December 16, 2024 - 6:00pm
In response to UnitedHealthcare boss Brian Thompson’s slaying at the hands of suspected shooter Luigi Mangione, the CEO of the insurer’s parent company, Andrew Witty, has written an op-ed in The New York Times. In the piece, Witty seemingly acknowledges popular grievances about America’s “patchwork” healthcare system, conceding: “We know the health system does not work as well as it should, and we understand people’s frustrations […] No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did.” However, for many who read it, in the comments section (which garnered nearly 2,500 responses before the Times website closed it down), on social media, and in the wider political world, Witty’s message was not only deemed insufficient, but offensively tone-deaf and obstinate.
Readers noted that Witty entertained no proposals for policy change nor made any attempt at meeting the criticism that his company’s ruthless pursuit of profit has grossly warped its incentives, perhaps even more so than other insurers. Instead, they charged, his op-ed was an exercise in corporate PR that looked to valorise Thompson as a meritocratic role model while eliding the larger problems his violent death has highlighted. In any event, the reputational damage to the insurance industry has been done and Witty’s invitation “to partner with anyone […] to find ways to deliver high-quality care and lower costs” will inevitably be taken up by elected officials looking to tap into and lead the renewed momentum for enacting reform.
Without condoning the act itself, at least a few members of Congress asserted the connection between Mangione’s vigilantism and what they regard as morally legitimate concerns. Leading the charge are the likes of progressive Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. In a HuffPost interview, Warren said: “The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated […] by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning”. Sanders, meanwhile, called the assassination “outrageous” but still expressed his belief that “what the outpouring of anger at the health care industry tells us is that millions of people understand that health care is a human right.” Congressman Ro Khanna likewise lamented the violence while calling for Medicare for All — endorsed by all three Left-wing legislators — as a solution to America’s healthcare woes.
This is in stark contrast to Right-wing media and politicians, who have vociferously opposed any notion of legitimising sympathy for Mangione. This conservative chorus has included Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and Brett Stephens, as well as Fox News’s Laura Ingraham and CNN’s Scott Jennings. Shapiro and Walsh invited considerable backlash from their own audiences, while Ingraham and Jennings baffled some by pivoting in the same breath to praising their preferred vigilante Daniel Penny. In addition, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene cited her fear that Mangione’s example will create both copycats — already, a Florida woman has been detained for repeating his “delay, deny, depose” slogan — and enthusiasm for a single-payer system, such as Medicare for All.
But any such movement will have to reckon with the fact that the healthcare industry accounts for 18% of US GDP, a sign of high inefficiency among the rich nations, to be sure, but one that indicates just how much of the economy would be affected by any major change. Shifting to a universal healthcare system would require creating new public bureaucracies to replace private ones, potentially costing the federal treasury an astronomical amount (as Warren herself has in the past admitted) while causing disruption to countless Americans’ healthcare plans. It would also threaten the positions not just of the big executives who run the existing system but, in Witty’s telling, the thousands of “nurses, doctors, patient and client advocates, technologists” who work for them.
Evidently, there is no clear fix for Americans. But still, there is no question that the current system is deeply dysfunctional. It should not have taken Brian Thompson’s death to reveal that.
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SubscribeCould someone with knowledge of the US healthcare insurance market provide an insight into how insurance companies are able to wriggle out of providing for healthcare within the terms of their policies?
Is it a matter of customers not having “read the fine print”, or something else?
There are many, many perfectly legal ways to deny coverage that don’t involve much wriggling.
First, there’s the distinction between in-network and out-of-network. Insurance companies negotiate standard, reduced fees with health care providers. These providers are called in-network. If a policy holder goes to an out-of-network provider (intentionally or accidentally) they will be responsible for the full bill minus what the insurance company typically pays an in-network provider.
Then there’s the question of which procedures, tests and drugs a specific health insurer will pay for and whether the service the insured is requesting is medically necessary. For example, it’s not unusual for an insurance company to deny coverage for the latest tests/procedures on the grounds they’re still experimental or simply don’t have enough evidence to show they confer a substantial benefit on a patient.
Then there’s determining whether a procedure was medically necessary after the fact. For example, some years ago my primary care physician (GP) referred me for a scan of my lower back. I even contacted my insurance company to check the scan was covered by my insurance and I was going to an in-network scanning facility. The scan came back negative and the insurance company promptly denied coverage on the grounds that the test wasn’t medically necessary as shown by the negative scan result–perfect circular reasoning on the part of the insurance company. I challenged the decision and won.
Then there’s the question of formulary. Insurance companies will cover some drugs but not others, usually on the grounds there’s not enough evidence to show some drugs confer a substantial benefit on patients, or perhaps because a cheaper drug in the same class is available (even though not all drugs within the same class work to the same extent on every patient). If you want a drug not covered by your insurer’s formulary, you’re out of luck.
If you suffer from complex medical issues, you will generate an enormous amount of paperwork from physicians, hospitals, the insurance company at a time when you’re least able to deal with all that complexity. Insurers routinely deny a certain percentage of claims and it’s up to you to challenge those denials. Some people even hire services that track medical billing and payments for them, and deal with the insurance company over disagreements.
The Dems promote Medicare for All, while the old joke about the Republicans’ attitude to health care is: don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.
I don’t know the answer. Reading Unherd, it appears the UK’s NHS–universal healthcare paid by taxes–doesn’t work either.
Thanks JB, that’s precisely the kind of insight i was looking for.
You’re absolutely right about the UK system too. Its floundering, albeit for different reasons. If Medicare for All is being promoted along the same lines, you really don’t want to go there.
I’m as committed to the principle of “free at the point of use” as anyone; decent healthcare should be a basic element of any advanced society and denial of such regarded with abhorrence. The devil is, of course, in the detail and there’s potentially no limit on what might constitute healthcare, certainly far more than was ever envisaged by the founders of the NHS. It seems we are, as yet, unable to have a sensible conversation in the UK about this. Hopefully what happens in the US in the light of Mangione will provide a few pointers.
No, free at point of use healthcare is NOT part of a decent society. Quite the opposite, both in theory and practice. I am British and the NHS is only viewed with favour by anyone due to its creation having been at the same time as massive improvements in basic public health.
Time to scrap NHS and more forward to private medicine.
Your claim that “the NHS is only viewed with favour by anyone due to its creation having been at the same time as massive improvements in basic public health” is disingenuous.
That’s absolutely not why most people view the NHS “with favour” – whilst recognising from a much more nuanced and humane perspective that it needs vigorous reform.
The NHS is actually a victim of its own success, to the point where demand has overwhelmed supply of services, whilst new medicines and technologies have created additional financial strains. However, I really don’t think you can evaluate the NHS without understanding how it would be to be denied basic healthcare due to inability to pay. Free at the point of use must remain the underlying principle, but by all means lets have an intelligent conversation about how the taxpayer can be at least partially relieved of the burden of funding healthcare by finding other, more efficient ways to manage the system and that includes provision for private practise.
Agree with much of that LL. There is though scope for private practice. Most NHS hospitals will have a private wing too, and the lengthening waiting lists have further stimulated the private market. NHS Consultants have a right to practice privately as well as hold an NHS contract. NHS organisations often contract with private providers for specific work. There is also an explosion in private primary care because of problems accessing a GP, although be careful you aren’t fleeced.
The problem is private sector ‘cherry-picks’. It understandably wants to minimise financial risk so it’ll do the stuff that’s straight-forward or where the customer can pay a v high rate. It won’t do A&E. It’ll also bounce a complication to the NHS if it can’t manage it. And it doesn’t train any doctors or nurses so feeds off those trained by the public system. Nonetheless it definitely has an important role, but one has to be aware of it’s deficiencies too.
That’s pretty much correct, although many “private wings” within NHS facilities were phased out in favour of seperate enterprises with the ability to upgrade standards of building and equipment. Yes, “cherry picking” does happen, and that’s why it’s wrong for people to become overenthusiastic about private provision.
The symbiosis can only occur when doctors are able to demonstrate competence from within the NHS, to establish their credentials to practise privately (although the odd rogue still slips through the net as we’ve seen recently with the children’s surgeon in London).
NHS is hugely flawed because it is free. People don’t treat a free service as something that is worth bothering with. They want FREE and they want GOOD SERVICE. The two are not compatible. Make the people pay something and maybe they will actually pitch up for appointments. I have sat in a doctor’s surgery in London (as a South African I was paying). A notice on the wall said 692 patients in a couple of months had not turned up for their appointments and had not bothered to cancel them. This is not good practice and contributes hugely to flawed, inefficient and expensive process.
But overwhelmingly people do pay through taxes and they recognise that. What you are referring to is perhaps a more direct transaction that might aid awareness and behaviour. There may be something in that, but would also come with an additional bureaucracy to manage it. So strangely the folks pressing for this are also pressing for more admin cost.
No many of them don’t recognise that.
And what does ‘private medicine’ mean RN? Only those who can afford an insurance package get one? No regulation of Providers so you have to hope what you’re getting is trustworthy? Millions without any cover and the societal strain that would create?
Now there may be something about ‘contribution’ element that we are in danger of losing, but your over simplistic thought shows you haven’t given it much of that at all.
How rich are you?
You talk about simply “scrapping” the NHS. Such a radical move would firstly be hugely disruptive, and secondly be politically impossible. But what system do you advocate l? A fully private system where everybody pays the full cost of their own medical care? Or perhaps (horror) insurance industry plays a major role as in the US!
The UK’s NHS does work, however it does have some serious inefficiencies, partly (mostly?) because being subject to political control it is under-funded (I believe amongst the lowest cost per head for healthcare in comparable countries); however it doesn’t make you bankrupt or suicidal. I have heard many 1st-person reports from those unfortunate enough to have had an interaction with US ‘healthcare’, all supposedly ‘insured’, and without exception they are horrific to any British citizen.
The NHS isn’t underfunded. What it is is highly inefficient, weighed down by multiple tiers of managers and admin, and lack of integration with the, underfunded, care system.
In addition, the whole NHS model from inception was designed to treat acute medical needs (something it still generally does very well) whilst offloading chronic conditions to external providers hence its continued failures in those areas.
Have a read of the Darzi report IW and the thoughts on management. There is something in your point, but it’s not straightforward. The regulatory functions have significantly increased. The coalface management of service delivery hasn’t and in fact is under-managed
As regards your view on Chronic conditions – who do you mean it’s been offloaded to? Some Acute services hardly do anything but manage chronic conditions – e.g diabetes. Primary Care is weaker and did more on this in the past though. Now those patients pitch up more often in secondary/acute care as a result, although some is also a symptom of us just having an aging population. We’ll all have 2-3 chronic conditions if we live long enough and therein lies a considerable health economics challenge. Back to the Article, private insurance isn’t good at covering stuff that’s inevitable.
Good informed post concisely conveyed JB. I’d add the US ‘fee for service’ in how Doctors are paid creates an over-diagnosis/treatment incentive. (Doctors are salaried in UK so no such incentive). ‘Managed care’ via some of the Insurance providers tried to ‘protocol-limit’ that impact but marginal impact. The patient in healthcare also always suffers from asymmetrical knowledge and often does not have time to shop around – most healthcare tends to be of an urgent/emergency form. This is v problematic for free market ideologues.
The system in US is screwed and vested interests block major reform. Obama tried to reduce premiums by forcing and subsidising people to buy cover – basic extension of the risk pool to reduce costs, but again the cost inflation and profiteering in US system accelerates away from that faster than the benefit. Trump certainly won’t do much. He hates fact Obama did something more than he has any idea what to do himself.
The systems worth looking at are western European much more than US. As a proportion of GDP they commit more than UK and have universal cover but it’s arranged a bit different. Nonetheless they all have much the same pressures.
“Medicare for all” is not “single payer”. It’s socialized healthcare paid for by taxation. Single Payer would still be private healthcare only without the group/employment based plan Not the same thing remotely. I’m offering no opinion on the arguments for either here. I am just tired of repeatedly hearing this incorrect equivalency.
“Baffled some”. Who did it baffle that defending people directly threatened on a train carriage is not the same as killing a random CEO of a major healthcare provider? Imbeciles. To describe them both as vigilantes is disingenuous – like describing Churchill and Hitler as politicians.
Progressives make unhinged, emotional arguments in the moment to seize the moral highground. Then once the moment ends and public support for their position wanes, they act like it never really happened. The issue is never the issue.
They do this repeatedly with every issue that can be leveraged. All they really want is a greater role in the administration and distribution of public funds.
Daniel Penny is not a ‘vigilante’. Why do these writers let themselves down so badly. They try to make a point by trying to assuage people on the both sides of the aisle by conflating facts. Daniel Penny is a hero. The other guy is a vigilante who shot a man in the back to make a point. The rest can be debated.
The problem with selling healthcare is that you always lose as everyone dies in the end.
No happy customers.
The benefit of private healthcare is you can choose the provider with the coverage you want to pay for. You can switch providers.
The benefit of government funded is that it seems like an item society should provide.
In the real world scarcity and economics comes into play.
Who decides what doctors should be paid and what coverage should be supplied and to whom and who pays.
Is it healthcare when you have to wait a half year to see a doctor?
The trick for me is individuals making decisions. They may make poor decisions, but they should get better at it in time. A strong society is made from individuals making good decisions.
Btw, this act was murder and the usual suspects are busy rationalizing it for the comforts of their base.
Agree – both with your overall idea and particularly so with your concluding point.
As someone who’s been living in Belgium for nearly 20 years, I have the impression that too often the debate about the healthcare system concentrates on the two extremes: the NHS model and the US health insurance system.
However, there are well established systems in-between and they work quite well in Belgium and France,.They are not perfect, of course, but they do function quite well , combining personal financial contributions and reimbursement by healthcare companies .
These systems also cater for low-income individuals who receive 100% reimbursement, often at the point of entry (similar to NHS). There are public hospitals and some of them are recognised as being among the best in Europe. There are also private clinics and they, too, are very good.
In other words, there’s already something that works in practice and this could be looked into and replicated with the necessary adjustments or in its entirety.
The old argument is that no private healthcare because then rich people have to support the public system, because they need it. Course now they just go overseas.
Take a holiday in Mexico and get your teeth done. Come back home and any issues are the public healthcare problem.
Rich people don’t go to Mexico though.
And society is now stuck in the healthcare rut. It doesn’t help that demographics are a big issue. Interesting times are coming.
This is such a flawed argument! If rich people (and even people with decent income) opt for private insurance and/or private healthcare providers, this will free up the resources of the public health sector. In addition, the private insurance companies and private providers will pay more taxes that will also feed the public healthcare system.
The NHS model is obsolete and highly inefficient. It copies the system that used to exist in the USSR. And, btw, in the USSR they had paid healthcare services , in addition to the “free-of-charge” health care.
One of the many things I like in the Belgian (and the French) system is that you are more a customer rather than just a passive consumer. It’s up to you to choose your doctor, to go to a specialist doctor without referral, to decide which medial centre or clinic you prefer.
And you are treated as a valued customer, because you bring money through your insurance company and also because in most cases you pay the part of the fee. This is also recognised by the doctors you have chosen.
I think that this motivates both parties to be more responsible and to be put on an equal footing , respecting each other’s interests.
Single Payer or Medicare for All would be great! It would be like Covid Lockdowns except permanent and with more unelected bureacrats telling everyone what to do and agitating for social justice riots. Sign me up. Socialism 4 All!
Back to the aptly named Mssr. Witty. He notes that United Healthcare employees are the thousands of “nurses, doctors, patient and client advocates, technologists.” It’s telling that he front-loads nurses. One could even have said, in a previous time that he is hiding behind their skirts!
One of the areas where the healthcare system in the United States is fraught with issues is its foundation. The healthcare system was initially created in a way that did not promote equality or equity among all Americans. It was designed to ensure that marginalized communities, such as the Black community emerging from slavery and later segregation, would not fully benefit from it. Rumor has it that it was designed to allow sort of extinction of the minority group! This original inequity became a significant point of contention and eventually made healthcare a political issue.
You can clearly see how each state’s perspective on healthcare differs, and this division contributed to the rise of movements like the Tea Party during the development of Obamacare. The two biggest problems with the system are surprisingly simple to fix, assuming the concept of a free market is upheld.
First, healthcare providers should be required to list all their prices online. Prices should be transparent so that people can make informed choices about which insurance to purchase. Currently, this lack of transparency creates confusion and limits consumer choice.
Second, there should be no distinction between in-network and out-of-network providers or completely removed. All doctors and nurses are regulated, so this distinction is unnecessary and only serves to frustrate patients. If a doctor or nurse is licensed and regulated, their services should be accessible to all. If insurance don’t trust certain providers, that’s a separate issue.
Additionally, basic primary care should be universally available and not dependent on insurance. While secondary care might involve insurance, putting profit at the center of healthcare creates perverse incentives. When profit is prioritized, the more people who suffer or even die, the more money is made. This system operates like a “stick and carrot” model, which is fundamentally flawed.
Finally, one of the worst aspects of current healthcare policymaking is its reactive nature. Decisions are often made in response to crises rather than proactively addressing systemic issues. This reactive approach prevents meaningful reform and perpetuates the same problems over time but perhaps we reaching a point of no return!
Excellent analysis, thanks for that.
We saw with Islamic State and Hamas that we are once again in the presence of a generation happy to promote a murderous form of terrorism. Is it because they are the children of the Babyboom generation who did much the same in the 1960s and 70s?
Yes, Sens. Warren & Sanders are right, America should switch to a single payer system because when we shed our capitalist chains for a socialist Utopia we will no longer be stymied by made up social constructs such as scarcity and supply & demand. Once we make that switch, it’ll be unlimited resources and everybody gets every medical procedure whenever they want it.
I worked for several years as an actuary at Blue Cross. It’s my sincere hope that progressive reformers won’t enact sustainable, inclusive, and socially just reforms through the use of deadly weapons.
Few people understand either health care itself or the financial means to fund it. Our choices are either very high taxes, very high insurance premiums paid by ourselves or our employers, or, more rarely, cash.
In the US, we use all three, but badly injured or very sick people rarely have huge sums of money on hand, are often unemployed or not well compensated, and have little to tax.
At the same time, American physicians complete eight years of higher education before they choose a medical specialty, and then three to seven years or more before their specializations are complete. Nurses, technicians, and other specialists also complete years of often grueling education, training, and experience, and they also expect to be compensated. Lasers, imaging gear, pharmaceuticals, robotic surgical tools, and other health care methods are similarly very costly.
Someone has to pay money for health care, in other words, and the sums are considerable. The swipe of a legislator’s pen, or the actions of a violent, narcissistic lunatic, won’t change these basic, obvious facts.
Apparently, the designated payor for health care costs should always be someone else.
*The left intentionally conflates the terms “health care” and “health insurance” to muddy the waters in this ongoing argument. They are two related but completely different things. We have the best health care in the world that is served by an intensely complex and over-managed health insurance system that, for all its sometimes irrational actions, does a remarkable job of paying for good, timely, and efficient day-to-day medical care for the enormous majority of Americans.
I don’t think that your statement that the USA has “the best health care in the world” is anywhere near backed up by the statistics of outcomes for the population as a whole, although I’m sure that it is excellent for those lucky few who don’t have to concern themselves with its cost.
Thank you for pointing out the difference. Now add in “health’ and we can start to have a clearer conversation. And yes, Mr. Price, the US health care is the best in the world. Now, as for our health…
The average American is in his or her 40s. Prosperity inclines us towards obesity, and aging inclines us towards ill health.
We have a large immigrant population, some of whom will be in poor health, and though our middle classes are largely insured, our very poorest rely on very poorly designed public plans.
The vast majority of white collar employees, and many unionized or blue collar workers, have comprehensive, well administered health insurance through their employers.
That said, we do ration health care, through either the marketplace, insurance policy provisions, or Medicare she Medicaid rules.
All countries do this.
The apologists for L. Mangioni conveniently omit the fact the he was _not_ a United Healthcare customer.
He was an anti-capitalist activist and was apparently driven by pure class hatred. The fact that in the court he shouted that his prosecution was ‘unfair’ points not only at his immaturity and sense of entitlement, but possibly also at his ideological bias and the leftist zeal to resort to violence in the name of “fairness” and “justice”.
So, he is not even a victim of malicious health insurance industry, as some would have us believe.
I am afraid that linking the cold-blooded murder to the (obviously long overdue) reform of the US healthcare system might create a dangerous precedent that might lead to copycat murders by other highly deranged individuals.
Yes. And the ironic frosting on this cognitively dissonant pie is Mangione’s undeniable family wealth.
His secondary, university, and graduate educations are from among the most expensive and selective schools in America, he has several very prominent relatives, and grew up surrounded by considerable comfort and financial security.
Hardly some sort of foundling or disadvantaged person, he was a gym honed, handsome young man from a very well to do family.
It is hilarious to me that morons think that “Medicare for all” is the answer to anything. Insurance based denied claims nearest the point of care today will just be stealthily denied at the front end by regulations/scarcity in a Medicare for all system, depending of course upon whatever the current political and economic winds of the day are. Note that such a system, as would be dreamed up by a Bernie Sanders, must by necessity be in conflict with their “Health care is a human right” mantra. The blame for the necessary front end denials in such a system will be impossible to pinpoint to a single HC executive or policy, but instead will be diffused and nearly invisible amongst countless faceless DC committees, lettered agencies, and apparatchiks across multiple administrations. The managed decline of our HC, which is already well underway, is by design. The real blame will reside with us, placing our trust and hard earned dollars for our own well being into the hands of government. Trade liberty for security, and you will have neither.
It shouldn’t have taken a killing to trigger (!) a debate about healthcare
The insurance companies should all be shut down… immediately. They should be replaced with…. absolutely nothing. They are the problem. The problem is that all these people are to the healthcare system what a fat tick is to a healthy dog, that is a parasite that provides nothing to the system while getting everything from it. Transferring all that rent-seeking from a private bureaucracy to a public bureaucracy is utterly pointless. Nothing would change. We’d pay a healthcare tax in lieu of premiums and the bean counters working for United Healthcare would get their checks from some newly created department of Medicare for all. On the other hand, if there were no insurance companies and no bureaucracy and the healthcare marketplace was allowed to function like a normal competitive market, it would result in competition, efficiency, and lowered prices. Medicare should be done away with also. It’s universality is the problem. Everyone over a certain age gets it whether they need it or want it or not. Eligibility for government assistance should be income based, not age based. Bill Gates is officially on the Medicare rolls. How dumb is that?
Most of us are concerned about giving everyone access to health care, and that’s fine. We could simply let people seek their own health care solutions and then get compensated on their taxes or give people a direct compensation based on income, not medicare for all, but something like a national Medicaid plus. For you folks across the pond, Medicaid is what the absolute poorest people get in health coverage in most states. It’s a state program that represents the ‘bare minimum’ health care because the providers have to bill the state government rather than the federal government, and state governments don’t pay as much or as reliably as either the insurance companies or the federal government that funds Medicare in partnership with the insurance companies. Many providers do not take Medicaid patients, but there are state regulations though that require certain healthcare providers that receive certain tax breaks and benefits. This thus, is the usual way that the minimum price for service is established. Healthcare providers that literally cannot be profitable without state assistance and/or tax breaks become the lowest common denominator of healthcare and set the price floor. They have to meet federal regulations for proper care but still be able to make money getting most of their money from state Medicaid programs, who actually do nickel and dime the providers to save taxpayer money, because most states, unlike the federal government, have to balance their budgets and can’t just print more money. This is actually the only real downward pressure on prices in some places, because the federal government is too distant and bureaucratic to care and the insurance companies aren’t really doing most of their squeezing on providers, they operate on the basis of transferring as much of the cost as possible back to patients, hence people angry enough to hold a serial killer up as a hero.
The fact is that any economic activity requires just two things, supply and demand. Doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc. provide the care while sick patients provide the demand. What part of this equation requires insurance companies? What value is being added to this system by the seven digit salaries of men like Mr. Thompson who is only in the news because he had the singular bad luck to be murdered by a serial killer with a very odd criteria for his victims? The most affordable form of health care is actually elective and cosmetic surgery. Why? Because it’s not covered by health insurance, therefore providers have to compete in the marketplace and sell at a price that’s competitive with other providers or offer a premium level of quality to command a higher price. All the insurance companies and the bureaucrats do is move those marketplace decisions into the realm of negotiations between healthcare providers, themselves, and the corporations/businesses that provide healthcare coverage for workers. The insurance companies have to capture a part of the profits for themselves to keep their companies running and the corporations/businesses now benefit from the system by holding employees hostage who might quit and start their own businesses or work for better employers. Healthcare is overwhelming more expensive than anything else Americans buy and use regularly. They are hostages, hostages who would probably scream bloody murder if it were taken away by some government fiat, but it needs to be taken away. All that needs to go away before anything will really change.
You take a completely privatized marketplace, get rid of the insurance conglomerates, get rid of the bureaucracy, and add in a Medicaid program for the poorest of the poor, and you’ll get, I think, something marginally better than what we currently have. The greatest criticism of such a plan would be the dreaded ‘two-tiered’ system, but at this point, I’d say two tiered is an improvement over one tier that everyone hates and too many cannot afford, and honestly, how would that be worse than anything else in a capitalist society. If you want to drive a Ferrari, work your butt off and buy one. If you don’t care so much, save money and drive a jalopy you bought from Joe’s used cars. There will be plenty of people in such a two tiered system who will slum it with the poorest of the poor to save a buck just like you find fairly well to do people browsing the pawn shop or second hand store. It’s not an ideal solution, but we’re well past ideal solutions here. That’s my least bad option, and if I’m honest, it’s still pretty bad and there are lots of ways it could go wrong, but this is where we are. Things ain’t pretty ladies and gents.
I would give you a hundred likes if I could. BTW I will be 70 this year.
“Leading the charge are the likes of progressive Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. In a HuffPost interview, Warren said: “The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated […] by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning”. Sanders, meanwhile, called the assassination “outrageous” but still expressed his belief that “what the outpouring of anger at the health care industry tells us is that millions of people understand that health care is a human right.””
How surprising that Warren and Saunders should use the murder as a prop for their own socialist perspectives on health care (which is not a ‘human right’)!
As I have previously observed, the celebration of this murder as somehow being justified, and the corresponding championing of the murderer, are manifestations of the grotesque thought processes that churn in progressive minds. Murder is wrong – evil – period! And if people like Warren and Saunders were so concerned about the health insurance industry, why the hell have they not been whingeing about this on the public stage before the murder? Horrible politicians seeking to make political mileage from someone’s cold-blooded execution in the street.
PS – the UK National Health Service is massively costly and not particularly good either. The UK always copycats everything that the USA initiates and exports (e.g. BLM, DEI, etc.). Let’s hope that some prominent CEO in our NHS may not be targeted after some nutcase here reads articles justifying this assassination in the USA.
You can’t have a right to somebody else’s labour. That would be slavery.
However primary healthcare should be supplied by society. Stuff like natal care, infectious disease care and youth health.
All the rest government should keep their hands out of it.
Health care is NOT a human right – The ability for any person to do what they can to obtain the healthcare they need unencumbered by any other person is a Right. But forcing any person or people to provide anything to anyone at the point of a gun is not a right… One hopes that healthcare is available and within reach of all people. A virtuous goal we should all choose to work towards. But this Leftist idea that one has a fundamental right to the labor of another is fundamentally wrong.