UnitedHealth, employer of slain exec Brian Thompson, found to have overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%
UnitedHealth, employer of slain exec Brian Thompson, found to have overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%
"Employer of Brian Thompson" is such a weird turn of phrase. while factually correct, it somehow manages to leave out that this particular employee also ran the show.
Well, yes and no. BT ran a subdivision of the giant megacorp, called UnitedHealth Care. Andrew Witty (I think, I'm not wasting energy looking his name up to make sure I spelled it correctly) is the CEO of that larger, even worse corp, called UnitedHealth Group. And he makes the real murderbux.
That's one of the reasons why corporations structure themselves vertically like you just described: they hope to dilute responsibility and compartmentalize legal impacts.
Brian Thompson and Andrew Witty didn't run their bits of the company in total separation: they talked to each other. They are equally guilty, the structure of the company doesn't split the blame in two parts. In fact, you could easily argue that they probably conspired to achieve the same outcome, which makes it even worse.
The supreme Court is the next big item after Trump faces the inevitable. Many of them fucking consider corporations legally the same as a person except for when it comes to any type of punishment or negative consequence.
The corporate personhood doctrine is 200 years old. It's nothing new. It's disgusting, it's dysfunctional, but it's as American as it gets.
The reason why corporate persons can't be punished is because they don't physically exist and therefore can't go to the slammer or fry on an electric chair. The only punishment you can apply to a corporate person is a fine, and that's a very poor punishment because the one thing corporations do exceedingly well is managing losses and profits, and a fine is nothing other than a negative entry in the ledger. If it's small enough and the crime drove profits up, the corporate person will automatically reoffend, simply by plain business logic. That's the nature of the beast.
As for the supreme court, if you think for a second this corrupt MAGA outfit will set about to tackle such an old and well-established business institution, I have a bridge to sell you.
"We've always done it that way" is not a great reason to keep doing something wrong, though.
If it doesn't breathe, eat, talk, and feel, it's not a person. Calling it one doesn't make it true.
To be clear this isn't aimed at you, I'm pretty sure you're not 200 years old and didn't come up with the original idea.
LITERALLY the first words of the United States Code:
§1. Words denoting number, gender, and so forth
In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise-
words importing the singular include and apply to several persons, parties, or things;
words importing the plural include the singular;
words importing the masculine gender include the feminine as well;
words used in the present tense include the future as well as the present;
the words "insane" and "insane person" shall include every idiot, insane person, and person non compos mentis;
the words "person" and "whoever" include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;
[emphasis mine]
The Supreme Court was right, the law is wrong. Undo this shit.
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