In the aftermath of the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week, politicians across the political spectrum have been tripping over themselves to condemn the shooting. But few have acknowledged our country's broken health care system which can force people to call an Uber because their insurance won't cover an ambulance. Finally, on Tuesday, an American politician said something surprisingly sensible about the devastating conditions that might have led suspect Luigi Mangione to shoot and kill Thompson.
“The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the health care system,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told HuffPost. “Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far. This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”
She continued, “The number of people I personally hear from, both in my official capacity and as somebody who stops and talks to people in the grocery store about how hard it is to get medical care that people have paid their insurance companies for over and over and over, is a reminder that this system is just broken.” Frankly, I can’t think of any other wealthy country where 60% of personal bankruptcies are driven by medical debt. The term “medical debt” shouldn’t even exist.
Mangione's social media posts and interviews with his old friends and roommates suggest he suffered from a painful and at times debilitating back condition and struggled to navigate the medical system for adequate care. “His spine was kind of misaligned,” one old friend told the New York Times earlier this week. “He said his lower vertebrae were almost like a half-inch off, and I think it pinched a nerve. Sometimes he’d be doing well and other times not.” Friends and family said Mangione had back surgery in 2023 but lost touch with him months later; his mom reported him missing to the San Francisco Police Department on November 18.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren: "Violence is never the answer...but you can only push people so far, and then they start to take matters into their own hands."
"What happens when you turn this into the billionaires run it all, is they get the opportunity to squeeze every last penny."
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein.bsky.social) December 11, 2024 at 3:46 PM
On Wednesday, Warren sent a clarifying statement to HuffPost: “Violence is never the answer. Period. I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder.” Her clarification came after some social media users criticized her for including a "but" after "violence is never the answer." Of course, because I'm not a toddler, I certainly didn’t get the sense that she was condoning murder in her original remarks, but… fair enough! Later, on MSNBC, Warren again reiterated that "violence is never the answer,” but at a certain point, when people feel abandoned by the system, they “start to take matters into their own hands."
Private insurers reject about one in seven claims from individuals seeking coverage — but United leads the pack, rejecting a third of claims. Reporting from 2023 revealed the company recently started using a dehumanizing AI model to determine which sick people to deny coverage to, and continued using the model even after finding it had a 90% inaccuracy rate. Before his death, comment sections underneath some of Thompson’s social media posts were rife with heartbreaking stories and pleas from people with family members battling terminal conditions who were still being denied coverage. People lose loved ones every day to the health insurance industry; it’s not just guns — policy kills, too.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) similarly told HuffPost that Thompson's death is "outrageous" and "unacceptable," but also condemned the medical system: "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 and that you cannot have people in the insurance industry rejecting needed health care for people while they make billions of dollars in profit."
On Tuesday, Forbes reported that a Reddit account that appears to be linked with Mangione advised fellow Redditors suffering from chronic, debilitating back pain on how to navigate the cruel intricacies of the for-profit medical system: “Tell them you are ‘unable to work’ / do your job. We live in a capitalist society. I’ve found that the medical industry responds to these keywords far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it’s impacting your quality of life."
