1. I’m grateful for the NHS, and fucking glad I don’t live in the US. Even as a reasonably healthy adult that country terrifies me. “The U.S. has the lowest life expectancy among large, wealthy countries while it far outspends its peers on healthcare”(1).

2. I first learned of American health insurance denials in the John Grisham novel of 1995 ‘The Rainmaker'(2), where it was already known as a well-established industry practice. This makes me certain that any modern CEO of a current “Healthcare” organisation knows fully well what the game is. More has been written in the Jay M. Feinman book of 2010 ‘Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It'(3).

3. AI is now being used to streamline the process of automatically denying insurance claims in the US. Not, as we might be convinced, to better any healthcare outcomes(4).

4.”What we know from the research is, well first of all we don’t know very much at all, because there’s been a total abrogation by all government to actually require health insurance companies to report how many denials they issue. Some states do, some states don’t. At the Federal level they are required to capture this data, but again some states refuse to participate or have not participated including New York” (required in the Affordable Care Act, including the reason(s) for denials)(5).

5. There is a proven phenomena called ‘Financial Toxicity’ that exacerbates your physical condition as you deal with medical death or insurance claims, which is only happening in the United States. It takes about 1 year off the life of a cancer patient(6).

6. The death of a rich guy was more important than any other homicide in New York at the time and seems to have required huge law and order resources, but at the same time it was not important enough to cancel the “Healthcare” company’s investor conference that he was shot going to. Imagine being so unimportant that your company won’t cancel a conference as you get shot outside it.

7. The late Brian Thompson, along with two other executives, were accused of dumping stock prior to February announcement of a DOJ antitrust investigation into the company. The claim alleges insiders, including Thompson and the named defendants, sold more than $120 million in stock after learning of the re-opening of the federal investigation, which was not made public until a February 27 report from the Wall Street Journal(7).

8. United Healthcare now has another CEO.

Reading: