I’ll never understand how people were OK with putting middlemen with an interest in denying care between them and lifesaving treatment.
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2026
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because apparently, the alternative is communism, and it will have death panels that will decide if you get to live in order to save costs...
The Acquired podcast went over this history very briefly in their Epic episode and it's so crazy how close we were to having universal healthcare.
Tl;dl:
- during WW2, wage controls were in place due to a large demand of workers but very few people available due to being in the war
- unions and companies alike were looking for ways to make their positions and companies more attractive.
- government permitted benefits to augment salaries. Some companies started offering health insurance.
- back then going to the doctor was NOT the bankrupt causing thing that is today and was considered a fringe benefit
- larger companies were able to offer better incentives due to healthcare benefits
- add a few years of corruption and "market forces" and you have the system we have now
So blame wage controls during WW2.
Someone close to them might just turn in Luigi one day. Good job.
This would be enough to "radicalize me", but I don't think it's all that radical to be against a system that treats people this way.
It isn't. It's inhumane the way these companies are behaving. They're a threat to society and this is humans' instinctual response to eliminating threats.
We are giving thousands of dollars of our money to a company to insure that our life and health will be taken care of, it should NOT be up to these companies what methods of remedies that a person needs to be kept alive and healthy are "deemed necessary"
Furthermore; these companies CEO should NEVER be paid more than an average citizen... full stop. There's no reason an insurance company employee owns a yacht.
average citizen
Median citizen. The average is raised significantly by a few rich folks.
Great point and an even better ultimatum.
That's the point, we're not living a neutral situation, we're under attack by bad people doing disgusting jobs
It's us against the Epstein class, really.
Life is not medically necessary
In fact its a massive risk factor.
I work in EMS. My advice to students and brand new EMTs is always the same: don't freak out when your patient is in cardiac arrest. Those are the easy calls. I have to keep people alive and if someone is crashing in front of me I have to figure out why and what I can try to do to stop it so they don't die. The ones that are already in cardiac arrest aren't getting any more dead, and the only outcomes are that we improve on that or we don't. We can't make them worse. Dead is the most stable condition.
Edit: That said, one of my favorite things about working in EMS is that I don't have to care about "medically necessary" or insurance companies. If I think my patient needs a treatment and it's in my protocol to give it, I give it. I don't have to ask for an insurance company's approval or get a payment method from my patients, I just get to help people.
Imagine all medicine working that way.
Thank you for your service and for sharing your insight.
It's the ultimate pre-existing condition.
He was dying. This would likely have given him more time but not stopped him from dying in the near future. To an insurance company, these results are the same except that the latter case costs them more money.
You are also dying in the future. So no treatment for you. It's even cheaper the sooner you die. And since you don't need money after you've died, lets make your last days so expensive that we can extract all the money from you and if possible from the rest of your family. Profit.
Whoa whoa whoa. We can't just let people die until we've extracted their economic output, up to the point where the cost of the treatment exceeds expected remaining economic output.
Someone phone Luigi.
Mototov the fuck
Death panels by any other name wouldn’t be so bleak.
It was unlikely the proposed treatment would have sent Tennant into full remission, but the family believed it could have bought him some more time.
Does an actual doctor believe that too?
We don't have infinite resources to spend on treatment that won't actually help.
This is a slop article. No actual info on success chances, prior treatments etc.
They're really tryna create another Luigi aren't they?
I suspect they've created many.
Only one became active. Allegedly.
So far.
