This very well could be true, but I don’t think it is necessarily true. Shooting someone at close range doesn’t require weapons training.
Plus if you look at the number of Americans who either have done weapons training or are related to someone who does… that’s a lot of people.
I think it’s something on the order of 10% of the adult population that is current or former military or law enforcement. Probably more than 10% of adult men.
Add in all the people they’ve taught (kids, grandkids, spouses) and gun enthusiasts who spend a lot of time at the shooting range and you’ve got a LOT of people who are probably competent enough with a gun to pull something like this off.
I think it might be hard to distinguish a person doing reconnaissance from a tourist with a camera. And if the person wasn’t an idiot they probably picked a cold day and wore a ski mask so identifying such a person would be very difficult.
I hope that they catch the guy (or gal). There’s no excuse for murder. But I think there’s a very good chance that they don’t.
I’m sure we have a thread on this, and there’s probably cross-posting potential, but does this lead to any changes in health insurance? Almost certainly no.
Should it? I suspect we’ll have ~15 minutes of discussion about why medical costs are so goddamn high and a little Susan Collins-type hand-wringing, and then everyone will go on about their lives like nothing happened while continuing to bitch about the high cost of medical care.
But presuming this is about a claim denial, it leads to a discussion that goes to so what can we do about medical costs? And I’ll maintain what I said years ago: eventually this has to result in some form of single-payer healthcare, because there’s no other way to keep costs under control and allow everyone access to the coverage they need. How long that takes, I don’t know. Probably 10, 15 more years. Probably until the system collapses. But we’ve had stories about healthcare systems enriching themselves at the expense of the public and I’ve talked about healthcare systems exploiting the court system to squeeze every last penny out of patients, including seizing of assets and liens on property. Eventually, that’s going to hit a breaking point and it’s probably better to fix that while it’s controllable than to let it go and suddenly things aren’t controllable.
This is only mandatory if you have no imagination.
Regulate Rx drug prices just like you regulate insurance premiums. At least for ones under patent protection.
Require price transparency. No, when my daughter needs stitches or a broken bone set I’m not going to shop around. But we live almost precisely halfway between two hospitals in competing health conglomerates. If it’s well-known that one is routinely 60% more than the other then I’ll pick the less expensive one. (They both have great reputations.)
Heck, regulate provider prices.
There’s a lot of ways to make things better without going to single payer.
In order to rein in costs people need to accept the idea that a couple of extra weeks/months a life when deeply ill are not worth $100k+. Spending on the last 6 months of life is a major problem.
They got some clearer shots of his face from the cameras in the Starbucks and a hostel in the upper west side.
I am leaning to this not being a professional hit now.
Seems like a silly thing to do (have coffee at Starbucks right beside the place)
But he clearly had advanced weapons training because he likely modified his own suppresor (silencer). And knew how to use it with low speed ammunition.
I am sticking to Police and Military background on this one.
Ok but I doubt the majority of claim denials are for the last 6 months of life. MRI’s, for example, are routinely denied. For all our discussions of wellness, my insurance company would rather have me live with an injury that prevents exercise than allow the testing and fix it. Meanwhile my heart health suffers and my blood pressure increases.
I once had a claim denied for my kid bc we didn’t have the proper pre-auth. The claim was for a cast for her broken arm. When I called, they said I needed a referral. I had a referral. It was not for that service, they said. What was the dr supposed to do, I asked. Verify it was broken and then send us on our way? They covered it but I shouldn’t have had to fight over that one. How much money is wasted on having to redo things bc they just automatically deny everything? Or do they actually save money bc most people don’t fight stuff like that?
Another theory . . . Thompson knew something terrible was imminent that would affect the family’s income . . . so arranged to be “murdered” as a way to secure life insurance (and other benefits) to his wife and kids . . .
