Gurgen Let’s not blame over half the country that believes if you’re poor and can’t pay your medical bills, you deserve to die.
I'm a simple soul. If a big business has established practices that inflict a huge human cost for a huge profit, I first blame the people who own and run the business and are making all the money.
Deranged view, I know. Overcomplicating things the way I always do. Practically frothing at the mouth with my bloodthirsty online Leninism.
Seeing photos of this guy in court today and it all looks like one big bloody joke to him and his cult following.
We have people who now think these CEOs are like mass murderers so am guessing they think this fair game. People have lost their fucking minds.
The problem isn’t just the healthcare companies, it’s the laws that govern them. Successive American governments have allowed them to take the piss. You'd hope the new government will look into it but killing a ceo should not be the way to bring about change.
Do you think the people killed by UnitedHealthcare are morally defensible because the law allows them to kill people?
That the CEO is a mass murderer doesn't mean I think Luigi shouldn't be sentenced. I'm against death penalty.
It's a red herring whether what Mangione did (who as I've said previously seems to be politically incoherent) is "good" or "evil". You can't so easily extrapolate from such a judgement to a politics, even if because he's photogenic he's becoming a lightning rod for mass resentment of the health system.
Instead, it's more about how we choose to explain for ourselves why anyone would get upset about a CEO taking a bullet, supposing they then tacitly accept the same CEO's company denying its customers life-saving treatments at the highest rate in its industry and thereby hastening the deaths of thousands.
The sarcasm of "because life isn't fair" amounts to a reactionary doubling down on these failures. There's no utopianism when the US implementing similar systems to those which exist in most other OECD nations would be a big improvement.
Burnwinter Instead, it's more about how we choose to explain for ourselves why anyone would get upset about a CEO taking a bullet, supposing they then tacitly accept the same CEO's company denying its customers life-saving treatments at the highest rate in its industry and thereby hastening the deaths of thousands.
What? You are making an unnecessary leap here. It's not about that at all. Not even slightly.
You can't say it's not about good and evil, and then play some kind of cosmic morality card.
You were right the first time. It's about ethics, not universal truths. Frameworks for living together in our societies. Neither framework that the players in this particular melodrama suggest is particularly compelling to me.
That woman being burnt to death on the NYC subway is mad
QuincyAbeyie Yes like @Gurgen says we should let you decide who we label as mass murderers now. Maybe we should go and shoot all the unethical pharmaceutical CEOs as well while we are at it.
The speculation and panic in this thread is still about the one CEO who got shot and whether that'll be repeated. It hasn't been though.
But since we started discussing this news item hundreds if not thousands of questionable health insurance claim denials will already have been handed to patients with life-threatening illnesses in the United States.
There is plenty of long-standing insider insight into the sector showing that its leaders and investors deny access to vital health care for profit with full knowledge of what they're doing.
Coombs You were right the first time. It's about ethics, not universal truths. Frameworks for living together in our societies. Neither framework that the players in this particular melodrama suggest is particularly compelling to me.
I agree, we wandered off into the type of polarised rhetoric that belongs to the powerless. It happens. Even if I reckon assassinating a string of CEOs could be justified, I don't imagine repeating Mangione's specific act would do anything good.
Revisiting the politics of healthcare reform in the United States over the past week or two, I found the extreme degree of federal capture disturbing. I can't see the Democrats seeking a mandate for the proper changes at that level, seems to be the same story for many other policy areas.
JazzG you didn't answer the question.
Burnwinter There is plenty of long-standing insider insight into the sector showing that its leaders and investors deny access to vital health care for profit with full knowledge of what they're doing.
And it's even worse than that when you realize that the outsider outsight shows that they are often operating in accordance with the law when doing so. Shareholder primacy results in a fiduciary duty that essentially demands denial of coverage whenever possible. Sure, they deny care illegally on a routine basis, but there are plenty of legal ways to do it, too. For instance, employers often opt to provide cheaper, self-funded plans to their employees that are exempt from state laws, a type of plan offered by - you guessed it - UnitedHealthcare. They can claim bogus, vague reasons like "lack of medical evidence" or what-have-you and put the burden of proof on the patient.
The law in this country is built to deny health coverage for profit.
A stupid example: I went for an annual checkup last year and my old primary had retired. New guy checks my ears, and casually recommended a wax removal as there was some obstruction, said we could just get it done then and there. I'm on a state research university's basic health plan as full time faculty.
A few days later, got a bill for $1,500...no mistake. That shit was legitimately not covered. Had to be on the premium plan and even then I'd have to pay some amount out of pocket. It didn't even occur to me that I was having a "minor procedure" because it was so casual and off the cuff in the moment. Just squirting some salinated water into my ear. This place is fucking wild.
There is a certain degree of privilege in being able to follow the absolute "moral" approach to any conflict. Hence when judging the principal actors an analysis of the level of privilege involved is always necessary.
Mangione deserves to be tried and should probably be convicted if found guilty (he's admitted not guilty so just wait for the trial). But his actions must be viewed from the lens of someone in his position, not from us who've never had anything close to the motive for what he ended up doing.
My first instinct is always that we should never condone murder. Yet I am open to violent acts being committed by the oppressed. Like in Palestine. Like Haiti in the past. Like South Africa in the past. Victims of societal violence. They have tried every outlet to change things.
Injustice is just slow violence. Let's not pretend there's not been all the different tried ways to reform healthcare in the US. Everybody knows it's broken except the most privileged, even those outside the States. Through that lens, I can perfectly understand that while he should be punished, Mangione would nevertheless be seen as a hero.
Coombs sorry to, wait for it... Hear this!
Seriously though the health/pharma industry is just a huge scam. No amount of assassination will help. These folks will simply upgrade their personal security detail. Too much money and too much corruption involved. It's depressing. There's people I know who have fallen into a life of virtually unpayable debt due to a surprise/emergency medical bill.
Had to give up on this thread after Christmas leave was called bourgeois.
A key part of the system’s function is the promise to the managerial class that they will never be held to moral account for their actions in service to the power of capital. The murder put a small, brief crack in that promise, and the reaction shows the fear of the promise ever being betrayed.
If the human race survives, servants to capital like Thompson will be judged like Eichman, though I doubt we’ll get there.
yuppa Had to give up on this thread
If you hadn't maybe you would have read my clarification. Poor choice of words on my part (I was using it colloquially, not literally) but from the rest of your post it seems we'd disagree on this anyway.
Capital doesn't just exist in the abstract. It's a tool used by actual people. Nobody serves capital, that doesn't make any sense. It is used, mostly it to exploit others through processes of exclusion and sequestration.
No cracks in any mysterious promise was opened. The inherent violence of capitalism was reaffirmed and reinscribed, and so, too, the power dynamics it engenders across classes.
Fucking hell man, scary shit. Seen some videos of houses collapsing with the fire.
Euro stoxx 50 up 10% in the last month (since Trump tariffs threats). Markets are weird!
Kel Varnsen Euro stoxx 50 up 10% in the last month (since Trump tariffs threats). Markets are weird!
they went up in response to clawbacks of his previous tariff announcements. But the tariffs will be coming in the next quarter. Yes, markets are weird.
