The Greek tragedy of United Healthcare.

20241211

The news story of the day is the shooting of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson by a disgruntled client who had been denied coverage.

This to me is a Greek tragedy. The conflict inherent in the tragedy is between the expectations that common people place on insurance and the avarice of the insurance providers. It is a proper tragedy, with impiety, failures of belief on the part of both.

Most people don’t accept that our fate is in God's hands or that our life span is limited. We don’t accept that there are difficulties that simply cannot be overcome, diseases that cannot be cured and accidents that cannot be avoided.

Our ancestors’ belief was that this was all part of God's plan. They prayed to God for their own lives, and they prayed to God for the salvation of the souls that did happen to die.

When a fellow like Mangione had insufferable back pain or his mother some incurable disease they would ascribe it to God's will. They would read the book of Job and get on with life, part of which was having children. No single person can last forever, but humanity goes on through our children.

We no longer see reminders of the reality of our own mortality. Children don’t die young. Our elderly go to homes and hospitals to die. A subset of my modest subscriber base, Joanne, Gus and David, had parents live to be 100. How rare is that? And yet, we all must die.

Hucksters encourage us to pretend that we can dodge fate, that we can avoid difficulties. Health insurance is certainly one of these games. Health insurance purports to assure good health throughout our lives and to protect us from financial loss. Social Security supposedly prevents destitution in our old age. Police and courts insure against being robbed and defrauded.

Every form of insurance costs money. We fork over our money to the insurers for the peace of mind they provide. We don't ask about the other potential uses of that money. If we were able to give less to the tax people and insurers, we could afford to have children to care for us. We don't make that equation. In fact, most of us have been persuaded not to want children. We are propagandized to ensure the future of the planet by not polluting it with our children and the environmental destruction they would occasion.

I, as a conservative, hold, to a traditional notion of self-reliance. I have never bought insurance I didn't have to. Our car insurance is minimal – liability only. I bet I'm not going to wreck my car and I never bought a car that so expensive that I could not afford to replace it.

I have enough money to pay the hospitals to treat whatever is treatable. That works well here in Ukraine where it's more or less fee-for-service – you don't have the Brian Thompsons of this world, the middlemen, jacking the prices up astronomically.

My calculation has been that if I get anything that can't be cured for a couple hundred thousand dollars. I probably don't want to live anyhow. Once again rather like Mr. Mangione’s mother and himself. If I had his problems, I would accept it as fate and pray for God’s help to get on as well as I could. I would not blame the medical/insurance establishment for non-fulfillment of hollow promises, but myself for having been gullible enough to believe them.

I can agree with Mangione right down the line on the shortcomings of allopathic medicine, but at the same time note that though it is vicious of government and the AMA to suppress alternatives, those often don’t work much better anyhow. Even in a fair and open market there are frequently not solutions.

Returning to the topic of conservativism, our family dresses modestly, eats modestly, lives in a modest house, and drives a modest car. Truth told, an absolute wreck. We are able to translate living modestly into accumulating something to pass on to our progeny. More than just providing an education, we hope to position them to start their own families at an early age.

This is quite the opposite of most modern liberals, epitomized by my rich ex-wife. Before our divorce we had a ton of money. I set up trusts for the children in the expectation that they would start their own families. She had no belief in the project and liquidated the trusts as soon as I left. Though she has no better use for her money, I am not aware that she gives them any financial support even today. It turns out not to matter; the children had been brainwashed to have no interest in starting their own families.

In a similar conservative vein, I contributed a minimum to Social Security because I did not believe in it. While I am content to cash their generous pension checks simply by virtue of the generation into which I was born, it remains a Ponzi scheme whether I'm on top or bottom. I pity you younger readers who are being robbed to support me.

I’ll close in saying, God bless the child who's got his own. You cannot trust the promises of any official organization. That includes insurers, public health officials, climate bureaucrats – all of them. They have their own agendas and they are not so whatsoever interested in you.

I celebrate this age of revolt. The age of Donald Trump in the United States, the AFD in Germany, National Rally in France, the Dutch freedom party and the Austrian freedom party. People are finally deciding that they've had enough. They do not want academically credentialed poohbahs with long strings of failed prognostications telling them what to do. They do not want to listen to the traditional news outlets that have been wrong right down the line, that supported the establishment telling them what to do and to shut up and stay in their place if when they disagreed.

People want to read alternative blogs. The establishment fears and attacks our Internet vehicles for spreading different dissenting opinions. We must celebrate our freedom of speech while it while it lasts. It is under relentless attack.

I predict that any Go Fund Me for Mr. Mangione will be well subscribed. Though I in general have no use for Ms. Lorenz, I suspect that the indignation directed at her is largely hollow. There is a strong streak of Robin Hood in our society.

Back to the Greek tragedy. The Gods have willed this confrontation, in which both protagonists must meet dismal ends. The moral for the Greeks was not to believe in false gods. For us as well.

Graham