Perverse Incentive Structure of Capitalism Responsible for UnitedHealth Executive's Assassination

The incoming Trump Administration is preparing to compel obedience to capitalist health care that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year by labeling lack of sympathy for the recently slain UnitedHealth executive Brian Thompson as "terrorism." 

And they do not mean sympathy for him for having fallen into the tragedy of getting rich by denying people needed medical treatment, a form of legalized killing far more deadly than Luigi Mangione's lone act of assassination. They mean the mawkish sentimentality of treating Thompson as a selfless leader and dedicated father without regard for the immense destructiveness of the productive role he willingly embraced. Who cares, in other words, for the vast numbers of Americans injured and killed by a Profit Care system that considers them mere collateral damage in the feverish quest for limitless private gain.

Philosopher Irami Osei-Frimpong (see his wonderful podcast - The Funky Academic) has a helpful suggestion for dealing with this grotesque situation. Noting that the upcoming Mangione Trial is sure to dominate the national attention in 2025, he recommends we take advantage of popular anger to form a universal public health care party that will directly challenge for-profit health care at the ballot box, similar to how the abolitionists formed the Republican Party to challenge the pro-slavery Whigs in the 1850s. In those years new states were admitted to the Union in pairs, one slave and the other "free," as though the persistence of slavery didn't cripple everyone's freedom. Today we are assigned to Profit Care if we are under 65 and Public Care (Medicare) if we are seniors, as though the superordinate goal of profit didn't cripple the quality of health for everyone.

The United States remains the only developed country that doesn't provide free health care at the point of service, and the only one in that group that still tolerates medical bankruptcies. In fact, inability to pay medical bills is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. To the grief of illness and death is added the grief of economic ruin.

According to President Trump and his team, anyone who has a problem with this is a terrorist.