No, Luigi Didn’t Solve Anything, But the Healthcare Convo Is Real

If you are pissed off at healthcare companies, you have every right to be.

You may have had the galling experience of being denied care because your insurer won’t pay for a particular treatment. Or the cost of a procedure you need is only partially paid for by a company and you’re left looking for money to pay for a surgery or therapy that a loved one needs to save their lives.

Maybe bureaucracy has you tied up in so much red tape that it’s taking you months that you don’t have to get an answer regarding the prescription for a much-needed medicine for your child.

Meanwhile, healthcare companies rake in billions every year, while you’re left miserable and uncertain. Let’s be real, the No. 1 cause of personal bankruptcy in America is healthcare-related debt, according to the American Bankruptcy institute.

But did you think of killing the leader of one of these companies as a solution? If you did, stop reading. We have nothing more to talk about. If not, then there’s a conversation to be had about the healthcare crisis, corporate greed and the foolish thinking that we can shoot our way out of a generational problem.

This means it’s time to have a post-Obamacare, persistent, serious and effective conversation about the trash business model that masquerades as the American healthcare system.

Keyboard Warriors

Over the past several days I’ve been engaged in a number of conversations about the Dec. 4 death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a saga that has arrived at the arrest of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with murder in his slaying. There are people who have described him as a “hero” for killing Thompson, who they believe is responsible for the actions of UHC in denial of critical insurance payment for many in need.

Let me be clear before we go any further: If you think that shooting a man in the back because you don’t like his company’s policies is justified, you are one sick f**k and there’s no need to even stay on this page. Same for people who are into Mangione thirst traps. You can go to the top of your browser, click on anything else and leave this blog – I don’t want you as a follower.

Plus, where I come from, people who shoot others who they are beefing with in the back instead of facing them get, ahem, special treatment in prison.

The many people who are cheering the violence strike me as people who have never actually been in a fight, have never seen someone shot to death and when it comes to an armed insurrection against the corporate machine, they don't want that kind of smoke.

Night of the Paying Baseheads

Mangione is an Ivy League graduate from a privileged background. His record indicates that he qualifies for multiple great jobs that pay well and come with Cadillac health plans. So why would he allegedly kill someone?

Well, a Manifesto purported to be written by him has been circulating online thanks to journalist Ken Klippenstein on his Substack. The major news organizations will not publish it, but I won’t either so that I’m not giving him any further validation. But he does give a clue:

A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed [sic] them to get away with it.

What he is saying is basically true. Even with the Affordable Care Act, the United States spends about 16 percent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, dwarfing other rich nations. According to published figures, dealing with your health, ranging from routine doctor visits to critical surgeries, therapies, treatments and medicine, cost Americans an average $12,555.30 per person in 2022. The next most expensive was Switzerland at $8,049 – a drop of more than 35 percent!

Now to be honest, it’s expensive in other countries, too. Even in ones where healthcare is subsidized, out-of-pocket costs can hit people pretty hard, according to a study by The Commonwealth Fund, and that’s most impactful among the poor and people of color.

But when you spend $400 (US$282) for an emergency room visit to Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital, but $3100 at Broward Health in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the disparity is clear.

There are people who will argue that the reason healthcare costs are cheaper in other countries is because the populations are smaller, there is less stress from less superficial lifestyles, and the quality of food they consume is much better, which contributes less to long term health problems.  The smaller the market for healthcare, the logic goes, the less it will cost.

But I’m skeptical of that and while it seems plausible and even logical, I’d need to see numbers to prove that these are the singular causes of our healthcare plight. Plus, too many of us suffer from poor food quality because Big Food is just as greedy as Big Pharma and the healthcare industry, and we’ve all become baseheads in their traphouse.

The Reasons…the Reasons That We’re Here

I tend to believe that the overarching reason is that hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and insurers have become huge financial hustles, hitting us from all sides when we’re sick or injured between fees, deductibles and copays. This is a conversation that has existed for generations and we haven’t found our way out of this maze. It’s hard to wrap our heads around this, but healthcare expenditures were $74.1 billion in 1970, but exceeded $4.5 trillion by 2022. These are numbers that you will not be able to count to in your lifetime.

All of this is why you are within your rights to be frustrated about healthcare in America, especially when pharmaceutical companies alone gave more than $15 million to both Democratic and Republican political action committees in 2023 and 2024, and the top contributors in the industry gave them more than $182.5 million. That means aggressive legislation that could push back against the exorbitant costs shouldn’t be expected in the near future.

But would I advise guerilla warfare against the people Mangione called “parasites”? I can’t say I would. At the end of the day, he didn’t solve any of these issues. The only thing that will probably happen as a result of his actions is the companies spending a small fraction of the billions they make on more security (and they’ll probably find a way to pass that cost to consumers).

No, one approach – and I’m not an expert – is first in eliminating some of your reasons to seek healthcare in the first place. Quit drinking and smoking. Cigarettes alone costs an annual $240 billion in healthcare costs and alcohol is costing users about $14,000 per commercially insured person for the problems it causes. Not trying to run your life, and I'm not suggesting that's the one miracle answer, but numbers don’t lie.

But you also have to keep the pressure up on the politicians who take money from an industry that is hurting you. The Federal Election Commission keeps accurate records of who is giving campaign money to your Senators and Representatives in Congress, as well as candidates for president, and this is public information. State campaign finance boards also keep these records for your local politicians and they have to disclose this information by law. OpenSecrets.org keeps a great list of ways to find this information. Use it to your advantage.

Since this is in the news cycle and major media is keeping its eye on this whole thing, there’s really no way to stop it, that is until the very short American attention span turns to something else. So I hope that the conversation can be focused, not on Mangione and his looks, but rather on chipping away at the mountain that is the healthcare industry until it’s a pebble we can skip on the water.

Madison Gray is a New York City-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in multiple publications globally. Reach out to him at madison@starkravingmadison.com.