At this very second Luigi Mangione, who’s accused of capturing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO final month, is sitting in a federal jail cell in Brooklyn. He’s obtained a barrage of court docket appearances scheduled and, as soon as he has wound his means by means of the felony justice system, he may very well be behind bars for the remainder of his life.
Which, after all, is correctly. Whereas there are quite a lot of causes that many individuals discover the 26-year-old alleged murderer sympathetic, you’ll be able to’t simply gun a CEO down exterior a lodge in Manhattan and face no penalties for it. And Mangione, who’s, by all accounts, a particularly good man with an Ivy League schooling, ought to actually have recognized higher. He ought to have recognized that if he needed to homicide somebody – and get away with it – there have been much more socially acceptable methods of doing so.
Mangione might, for instance, have gotten a well-paid job as a administration advisor and helped supercharge the nation’s opioid epidemic; likelihood is he would have confronted little greater than a slap on the wrist. He might have gone to Gaza and shot some Palestinian kids within the head – by which case, not solely would he most likely face no penalties in any respect, US lawmakers would most likely exit of their means to defend him from accountability. And, after all, Mangione might have gone into the medical insurance business himself, and routinely denied life-saving care to determined folks with the intention to increase income. That sort of violence is completely advantageous.
Mangione is now a family identify across the globe: there’s pro-Luigi graffiti all over the place from Chicago to London to Rome. In keeping with one current ballot, 48% of school college students within the US say they view the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, as completely or considerably justified. In a extra purposeful world, the outpouring of help for Mangione would have given the people at UnitedHealthcare (a part of UnitedHealth Group and the US’s largest personal well being insurer based mostly on income) pause for thought. On one other timeline the limitless horror tales shared on social media about how medical insurance corporations had denied protection and ruined folks’s lives may need pushed the business to vary their enterprise practices. However we reside in hell, so none of that occurred, did it?
As a substitute, lawmakers (who get extraordinarily good medical insurance because of US taxpayers) have made it clear to their company overlords that their No 1 precedence is guaranteeing the protection of their donor base. Mangione hasn’t simply been charged with homicide; he’s been charged with terrorism. Final month New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul made headlines for reportedly contemplating a particular hotline for CEOs to report security threats. Are you an obscenely wealthy CEO apprehensive the proletariat might rise in opposition to you? Simply name 1-800-SAVEOURCEOS and we’ll dispatch 24-hour-security! We’ve de-funded the libraries to pay for it.
In the meantime, insurers appear to have gone into full-on villain mode; simply while you assume you’ll be able to’t hear something worse concerning the insurance coverage business, a brand new horror story comes out. There’s been an uptick in tales about insurers limiting protection of prosthetic limbs and questioning their medical necessity, for instance. Mr Beast, an influencer with 343 million subscribers on YouTube, just lately railed in opposition to the healthcare business in a brand new video the place he helped 2,000 amputees stroll once more. “Many lived in America and it feels so disgusting that in a rustic with this a lot wealth, a fucken YouTuber is their solely choice to get a prosthetic leg,” he tweeted. “We have to repair this.”
And final week a plastic surgeon known as Dr Elisabeth Potter – a specialist in reconstructive surgical procedure for breast most cancers sufferers who’ve had mastectomies – went viral on TikTok for claiming she needed to pause an operation as a result of a medical insurance consultant demanded proof it was needed. In keeping with Potter, her affected person was beneath anesthesia when she obtained an pressing cellphone name from UnitedHealthcare whereas within the working room.
“So I scrubbed out of my case and I known as UnitedHealthcare, and the gentleman stated he wanted some details about her,” stated Potter. “Wished to know her analysis and whether or not her inpatient keep must be justified.”
Potter reportedly defined to the insurance coverage consultant that her affected person had breast most cancers – one thing he apparently didn’t know as a result of another person in a “totally different division” had that data. This is the reason medical insurance executives receives a commission a lot cash, you see. They construction their corporations in difficult ways in which imply you need to undergo a minimum of 50 totally different folks in numerous departments to attempt to type out a declare; ultimately, a sure share of individuals simply hand over as a result of the method is so laborious. That stated, truly going by means of actual life customer support representatives is changing into much less frequent. UnitedHealth Group has been beneath the highlight for the way it makes use of AI to aggressively deny claims. A lawsuit filed final November claims UnitedHealth illegally denied “aged sufferers care owed to them beneath Medicare benefit plans” by deploying an AI mannequin recognized by the firm to have a 90% error fee.
To be clear: it’s tough to fully validate Potter’s story due to legal guidelines that shield sufferers’ well being data. UnitedHealthcare, for his or her half, appear to reject the physician’s account of occasions and have insinuated that Potter was being unprofessional. A spokesperson from the corporate informed me: “There are not any insurance-related circumstances that may require a doctor to step out of surgical procedure … We didn’t ask, nor would ever count on, a doctor to interrupt affected person care to reply a name and we might be following up with the supplier and hospital to grasp why these unorthodox actions have been taken.”
Nonetheless, the virality of the story is one more reminder of simply how pissed off everybody – from docs to sufferers – is with the profit-driven medical insurance business within the US. But, regardless of this palpable anger there appears to be no urge for food by these on the prime to vary the system. Certainly, it appears seemingly that Donald Trump’s administration will shrink Medicaid (a authorities system which helps low-income folks entry healthcare at a lowered price or totally free) and insurance coverage corporations will up their use of AI to disclaim protection. Mangione ought to completely be dealing with penalties for what he’s alleged to have finished – however there also needs to be extra authorized penalties for these pushing predatory medical insurance practices. Killing folks with paperwork as an alternative of a gun doesn’t make you any much less of a assassin.
