CEO of United Healthcare Murdered in Manhattan

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a bit too much hate piling up on managed care organizations- from media, government, physician’s cartels. that murder is one of the consequences
I don't think physicians have cartels. If we did, would we have doubled our supply of rad oncs while the indications and number of fractions all dropped?

We aren't even allowed to unionize as I understand it
 
Analogous to rationing of care seen in socialized/UHC systems with the difference being the savings and profit passed on to shareholders and CEOs/management

Creates a real public enemy #1. Media shining even a little light on it through things like propublica investigations is enough to enrage patients and physicians on both sides of this with their own personal experiences
You make a good point about other countries. The Canadian and British systems set limits and ration care but at least it's a public shared sacrifice and not for individual or corporate gain.

It's not working out real well for all patients needing rad onc treatment though, with both those systems booked out for months in some places and patients having to come to the US for timely Xray treatment or proton therapy for kids and others who need it. There isn't much incentive to invest in a socialized system I guess.
 
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You make a good point about other countries. The Canadian and British systems set limits and ration care but at least it's a public shared sacrifice and not for individual or corporate gain.

It's not working out real well for all patients needing rad onc treatment though, with both those systems booked out for months in some places and patients having to come to the US for timely Xray treatment or proton therapy for kids and others who need it. There isn't much incentive to invest in a socialized system I guess.
Cancer survival, by stage, cancer type, sex, age, etc is universally 10% greater in the US compared with the NHS system. The NHS created a taskforce to determine why. The answer: $
 
Cancer survival, by stage, cancer type, sex, age, etc is universally 10% greater in the US compared with the NHS system. The NHS created a taskforce to determine why. The answer: $
I wonder how those numbers look if you only see Medicare Medicaid hmo pts. Same rationing and delay/denial of care. Just a different reason why
 
Cancer survival, by stage, cancer type, sex, age, etc is universally 10% greater in the US compared with the NHS system. The NHS created a taskforce to determine why. The answer: $
I suspect that good proportion of that 10% gained time is spent in ICU
 
life expectancy is substantially lower in the USA than England.

Uk- 82
Cuba-78
US- 77
Gaza strip- 76
Imagine obesity rates correlate there


I believe otn was referring to cancer survival rates which are worse in the UK unfortunately it's washed out given the worse CV health/lifespan in the US overall
 
Imagine obesity rates correlate there


I believe otn was referring to cancer survival rates which are worse in the UK unfortunately it's washed out given the worse CV health/lifespan in the US overall
Possibly, but I have a hard time believing statistics like population based cancer survival length vs something very concrete like life expectancy. Today, the Brits are dirt poor with average incomes 60% of ours. The average Brit is worse off than our poorest states. Uk has its own health issues- higher etoh and smoking.
 
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Possibly, but I have a hard time believing statistics like population based cancer survival length vs something very concrete like life expectancy. Today, the Brits are dirt poor with average incomes 60% of ours. The average Brit is worse off than our poorest states. Uk has its own health issues- higher etoh and smoking.

Preventable deaths. Also, our health care disparities mean that poor people die younger here. US of course has great healthcare for the wealthy. The mean life expectancy of Asian Americans is 85. Better than Japan.
 
Possibly, but I have a hard time believing statistics like population based cancer survival length vs something very concrete like life expectancy. Today, the Brits are dirt poor with average incomes 60% of ours.
In the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba entered a very strong recession. GDP contracted by 35%. A modern famine occurred: average caloric intake decreased from 3000 to 2000 Cal/day. Hospitals and access to healthcare were also negatively impacted.

In spite of the decreased healthcare, life expectancy increased from 75.0 to 75.6 years because of the decrease in diabetes in cardiovascular disease secondary to the nationwide food shortage.

 
In the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba entered a very strong recession. GDP contracted by 35%. A modern famine occurred: average caloric intake decreased from 3000 to 2000 Cal/day. Hospitals and access to healthcare were also negatively impacted.

In spite of the decreased healthcare, life expectancy increased from 75.0 to 75.6 years because of the decrease in diabetes in cardiovascular disease secondary to the nationwide food shortage.

maybe we should stop funding all cancer care and set the price of ozempic at 100$/month (like the rest of the world)? Lifespan should go up and we would save a ton. Curing cancer only would increase lifespan 2-3 years.
 
maybe we should stop funding all cancer care and set the price of ozempic at 100$/month (like the rest of the world)? Lifespan should go up and we would save a ton. Curing cancer only would increase lifespan 2-3 years.
Would reduce cancer incidence too (not sure about those endocrine ones though). Less dialysis etc. semiglutide is an all around winner
 
maybe we should stop funding all cancer care and set the price of ozempic at 100$/month (like the rest of the world)? Lifespan should go up and we would save a ton. Curing cancer only would increase lifespan 2-3 years.
Nah, we do a lot of good too. I mean if you were to rank all of our medical interventions on a spectrum of cost effectiveness, vaccines would probably take the cake but ozempic would do very well. On our side, we can all think of examples where radiation quite probably added 15 years to someone's life, or examples where an extra 10 fractions added just to a hospital's profit margins with no improved outcomes.

I think that same paper also said that curing heart disease would only add 4 years to average lifespan?

My broader point was that life expectancy, while maybe our best metric, is not the only thing. For better or worse, freedom to eat a burger and fries is one of those uniquely American freedoms, written not into the Constitution but into our societal DNA. There are conversations going on to control freedom of the press (e.g. clickbait social media and the networks that profit from them), freedom to bear arms, but no one is out there trying to rein in our freedom to order a burger and fries.
 
They would if they could

Nah, we do a lot of good too. I mean if you were to rank all of our medical interventions on a spectrum of cost effectiveness, vaccines would probably take the cake but ozempic would do very well. On our side, we can all think of examples where radiation quite probably added 15 years to someone's life, or examples where an extra 10 fractions added just to a hospital's profit margins with no improved outcomes.

I think that same paper also said that curing heart disease would only add 4 years to average lifespan?

My broader point was that life expectancy, while maybe our best metric, is not the only thing. For better or worse, freedom to eat a burger and fries is one of those uniquely American freedoms, written not into the Constitution but into our societal DNA. There are conversations going on to control freedom of the press (e.g. clickbait social media and the networks that profit from them), freedom to bear arms, but no one is out there trying to rein in our freedom to order a burger and fries.
Cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s are all for the most part manifestations of aging which is why curing cancer has limited effect on lifespan.
 
The irony about this case is that while Mangione's primary motive behind killing Thompson was UnitedHealthcare's practice of denying and delaying care, with what we know about patients who end up entwined in the pain industrial complex (pain docs, spine docs) undergoing countless procedures while becoming dependent on pain medications, he likely would have been better off avoiding the medical industrial complex in the first place. It's not uncommon less medicine is better medicine.

"Spoke with a source that had a lot of friends that went to high school with Luigi Mangione. What keeps coming up is a back surgery that “changed everything” for him and he went “absolutely crazy.” Checks out with his GoodReads history and the X-Ray in his header.

More info:
Back injury happened when he was surfing in Hawaii. Surgery didn’t go great. Moved to Japan. His contact with family stopped about a year ago. Recently the family reached out to his friends from high school asking if they had info on him. So he’s been pretty aloof for awhile. This checks out with his IG tagged photos as there were a lot of posts from family through 2023, none recently."
 
Tuesday night his staff informed him that he’s received some emails of people offering to help pay for Mangione’s legal bills.

“I have received some emails. I have not seen them personally, but my understanding from my staff is people are doing that,” Dickey said while also saying he “probably wouldn’t” accept the offers.

“Obviously my client appreciates the support that he has, but I don’t know, … it just doesn’t sit right with me.”

The emailed offers come as Mangione has received sympathy on social media and has even been referred to as a “hero” in relation to the country’s growing frustration of its health care system.

 
Hard to beat the $5 meal deal at McD's. Get your money's worth.

Not so much with UNH.
 
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