this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (3 children)

Just remove the "and health insurance" and this works.

I love it when people play with the "Bruce Wayne is an evil oligarch" trope. Just look at Gotham, it's massively run down, and yet there are billionaires like Wayne at society events. Sure, he spends nights fighting crime (or at least criminals) as Batman, but does he pay his taxes? Does he employ lobbyists who lobby for tax breaks on billionaires, justifying it by thinking that without those tax breaks he couldn't afford to have Wayne Enterprises come up with such cool toys for Batman, and he wouldn't be as effective at fighting ~~crime~~ criminals? Surely, one of the best ways to reduce crime in Gotham wouldn't be to punch bad guys at night, but to ensure that there's a robust social safety net, and that there isn't such a vast wealth disparity between the haves and the have-nots. But, we don't see either Batman or Bruce Wayne arguing for more taxes on the rich, more social programs for the poor, etc. It's more about having adventures and going to gala events.

As for this comic, the only way health insurance companies benefit if someone requires life-long medical care is if they're not the ones footing the medical bill, and are just a proxy for government money. So, instead of "It's a good thing you have health insurance", "It's a good thing you're on Gothamcare Advantage by Wayne Enterprises". Similar to the scam that is Medicare Advantage.

Edit: Now I want to see someone do a Batman spoof where he's "fighting crime" in his Batsuit but with one of those green eye shades, sitting at a desk, going line by line through financial data on his fellow oligarchs, trying to find the ways they cheated on their taxes.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

The thing about Batman that you need to remember is that he's been around since the 1930s. Many facets of the character have been explored, including this one. Bruce Wayne has, on multiple occasions, argued for and created social programs for the poor. That is something he has done in many comics.

That said, he hasn't argued for higher taxation on the rich. There's a few reasons for this, the chief among them being the unquestioned omnipresent capitalist dogma that informs a lot of media. Though I'd add that the idea of wealth redistribution is kind of incompatible with the idea of Batman. He's a deeply psychologically motivated character. His war on crime is largely personal. As his vigilantism is enabled by his wealth, it makes sense that he would favour philanthropy. He wants to be the agent of change in 'his' city. Broadly speaking, that might make him ineffective but I don't think it makes him bad. I think it's part of what makes him an interesting character.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 hours ago

argued for and created social programs for the poor

Has he argued for big government programs, or is it Wayne Enterprises or Bruce Wayne charities?

Though I'd add that the idea of wealth redistribution is kind of incompatible with the idea of Batman

It is, that's kinda the point. He's a rich guy with no superpowers who fights crime. He's able to fight supervillains through technology and he can afford that tech because he's rich. You take away his wealth and you take away his tech. Without tech he's just a man, and he can't stand up to supervillains.

But, I think it would be really interesting for a writer to explore a Batman who actually identified unregulated capitalism as a problem, and how Wayne Enterprises is at the heart of that. Superheroes losing their powers is a common trope in comics. I haven't read much Batman, but I would bet that there have been dozens of stories where he's cut off from the Wayne Enterprises wealth and has to go it alone for a while. It would be different if he saw Wayne Enterprises as an evil he had to conquer though.

Maybe have a Batman story where he gives away his wealth and dismantles Wayne enterprises, and tries to take down all the various other oligarchs. We had the Iron Man story where he was in a cave and had to build an Iron Man suit from random scrap in the cave. What if Batman moved to the slums of Gotham and teamed up with ultra poor but really clever hackers, building weapons and vehicles out of scavenged junk. Instead of Batman in a billion-dollar armored vehicle taking down Bane and his goons, have Batman in bat suit built from scavenged parts, taking down the armed guards of a high-society oligarch who used to be his pal.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Bruce does plenty of good with his money, it just isn't really ever shown in anything other than comics.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago

Did he hire you to do PR for him?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

fighting crime (or at least criminals)

I like that you made that distinction.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

It's true. If Bruce Wayne / Batman cared about fighting crime, he'd go after the root causes: desperation, corruption, inequality, etc. Instead he focuses on fighting criminals.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago

I'm pretty sure there was at least one comic where he openly admits he knows beating up people in alleys doesn't change the system, but he's a fundamentally broken person who needs to keep doing it.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 17 hours ago (5 children)

Surely health insurance would be making a loss on this particular person.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Doesn't matter, he's running the hospital, not the health care.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

He's running both the hospital and the insurance company. And it's apparently good quality insurance, so they aren't skimping on his treatment. There's no way both the hospital and the insurance company can be profiting from this guy getting all the bones in his body broken. Not at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Step 1. Sell insurance to criminal.
Step 2. Beat up criminal.
Step 3. Advertise loudly that criminal is lucky they have bat insurance or they'd be fucked.
Step 4. And this is the important one: don't beat up every single other person that then buys bat insurance, instead beat up those who might want to beat them up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Disproportionately beat up those who don’t have bat insurance, and suppress the “conspiracy theory” that there is such a correlation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago

You're write, I missed that bit. I guess the fear of being disabled makes people want to get insured?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago

You see, as Batman sends more and more people to the hospital, the health insurance costs increase for everyone. And thus you have a direct flow of money from the public through the health insurance and the hospital to the pockets of Batman.

[–] RandomVideos 2 points 13 hours ago

But people would know that health care is important

Batman isnt making every single criminal have to go to the hospital, but he is making them not want to take the risk

[–] [email protected] 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Health Insurance isn't Health Care

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

True, the hospital could be doing the bare minimum to keep him alive. But I get what the person you're relying to is saying. Surely if you're a capitalist ghoul who runs both a health insurance company and a hospital, you would want as little overlap between customers as possible in order to maximize profits, right? The people paying you insurance premiums would ideally never get sick and require the insurance to pay out, and the hospital would ideally be full of people with other insurance plans.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

In the fictional universe that we're talking about, which is an allegory of our own world, did I miss the comic where Bruce Wayne runs an insurance company as well as hospitals or is this head canon?

Most indigent people, such as disabled henchmen here, likely would be covered by Medicaid. So the joke would stand that Bruce is benefiting selfishly through his hospitals providing marked up care at the government's expense.

I mean, this is much more believable behavior from billionaires than what's normally depicted, lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

I think it's just people assuming Wayne Enterprises is one of those evil all-encompassing mega-conglomerates common in fiction, like Buy n' Large, Wayland-Yutani, or Amazon.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

I think the insurance company part was invented by this comic but I didn't know a ton about Batman. I did see online that Wayne Medical is a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises and operates many of the hospitals in Gotham.

[–] TheFogan 1 points 17 hours ago

I guess the question is if that's maybe better marketing. IE on this person yeah probably (though that also can be lowered if you own both the hospital and the insurance. But the side factor of perhaps the joker or penguin villain leaders, knowing that they need to have a good health insurance plan purchased for all of their minions

[–] [email protected] 18 points 18 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

So the insurance is killing him then.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago

Always has been.