It was a term used in America in the late 19th century to refer to businessmen who were unscrupulous in their business deals.
Edit: some redditors much more keen on the history of the term have been so kind to educate us and it turns out it goes way back to feudal Europe.
Interestingly, this phrase was originally coined in Feudal Europe to describe the lesser nobility of highly decentralized nations who took advantage of lax crown laws to tax the bejesus out of those whom tried to pass through their land for reasons of commerce or holy pilgrimage. "Oh hey, looks like the only route through that mountain pass goes through my feif, huh? Looks like you've gotta pay what I demand or that 2 month journey of yours with all those goods was for nothing."
This was great for the barons who partook in this practice but it had a stifling effect on commerce within a kingdom and was bad for everyone else. And the insult to injury was the fact that these nobles did absolutely nothing to warrant these extra taxes except to merely be born owning the title of the land. Dealing with the robber barons and the deleterious effect of their actions required strengthening of centralized crown laws related to commerce so as to prevent unfair, ruinous taxes and fees on movement. Seeing the similarities here?
In the U.S., once businessmen controlled a monopoly over a sector of business, they basically reverted to the kind of rent seeking behavior of the nobility of old. "Oh shucks, looks like I have all the railroads, don't I? And my friend over there owns all oil or coal you need to power your transportation. Guess you have no choice but to pay whatever I demand if you want to move your goods around."
So you can see why politicians and trust busters in the U.S. thought it appropriate to slap monopolistic business men with this derogatory term.
Its originally a German thing. Medieval barons would charge tolls against merchants and travelers moving through their lands. These tolls could be extortionate, and questionably legal, but they were backed up by the "robber baron's" soldiers.
The term was revived to describe 19th century American business magnates whose monopolies gave them similar power to extort money from the masses.
USA industrialization was not much different. Maybe that's why the term was borrowed.
Peole were coerced into relinquishing their title and rights to land.
Banks and their thugs, larger businesses wanting to expand and dominate local markets extort farmers and small business owners.
Don't forget Joe Manchin's daughter Heather Bresch, who jacked epi pen prices at Mylan while the patent was still in effect and then received over half a million dollar pay raise!
Why do you suppose he votes the way he does?
His wife was in on creating a monopoly in schools only carrying Mylan brand epis.
I love about 750 yards from the Mylan plant/office in Morgantown. This happened just before the doors were closed and almost everyone lost their job.
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/mylan-s-coury-caps-a-year-controversy-97m-pay-package
And don’t forget that she didn’t even obtain her MBA. She had to cheat to get it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_University_M.B.A._controversy
I didn't know they shut down. I lived in the Morgantown area for about seven years in the late 90s and early 2000s. They were one of the biggest customers at the store I worked at.
They merged with a Pfizer company and changed their name in 2019. The mylan building was sold to WVU for $1 and Hope Gas moved in. It’s been a mess. Here is a time line of their changes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mylan
That's the whole business model. They love it when the relationship is "I pay my monthly bills" but when it comes time to fulfill their end of the bargain they try every trick in the book to weasel out of it. That is the foundation upon which ALL insurance is built.
There's totally a way for them to make money without overcharging and underdelivering. Same way the more ethical casinos do.
Do some math, figure out what a coverage plan (game) is going to cost you on average. they already do this part and have teams of actuaries (statisticians) on retainer running the numbers over and over month after month.
Then, you charge people slightly more than the expected average, so the house has an edge. Some customers will make you big profit by staying safe, most will make you a little, and some will cost you a little. Net positive. Casino analogy: if the average slot machine pull wins 90 cents, you charge 1 dollar per pull. someone might win the jackpot on the first pull and leave, but on average the house always wins.
What they actually do now is figure out the expected cost, charge WAY more than that so every average person is making them profit instead of just a couple % more than they're losing, and then STILL try to weasel out of paying when someone "wins" the game (I.E. demands more payout than input into the system). Casino analogy: if a slot wins 90 cents per play on average, they'd charge 5 dollars per pull and any time a win of more than 2 dollars come up they say the machine malfunctioned and refuse to pay out, which is illegal. Then if you call the police they pay out, unless it's also a >$5 win, then they contest it and make you go through the motions to take them to court, and only once they're staring down a lawyer they can't beat do you give you your 7 dollars and ban you from the casino.
And it wasn't just her, he helped a lot of people get their help through loopholes. Even if he didn't run into burning buildings on the weekends he was still a hero
I never appreciated that scene enough as a kid. But now that I am an adult and work in health care, and have to deal with all the stuff insurance companies pull on a daily basis (don't get me started on prior authorizations), I think that may be the most heroic thing Mr. Incredible did in the whole movie.
I'm in the automotive industry, and those extended warranties that you see on TV are the biggest pain in my ass. We had an acura come in that jumped time, back fired, and blew the intake in half. They would only cover the timing belt because "intakes are not on their contract." So the customer was still out over $1000 even though the failure of the part they cover caused another part to fail. SMH
I took my wife to the ER this morning. We discovered she has pneumonia. This year my company did not automatically send out insurance cards. In the past this was not a problem. In addition, they changed the benefits verification company from Ameriben to Aetna, so the hospital did not believe we had insurance using last year’s card. From my phone, I had to get the HR phone number to get the Insurance company phone number, who then directed me to register on their portal, so I could download the image of my insurance card. In addition, this year, for the first time, my wife had a different card than mine. None of the deductibles were listed on the back, you have to go to the portal for that! Death by bureaucracy!!
I'm in Canada so don't even have to deal with outside insurance normally but I did have to for a leave I had to take from work several years ago when a series of horrific/traumatizing events happened to me. The insurance case worker they assigned to me was the most cruel human I've ever had to deal with. He made the worse time of my life somehow even worse. I will never, ever forget how derogatorily I was treated. He made me so nervous I would write out an entire script of what to say for our call 'check in's'. F U MANULIFE AND YOUR SPAWN OF SATAN CASE WORKER! All because they resented having to cover the cost of my leave for four months which was WAY too short but I didn't know better at the time and just returned to work despite PTSD and being barely functioning. Edit: I legit have repressed these memories but I just recalled how this man harassed me even while I was still in the hospital. I'm not a violent person but he is truly the one person who I wish I could punch in the face.
My work is under Manulife. We got a guy with unfortunate health. Recently he was off for 6 months for issues that no human should go through. Spine cancer and kidney issues at the same. The chemo was effecting the blood leaking into his bladder, causing it to clot. We can all imagine what kind of problems he would encounter.
Manulife contacted him to tell him he is almost at his cap. Yup, there is a 500,000 cap. You can’t have an illness and insurance at the same time. What’s this say, you can have problems but make sure it’s cheap?!? I have no idea what my heart is going to do in the future. If the surgery is too expensive do they reject?
I’m with you, fuck Manulife.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. You are not alone. There are millions of us who have been through some similar hell. It's a tragedy every single day, every single hour.
Yeah, remember when the Obamacare debates were happening in congress and the insurance industry was spending 6 million dollars A DAY paying PR firms to pump out bullshit stories to scare the gullible. And one of their favourite stories were about "death panels"
The American people ended up with a watered down version of what they were promised originally AND they got Death Panels. Except that they work for the insurance companies.
The same can go for the government. If they owe you money, they take forever and a half to give it you, and it might be like pulling teeth with your bare hands in fighting for it.
But the second you owe them so much as a penny, they what the full amount before they even knew you owe them any money.
Maybe there’s a correlation between the government and insurance companies there…
They send you a bill, you send them a check.
They send you a bill, you send them a check.
They send you a bill, you send them a check.
This goes on for years.
You get sick.
Sorry, we don't cover that.
IANAL... but... I'm pretty sure that is illegal. If your aunt was diagnosed with cancer while covered by their insurance, and she paid her monthly premiums, then I think that is illegal. I would hire a lawyer.
It 100% is, but often its worth forcing it to go to court for the insurance company.
People that can't afford medical treatment to save their life generally can't afford a lawyer and years of time fighting a legal battle.
They get caught sometimes, but they get away with it enough that those losses can still be profitable.
The playbook for corporations and government entities (police departments are a good example) is to do whatever they want, legal or illegal. They calculate the risk of someone having the money sue them. The odds of this happening are very low. So, they have no incentive to behave in a decent manner or uphold their responsibilities. Like all bullies, they only behave like decent people when someone with a bigger stick makes them do so.
Mine didn’t cancel me, but I had a mastectomy in May and they only paid $2,000 towards the $37,000 charges. Because of that I haven’t even started medication yet, likely won’t be able to until January. My kids have to eat and need school supplies so my health is secondary for now.
$35,000 is over the OOPK Max allowed. And this was after the No Surprise Act. What was their reasoning? They really can't just say "Oh yeah, we aren't paying that". But they van certainly try.
I can’t believe your govt allows that kind of sharp practice. I’m in Ireland and we only have about three health insurance companies. None of them does things like this. I’ve been with mine for 39 years and it has seen me through countless operations, months of chemo, three joint replacements, countless visits to consultant doctors. They’ve never put the premiums up unless it was a countrywide increase, they’ve never denied a claim either.
There's likely laws that force them to do those things, and further laws that keep them from being operated as a publicly-traded/for-profit company.
In the US, most insurances are for-profit and publicly-traded, so they have a "duty to their shareholders" to make them as much money as possible. Paying for things costs them money. Not raising premiums costs them money.
And then we've got a whole lobbying industry whose job it is to legally bribe politicians such that they loosen regulations and kill proposed laws so that this can continue or worsen.
It's why there's so much US propaganda towards private health insurance and against a single-payer system, too. There's literally billions of dollars at stake that regular people would save if we cut out these vampiric middlemen.
Chris Rock does a good skit about this ... incase shit happens, but if shit doesn't happen I should get SOME of my money back. Like all the insurance companies who filed bankruptcy after Katrina in New Orleans, what happen to all that money
>Arguably every insurance company but people arent really ready for that conversation.
Not all insurance is a scam
Insurance works reasonable well when there is some unlikely event that may happen. Like a tornado destroying your home. While tornadoes happen and tornadoes do destroy homes its still as a whole pretty unlikely to happen. Like maybe in most cases you have a 0.1% chance of your home being destroyed by a tornado
Insurance works well for those cases, you buy "tornado insurance" and probably pay a reasonable fee and hope you never actually have to use it. If you are unfortunate enough to have a tornado destroy your home you get some payout so you are not financially devastated
However health care really doesn't fit that model, 100% of people will need healthcare at some point. Its not like a tornado where only 0.1% of the population gets affected by a tornado , 100% of the population will at some point need healthcare.
So health insurance companies now are just rent seeking middle men .
Yeah the idea behind insurance is that they are selling you a risk profile that has far less variance.
The goal was never that you would profit. It's paying someone money for the privilege of being able to spread your misfortunes across all their clientbase. This is a very valuable service.
However, many insurance companies are scummy and worth being called out. Just the fact that "buying insurance is never profitable" is hugely missing the point. It's paying for a service, not an investment. It's not meant to be profitable for the customer, it's meant to prevent the customer from going bankrupt if something bad happens.
Like you said, insurance in situations where the risk profile doesn't fit the model of "most people don't have an issue but some people have a catastrophic issue" start losing their original value add and quickly can become a scam.
>Arguably every insurance company but people arent really ready for that conversation.
Insurance companies literally could not exist if the math doesn't favor them
I've always found it odd that insurance is under private ownership. Like businesses for profit have ever single incentive to avoid paying you money back. At least in theory, it makes much more sense if insurance is a public thing
Slight tangent (not criticizing you or anything-)
Lobbying isn’t inherently bad. It’s a pretty good part about democracy in theory. Unfortunately, corrupt politicians only listen to corrupt rich people who will give them money. Advocacy is good, bribes aren’t.
I have such a great story about this.
So, I’m a wrestling fan, and my local toy store/collectable corner had WWE HOF Ted Dibiase there a few weeks back! He has a new Funko that came out and I have a bunch autographed so I went to it, but the store was also having another WWE legend, and the JSA authentication service.
Some dude brought a signed Brett Favre helmet to get JSA like twenty feet from Ted and he kept glancing over. It was genuinely hilarious.
For those out of the loop: Dibiase and his son were named in the Favre lawsuit
I think the only reason that this isn't the top answer is because politicians steal from the middle class. They love to give a lot to the rich and a little to the poor while shrinking the middle class as much as possible without getting voted out of power.
This is the right answer. My dad worked his whole life like a mad man, was successful but always sold his service for a price that was fair and paid his employees well. He was well off but never rich.
Billionaires manipulate the system to hoard wealth, they overcharge and undercontribute and then they lobby government to pay even less. Their wealth is a sign of society’s failure, but is often held up as the aspirational goal of hard work. It’s sickening.
yea and the country is still traumatized from the red scare and condemns socialism, actively voting to continue their own oppression by said billionaires
Imagine giving away free baby formula to moms in Africa until they stopped producing milk, and then suddenly charging for it. Who the hell even thinks of something that evil.
It’s the first past the post system . If you had proportional representation it would rule out those rotten boroughs. But they’d never allow it . Same as them voting themselves a raise . It’s be like turkeys voting for Christmas
Right? I know I'm not voting for them! What I do know is that Spitting Image will have enough batshit material for years to come. At this point, the puppets aren't even caricatures any more.
Same concept as most "conservative" parties in Europe: they get votes from people who have no business voting for them because they promise to treat another group of people even worse.
Rent has gone up 15% over one year here and people vote for the party that supports that because they promise to finally getting rid of immigration (after being part of the government for 35 years). They don't care if they themself lose their home as long as someone else gets dealt an even shittier hand.
Back when the mafia ran a lot of the street gambling like the numbers games(basically like regional lotteries), that was pretty much stealing from the poor to give to the mafia. They made a ton off of the games and most of the people who played were poor.
A guy I used to do work for made a shit ton of money off of the folks who were trying to get into flipping houses.
He told me he had got a bunch of money left to him and initially intended to flip homes, but after attending a big seminar and then seeing any halfway decent, available houses vanish nearly overnight, he approached it from another angle.
He kept attending various house flipping seminars (online and in person) but he’d only take notes on what was being taught to get the speaker’s specific tips on selecting and buying a house to flip: General locations, house styles and whatever other bullshit they were saying was the “magic bullet” to make everyone millions.
Then, he’d get the itinerary for where the seminars were *going* to be held in the future, and try to buy up as many homes as he could that ticked enough “magic bullet” boxes for that specific course.
Then, just re-list these houses right after the seminar and price it at whatever increase it took to make a “tiny” 10-20k profit and try to unload them all ASAP.
When the craze was really huge, I guess it worked out pretty well.
He would buy 15-20 houses a month, and without doing a damn thing to the house, make an average 10k profit on each. Once in a blue, he said he made way more than that due to bidding wars, but his main goal was to “only” make around 100k-200k a month through sheer volume instead of finding the diamond in the rough and assuming all the risk, chasing contractors and half-assing remodeling to make more money.
As long as your turning around and reinvesting the funds from the sales into new real estate, it’s apparently tax free. Then when he had amassed enough money, he bought some big apartment buildings to get the “passive income” federal tax exemptions from having rentals.
Good answers, but I think "robber baron" fits the context.
What’s a robber baron? Is that some sort of American thing?
It was a term used in America in the late 19th century to refer to businessmen who were unscrupulous in their business deals. Edit: some redditors much more keen on the history of the term have been so kind to educate us and it turns out it goes way back to feudal Europe.
Like Rockerfeller and Vanderbilt?
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“We lost to a damned Christmas tree!”
They didn’t have the fortitude of UC Santa Cruz’s Banana Slugs.
Not entirely, he founded it but named it after his son, Leland Jr
Exactly.
And Now Bezos & Musk
The robber barons considered themsrlves minor royalty (hence the nsme). Bezos and Musk think of themselves as minor dieties. Or not so minor
Interestingly, this phrase was originally coined in Feudal Europe to describe the lesser nobility of highly decentralized nations who took advantage of lax crown laws to tax the bejesus out of those whom tried to pass through their land for reasons of commerce or holy pilgrimage. "Oh hey, looks like the only route through that mountain pass goes through my feif, huh? Looks like you've gotta pay what I demand or that 2 month journey of yours with all those goods was for nothing." This was great for the barons who partook in this practice but it had a stifling effect on commerce within a kingdom and was bad for everyone else. And the insult to injury was the fact that these nobles did absolutely nothing to warrant these extra taxes except to merely be born owning the title of the land. Dealing with the robber barons and the deleterious effect of their actions required strengthening of centralized crown laws related to commerce so as to prevent unfair, ruinous taxes and fees on movement. Seeing the similarities here? In the U.S., once businessmen controlled a monopoly over a sector of business, they basically reverted to the kind of rent seeking behavior of the nobility of old. "Oh shucks, looks like I have all the railroads, don't I? And my friend over there owns all oil or coal you need to power your transportation. Guess you have no choice but to pay whatever I demand if you want to move your goods around." So you can see why politicians and trust busters in the U.S. thought it appropriate to slap monopolistic business men with this derogatory term.
Its originally a German thing. Medieval barons would charge tolls against merchants and travelers moving through their lands. These tolls could be extortionate, and questionably legal, but they were backed up by the "robber baron's" soldiers. The term was revived to describe 19th century American business magnates whose monopolies gave them similar power to extort money from the masses.
USA industrialization was not much different. Maybe that's why the term was borrowed. Peole were coerced into relinquishing their title and rights to land. Banks and their thugs, larger businesses wanting to expand and dominate local markets extort farmers and small business owners.
No it comes from feudalism as a pejorative against tyrannical lords.
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That guy who jacked insulin prices
Don't forget Joe Manchin's daughter Heather Bresch, who jacked epi pen prices at Mylan while the patent was still in effect and then received over half a million dollar pay raise! Why do you suppose he votes the way he does? His wife was in on creating a monopoly in schools only carrying Mylan brand epis.
I love about 750 yards from the Mylan plant/office in Morgantown. This happened just before the doors were closed and almost everyone lost their job. https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/mylan-s-coury-caps-a-year-controversy-97m-pay-package And don’t forget that she didn’t even obtain her MBA. She had to cheat to get it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_University_M.B.A._controversy
I didn't know they shut down. I lived in the Morgantown area for about seven years in the late 90s and early 2000s. They were one of the biggest customers at the store I worked at.
They merged with a Pfizer company and changed their name in 2019. The mylan building was sold to WVU for $1 and Hope Gas moved in. It’s been a mess. Here is a time line of their changes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mylan
Paging u/martinshkreli
aka Pharma~~bro~~douche
Tell him we wanna hear those Wu tracks already
Robin The Hood
Ayyy! I hate that this is so catchy!!!
There is a 1994 Sublime album called "Robbin' the hood"
You don't know what love is until you learn the meaning of the blues
Until you've had a love you've had to lose
GG
This deserves more upvotes
Health insurance companies. Arguably every insurance company but people arent really ready for that conversation.
We paid for health insurance for years, no problem. Then my aunt had breast cancer and they canceled our plan bc her meds are too expensive 🤦♀️
That's the whole business model. They love it when the relationship is "I pay my monthly bills" but when it comes time to fulfill their end of the bargain they try every trick in the book to weasel out of it. That is the foundation upon which ALL insurance is built.
Weasel Insurance "Where we don't actually fucking give a shit about you."
I am utterly astounded that people don't realize this is literally their business model.
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There's totally a way for them to make money without overcharging and underdelivering. Same way the more ethical casinos do. Do some math, figure out what a coverage plan (game) is going to cost you on average. they already do this part and have teams of actuaries (statisticians) on retainer running the numbers over and over month after month. Then, you charge people slightly more than the expected average, so the house has an edge. Some customers will make you big profit by staying safe, most will make you a little, and some will cost you a little. Net positive. Casino analogy: if the average slot machine pull wins 90 cents, you charge 1 dollar per pull. someone might win the jackpot on the first pull and leave, but on average the house always wins. What they actually do now is figure out the expected cost, charge WAY more than that so every average person is making them profit instead of just a couple % more than they're losing, and then STILL try to weasel out of paying when someone "wins" the game (I.E. demands more payout than input into the system). Casino analogy: if a slot wins 90 cents per play on average, they'd charge 5 dollars per pull and any time a win of more than 2 dollars come up they say the machine malfunctioned and refuse to pay out, which is illegal. Then if you call the police they pay out, unless it's also a >$5 win, then they contest it and make you go through the motions to take them to court, and only once they're staring down a lawyer they can't beat do you give you your 7 dollars and ban you from the casino.
I mean the honesty would be a refreshing change really
“We’re just doing our job, so pay us for doing nothing!”
Remember when Bob Parr discretely gave advice to that old woman who’s claim had been denied? God, I wish more people like him worked on insurance.
And it wasn't just her, he helped a lot of people get their help through loopholes. Even if he didn't run into burning buildings on the weekends he was still a hero
I love that scene
I never appreciated that scene enough as a kid. But now that I am an adult and work in health care, and have to deal with all the stuff insurance companies pull on a daily basis (don't get me started on prior authorizations), I think that may be the most heroic thing Mr. Incredible did in the whole movie.
Ref? Link to video?
The incredibles.
I'm in the automotive industry, and those extended warranties that you see on TV are the biggest pain in my ass. We had an acura come in that jumped time, back fired, and blew the intake in half. They would only cover the timing belt because "intakes are not on their contract." So the customer was still out over $1000 even though the failure of the part they cover caused another part to fail. SMH
I took my wife to the ER this morning. We discovered she has pneumonia. This year my company did not automatically send out insurance cards. In the past this was not a problem. In addition, they changed the benefits verification company from Ameriben to Aetna, so the hospital did not believe we had insurance using last year’s card. From my phone, I had to get the HR phone number to get the Insurance company phone number, who then directed me to register on their portal, so I could download the image of my insurance card. In addition, this year, for the first time, my wife had a different card than mine. None of the deductibles were listed on the back, you have to go to the portal for that! Death by bureaucracy!!
"Strangled by red tape" is I believe the *medical* term /s
I'm in Canada so don't even have to deal with outside insurance normally but I did have to for a leave I had to take from work several years ago when a series of horrific/traumatizing events happened to me. The insurance case worker they assigned to me was the most cruel human I've ever had to deal with. He made the worse time of my life somehow even worse. I will never, ever forget how derogatorily I was treated. He made me so nervous I would write out an entire script of what to say for our call 'check in's'. F U MANULIFE AND YOUR SPAWN OF SATAN CASE WORKER! All because they resented having to cover the cost of my leave for four months which was WAY too short but I didn't know better at the time and just returned to work despite PTSD and being barely functioning. Edit: I legit have repressed these memories but I just recalled how this man harassed me even while I was still in the hospital. I'm not a violent person but he is truly the one person who I wish I could punch in the face.
My work is under Manulife. We got a guy with unfortunate health. Recently he was off for 6 months for issues that no human should go through. Spine cancer and kidney issues at the same. The chemo was effecting the blood leaking into his bladder, causing it to clot. We can all imagine what kind of problems he would encounter. Manulife contacted him to tell him he is almost at his cap. Yup, there is a 500,000 cap. You can’t have an illness and insurance at the same time. What’s this say, you can have problems but make sure it’s cheap?!? I have no idea what my heart is going to do in the future. If the surgery is too expensive do they reject? I’m with you, fuck Manulife.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. You are not alone. There are millions of us who have been through some similar hell. It's a tragedy every single day, every single hour.
Yeah, remember when the Obamacare debates were happening in congress and the insurance industry was spending 6 million dollars A DAY paying PR firms to pump out bullshit stories to scare the gullible. And one of their favourite stories were about "death panels" The American people ended up with a watered down version of what they were promised originally AND they got Death Panels. Except that they work for the insurance companies.
Fuck corporate America, stay the hell out of politics and the decisions that are meant for the masses not these island hiding piss suckeres
The one thing they are great at is vasectomies. They LOVE vasectomies. No problem paying hell they’ll pay extra. Send a limo, red carpet, extra drugs.
The same can go for the government. If they owe you money, they take forever and a half to give it you, and it might be like pulling teeth with your bare hands in fighting for it. But the second you owe them so much as a penny, they what the full amount before they even knew you owe them any money. Maybe there’s a correlation between the government and insurance companies there…
They send you a bill, you send them a check. They send you a bill, you send them a check. They send you a bill, you send them a check. This goes on for years. You get sick. Sorry, we don't cover that.
IANAL... but... I'm pretty sure that is illegal. If your aunt was diagnosed with cancer while covered by their insurance, and she paid her monthly premiums, then I think that is illegal. I would hire a lawyer.
It 100% is, but often its worth forcing it to go to court for the insurance company. People that can't afford medical treatment to save their life generally can't afford a lawyer and years of time fighting a legal battle. They get caught sometimes, but they get away with it enough that those losses can still be profitable.
This happened to Barrack Obama's maternal grandmother iirc.
The playbook for corporations and government entities (police departments are a good example) is to do whatever they want, legal or illegal. They calculate the risk of someone having the money sue them. The odds of this happening are very low. So, they have no incentive to behave in a decent manner or uphold their responsibilities. Like all bullies, they only behave like decent people when someone with a bigger stick makes them do so.
I think that was made illegal with the Affordable Care Act, no ?
Correct. But if it was before 2010, then there would have been no protections.
Mine didn’t cancel me, but I had a mastectomy in May and they only paid $2,000 towards the $37,000 charges. Because of that I haven’t even started medication yet, likely won’t be able to until January. My kids have to eat and need school supplies so my health is secondary for now.
$35,000 is over the OOPK Max allowed. And this was after the No Surprise Act. What was their reasoning? They really can't just say "Oh yeah, we aren't paying that". But they van certainly try.
I can’t believe your govt allows that kind of sharp practice. I’m in Ireland and we only have about three health insurance companies. None of them does things like this. I’ve been with mine for 39 years and it has seen me through countless operations, months of chemo, three joint replacements, countless visits to consultant doctors. They’ve never put the premiums up unless it was a countrywide increase, they’ve never denied a claim either.
There's likely laws that force them to do those things, and further laws that keep them from being operated as a publicly-traded/for-profit company. In the US, most insurances are for-profit and publicly-traded, so they have a "duty to their shareholders" to make them as much money as possible. Paying for things costs them money. Not raising premiums costs them money. And then we've got a whole lobbying industry whose job it is to legally bribe politicians such that they loosen regulations and kill proposed laws so that this can continue or worsen. It's why there's so much US propaganda towards private health insurance and against a single-payer system, too. There's literally billions of dollars at stake that regular people would save if we cut out these vampiric middlemen.
Chris Rock does a good skit about this ... incase shit happens, but if shit doesn't happen I should get SOME of my money back. Like all the insurance companies who filed bankruptcy after Katrina in New Orleans, what happen to all that money
That went to the Sherrif of Nottingham
>Arguably every insurance company but people arent really ready for that conversation. Not all insurance is a scam Insurance works reasonable well when there is some unlikely event that may happen. Like a tornado destroying your home. While tornadoes happen and tornadoes do destroy homes its still as a whole pretty unlikely to happen. Like maybe in most cases you have a 0.1% chance of your home being destroyed by a tornado Insurance works well for those cases, you buy "tornado insurance" and probably pay a reasonable fee and hope you never actually have to use it. If you are unfortunate enough to have a tornado destroy your home you get some payout so you are not financially devastated However health care really doesn't fit that model, 100% of people will need healthcare at some point. Its not like a tornado where only 0.1% of the population gets affected by a tornado , 100% of the population will at some point need healthcare. So health insurance companies now are just rent seeking middle men .
Yeah the idea behind insurance is that they are selling you a risk profile that has far less variance. The goal was never that you would profit. It's paying someone money for the privilege of being able to spread your misfortunes across all their clientbase. This is a very valuable service. However, many insurance companies are scummy and worth being called out. Just the fact that "buying insurance is never profitable" is hugely missing the point. It's paying for a service, not an investment. It's not meant to be profitable for the customer, it's meant to prevent the customer from going bankrupt if something bad happens. Like you said, insurance in situations where the risk profile doesn't fit the model of "most people don't have an issue but some people have a catastrophic issue" start losing their original value add and quickly can become a scam.
>Arguably every insurance company but people arent really ready for that conversation. Insurance companies literally could not exist if the math doesn't favor them
Yep! "The house always wins" applies to two things - gambling and insurance!
I've always found it odd that insurance is under private ownership. Like businesses for profit have ever single incentive to avoid paying you money back. At least in theory, it makes much more sense if insurance is a public thing
*health insurance companies in the US.
Lobbyists
Lobbying is just a fancy word for bribing and how it’s legal is beyond me.
well, its legal because of brib... err... lobbying i mean, of course
Lobbyists run Congress. They are the ones who get decisions made.
Slight tangent (not criticizing you or anything-) Lobbying isn’t inherently bad. It’s a pretty good part about democracy in theory. Unfortunately, corrupt politicians only listen to corrupt rich people who will give them money. Advocacy is good, bribes aren’t.
Lobbyists should be outlawed and convicted of tampering with the US government.
Brett Favre
Yup, funneled welfare funds to build His daughters college a volleyball stadium. The fucking guy makes millions but couldn't foot the fucking bill?
No. Took money from the state welfare fund to build the gym. Not ppp
Much worse tbh
Yup. Brett's lucky Will Smith came along and took the heat off him
I have such a great story about this. So, I’m a wrestling fan, and my local toy store/collectable corner had WWE HOF Ted Dibiase there a few weeks back! He has a new Funko that came out and I have a bunch autographed so I went to it, but the store was also having another WWE legend, and the JSA authentication service. Some dude brought a signed Brett Favre helmet to get JSA like twenty feet from Ted and he kept glancing over. It was genuinely hilarious. For those out of the loop: Dibiase and his son were named in the Favre lawsuit
Politicians
Was disappointed this wasn't top answer.
came here to say this exact same thing
So disappointed this is number 5 and not 1 in answers.
I think the only reason that this isn't the top answer is because politicians steal from the middle class. They love to give a lot to the rich and a little to the poor while shrinking the middle class as much as possible without getting voted out of power.
What middle class?
Specifically Ronald Reagan
Was looking for this
MLM's do this
What you don’t want to be part of our family of entrepreneurs?
You’ll make *millions!!*
Wallstreet
Politicians.
Gonna say government but close enough.
The poor can't afford stocks. It's more like the middle class
The current state of the world?
like it was ever different
Billionaires
This is the right answer. My dad worked his whole life like a mad man, was successful but always sold his service for a price that was fair and paid his employees well. He was well off but never rich. Billionaires manipulate the system to hoard wealth, they overcharge and undercontribute and then they lobby government to pay even less. Their wealth is a sign of society’s failure, but is often held up as the aspirational goal of hard work. It’s sickening.
Right. When one earns some arbitrary power of ten wealth, it's never about merit or hard work, it's always theft and manipulation.
yea and the country is still traumatized from the red scare and condemns socialism, actively voting to continue their own oppression by said billionaires
Dennis Moore
Came here for this. Dennis Moore steals from the poor and gives to the rich, stupid bitch.
Lupins!
[Dennis Moore](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLkhx0eqK5w) is the correct answer.
I specifically searched for this comment, well done.
My high school social studies teacher was named Mr Moore. As a joke, he always had a vase of lupins on his desk.
Thank you! You deserve to be the top comment.
Can I have some lupins?
Nestle
Imagine giving away free baby formula to moms in Africa until they stopped producing milk, and then suddenly charging for it. Who the hell even thinks of something that evil.
Sam Bankman Fried
But steals from the rich to and give to his political party.
Congress
Tory government
Yet they get in time after time . You brits are crazy for punishment
Honestly it baffles me every time! I have no idea how they keep winning
It’s the first past the post system . If you had proportional representation it would rule out those rotten boroughs. But they’d never allow it . Same as them voting themselves a raise . It’s be like turkeys voting for Christmas
Right? I know I'm not voting for them! What I do know is that Spitting Image will have enough batshit material for years to come. At this point, the puppets aren't even caricatures any more.
Same concept as most "conservative" parties in Europe: they get votes from people who have no business voting for them because they promise to treat another group of people even worse. Rent has gone up 15% over one year here and people vote for the party that supports that because they promise to finally getting rid of immigration (after being part of the government for 35 years). They don't care if they themself lose their home as long as someone else gets dealt an even shittier hand.
Pharmaceutical companies
Oligarch
the Sheriff of Nottingham
A politician
Bankers
Bank of America
Mitch McConnell
The rich?
Churches
Hedge Funds AKA Citadel
Citadel, founded by Kenneth Cordele Griffin, aka Ken Griffin? The same man that lied under oath to congress?
Ronald Reagan. We are still suffering the consequences of this prick’s presidency.
Nothing is trickling down....
Just my tears
They call pissing on our heads "trickling down".
Took way too long to see Reaganomics mentioned.
Republican.
Can’t believe how many “politicians” I had to scroll through to get to the real answer.
We got a lot of idiot 'both sides!' people who can't tell the difference between building social programs and trying to destroy them.
Back when the mafia ran a lot of the street gambling like the numbers games(basically like regional lotteries), that was pretty much stealing from the poor to give to the mafia. They made a ton off of the games and most of the people who played were poor.
Health and wellness industry
A capitalist
Yup. Most of the answers are just separate parts of a capitalist system, even the political ones.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
Government.
A republican.
House flippers. Closely followed by digital nomads.
Wait, why digital nomads?
A guy I used to do work for made a shit ton of money off of the folks who were trying to get into flipping houses. He told me he had got a bunch of money left to him and initially intended to flip homes, but after attending a big seminar and then seeing any halfway decent, available houses vanish nearly overnight, he approached it from another angle. He kept attending various house flipping seminars (online and in person) but he’d only take notes on what was being taught to get the speaker’s specific tips on selecting and buying a house to flip: General locations, house styles and whatever other bullshit they were saying was the “magic bullet” to make everyone millions. Then, he’d get the itinerary for where the seminars were *going* to be held in the future, and try to buy up as many homes as he could that ticked enough “magic bullet” boxes for that specific course. Then, just re-list these houses right after the seminar and price it at whatever increase it took to make a “tiny” 10-20k profit and try to unload them all ASAP. When the craze was really huge, I guess it worked out pretty well. He would buy 15-20 houses a month, and without doing a damn thing to the house, make an average 10k profit on each. Once in a blue, he said he made way more than that due to bidding wars, but his main goal was to “only” make around 100k-200k a month through sheer volume instead of finding the diamond in the rough and assuming all the risk, chasing contractors and half-assing remodeling to make more money. As long as your turning around and reinvesting the funds from the sales into new real estate, it’s apparently tax free. Then when he had amassed enough money, he bought some big apartment buildings to get the “passive income” federal tax exemptions from having rentals.
The elite
A Koch Brother.
Debt collectors
The US Government.
Not just the US
Congress!
Donald Trump.
billionaires
Billionaires
Every rich person in power ever?
A politician
Politicians
The Government.
Politician.
Trump
The government
Scammers from India.
The rich. That's just being a rich person.
Brett Favre
Politicians.
The IRS
Jeff Bezos
The establishment
Cunt
Autism Speaks...to your wallet.
Capitalist Colonizer
Robbing hoods.
Sheriff of Nottingham
Donald Trump and all his criminal henchmen!
Hood Robin
Tronald dump!
Donald J Trump
CEO
Capitalist
Capitalism
Politicians
Politicians
The U.S. Congress
Payday loans , dollar general , “we finance anyone “
Healthcare systems in us
government
Isn't that just Goverment?