"But it would not surprise me if the killer stalked Thompson because UnitedHealthcare had denied medical coverage, or forced a family or an individual into bankruptcy, after the company failed to cover a serious illness." I agree ~ I fought with a health insurance company for 9 months to obtain treatment that my daughter required and was caught in a Catch-22 loop and denied coverage (no need to go into detail on that). Suffice it to say, I drove to the regional headquarters of that particular insurer one morning and camped in the lobby with my documentation until someone with the authority to reverse their denial of coverage would speak to me.
I was told repeatedly that the only person who could help me was unavailable for the rest of the day, and they were unsure of his schedule for the rest of the week. I said no problem, I'll wait all day if necessary. Around 4 PM I was called into a conference room and the manager of that office agreed to hear me out. After 30 minutes he left the room to discuss my case with "the decision maker." After another 30 minutes he returned and said, they had reversed their denial and that my daughter could receive her treatment. And sure enough, they followed through as promised.
But despite my joy at obtaining coverage, I could not help but be angry with the realization that not everyone in similar circumstances is as stubborn and motivated as me, lives in a city with a regional office of their health insurance carrier, or could take an entire day off to press the issue in person at said office. Our country's for-profit healthcare system is a crime against humanity. That we permit our government to perpetuate this travesty is shameful.
I applaud Paul Bruno's perseverance for the sake of his child. I also really appreciate the nod to families who don't have the resources to fight in the same way. I think the same sentiment can also extend to families who never had a chance of winning a similar battle.
My family never stood a chance in trying to get coverage for our sick child but, rather than conceding total defeat, we left the US-- something else which took resources and technical advantages the vast majority of US families don't have. So I relate to having a sense of relief tempered by the sad knowledge that countless others don't have the options we had.
I'll get a little more into the nitty gritty details than Paul Bruno did about our personal situation but I hope some of it provides a bit of food for thought because we're hardly alone in what we gone through. The reason we never stood a chance of getting treatment covered was largely because the only "officially" recognized biomedical treatments for our son's autoimmune-related neurological disorder were on-patent major sedatives and other psychopharmaceuticals. Because we were never going to give our son drugs which, aside from never having been approved for children, had such terrifying side effect profiles merely to control behaviors related to his condition, my husband and I were forced to pay out of pocket for the cost of recovering our son through non-psychoactive medical approaches.
For the record, none of the remedies we used involved "crystal healing" or other iffy nonsense, all were based on established and peer-reviewed science and were prescribed by experienced MDs based on standard laboratory analyses. But even while the National Institute of Health regularly published research supporting the exact protocols we used, the NIMH's official page on our son's condition only recommended psychopharmaceuticals (by brand) and intensive behavioral therapy which also is not covered and which we could not afford.
For years we shouldered these costs but could scarcely afford to do anything else for our kids like extracurricular sports and music training, etc. As our kids got older, the potential tragedy of this weighed on us so heavily that we eventually left the US and began to spend most of the year in a country with universal health and a far better cost of living which, aside from other benefits, enabled us to give our kids a much richer educational experience while continuing to treat our son's condition.
We also left the US because our refusal to put our son on the standard "behavioral drugs" (i.e., chemical straight jackets) most schools prefer for disabled students as the price of inclusive education. Though pressuring families to drug disabled children is not legal, there are many indirect ways that schools pressure families to drug the shit out of disabled students. Long story short, our noncompliance with "recommendations" led to a dangerous standoff with the district which eventually resulted in our fragile, then very young son being physically abused by school staff. That's another saga but it's quite clear to us how it related in part to the same corruption in healthcare that led to us shouldering treatment costs.
In any event, the proof's in the pudding that the so-called "alternative" treatment protocols were the better choice because our son defied all original dire prognoses. This even prompted his veteran pediatrician to go on the radio and, without naming names, describe our son's "rare recovery" and attribute this to some of the "simple" yet very expensive measures we took to do this. This was partly a preface for the pediatrician to decry how insurers would only cover treatments for which they receive kickbacks (no big secret: https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2023/02/27/the-hidden-system-of-legal-kickbacks-shaping-the-u-s-prescription-drug-market/ ) and the same treatments for which US regulators receive kickbacks despite the fact the same drugs being pushed by the NIMH are widely known to cause or worsen the very same cellular damage underlying our son's autoimmune condition.
This doctor concluded with a similar point that Paul Bruno made, which is that very few families with afflicted children could shoulder the cost of so-called "alternative" non-drug treatments, consequently it broke his heart to recommend these measures to those he knew could not afford them for their children. Furthermore, he'd had several patients whose families had been harassed by schools or the state for using alternative protocols rather than standard behavioral drugs on the grounds of "medical neglect" (despite no evidence the drugs correct any underlying condition) or charges vaguely related to "Munchausen-by-proxy" simply for giving kids diets free of chemical additives based on well-established but not officially "condoned" science related to microbiome and autoimmune inflammatory processes. The most this doctor could do was to keep his own fees down, keep stubbornly submitting claims to insurers, finding loopholes to get remedies covered, guiding families through the gauntlet and, as he had done for us, help to defend families against official pressure to drug the shit out of their disabled children and enrich the drug and healthcare industries in the process.
What our kids' doctor didn't mention during the radio interview is that he also kept his practice open ten years past typical retirement age because he was the only remaining doctor in our area who had not been scared off of going outside official recommendations-- also why his practice had a five year waiting list for new patients.
This pediatrician was basically the last man standing for over 10,000 square miles. I always suspected this related to the fact his father had been an Italian partisan fighter in Italy in WWII so no one had to explain to him the relationship between fascism and deadly corruption in science and medicine.
All told, the cost of medically treating our son out of pocket from the age of two to the present has been well over $1m USD. We'll never get a penny of it back for all we've paid for insurance. And I don't even want to go into some of heartbreaking details of leaving the US and going into what is essentially "medical exile." But we console ourselves that, aside from our son doing very well these days, we've learned a thing or two about keeping the entire family healthy from our son's ordeal and, as a result, have probably robbed and will continue to rob the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries of far more than that in terms of copays, kickbacks and drug profits.
Living in a country with universal healthcare has been inspiring in many ways. One among many "inspiring" stories I've heard was about the mother of the lovely young single mom who cleans our apartment complex who received cutting edge treatment for severe bowel cancer at zero cost to this economically struggling family and who is now cancer-free and doing very well. But this young woman and I talk frequently about how the new neoliberal regime in this country is trying to kill public health in order to follow the US model for healthcare. We often joke about it with gallows humor-- how TV and media bs depictions of the glamorous and easy life in the US that many in her country have been led to believe are true are fueling this insane wave of support for neoliberalism.
But at the end of the day none of this is funny. We've both expressed an increasing sense of dread that neoliberalism is a kind of contagion spreading across the globe and, eventually, there will be nowhere to hide from it. And when, at last, there's nowhere to hide from it and no bureaucratic loophole to amend it, the last of its masks will drop and it will reveal itself as radically evil, radically violent and radically deadly.
Bravo; everyone should become as stubborn and motivated as you. At that point, we all see the needle get moved.
In a functioning republic, citizen responsibility does not end at the ballot box. To paraphrase B. Franklin: "A republic works... only if you can keep it." By that, I believe he meant it takes constant work and vigil.
Thank you very kindly for the kind words! But I have to say that being stubborn and motivated only go so far. I can't claim that my husband and I are particularly special in that regard but just that we had certain advantages. For one, my husband already had citizenship in a country with free healthcare. He also had no student loan debt to weigh us down because his country of origin also has free universal university education. So we-- as a struggling middle class family- could (just barely) afford to make this move. It definitely helped that our kids got automatic citizenship and that I got automatic residency through marriage.
I can take a little bit of credit that it required a lot of courage to move a family to another country, learn a new language and adapt to a new culture. And we can take credit for the fact there were sacrifices to be made. For one, we lost several beloved family elders in that time, especially during Covid lockdowns when we couldn't travel to see anyone. But the fact we even had the options available to us to address our son's issues is exceedingly rare. I know in my heart that the vast majority of parents would do the same and more for the sake of their children or other loved ones if they only had the chance. But most don't.
As corporate execs keep sucking the life out of the rest of us and the planet, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more incidents in the future. A universal norm of compassion & sharing could change the lives of everyone on the planet for the best. That’s how we all started out.
This will mostly be a boost for personal protective services providers, which may at least put some serious constraints on the lives of these ghouls and their families.
Glenn Greenwald talked about his personal experience with UH when his husband was dying. It wasn't pretty.
I am most fortunate to be on Medicare. UHC is my supplemental and I haven't had a problem. My husband had myriad life threatening health issues that led to multiple ER visits & hospitalizations. Medicare paid for it all.
Clearly a national, public health insurance system is long overoverdue.
some hospitals that are non-profit are part of companies that also have health insurance, so you pay a lot for a limited network, only their hospitals and a reduced number of doctors that are part of their medical groups. AdventHealth is one of those. The health insurance they run is HealthFirst (in Central Florida)
I also am on Medicare, getting my supplemental coverage from United Healthcare, and so far have not had any problems. However that said, I'm considering dropping UH for another company, now that I know how bad their denial rate is (the highest, as it turns out!) Just makes me so angry. I know I'm not affected, since they're required by law to cover the balance of anything Medicare covers. But a 32% denial rate is too offensive, beyond what I can tolerate. And they just raised the rate of my supplemental coverage another FIFTY BUCKS!!! Bye-bye, United Healthcare!! (Greedy parasites)
One needs to understand that Traditional Medicare is an entirely different entity than Medicare “Advantage” (Part C). It sounds like you have Traditional Medicare with a Medigap policy that helps cover 20% of Part B that patients are responsible for.
In Traditional Medicare the payment schedules are determined by Medicare and the Medigap insurance pays toward those fees as directed. How much is covered by Medigap is determined on what lettered program a person chooses. Most medical facilities/clinicians now accept assignment which means they do not and cannot bill patients extra if fees were denied or discounted by Medicare. Except patients can be billed for procedures never covered by Medicare like some preventative services. Now whether you have UHC or Anthem, or Aetna etc for your Medigap insurer coverage, the lettered coverage you picked determines similar payments from any one of them.
Medicare “Advantage” is the privatization of Medicare. This is mostly a HMO model where insurers can deny care or payment for any number of reasons. Most seniors do not understand this as they are bombarded by grand literature of Advantage programs being premium free or that they cover a small amount toward hearing aids, eyeglasses and dental work. Advantage plans bill the U.S. Government for services they provide, often coded at higher fees than Traditional Medicare allows and they tend to look for huge profits by denying medical care payments for more complicated care that take a bigger bite out of their set fees. The private system states officially it only denies payment for unnecessary or unproven treatments and they are streamlining the system as expected. Studies have shown that Advantage program care does not have better medical outcomes than the less expensive Traditional Medicare. Also Advantage programs usually deny care outside their panel of providers, whereas in Traditional Medicare these restrictions rarely exist.
Once a person is in the Advantage system for awhile, in most cases it is difficult to switch to Traditional Medicare without an underwriting process for the 20% Part B Medigap coverage, which means often higher premiums paid.
I have seen the inside of the private insurance non-coverage schemes and former insurance company employees have explained that significant numbers of denials for payment coverage are arbitrary. These denial of payment (care), work to significantly increase the insurance industry profits. They understand that few people will have the time or fortitude to fight these denied care claims. It is truly inhumane, profits above all else, obscenely profiting off the illnesses of our citizens, and often leading to personal bankruptcies and personal tragedies.
Be careful what you ask for. Once you have a single payer, they hold all the cards. And there will be no one to take your call of even see you if you are denied care.
We are a nation in a total crisis of morality. I live in NYC and frequent the midtown area. Shameful. To think that we deny healthcare and protect Israel’s crimes against humanity, now completely exposed, is remarkable. I think these things will happen more.
As is often the case, Chris Hedges, armed with great journalistic instincts paired with deep humanity, is able to express what others only intuit.
Yes, torches and pitchforks are being readied, and the targets will often be the wrong ones. For now, we can wait and maybe see the outcome and learn the motive, but as with any violence, there is always a better way. The eruption of violence is partly the result of repressed communication. If only we had more Hedges’s and fewer walls.
I agree with Chris. We just heard this news report here in Canada at 7 PM and that was my VERY first thought. Someone who was denied health care seeking revenge. In a country where every solution to a problem is to pull out a gun and start shooting, then nothing surprises me. Commenting from the 51st state!
I'm glad I moved to Mexico. The health care system is outstanding! I make an appointment, see the doctor, s/he recommends treatment, period. $800 pesos for the visit which is roughly $40 U.S. Yes, I pay for treatment but no one's telling me it's medically unnecessary. I get to function as a grown-up who makes my own decisions, not a functionary in a cubicle who mercilessly makes life or death decisions.
We in the U.S. are a culture marinated in violence. From domestic abuse in our homes, to the reveling in violent resolutions to antagonists in popular entertaiment, to the organized violence of the NFL, to the industrial slaughter practiced by the U.S. military against 'enemies', there is no escape.
Thanatos is our national religion - and we will all pay a price for it, whether personally or growing more cynical as the body count continues to grow - to include those whose lives are remote from the suffering and violence they have caused either through arrogance or indifference.
Yes. I'm thinking of that woman who shot, and killed, a man on her doorstep, through her locked door! because she was afraid of him. At trial her mental illness, or at any rate emotional fragility, was raised as a mitigating factor. What I thought was: No gun, no shooting.
Yes, that's the first thing I thought also; it must be someone who faces death or bankruptcy because United Health Care refused to honor their obligations. It wouldn't be the first time someone was driven to an extreme because of the perfidy, greed and fraud of the health insurance industry. Another vampire will soon take his place.
We're supposed to feel a twinge of guilt for that view, but to hell with it; I'm so sick of corporate criminals, and the behavior is so ingrained up and down that bureaucratic structure that only radical signals to these sociopaths have any chance of being heard. You'd like to think you could say: "Hey dickwad, your corporation is essentially a murderer" and have it have an impact, but sociopaths are immune to that.
No, I agree with the people who are empathizing with the man who shot him, on the assumption he was denied coverage, but I don't think they are supporting killing the man. He also has a family, a wife, children who will suffer from his loss. Can't change the system by killing people.
What the US has can be more aptly described as disease care -- extremely lucrative palliative drugs and surgery to mitigate the effects of idiotic lifestyles. Health care should be proactive, not largely palliative, but that's only a minor slice of what I see. Pharma money drives the disease-care model to stay on track to generate huge profits and consumers, brainwashed by nonstop advertising, just go merrily along.
Unfortunately too many who are treated, by no means the majority, die while being treated due to medical negligence. I know people who died under the knife like a cousin, a bypass but also a sliced aorta.
I had a mixture of shame and excitement hit me when I heard who the victim was and thought that it was a good start.
They do what they do because no price is paid for their actions.
This one paid.
I know that this is the part where I'm supposed to be sorry but I've seen people crushed by cost of medical conditions that were no fault of their own.
What's sad is that we have a for-profit healthcare system. The ultimate goal of any business is to maximize shareholder profits, which is intrinsically in opposition to the goal of proper healthcare, which is to maximize the benefit to the patient.
As a stage four cancer patient I’m lucky. I’m on disability, Original Medicare and have a second policy through my spouses job. Even with all that I’m had to fight denial of some claims in addition to fighting for my life.
That could all change in a year when the coverage from my spouse coverage ends and Trump gut both social security and medicare. I wonder what happens then not just for me but millions of other families and individuals who have nothing left to lose?
Trump is not going to gut social security and medicare. I don't know why they are saying such things, since it can only make sick people feel even more insecure. I wish you well.
More bullshit. If medicare funds run out, it will be because of the interest cost on our mountain of cumulative federal debt. Right now that stands at just over $2.75B a day! The President doesn't control the country's purse strings, Congress does. If the President approves spending under an executive act, then it's because Congress approved it or gave it to him in the first place.
Thanks well wishes. I need them all. Curious about why you think Trump won’t gut medicare when they keep saying that’s the plan especially after winning the election?
No matter what you think of Trump one has to acknowledge the democratic party vilified him and made all matter of accusations and claims that were simply not true, and cutting medicare and social security was one of those lies backed by media like CNN. Harris during her presidential run also made that claim. Remember, the democrats also pushed the lie of Russia-gate, and used him to glorify themselves. Trump repeatedly said that cuts to either was not going to happen, and considering his base cutting either is absurd on it's face. I use to be a registered democrat, but I hated the way they used him and made a real attempt to remove him from office based on lies. I'm an independent now. We're finished. Check it out with Fact Check, even though they sometimes get their facts wrong.
Saying that the Democrats “vilified” Trump is bizarre. His own actions vilify him, but what’s unconscionable is that Republicans and Trump himself used vile, vulgar, racist and sexist language to vilify Harris.
What those in politics, especially at this level, say and what they do are often totally at odds with each other. Biden is an excellent example. Only time will tell, especially with Trump, who is sometimes a lot less predictable.
I also blame our US popular media. The only way presented in most of our media to resolve conflict is a lone man with a gun (or various contests of force and violence). This very much limits the imagination. And occasionally, some men act violently as individuals. Shooting a CEO will not change the system. To achieve a just medical care system, we require not a lone individual acting out of rage, but mass action pressuring politicians to pass significant reform that strangles and crushes the inhuman for-profit medical system. Banish the parasites. They don't like their jobs anyways. The trillion dollars sucked up by them could go towards actual useful jobs.
You don't know, at this point, that the gunman brought the subject to the surface. That's your opinion which I feel your are morally obligated to qualify it as such. If not, you simply present yourself as ignorant of the facts. Your choice to be ignorant.
We do, however, know that the media brought the subject to the surface, though. There could be nefarious reasons for that--which have nothing to do with the assassination. I recommend that you try to think outside the box that media's predictive programming M.O. has put most people in.
Payday Report Covering Labor in News Deserts. Earlier today, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was assassinated in New York City. Ken Kipplestein broke the news . Thompson was being sued by the firefighters union of Hollywood, Florida.
The union sued Thompson for failing to reveal that United Healthcare was under DOJ investigation. As a result, the pension fund lost $25 billion in value.
Meanwhile, Thompson had cashed out over $15 million in stock while selling the stock to pension funds like those of the Hollywood Firefighters union. Read Ken Kipplestein's full story at PAYDAY REPORT on how Thompson defrauded union pension funds. Melk
Perhaps like me, you read many stories on multiple different websites. It’s easy to mistake one for another. I went to Payday News and did a search on the topic and author, but returned zero results. In the interest of tracking this down, I came across this. https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/lawsuit-against-murdered-ceo
Could this be what you are referring to? I hope it turns up on his Substack as well.
Thompson's fate was richly deserved, and I'm hoping for more soon to follow. I'm also hoping, probably in vain, that Thompson's killer is never caught. Far as I'm concerned, that guy is a frickin' hero!!
I suspect that the first thought that went through most people’s minds was indeed that it was revenge for a denial of care, if not also a dubiously effective protest against the health insurance industry. It will be remarkable if it proves otherwise.
The questions arise of when such violence is justified and what counts as violence. On the second question first, why is it that the explicit, dramatic, instantaneous, and deliberate act that is a cold-blooded shooting is considered more of a violent act, or a crime, than routinely denying health care en masse to people who need it who then die as a result? I don’t know the answer but the intuition that, in denying medical care, the relatively attenuated connection between the perpetrator and the victim makes it count less or at all as a kind of homicide needs to be looked at more closely than it has been looked at thus far.
On the first question, I do not believe violence for violence is ever justified except in self-defense, but sometimes I do not know what else but violence, and the fear and sense of emergency it generates, even if it is not justified and even if it Is ineffective in the long term, will get the attention of those who need to pay attention before meaningful change can take place. Violence in that case might still be necessary, though one might wish it were not. This is another issue that cannot be resolved simply by adverting to platitudes about the immorality of violence.
"But it would not surprise me if the killer stalked Thompson because UnitedHealthcare had denied medical coverage, or forced a family or an individual into bankruptcy, after the company failed to cover a serious illness." I agree ~ I fought with a health insurance company for 9 months to obtain treatment that my daughter required and was caught in a Catch-22 loop and denied coverage (no need to go into detail on that). Suffice it to say, I drove to the regional headquarters of that particular insurer one morning and camped in the lobby with my documentation until someone with the authority to reverse their denial of coverage would speak to me.
I was told repeatedly that the only person who could help me was unavailable for the rest of the day, and they were unsure of his schedule for the rest of the week. I said no problem, I'll wait all day if necessary. Around 4 PM I was called into a conference room and the manager of that office agreed to hear me out. After 30 minutes he left the room to discuss my case with "the decision maker." After another 30 minutes he returned and said, they had reversed their denial and that my daughter could receive her treatment. And sure enough, they followed through as promised.
But despite my joy at obtaining coverage, I could not help but be angry with the realization that not everyone in similar circumstances is as stubborn and motivated as me, lives in a city with a regional office of their health insurance carrier, or could take an entire day off to press the issue in person at said office. Our country's for-profit healthcare system is a crime against humanity. That we permit our government to perpetuate this travesty is shameful.
Not everyone, how about most. You're a really good Daddy.
I applaud Paul Bruno's perseverance for the sake of his child. I also really appreciate the nod to families who don't have the resources to fight in the same way. I think the same sentiment can also extend to families who never had a chance of winning a similar battle.
My family never stood a chance in trying to get coverage for our sick child but, rather than conceding total defeat, we left the US-- something else which took resources and technical advantages the vast majority of US families don't have. So I relate to having a sense of relief tempered by the sad knowledge that countless others don't have the options we had.
I'll get a little more into the nitty gritty details than Paul Bruno did about our personal situation but I hope some of it provides a bit of food for thought because we're hardly alone in what we gone through. The reason we never stood a chance of getting treatment covered was largely because the only "officially" recognized biomedical treatments for our son's autoimmune-related neurological disorder were on-patent major sedatives and other psychopharmaceuticals. Because we were never going to give our son drugs which, aside from never having been approved for children, had such terrifying side effect profiles merely to control behaviors related to his condition, my husband and I were forced to pay out of pocket for the cost of recovering our son through non-psychoactive medical approaches.
For the record, none of the remedies we used involved "crystal healing" or other iffy nonsense, all were based on established and peer-reviewed science and were prescribed by experienced MDs based on standard laboratory analyses. But even while the National Institute of Health regularly published research supporting the exact protocols we used, the NIMH's official page on our son's condition only recommended psychopharmaceuticals (by brand) and intensive behavioral therapy which also is not covered and which we could not afford.
For years we shouldered these costs but could scarcely afford to do anything else for our kids like extracurricular sports and music training, etc. As our kids got older, the potential tragedy of this weighed on us so heavily that we eventually left the US and began to spend most of the year in a country with universal health and a far better cost of living which, aside from other benefits, enabled us to give our kids a much richer educational experience while continuing to treat our son's condition.
We also left the US because our refusal to put our son on the standard "behavioral drugs" (i.e., chemical straight jackets) most schools prefer for disabled students as the price of inclusive education. Though pressuring families to drug disabled children is not legal, there are many indirect ways that schools pressure families to drug the shit out of disabled students. Long story short, our noncompliance with "recommendations" led to a dangerous standoff with the district which eventually resulted in our fragile, then very young son being physically abused by school staff. That's another saga but it's quite clear to us how it related in part to the same corruption in healthcare that led to us shouldering treatment costs.
In any event, the proof's in the pudding that the so-called "alternative" treatment protocols were the better choice because our son defied all original dire prognoses. This even prompted his veteran pediatrician to go on the radio and, without naming names, describe our son's "rare recovery" and attribute this to some of the "simple" yet very expensive measures we took to do this. This was partly a preface for the pediatrician to decry how insurers would only cover treatments for which they receive kickbacks (no big secret: https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2023/02/27/the-hidden-system-of-legal-kickbacks-shaping-the-u-s-prescription-drug-market/ ) and the same treatments for which US regulators receive kickbacks despite the fact the same drugs being pushed by the NIMH are widely known to cause or worsen the very same cellular damage underlying our son's autoimmune condition.
This doctor concluded with a similar point that Paul Bruno made, which is that very few families with afflicted children could shoulder the cost of so-called "alternative" non-drug treatments, consequently it broke his heart to recommend these measures to those he knew could not afford them for their children. Furthermore, he'd had several patients whose families had been harassed by schools or the state for using alternative protocols rather than standard behavioral drugs on the grounds of "medical neglect" (despite no evidence the drugs correct any underlying condition) or charges vaguely related to "Munchausen-by-proxy" simply for giving kids diets free of chemical additives based on well-established but not officially "condoned" science related to microbiome and autoimmune inflammatory processes. The most this doctor could do was to keep his own fees down, keep stubbornly submitting claims to insurers, finding loopholes to get remedies covered, guiding families through the gauntlet and, as he had done for us, help to defend families against official pressure to drug the shit out of their disabled children and enrich the drug and healthcare industries in the process.
What our kids' doctor didn't mention during the radio interview is that he also kept his practice open ten years past typical retirement age because he was the only remaining doctor in our area who had not been scared off of going outside official recommendations-- also why his practice had a five year waiting list for new patients.
This pediatrician was basically the last man standing for over 10,000 square miles. I always suspected this related to the fact his father had been an Italian partisan fighter in Italy in WWII so no one had to explain to him the relationship between fascism and deadly corruption in science and medicine.
All told, the cost of medically treating our son out of pocket from the age of two to the present has been well over $1m USD. We'll never get a penny of it back for all we've paid for insurance. And I don't even want to go into some of heartbreaking details of leaving the US and going into what is essentially "medical exile." But we console ourselves that, aside from our son doing very well these days, we've learned a thing or two about keeping the entire family healthy from our son's ordeal and, as a result, have probably robbed and will continue to rob the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries of far more than that in terms of copays, kickbacks and drug profits.
Living in a country with universal healthcare has been inspiring in many ways. One among many "inspiring" stories I've heard was about the mother of the lovely young single mom who cleans our apartment complex who received cutting edge treatment for severe bowel cancer at zero cost to this economically struggling family and who is now cancer-free and doing very well. But this young woman and I talk frequently about how the new neoliberal regime in this country is trying to kill public health in order to follow the US model for healthcare. We often joke about it with gallows humor-- how TV and media bs depictions of the glamorous and easy life in the US that many in her country have been led to believe are true are fueling this insane wave of support for neoliberalism.
But at the end of the day none of this is funny. We've both expressed an increasing sense of dread that neoliberalism is a kind of contagion spreading across the globe and, eventually, there will be nowhere to hide from it. And when, at last, there's nowhere to hide from it and no bureaucratic loophole to amend it, the last of its masks will drop and it will reveal itself as radically evil, radically violent and radically deadly.
You’re my hero.
Bravo; everyone should become as stubborn and motivated as you. At that point, we all see the needle get moved.
In a functioning republic, citizen responsibility does not end at the ballot box. To paraphrase B. Franklin: "A republic works... only if you can keep it." By that, I believe he meant it takes constant work and vigil.
Thank you very kindly for the kind words! But I have to say that being stubborn and motivated only go so far. I can't claim that my husband and I are particularly special in that regard but just that we had certain advantages. For one, my husband already had citizenship in a country with free healthcare. He also had no student loan debt to weigh us down because his country of origin also has free universal university education. So we-- as a struggling middle class family- could (just barely) afford to make this move. It definitely helped that our kids got automatic citizenship and that I got automatic residency through marriage.
I can take a little bit of credit that it required a lot of courage to move a family to another country, learn a new language and adapt to a new culture. And we can take credit for the fact there were sacrifices to be made. For one, we lost several beloved family elders in that time, especially during Covid lockdowns when we couldn't travel to see anyone. But the fact we even had the options available to us to address our son's issues is exceedingly rare. I know in my heart that the vast majority of parents would do the same and more for the sake of their children or other loved ones if they only had the chance. But most don't.
As corporate execs keep sucking the life out of the rest of us and the planet, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more incidents in the future. A universal norm of compassion & sharing could change the lives of everyone on the planet for the best. That’s how we all started out.
I’m an Australian and I’m so shocked that Americans tolerate this type of system. I can see why so many people would fall through the cracks. So sad
When you 're on a tight rope, everything beneath you is one big crack.
This will mostly be a boost for personal protective services providers, which may at least put some serious constraints on the lives of these ghouls and their families.
I doubt it. It more likely will just boost premiums and/or deductible levels as they pass on the additional overhead.
Glenn Greenwald talked about his personal experience with UH when his husband was dying. It wasn't pretty.
I am most fortunate to be on Medicare. UHC is my supplemental and I haven't had a problem. My husband had myriad life threatening health issues that led to multiple ER visits & hospitalizations. Medicare paid for it all.
Clearly a national, public health insurance system is long overoverdue.
It's the same for ANY major or minor insurance provider. UH is not an outlier. BCBS is just as bad.
The same happens with the "non-profit" umbrella companies. Hiding behind the status of charity, exploiting people when they need the most.
Not sure there are any non-profit insurance companies left
some hospitals that are non-profit are part of companies that also have health insurance, so you pay a lot for a limited network, only their hospitals and a reduced number of doctors that are part of their medical groups. AdventHealth is one of those. The health insurance they run is HealthFirst (in Central Florida)
I also am on Medicare, getting my supplemental coverage from United Healthcare, and so far have not had any problems. However that said, I'm considering dropping UH for another company, now that I know how bad their denial rate is (the highest, as it turns out!) Just makes me so angry. I know I'm not affected, since they're required by law to cover the balance of anything Medicare covers. But a 32% denial rate is too offensive, beyond what I can tolerate. And they just raised the rate of my supplemental coverage another FIFTY BUCKS!!! Bye-bye, United Healthcare!! (Greedy parasites)
One needs to understand that Traditional Medicare is an entirely different entity than Medicare “Advantage” (Part C). It sounds like you have Traditional Medicare with a Medigap policy that helps cover 20% of Part B that patients are responsible for.
In Traditional Medicare the payment schedules are determined by Medicare and the Medigap insurance pays toward those fees as directed. How much is covered by Medigap is determined on what lettered program a person chooses. Most medical facilities/clinicians now accept assignment which means they do not and cannot bill patients extra if fees were denied or discounted by Medicare. Except patients can be billed for procedures never covered by Medicare like some preventative services. Now whether you have UHC or Anthem, or Aetna etc for your Medigap insurer coverage, the lettered coverage you picked determines similar payments from any one of them.
Medicare “Advantage” is the privatization of Medicare. This is mostly a HMO model where insurers can deny care or payment for any number of reasons. Most seniors do not understand this as they are bombarded by grand literature of Advantage programs being premium free or that they cover a small amount toward hearing aids, eyeglasses and dental work. Advantage plans bill the U.S. Government for services they provide, often coded at higher fees than Traditional Medicare allows and they tend to look for huge profits by denying medical care payments for more complicated care that take a bigger bite out of their set fees. The private system states officially it only denies payment for unnecessary or unproven treatments and they are streamlining the system as expected. Studies have shown that Advantage program care does not have better medical outcomes than the less expensive Traditional Medicare. Also Advantage programs usually deny care outside their panel of providers, whereas in Traditional Medicare these restrictions rarely exist.
Once a person is in the Advantage system for awhile, in most cases it is difficult to switch to Traditional Medicare without an underwriting process for the 20% Part B Medigap coverage, which means often higher premiums paid.
I have seen the inside of the private insurance non-coverage schemes and former insurance company employees have explained that significant numbers of denials for payment coverage are arbitrary. These denial of payment (care), work to significantly increase the insurance industry profits. They understand that few people will have the time or fortitude to fight these denied care claims. It is truly inhumane, profits above all else, obscenely profiting off the illnesses of our citizens, and often leading to personal bankruptcies and personal tragedies.
Be careful what you ask for. Once you have a single payer, they hold all the cards. And there will be no one to take your call of even see you if you are denied care.
Why? I am not trying to be flippant here. I genuinely want to know the reasons behind your opinion.
We are a nation in a total crisis of morality. I live in NYC and frequent the midtown area. Shameful. To think that we deny healthcare and protect Israel’s crimes against humanity, now completely exposed, is remarkable. I think these things will happen more.
As is often the case, Chris Hedges, armed with great journalistic instincts paired with deep humanity, is able to express what others only intuit.
Yes, torches and pitchforks are being readied, and the targets will often be the wrong ones. For now, we can wait and maybe see the outcome and learn the motive, but as with any violence, there is always a better way. The eruption of violence is partly the result of repressed communication. If only we had more Hedges’s and fewer walls.
This is a good group. We need to start a movement
It already started.
I agree with Chris. We just heard this news report here in Canada at 7 PM and that was my VERY first thought. Someone who was denied health care seeking revenge. In a country where every solution to a problem is to pull out a gun and start shooting, then nothing surprises me. Commenting from the 51st state!
Yes, I'm so glad I came to Canada decades ago.
I'm glad I moved to Mexico. The health care system is outstanding! I make an appointment, see the doctor, s/he recommends treatment, period. $800 pesos for the visit which is roughly $40 U.S. Yes, I pay for treatment but no one's telling me it's medically unnecessary. I get to function as a grown-up who makes my own decisions, not a functionary in a cubicle who mercilessly makes life or death decisions.
Yes, the country whose parliament openly celebrated and fetted a former nazi ss soldier for his service in opposing the allied resistance.
What has that got to do with universal medical coverage?
I jumped to the same conclusion about possible motives.
So did I
We in the U.S. are a culture marinated in violence. From domestic abuse in our homes, to the reveling in violent resolutions to antagonists in popular entertaiment, to the organized violence of the NFL, to the industrial slaughter practiced by the U.S. military against 'enemies', there is no escape.
Thanatos is our national religion - and we will all pay a price for it, whether personally or growing more cynical as the body count continues to grow - to include those whose lives are remote from the suffering and violence they have caused either through arrogance or indifference.
Yes. I'm thinking of that woman who shot, and killed, a man on her doorstep, through her locked door! because she was afraid of him. At trial her mental illness, or at any rate emotional fragility, was raised as a mitigating factor. What I thought was: No gun, no shooting.
Violence, and greed. A bad combination.
Yes, that's the first thing I thought also; it must be someone who faces death or bankruptcy because United Health Care refused to honor their obligations. It wouldn't be the first time someone was driven to an extreme because of the perfidy, greed and fraud of the health insurance industry. Another vampire will soon take his place.
What goes around comes around. I won’t be shedding any tears. He was the head of an evil corporation. Good riddance.
We're supposed to feel a twinge of guilt for that view, but to hell with it; I'm so sick of corporate criminals, and the behavior is so ingrained up and down that bureaucratic structure that only radical signals to these sociopaths have any chance of being heard. You'd like to think you could say: "Hey dickwad, your corporation is essentially a murderer" and have it have an impact, but sociopaths are immune to that.
No, I agree with the people who are empathizing with the man who shot him, on the assumption he was denied coverage, but I don't think they are supporting killing the man. He also has a family, a wife, children who will suffer from his loss. Can't change the system by killing people.
Maybe you can. Put the fear of God in them. Amen.
I'm sure there are other ways.
What the US has can be more aptly described as disease care -- extremely lucrative palliative drugs and surgery to mitigate the effects of idiotic lifestyles. Health care should be proactive, not largely palliative, but that's only a minor slice of what I see. Pharma money drives the disease-care model to stay on track to generate huge profits and consumers, brainwashed by nonstop advertising, just go merrily along.
Unfortunately too many who are treated, by no means the majority, die while being treated due to medical negligence. I know people who died under the knife like a cousin, a bypass but also a sliced aorta.
I had a mixture of shame and excitement hit me when I heard who the victim was and thought that it was a good start.
They do what they do because no price is paid for their actions.
This one paid.
I know that this is the part where I'm supposed to be sorry but I've seen people crushed by cost of medical conditions that were no fault of their own.
No one cries for their spouses or children.
It’s so sad that there seems to be no real government regulation of these providers
What's sad is that we have a for-profit healthcare system. The ultimate goal of any business is to maximize shareholder profits, which is intrinsically in opposition to the goal of proper healthcare, which is to maximize the benefit to the patient.
As a stage four cancer patient I’m lucky. I’m on disability, Original Medicare and have a second policy through my spouses job. Even with all that I’m had to fight denial of some claims in addition to fighting for my life.
That could all change in a year when the coverage from my spouse coverage ends and Trump gut both social security and medicare. I wonder what happens then not just for me but millions of other families and individuals who have nothing left to lose?
So sorry you have to face this situation. Sending prayers 🙏
Trump is not going to gut social security and medicare. I don't know why they are saying such things, since it can only make sick people feel even more insecure. I wish you well.
This is not from some hippy commie news source; it’s from Forbes!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/11/06/how-trump-could-affect-social-security-and-medicare-group-warns-funds-could-run-out-in-6-years-under-his-plans/
More bullshit. If medicare funds run out, it will be because of the interest cost on our mountain of cumulative federal debt. Right now that stands at just over $2.75B a day! The President doesn't control the country's purse strings, Congress does. If the President approves spending under an executive act, then it's because Congress approved it or gave it to him in the first place.
Thanks well wishes. I need them all. Curious about why you think Trump won’t gut medicare when they keep saying that’s the plan especially after winning the election?
No matter what you think of Trump one has to acknowledge the democratic party vilified him and made all matter of accusations and claims that were simply not true, and cutting medicare and social security was one of those lies backed by media like CNN. Harris during her presidential run also made that claim. Remember, the democrats also pushed the lie of Russia-gate, and used him to glorify themselves. Trump repeatedly said that cuts to either was not going to happen, and considering his base cutting either is absurd on it's face. I use to be a registered democrat, but I hated the way they used him and made a real attempt to remove him from office based on lies. I'm an independent now. We're finished. Check it out with Fact Check, even though they sometimes get their facts wrong.
Saying that the Democrats “vilified” Trump is bizarre. His own actions vilify him, but what’s unconscionable is that Republicans and Trump himself used vile, vulgar, racist and sexist language to vilify Harris.
I don’t understand how you can be taken in by this narcissistic sociopath. First of all, he is a LIAR:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/12/08/politics/fact-check-trump-meet-the-press
What those in politics, especially at this level, say and what they do are often totally at odds with each other. Biden is an excellent example. Only time will tell, especially with Trump, who is sometimes a lot less predictable.
Trump hates himself and other people. Much like Joe the genocide freak.
May I ask on what bases you make that assertion? What exactly did he do that makes you think he hates humanity as well as himself?
Here’s just a sampling:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/30/trump-racist-gop-rhetoric-new-york-rally/
Please reconsider.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/16/what-will-elon-musk-and-vivek-ramaswamy-accomplish-with-doge
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/am
I think.
You're right why sacrifice your base of support needlessly?
Praying for you to all the gods.
⛪️🕌⛩️🛕💒🌅🌌
Watch out for, Azusa!
He still owes me money!
I also blame our US popular media. The only way presented in most of our media to resolve conflict is a lone man with a gun (or various contests of force and violence). This very much limits the imagination. And occasionally, some men act violently as individuals. Shooting a CEO will not change the system. To achieve a just medical care system, we require not a lone individual acting out of rage, but mass action pressuring politicians to pass significant reform that strangles and crushes the inhuman for-profit medical system. Banish the parasites. They don't like their jobs anyways. The trillion dollars sucked up by them could go towards actual useful jobs.
Basically big business has taken over the medical field, and they buy up physicians medical practices.
Yeah, but that lone gunman brought the subject to the surface and now people are considering the factors that drove him to take that action.
You don't know, at this point, that the gunman brought the subject to the surface. That's your opinion which I feel your are morally obligated to qualify it as such. If not, you simply present yourself as ignorant of the facts. Your choice to be ignorant.
We do, however, know that the media brought the subject to the surface, though. There could be nefarious reasons for that--which have nothing to do with the assassination. I recommend that you try to think outside the box that media's predictive programming M.O. has put most people in.
There's another minion right behind him.
Payday Report Covering Labor in News Deserts. Earlier today, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was assassinated in New York City. Ken Kipplestein broke the news . Thompson was being sued by the firefighters union of Hollywood, Florida.
The union sued Thompson for failing to reveal that United Healthcare was under DOJ investigation. As a result, the pension fund lost $25 billion in value.
Meanwhile, Thompson had cashed out over $15 million in stock while selling the stock to pension funds like those of the Hollywood Firefighters union. Read Ken Kipplestein's full story at PAYDAY REPORT on how Thompson defrauded union pension funds. Melk
Perhaps like me, you read many stories on multiple different websites. It’s easy to mistake one for another. I went to Payday News and did a search on the topic and author, but returned zero results. In the interest of tracking this down, I came across this. https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/lawsuit-against-murdered-ceo
Could this be what you are referring to? I hope it turns up on his Substack as well.
Thank you, Joy.
Thompson's fate was richly deserved, and I'm hoping for more soon to follow. I'm also hoping, probably in vain, that Thompson's killer is never caught. Far as I'm concerned, that guy is a frickin' hero!!
Was this not on his Substack? I didn't get a notification if so. I also cannot find it here.
https://paydayreport.com/
I suspect that the first thought that went through most people’s minds was indeed that it was revenge for a denial of care, if not also a dubiously effective protest against the health insurance industry. It will be remarkable if it proves otherwise.
The questions arise of when such violence is justified and what counts as violence. On the second question first, why is it that the explicit, dramatic, instantaneous, and deliberate act that is a cold-blooded shooting is considered more of a violent act, or a crime, than routinely denying health care en masse to people who need it who then die as a result? I don’t know the answer but the intuition that, in denying medical care, the relatively attenuated connection between the perpetrator and the victim makes it count less or at all as a kind of homicide needs to be looked at more closely than it has been looked at thus far.
On the first question, I do not believe violence for violence is ever justified except in self-defense, but sometimes I do not know what else but violence, and the fear and sense of emergency it generates, even if it is not justified and even if it Is ineffective in the long term, will get the attention of those who need to pay attention before meaningful change can take place. Violence in that case might still be necessary, though one might wish it were not. This is another issue that cannot be resolved simply by adverting to platitudes about the immorality of violence.