A year after Luigi Mangione’s arrest, health care is even worse

An inordinate amount of proverbial ink has been spilled trying to psychoanalyze Luigi Mangione who is in court this month accused of killing Brian Thompson the UnitedHealthcare CEO who was fatally shot this time last year Articles and documentaries with titles like Inside the mind of Luigi Mangione and The mind of a killer abound which is perhaps typical when an alleged assassin gets such a high profile But the analysis is remarkably different from other newest gunmen such as Tyler James Robinson Charlie Kirk s alleged killer or Thomas Crooks who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump on the campaign trail Far fewer people are making memes with excerpts of their thoughts or selling biographies of their rise and fall It s hard to imagine giddy whispering fans showing up in court with messages of aid for most of notorious killers yet that s precisely what major outlets record is happening this month for Mangione What is it that makes Mangione so magnetic Perhaps it s the conviction that certain project onto him that he is a vigilante who attempted to send a violent message to a violent industry Perhaps it is a feeling of vindication knowing that virtually everyone including myself know someone whose life was unnecessarily cut short by incompetent profit-driven inadequate care It could even be as trivial as his conventional attractiveness which is in stark contrast to a typical shooter with an agenda Related Is America a death cult Mangione who is also seems to care about how the populace perceives him During testimony last week Tomas Rivers a correctional officer from State Correctional Institution Huntingdon where Mangione was first held described conversations he had with the accused according to Rolling Stone Rivers testified that he and Mangione spoke about private versus nationalized healthcare and announced Mangione was interested in how the citizens was perceiving the United Healthcare shooting Rivers noted he advised Mangione what he perceived which was Mainstream media and traditional TV news focused on the crime whereas people on social media were talking about wrongdoings probable wrongdoings in the healthcare industry So let s talk about why Mangione who has pleaded not guilty may have veritably done it To recap in the early morning of Dec Thompson was shot twice by a masked assailant who d been waiting for him outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel Thompson was attending the annual UnitedHealth Group investors meeting Three words delay deny depose were written on spent bullet casings determined at the scene an echo of common tactics in the insurance industry to avoid paying declares A five-day manhunt ensued with Mangione being arrested at a McDonald s in Altoona Pennsylvania Even before a large number of of these details were disclosed the internet became flooded by people projecting their own perceived motives onto the killing Because the target in this assassination was the head of UnitedHealthcare a company accused of cruelty and corruption toward sick and dying people it was easy to see this as fighting back UnitedHealthcare is a company accused of numerous offenses from ignoring doctors advice and denying alleges for services they deemed not medically necessary to extracting overpayments from the federal executive Last year a ProPublica assessment revealed that UnitedHealthcare denied critical medication for kids with autism which even the company acknowledged as gold standard therapy all in an effort to maximize profit Thompson and his co-workers didn t put a gun to anyone s head but in countless avenues the aftermath is the same UnitedHealth Group the parent company of UnitedHealthcare denied about in insurance proposes in The company is even accused of offloading these decisions to AI-driven algorithms Make no mistake these bureaucratic decisions cost lives And these effects are not felt evenly with poor and marginalized groups experiencing more denials Thompson and his co-workers didn t put a gun to anyone s head but in a large number of techniques the effect is the same Systemic violence like the gutting of USAID by the Trump administration which by a few estimates has killed more than people and counting is excused by our society because it s not as dramatic or flashy to watch someone wither away in a hospital bed versus bleed out on a Manhattan sidewalk If it s true that Thompson s killing was an act of vengeance it doesn t seem like it accomplished much as I argued it wouldn t last year in Salon It s not hard to predict that violence won t undo violence Maybe it s too early to tell but it definitely seems like community healthcare and access to medical care in America is much worse than it was a year ago Right now Congress is still squabbling over Affordable Care Act subsidies which are set to expire by the start of the new year The vote which has yet to be set is expected to fail making this concession to reopen the governing body another Democratic surrender Meanwhile a billion defense bill is considered must-pass provision The impact is expected to spike premiums for tens of millions of Americans which is already happening across the nation while covering even less Congressional Republicans have yet to produce a coherent strength care plan to replace what s being lost The various rumors of what may or may not be voted on soon doesn t feel comprehensive Meanwhile President Donald Trump has let Robert F Kennedy Jr go wild as he put it doing everything to erase the population from inhabitants wellness This has included attacks on vaccines massive funding cuts at the Department of Medical and Human Services and laying off thousands of regime employees tasked with surveilling and treating complaint We need your help to stay independent Subscribe this day to encouragement Salon s progressive journalism The Trump administration s response to Mangione s event is to try to kill him One of Trump s first actions during his second term was to reinstate the death penalty which his Department of Justice has specifically sought to wield against the accused It goes without saying that capital punishment is counterproductive but of module it does nothing to improve the lives of Americans either Soundness care in America remains the preponderance expensive in the developed world and fewer and fewer people can afford it That means more people will skip coverage see doctors less and forgo prescriptions as minor healthcare problems that are not caught early balloon into bigger deadlier and costlier conditions Greater strain has been felt on hospitals especially in rural areas as critical staffing shortages are predicted to continue for the next decade So even for the people who can afford care quality has dropped All of this makes the U S especially vulnerable to a major crisis like another pandemic which is deeply concerning considering the nation is about to lose its measles elimination status COVID- still hasn t fully gone away and diseases like bird flu may unleash another physical condition situation Would a scarce bullets reverse all or even selected of these trends It seems incredibly unlikely It s not even reasonable to expect violence to bring attention to these issues because the majority Americans are already well aware of this situation they re living it It s not even clear that UnitedHealth Group has suffered plenty of consequences from the fallout of Thompson s death In the past year the company s stock dropped tremendously but has since rebounded slightly Particular investors in the company indeed sued accusing the conglomerate of shifting its business practices in response to masses outcry In other words denying fewer maintains and thus hurting profits However that doesn t seem to have definitely happened If Americans want a better system they only have to demand it and not by using guns As Slate communicated in May this apparently has little to do with Mangione UnitedHealth is struggling because too a great number of customers are using their insurance too much It has kept growing its revenue but it has started spending much more than it used to about billion more on therapeutic costs in the first three months of than in Elderly people seem like a particular matter as the company is seeing higher senior care activity with its Medicare Advantage customers proving a vexing group UnitedHealth has had to put more of customers premiums back into their care though the company s insurance division has remained profitable Indeed UnitedHealth s third-quarter earnings statement its majority up-to-date detailed consolidated revenues of billion up year-over-year while UnitedHealthcare revenues specifically grew year-over-year to billion The Target boycotts over rescinding their DEI strategy have been more effective at authentically harming a corporation s bottom line The most of that can be noted was accomplished by Thompson s death is that it shifted the Overton window the spectrum of ideas on agenda and social issues considered acceptable by the general citizens Again no one requirements reminding that wellness care in the U S is abysmal Start your day with essential news from Salon Sign up for our free morning newsletter Crash Syllabus So what can we really do to fix this broken system Universal fitness care is the place to start Numerous studies have rigorously examined the issue and identified that it would be a savings boost that would cut drug prices and save lives A survey in The Lancet published a single-payer universal health-care system is likely to lead to a savings in national health-care expenditure equivalent to more than U S billion annually In the context of the COVID pandemic a evaluation in PNAS unveiled a single-payer universal healthcare system would have saved lives in alone We also calculated that US billion of clinical expenses associated with COVID- hospitalization could have been averted by a Medicare for All system We also need to rebuild our primary care and society healthcare maximum basically the opposite of what Kennedy is doing That means addressing physician shortages and easing the cost of health school while erasing the administrative red tape like excessive prior authorization demands Until then we ll keep paying vastly more for lower-quality physical condition care If Americans want a better system they entirely have to demand it and not by using guns By certain estimates a nationwide general strike would be enough to hobble the economic system in about a week From there activists could demand almost whatever they want action on environment change an end to mass surveillance and ICE raids or an equitable fitness system that heals instead of mangles The U S has a long history of such action but much of it is decades old Chosen argue we re overdue for the people s veto The increasingly poor conditions of working Americans are making such an option more and more attractive with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson calling for a general strike in November but it won t be easy to pull off either It would require immense coordination across a nation divided by algorithmic outrage and petty politics Given that the other option is sending us off a cliff maybe enough people are absolutely fed up to make it work If such a feat is literally accomplished it will be thanks to collective nonviolent power and solidarity not a lone man with a gun Read more about robustness care Is the citizens s aid of Luigi Mangione a symptom of empathy fatigue Pam Bondi s push for the death penalty in Luigi Mangione s affair is not about justice More than a plague How colonialism class and incarceration feed complaint outbreaks The post A year after Luigi Mangione s arrest healthcare care is even worse appeared first on Salon com