Comments on: More on the left’s big slobbering love affair with Luigi Mangione

By: Cappy

Cappy — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:29:24 +0000

Liberals slobber too much.

By: Barry Meislin

Barry Meislin — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:28:42 +0000

I guess that if one criticizes cold-blooded murderers, that’s considered “triggering”.
“Violence”.

But if one adulates them, praises them, writes songs about them, it’s “virtue”.
“Humanity”.
“Resistance”.

Ladies ‘n gentlemen, start yer engines…and choose yer side.

By: Sennacherib

Sennacherib — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:13:26 +0000

Joan Baez is going to sing about Luigi!

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 01:30:10 +0000

All health care contracts have exclusions. Could be for “self-inflicted”. Could be if covered by work comp. Could be a number of things spelled out in the contract and usually seem reasonable. But when you’re really screwed, that it’s the result of something you shouldn’t have done (list of high-risk recreations, maybe) or should have other coverage–which itself may have limits–then you’re going to be angry and others hearing your story, possibly without relevant details, will be angry on your behalf.
There are accident-only policies although not usually sold as group products, except possibly for AFLAC.
Had a client whose relation died of blood poisoning he got from falling off a horse at a dude ranch and getting tangled into some barbed wire. Cattle are forever scratching themselves on the stuff…. Took some effort, but got the “accident” policy paid.
So the refusals to cover aren’t always just plain greed.
Doctors have to make sure they don’t miss anything so they may over-order tests, to protect against malpractice. Company might fight that when the recommended tests are far from current diagnoses or whatever the trouble presents.
Still, room for arbitrary actions. But a contract is a contract and courts usually see it that way. The cost of fighting a likely losing battle is pretty high, considering.
Of course, arguments about in and out of network, so forth, are a different issue but should be looked at early on.

By: Niketas Choniates

Niketas Choniates — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 01:42:32 +0000

@The Other Chuck:Kaiser Permanente the best at only 7%.

Apples and oranges. Kaiser has an integrated HMO. When Kaiser members get services done at Kaiser facilities they’re just moving money from one of Kaiser’s pocket to another. The flipside is this is a narrow network, you can’t just have any doctor you want. They have much less need to deny claims, because they have more control over what services their members get.

Not everyone with Kaiser is on their HMO plan, but most are. If you’re on the Kaiser PPO plan, you can have any doctor you want, but Kaiser will sometimes refuse to authorize services at non-Kaiser facilities.

There is a lot to know about health insurance, and any factoids you read in the media are selected to create a narrative which is probably misleading.

By: The Other Chuck

The Other Chuck — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:35:03 +0000

United has the worst claim denial rate of any insurance company at 32%, and Kaiser Permanente the best at only 7%.

By: neo

neo — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 20:55:49 +0000

Lee:

Unfortunately, health insurance as a business is always going to deny people care at times and be sued. I don’t know whether United Healthcare is any worse or any better than others. Health insurance can be very frustrating.

I do know that most of the people I know with Medicare have United as their supplemental and have never had a moment’s trouble with it. But that may be quite different from United’s regular insurance policies as compared to their policies for supplemental Medicare insurance.

By: Lee

Lee — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 20:45:41 +0000

I have endured actual harm from United Health Care–they withheld legally contracted payments from my group that caused us to have to sue them to recover–and we are far from the only group in this country that had to do so–
but I would NEVER advocate killing their CEO.

I do understand though why the face of a business that takes money from people to cover medical care, then denies care as its business model and holds payment for elligible coverage to play the float gets murdered.

Just sayin’–
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

By: F

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 19:53:48 +0000

Neo:

You’re right: my comment about not shooting someone in the back was more about the fictional vision of the Old West, not real life. I’m a little older than you; certainly old enough to remember leftists shooting people in the back. Poorly worded on my part. I was multi-tasking when I wrote that and should not have been.

By: Abraxas

Abraxas — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 15:00:46 +0000

There’s a segment of the population that is in love with Mangione’s looks. There were even people with crushes on Dzhokar Tsarnaev. But there’s also a silence or puzzlement that happens when people who have been raging against an elite of one sort or another hear that someone from the elite group has died or been killed. Hollywood (an elite institution in its own way) makes folk heroes of men who are pushed to the wall by circumstances and lash out violently. When this happens in real life people don’t know how to react and there’s much awkwardness and many uncomfortable reactions.

There is a parallel to how Northerners reacted to John Brown in the 1850s. Suddenly someone took the moral agitation against slavery seriously enough to launch violent attacks on it. How to react to that? The South had its own heroes in the fight over Kansas, but the South wasn’t as dominated by the media, and no one was as charismatic as mad John Brown.