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.

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.

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.

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.