Day: December 19, 2024

It used to bother me when Leftists would use “It’s the current year and I can’t believe we have to talk about X” (X being their cause du jour, not the Social Media Site Formerly Known As Twitter), but I have to use it in this case.

It’s 2024, and I can’t believe we have to talk about how murder is wrong.

I’m referring to the recent shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. While some cooler heads have decided murder is wrong because, well, it’s fucking murder, other heads have tried to add nuance to the situation as a means to explain it in terms of a larger narrative, that being health insurance companies and American healthcare in general sucks ass. Such intellectual giants like Taylor Lorenz, Elizabeth Warren, and many online Leftists have said the killer (who I will not name because he doesn’t deserve to be named as far as I’m concerned) was justified in killing Thompson for the reason I mentioned earlier.

In other words, there are a lot of dumbasses making hay out of this with the end goal being health insurance and by extension healthcare gets better. Sort of the “you can’t make an omelet without breaking some CEOs” approach.

And on the surface, the Left seems to have a point. How many families have had to deal with deaths based on insurance denials? More than I care to count. That pain of loss can turn to anger very quickly, and that anger can spur people to act.

In this case, it spurred a young man to kill.

No matter how you try to spin it, justify it, kinda justify it, soften it, or add nuance to it, a man is dead because a young man felt justified to kill another person. And that is fucked up. What’s just as fucked up is the number of people who are still cheering the act or treating anyone who thinks murder is bad as weirdos.

We have reached the Upside Down, kids. And it only gets worse.

Here’s the thing Leftists cheering the murder don’t understand. Once you open the door to killing people for whatever reason you can invent, you might as well take off the hinges because you ain’t closing that door ever again. While you think it’s hunky dory to off a CEO of a health insurance company, it leaves you defenseless if some right wing asshole decides to off a Leftist CEO for whatever reason. And, Spoiler Alert, that never ends well for anyone.

See World Wars I and II for evidence.

What’s more disturbing to me is how this situation reveals not just how easy it is for people today to dehumanize people they don’t like, but in just how little the people doing the loudest cheering understand about the insurance industry. Without giving away too much, I’ve been in the insurance game for a shade under a decade, and I’ve been insured for far longer. And, yes, I have had claims I felt were valid denied for reasons I don’t agree with. But here’s the difference.

I didn’t take it out on those who denied the claim at any level.

On a deeper level, though, the denial process is a bit more complicated than what the Left thinks or feels it is. Sure, UnitedHealthcare was using AI to deny a lot of claims recently, but that doesn’t touch on the entire process by a long shot. Many insurance claims, regardless of the policy type, go through men and women called adjusters. It’s their jobs to research the validity of the claim, determine the risk as compared to the policy terms, and render a decision and, ideally, some form of payment in an attempt to make everyone whole.

With health insurance, that’s a little trickier. Not only do you have all the little things I just mentioned, but you also have to work with hospitals, medical facilities, and even your local mom-and-pop doctor’s office. With so many hands involved in the process, a lot of humanity gets lost in red tape. Some of that can be attributed to insurance companies, some to the medical providers, and a lot to the legal framework by which everyone involved but the patient is governed.

That’s right, kids. Government rears its ugly head yet again.

Any national insurance company has to deal with state insurance boards as a condition of being allowed to sell policies in said states. And they are as picky as the IRS when it comes to following regulations. The rules themselves will make you cross your eyes while you’re trying to cross your Ts.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the clusterfuck that was Obamacare. While Leftists lament the alleged lack of qualifications of Donald Trump’s nominees for different federal positions, they were perfectly fine letting dumbasses with zero experience and even less understanding of health insurance made sweeping decisions that affected millions of people. And it only made the prices jump and the quality decline for many of them. So…yay?

What the Left fails to realize (among sooooooo many things) is how the actions they supported then lead to the situation that lead to a man being murdered. But they’re lining up to cheer the results without owning up to that little detail.

Furthermore, what they’re cheering now opens the door to another question: what will they do to the adjusters making the decisions on health insurance claims? Are they ever going to be the targets of Leftist assholes, or will it be limited to CEOs, who don’t have a direct line to the decisions the adjusters are making? Judging from the “wanted” posters going up, the Leftists are only gunning for the big wigs.

Fucking brilliant.

Of course, the Leftist line of “if it causes just a little bit of change, it’ll be worth it” comes out like penalty flags whenever Patrick Mahomes gets breathed on wrong this season. The thing is…not much will change. The insurance companies will have to hire more security, which will get passed along to the customers in the form of higher premiums and may make said insurance companies rethink whether they want to insure people in some states to avoid risk. Thus, leading to more denials and more people getting kicked off their health insurance policies, leading to more people being forced to pick up shitty Obamacare and potentially spend more than they were before.

If Leftists think this makes the case for single-payer government health insurance, they’re dumber than two bags of hammers, and they can suck a bag of dicks while they try to figure out why it doesn’t.

However, there is one way to really stick it to insurance companies, and it’s so simple even Leftists can understand it. It’s called “paying your own way.” If you don’t have to submit a claim to your health insurance company, they don’t have a say in whether your claim will be approved or denied. Plus, it saves doctors time having to deal with insurance companies and filling out endless amounts of paperwork, meaning they can spend more time working on your problems and the problems of anyone else who takes the same tack.

But won’t that make things more expensive? Not necessarily. With some treatments it will, but with others it might make them less expensive or at least give medical providers more incentive to work with you on payments. Why, it’s almost as if cutting out the middle man passes savings directly to you!

Of course, capitalists understood this concept centuries ago, but I’ll give the Left a little more time to grasp it. But I’m not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a disturbing trend. A recent poll showed that over 40% of younger voters aged 18 to 29 surveyed thought the shooting was justified. That number dropped to 23% with voters 30-39. Think about that for a moment. The people who might be taking care of us in the near future are okay offing someone. Hopefully time and maturity will fix that. If not, I get the feeling we’ll be heading down a very dark path in this country and Brian Thompson’s murder of will seem like a walk in the park.