Photograph Source: Marc Nozell from Merrimack, New Hampshire, USA – CC BY 2.0

We all know the story. Someone gets furious at the behavior of a health insurance company. Perhaps they are exceptionally irate at the words and actions that have come from the CEO and other leaders in the company. And then the moment of truth occurs and they take action.

By this I mean, a group of shareholders of United Healthcare filed suit in May of this year against the company. This action was in response to a drop in shareholder value of around 22% after the death of their CEO. The shareholders were angry and felt they’d been misled when the company indicated that there would be no change in their profit forecast after this event. However, the suing shareholders distinctly believe that UHC started approving a tiny bit more care in response to their CEO’s death. This harmed their finances, they say, and in a fit that can only be solved through litigation, they went after the company. In this case, the bottom line and health of those shareholders’ finances is inversely proportional to the health of the bag holders who dismally have UHC insurance. You see, the rules are that you pay through the nose for high premiums and just wither away if you get sick. It’s a poor tax. You don’t get to ask them to fulfill their end of the bargain.

United Healthcare was always a stand-out in the world of profiteering through misery, number one in denials and at the forefront of clanker denied care (by that I mean utilizing AI to deny physician recommended services as a first response). The fact that those shareholders were angry when there was a lessening of the denials is amazing because it’s not like they started approving all care that the physicians indicated was necessary. No, it appears it was simply a slight lessening of the unreasonableness. Kind of like Howard Hughes only sprays you with a 25% solution of bleach rather than the 28% solution when you enter his elevator to come visit him.

Now what kind of profits are we talking about in this world of corporate misery mining? Well in the year 2023 the US healthcare system expenditures tallied a grotesque 4.9 trillion (or $14, 570 per person). I........

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