“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” — Isaac Asimov
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” — George Orwell
We’ve had a confusing relationship with violence in this country. We claim to be a peace-loving people, yet we seem to be at the center of some of the most violent encounters around the planet. We are either involved in arming one side or the other, and in some extremely profitable cases where our military industrial complex arms both sides: Wars don’t end well for anyone but Wall Street.
War is one thing, but when violence becomes up close and personal like the genocide that swept North America of the natives that lived here for over 10,000 years. So is it any surprise that a country built on the extermination of the natives might have a problem with violence to this day.
We have way too many guns in America, and they’re way too easy to get. School shootings, mall shootings, theater shootings, concert shootings, and supermarket shootings, the senseless killing of strangers for no apparent reason leaves us all questioning a government that seems incapable or unwilling to solve the problem. And make no mistake about it, the problem is growing worse.
When the CEO of UnitedHealthcare Brian Thompson was gunned down on a busy midtown Manhattan street during the Christmas season one could tell this was different. This was a new development. Top executives around the country have always been on-guard for the backlash of their Draconian decisions. This is nothing more than the push and pull between labor and capital. Violence has always been part of the fight for economic justice, but it still doesn’t make it right. What makes the killing of Brian Thompson different is, and I’m willing to go out on a limb here, and say that it looks like this might have been a disgruntled customer.
That was the general consensus of the healthcare groups that I belong to, and I want to say here that I’m extremely impressed with the way these groups addressed the killing.
There was no gloating or snarky jokes: One person pointed out that there was some “poetic justice.” But I got to thinking that this wasn’t irony; if he arrived at Mt. Sinai and was refused care because, “I’m sorry sir, but gunshot wounds require prior authorization,” now that would be poetic justice.
Talk about American exceptionalism and the way we do healthcare. Everyone has a healthcare horror story. It may not be yourself, but perhaps a parent, a sibling, or worse, one of your children. Something as simple as if you’re sick you get care seems to be beyond the understanding of health insurance professionals. In fact, Brian Thompson when he was running the interaction with the federal programs for the company, according to ProPublica it became a multi-billion profit center for shareholders built on Medicare Advantage fraud. On his watch he pioneered using artificial intelligence to review and deny claims. I read someplace that the new system has an initial denial rate of something like 90%. Could this have been what angered the shooter? It angers me! You?
Will the killing of one healthcare executive set us on the road to reform? Not likely. Corporate security around top executives will get tightened, but as we saw last summer even the Secret Service can’t keep their people from harm, so corporate security won’t have a chance against a motivated would-be killer.
Would we get reform if five executives got gunned down?
Not very likely! There’s just trillions of dollars in profit to be made off the sick and dying in this country. If a hundred executives got gunned down, they’d just find some new execs.
Nothing stands in the way of the healthcare industrial complex. Violence solves nothing. In fact, looking back over history the violence that was employed during the fight for an eight hour workday and weekends off would delay legislation by almost 50 years because of violence. Have the American people reached the end of their tolerance for this one-sided arrangement? Will our lawmakers replace the profits of their benefactors with the well being of their constituents?
The killing of one healthcare executive could be a wakeup call, but otherwise it’s just another case of senseless violence.
Too many people are profiting off the current system, and our politicians have been bought off. Nothing will change unless we demand it. You just have to ask yourself: Just how many more lives must be lost because lifesaving care was denied, or out of frustration from a system that’s so horribly broken?