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Culture war going hot: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/04/us/brian-thompson-united-healthcare-death/index.html
A gunman has killed the CEO of United Healthcare this morning, and has disappeared into the city. I’m somewhat surprised this isn’t more common, especially given the nature of healthcare company’s profit motives. I could imagine “we denied your wife’s medical claim and are sorry for her death. Also your bill is past due and we are sending you to collections. Thank you understanding.” might be a story that exists in a lot of people.
Expect to see more private security, more private flights, more underground parking and armored cars and so forth for a while.
This was clearly an assassination.
Your anger at health insurance companies is misplaced. If the profit motive is the problem, a public option is a solution, but American voters (especially right-leaning ones) have been pretty emphatic about refusing it.
Companies have to deny some claims or else premiums would have to rise for everyone. UHC's profit margins are actually far lower than e.g. Apple's.
The insurance companies, the AMA, and the feds are locked together in a perverse cycle that produces a system that somehow spends even more on healthcare than socialized medicine countries...but the lion's share of the extra money goes to doctor's salaries (artificial scarcity driven by the AMA, med schools, and residency limitations) and ever-increasing administrative costs (additional regulations and insurance bureaucracy).
Story in healthcare same as everywhere - you have an increasingly rich populace with a rivalrous good that is non-discretionary (housing, education, childcare, healthcare), and the Government/private actor response is to subsidize demand and regulate supply than go shocked-pikachu-face.jpg when costs skyrocket.
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