"What can be said about the powerful and in many ways surprising reaction to the cold-blooded killing of Thompson, and to the chief suspect in that crime, Luigi Mangione?... The crime itself, and the growing agglomeration of cultural evidence around it, is almost hysterically overdetermined. It’s about the barbarism of America’s health care system; it’s about the extent to which people have become desensitized to violence; it’s about how the Internet has melted everyone’s brains; it’s about how we can’t help judging attractive people... by different standards from those we apply to everyone else; it’s about a growing and quasi-revolutionary rage at the structural violence of capitalism; and it’s about (depending on which opinion columnist you want to go with) white privilege, the coarsening of American political discourse, and the problem of male loneliness.... If Mangione did commit the murder of which he stands accused, it may have been because he felt that more democratic and ethical ways of refashioning a system grotesquely misshapen in the interests of the rich were not viable, or at least less attractive."
Writes Mark O'Connell, in
"Single-Player Politics/Luigi Mangione’s alleged killing of a health care CEO was conceived—and received—as a move within a game of symbols" (NYRB).
I can't believe I read that. I'm getting a little hysterically overdetermined.
Posts
112 comments:
"It’s about the barbarism of America’s health care system"
Obamacare? Barbarous? Who knew?
When you incentivize terrorism you get more terrorism. Try to imagine an America where health insurance is the only government policy worthy of political terrorism and when it works, political terrorism stops.
It's about religious relief of "burdens" through the entertainment of abortive ideation, the wicked solution.
That rant was Communist Party cant... "The structural violence of capitalism"... Watch for Bernie Sanders to start quoting that pile of vicious shit.
"Single-Player Politics“. More like single slayer politics. I don’t recall a time when advocating political murder, like killing Trump or Musk has been so prevalent. Destroying certain cars is quite popular. Shooting into certain stores is for the good.
If anything is “overdetermined” it is the current failure of the Democratic Party. It is dying as a result of multiple work flows including the desire to structure government to provide wealth to the rich elites not by useful production but by hidden government cash provided to insiders as well as use of approved violence to generate a sense of hopelessness in the public.
I really hope that these bad acting democrats go away for a while.
"a system grotesquely misshapen in the interests of the rich"
Would this be the system that people from all over the world are trying to escape to?
My prediction: It's going to come out eventually that the murderer was narcissistic and, to some degree, a sex addict, who because of his spinal problem, had become impotent.
The glorification process is solely due to the media's star-making treatment of him; the obsessing over his court-appearance wardrobe, with the simultaneous online marketing of the items - truly vile. It will eventually become a sordid little drama, at the expense of the memory of the slain innocent.
OT: What the hell is this?
"If Mangione did commit the murder of which he stands accused, it may have been because he felt that more democratic and ethical ways of refashioning a system grotesquely misshapen in the interests of the rich were not viable, or at least less attractive."
No shit, Sherlock. There's a reason why murder is not regarded as an acceptable form of political discourse.
Talking Heads 1977 ...
Réalisant mon espoir Je me lance, vers la gloire,
Translate...
Fulfilling my hope, I throw myself toward glory
Meaning...
Mangione is an entitled yuppie fuck.
Psycho Killer - Talking Heads
Now do Timothy McVeigh.
It's about the corrupt left - and their violent vilifications that lead people to commit murder.
All while the Legacy media(D) ignore it.
Leftism is evil.
So the killing was an "art project"?
"Portlandia" had a funny sketch about "art projects," and I wondered how long it would be before someone would research and work out a terrorist act and, when apprehended by the authorities, would say that it was all an art project. It looks like we're almost -- or already -- there.
One can, and probably should stop reading after the headline. Unless one would like to add, "... and move quickly on from that moral assumption to a finding of guilty to a charge of capital murder, and shortly thereafter to imposition of a sentence of capital punishment." There is simpy nothing more to add.
"it’s about the extent to which people have become desensitized to violence"
Do ya mean like the Democrats chanting "Abortion yesterday, abortion today, abortion forever?"
That kind of violence?
"Allegedly".
Anyway, Mark Twain wrote a piece about women writing love letters and poems to vicious prisoners sentenced to hang.
Waiting for RH to weigh in..
The state put timothy McVeigh to death.
We should also put leftist hero Luigi to death.
Retribution.
He --Luigi-- is going to get off, isn't he?
Rule of law is dead in this country.
We are an immoral peoples.
Our policies too...
#ChangeIsGonnaCome
There seems to be an unlimited number of low-T, Marxist pantywaists writing nothing but drivel these days.
If Joe Biden were his Dad and still president, Luigi would have been pardoned post conviction. "We take care of our own." How wealthy exactly is this man's family? It seems more relevant to the justice he has coming in this country than that pretty boy face... #sad
It's about soap opera.
Did the cold-blooded murder of the healthcare CEO get the corrupt left/economic morons what they wanted?
The Bulwark - maxi-pad Soap Opera
Take care of Luigi so that the clean-up will require a SqueeGee.
Peachy, ref your video:
It says Arizona. Must be Republican ballots being "processed."
JSM
What a rationalization.
Mason G said...
"a system grotesquely misshapen in the interests of the rich"
Would this be the system that people from all over the world are trying to escape to?
This is not true. Our health care system is run by absolutely amoral soulless ghouls.
We are flying my father to San Diego in a week. He is going to stay in a hospital and take a shuttle over the border to a facility in Mexico for stem cell treatments for encephalitis. These treatments are offered in several other countries, but are prohibitively expensive in the US because of the insurance companies.
Socrates considered sophists like this to be unprincipled intellectual prostitutes.
"...it’s about a growing and quasi-revolutionary rage at the structural violence of capitalism..."
That's nothing compared to the structural violence of socialism, where the State is the ultimate authority and there is no structural higher authority for appeal.
"This is not true."
People from all over the world aren't trying to get to the US?
I don't know how anyone could defend our drug companies right now after COVID and the vaccines and the record profits they raked in while causing a myocarditis epidemic.
The people running these companies need to face justice.
The point of the government having a monopoly on violence is to maintain order. It is there to make sure our society handles the maintenance or law and order in a rational and somewhat as fair as possible way.
But when the government does not provide justice or fairness and it allows people running these Health Insurance companies to act this way and protects them from liability the people who are hurt by them will feel a certain way.
There is no right and wrong in this situation. Everyone is wrong. These health insurance executives have acted in a heinous and evil manner and the people they have hurt and the families of the dead have understandable grievances.
There is a reason Mangionne has support and would have support even if he was ugly. The people who have pushed statins and made billions if not trillions off those drugs using faked science are evil. Same goes for the vaccine producers.
People need to grow up and look at the consequences of the systems that have been built.
Mason G said...
"This is not true."
People from all over the world aren't trying to get to the US?
They are here because of free stuff. They are not here for specific medical treatment.
Trying to conflate illegal immigration as some sort of endorsement for our atrocious medical system that is run by amoral corrupt corporatists is juvenile and lame.
"...the barbarism of America’s health care system...."
Our health care system is barbaric? Mighty harsh word there. If so, has it always been that way? If not, when did the barbarism start? What drives the health care market? Who is the largest buyer of health care services?
Oh. The Feral Gummit. Well, of course! Says right there in the Declaration of Independence everyone has a right to food, clothing, shelter, and a living wage, and that all should come free.
Western Europe and Canada - your "free" health care (It's not free) comes with a nice long wait. Hopefully you won't die waiting.
rehajm said...
When you incentivize terrorism you get more terrorism. Try to imagine an America where health insurance is the only government policy worthy of political terrorism and when it works, political terrorism stops.
This is vigilantism not terrorism. There is a slight difference.
How much money did the United Health CEO make off of pushing vaccines?
How many people are suffering from myocarditis because of the things he ordered his company to do?
Who wants to wager he was involved in lobbying government officials to mandate vaccines?
How much money does his company kickback to doctors to prescribe favored treatments?
The reason to give the Government a Monopoly on Violence is to make the distribution and management of justice acceptable to a critical mass of the population. When the system of justice fails to deliver acceptable outcomes and it allows people to get rich while doing harm to others it is utterly predictable that people will take their version of justice into their own hands.
The victim actually came from humble roots, went to a state school, I think... He didn't come from money and worked his way up. This is now how you change "the system". This is how you kill those who played by the rules in a gamed system.
Work to change the rules and make this world a more equitable, livable place for more people. Don't go to violence and try to kill your way to a win. (Tell our leaders and allies too. The kids seem to think a win is a win at any price, however immoral. Where do they get that from?? #Parity)
I predict he is quickly convicted. I don't think we are that far down the road of barbarism, even in NY City where the trial will be.
Zavier Onasses said...
"...the barbarism of America’s health care system...."
Our health care system is barbaric? Mighty harsh word there. If so, has it always been that way? If not, when did the barbarism start? What drives the health care market? Who is the largest buyer of health care services?
Oh. The Feral Gummit. Well, of course! Says right there in the Declaration of Independence everyone has a right to food, clothing, shelter, and a living wage, and that all should come free.
Over the last year we have been dealing with my father's head injuries. After his brain started bleeding internally he had to be flown to Harborview they put him in a room. They had to do this because there were no doctors able to treat him on a weekend anywhere else in the state of Washington.
We had to drive about 2 hours to catch up to him. They would not let our family in to see him for the weekend after the surgery because of COVID rules. In 2024.
Once we got into the room he was strapped down and couldn't move. They strapped him down for 2 days. He was disoriented with a brain injury and their answer was to isolate him from the family and strap him down to a bed in a room without windows and to shut the door.
Our medical system is infested with soulless evil bureaucrats and is managed and lorded over by truly evil insurance companies.
You people need to get out of this left vs. right mindset. Our healthcare system is being perverted by evil people.
"Trying to conflate illegal immigration as some sort of endorsement for our atrocious medical system that is run by amoral corrupt corporatists is juvenile and lame."
I'm not trying to conflate anything. You're reading something into my comment that I didn't say.
Read the linked article because I've been trying to get in the head of those who seem to think a system of medical insurance they don’t like justifies killing insurance company executives. The article did little to aid my understanding nor assuage my concerns that if Brian Thompson’s killing is justified in many people’s minds, how many other killings are too?
Listened a podcast recently, don’t remember the one, and they played a recorded phone call from a customer to their insurer. I’m getting the numbers wrong, but essentially, their bill was ~$800, insurance wasn’t used, when insurance was applied, the bill ~doubled to ~$1600. Aggravating for sure, there was a quirk that offered a discounted price for the uninsured but since they had insurance, they didn’t qualify. Podcast hosts were like, see, this is why people like Luigi Mangione.
If people think unfair $800 bills justifies killing, well, I just can’t relate. Put me in the “charge it to the game” camp. Seriously, people need to learn “charge it to the game,” and move on with their lives. The world would be a better place.
Oh, and I have a bone to pick with the article’s question of, is it wrong to murder a person? That’s tautologically true. Murder is wrongful killing, a specific type of wrongful killing to be sure, one that includes premeditation. But wrongful is right there in murder’s definition. The question is whether this particular killing is justified, and therefore, not wrongful and not murder. The use of murder and kill as synonyms is one of my pet peeves.
Achilles said...
Mason G said...
"a system grotesquely misshapen in the interests of the rich"
Would this be the system that people from all over the world are trying to escape to?
This is not true. Our health care system is run by absolutely amoral soulless ghouls.
We are flying my father to San Diego in a week. He is going to stay in a hospital and take a shuttle over the border to a facility in Mexico for stem cell treatments for encephalitis. These treatments are offered in several other countries, but are prohibitively expensive in the US because of the insurance companies.
3/16/25, 1:11 PM
...
I work as a physician. As of today, 2025, stem cell treatment is not valid. Science does not support its use. That's why you can get it in third world countries if you pay cash but not here.
As regards how barbarous our system is, it's still the best system in the world. If you are old, medicare pays your bills. If you are working age you should have insurance through your work. That will be PPO or HMO. If you are poor medicaid covers your care.
If you have PPO and your knee hurts you can schedule an appointment within a week or two with a surgeon, get an MRI within a week, and have a scope within a couple weeks thereafter. Arthritis? You get a new hip and a new life within a few weeks.
HMO? It takes an extra week or two or three for each step.
Medicaid/Charity care? It takes a few weeks extra and you'll be at a charity hospital or medical center.
Canada? Britain? It will take several months to get in to see your GP. Then several months to see a specialist. Then several months more for your MRI. Then months if not years before surgery. These are all published data.
If you live in Canada or Britain you simply do not have access to timely care. If you live here and have PPO you have access to timely care. If you live here and have HMO you have access to timely care. If you live here and are not paying for your insurance - charity care - you are getting the same care Canada gets and at no greater delay, probably less delay.
Those who advocate for a Canada-style or NHS-style system are advocating for EVERYONE to be on Medicaid. That's what you're getting.
Achilles - I'm sympathetic to and sorry for your father's treatment. With that said, the number of horror stories coming out of Canada and Britain - people confined to their beds who literally starve to death bec they are ignored, people dying for any of a number of reasons bec they are simply ignored and no one cares - is legion.
"These treatments are offered in several other countries, but are prohibitively expensive in the US because of the insurance companies."
Agree -- we should eliminate health insurance companies and just have everyone pay out of pocket for everything. Clearly, insurance companies, with their 3.3 to 3.4 % profit margins, are gouging the public. Time to put an end to it.
You leftists have no idea of the fire you're playing with. None.
actual items said...
If people think unfair $800 bills justifies killing, well, I just can’t relate. Put me in the “charge it to the game” camp. Seriously, people need to learn “charge it to the game,” and move on with their lives. The world would be a better place.
Bad Straw Man. You are trying to pretend that the insurance industry and people like Brian Thompson have only bilked the system for 800/1600$ in a couple random situations.
Brian Thompson was a leader in an industry that lobbied the government to force people to take a set of vaccines that the industry lied about safety testing on in a scheme that made billions for himself and others. The vaccines were ineffective and they knew it. The vaccines were dangerous and they knew it. But they knowingly pushed for them to be government subsidized and mandated so they could make money.
And the damage the vaccines have done is a drop in the ocean compared to the damage done by Opiods or Statins.
A more effective argument is that you cannot have individuals in society make unilateral decisions to enforce social order and impose justice because the inevitable result of that is mob rule and might makes right tribal justice systems.
But concurrent to that you need to support reforms to the system that will hold corporatist scumbags like Brian Thompson accountable for his actions. If you do not do that then you will lose a critical mass of the population who will refuse to participate in the justice system and start to act on their own.
Dogma and Pony Show said...
"These treatments are offered in several other countries, but are prohibitively expensive in the US because of the insurance companies."
Agree -- we should eliminate health insurance companies and just have everyone pay out of pocket for everything. Clearly, insurance companies, with their 3.3 to 3.4 % profit margins, are gouging the public. Time to put an end to it.
You are trying to make a sarcastic point while using obfuscation. If this was not your intention let me know.
The primary cause of the health care crisis in our country is to separate price determination from the principal parties involved in the transaction.
The doctor and the patient need to determine the price of the care in a market based system.
Removing this interaction and replacing it with pseudo-government agencies like United Health has essentially instituted single payer in the US. United Health is a bureaucratic monster that lives parasitically on patient doctor transactions. The multinational corporations have also lobbied us all into a system where you have to work for a multinational corporation to get this "insurance."
We no longer are really allowed to discuss the price of care with our doctor. The price is set by a government/corporate alliance. The types of treatments we can receive from a hospital are determined by the "Standard of Care" which shockingly is determined by the same pseudo-government bureaucratic institutions.
If you deviate from the standard of care you will be sued out of existence by, total shocker, our judicial branch of government.
People are completely unwilling to deal with the truth of the current state of the United States health care system. It is absolutely corrupt to it's core.
Keith said...
Achilles - I'm sympathetic to and sorry for your father's treatment. With that said, the number of horror stories coming out of Canada and Britain - people confined to their beds who literally starve to death bec they are ignored, people dying for any of a number of reasons bec they are simply ignored and no one cares - is legion.
I am not arguing for single payer. Quite the opposite.
What I am pointing out is that Brian Thompson was a leader in the health care industry that has essentially instituted single payer in the United States with the added layer of replacing the government incompetence of the Canadian system with the worst form of globalist multinational corporatist greed of the giant insurance companies.
Achilles - very sorry for your dad's suffering. Do you have a Gofundme or similar?
"Once we got into the room he was strapped down and couldn't move. They strapped him down for 2 days. He was disoriented with a brain injury and their answer was to isolate him from the family and strap him down to a bed in a room without windows and to shut the door."
Not to make excuses for idiocy, but I take it Harborview is in Seattle. They probably have to follow 'urban rules' for everyone with head injuries, because a few families acted up and ruined it for everyone else. If they make exceptions for obviously well-behaved people, they open themselves up to lawsuits.
Messed-up world.
RLTW
JSM
If you think its bad now, wait a decade or so. Pediatricians haven't filled their nationwide residency slots by several hundred for the past few years, meaning that there are more retirees and others leaving the field than joining it. Expect Pediatrics to be several tens of thousands of doctors short nationwide in a few years. Other specialties have similar shortfalls of applicants. As to nursing, heh, multiply the shortage of doctors by about 10x. And just paying more won't fix this shortage in anything less than another decade after the shortfalls become really, really bad. Enjoy!
mikee said...
If you think its bad now, wait a decade or so. Pediatricians haven't filled their nationwide residency slots by several hundred for the past few years, meaning that there are more retirees and others leaving the field than joining it. Expect Pediatrics to be several tens of thousands of doctors short nationwide in a few years. Other specialties have similar shortfalls of applicants. As to nursing, heh, multiply the shortage of doctors by about 10x. And just paying more won't fix this shortage in anything less than another decade after the shortfalls become really, really bad. Enjoy!
This is absolutely by design.
The people in charge of our health care system want fewer people on the planet.
I thought ObamaCare was supposed to solve everything?
"People in charge of our health care system---fewer people on the planet"
Yes, of course. Why do you think Hospitals have embraced robotic technology in droves ? You can't shoot robots when they turn you away. You may have thought robotic surgery is the latest technique to "Help" patients but don't be fooled. (Do you really want a robot operating on you?) It's nothing but a ploy to take Healthcare off the hook in lawsuits. On a botched surgery you won't be able to sue a Robot for malpractice. AI in healthcare settings is nothing but a tool to avoid liability.
I see that some Minnesota Republicans are planning to introduce a bill making Trump Derangement Syndrome a verifiable mental illness:
"“Trump Derangement Syndrome” means the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies of President Donald J. Trump. Symptoms may include Trump-induced general hysteria, which produces an inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and signs of psychic pathology in President Donald J. Trump’s behavior....."
https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/03/republicans-in-minnesota-introduce-bill-classifying-trump-derangement-syndrome-as-a-mental-illness/
Hmm... Does that mean a diagnosis could be made? Does that mean there could be, you know, a process for finding someone mentally incompetent because of this diagnosis?
Mark O'Connell's moral compass is festooned with swastikas and SS runes. Not surprising, really. Nor is the fact that the New York Review of Books publishes him. Both are plummeting headlong into damnation.
Achilles is teetering on the brink.
"...righteous fury at the iniquity and injustice of America’s profit-driven system of health care."
If it's greed and the profit motive that instills "the barbarism of America’s health care system," ask these armchair "activists" a simple question:
What's stopping anyone (including the most vocal of you) from starting a mutual health insurance company, collectively owned and run by the policyholders for the benefit of the policyholders? A collective that wrings-out all of that obscene profit.
these people are sociopathic, high functioning,
I dubbed the Review Molotov monthly after that notorious 1969 cover,
Thank god someone is finally sticking up for the robber barons in this great oligarchy! I for one, salute our gilded overlords.
The Hag what Tea Bags grew tired of the leftwing geldings!
Wince said...
"...righteous fury at the iniquity and injustice of America’s profit-driven system of health care."
If it's greed and the profit motive that instills "the barbarism of America’s health care system," ask these armchair "activists" a simple question:
What's stopping anyone (including the most vocal of you) from starting a mutual health insurance company, collectively owned and run by the policyholders for the benefit of the policyholders? A collective that wrings-out all of that obscene profit.
We are. There are numerous Cash for Care companies being built right now. There are cooperatives that are mostly growing out of the Men's health/Testosterone Replacement Treatment industry.
Not sure how your argument serves as a defense for the industry that used a corporate/government alliance to force vaccines on us and rape tax payers for billions of dollars while shortening millions of lives.
You people are reflexively defending the insurance companies that teamed up with Obama and corporatist republicans like Romney and McCain to push Obamneycare on the country because you hate the marxists. There needs to be a separation here and you need to stop the emotional reactions.
You did not reason yourselves into your current position.
Mangionne and the marxist movement he was a part of are terrible people who are violent and are pushing for a malevolent totalitarian society.
Brian Thompson was a globalist apparatchik pushing drugs and a health care system that shortens lives by design and uses a corporate/government alliance to take money from taxpayers and enforce his monopoly position.
There are thousands of health industry executives and government bureaucrats in the world who have lied to us and who extracted billions of dollars using corrupt and malevolent tactics.
There will be punishment for this. It is intolerable.
It will either be within the justice system meted out by the government with a monopoly on violence or there will be unrest and vigilantism.
It doesn't matter whether it is right or wrong. The morally juvenile pronouncements about what Mangionne did and what justice he deserves are just silly. You can't keep blindly supporting a system like this.
Obviously I would prefer that Fauci and Birx and the bureaucrats at the CDC and the corporate officers at Pfizer and the corrupt operatives at NIH that funded the research of COVID were indicted and faced transparent and honest trials for the murders they committed and the fraud and theft they used to enrich themselves. But if that doesn't happen and these people are still around in a year claiming they are good people with the justice system doing nothing you can't pretend that it will just slide.
I know someone who works for the robot-surgery. She is wicked smart and makes a lot of money -tho - sometimes grueling hours. She knows the company she works for is cut-throat and nasty. Really nasty. mob-like behavior.
TeaBagHAG - wow - you've discovered greed. Who knew?
I'm sure your side is free of greed and grift.
Holy shit Achilles! Save some crazy for the rest of us.
1) You aren't authorized to kill someone because you don't like the policies of the company he runs. We call that "murder".
2) Just in case you missed #1: We call that "murder".
3) If this creep weren't good-looking, he wouldn't have all these fan-girls and fan-boys rooting for him. Think about that while you celebrate the cold-blooded murder he committed.
I have my insurance from the company the victim ran, and they have never turned me down for a claim. If I'd had notice that this creep was going to murder this guy, and a chance to pick up a surplus M-14, there'd be 1 more live insurance exec., and one more wounded nutso (at least I used to be that good a shot -- maybe I'd have to shoot the nutso to kill).
"This is vigilantism not terrorism. There is a slight difference."
It is a major difference. And this is terrorism, not vigilantism. Always assuming it's not just some kind of delusory mental illness.
The left get it wrong.
Allow healthcare to be open market - with prices up front.
So much is hidden behind layers of bureaucratic government regulations / big pharma / big hospital waste, fraud and abuse.
Yes - people who have money escape to private insurance markets because it's cheaper and more effective. Doctors - good ones - like it too.
Making something like that for everyone - goes against the grifter instinct.
Plus = the left gain a lot from keeping the system complicated , victim, and financially and physically ineffective.
You can abort a human life for causes other than self-defense, but is it moral? It is ethical. To make that Choice? The lobbyist, the the politician, the voter, the medical staff, the administrative staff, the bureaucrat, the financier, etc., who is worthy of entertaining abortive ideation and affirmative action? Should we celebrate their Choice? Should we exercise liberal license to indulge Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class bigotry) in blocs? Should we be informed by anecdotal evidence with empathetic appeal? Who is responsible for elective conditions? What are the causes of unaffordable and unavailable medical services and products? Is all fair in lust and abortion?
If Mangione did commit the murder of which he stands accused, it may have been because he felt that more democratic and ethical ways of refashioning a system grotesquely misshapen in the interests of the rich were not viable, or at least less attractive.
Or it may be that he tried to get a piece of the graft and committed homicide out of frustration at his lack of success.
"Trying to conflate illegal immigration as some sort of endorsement for our atrocious medical system that is run by amoral corrupt corporatists is juvenile and lame."
California now offers free healthcare for illegals. Cost ballooned up to 9 billion.
You will indeed start to see Cancer migration.
imagine you come to America, your mother back home gets cancer, would you not bring her to California to get free care?
Amen!
Better to watch with glee, as the many die and suffer for profit and say nothing, than to slow clap as one greedy mass murderer gets his comeuppance.
.
TeaBagHAG - you should kill all the evil healthcare CEO's - with glee. Because that will, like, totally solve all the problems the Single-Payer-ObamaCare-ninny's created.
The left's master idea: Free Tax payer funded health care for Illegals. When it all goes to shit - kill the CEO... with your leftist glee.
I’m pretty sure that’s in the MAGAt bible; I saw the many suffering and I said to the lord,; maybe we can end the sufferring of the masses by making many dollars for the few.
I think my healthcare has been great, even when I was a poor child. I have gotten excellent treatment for everything I needed.
When he was still funny (and alive) P.J. O'Rourke noted that if you think health care is expensive now, wait 'til it's free.
Is Luigi attractive? He looks like a furry greaseball, a monobrowed hominid. Maybe that’s what women like, or maybe they just can’t resist a cold-blooded killer
Not sure how your argument serves as a defense for the industry that used a corporate/government alliance to force vaccines on us and rape tax payers for billions of dollars while shortening millions of lives.
My argument was the opposite of a defense of the health insurance industry. By pointing out "that activists" have had the keys to the Bastille all along, I was calling the bluff of those who claim it should be simple to compete at less profit, provide better service and take market share away from the corporate gougers. As an alternative to shooting people in the back.
If the "corporate/government alliance" creates a barrier to entry that thwarts competition, make the case. I'm listening. Reallocating the tax advantages that predominantly puts employers in the middle of the transaction might be a good first step.
Admit it- you weren’t expecting that from Wince, were you?
The Hag is in the bag.
The iman licks cornhole for money?
Am I doing this right?
Found another use of the term "hysterically overdetermined" in this piece: https://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2014-10-17/the-good-eye-killer-outfits-annas-blue-dress/
Not a phrase I'd ever seen before, and not one I'm likely to use in anything I might decide to write.
He is going to stay in a hospital and take a shuttle over the border to a facility in Mexico for stem cell treatments for encephalitis. These treatments are offered in several other countries, but are prohibitively expensive in the US because of the insurance companies.
Because of insurance companies or because of the pharmaceutical companies? If they're cheap in other countries without insurance, then the base cost is inflated only in the US. The insurance companies don't inflate the base cost. The medical companies that provide the treatment set their cost and insurance companies respond. This may be a case where the base cost in the US includes the research needed to establish the treatment while the base cost in other countries only reflect treatment production costs. This has been going on with drugs for a long time. In the US, drug companies are given a period before generics become available to recover the development costs. That period does not seem to exist in other countries.
You may be blaming the wrong party for the costs. Unfortunately, the US population has been burdened with medical development costs and the rest of the world freeloads.
Unfortunately, the US population has been burdened with medical development costs and the rest of the world freeloads.
Bingo! I’m an old man (79th birthday coming up) and for decades I heard liberals explaining that “we can afford it because we’re the richest country on earth.” And now we’re so deep in debt we may never recover.
And BTW, can anyone point to a single-payer system that does not ration healthcare by age? It’s the norm in Canada (the push assisted suicide instead) and in the UK’s NHS. Yeah, Gen-Z and Millennials are all for single payer. They forget that someday they’ll be old too.
TeaBagHag said...
"Thank god someone is finally sticking up for the robber barons in this great oligarchy! I for one, salute our gilded overlords."
What are going to do once all the billionaires are dead or have left? Do you somehow think all that wealth will be left behind for you to exploit?
Shit like this happens to inconsequential poeple every day, and those offenders have their fan clubs -- like the ACLU and the media and Law Professors.
Try to never forget that, and ask yourself: why does this one surprise and shock me? And, what could I have done to stop this from happening to the little people? And, what didn't I do?
Wince said...
Not sure how your argument serves as a defense for the industry that used a corporate/government alliance to force vaccines on us and rape tax payers for billions of dollars while shortening millions of lives.
My argument was the opposite of a defense of the health insurance industry. By pointing out "that activists" have had the keys to the Bastille all along, I was calling the bluff of those who claim it should be simple to compete at less profit, provide better service and take market share away from the corporate gougers. As an alternative to shooting people in the back.
If the "corporate/government alliance" creates a barrier to entry that thwarts competition, make the case. I'm listening. Reallocating the tax advantages that predominantly puts employers in the middle of the transaction might be a good first step.
You are of course referencing Medicare/Medicaid which defacto set prices for almost all medical care procedures and decide which procedures are allowed. Medical care providers either participate in the system and set their prices as the government dictates or they get no Medicare patients.
Huge administrative costs in order to participate in this system eliminate all small and medium health care companies. The predictable end result is an oligarchy controlling almost all medical treatment in the country. Now you add in Obamneycare requiring everyone to have insurance and forcing people with jobs to participate in an extremely limited marketplace.
My father cannot get the stem cell treatment for encephalitis in the US because Medicare just will not cover it. If you want to pay for it they have set the price way out of our means. There are several hospitals/clinics right on the other side of the border in Tijuana that provide the treatment and have had solid results.
There is a small cottage industry in San Diego with medical organizations in Mexico that coordinate with hotels in San Diego that have packages for a long list of medical procedures. Panama and several other countries in central america host similar medical tourism industries.
The only medical procedures that get cheaper in the US over time are plastic surgery and lasik because they are a pure cash market.
Lasik would be 10 times as expensive now if insurance and medicare were involved and all of the difference would be flowing into the pockets of the insurance companies at the expense of taxpayers and the people forced to buy insurance.
Tina Trent said...
Shit like this happens to inconsequential poeple every day, and those offenders have their fan clubs -- like the ACLU and the media and Law Professors.
Try to never forget that, and ask yourself: why does this one surprise and shock me? And, what could I have done to stop this from happening to the little people? And, what didn't I do?
I think the Joker laid this out pretty well.
Discussing whether or not Mangionne was right or wrong is stupid.
The point is that Mangionne is inevitable. And now he is a hero to a not insignificant number of people.
My father has permanent brain damage and I am believe that the policies at that hospital and the insurance/medicaid system are in part responsible.
My personal experience with the "health insurance" offered as a "benefit" for my job make me believe I am just giving giant companies 3000$ a month so they can serve illegal aliens and bonuses for insurance company execs. It pays for nothing.
"Pediatricians" are still trying to get us to "vaccinate" our kids with COVID vaccines. We found them trying to call them "flu shots."
I am not sure how you people can defend what these insurance companies and our government are doing. What we have now is worse than single payer by a long ways.
If you people keep defending this we will end up with single payer. That is inevitable as well. I would prefer a doctor/patient cash system with government covering catastrophic. But single payer is better than what we have now.
I've spent my whole life negotiating care for chronically sick parents and a brother. I call what people like Fauci did during Covid treason. He did the same damn thing in the early years of AIDS. I know people at the CDC who have said this. But they won't say it out loud, the cowards. I'm as expert as you get on the misuses of public health messaging and the role pathology plays in medical prima donnas.
I've barely gotten out of bed or had solid food for more than two years, a circumstance that started directly following my second Covid shot. I'm no crazy anti-vaxxer: I'm a bloody pissed off previously pro-vaxxer. We're selling the house I built with my own hands to pay for medical bills. And yes, despite insurance, I wait for months for tests sometimes. I had a blood cancer doctor whisper (whisper!) to me to not get any more Covid boosters. I had mild inflammatory conditions, but they were under control before the Covid shots. I can read an M and M report. I do that, and more, every week. It's not looking good, and yes, they colluded to lie to us. Read "We Were Badly Misled About Covid," in the NYT yesterday.
I was once an ultramarathoner. Now I have no life. No job, no friends, no plans for the future. I go from doctor to doctor and they do outrageously expensives tests and then send me to the next doctor. I of course wouldn't shoot a CEO, but, given what even the NYT is admitting this week, I'd find him guilty for treason and volunteer for the firing squad.
And of course that shaggy-haired Colgate smile guido murderer belongs on death row too.
Let's take it as a given that it's wrong to murder the writers and editors of the New York Review of Books.
Now do Timothy McVeigh.
That's not as crazy as it sounds. One can make a reasonable argument that after what the BATF and FBI knowingly and deliberately did to babies and innocent children and pregnant women at Waco, McVeigh's actions were more justified than Luigi Mangione's.
That's not a high bar, and McVeigh's actions were entirely reprehensible and worthy of the death penalty. If he had chosen his target more carefully, and leveled the FBI headquarters in Washington instead of some random Federal building full of bureaucrats who had nothing to do with Waco, I would say the same, but in that case the calculus would be even more definitively on the side of McVeigh.
A lot of leftist scum are saying that the CEO deserved to die because his company greedily took money from people and then refused to pay it out when they needed it -- well, what is government but the very same scam, on a grander scale, and enforced by men with guns?
Put another way, what justifies shooting a health care CEO that does not also justify the wholesale slaughter of politicians and senior bureaucrats who have lied to us for decades, stolen our taxes and pissed them away on themselves and their cronies and their political machines, giving us back a pittance in Social Security payments that could have been four or five times greater if people were allowed to invest privately instead of in the Social Security Ponzi scheme?
All the robber barons and corporate pirates who ever lived can't hold a candle to scum and scoundrels like FDR and LBJ. Government is a racket. Government is Mafia. There are no greater criminals, no greater murderers, no greater evil than exists in government.
If there is going to be jury nullification by the Left for the likes of Luigi Mangione, then they had better not complain when someone targets, say, a Chuck Schumer or an AOC or a Janet Reno, and walks freely out of the courtroom by a vote of his peers.
McVeigh was a Democrat. A very good book was written about all the lies the media printed. And no, you don't bomb daycare centers. You let our laws play this out and let the guilty rot in prison on death row.
I was working on a CDC grant in the early 90s when I first heard of Fauci. All of it was bad, if not evil. He and Robert Gallow and French scientist Montagnier, perhaps the biggest confluence of scientific ego of all time, were going for a moonshot - a vaccine. They had the money and power. They didn't close the bathhouses, which accounted for 80% transmission at the time. They pandered to gay activists, hard. They used the rare, middle-class woman who had gotten AIDS from a blood transfusion to terrify the public of a more dangerous pandemic to gain power and money.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Dole was running the blood banking system for the U.S., despite no medical experience. She refused to test the syrum, often gathered from thousands of donations, and all the hemophiliacs died excruciating deaths. As it is a genetic disease, some families lost two, three, four children.
I worked in public health for several years. Through my usual Zelig twists of fate, I got to know some of the highest people at the CDC. They really were not the problem, then or now. They're just not that good at politics, which is a compliment. The problem lies at the NAID. I say DOGE that and put their mission statement under Robert Redfield, the previous director, who doesn't conceal his contempt for Fauci.
America’s health care system
Can we stop calling insurance companies “health care”? They do not and never have provided care to anyone’s health. It is like calling a bank an engineering firm because you need a bank to finance your engineered projects.
Dogma and Pony Show said...
"Clearly, insurance companies, with their 3.3 to 3.4 % profit margins, are gouging the public. Time to put an end to it.”
On a tangent but…
If 3.4% profit is gouging, then surely 3.4% tax rates - on things like income, gas, etc, etc - is gouging, too.
If 3.4% leads to fat cat millionaire CEOs, then surely similar tax rates lead to fat cat millionaire governmental types.
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...
“Is Luigi attractive? He looks like a furry greaseball, a monobrowed hominid. Maybe that’s what women like, or maybe they just can’t resist a cold-blooded killer.”
Women calling Luigi attractive has made me seriously question the judgement of women who have ever called me “good looking”.
“… a system grotesquely misshapen in the interests of the rich…”
Not the rich; the connected.
Of course the connected often end up getting rich for that reason rather than providing goods and services people willingly buy.
"On a botched surgery you won't be able to sue a Robot for malpractice. AI in healthcare settings is nothing but a tool to avoid liability."
********
Now explain why Boeing got sued to the eyeballs for using faulty software to help fly its new 737's....into the ground.
Someone programmed those robots, and those people can be sued.
Any thoughts, Tea Bag Hag? Have you thought this through yet?
Luigi is an ink blot. People see what they want to see.
Rusty at 9:02 - good question
The collective Molotov cocktail left: It's OK to Kill all the robber barons!
Except Soros' family, The Davos gang, and Bill Gates. They are cool.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that killing people is wrong. Fire away. But that doesn't mean that everything is hunky dory with our current healthcare system. If insurance takes a 100% mark-up, people are going to be legitimately angry about that and not just slough it off as if it were an inevitable fact of life. Still, that doesn't justify killing.
Get government out of Big Insurance.
Before WW2 Japan's military had lots of 'true believers'. They would just walk up to an adversary and shoot them and say they did it for their country. And that is how the far right military got in control of their country.
And this POS Luigi is the same way... can't get your way.. then murder them and claim it was for the 'good of the country'.
I sincerely hope he gets the death penalty or life in SuperMax least there is no message sent that his actions were wrong.
Who wants to bet some progressive judge lets Luigi off easy. ?
This is from the half of the people in this country that don't want you to be able to defend yourself from criminals even in your own home. That couldn't see self defense when show video of a 17 year old young man being chased by people clearly intending him harm if not death.
Shoot a rich man in the back and that's cool with them.
It's pretty disgusting.
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