Early on December 4th, Brian Thompson, billionaire, and United Healthcare CEO, was shot dead in New York City. Amazingly, in one of the most surveilled and policed cities on earth, the killer not only evaded immediate capture, but during the ensuing four days he instead captured the imagination of the American public. The clearly targeted nature of the attack, and the ongoing details that emerged about the event, like the words carved into the bullets “deny” “delay” “defend,” which were reminiscent of slogans used by healthcare insurance providers to deny claims, focused much of the discussion on the system Thompson represented, instead villainizing the vigilante. In their place, the all-too-common stories of everyday people’s hardships dealing with insurance companies filled the space.
This event, more even than the election of Trump, revealed how angry and frustrated this country is at the status quo, and how desperate they are to see some level of accountability meted out to the ones most responsible for the unjust world we live in.
And the uncomfortable truth is that Brian Thompson did play a roll in this injustice. United Healthcare did deny claims at a higher rate than other insurance companies. Under his watch they knowingly deployed an AI with a very high error rate to review insurance claims, resulting in many wrongful denials of coverage. Such acts Are violence, they Do Kill People, - by the thousands - and trying to obscure that fact behind bureaucracy and business does not cleanse one's hands of those deaths. Especially if you're at the top, making and justifying those decisions.
On Monday police captured a person of interest, Luigi Mangione, in a McDonald's in Pennsylvania, finally bringing an alleged identity to the mysterious killer. With a suspect in custody, the focus on the individual may soon supersede the crime itself and the reasons for it, which would be a profoundly wasted opportunity. we cannot condone of course the murder of Brian Thompson, or anyone, but the public response to his death, and the seeming lack of sympathy by many has exposed once again how tired the American people are with a rigged system, and the dangers of inaction.
As President JFK once said during the struggle for civil rights, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” The people are desperate for change, and some are now turning to violence. We must find a way to bring a peaceful revolution to this unjust system.
We must work to bring healthcare to everyone, which is so desperately needed by the vast majority of Americans. Together we must work to keep it out of the hands of profiteers, and instead care put it back in the hands of physicians. The healthcare industry is one of the top donors to Congress. They are the heart of the donor class, always making sure this life-or-death system works for them.
The need for massive change is in the air, it’s palpable. Without positive outlets to bring about change, we can tragically expect that the violence will continue. It won’t stop until the underlying issues from affordable health care to the climate crisis, to wealth inequality, to housing actually change for the better and better serve our citizens.
We need to join together with growing solidarity, combining our political and our economic might in an empathetic community. Together we can build a force that will wrest control away from the donor class and make our politicians finally deliver on these much-needed policies! So, join us each Tuesday to fight to make the peaceful Revolution possible! Don't shop on Tuesday.
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