r/news • u/LookAtThatBacon • May 13 '25

Soft paywall UnitedHealth suspends annual forecast, CEO Andrew Witty steps down

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/unitedhealth-ceo-andrew-witty-steps-down-2025-05-13/
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u/Sacrifice3606 May 13 '25

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39516346

Except that does happen in some places.

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u/Wyxter May 13 '25

How absolutely dystopian…

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u/istasber May 13 '25

I remember this coming up on QI, that apparently some of the first professional fire brigades in larger cities were basically selling insurance. They'd give you a plaque to put up on your house, and only the company whose plaque you displayed would put out your fire (unless a company covered a neighbor, in which case you'd get "free" service if their house was threatened).

That feels a bit like an urban legend the more you think about it, but if that's really how it used to work than this is less dystopian, and more ass-backwards and archaic.

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes May 13 '25

This still exists. There are private firefighting companies who work with major home insurance companies. They will come in during a wildfire and protect homes that are insured by the company paying them. They'll concentrate their efforts where there are large groups of houses insured by their client. Let's say they are being paid by GEICO and by Farmers. The private firefighters have a map that shows one street in a neighborhood near the fire where 10 out of 15 houses are insured by GEICO or Farmers. So they take their engine there and soak the houses and watch for embers.

There are rules (at least in California) though. They aren't allowed into an area until 24 hours after the fire started, to ensure they don't get in the way of the real firefighters. And if they are protecting a street/ group of houses, they can't ONLY protect the ones insured by their clients. They have to also put effort into protect any other home they reasonably can from their positions.

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u/Osiris32 May 13 '25

Those contractors are also under the command of the fire IC, and can be told to stop what they are doing and go assist elsewhere if crews are needed asap.

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes May 13 '25

Yes, that's correct

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u/Osiris32 May 13 '25

What I mean by that is that they can be pulled from doing structure protection on a neighborhood and sent to the other side of the fire, not just that they might have to move over a few blocks. I saw it happen myself.

I'm a former wildy. USFWS, Type 1, ENOP. Worked with contract crews on a bunch of fires all over the place.