Let me be clear: murder is not a “policy choice.” Yet, grotesquely, proponents of socialized medicine are using December 4th.th kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson held a press conference in New York City to discuss policy issues.
a Generation Lab Voting A report released last week found that 50% of college students (a demographic largely conditioned by social media) view suspected killer Luigi Mangione “very” or “somewhat” favorably. It turns out. Just 19% thought the same about Thompson.
Behind this kind of false information are the following books:Deadly Spin: Insurance company insiders talk about how corporate communications is killing healthcare and deceiving Americanssaid Wendell Potter, former vice president of corporate communications at Cigna. In 2024, Cigna will 6th largest American health insurance company with sales of $195 billion.
This book is particularly relevant to the 2007 film,sicko'' praised Fidel Castro's communist health care system, which itself was a major force in passing the increasingly problematic Obamacare system in 2010.
Peter Suderman I wrote last month's reason magazineObamacare's high costs to participants hit hard because “the benefits must cover a large number of essential federally mandated health benefits, regardless of whether they are needed or desired.” received.
Then a spendthrift Congress (one of many) did not cap benefit subsidies in the American Rescue Plan Act during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, and in 2022. Once again, the “Inflation Control Act'' did not set a cap on benefit subsidies. These measures allowed “households earning up to $350,000 a year in some cases to obtain subsidized insurance at a cost of approximately $30 billion to $40 billion a year.” The subsidies will expire at the end of 2025, creating a major headache for President-elect Donald Trump.
Mr. Potter, a former Cigna employee, is now pushing for greater government control over the health insurance industry. Thompson's murder prompted Fortune magazine to interview him for an article late last month.Former Cigna Insurance executive says, “I quit after witnessing an industry that prioritized profits over patients.''He doesn't seem to understand how free market systems work, whether it's healthcare or MacBooks.
In the big government world of Obamacare, the Veterans Administration and other government-run health care systems operate according to political rather than market principles. If a government program fails to help people, it doesn't mean it goes out of business. Either more money is thrown at the problem, which increases inflation and reduces taxpayer purchasing power, or it directly hurts taxpayers through higher taxes and increased bureaucracy. This is effectively the brick wall that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency faces as it attempts to cut the bloated waste that has produced an incredible $2 trillion budget deficit. 2024 federal budget.
But Potter is now criticizing a system that “forces patients and doctors to go through a maze of approvals before undergoing procedures, sometimes denying them necessary treatment.” As the reason for his resignation from Cigna in 2008, he cited a leukemia patient who refused a liver transplant because he was “too unwell to receive one.”
But what does the situation look like today, 17 years after Potter left Cigna? Last April, a Cleveland Clinic Daily News story headlined:New technology benefits liver transplants” A December 2023 study The National Library of Medicine summarizes it as follows: “Advanced analytics is poised to transform LT management. [liver transplants]Maximize graft and patient survival. ”
Reports like this are evidence of medical progress under our belt. the current It's not Potter's utopian fantasy, but a completely government-run system similar to Canada's Medicare. Recent research from the Frazier Institute calculated In our northern neighbor, wait times from referral to treatment were much longer than in the United States, twice what patients expected in 1993.
So the 2024 Ipsos poll is no surprise. Found 42% of Canadians would leave the non-profit system and drive to the United States to pay cash for treatment in the for-profit system, a scenario Potter does not mention.
America's health care system is far from perfect, but those seeking reform should apply the maxims of the Hippocratic Oath. First of all, do no harmAnd at least stop using the murder of a medical company as fodder for your policy agenda.
BOb Barr currently serves as president of the National Rifle Association. He served as a member of Georgia's 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as a federal prosecutor in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an employee of the CIA in the 1970s. He currently practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, and is the head of the Liberty Guard.
