Remember, even if the healthcare industry is guilty of lobbying to stop Universal health care and that somehow actually worked- Thompson was just getting out of High School back then. Any executives who planned that campaign are retired or dead.
Read it again, I pointed many times already that the efforts from the past are not gone in the current timeline.
I’ve 100% been saying it was justified, righteous and honestly I am slightly disappointed it hasn’t lead to any copycats.
Mangione is a kook. I’m less interested in his motivations than I am in why so many people either view him as a hero and/or have very little sympathy for Thompson. Which has been covered extensively in this thread. What I personally find the most interesting is this celebration/indifference to Thompson’s murder cuts across political ideology.
Well, of course I should had said that there are exceptions, but that is why I did switch from “no one here”, to “me and others”.
But this a chance to say: Nope, I don’t agree with that. You will not know what kind of change that way of doing things will lead to. Think about the “Terror” days of the French Revolution.
There are many Americans, especially young adult ones, who are angry and unhappy often not even knowing why. The usual list of course. Resentment, feeling that the future is not a brighter something to look forward to, that their social position is relatively dropping, a lack of connection to society as a whole or to any institutions, a lack of feeling part of a mission greater than yourself … the list can keep going.
That’s been in common.
And Thompson is someone that across the spectrum is agreeable to think of as an other. The spectrum will disagree on other targets like immigrants, or the highly educated, or whoever, but the healthcare CEO is only thought of as the SOB getting in the way between me and my care (people are sometimes abusive to our front office staff for the same emotion, then sweet as can be to us, they are the perceived obstacle rather than a real person).
New poll shows that 69% of Americans (nice) hold the healthcare industry responsible for Thompson’s death.
The actual poll results are very telling.
The solid majority of the polled population have themselves, and in their friends and family, NO reported problems with coverage issues. Of those with problems the most common one was finding someone “suitable” in network. But they are angry, and nearly as many agree that the healthcare insurance industry is responsible for this murder as Mangione is. Not wealth or income inequality in general. And they are not overwhelmingly concerned about others getting killed. (Why would they be if they think this one is at least somewhat justified?)
How to square that?
Perhaps by recognizing that the system is unpleasant and unfair and, even if you have good insurance which will pay for everything, often means dealing with confusing and complicated paperwork while ill?
I appreciate the criticism of some of the more hyperbolic accusations, but honestly, some of your posts in the thread seem to express confusion at why people have a problem with the status quo.
I couldn’t get your link to work, so I couldn’t see the questions asked and answered.
Right. As I asked earlier:
-Is it ever OK for people to rise up against their oppressors?
-Is it possible for repression to be something other than governmental use of force?
-Is a feudal system where the lord literally owns his peasants functionally equivalent to a corporate system where the oligarchs practically own the people?
Because if the answers to those things are “yes,” then we’re really only arguing over whether we’re at the tipping point. And as far as I know, it’s not up to me solely to decide.
And Mangione may well be a kook who is undeserving of his admiration, but in a way that’s beside the point.
I can’t read the pdf, either.
The only claim I’ve had rejected recently seems to have been resubmitted and accepted, and i only know it was rejected because i was going through my EOB forms for a different reason.
But I’m still bitter about the health insurance refusing to pay for my daughter’s delivery because i didn’t have “prior approval”. I had prior approval for maternity care, mind you, just not for delivery. It took months to straighten that out. And I’m bitter about being billed for the out-of-network guy who read the ultrasound when i was pregnant with my son. “This must be a mistake”, i said, “i have not seen a single guy in all my care, only women”. “No mistake, you never saw him, we sent the scans to him to interpret”. “Why did you send them to someone out of network?” Crickets.
And i haven’t had any significant medical care since then. I have a high deductible plan, mostly i pay for everything out of pocket.
I’m recently bitter that if i get drugs through express scripts “using” my insurance, my out of pocket cost is higher than if i buy them directly through costplus pharmacy. In one case, something like 20 times higher. The health insurance industry at least sometimes does it’s job, the pharmacy benefit managers just bleed the system, as best as i can tell.
And those " explanation of benefits"? Could anything be more opaque? I have no idea if I’m being billed appropriately because most of the time i can’t even tell what a bill was for.
And the last time i saw my gastroenterologist, he spent the entire time i was talking to him on hold, because he was trying to get something approved for another patient, and he couldn’t reach the insurance company.
Anyway, I’m a wealthy privileged American, and i worry about my husband keeping his job so we don’t lose health insurance. And I’m worried that something will go wrong and I’ll get crazy bills and won’t have the emotional energy to straighten them out.
So anyway, I’d probably say “i haven’t had a problem”. Except i am stressed by our health insurance system, and bitter about it, and completely understand why someone might feel rage and want to take it out on a symbol of the health insurance system. And this CEO didn’t create the problems, but did he symbolize it? Of course he did.
You can get to the same link from @Smapti’s citation. Not sure what I copied wrong. Apologies.
Nah. I very likely have more issues with the status quo than the average person. I had problems with UHC dealing with major health concerns for my wife while very stressed dealing with both those issues and the work world. Yes things not paid for. It was very much not fun. I have many frustrations with healthcare coverage idiocies as a provider too.
I get @puzzlegal having bitterness over stupidity that becomes her problem. But clearly she is not so embittered as to thinking that she would understand if someone else killed the person who sent the ultrasound to an out of network reader when it happened to them.
And I am grateful for our society that we are as improved over what we were from before the ACA, low bar as such was (as @puzzlegal has noted).
I still see a response by 69% of Americans, most of whom have less poor personal (or via friends or family) frustrating experiences with insurance companies than I have had, (or none), that these frustrations are enough to think of being responsible for a person being executed as a sign NOT of how bad healthcare is, but of how BROKEN, psychologically and ethically, so many Americans are, in general, and how so many are eager to have some faceless schlub to be punished. The MAGA crowd is not unique.
It is to me a manifestation of a broader dysfunction in our society, not healthcare coverage frustrations in particular.
Gavrilo Princip was pretty off the wall, too, and look what he started.
That’s actually who I had in mind.
And @DSeid, I’d really be interested to hear your answers to my questions, since you seem to be the most non-understanding of why some people might cheer him on.
Here is a quick summary of the poll for the base question “what do you think was responsible for the killing”
| 12-16/2024 | a lot | not much |
|---|---|---|
| Denials for health care coverage by health insurance companies | 69 | 29 |
| Profits made by health insurance companies | 67 | 30 |
| Wealth or income inequality in general | 53 | 44 |
| Health insurance industry layoffs and job losses | 41 | 57 |
| Personal issues in the CEO’s life | 24 | 73 |
| The media | 40 | 58 |
| Political division in the US | 45 | 53 |
| The individual who committed the killing | 78 | 20 |
Yeah, just a faceless schlub . . . that made over $10 million dollars a year being the CEO.
Sure.
Ever okay. Of course.
Sure repression can be implemented by an entity other than government use of force.
And depends on how one defines “practically own the people.”
But strong disagree that “then we’re really only arguing over whether we’re at the tipping point.”
My contention is that the framing of the public reaction as having to do with “oppression” or “repression” upon a group “practically owned by oligarchs”, is completely off the mark. Not just in terms of degree.
A rich faceless schlub is just as faceless, and all the more of an easy cartoon scapegoat. Part of this schlub’s being other is that he was so well paid to be sure. Or there is also fetishization of the very wealthy and powerful, but they certainly are other than the remaining 99.9 percent.
FWIW I believe that power and wealth are the same, that neither is best measured in currency alone, and that our country’s increasing disparity in that dimension is a major problem, including as a major factor to unhappiness even if all boats rise (just some more than others). But this murder and the reaction to it was not about wealth inequity other than that it made for a someone that most could see as a faceless other.
Easily. The media shows bad news, not good news. trump won as the media showed that the economy was bad (it wasnt), that the border was a major issue (it wasnt) and that crime was out of control- (it isnt).
Your denial of what Democratic voters experienced is the reason Trump won.
The major news outlets carried your message of hope and success. They went so far as to hide Biden’s declining mental state.