• Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    This claims to be his story. I haven’t verified it, but I have no reason not to believe it. Basically, UHC tortured his mother for years through denial of care, then they did the same to him.

    I would note that he is 26 years old: He likely just aged out of his parents’ health insurance policy, and I would guess that he can’t get decent coverage on his own due to his pre-existing condition.

      • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        This does seem very amateurish (Gladiator, Greenday, “smile through the pain”). These are emo tropes. I’d be disappointed to know it’s him.

          • aislopmukbang@sh.itjust.works
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            1 day ago

            Not necessarily but basing an idealogy in fantasy (as he talks about the emperor being god in gladiator) neglects reality. Anger and whatever sense of righteousness you subscribe to should be based firmly in reality, otherwise you’ll find you are acting on nothing but hypotheticals.

            • Lumidaub@feddit.org
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              1 day ago

              I don’t see the issue in quoting works of fiction if you think they express something you’re trying to say. People quote Shakespeare all the time to make a point but nobody cares because that’s old and accepted. No I’m not saying Gladiator is on a level with Shakespeare but there’s a weird imbalance in what you’re allowed to quote in your argument and what not. If the imagery spoke to him, why not?

              • iii@mander.xyz
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                1 day ago

                I don’t see the issue in quoting works of fiction

                Otherwise the whole of marxism would be off limits

          • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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            1 day ago

            I liked that the writer stuck with clear and simple english instead of flowering up their prose, but I just feel that using borrowed quips and popart philosophy isn’t an honest way to write. It feels more in line with a teen or a young adult trying to find their voice in the words of others (and we’ve all been there)

            • Lumidaub@feddit.org
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              1 day ago

              I still feel being “disappointed” is harsh. He’s 26 and just wanted his thoughts out. He may have been trying, maybe even subconsciously, to emulate some literary devices more or less successfully in an effort to better convey his feelings but I really don’t think the point was to write great literature.

              • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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                1 day ago

                To theirs credit, the part about watching their mother suffer was very relatable and felt extremely honest. I guess I was hoping that they would open with something like that instead of talking about their philosophy first. You’re right though, the writer is likely young and I shouldn’t expect so much.

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Because of the ACA (Obamacare) requirements, he can’t be refused or charged more for coverage because of a pre-existing condition.

      Whether that insurance denies claims for treatment, however, is still very much in play. I’ve heard you should ask the names and certification of the person or people responsible for the denial of your claim, in writing. Because a lot of the time it’s an algorithm or an unqualified peon, and the company can get in trouble for that.

        • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          I imagine you mean they won’t, and you may be right. But too many people don’t even start trying to fight denials, which is why insurance companies do it. Often it doesn’t take a huge pushback to get them to change, especially if it would expose their corrupt practices. Of course, sometimes they are obdurate, and United Healthcare is one of the worst.

          As for the ACA, it’s still true, at least until Trump takes office.

    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      I really hope this is genuine, because whoever wrote this did an amazing job of conveying their feelings and experiences in a very short piece of literature.

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        2 days ago

        I, too, am curious. But, I read this part of a short story in The Things They Carried, many, many, years ago, and it stuck with me:

        You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let’s say, and afterward you ask, “Is it true?” and if the answer matters, you’ve got your answer.

        For example, we’ve all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies.

        Is it true?

        The answer matters.

        You’d feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it’s just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen - and maybe it did, anything’s possible even then you know it can’t be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it’s a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, “The fuck you do that for?” and the jumper says, “Story of my life, man,” and the other guy starts to smile but he’s dead.

        That’s a true story that never happened.

        I don’t know that this article was written by Luigi Mangione, or if Luigi Mangione killed the CEO. But, I do know that this story is true, even if it never happened.

        • affiliate@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          i think there are two different meanings of truth here, and it sounds like one of them might be referring to aletheia. from the wikipedia page:

          Heidegger gave an etymological analysis of aletheia and drew out an understanding of the term as “unconcealedness”.[6] Thus, aletheia is distinct from conceptions of truth understood as statements which accurately describe a state of affairs (correspondence), or statements which fit properly into a system taken as a whole (coherence). Instead, Heidegger focused on the elucidation of how an ontological “world” is disclosed, or opened up, in which things are made intelligible for human beings in the first place, as part of a holistically structured background of meaning.

          edit: just want to say that i agree with the message, and i think it’s true that things don’t have to actually happened in order to be true in some sense. i think the term aletheia can be helpful for making the distinction and wanted to share it for that reason

        • And009@lemmynsfw.com
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          2 days ago

          New concept, still confused. Sounds like a combination of ‘what’ and ‘why’. The ‘why’ always matters but doesn’t precede the ‘what’.

          Like a death by accident, doesn’t matter if someone was drunk or sober. Dead, is ultimately dead.

          • Jerkface@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            The truth lies in the heart of the beholder. If the story speaks to you in some particular way, if it resonates deeply enough, then it’s speaking to something you know to be true about the world as you know it. Something which remains true regardless of whether the story is factual or not.

            • Jesus_666@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              It speaks to something you believe to be true. There is a difference and it’s rather important.

              Populist political campaigns speak to such “truths” all the time but the belief of a lot of people that [insert outgroup here] are responsible for all the bad things and that we can all live a great life if we just let [insert strongman here] have absolute power so he can punish them is still just a belief, not truth. Declaring it to be the truth just devalues the concept of truth.

              We’re all biased. We should try not to confuse our biases with reality.

              • CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works
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                1 day ago

                Not just populists: many groups have less concern for the truth across the whole political spectrum. Example: feminists and their claim that women make an ever decreasing amount of money relative to men. This claim is based on a single study that compared sweeping aggregate data, and then called the whole thing an actionable issue.

                The problem is that when you get into the weeds of the claim, and you should always do so, you find that there are so many confounding variables that went unaccounted for that the study cannot reasonably conclude anything. Meanwhile women have been graduating at higher rates since the 90s, younger generations of women make more money on average than men, and women have more job security than men. Women also get substantial benefits throughout their education and are considered a minority class for the purposes of hiring in many jurisdictions.

                Be wary of people driven by agendas, even (or perhaps especially) the agendas you think are good.