Explaining Myself.
Brian Thompson Should Not Have Been the Target
12/06/2024
The shooting death of Brian Thompson has provided a framework for the open condemnation of our predominantly for-profit health care system. But I feel this condemnation is misappropriated if not obviously cruel.
Brian Thompson wasn't denying anyone getting healthy or healed. In fact he probably cherished the health and well being of anyone as very much you and I do.
The real outrage isn't that United Healthcare is a thing that denies coverage in a contract with policyholders. From their perspective that's just business as usual wherein drawing a line in coverage is always controversial. You can pretty much say that about the inconvenient parameters of any business contract.
Health insurance companies don't deny anyone procedures once the lines and thresholds are hit. You want anesthesia? Fine, have it. All Anthem Blue Cross is saying is *you* pay for it.
That is, if you have thousands of dollars laying around -- of course.
What's actually mortifying is that you likely can't pay for it.
In colossal effect what the composite reality of all health care insurers are actually telling you to do when denying coverage, is to get rich.
Get rich.
Think about that.
Consider that this isn't the expectation underlying the morality of just United Healthcare or Anthem Blue Crosss' decisions to deny, deflect, and defend. And also consider that when the insinuated assertion to "get rich" doesn't mean just get fiscally well situated or to just rely on fair wages for a fair time's work.
The message, literally and unambiguously, is to get filthy stinking rich, period.
And there you have it.
This is what our society has evolved to. In all areas, not just health care. Whether it be to live securely free of destabilizing crime and drama, to weather the foils of unemployment or employment, to eat healthy, to exhibit as an artist, to trill in song to massive audiences, to pontificate, to raise your children and to protect them, and even to defend your reputation or to establish one in the first place - everything - is now subject to the expectation that you "get rich" to do it.
I know we can point to bulks of people who do afford healthcare, do art, do sing, and do raise great and secure families. But only at the behest of misery on a larger scale and only by playing to the gamemasters. Some people become or embrace sociopaths - they join the United Healthcares of the world or at least admire and emulate them well enough to self-insulate. Some decay over time at the stress of, dying internally. Some rot into criminality at more basil levels. In ignorance, negative in, negative out, after all.
Whatever the cope and whatever the resilience, pound for pound, we as a people have terrible yield.
It could be a lot lot better with just a little more wisdom. Be outraged we don't evolve better, not that because we haven't, that lo and behold, we have United Healthcare, not to mention people credibly doing their jobs like Brian Thompson. A very real soul probably being reminded of that as you read these very words.
By laws of both scarcity and sheer probability everyone can't "get rich". If three bullets need to go into something, it's the universal expectation that everyone can and should, to live free secure and prosperous lives. Rich is a rotten threshold for basic living.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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