- You keep stating that UHC "provides healthcare" (paraphrasing is mine). That is a ridiculous thing to interject into the debate: UHC can be described as paying the bills, but they are not actually providing healthcare in any real sense of that word.
- Because they do not actually _provide_ healthcare, it is very reasonable to ask why they need to spend billions on what essentially amounts to clerical work. We know they spend a lot of overhead on finding ways to _not_ pay for healthcare, which is one way that they could reduce this overhead if they were so inclined.
- It is obscene that in addition to massively overspending on providing this clerical function, they manage to still profit somewhere north of $14 billion dollars. That money, and the overspending on clerical functions, could have and should have been spent on paying for healthcare.
- No single individual should earn a compensation of $10 million dollars; but it is especially wicked to earn that amount of money, essentially, while there are unpaid claims. I won't start ranting about capitalism in general here - the CEO needs a paycheck too - but it's just absurd to think that they alone provide $10 million dollars worth of "value" and it's immoral to provide that compensation _in lieu of paying for healthcare_.
- You keep saying the CEO is "competent." From what I can see, his primary competency seems to have been increasing (or at least, holding steady) the amount of profit that UHC earns year over year. That is to say: he was competent at making sure UHC did not substantially pay for more healthcare. Another way of looking at that is that he was uniquely competent at increasing (or at least, holding steady) the amount of human suffering caused by UHC in exchange for those profits.
So - yes, I stand by my original statement that the population would have been far better off if he were not running the company, because he was carrying out a fundamentally immoral function in society. All of the insurers should be non-profits; in fact, every aspect of our healthcare system should be non-profit. Or at the very least, regulated to only earn a tiny amount of profits. Because there's no way around it - profit in the medical system is always directly tied to extracting more money from a population than it takes to provide that care, and I view that as utterly immoral.
- You keep stating that UHC "provides healthcare" (paraphrasing is mine). That is a ridiculous thing to interject into the debate: UHC can be described as paying the bills, but they are not actually providing healthcare in any real sense of that word.
- Because they do not actually _provide_ healthcare, it is very reasonable to ask why they need to spend billions on what essentially amounts to clerical work. We know they spend a lot of overhead on finding ways to _not_ pay for healthcare, which is one way that they could reduce this overhead if they were so inclined.
- It is obscene that in addition to massively overspending on providing this clerical function, they manage to still profit somewhere north of $14 billion dollars. That money, and the overspending on clerical functions, could have and should have been spent on paying for healthcare.
- No single individual should earn a compensation of $10 million dollars; but it is especially wicked to earn that amount of money, essentially, while there are unpaid claims. I won't start ranting about capitalism in general here - the CEO needs a paycheck too - but it's just absurd to think that they alone provide $10 million dollars worth of "value" and it's immoral to provide that compensation _in lieu of paying for healthcare_.
- You keep saying the CEO is "competent." From what I can see, his primary competency seems to have been increasing (or at least, holding steady) the amount of profit that UHC earns year over year. That is to say: he was competent at making sure UHC did not substantially pay for more healthcare. Another way of looking at that is that he was uniquely competent at increasing (or at least, holding steady) the amount of human suffering caused by UHC in exchange for those profits.
So - yes, I stand by my original statement that the population would have been far better off if he were not running the company, because he was carrying out a fundamentally immoral function in society. All of the insurers should be non-profits; in fact, every aspect of our healthcare system should be non-profit. Or at the very least, regulated to only earn a tiny amount of profits. Because there's no way around it - profit in the medical system is always directly tied to extracting more money from a population than it takes to provide that care, and I view that as utterly immoral.