Rolling Stone covered the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as it should have, in typical Hunter S Thompson fashion, except the Gonzo effect was emanating from the American public and not the writer. “It’s actually kind of touching that the one thing that can bring together our fractious and disunited country is celebrating the assassination of a health insurance CEO,” wrote University of Virginia historian David Austin Walsh on X. Ten years ago, speaking one’s mind would have gotten threats of litigation on you, like when Eric Miller, the executive director of the National Association of Mortgage Field Services (NAMFS) attempted to sue me, having a lawyer serve me a letter on a Friday evening and on Monday morning, apologized. Even so, the level of hatred spewing out from all corners is disconcerting.
Healthcare is a lightning rod in the United States. Two things are inevitable: One is that we are all going to pay taxes and the other is that we will die. The former is controlled by lawyers and rather easily tamed, but the latter is measured by a rationed allotment of treatment delivered in small portions only to those whom can afford it.
And while there are very few industries that literally impact one’s ability to live, like healthcare, the mortgage field services industry is considered to be one. Maslow postulated that food, clothing, and shelter were all necessary to survive. I would add healthcare to that, as well. And when you remove any of those, rapid deterioration and eventually death is the end result. Healthcare has always been more of a smoke and mirrors industry. It consumed $4.5 trillion in 2022, making up 17.3% of the GDP. When compared to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the US ranks last. And among 27 advanced economies, the United States ranks No. 21.
For whatever reasons, the two most important things in life, healthcare and housing, are the least protected resources in the US. Moreover, though, those less fortunate amongst us are even more at risk due to myriad reasons hidden throughout a labyrinth of smoke and mirrors rewarding bad behavior.
In our Industry, you need go no further than the 2008 Financial Crisis to identify how greed is considered to be the status quo as not a single person was convicted in the multi-trillion dollar fleecing of the middle and lower class. Moreover, though, our Industry learned lessons from this in their application of tens of millions of dollars of fraud unleashed upon those least prepared to deal with it. It was Naziesque in that the very people whom were evicted from their homes were, in turn, pressganged into evicting their neighbors. Adding insult to injury, many of them were never paid for their work. The nearly decade long bankruptcy of National Field Network is a testament to the collusion, corruption and daily roll out of civil rights violations; anti-trust violations, bid rigging and price fixing; as well as collectively acting in concert to destroy all whom oppose their cabal.
And yet there are not assassinations in our Industry. Nor are there assassinations in the food sector. And there are not assassinations in the clothing sector. All of these sectors are necessary, as discussed earlier, to survive. Violence is never the answer to resolving civil matters. It should never be condoned. More importantly, though, it should never be glorified. With that said, though, for democracy to work, it must work for all. Whether it be wealth inequality, healthcare inequality, or representative inequality, these are historically triggers of violence once they hit intolerable levels.
In July 2014, Nick Hanauer gave a TED Talk entitled, The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats. Politico republished it, under the same title, and this quote stood out to me,
If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.
The assassination of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson, while shocking, is not unexpected. Allowing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to decline claims in massive rounds — read that as life is reduced to a computer’s programmed imperative of money over lives — was not going to bode well for anyone. Moreover, though, whether it be the paycheck necessary to eat and pay rent, or the medical care necessary to save a child’s life, refusing to provide what is owed, when it is owed, is a recipe for disaster. Tragically, our Industry — and others — has begun relying heavily upon AI to make decisions formerly handled by humans, as well.
