BlackRock is Suing UnitedHealth for Giving “Too Much Care” to Patients After the CEO was Murdered
BlackRock is Suing UnitedHealth for Giving “Too Much Care” to Patients After the CEO was Murdered
The Punchline That Isn’t Funny
BlackRock will probably win this lawsuit. Or settle for millions. Either way, they’ll extract value from a system designed to extract life from patients.
They’re not just suing UnitedHealth — they’re suing the very idea that health insurance should provide health insurance. They’re fighting for their constitutional right to profit when people die and lose money when people live.
Welcome to American healthcare, where caring too much is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Dear Sweet Mother of God, this article does not hold back on the biting truth.
It's a worthwhile read with only one small mistake contained within:
Luigi Mangione didn’t just kill a CEO
There is no reliable evidence to suggest Mr. Mangione killed anyone. And I, for one, remain convinced he did not do that deed.
Hope Mangione is found innocent and he suits the shit out off all the media companies that declared guilty without any proof.
I'm pretty sure a piano fell on that guy.
It's worth noting that this is a blog post, and not reporting from an accountable journalistic agency.
I don't see anything obviously incorrect, but it's worth noting the source.
Hello my American friends, as an observer from outside, it looks to me like you all need some of that "democracy" you've been bombing across the world for decades.
More than half of us agree with you but overcoming the inertia necessary to change our current condition of minority-majority rule is apparently going to take some kind of political (if not literal*) bomb.
*Not advocating violence, just feeling hopeless about the likelihood that we meaningfully change things at this point through anything short of an actual revolution.
It's very difficult to use logic and try to reason with hatred. Majority of people genuinely want to settle disputes peacefully but it's getting harder and harder to deny that's simply not going to work against a minority of loud, angry and ignorant people cheering on a demagogue.
Historically, it has been violent unfortunately, and I don't see that changing in this situation. Just hoping the violence is aimed at the right people soon before more innocent people die.
Sounds like they're admitting the CEO murder brought about a good change. We should do it more often 🙂
Sounds like we have a great candidate
So BR CEO next?
Will nobody rid me of this meddlesome BlackRock CEO?
Sounds like the black rock ceo needs a visit by the Mario bros.
Hooray for laws that make it your legal responsibility to maximise profits for shareholders! Those are doing such amazing things for the overall public good!
/s just in case
send more blue shells
I hope these people have the day they deserve
They'll all probably get away with everything while also giving themselves more money due to Trump's regime. They'll all live to ripe old ages supported by profits that could've benefitted everyone, if they don't cure aging for themselves before then to become absolute, not that their shitty nepo kids wouldn't just replace them.
2 of the worst companies out there fighting, get the popcorn ready
As much as people harp on blackrock and vanguard they hold a ton of people's retirement funds.
This is a vicious thing to do of course but they are protecting a lot of people's nest egg.
Oh please. That doesn't make the math any more forgivable. Every investor made a choice. The fact that it's an institutional investor and mutual funds doesn't sever the provider of the money and their demand for returns from the ethical issues of what the companies are doing.
Don't fail to hold equity investors like this to account because they're holding grandma's retirement hostage. That's on grandma too.
This is a vicious thing to do
If you get into the weeds, the issue isn't that UHC updated their coverage policies and practices. It is that they did so without notifying shareholders first.
Incidentally, one upshot of this lawsuit will be a long period of discovery during which UHC will attempt to prove it is fulfilling its fiduciary duty by showing off how many cruel and nefarious methods it uses to fuck over its clients. So, while you might shit on Blackrock for "viciously" exposing UHC's internal practices to the light of day, I've gotta say that I am seeing nothing but positive outcomes as a result.
Wait. What's the deal with vanguard? I don't think I've ever seen anyone harp on them
Who is the CEO of Blackrock?
Apparently Larry Fink runs the American Investment Firm known as BlackRock. Why do you ask? Are you going to write him a letter? In that case according to the article there's some relevant information about where to send it
"In 2004, they bought Finch Farm in North Salem, New York from the actor Stanley Tucci for $3.7 million and have since bought seven more parcels of land there, including one from Maurice Sendak and 27 acres from the town's deputy supervisor Peter Kamenstein in 2019 for $5.4 million.[47] They also have an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and a house in Aspen, Colorado.[3]"
If you're worried about him being on the opposite side of political issues then don't you worry because Larry "Fink is a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party."
I hope that helps you with your message! Good Luck.
I somehow doubt he was a Democrat. There are articles claiming he just split campaign contributions in half.
Reminder that capitalism is a system where companies cannot afford to consistently do the right thing. Therefore Capitalism must be abolished entirely.
My greatest wish is the fall of the dollar for exactly this reason. This is the result I want. I want capitalism to collapse. Worldwide. And it will sooner or later. But I'd prefer sooner. Capitalism cannot survive. Infinite growth + finite resources = inevitable collapse. Dependence on the US Dollar is how this all got as bad as it has. We were the snake oil salesman selling capitalism to the world. With extreme prejudice where deemed necessary.
I'm 100% sure I won't survive that crash. But if the human race is to survive. Capitalism has to end. Or at least be wrestled into submission. We can't flee to space. We can't farm the asteroid belt for resources. We're a couple years from AGI. Climate change is happening live. We see it every single day. As of right now we don't have a future. End of this century maybe. Maybe.
That's a thing you can sue for?
Yes, shareholders in the US have rights to sue when their investments don't return profits as promised.
This is one of the biggest drivers of corporate greed in the US.
You can sue for everything. If you win is another question.
Good old BlackRock making the world a terrible place.
Seems that we have a very clear cause and effect pathway now, though, and blackrock has offered a solution.
Mario-san? HAAIII! Nani ga sugi? CEO no rieki yori mo anata!!
A while back, I was watching a video about emergent behaviour. A fun concept. the idea is that under some rules, the way things behave ends up making their own different rules. Like how the rules of particle physics determine how subatomic particles behave, but when together they form chemistry, a different set of rules working on top of the lower layer. The same way as biochemistry becomes its own thing, and so biology is built on top of that, and on top of that we have ecology and then humans, and sociology, economics…
It left me with a question, a rather big and stupid question. We are intelligent, sentient, we are just a bunch of cells, intelligence has appeared in our layer. and my question was, can it appear in another? would we notice if there was an intelligent organism that uses our behaviour as its cells? I am not asking for sentient, because that is such a philosophical question which would be a massive tangent just to unpack.
For a while I was just wondering if it was possible, until I realized. They exist. Institutions. they are another layer of emergence, and they do have intelligence and behaviour.
You might say, that it is obvious they are intelligent, they have a CEO that makes decisions, therefore they get their intelligence from him and/or his advisors or advising teams. good point, exceptthe CEO is not the institution, he is replaceable, and the institutions themselves have built in mechanisms for it, to run efficiently. everyone is replaceale and for what? the survival ad near cancerous growth of said institution. Shareholders only care about numbers going up, and will fire anyone who makes any decision that questions it.
Aha, you will point at the shareholders, they are people, they make the decisions. Except most of them are not, they are other institutions, other corporations trying to keep the numbers up. trying to feed on capital.
This seems obvious. But I just providing another lens. Because now we can see their behaviour under a new light. Just like living organisms requre energy and its distribution to live. Institutions need capital, need people to work in there for them to exist, need people moving money around for them to exist.
And given the new lens we can ask different questions. Do they age, evolve, get diseases, do they have an ecology?
They do age. They must grow and a bigger corporation might be stronger but less adaptable and less nimble. can take less risks, it has less space to grow and might only survive by buying off the competition. For example, we can point at Kodak, they could have developed the digital cameras except they make money selling camera film, not cameras. For them making any product that will hurt film sales was short term suicide. Digital cameras were unavoidable, they could have succeeded in the digital fight and come out on top, but trying was forbidden to them as any decision that would hurt them in the short term is beyond the scope of their actions.
Evolve? yes they do. in their own way. simply, any institution that does not grow as fast or as strong will simply die off. There is a lot of competition, and new corporations with different rules will try to take over and if they actually are better fit for their environment they will succeed. We can see the evolution of corporations within the last centuries with corporations getting more traits, all using new behaviours and try to survive copying from each other if they can.
Ecology? Just look at the markets, private equity are basically scavengers, some corporations feed each other, niche speciation, trophic cascades… all those concepts apply here in some way.
My point is, corporations are not people. They are their own creatures, which care for us. The same way you care for your own cells. Are you even aware or care that millions of your cells die regularly, for example in your gut or skin? no, the same way a corporation has absolutely no care for their workers.
This is just a lens, if you are a socialist you might think best to end them, which might work. Whatever institutions we make will likely have their own issues. A liberal might think that under these metaphors we might be able to tame them, which is possible. Except not fighting them is something corporations want us to believe.
I personally think we can consider domestication. by understanding them through this lens. One way to domesticate them is simple. Kill them. I mean the bad ones. Let them fail, and fear not for their death. If they hurt people, and there is a lawsuit, the punishment should be significant, enough to kill the company and ruin all the investors. This way surviving companies will be afraid and police themselves. They will only behave themselves as long as there are consequences for not doing so. If you try to domesticate animals you will put down those who bite and are dangerous. Another solution is that stakeholders should be entitled to shares, people who work or rely on the product should have a voice and more importantly a vote. Although then we need to look into what institution is deciding who gets shares.
BTW, this can be interpreted as a liberal believing that “Just one more reform, trust me bro”. or worse an ancap thinking we just need the right corporations. My version of a reformed capitalism would be so different it would be a stretch to call it liberal.
TLDR: corporations are not people, they need to be treated as such, and be forced to serve public interest. Even less considering them as a group of people.
Interesting take!
I'm not sure how well recieved it will be here on Lemmy, but it's well reasoned and explained with clear references.
Even if others don't agree with you, you've certainly earned respect for so cleanly writing out how you're looking at this and why.
Personally, I think your answer aligns itself well with the classic solutions to these problems.
Machiavelli wrote extensively about what you're saying in "The Prince" and came to a similar solution that institutions and any position of power over them needs to be completely transparent and open to critique. He pushed for heavy regulation becuase it's the literal singular mechanism that pushes institutions towards benefiting the public instead of benefiting themselves.
The most interesting takeaway from reading The Prince in a modern context is how deregulation killed every system of governance we've tried going all the way back to ancient Rome.
Nero fiddled as Rome burned because Roman government was deregulated to the point an idiot could hold power over them.
USSR couldn't keep communism regulated, so those that were stealing and breaking the system used their illegally gained resources to deconstruct the communist regime in its entirety.
Now, in the US we're watching as both of these happen at the same time. A social system deregulated to the point several reality TV stars can hold the highest military and government positions while bailing out our Oligarchs so much they've evolved from "too big to fail" into "too big to stop."
Tansparency and regulation are a necessity in any functioning society to prevent the minority of horrible humans among us from becoming subjugators.
actually, it seems it was well received by people who read it.
was afraid no one will read an essay here.
"too big to fail" should be turn to "too big to keep alive"
There's an entire field of organizational psychology that studies this phenomenon. I have a colleague who has her doctorate in it, super smart person. She gets so frustrated when she gets a call to help solve some org issue and nobody understands pretty much what you just described.
Changing reporting structures and titles only goes so far. At some point you are inside the system and have to observe its rules. Without changing some fundamental piece or pieces you're going to come to a limit of what you can do. Ever suggest changing incentive structures to match desired outcomes? She has, and won't be doing it again after being laughed off the job.
If you're a publicly traded company in a capitalist country I would guess 65% of your culture and behaviors are immovable. And, as of late, I also believe that those 65% are the worst behaviors for humanity.
you cannot even attempt to change the system without friction from said system. however, we shouldn't care at all if said system complains. those systems aren't our friend. and we need to use them for our benefit, not the other way round.
These emergent institutional entities are themselves the gut biota of Moloch.
ITT:
I'm not got to name names, but I really hope certain people cease to exist because that would be hilarious.
Can you give me fake names in place of real names so that I can look them up?
Man I am so glad that the chancellor of germany is the head of the german branch of this evil piece of shit company.
We need more luigis
We saw what was a perfect three-word alliteration as found on certain shell casings for a healthcare CEO, but what comparable three-word alliteration would be suitable for an asset manager? I don't know...
I am also wondering that, you know, to make up something when the people who Extract all the value from society, Extinguish all alternatives to their monopolies are Eliminated.
That was so very well said! Yes, yes!
"Too much care" is great if you're fine with passing up on the alliteration
Is Mr Fink aware of the fate of the last CEO who tried to extract profits from those in need? Because I'm starting to think he and his lot are asking for a refresher on the matter.
There's this rule that says a business will never make less money to provide better arrived. They will charge us more and deny claims to compensate.
Why should the customer pay for the business to weather ups and downs.
Take pge. Hey burn half of the north bay down and then charge people more on their bills to prevent future fires. They were pocketing the money for years which caused the fires.
This country has really reached its end.
Any attorneys willing to weigh in, hypothetically, about if BlackRock wins, whether this would open them up to suits from UHG benefit members?
My thinking is if BlackRock wins and UHG goes back their old denying claims ways, could a patient who doesn't get necessary care OR family members if they die due to a denial sue BlackRock with an argument to damage and harm from BlackRock's actions?
If BR wins, it just means that you cannot lie about your earnings targets. UH is getting sued not because they earned less, they are getting sued because they did not disclose their actions would impact the earnings target.
I wish a big ass fucking meteor would finally make humanity go extinct. Tabula rasa
The climate crisis has a good chance of completing the job. And then there's a lot of not-quite-worst-case scenarios where a tiny number of humans are able to survive for the tens of thousands of years it'll take for the earth to repair itself. Everything we know about humanity will be lost and replaced by an entirely different culture.
The tabula is never quite rasa in practise. Besides, it's not like humans are all angels deep down.
I'm not trying to be hopeless here, I think it's more hopeless to imagine some big death tantrum will fix us.
gee almost as if it is a bad idea to leave healthcare at the hands of greedy little billionaire turds
Ugh, we understand that poor people need to live so they can work for us and make us money.
But do we really need all of them?
ethics and morality dont exists for BlackRock and the people who work for it. specially the people/lawyers/board members who do the dirty work and decision making to put this law suit into action. awful just evil awful wicked people at BlackRock no better then scum and bugs.
Don't talk so rudely about scum and bugs please. They have more real purpose in this world than the people you mentioned.
I know it doesn't matter because money, but in what world does Blackrock have any semblance of standing to sue?
according to the supreme court standing is no longer required
If they're shareholders, they probably have standing to sue over lost shareholder value or some such bullshit like that
Sorry UnitedHealth, but your insurance does not cover getting bled dry by parasitic leeches.
Sweet. Get Luigi on the phone.
