I have five really good post topics sitting on the assembly line, and I’m ticked off that I have to start with #6 this morning: the idiotic and unethical blather of my Facebook friends (and others, of course) using the cold-blooded murder of an innocent—yes, innocent—insurance executive to bitch about health care, insurance, capitalism and the United States generally.
I could have predicted, if someone had asked, which of my substantially arts-involved friends and acquaintances would take this moronic path: they are the socialists and crypto communists who actually thought Kamala Harris would be a competent President, who support the nonsense Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore barf up and who are prone to making arguments like “The U.S. is the only civilized, first world nation without national health care!” (Also “Nobody needs an assault weapon to kill a deer!,” “Hate speech isn’t protected by the First Amendment!,” “Jesus was an undocumented migrant too!” and “We have only [fill in number here] years to save the planet!”)
Yesterday, one of the most smug and insistent of these was taking satisfaction that NBC News had reported that a couple who owed $92,262 to North Carolina’s Atrium Health hospital system and had a lien on their house learned that their debt was being removed and that the hospital was cancelling the debt of many other former patients who owed a lot of money. ‘Gee, what a coinkydink!’ wink-wink was the gist of mt FBF’s remarks, or in other words, “See! It worked! Let’s keep that ball rolling!”
As usual, with these sensitive social justice warriors, facts don’t matter. The decision to let the couple off the hook and to erase the overdue medical bills of some longtime debtors who were unlikely to pay them off was made in September and not in response to the assassination of Brian Thompson. Meanwhile, others on social media were quoting various armchair revolutionaries about how violence sometimes pays off and is justifiable when “good people” cannot take any more injustice.
These emotion-fueled shallow thinkers and ideologues, like those who argue that the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel was justified, are validating terrorism and therefore ensuring more of it. So would be any cowardly insurance executives who changed their company’s policies, not because they felt change was appropriate, not because they sought to send a positive public relations message, but because they are afraid of being gunned down in the street.
Insurance companies are businesses, not charitable organizations. While it would be nice if doctors and hospitals fully embraced the role of the idealistic professional and forswore worldly comforts to serve humanity without compensation except for the occasional chicken, a system depending upon angelic motives would find adequate health care and medical services to be scarce. I don’t feel like getting into the high weeds of health care policy here, but the bare fact is that health care costs money, and every system is burdened by perverse incentives that are endemic to those systems.
Want to see what happens without the insurance industry? Go ahead: I dare you. One way to do it is to make the business of insurance unprofitable, by forcing them to pay more for the medical needs of their customers than they receive in insurance payments. (Obamacare helped push insurance companies into tougher policies by forcing them to cover pre-existing conditions…and that result was predicted when the bill was being debated.) Hospital bills would come down, of course, and so would the number of doctors. The costs of drugs would come down too, resulting in drug companies finding it less profitable to develop new drugs. (I have seen calls for the murders of drug company executives too).
My Facebook friends rejoicing in the murder of Brian Thompson want to live in a socialist/communist society, and the United States was created and generally has thrived as one that celebrates individualism, personal responsibility and accountability over reliance on governments. Killing people to get cheap health care is only the beginning for these Luigi Mangione fans: next is guaranteed housing, food, clothing, college and as the brilliant Rep. Octavio-Cortes promised in her Green New Deal, a living wage for those who “choose not to work.” And, of course, ths would encourage a culture that approves of threats and violence to intimidate anyone who doesn’t embrace Big Brother—you know, those bad people who think bad thoughts and have insufficiently beneficent opinions.
The attitude we are seeing now from the woke and wonderful is a full endorsement of “the ends justify the means” as a political philosophy, and that includes terrorism….for their goals only, of course. When the goals of the bad people spark violence, its unconscionable. This explains why these same social media mavens see no inconsistency in the disparate treatment of 2020’s rioters.
The stirring of sympathy for a terrorist act is more significant than the usual ignorance we see on social media, and much more ominous.
Ethics Alarms 
And how about the disparate treatment of Daniel Penny? That’s my personal favorite contemporary glaring hypocrisy of the left.
The minute one of your liberal friends mentions gun control, remind them they celebrated the death of a man shot in the back, and made a hero out of the shooter.
The left doesn’t care about gun control, people, murders, justice, or life. They care about their feelings and “likes”. They’ve reached a level of ridiculous ideation that is unsustainable in a civil society.
We either have to just give up and join the pandering, or we’ll be driven to fight back with force. If murderers and assassination become the socially accepted norm, I fear the liberal radicals are in for a bit of a rude awakening. They would not have done well in the wild west.
Be sure to point out the firearm laws their hero violated. tlThe NFA by possession of a homemade silencer without a permit. The violation of NY state law by possession of a homemade firearm. The carrying of a firearm concealed without a permit.
All those laws worked so well in this case.
And now that four people have been shot and killed at a Christian school in Madison, WI, let’s listen to the different tune that Lefty sings.
I’m a legal secretary who prepares paperwork in collections matters for our law firm. Our collections clients opt to write off debts on a regular basis, BUT it’s because they’re uncollectible (or would require more time & money to collect than the client wishes to expend), not in response to violent actions by a defendant or debtor. (And our clients have cooperated with the local State’s Attorney when criminal charges are filed against a defendant for post-judgment violent actions.) Such was doubtless the case with the debt cancellation situation reported by NBC and mentioned in your post.
Perhaps my situation is not typical, I do not know.
I and my sisters all have traditional Medicare and a supplemental policy. My experience has not been one with a problem with the private medical insurance company. But we do have continual problems with Medicare.
My sister really needs not only some medicine but medical equipment that would go a long way to improving her quality of life. and reducing the care burden for me and my other sister. Medicare simply denies coverage on all these items, saying she doesn’t need them. Now if she were to gain another 50 pounds or so (which would make her situation worse), they might cover these items.
So I have no beef here with my insurance company. My beef is with — who? Congress? The Medicare bureaucrats, the Medicare rule writers?
Those advocating ‘Medicare for all’ have no clue what they’d be in for. Or don’t care.
Very good point and the reason for that is very simple.
Medical care will continue to be a scarce good regardless of who controls access to it–health insurance or the government. Unless the government simultaneously rolls out an enormously expanded network of doctors, hospitals, drug manufacturers, etc., while rolling out a single payer system, we will have the same production (or less, as doctors retire en masse to avoid it) and VASTLY more demand now that everything is free.
At this point, the government’s primary job would be limiting access to healthcare, and it would get ugly fast. I’d ask gov-funded proponents this question — let’s entertain a hypothetical situation where every person in the nation puts $1000 a month into a pot that funds every grocery store in the nation. In exchange for the money, everyone gets equal access to whatever food is available at these grocery stores. What would happen to the grocery stores and how would we handle the obvious result?
Or my favorite hypothetical I’ve shared here before: Two apartment buildings, identical in every way, same number of rooms, occupants, etc. The only difference is one building splits the gas/electric bill equally among every apartment while the other bills by usage per apartment. Which apartment will have a higher cost per unit?
Your hypothethicals will certainly require some form of rationing and see higher total costs, but those who starved/went without utilities before would enjoy an improved quality of life.
That doesn’t mean, though, that socialism is ideal for every country or works in every sector — heck, here in Canada we still haven’t socialised medication costs or dental care…!
You’re talking about something that has never worked and never resulted in anything but tragedy as if it’s a viable option some of the time. The only way a single socialist policy has ever even so much as superficially “worked” (read: not left everyone poor or dead) is when it’s massively mitigated by some unrelated counter-factor.
I’m not convinced insurance should be a thing at all… like lending at interest, it can be plausibly argued to be more corrosive to our economic system than a benefit. It’s a prisoner’s dilemma issue. everyone is better off if no one has it, but the worst case for an individual is if everyone else has it and you don’t