Progressive congressperson Ro Khanna has sympathy for the murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson – yet at the same time is not surprised that the killing reignited a national dialogue about inequities in the US healthcare system, he said in an interview on Sunday.
“It was horrific,” the California Democrat said on ABC This Week with respect to the slaying of Thompson, whose survivors include his widow and two sons ages 16 and 19. “I mean, this is a father we’re talking about – of two children, and … there is no justification for violence.
“But the outpouring afterwards has not surprised me.”
Khanna told the show’s host, Martha Raddatz, that he agreed with fellow liberal and US senator Bernie Sanders when he wrote recently on social media: “We waste hundreds of billions a year on health care administrative expenses that make insurance CEOs and wealthy stockholders incredibly rich while 85 million Americans go uninsured or underinsured. Health care is a human right. We need Medicare for all.”
“After years, Sanders is winning this debate,” Khanna said, referring to the Vermont senator’s support for a single-payer national health insurance system seen in other wealthy democracies.
While police have stopped short of offering a possible motive behind Thompson’s 4 December shooting death, the apparent targeted nature of the attack – as well as shell casings found at the scene of the killing displaying the words “delay”, “deny” and possibly “depose” have suggested it was maybe linked to the largely privatized US healthcare industry’s routine denial of payments to many Americans.
Healthcare debt has emerged as a leading cause of bankruptcy in the US while for-profit health insurers such as UnitedHealthcare are among the country’s richest companies. Thompson, 50, who lived near UnitedHealthcare’s headquarters in Minnesota, commanded a salary of $10m annually before a gunman wearing a mask shot him dead outside a hotel in Manhattan as he prepared to attend a meeting with investors of his company.
Many greeted news of Thompson’s death not with sympathy but with mockery. A widely shared example of the sentiment was a social media post from Columbia School of Social Work’s Anthony Zenkus, which read: “Today, we mourn the death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down…. wait, I’m sorry – today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who die needlessly each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.”
Khanna on Sunday said his status as a member of the US House has not immunized him from absurd insurance battles.
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Though he acknowledged it paled in comparison to people with cancer, heart disease and diabetes being denied coverage while they battle for their lives, Khanna said: “I, as a congressperson had UnitedHealthcare deny a prescription for a nasal – a $100 pump spray, and I couldn’t get them to reverse this. So imagine what ordinary people are dealing with.”
Khanna said some modest steps that the US could take to begin addressing injustices in the country’s healthcare include capping out-of-pocket costs while also requiring the private insurers relied on by many Americans “to cover anything” that Medicare would.
Medicare is the public US health insurance program for those older than 65 and people who are disabled.
“We have to understand people with cancer, with heart disease, with diabetes, with insurance aren’t getting the care that they need. They’re getting stuck with huge medical bills.”
rainbowblack79 on December 9th, 2024 at 12:55 UTC »
I had severe pain on my right side last year. I went to urgent care, and they referred me to the emergency room. The ER doctor ordered a CT scan and told me I needed an appendectomy and if I waited too much longer my appendix might burst. I was admitted to the hospital and given antibiotics for 12 hours and then they did the surgery. A few weeks into my recovery, I received a letter saying my ER visit “was not medically necessary” and that they wouldn’t be paying for it. They sent another letter a few days later saying they’d “reevaluated my case” and they decided to pay for the ER visit. What was I supposed to do, diagnose my own self? For profit healthcare is absurd. It hurts and kills people.
AnomalousMass on December 9th, 2024 at 12:25 UTC »
People aren’t getting the care they PAID FOR
yatterer on December 9th, 2024 at 11:46 UTC »
People forget that our justice and legal system aren't just there to punish the guilty. They exist to protect them, too. If some business owner ruins you but you can get restitution against them in court, that's probably what you'll do. If you can't, well, maybe you do nothing, maybe you go burn his house down.
Industries like the one Brian Thompson belonged to pour billions of lobbying dollars into making the death and misery they bring to thousands of families legally untouchable, not even considered criminal in the first place, and into calcifying the laws, loopholes and handouts they exploit so that it's impossible for our political system to reform them. They think they're protecting themselves by placing themselves outside the system of laws and enforcement; what they're actually doing is ensuring that anyone seeking restitution against them will also do so outside of the system, and outside of the protections like due process and predetermined punishments that it grants.