Deserved#

Many people have celebrated Thompson’s killing as a good act. In a new poll conducted by Emerson College, data shows that 41% of voters aged 18 to 29 found the killing to be acceptable on some level.

There is a lot that can be inferred from this. Most people don’t even begin to deal with the “fun” side of medical insurance before 26 and likely have no practical experience with the process so it would make sense that a majority of them have these feelings. For me, this looks like a case of “I’m mad about this thing because someone on the internet told me I should be mad about it”. This could more true with younger kids as they see one friend support the murder and decide to join the bandwagon.

Either way, this data is quite concerning.

UHC Denial rates#

I know many people who work in healthcare, and they echo the sentiment that UnitedHealthcare has the highest denial rates and the pain of having to go to a patient and say, “Sorry, your insurance is not paying for your care,” and hand them a bill that breaks them financially. But where did this come from? Recently, this chart showing claim denial rates by insurance companies has been circulating around the internet, showing the industry average denial rate at 16%, with UHC at the bottom of the graph with denial rates at 32%. Here is the original chart:

The chart was from a valuepenguin.com article titled “Insurance Claim Denials: Worst Companies and How to Appeal”. The chart has since been removed from the article (here is an archived version). ValuePenguin provided two updates at the top of the article which is shown below.

Dec. 6, 2024 — Due to recent events, ValuePenguin removed certain data elements from this piece at the request of law enforcement. If you would like more information about the analysis presented in this piece, please contact press@lendingtree.com.

On Dec. 5, 2024, one insurer contacted ValuePenguin claiming that the denial rate listed in this article is not consistent with their internal records. We will update this article with more information as it is made available to us. Refer to our methodology below for additional sourcing information.

Now, I am not an expert on how medical insurance works or on reporting claim data, so I did some more digging.

According to ValuePeugin, the denial rates are based on data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services public use files. The exact year(s) of data used for the chart is unknown, but speculation is that the data is only used from the 2022 calendar year. Medicare and Medicaid data also does not include information about employer-sponsored health plans, which covers 63% of adults aged 19 to 64². Others have used the 2023 data comparing the number of claims to the insurer and denials, which showed that UHC denied about 33% of claims, the highest of any other major insurer.

But there is more to this.

According to Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the KFF, the data gathered on health insurer’s denials is “haphazard and limited to a small subset of plans” and “isn’t audited to ensure it is complete” with “Federal oversight and enforcement based on the data are, therefore, more or less nonexistent.”³ Peter Lee, the executive director of California’s state marketplace, said in an article with ProPublica that the federal government data is “not standardized, … not audited, … not really meaningful”.⁴

UnitedHealth Group published a fact sheet (archived) on December 13 with the claim “UnitedHealthcare approves and pays about 90% of medical claims upon submission.” and “Any other numbers being discussed in some quarters purporting to be the UnitedHealthcare approval rate are wrong.” At face value, this seems excellent, but since they have not been audited by a third party for their approval rate, it is just a “trust me bro” guarantee.

So, what does all of this mean? While most signs point to UHC having the highest denial rates of any insurer, we do not have concrete evidence, and the federal government’s data is inconclusive. Are all of my friends who work in healthcare lying? Maybe not, but it could also be a case of confirmation bias. Regardless, more concrete data is needed.

”Eat the rich”#

sigh great, this thing again.

I hate this anti-capitalist argument as most of the time, the person using the argument still supports very capitalist companies.

Let’s examine Luigi Mangione and his travels. On November 24th, he took a Greyhound bus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan. Early in the morning of December 4th, he took an e-bike (most likely owned by Citi Bike, which is associated with Lyft) to a Starbucks to make a purchase. After several days, on December 9th, he was caught at a McDonald’s restaurant.

So he has interacted with Greyhound (with an revenue of 3.2 billon each year), Lyft (a for-profit transportation company), Starbucks (a massive global company with stock trading at 100 USD as of December 4th), and McDonald’s (which made 14 billion in profit in 2023). That’s not very anticapitalist of someone described as “anti-system.” From this alone, he loved to support big corporations. Perhaps his biggest crime was being a hypocrite.

But for the sake of research, how rich was Brian Thompson?

The number is still blurry, but the general consensus is that Brian Thompson’s net worth is around $42.9 million as of February 16, 2024. This includes 82,348 units of stock in UnitedHealth Group.⁵ This is all I found, but judging by his senior position at a profitable company, it is safe to say he was well off.

As much as I hate when big companies screw the consumer as the next person, without these big companies, life is much more complicated. If we were to zap Amazon out of existence the next day, there would be chaos. Many other companies like Netflix, Okta, Twitch, Starbucks (that Luigi is a patron of), Sony, Airbnb, Canva, Pinterest, Vercel, Snapchat, Verizon, and more rely on Amazon Web Services and they would all be unable to function without it. Many people reading this blog could care less about some of these companies, but there are many more who rely on their services daily. Many small businesses that use Amazon to get their products out would. Many consumers needing essential items from Amazon would now have to go out of their way for products. Simply put, Amazon is too helpful to get rid of it. I plan on going more in-depth with my thoughts about anti-capitalism in a future post, but I will leave it at that for now.

The 3 paragraph manifesto#

I also just wanted to quickly talk about Luigi Mangione’s manifesto. Thanks to some internet nerds, they uncovered his GoodReads account where he had rated the Unabomber’s manifesto a 4 out of 5, which I interpreted it as him saying “yeah it’s alright but I could do better”, which I would like to argue he did not.

His manifesto was pretty much a short blurb, which at the bottom boils down to “I’m not smart enough to argue this point so I will leave that to other people.”

Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument.

Excerpt from Luigi Mangione’s Manifesto

But apparently, he is qualified to shoot the guy. This is pretty much him saying, “I know I am right, but I am not smart enough to say why.”

Don’t take this as me praising the CEO. Still, if you are going to rank Ted Kazinski’s manifesto a 4/5, then write something as bad as that, I am questioning that Ivy League education and why you gave your manifesto the same effort as a 7th-grade book report.

Also, Ted had a higher KDR. Not saying Ted was right, but it is just a fact…

Memes? Yes#

Look, I don’t like Luigi at all, but the fact that he left a backpack full of Monopoly Money in Central Park is pretty funny.

The memes that came out of the situation are even more hilarious, so here are a few of my favorites:

If you know the original behind this, you are a real one.

And finally, luigi’s victory dance in Super Smash Bros. 4:

The actual Conclusion#

As for this whole situation, I give it a 4/5. Unfortunately, I’m not smart enough to articulate why I’m giving it this rating, but I’m sure someone will come along who can provide a full explanation. /j

Thank you for listening to me. I know that based on the communities I am in, this will be a very unpopular opinion, but I hope everyone can be civil when discussing this topic. Thanks to Entropy for copyediting this post and giving me feedback. This will be my last post this year, so Happy New Year! With that, I will leave you with this post from a Twitter user:

It’s important to lead your life in such a way that when you’re gunned down in public by an anonymous hitman on a New York City street the country at large doesn’t react like the Ewoks watching the second Death Star explode

Tweet from Bob Kostic @causticbob - Nitter

Happy holidays, and I will see you all in 2025! Cheers.