On December 4, Brian Thompson, chief executive of health insurance giant UnitedHealthcare (total assets of $273.7 billion), was shot and killed in midtown Manhattan. On Monday, in Pennsylvania, a “person of interest” was arrested in the case. According to local police, this is a person who “holds grudges against big American business”.
The murder of Brian Thompson became an important social and political focal point in the United States. He brought to light certain realities of American life, usually buried in the media under a ton of illusions, lies and stupidity.
First, the popular reaction to the shootings revealed widespread anger against the private health insurance system, in particular, and industry giants, in general. To repeat what we wrote a few years ago, the incident “clearly shows […] how capitalism is hated in the United States. And why would it be otherwise? Who knows its inner workings better than the American population? Of course, only a small number of them are conscious of the distrust and contempt they feel towards the current social system and have reflected on its implications.
This week, the Wall Street Journal published a remarkable front-page article titled “Manhunt for UnitedHealthcare CEO’s Killer Meets Unexpected Obstacle: Sympathy for Shooter,” noting that “authorities face an unexpected challenge: an outpouring of sympathy popular for the killer.”
On online forums, on social media and on the streets of Manhattan, people celebrated the suspect as a quasi-folk hero who dealt a blow to a hated institution, the for-profit national health care system.
The media is suddenly filled with pressing topics it had not previously seen fit to cover, reporting the horror stories of those whose medical treatment has been delayed, denied or undermined by companies like UnitedHealthcare. There is not enough space in more than ten of WSWS perspectives to summarize the details. Social media was flooded with nightmare stories.
A woman said she fought an insurance company when she was nine months pregnant and her 1-year-old child was hospitalized with a life-threatening brain tumor. Another received a bill because she was in excruciating pain and was sent to an “out-of-network” hospital that “was more than we paid for the house we live in, and it It’ll probably take, I don’t know, 20 to 30 years to pay off that hospital bill.” The family declared bankruptcy. A third: “Today I’m thinking about the time United Healthcare suddenly decided to stop paying for my chemotherapy and didn’t bother to tell me, so the nurses had to tell me when I went to the cancer center for my next treatment. » These tragedies are countless.
According to several news reports, medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States. “One study claimed that 62.1% of bankruptcies were due to medical problems (The Balance). Tens of thousands of people die every year in the United States because they don’t have health insurance. How many more die because of insurance company denials or delays or the long-term stress of having to worry about their health?
The ruling elite and its media were made nervous by Thompson’s assassination and the popular reaction. Since Wednesday morning, media coverage has been uninterrupted. This is partly an attempt by the media, as usual, to distract attention from war, social inequality and the danger of fascism. But, more importantly, it reflects a real, deep anxiety about the state of hostility and anger toward billionaires, who are seen as owning everything, running everything, and stealing everything.
The reaction of theestablishment is the expression of a collective bad conscience. Big business executives, who are busy implementing new security measures and barricading themselves like never before, know they are looked down upon. They can and should increasingly expect to be attacked.
In the current political situation, terrorist sentiments can find some fertile ground, especially among young people. The election campaign and election results have been grim for the most vulnerable or impressionable. Two candidates from big business and parties of war, violence and repression, and now the prospect of a horrible Trump administration to come. Official policy is abhorrent beyond words, dominated by brutal, right-wing, militaristic and chauvinistic figures, with no apparent relief in sight.
Millions of people do not have an outlet for their feelings and interests, as the current situation and the flood of emotions indicate. A concerted, politically conscious movement of the working class must show them a way out of the current impasse. Individual acts of violence will not change the situation and will only increase state repression.
Terrorism, as Rosa Luxemburg asserted in 1905, referring to the situation in Russia,
was born historically from pessimism, from the loss of confidence in the possibility of a mass political movement. It is essentially opposed to the idea of a mass movement of the working class.
She adds that terrorism
can only have a soporific and paralyzing effect, rather than incite action – although it can arouse strong feelings of moral satisfaction in each individual case.
Indeed, continues the great German-Polish revolutionary, the acts of revenge carried out by the terrorists
invariably aroused vague hopes and expectations – especially among the uncertain and hesitant elements – that they could count on the invisible and miraculous arm of the terrorist “avengers”.
The Thompson affair also exposed immense and unbearable paradoxes in American society. This country is horribly backward and primitive in many ways!
An overwhelming contradiction exists between technological abundance and terrible cultural and intellectual insufficiencies.
We are a quarter of the way into the 21st century and an advanced society allows corporations and individuals to prey on the sick and suffering for profit and personal enrichment. The CEOs of the six largest national insurers received a combined total compensation of $122,970,614 in 2023. Andrew Witty, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, received $23.5 million last year. No wonder their victims consider them leeches!
Artificial intelligence is being used by the healthcare industry to further abuse and torment people. “Automation and predictive technologies,” according to a U.S. Senate subcommittee last summer, were introduced to increase rates of denial of care for older adults.
The American political situation is complex and many people are confused. But countless surveys and polls reveal distrust, dislike, and even hatred toward insurance and drug companies, big banks, Wall Street, the rich, and more. All this goes against the fantasy image of the American people in love with billionaires, Musk, Bezos and other scoundrels.
There is no doubt that many of those who today react with hostility and even fury to the heinous activities of health insurance companies and their CEO oligarchs voted for Donald Trump just over a month ago. Whatever these super-rich reactionary fools may think, they will cause a storm of opposition and resistance.
Luxemburg’s criticism of terrorism is also ours. She explained that such actions weaken
the clear understanding of the absolute necessity and exceptionally decisive importance of a mass movement among the people, of a mass revolution of the proletariat.
The American ruling class has shown itself incapable of ensuring even the most minimal protection of life and health. Obamacare, developed in close collaboration with insurance companies and drug manufacturers, was a fraud, a boon for health care insurers that did nothing to stop soaring health care costs and the general public health disaster.
In the COVID-19 pandemic, more than a million people have been allowed to die to maintain corporate profits and the stock market. Public health and the health of citizens are in a lamentable state. Life expectancy decreased by 2.4 years during the first two years of the pandemic; it has still not returned to its pre-COVID level. A ruling elite that would allow masses of citizens to die needlessly is capable of anything.
Like all important aspects of life, medicine and health care are inevitably marked by social stratification and inequality in wealth levels.
Only socialism, the rule of the working class based on the principles of social equality, can solve today’s problems.
The American people and all people have the right to quality health care.
The response to the current crisis is to end private health care companies, which rake in nearly $300 billion in profits annually, and implement fully socialized medicine. No more hospitals, health care insurers and for-profit pharmaceutical companies! Resources exist in sufficient quantity to provide the best quality health care, free and easily accessible to all human beings.
At the same time, tens of billions must be invested in existing and new facilities and in training new doctors, nurses and other health care providers. The basic rights of the population include the right to free preventive care, prescription drugs, mental health care and all advanced tests and procedures, as well as the right to abortion, one of the rights most important civil, political and cultural rights of women, which is of paramount importance. Existing personal debts, accumulated due to exorbitant and scandalous health expenses, must be abolished.
All of this can and must be accomplished by a politically conscious working class, which will put an end to the capitalist system and its irrational and destructive subordination of human life to profit.
(Article published in English on December 10, 2024)
