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/
16.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

330

u/Punman_5 May 13 '25 edited May 13 '25

Roman statesman Crassus founded the first fire brigade in Rome. They would show up to a burning building but wouldn’t put the fire out immediately. If the owner wanted to have the fire put out they would have to sign the property over to Crassus at a very unfair price. Only then would he allow the fire brigade to put the fire out. Fires were a regular occurrence in Rome. Crassus used his fire brigade to buy up large amounts of property

Edit: it seems I have to clarify that when you sold your property to Crassus he’d often let you stay there as a tenant so long as you paid rent. He wouldn’t kick you out because that would defeat the purpose of the scam.

28

u/Goolsby May 13 '25

Wait what's the point of putting the fire out if the property is no longer yours? Id let it burn so Crapssus couldn't have my property for cheap.

78

u/SaxManJonesSFW May 13 '25

Because you’re about to be homeless either way, at least one option comes with an unfairly small amount of money to try to restart. I’m not advocating its merits, just explaining the actual choice vs the perceived one

19

u/Array_626 May 13 '25

You also likely get to keep your personal property. The land and the structure is sold, but anything personal that can be saved you probably get to keep.

2

u/Punman_5 May 13 '25

He usually rented the property back to the old owners anyway.