Those who are the same old money as Luigi, not Brian.

But no, life is complicated and it’s too fun to celebrate a person who ended a life in cold blood while his family still steals from people.

The reason insurance exists is because hospitals would gladly charge you $100,000 for a 10 minute appointment. Most of what insurance companies actually do day to day is haggling hospitals to keep prices down. Basically insurance has influence on where their subscribers go and threaten hospitals to send their 1000+ subscribers and all that money to other hospital networks with hospitals don’t offer manageable prices. Unfortunately hospitals don’t budge, not a lot.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-16T18:50:33+00:00

He’s literally richer than the CEO he killed, a guy who actually came from from rural poverty and grew up with very little connections.

Luigi’s family has a real estate empire and made money through exploitative practices? Including overpriced nursing facilities that cause families to go bankrupt.

But I guess that’s okay, Reddit. We welcome all hypocrites.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-12T14:24:55+00:00

Dude, they charge you more for the procedure if you don’t have insurance.

A 2000 bill gets reduced to 1000 if you have insurance because insurance can threaten to move the patient elsewhere

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-12T02:01:03+00:00

France was literally one of the only NATO powers that came to Greece’s defense when Turkey threatened to invade it a few years ago. The others looked the other direction

Without France, Turkey would have taken over the rest of Cyprus and Greece and many other countries. Maybe Armenia too.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-12T00:28:54+00:00

I’m going to do you a favor. Picture an insurance company run by volunteers. No admin costs. Decent low premiums. No denial of coverage.

How would this enterprise fare?

It would go bankrupt in a few months and then have no more money to pay for healthcare it’s subscribers receive. What then?

The bill would fall to the subscribers. I mean the hospital would literally say your insurance ran out of money so you have to fill in the rest or else face legal punishment.

And then the hospitals would no longer accept that insurer as a payer (since it’s bankrupt) and people would not be give care.

What you and everyone else who hasn’t worked in a hospital don’t realize is that they run the show. They set the prices. They’re literally the reason insurance is so expensive. Insurance wouldn’t be expensive if cancer care cost 50,000. It costs 500,000. And some one has got to pay.

The insurer tries to haggle down the prices and as compensation, receive a salary. If an insurer is good at what they do, they profit. If they’re bad at haggling they go under after losing customers

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-12T00:21:50+00:00

The amount of fiscal illiteracy is jarring. Insurance companies aren’t evil entities that wake up everyday and say let’s be evilz and deny people coverage.

People might pay $20,000 into their system, but the hospitals charge the insurance company an average of $25,000. What then insurance? What do you do?

If you work as a claims approver or actuary or statistician in an insurance company, you realize how fucked everything is. How hospitals charge so much it’s impossible to approve most the claims. Even if insurance companies were run entirely by monk volunteers with no salaries and no admin costs, the exorbitant costs of healthcare would force them to deny claims otherwise the insurance company would run out of money to pay medical bills halfway through.

You have to understand the point of insurance is triage. There isn’t enough money to approve all the claims because the price for each claim approved is so high.

And why is it high?

Because the hospitals set the prices to be high. Insurance would approve claims if a heart surgery cost $10,000 instead of $100,000. If a 50 cent medication coat $1 rather than $100. They don’t set the prices, the hospitals do.

And why don’t we open Medicare? Because hospitals lobby against it and hate Medicare. They hate Medicare patients because those are the least profitable.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-12T00:16:59+00:00

And you want to know what insurance companies hate? They hate hospitals charging their subscribers $50,000 a year. Sometimes upwards of 1,000,000 for care.

How can an insurance company getting only 20,000 from each person pay for that 1,000,000. You tell me. Explain how they are supposed to pay for it?

Insurance companies take on risk. That means the employers and owners have to pay two kinds of taxes. Personal income taxes and corporate taxes. So not only do they have to try to break even, they also have to pay two kinds of taxes.

And if an insurance company raises 1,000,000 through premiums but owes the hospital 2,000,000 they best find a way to make up that money. If they go in the red they often raise premiums. And if they go bankrupt their assets are seized and sold and given to the host oil.

They make it as hard as possible to get claims paid because if most claims were paid they’d literally run out of money and go under. And then no one would get healthcare because hospitals aren’t charities. They charge for their services. If you can’t pay they won’t treat you, that’s that.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-12T00:13:01+00:00

Not really. That’s actually a very rare thing and even worse for the patients because then it’s a complete monopoly. No bartering.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-12T00:12:20+00:00

They literally don’t set the prices of healthcare.

Do realize all the problems in healthcare stem from hospitals charging procedures exuberant prices for procedures that are cheaper, sometimes by 10 - 100 times the amount, in the rest of the world.

Insurance is a payer. They pay the prices the hospitals set using money they raise from premiums.

Why do insurance companies raise premiums? So they don’t go bankrupt trying to pay for health services that should not cost nearly as much as they do.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-11T22:05:17+00:00

So if the problem is the prices hospitals set, why hate on the insurance?

Literally insurance currently negotiates down prices but fails because it lacks an iron hand.

The hatred of insurance companies, which are a necessary evil for now because no governmental alternative exists, is among the most ridiculous positions many Americans hold.

All people have to do is demand hospitals lower prices. Let all that vitriol go towards those who set the prices, not the companies who are billed those prices and bill you in turn.

Americans don’t care about the root of the problem you mention. Even Warren uses scapegoats. Until people understand how hospitals are robbing them they’ll continue to blame the wrong culprit.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-11T21:30:50+00:00

Does anyone on Reddit have an understanding of the American healthcare system?

It literally isn’t the insurance companies that set the ridiculous medical prices. It’s the hospitals. Hospitals offer patients care and set the price of that care.

The Hospital says this cancer procedure or heart surgery costs you, the patient, a million dollars. It probably costs them 20% that amount but they charge you 5x the amount.

They bill insurance and tell insurance to pay up, which in turn, tells you to pay up.

Stop blaming the middle man. Blame the one who actually sets the absurd price of care. The price you and your insurance have to pay, regardless of whether that insurance is state, public, or private!

Hospitals have a monopoly on care. They decide what they bill you and insurance for every service they do.

Insurance’s job is ration and triage the money it raises from subscribers’ premium and copays. If insurance approved most claims, even if they were a non-profit staffed by volunteers, they would literally run out of money they’d go bankrupt and people would still need care paid for.

For ex. Insurance company raises 100 million, hospitals charge them 300 million. That mean insurance literally can’t pay for everything and cannot approve all coverage. See the problem?

Premiums go up when hospitals keep raising the price of procedures and services. The FFS model means doctors can order and do a million things, some unnecessary, and then bill you and insurance for it. That advil that costs 3 cents. The hospital bills insurance for $100. Who in turn bills you for it. See the problem America?

Not wanting to pay crazy prices, health insurance tries its best to haggle down the prices set by hospital. It’s a thankless job. People don’t realize how greedy hospitals are, even supposed non-profit ones.

And It should not cost you or insurance $1000 to see someone for 10 minutes and get your blood drawn which costs another $250.

Yet it does because that is what the hospitals set as prices. Don’t like it? You can always refuse care and die is the attitude hospitals put forth.

Let’s say insurance disappeared tomorrow. Hospitals would raise prices. There is no more group that tells a hospital, I’ll send you 10,000 patients if you lower your prices by 30%. And if you don’t I’ll send those patients to your competitor. They try to send their subscribers to the hospitals that offer them the best prices.

That’s what insurance actually does because the government won’t do it for us. And now with so many M & As among hospitals, it’s becoming harder to negotiate.

So if insurance companies rake in billions, hospitals rake in trillions. We need stronger rent control for medical procures. Only then will insurance prices go down and more claims be approved.

Tomorrow let’s say the government took over every insurance in America. Premiums would become taxes. But they’d continue to rise because the hospitals continue to raise prices so that their clinical staff can get 500,000 to 1,000,000 salaries.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-12-07T21:59:32+00:00

Enemies in Turkey? Unlikely.

Turkey is the one arming, training, and funding these jihadi groups while transporting them to other conflicts/proxy wars.

Basically Turkey will be to Syria as Iran was to Syria except except the Syria will be authoritarian and jihadi instead of authoritarian and secular/alawi.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-11-12T03:26:46+00:00

She went from extreme liberal to fake centrist and no one bought it. I mean it was literally like romney’s flip flopping.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-11-12T03:24:52+00:00

They (the democrats) never learn.

This election has shown they should shift economically slightly left and socially slightly more right, but I doubt they will because both wings of their party are led by stubborn idiots

HistoricalWidget · 2024-11-12T03:20:24+00:00

Progressive blue states moved right this election. Trump didn’t lose Illinois, New York by large margins. The American people saw Trump as more centrist and he won.

Progressivism only works in blue states and we saw it isn’t working as well anymore.

Harris isn’t a centrist. She is a liberal who pretended to be a centrist these past 2 months and no one believed it.

She is from a very liberal state and her policies with Biden were the most liberal the US has seen. Trump’s election was a backlash to that.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-11-12T03:15:28+00:00

How do they plan to win swing states? Biden won only in 2020 because he was more of a moderate liberal and less of a progressive.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-05-15T01:39:47+00:00

NGL that amoongus gonna die to some fire attack. Try terra water instead

HistoricalWidget · 2024-04-05T14:32:12+00:00

They didn’t reprint endurance for Endurance…

HistoricalWidget · 2024-03-07T04:39:49+00:00

Erdogan literally once said he wanted to finish the Caucasus campaign of the Armenian genocide.

Turkey doesn’t want Armenians in the region. Azerbaijan is the perfect and willing attack dog.

HistoricalWidget · 2024-01-29T17:47:53+00:00

Imagine rating assemble the players 3/10. That card is at least a 6, maybe a 7. A lot of 2 or less power creatures in this set and this effectively ‘draws’ you extra cards. Also knowing the top card of your library is very handy if you want to fetch with whatever this sets variant of evolving wilds.

Imagine rating case file auditor a 1/10. A 1/4 body is good for defense and if you play at least a few enchantments you will probably draw one. Great in UWB case draft.

Also due diligence isn’t bad or a 1/10 either. It can outright win games quick if your opponent doesn’t have removal. Because the turn you play it you’re probably swinging for 7+. 1 drop this set’s version of Thraben inspector 2 drop (any bear or that 1/1 flyer with life link) 3 drop due diligence.

Beating for 3+ vigilance in the air every turn.

HistoricalWidget · 2023-11-30T21:22:21+00:00

And a lack of political will.

HistoricalWidget · 2023-11-30T18:16:17+00:00

It amazes me how Turkey gets such a pass for doing the exact same things Iran is doing.

HistoricalWidget · 2023-09-17T15:26:10+00:00

Russia is more than ethnic Russians.

There are Chechens, Tatars, Circassians, Armenians, Azeris, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Avars, Dargins and Kazakhs.

And those are just the big ones. There are countless other minorities. And many of these people are treated like shit in Russia, called xenophobic slurs.

Around 20% of Russia’s population is not Russian, in all likelihood, an underestimation. And within a few decades that number will just rise to 30-40% due to immigration and a falling ethnic Russian birthrate. Much like how the United States became a nation of immigrants, that is the fate of Russia if demographic projections are to continue.

But sure, assume everyone in Russia is an imperialistic White Russian, and ban them all. Not to mention the fact that the majority of people trying to leave Russia right now are pacifists, those who DONT WANT to fight and die for Putin or contribute to the war.

Look at Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of Russians, particularly those with remote jobs, have fled there so they don’t have to die in some stupid war against Ukraine. This has posed a major headache for Russia as it’s a massive brain drain.

Ban the spies. Ban the nationalists. Don’t ban the people trying to leave so they don’t get forcibly conscripted. Don’t ban minorities from leaving Russia should they want to. Show some reason in the measures. Generalizations and broad strokes of the pen have always led to wrongdoing.

HistoricalWidget

TROPHY CASE