Can we estimate how many deaths a company is responsible for?
Can we estimate how many deaths a company is responsible for?
The current news has me thinking that, while the death of any human is not something I actively relish, most people feel a certain satisfaction, relief or, at least, less sad when someone like Osama Bin Laden dies, because they were responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
Which got me wondering, have studies been done estimating how many legitimate insurance cases are rejected, delayed or otherwise mishandled, and how many of those result in deaths? I guess other industries are also responsible for some pretty measurable risk factors (e.g. air pollution). It would interesting to see some rough numbers of how many deaths the CEOs who choose to continue running these companies in harmful ways account for. Obviously, they are only indirectly responsible, but the same could be said about Bin Laden, he didn't fly the planes himself, he delegated.
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It is impossible to accurately quantify how many deaths and human years lost can be directly attributed to Brian Thompson. UnitedHealthcare themselves may have some data but there are also indirect deaths and shortened life spans as a result of denied or delayed treatment.
Yeah, we can determine a floor but no upper limit.
If I drive my wife to the hispital instead of taking an ambulance becsuse of the worry about cost and she died on the way it would be due to the industry but wouldn't be counted against them in any statistic.
Or the people that don't seek care at all because they know the care isn't affordable. Folks with and without insurance die from treatable, non diagnosed diseases simply because they can't afford the routine checkups that could have caught the issue in time.
Worth mentioning (even though yes the post asks specifically about deaths) - the harm caused is far greater than just the deaths that needn't have happened.
The amount of chaos and misery inflicted on the suffering as they and their families have to fight the insurance companies while trying to fight whatever illness...these companies make the worst moments of people's lives much, much worse. The deaths are just the tip of the iceberg, truly.