Cynically, this sounds to me like something that people typically suggest we leave up to markets. Is that insane? Yes, but it's already a business model, and health insurance basically does that.
These people make vast sums of money every year by asking the American people what it's worth to them to not be ruined by a chance illness or injury, then finding ways to make sure they don't have to save people from financial ruin or death. I don't see how that's really so different from a protection racket, except for the fact that most protection rackets were operated with more good faith effort towards the extorted.
>These people make vast sums of money every year by asking the American people what it's worth to them to not be ruined by a chance illness or injury, then finding ways to make sure they don't have to save people from financial ruin or death. I don't see how that's really so different from a protection racket, except for the fact that most protection rackets were operated with more good faith effort towards the extorted.
This definition of a "protection racket" is a bit loose. By similar logic landlords are also a "protection racket" for having a place to hive.
> This definition of a "protection racket" is a bit loose. By similar logic landlords are also a "protection racket" for having a place to hive.
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce.” - known Marxist-Leninist Adam Smith
I was thinking the same thing. Oh and why stay in the healthcare vertical? Surely the CEO and employees of Raytheon deserve to be shot in the back leaving a hotel. What a ridiculous set of conversations…
Most of those people are making several multiples the average Indian's lifetime earnings. Should those call center folks pay for the Indians' healthcare?
That's a cop-out. Just as the CEOs could transfer their higher wealth to average Americans, average Americans could transfer their higher wealth to Indians without changing or giving input on their healthcare system.
(which is absolutely not universal in any OECD-country sense)
I didn't say the consequences should be proportional, I said the responsibility (or blame); and profits derived should just be one part of the equation.
Criminal consequences of a company collectively being responsible for the deaths of individual(s) shouldn't just disappear because no one individual ostensibly caused it. A company is a system of incentives and processes, and if those incentives and processes are leading to preventable deaths and suffering, those who benefit most from and are most responsible for perpetuating those incentives and processes should be held liable.
While I have trouble wrestling with the assertion as well, it does hold pretty true to the way the US justice system works. Sentencing is generally far harsher for financial crimes as $ goes up.
In stuff like drug crimes, US even has the death penalty as sanctioned remedy for quantities and enterprises of sufficient organization for mega profits. The thought process seems to be if you provide bad health care in the form of selling illegal drugs, at some level the death penalty is on the table.
>While I have trouble wrestling with the assertion as well, it does hold pretty true to the way the US justice system works. Sentencing is generally far harsher for financial crimes as $ goes up.
Right, but only for financial crimes. You're not going to get off murder by saying you only got $100 for the hit.
If you sell a few hits of fentanyl you aren't going to meet the statutory definition of a criminal enterprise and therefore will not be eligible for federal death penalty even though fentanyl induces death.
If you sell $100M of fentanyl you can get the death sentence, since fentanyl is an element in inducing death at basically any sufficiently large quantity of a criminal enterprise.
It is not exactly the same, but it has a lot of parallels to the argument I see here. If you are an insurance salesman selling contracts you know will not be honored and such denied claims will be an element of death, many will not see it as serious as being the criminal enterprise leader who orchestrated it. Even in such case that the policy can be attributed to a single salesman, the executive is likely to be held more culpable just as the US code holds the criminal enterprise executive to the death penalty whereas it may not hold the low level guy who sold the fentanyl.
Financial crimes are literally crimes that deprive people of their financial property. They are crimes because property is understood to have utility. This isnt rocket science.
That's the scary part. It's very tempting to just sentence someone like this. But more you dwell on it, the worst it gets. There is a reason why death penalty is considered an extreme.
The entire argument for high CEO renumeration is that they take on total responsibility for all actions of the company. The buck stops with them. So, why do we think it's acceptable for that not to be the case when the company does something bad?
Thats a good argument in a vacuum. But the world has determined "I was just following orders" is not a good defense.
We know the crimes against humanity are bad and subordinates are guilty if they do them. We don;t just let everyone off free except the head of state.
Not to see that united healtcare (as bad as they are) are anywhere near that, but I am saying that its clear that we, as a society, already hold all people complicit in evil as guilty. Not just the person at the top.