Health Care

Capitalists Should Be Removed From All Our Systems

December 19, 2024 Paul Street, Counter Punch. Strategize! Capitalism, Health Care, Public Services, Structural Violence

Imagine that your household was regularly broken into by a sadist who systemically beat-up everyone in your home. He’d start by punching folks in the stomach. Then he’d smack people on the both sides of their heads. Then he’d kick your legs out from underneath you and pound you all on your backs and necks before kicking you all in the jaw and punching your noses. In forming a response to this outrageous oppression would you tell this monster that the next time he breaks into your home with his fists balled he’s going to have to forgo one of the shots he takes at people – say, the head smacks.

Ten Inequality Victories In 2024

December 19, 2024 Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org. Educate! Albertsons, Amazon, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Krogers, Labor Movement, Paid Sick Leave, Taxes, Turbotax, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted overwhelmingly in April to join the United Auto Workers, a landmark win for labor organizing in the South. The region has suffered deeply because of its low-road, anti-union economic model. Seven out of ten states with the highest levels of poverty are in the South, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Another UAW election, at a Mercedes-Benz facility in Vance, Alabama, where management was more aggressively anti-union, went the other way in May. But the union has vowed to continue organizing in the region.

NYT Panics Over Outrage At Insurance Companies

December 18, 2024 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! Brian Thompson, Health Care, Health Insurance, Luigi Mangione, New York Times (NYT), UnitedHealthcare, universal healthcare

In the wake of the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the arrest of alleged shooter Luigi Mangione, I wrote (FAIR.org, 12/11/24) about how Murdoch outlets like the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, as well as Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post editorial board, not only decried the widespread support for Mangione but fought back against legitimate criticism of the health insurance industry. Now the New York Times is in full-scale panic mode over the widespread boiling anger against the health insurance industry the killing has laid bare.

Kaiser Strikers Say When Therapists Burn Out, Patients Suffer

December 16, 2024 Adriana Webb, Labor Notes. Resist! Health Care, Kaiser Permanente, mental health, Walkouts, Worker Rights and Jobs

I work as a medical social worker in the infectious diseases clinic, working primarily with patients who have been diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. I help my patients navigate Kaiser’s complex health care system, get access to needed resources, and figure out how they can afford a life-sustaining medication that often costs thousands of dollars per month. I see firsthand how Kaiser’s mental health system is failing these patients. It’s nearly impossible for them to get access to timely mental health care, and because Kaiser treats its therapists like assembly-line factory workers, so many therapists get burned out and leave.

Insurance Firms Are Hiring Middlemen To Deny Medications

December 15, 2024 Mike Ludwig, Truthout. Educate! Health Care, Insurance, Medications, Pharmacy Benefit Managers

Amid an outpouring of frustration with for-profit health insurance sparked by the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4, much of the media coverage has focused on the alleged shooter, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, and the industry’s nasty habit of maximizing profits by denying claims and leaving sick and vulnerable patients with massive medical bills. There’s plenty of data to back up the anger over private health plans expressed online since the shooting. Insurance costs are far outpacing inflation, leaving patients with soaring out-of-pocket costs.

The Dobbs Decision: Increased Black Maternal Deaths

December 12, 2024 Efia Nwangaza, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Abortion Bans, Abortion Rights, Black America, Black Women, Health Care, History, Maternal Mortality, Reproductive health

The Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has profound implications for Black women. The decision effectively removed the federal constitutional right to abortion, allowing states to set their own abortion laws. It denies women the human right of bodily autonomy, a cornerstone of self-determination. The concept of “States Rights” emerged in debates over the balance of power in the U.S. Constitution (1787), a strong central government versus states' rights to guard against “federal overreach.”

US Healthcare Corporations Reap Profit From Human Misery

December 12, 2024 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Educate! Assassination, Brian Thompson, Class Struggle, Corporate America, Corporate greed, health, Health Care, Health Insurance, Luigi Mangione, Medicare for all, United States

The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4 has sparked a reaction that few may have suspected. The perpetrator has received an outpouring of popular support, and a profound debate on the brutality of the US for-profit healthcare system has been sparked, with many accusing healthcare corporations of reaping their profits directly from human misery. Thompson was shot and killed while heading to an investors meeting in Midtown Manhattan on December 4. Police have arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in connection with the crime, who quickly has become a working class hero in the eyes of many in the US public, especially after his alleged manifesto revealed that he was motivated by outrage towards healthcare corporations.

‘It Had To Be Done’: Luigi Mangione Manifesto Revealed

December 12, 2024 Common Dreams. Resist! Assassination, Brian Thompson, Class Struggle, Corporate America, Corporate greed, Health Care, Luigi Mangione, UnitedHealthcare

A day after Luigi Mangione was arrested and charged as the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein on Tuesday published what he said was the 26-year-old's highly reported on manifesto. The existence of the handwritten document found on Mangione when he was taken into custody in Pennsylvania on Monday was confirmed by the New York Police Department, and major media outlets have quoted from it, but none had released it in full. "My queries to The New York Times, CNN, and ABC to explain their rationale for withholding the manifesto, while gladly quoting from it selectively, have not been answered," Klippenstein said on his Substack.

No Tears For Slain CEO: Compassion ‘Out Of Network’

December 11, 2024 Workers' World. Strategize! Assassination, Brian Thompson, Health Care, UnitedHealthcare

Normally when someone is shot dead, human beings feel sad for the victim. But in the case of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, killed before dawn on the streets of Manhattan on Dec. 4, a large majority of public comments are that empathy is “out of network.” For example, Anthony Zenkus, a lecturer at the Columbia School of Social Work, posted on X: “Today, we mourn the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down … wait, I’m sorry — today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.”

How Health Insurance Became A Boon For Business

December 9, 2024 Juan Cruz Ferre, Left Voice. Educate! Class Struggle, Health Care, Health Insurance, Profiteers

UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was killed in a targeted shooting outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan on December 4, 2024, when he was about to speak at an investor conference. While mourning and preoccupation spread among economic and political elites, a mix of celebration and snark dominated social media commentary. There has been an outpouring of empathy for the perpetrator, shirts with the murder scene printed on it, and even a UnitedHealth CEO shooter look-alike contest in Washington Square Park.

The ‘Silent Violence’ Of Corporate Greed And Power

December 7, 2024 Ralph Nader. Educate! Class Struggle, Corporate greed, Health Care, Health Insurance

For decades consumer groups have been sounding clarion calls for action against the “silent violence” causing massive casualties that arise from the unbridled power of corporate greed, criminal negligence or indifference. They cite statistical and case studies that the media and lawmakers mostly ignored or relegated to low levels of enforcement. Corporate bosses just have their corporate lawyers and public relations hacks brush away such warnings and pleas. One day stories they knew would not have legs if they just kept quiet or mumbled some general words of regret, promising some vague improvements to their products and services.

Chris Hedges: The Killing Of Brian Thompson

December 5, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Assassination, Brian Thompson, Health Care, UnitedHealthcare

We do not yet know the motive for the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. 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. Insurers reject about 1 in 7 claims for treatment, often by deciding the treatment is not “medically necessary.” Among 10 high-income nations, the United States spends the most on health care but has the worst health outcomes. Americans die four years earlier than their counterparts in other industrialized nations.

Supreme Court Hears Gender-Affirming Care Case

December 5, 2024 Unicorn Riot. Resist! Health Care, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Transgender Rights

Washington, D.C. — Transgender advocates converged at the Supreme Court for the oral arguments of U.S. vs Skrmetti, a case that will decide the fate of access to gender-affirming care for trans minors. Unicorn Riot was on the ground covering a rally near the U.S. Supreme Court Building steps Wednesday morning. The U.S. vs. Skrmetti case began in Tennessee, with the ACLU and Lambda Legal collective representing L.W. and her parents, Samantha and Brian Williams. Tennessee passed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in February 2023, which was signed into law in March of that year.

Fourteen Years After Reform, The US Healthcare System Is Still Failing

November 28, 2024 National Single Payer. Resistance Report Affordable Care Act, Health Care, Medicare for all, National Single Payer

Since 2004, the Commonwealth Fund has compared health system performance among wealthy nations. The U.S. consistently ranks dead last. Why is the U.S. such an outlier, when the solution, a national single payer system, free from profit, would save lives and money? Dr. Margaret Flowers, renowned single payer activist and humanist, was one of the 13 single payer activists, doctors, and nurses arrested at the Senate Finance Committee meeting in 2009, when the U.S. attempted to reform the health care system and came up with the Affordable Care Act.

We Need A Care System That Treats Patients With Dignity

November 27, 2024 Connie Choi, Inequality.org. Educate! health, Health Care, Hospitals, Profiteers

Earlier this year, I lost my dad to complications from diabetes. He was first admitted to the hospital two days before Thanksgiving of last year. Over the course of the next nine months, he suffered through 15 surgeries and 14 hospital stays. In between those stays, he was shuffled between skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, and board and care homes. While watching my dad’s decline in health, I learned the differences of what those terms meant in real-time as my family and I tried to navigate a complicated, and oftentimes unforgiving, health care system. All in all, he went to four separate hospitals and six outpatient facilities to receive his so-called “care.”

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