Air Date 1/4/2025
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.
The murder of a health insurance CEO being met with widespread approval, and the risk of going backward on life-saving vaccines in the country, pretty much sums up the current state of our approach to healthcare in the US.
For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today includes Straight White American Jesus, Serious Inquiries Only, The Majority Report, The ReidOut, and The Lever. Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections: Section A. RFK Jr.; Section B. Luigi Mangione; Section C. United Healthcare; and Section D. Health care history.
Luigi Mangione and the End of Civilization - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 12-13-24
BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: So we are going to talk about Luigi Mangione and the killing of the United Health CEO, Brian Thompson. We're then going to talk about Pete Hegseth and the military and also [00:01:00] just the general target that Trump's nominees and Trump himself have put on immigrants and queer folks, including and especially trans folks. So we will go there too with some updates in that whole arena. But we are going to start today with Mangione and I think the story that has really captivated the nation this week.
I think Dan, in a media landscape that we have now, where everyone is so fragmented, it's hard to think of a story basically being universal, like reaching every corner of the internet and broadcast news and everything else, but this one really has. I feel like I haven't done story time in a while and I, there's going to be a part of me here that wants to really get moving, but I feel like we're also going to have a chance to dissect an article that came out in the last two days and do something we haven't done in a while, which is kind of our grad seminar, "let's look at key quotes and break them down," mode of operating, which Dan, I really miss. And if there's something I miss about grad school, it's that, right? Sitting in a room, breaking down texts. It is really, [00:02:00] really enjoyable to me. All right, here's what's going on friends, you all know by now that the alleged killer of the CEO, Brian Thompson, the healthcare CEO, is a young guy named Luigi Mangione.
He has kind of captured the internet, he has polarized people, but some people are treating him like a folk hero, he's saying that he's very good looking, he's young, he is something like Robin Hood, something like, somebody who, you know, deserves to be somehow emulated or revered, and so on. One of the questions I'm sure some of you have, and I know that some of you already know this, but I think it's worth repeating, is what does the motive seem to be here?
And Robert Evans at It Could Happen Here said it this way a couple days ago. "His friend lived with him at an intentional community for digital workers in Honolulu in 2022. Confirms that Luigi suffered an injury shortly after taking a basic surfing class. After moving there. This laid him up in bed for about a week, unable to move, and his friends had to help him with the [00:03:00] special bed for the pain.
In general, we have ample confirmation that he was someone who dealt with a series of escalating health issues that changed him from an extremely active, physically fit young man, into somebody who felt like they were no longer able to do or enjoy the things they had previously been able to do and enjoy.
Now, this is most of what we know about the health history of Luigi Mangione as of December 10th. One of the things that, I mean, we can go into his manifesto, we can go into more here, but I'll just summarize. He seems to be somebody who had back pain for a long time. It seems to have gotten worse over the last couple of years.
And that, in many ways, radicalized him. The episode that they did over at It Could Happen Here was, Luigi Mangione was radicalized by pain. And I want to hold on to that phrase. I think it's a very apt phrase and I think they did a great job with that over at It Could Happen Here pod and their whole outfit. He was radicalized by pain. We can verify, they say that Mangione suffered from chronic [00:04:00] back pain. He had five different books in his Goodreads that he read about dealing with back pain and healing from back pain as well as other chronic health issues. If he is the shooter. Then we can confirm he also chose to act out by targeting an insurance CEO.
So Dan, I think there's, as soon as people heard us start talking about this there, are we going to take sides? Are we going to sit here and say that he's a hero and he's this or that? I want to try to do something with a little nuance, which is something we've always gone for on this show.
And I want to try to analyze something that I think is really important about this whole set of events. I'm not going to celebrate murder. I'm not going to sit here and say that what he did was good, or right. I'm not going to condone random interpersonal violence and I'm not going to encourage my kids to look up to him.
Okay, now, saying all of that, Brian Thompson was a human being. We can say that because of the role he played in the health [00:05:00] insurance system, that he was perpetuating some of the worst harms of that system and so on and so forth. There are kids though today that don't have a dad and so on. I'm not going to sit here and say I'm totally, let free Luigi. I'm not going to do that. Okay. What I am interested in is however, and I want to legitimize and I want to recognize, and I want to see what it means is the overwhelming outpouring of grief, anger, sadness, and pain, by those who've either sympathized with him or celebrated him.
Dan, there have been so many memes, so many tweets, so many Bluesky, whatever a Bluesky is skeet. It's called a skeet, which I'm just not, man, I'm, we have to draw the line. Am I supposed to call it a skeet? Is that what we're doing? I don't know. That seems, there's just a nineties kid in me that doesn't feel like that's appropriate, but whatever.
People have basically, used [00:06:00] this set of events to express their pain, right? If Luigi was radicalized by pain, people have used his actions to express their pain and basically express the tragedies and ravages of our healthcare system. What I want to notice and what I want to analyze is not whether or not he should have done this.
I don't want to ask that question. And it's not a question that I think is open for me. I don't think that we should encourage people to sneak up on others behind them and shoot them. If that is what he did, that's what he allegedly did. That's okay. But what I am interested in is this led to Dan and outpouring, right?
It felt like it was some kind of event that people, it was a canvas. It was a landscape. It was something where people could go find themselves, throw themselves, project themselves. I'm going to stop. I got, if I get going, you're going to not be on the mic here for another 50 minutes. So, any further reactions just to the events themselves, to what I'm saying, to the kind of internet culture [00:07:00] that's now surrounding this whole set of events and so on?
DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Yeah, I mean, it's not even just so called internet culture, right? You had the mainstream legacy media stuff reaching out and saying, we want to hear your stories about, the healthcare system or how you feel about this. And they got just flooded, again, inundated with people who, even if they didn't like, sort of condone this, they felt like they understood it. They felt like this was somebody who reached a breaking point that I think a lot of people, maybe I would say it this way, talk about being radicalized by pain, it appears that he reached some breaking point that a lot of people could imagine reaching that they might not live it out. They might not carry it out. I think most people won't. And again, we wouldn't condone that, but I think for a lot of people, this, they were, they understood this. I don't know if that makes sense. And it's a distinction I make sometimes for my students. That I think is worth looking at here of the difference between explaining something and justifying it.
And I think that's what we're trying to do is explain this to try to understand it. We're not [00:08:00] justifying it. We're not telling people everybody who's been denied a claim by something to go out and, kill somebody. But I think that there's, I think what this does is it makes an act that in the abstract is outlandish and violent and something that nobody, some regular people would never do. And I think there are a lot of people that say, you know what? I don't know if my circumstances were different, if I am radically different from that. I don't know, this isn't an act that feels completely foreign to me, that feels impossible, and I think that, I don't know if I'm articulating that well, but I think that that's a strange, affective place to be. And if people are listening, and you've ever been in that space where there's something that, in the abstract, you'd be like, nope, not me, not ever, and then you find yourself in a circumstance where you're like, oh, I'm not doing that, but I kind of get it. And I find myself getting it and I feel weird that I get it.
I think a lot of people have that kind of conflicted reaction as well. But I think all of that is real and is very much on display with everything that we're hearing and the, as you say the kind of [00:09:00] internet ecosystem that's taking place or taking shape around this, the constellation of responses.
You Dont Actually Need to Condemn the Murder of the CEO Guy - Serious Inquiries Only - Air Date 12-12-24
THOMAS SMITH - HOST, SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY: Thing one: You don't need to condemn the murder of the healthcare CEO, of the insurance guy. You don't need to. I'm gonna do you a favor. You don't need to do it. You don't need to say, well, murder is bad, I condemn the...you don't need to. It's not a thing you need to do. There's lots of murders every day. Do you condemn those? No. You don't. There's lots of bad things that happen every day. Do you condemn them? No, you don't actually need to. That might seem flippant, but it's actually, I've been thinking a lot about this, and maybe this is just the way my mind works, but I've come to realize it's almost like a mathematical thing. It's the way that the status quo perpetuates itself, and that privilege works, and that systemic injustice continue, like, we do this thing, where it's climate change all over again. We've got one [00:10:00] climate change denying scientist, and we've got one climate, like, actual scientist, and those are even, we do the same thing with this. Because what I keep hearing is, Yeah, okay, of course the health insurance situation, not great. there's lots of suffering, but murder, you can't murder. And this guy was a father and this was a human being and he's been murdered, and there's that kind of thing.
None of that is untrue, but you've put it now at a 50/50, you've now, and in some cases, depending on your emphasis, you've maybe made the murder more important because you said... it depends on the thing, I've noticed it's the thing you say first, and I'm guilty of this too, because same thing will happen with October 7th. Yeah, October 7th was awful, but now look at everything that's happened since then, and I'll own that. I don't care as much about October 7th as I do about the genocide that happened after. Doesn't mean I don't care about October 7th, [it] means, relatively speaking, [00:11:00] it's not my priority. And I think it's really telling which order you do that in. All right. Yeah. Healthcare. It's bad. I get it. I get it as bad, but like, this is a murder of a thing... that tells me where your priority is. Your priority is in criticizing and shutting down people who are maybe vocally supporting the murder, maybe joking about it, and I understand why you're doing that, but I'm here to say you don't actually have to do that.
And doing so is part of the injustice that continues. I mean this seriously, because what we're not doing is expressing our terms properly. We're not putting things on equal footing. If the thing we need to do is properly condemn all the deaths involved, then what that would... and I, this might seem ridiculous, but I've actually, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced of it. This is right. What you should have to do is go through every fucking example of someone who died because of bad healthcare, or at least got fucked over, someone who didn't [00:12:00] get their pills, someone who suffered. You should have to go through every single example first. And be like, yes, I condemn that person who was denied their cancer treatment, and then they died a preventable death because of UnitedHealthcare. And yes, I condemn this person who's had to pay way too much. They went bankrupt because UnitedHealthcare denied their coverage, and now they're bankrupt. Now they're homeless. Now I denounce what happened here. You should have to literally go through all of it. You should have to go through both sides of the ledger and condemn every single instance on the other side of UnitedHealthcare fucking people over. And what it did to them. And then, and only then can you say, and I also denounced this killing of their CEO. Like, that should be how it works.
I have no idea how people will receive this argument of mine. It may seem ridiculous, but I'm more and more convinced. This is actually what needs to happen. Because we suck as humans at doing this. We suck at properly evaluating large [00:13:00] numbers of anything, but of suffering, especially. We see a headline that a million children are starving. We're like, Oh man, fuck that sucks. It's not like we're happy about it, but we're like, man that, boy that's awful. And then we see a detailed image of one person being shot. And we're like, fuck that hits us the same or more, actually hits us more. I mean, there's studies about this, like more numbers, if the numbers get too big to where we think there's nothing we can do about it, we start to just not care. It's hard. It's human. It is. I'm not saying anyone's like evil for accidentally doing this. It is very clearly our human biases. And what I'm coming to realize, if I hadn't already, was that these very biases are a major reason why this awful status quo continues, because we have to do this fucking thing where this murder happens and we got, look, okay, the health insurance situation, not great. Not [00:14:00] great. But murder. You can't murder.
I'm serious. You should, if you're going to fucking do that, you should have to go into detail. You don't get to just say, in the same way that if you want to talk about the three scientists out of a hundred who don't accept climate change. Okay. You should have to go into detail. Okay. This person accepts it for these reasons. This person, this expert says, yes, it's happening. Like, you should actually have to go through the proper weighting of the sides. That's how you would actually arrive at an accurate feeling and actually an accurate emotional gut feeling as to what's going on. That's our problem as humans. We don't do that. It's too easy for us to use language, this great human thing, to be like, Yeah, okay, all kinds of suffering over here? Sure, granted. You know? Oh, I accept it. Yeah, no, I know. It's awful. It's all kinds of stuff. But then there's a murder. And then, just like that, we've put them on equal footing.
They're not on equal footing. They're not. [00:15:00] The stuff that the insurance company is doing is worse. The stuff that Israel did after is worse. They're not on equal footing. If you, the thing you do where you're like, well, yeah, okay. That they're not prosecuting the war properly, but like the terrorists. Yeah. Okay. We should have to go through each and every child... let's do it. Let's do it. I condemn. Let's start, let's keep, we'll do one in one. Here's what we'll do. We'll do one in one. I condemn this death of this Israeli on October 7th. And now we go over. Okay, now I condemn this child that was killed. This Palestinian child that was killed. We'll go one for one and we'll keep going until we've done all that. We've condemned all of them. And then wouldn't you know it? What will happen is we run out of the October 7th pretty quickly. And then we have tens of thousands left over of Palestinian children to talk about after that. And only then, if we actually went through that fucking process, would we have a proper [00:16:00] emotional feeling of what's going on there. We're just, we don't do that as humans. We're not good at it. And it causes so many problems.
The Dark History Behind RFK Jr.'s Health Policies - The Majority Report - Air Date 12-11-24
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I want to admit, I know Emma wants to talk a little bit about, the other sort of players who represent a similar thing in this, but what and Musk and others,
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: really, but,
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: but what, where, how do you approach it from this perspective? Because like, okay. The KKK, for example wants universal health care.
RICK PERLSTEIN: The KKK thing was super weird. I had a pamphlet from the 1920s. It was a KKK pamphlet saying the government should give away free health care because they believed in the germ theory, right? And all these immigrants were so dirty and diseased that unless everyone could go to a doctor for free, we'd all die because of these diseased immigrants.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, okay. I disagree with their their reasons for it, obviously. And with Kennedy, there's no sort of structural answer to what he's talking about. It's all he knows the right person to put in these [00:17:00] things and magically he's going to get the Republican Congress to outlaw certain chemicals and production. I mean, but, part of me is like, well, that would be good. Like, all right, the KKK is pushing for a single payer health insurance, let's say, or free government sponsored health insurance. That would be good. How do I, as someone who does not want the rest of the program that would come along with these people, how do I respond to this?
Because I'm looking at Bernie Sanders is saying to Musk, "I want to cut the military," and I want to cut the military too. But in, in my reaction to Kennedy saying like he's going to get he's going to regulate, I mean, cause there's, he doesn't say the word regulate, but that's the only way if you're going to get this, these chemicals out of food, you got to pass laws that say these chemicals don't belong in food anymore. And I like the idea of yes, let's regulate the hell out of corporations and introduce that concept and mainstream it. But how do you respond? [00:18:00]
RICK PERLSTEIN: This is why it's all talk, Sam. And this is why, they're just not trustworthy vectors for this sort of thing.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I agree. But what's the problem?
RICK PERLSTEIN: Sam Rayburn was one of the legendary politicians of the forties and fifties. He was LBJ's mentor. He was the Speaker of the House. And he said, he had a very wonderful saying that you should never forget, which is that "Any jackass can knock down a barn, it takes a carpenter to build something." These people are all jackasses and they want to knock down, this kind of, these sets of public health, bureaucracies that have been built up over a very, very, very long time. And, sometimes they failed us and sometimes they succeeded, right? They definitely need reform. They definitely need fixing. All bureaucracies need reform and fixing. But if you just kind of knock them out with a meat ax, right? The Vivek-Musk, "Oh, we're going to get rid of half of all public employees." You're just [00:19:00] destroying decades of accumulated expertise, right? Decades of accumulated knowledge, wisdom strategic capacity, institution building, you know? And the idea is, this is kind of the fascist idea that you can just kind of build a new world by scratch. By having the proper people in there with the kind of proper ideas.
And that's, that's the, any jackass can knock down a barn, right? It'll cause chaos, right? And it'll turn everyone who works within this bureaucracy which is just basically ordinary folks who work hard and generally have the public interest in mind, into extensions of the will of very bad people. Right? And they're just not trustworthy.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Right. All of that makes sense to me. But I'm saying like from the, and maybe it's more of an issue for people like you or I, right? [00:20:00] Or Emma. What, how do we, how do we, is it just simply we reject all of this because we know they're not going to do it? Or do we also, or is there also an element of "that's a good thing, but they won't do it." How does the part of society that doesn't want it, because I was looking at the clips of people up in AOC's district. There's been a couple of different reporters who have gone up there and interviewed people, one locally, and you can hear the way that people are talking about, or you hear there some people say, "No, he's only going to get rid of the criminal immigrants and not other immigrants." What's the job of those of us who don't want the authoritarianism, to use their promises for issues that we support. So that if we get past this stage, those issues [00:21:00] still have a resonance and, or that their failure to deliver ends up costing them.
RICK PERLSTEIN: Right, right. I mean, I think that I would point to the 900,000 unnecessary deaths that happened under Donald Trump's presidency, in the year 2000 (2020), if that was, I refer to 900,000 specifically, because that was a study that was done if we had the same rate, of deaths during COVID, as Australia had we would have saved 900,000 lives.
And Australia was a country that actually was, the prime minister was a conservative. He was actually a global warming denier, but he just did the kind of the normal things of turning it over to these boring public health bureaucracies. Turning it over to boring fricking experts and said, "You guys are in control. You [00:22:00] guys are in charge. I'll listen to you instead of you listening to us," right? And it's a tricky thing, Sam. It's really kind of one of the contradictions, the paradoxes, of small-d democracy that you do have to defer to experts and expertise is not always democratic, right? It's, the kind of "do your research" stuff that populism is very compelling, right? "Do your research" often, unfortunately means you do a Google search and the bad guys know how to manipulate search very well. And, they search, do search engine optimizations. So if Google trans and the first thing you come up with is the trans person who wants to play on the volleyball team, not the person who almost died from gender dysmorphia, right? So, I mean, we have to kind of, there's no magic bullet because you have to do this difficult thing of saying you have to defer to experts who know more than you.
Vaccine skepticism: Will the new Trump admin axe the polio vaccine - The ReidOut - Air Date 12-13-24
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Facing a likely contentious confirmation hearing, RFK Jr., Trump's pick for [00:23:00] Secretary of Health and Human Services, will head to the hill next week to meet with Senators. The New York Times is reporting that Kennedy's lawyer and noted vaccine skeptic, Aaron Siri, joined Kennedy in questioning and choosing candidates for top health positions, deepening concerns about vaccine hesitancy, taking the wheel and driving us back to when we had to be concerned about diseases like the measles, diphtheria, and polio. The New York Times adds that in 2022, Siri petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, saying that because the clinical trials relied upon to license this product did not include a control group, the FDA, therefore, must either withdraw or suspend the approval of this product, adding, quote, "it is likely and wrongly believed that this product can prevent infection and transmission." Late today, RFK Jr. 's spokesperson responded to this report, telling NBC News in a [00:24:00] statement that the polio vaccine should be available to the public, and thoroughly and properly studied.
And properly studied? It's worth a reminder that by the mid 20th century, polio was killing or paralyzing over half a million people a year around the world. But after the vaccine became widely available, cases decreased by a reported 99 percent since 1988, which helped to prevent an estimated 20 million cases of paralysis in children.
Before the vaccine, polio afflicted many unnamed people, and some people you're familiar with, like FDR, and in more recent history, Senator Mitch McConnell, who was treated for polio as a child.
Now, ahead of the transition, some fear that history is starting to look a little bit more like a prequel, with noted vaccine skeptics in an administration filled with multimillionaires and billionaires, people who may look at diseases as a way to turn a profit, people gearing up to make America go back to worrying about communicable [00:25:00] diseases, as if Trump's handling of COVID wasn't bad enough.
Joining me now is Dr. Erwin Redlener, MSNBC Public Health Analyst and Founding Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. Dr. Redlener, thank you so much for being here. I want to start with this claim by Mr. Siri that the polio vaccine, because they didn't use a control group, I guess meaning allowing some people to get polio and see what happened, the vaccine is not safe and should be taken off the market. Your thoughts.
ERWIN REDLENER: So, yeah. Hi, Joy. I'm astounded that we're having this conversation. Medicine has been all about, we have a disease that's killing people or injuring people. We try to treat it and then we try to prevent it. It's been a steady progress for 50 to a hundred years now.
And the great triumphs of medicine are mostly about vaccinations. They've prevented millions and millions of people from suffering [00:26:00] lifelong paralysis or death or brain injuries. And it's just amazing to me to even think about having a control group where some children got the polio vaccine and some didn't, exactly what you're talking about. Which children will we not give the vaccine to? Since we know for an absolute fact that it prevents the disease. It is extraordinary, really, and it's hard to even grasp how absurd this entire position is. Vaccinate, vaccinations in general. Yeah, so no, that is, it's crazy.
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: The idea of a clinical control group, that was the Tuskegee experiments, just letting some people get whatever the disease is and seeing what happened. It's extraordinary that people want to do the Tuskegee experiments on the whole country.
Mitch McConnell, it's not as if people, we don't know anyone that ever had polio. Mitch McConnell had it as a child. This is what even he said. And he's as hard right MAGA, helping Trump as it [00:27:00] gets. "The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in public cures is not just uninformed, they're dangerous. Anyone seeking the Senate's consent to serve in this incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts."
Now, if I trusted that he would actually vote against RFK Jr., I would actually compliment him for that. But they wanna do more than just mess with the polio vaccine, potentially. Pre-vaccine annual cases of the measles, 530,000; after the vaccine, 13. Diptheria, 200,000; now zero. Mumps, 162,000; we don't even hear about mumps anymore; 621. Rubella, 48,000; goes down to six. Smallpox, 29,000 to zero. Polio, 16,000 to zero. We could go back to the numbers on the left hand of that screen, right, doctor, if we get rid of vaccines.
ERWIN REDLENER: We absolutely would go back and, one of the things that's so interesting about the Senate, [00:28:00] Joy, is that the senators know that polio vaccine prevents polio and then the other vaccines prevent the other diseases.
I think there's a conflict here where they think somehow that requiring children to get these life-saving vaccines will somehow violate their freedom or their parents' freedom to make a choice. And it's not that at all. We're talking about the public's health. If your kid is not going to get vaccinated and many other kids are not going to get vaccinated, that actually puts a lot of other people at risk.
So, if you break your leg and you don't want to get treated for it, good luck to you. I'm sorry for you. But if you don't get vaccinated, you're not just endangering yourself or your child, you're endangering my children and my grandchildren. And that's what the senators really need to realize.
I wish I could sit down with all of them, Joy, and just say, Listen, we understand the freedom issue. We're not disputing that. But right now [00:29:00] we're talking about the public's health and well being. We cannot go backwards in medicine. That would be an absolute disaster for the country. And the fact that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. even hangs around with somebody like Aaron Siri is a warning sign to senators, please exercise your responsibilities. Do not let these people into America's healthcare system. It's many, many steps backward, Joy.
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Yeah. Rich dilettantes with no scientific training, deciding they can decide public health for all of us because they've got a vibe that they don't like vaccines.
It's a terrifying reality.
Weekly Roundup Luigi Mangione and the End of Civilization Part 2 - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 12-13-24
BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I know how I would say this in France, but -- and I've never heard Adrian's last name pronounced in English, I'm not cool enough to hang out at Atlantic dinner parties and cocktail hours and stuff, so I don't know. But anyway, it could be Lafrance. It could be La France. It could be Laference. Maybe it's Laference. I don't know how you say [00:30:00] this in the United States of America. I'm not making fun of the name. I'm saying, I don't know how one is supposed to render this name in English. Okay.
This, article, Dan, created a sense of complete outrage online. There were so many people angry. And I think this is an article that you can read the headline and just get super angry and start being snarky without reading it. Don't get me wrong. I don't like this article at all. And I don't like the argument here. But I want to go through some key points and see what you and I come up with.
So here's the first bit. "The line between a normal functioning society and catastrophic decivilization can be crossed with a single act of mayhem. This is why, for those who've studied violence closely, the brazen murder of a CEO in midtown Manhattan, and more important, the brazenness of the cheering reaction to his execution, amounts to a blinking and blaring warning signal for a society that has become already too inured to bloodshed in the conditions that exacerbate it."
Now, I do think there's some [00:31:00] nuance in this article. And I do think there's a little bit of trying to recognize certain factors and conditions. But I will say, Dan, that this opening line did not evoke sympathy for me for the argument because, one, you're talking about one event leading to catastrophic breakdown of society. The point, the example here is, of course, what happened in Manhattan this past couple of weeks, and the cheering reaction to that.
It's the same week Daniel Penny was exonerated for killing a man on the subway. And as many people have pointed out, we live in a society where people are cheered on for killing protesters. Does anyone remember Kyle Rittenhouse?
So there is -- I'm not going to lie -- from paragraph one, seemingly to me, a disconnect. There is one of those moments where you're like, this sounds like an elite who is zooming in to American life, and there's a lot of folks who are going to think [00:32:00] about school shootings and the killing of migrants, the killing of trans people, all kinds of murders and violence that is cheered on, that is not this one.
And so that's my reaction to that first paragraph. We're doing our grad seminar. You want to jump into the conversation here, Dr. Miller?
DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Yeah, I, agree. it was going to make essentially the same point, that it reads like the elite who's suddenly scared shitless because, oh, this was an elite who is shot. This wasn't kids in a public school where i'm not going to send my kids because i'm an elite person. This wasn't somebody on the subway that I don't ride because i'm an elite person. This isn't somebody who lives in a dangerous neighborhood that I'm not going to live in, because i'm an elite person.
I think there was a strong dose of that, as you say. And I think it's always worth questioning when people decry quote unquote "violence." What violence is being decried and what violence is being overlooked as just the price of being an American? And you listed a whole bunch of those. And on the [00:33:00] political right, many of those are actively celebrated at present.
So I think that I shared that same disconnect with you when I first read it was like, Oh, so this is the act of decivilization? Like this is the warning signal, not the mass shootings that don't even make the news anymore. Not the targeting of migrants, not the threat that's going on right now that, Oh, well, hey, Donald Trump says we might just need to deport families, including the citizens, like the whole family might need to be deported. All of that. None of that's decivilization, but this event is. That question, I think, of what makes somebody take an event as the seminal, defining event, that's always a point that should be questioned, and I think that it stands out here.
BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Well, Lindsey Graham saying that, you know, should turn Palestine into a parking lot. Come on.
Okay. This leads to a paragraph a little further down in which the author defines what they mean by "civilizing." "These conditions and the conditions," she mentions, "before this, are wealth [00:34:00] disparity," which I agree with, "declining trust in democratic institutions," yes, "heightened sense of victimhood, intense partisan estrangement, rapid demographic change, flourishing conspiracy theories, violent and dehumanizing rhetoric." so these are things that can create conditions like that of the Gilded Age or ours and a society that is on the brink of unraveling. "These conditions run counter to spurts of civilizing." I don't think I ever thought I would say the words "spurts of civilizing." That would be a really good ska band, Dan Miller, if you want to talk to me later about a little side project. "Spurts of civilizing in which people's worldviews generally become more neutral, more empirical and less fearful or emotional." I hate this sentence so much. I am trying to be professional. And I'm trying to like. I am so suspicious of the word [00:35:00] "civilizing" to start because it carries such colonial overtones of British, India, the Southeast Indian company --
The white man's burden.
Yeah. All of it. Algeria.
So civilizing to me is a word that I'm always like, do we need to be, is that the word? Is civilizing really the word to use? And then when you define it as people who are neutral, empirical, less fearful and emotional, it's -- I understand what you mean by empirical. Yes, I'm somebody who would like us to be empirical in terms of following science when it comes to vaccines and pandemics and gun violence. I don't know. You want people to be neutral? What does that even mean? Not emo-- I mean, Dan, we spent so much time talking about emotion and the disconnect with emotion that leftist and progressive -- and leftist is the wrong word, mainly liberals and neoliberals -- have with the American public.
Anyway, I'm going to stop. I hate this sentence. What do you think? [00:36:00]
DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: It's why I laugh. My students in some of my classes, it turns into this kind of running joke because they like to see me just go apoplectic about a sentence that some author writes or something. And this is one of those that would do that.
I often say this: I think that -- I don't want to fall too far into the rabble here -- but I think that neutrality is maybe the most pernicious concept there is when it comes to talking about our social life together, when it comes to thinking about ethics, when it comes to thinking about politics. Because I don't think that neutrality is a thing. I don't think it's real.
And we know this. We know that beings, for example, empirical or data driven, are saying, I don't know, should we mandate vaccines? Maybe let's understand the science of it and public health and so forth. If there's anything the last few years have shown us, there's nothing neutral about that, right?
Anything can be politicized. And so even the notion that we should value all lives equally, that's not about neutrality, right? Because there are lots of [00:37:00] people who don't value all lives equally. The, notion that, I don't know, everybody should be able to use a locker room or a bathroom where they feel safe, that fits their identity, right? A place that they don't have to be worried about being assaulted or accosted or something like that. That's not neutral, right? That's a highly, I don't know if partisan is the right word, but it's a highly invested position to take.
What neutrality often does is mask the fact that social life is always about power dynamics, it's always about the distribution of resources, it's always about who gets to count as part of that society and who doesn't, who has access to rights and who don't.
And whenever I hear somebody decry a loss of neutrality, what I think that they're actually decrying is some structure of privilege that has now been threatened, that was masquerading as neutral.
So I'm really, really suspicious when I read that. I can't say all of that is present here. But if we had a lot more time and wanted to dig into this, I think we could.
So I'm so suspicious every time I [00:38:00] hear appeals to neutrality or objectivity, for all of those reasons.
The Health Care Crisis Is The Democracy Crisis - The Lever - Air Date 12-17-24
DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: All of these indignities are the product of a government filled with politicians who are bankrolled by insurers, and who use their power to block the most basic reforms. Stuff like a public health insurance option, or an option to buy into Medicare, or simply expanding Medicare to cover everyone.
What's so frustrating is that politicians have spent decades, decades saying they recognize the problem, and they make promises to do something about it, and then almost nothing happens.
Think about the last 50 or 60 years of history. After JFK and LBJ's pressure resulted in Congress creating Medicare, the push for universal health care popped up in the early 1990s with the Clinton administration.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Under our plan, every American would receive a health care security card, [00:39:00] that will guarantee a comprehensive package of benefits over the course of an entire lifetime, roughly comparable to the benefit package offered by most Fortune 500 companies.
DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: The healthcare industry famously killed that initiative with a ton of lobbying and campaign cash.
And the healthcare industry profiteering continued, sparking outrage and new promises of reform from Democratic Party rising stars, like this guy from Chicago.
BARACK OBAMA: I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care plan. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14%, 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim's talking about when he says, everybody in, [00:40:00] nobody out. A single payer health care plan, universal health care plan. That's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately, because first we've got to take back the White House, and we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back Congress.
DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: So there it is. There's Barack Obama saying he supports single payer. But when Obama himself took back the White House, with huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, his administration deployed its Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, to promise that single payer wouldn't even be considered in any health care reform.
KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: This is not single payer. As you know, there have been a lot of congressional advocates who say, Why not? Why can't we have a single payer? That's not what anyone is talking about. Mostly because the president feels strongly, as I do, that dismantling private health coverage for the 180 million Americans that have it, [00:41:00] discouraging more employers from coming into the marketplace is really the bad direction.
DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Eventually, what became the Affordable Care Act included massive taxpayer subsidies for the insurance industry, and Obama's promised public health insurance option being excluded from the final bill.
And though the Affordable Care Act did include some very important reforms, the health care crisis continued, as did Americans' anger, much of which was channeled into Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign for Medicare For All.
But that campaign ran straight into a wall, known as Hillary Clinton.
HILLARY CLINTON: And the bulk of what he is advocating for is a single payer healthcare system, which would probably cost about $15 trillion. It's a bit concerning to me because it would basically end all the kinds of healthcare we know. Medicare, Medicaid, the CHIP [00:42:00] program, children's health insurance, TRICARE for the National Guard, military, Affordable Care Act, exchange policies, employer based policies.
DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: When Sanders' campaign nonetheless surged towards a win in the Iowa caucus, Clinton doubled down, insisting that Medicare For All was impossible, and that voters basically shouldn't ever expect anything better than the current healthcare system.
HILLARY CLINTON: Health emergencies can't wait for us to have some theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass.
DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: By the time the 2020 election rolled around, even as researchers estimated that a Medicare For All system could have saved 200,000 lives during the pandemic, Joe Biden, by that point, was running for president on a promise to veto Medicare For All legislation if it ever got to his desk.
JOE BIDEN: I would veto anything that delays providing the [00:43:00] security and the certainty of healthcare being available now. My opposition relates to whether or not a) it's doable, 2) what the cost is, what the consequences for the rest of the budget are. How are you going to find $35 trillion?
DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Side note: The Republican-led Congressional Budget Office found that Medicare For All would actually save Americans $650 billion by 2030.
Biden did promise that one of his first initiatives would be a public health insurance option. But once an office, he never mentioned the idea again.
And then, of course, came the 2024 campaign, in which the healthcare debate was essentially this: [sound of crickets] That's right. Nothing. There was no healthcare conversation at all. A reality summarized by a New York Times headline, which read, "The campaign issue that isn't: [00:44:00] Healthcare reform."
Basically, in deference to their healthcare industry donors, both political parties message on healthcare seems to be that line from the doctor's office scene in the old Jack Nicholson movie.
CLIP: What if this is as good as it gets?
DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Not surprisingly, lots of Americans being bankrupted by healthcare simply don't accept that this is the best we can do.
Which raises the question, why can't we do better? Out of all the challenges facing our country, why does this one issue, decent medical care for everyone, seem to be such an impossible problem? Why haven't we solved this problem once and for all? How is it, as JFK once said, we are behind every country in this matter of medical care for our citizens? He said that more than 50 years ago. And we're still at this impasse. How [00:45:00] could that be? What will it take to finally get the humane health care system that we deserve?
Vigilante violence is not the solution. The solution is a renewed focus on using our democratic institutions to force lawmakers to change the system.
As the old saying goes, power concedes nothing without a demand. This past week's primal screams of outrage at the health insurance industry are the demands for change.
The health insurance industry is undoubtedly hoping that that noise quickly dissipates, like everything else on social media. But the rest of us need those demands to get louder -- right now.
Note from the Editor on the racist history of opposing universal health care
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Straight White American Jesus discussing the impact of the killing of the United Healthcare CEO. Serious Inquiries Only examined why the demands to condemn the murder helps perpetuate injustice. [00:46:00] The Majority Report discussed the difficulty of supporting good ideas that are being pushed by people who also support terrible ideas. The ReidOut looked at the potential impact of vaccine skepticism in the country. Straight White American Jesus broke down the arguments around decivilization. And The Lever dove into the history of the fight for universal healthcare.
And those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dive section. But first, a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members, who get access to bonus episodes and enjoy all of our shows without ads. To support our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at BestOfTheLeft.com/support -- there's a link in the show notes -- through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcast app.
As always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing [00:47:00] more information.
Now I thought I would try something new, do a little experiment for a little while, and offer you the opportunity to submit your comments or questions on upcoming topics, not just the current topic or past topics. Since it takes us a little bit of time to do the research, I can actually give you a heads up about what's coming, so you can potentially join the conversation as it happens.
So next up, we're working on the topic of Trump antagonizing many allies of the US, often in bizarre ways, such as Mexico, Canada, and Greenland. And also we have just started thinking about a topic on the so-called "broligarchy" -- super wealthy Silicon valley and influencer bros who are all making waves in the MAGA movement. So, if you have thoughts on either of those topics, get your comments or questions in now for a chance to be included in the show. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].
Now [00:48:00] as for today's topic, I thought I would just replay the comments I made during a recent throwback episode, which was going out during the holidays, in the immediate wake of the United Healthcare CEO killing. I thought I said what I wanted to say pretty well, and I figured not everyone will have heard it in a rerun episode, particularly in the middle of December. So here it is.
It's been pointed out by some that Thompson is survived by a family that loved him, as a way of highlighting the injustice of having the sins of an industry fall on the shoulders of an individual. It doesn't take too much imagination to realize that the vast majority of people who have suffered needlessly, weathered stress, bankruptcy, and sometimes died from having to fight a health insurance company to have their care covered, also have families that love them.
As far as I'm concerned, assuming for a moment that Thompson really was targeted for his role as CEO, rather than a personal grudge, he should be considered a victim of the system more than of the individual, because a health system as unjust as [00:49:00] ours is bound to cultivate such levels of resentment, that violence should be understood as a predictable outcome.
The biggest difference between Thompson and the healthcare victims of his insurance company is not that one was killed with a gun while all the others were killed with paperwork. The biggest difference is that Thompson was in a position to help change the system. One of our mantras here at the show is to aim higher. If you're angry at a customer service rep, aim higher -- the manager? Aim higher. The CEO? Maybe you're getting there. Is there anything higher? Maybe the Board of Directors. But ultimately, it's the system itself.
So I recognize that even powerful individuals within the system cannot singlehandedly change that system. But they can either work for change, or work to maintain their power, or resign in protest and work to rally change from the outside as Wendell Potter did, when he quit his position as a health insurance executive to become an [00:50:00] advocate for healthcare reform.
People are going to act with the power they have. If those with great power use it only to maintain it, rather than for the benefit of those they have the power to help, then the powerless can be expected to take action. Most will simply advocate for better policy through the proper channels. But it should be expected that a small number may turn to violence. This was inevitable. It's part of the system we've built and that Thompson helped maintain.
If anyone should be expected to understand a statistical analysis of expected outcomes based on a given set of circumstances, it's an executive of an insurance company.
SECTION A - RFK Jr.
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up section a RFK Jr. Followed by section B Luigi Mangione, section C United healthcare and section D. Healthcare history.
The Dark History Behind RFK Jr.'s Health Policies Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 12-11-24
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Let's talk about your latest piece in The [00:51:00] American P rospect first. Anyways, I want to start there, Dr. Strange Kennedy, and this notion, because I see this, I mean, you refer to it is how to worry, how you should learn to worry more about a liberal politics in liberal guys. I'm seeing this also too, in the context of of populism. And we see various people sort of subscribing to specific nuggets within the agenda of what we're seeing in this administration. Positively. Well, like, just give me a sense overall of what you're talking about here.
RICK PERLSTEIN: Well, I mean, I guess it would be kind of like, if we're going to go like reductio at Hitler, I am right off the bat. You know, Hitler built the Audubon kind of deal, right? Mussolini made the trains run on time, right? My bottom line is...
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: the KKK you cite the KKK promoting universal health care. And, what was [00:52:00] the other one? The...
RICK PERLSTEIN: Well, I mean the Kaiser of Germany, Kaiser Bismarck.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yep. Bismarck,
RICK PERLSTEIN: Wilhelm Bismarck was the guy who invented, unemployment insurance, because he wanted the working class to support him when he took over Africa and, mowed over the Catholics of Germany.
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah. And I just want to say there's a version of this that I think they're trying to copy here on the right with Victor Orban, right? Where he offers some social services, and under the guise of trying to help people out, but it's really explicitly to reinforce, a patriarchal system anti LGBTQ system.
RICK PERLSTEIN: It's one of these old playbooks, right? And, the foundation of it that is, as I've been thinking about this, recently, and trying to put things together in a systematic way is that right wing politics whether it goes by the name conservatism or authoritarianism or what they used to, probably call in the early 20th century fascism, really is about hierarchy and authority, the right people being in control, people knowing their place.
And, if that's the bottom line, really, [00:53:00] the kind of policies that you use to get there are just tactical, ultimately. Conservatives have been for big government. They've been for small government, right? I mean, the first big government agency in America really was the FBI, what became the FBI, and it was kind of created out of a moral panic about white slavery, which was kind of like the QAnon of, the 19-teens, right?
They can be for social policy, or they can be against social policy. They can be for law and order, or they can be for, the kind of whatever it is that Trump does, where, like, his friends are all criminal are all innocent, and he's all criminals, right? So You know, in the case of a RFK Jr., a couple of points can be made. One is that, even though, a lot of what he says is very enticing and sounds quite humanitarian, taking apart Big AG, nailing Big Pharma to the wall, which is also a big part of Project 2025. Even though it sounds enticing, [00:54:00] it often means kind of eviscerating the kinds of institutions that it actually requires to do those things. But the other point I made in the piece is that actually, there's actually a long tradition on the right of this kind of purity, bodily purity politics. Which is actually one of the scarier kind of fascist traditions on the right. And I gave as you know the example from the early sixties the right wing crusade that held that fluoridation of water was a communist block, right?
So anyone who's seen Dr. Strangelove knows that hilarious scene in which the right wing general says that the communists are trying to sap our purity of essence. And have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water, right? And I also gave the example of, back in the nineties when I was, researching Before the Storm. All of a sudden, Phyllis Schlafly, who I was yakking with on the phone, as one does.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well just remind people who Phyllis Schlafly was, because I think you and I remember, but I'm not sure anybody else does.
RICK PERLSTEIN: Queen of the anti feminist movement of the 1970s, almost single [00:55:00] handedly defeated the Equal Rights Amendment. And there's a wonderful mini series about her Mrs. America that you can see on Hulu I think, maybe it was Netflix. Anyway, she was basically one of the most powerful reactionaries and successful reactionary organizers ever. And she died in 2016, a huge Trump fan. She kind of spans the era from McCarthy to Donald Trump.
And she was on the phone and she was just suddenly out of nowhere telling me about how pure the food was that she fed her children, right? So like health food, making fun of health food was a thing you made fun of the John Birch Society before hippies got ahold of it, right? So all these kind of scrambled ideological associations, shouldn't fool us to the fact that, RFK Jr. is a crazy conspiracy theorist. And if you actually kind of dig down into how he thinks about how we're going to fix the food system and fix the pharma system, it really is quite creepy in that it kind of [00:56:00] creates two classes of people. These kind of superior people and untermenschen, right? The superior people who eat the right foods, which are often, very expensive, right? Who do the right exercise regimes, which are also very expensive. Who take the right drugs, which, don't have anything to do with the democratic process of peer review, but are basically dictated from above often with people who have financial interest in those drugs, right?
So we look at that weird culture of, right wing food supplements and all that sort of thing. And they're superior, and we're all inferior for kind of messing around with this sort of rabble public health. The kind of stuff that evil people like Dr. Fauci, mess around with. Basically don't buy it. RFK could be the guy who presides over more deaths than a nuclear holocaust if he has his way. I mean, if we go back on something like the polio vaccine, one of the things I learned , recently, making these arguments on the dreaded [00:57:00] Twitter, is that it used to be when people were studying public health, or maybe they still do, students would go on walks of cemeteries. And you guys know why they, why public health professors would teach their students, take their students on walks of cemeteries on the first day of class? To show them what happened in the 1950s when the polio vaccine came about. That, how many babies died before widespread vaccination became a thing. So we're going to go back into this world where cemeteries are going to be full of infants if RFK Jr. and Donald Trump has their way.
Top ally of RFK Jr. petitioned FDA to revoke approval of polio vaccine - All In w Chris Hayes - Air Date 12-13-24
CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Joining me now is someone who has closely followed the anti vaccine movement, senior reporter for NBC News, Brandi Zadrosny.
It's great to have you here and I'm so glad to have you here because when this news went, I was like, oh, I have not heard of this guy. And you were like, I have heard of this guy. In fact, I know him quite well. Who is Aaron Seery?
BRANDY ZADROZNY: Aaron Seery, I like to think of him as the brains behind the anti vaccine movement.
Anti vaccine, um, Activists were largely an ineffective, um, group of folks, especially Robert F. Kennedy and his, uh, [00:58:00] communications director Del Bigtree, who runs the second largest anti vaxxer called ICANN. Um, they were just sort of like petitioning local governments. They were trying to get, you know, states to do away with vaccine mandates for children.
And they just wasn't working until they met. Aaron Seery. And Aaron Seery is a lawyer. He worked, has a New York law firm. And in 2015, he started dabbling in vaccine mandate for children cases. That got him linked up with Del Bigtree and with Robert F. Kennedy. And they started trying cases together. There was a case in Tennessee where a child was, um, they argued that the child had been affected by a vaccine and been caused to be autistic.
The courts did not find, um, that same thing. Uh, they disagreed. The court disagreed. Um, but so from there, Aaron Siri became the Um, but he has [00:59:00] raked in the cash, basically acting as part of a propaganda arm, filing crazy FOIA requests. Requests and then misrepresenting what those, the denial of those FOIA requests means for vaccines, filing lawsuits.
Like he was the man who overturned religious exemptions in Mississippi. He was the lawyer on that case, that sad, sad case in Mississippi. Um, he's all over. And, and then he was a huge part. Uh, I think 000 to represent, um, Kennedy and his campaign. You know,
CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: one of the things that is striking here when you talk about this petition to revoke authorization is that the rhetoric they will use is we're pro choice, anti mandate, right?
Um, and here's, here's the times on this. Mr. Siri insists he does not want to take vaccines away from anyone who wants them. You want to get the vaccine, it's America, free country. He told Arizona legislators last year for laying out his concerns about the vaccine for polio and other illnesses. He did not mention the petitions he has lodged on behalf of ICANN, the organization he just said, with the FDA, asking regulators to withdraw [01:00:00] or suspend approval of vaccines not only for polio but also for hepatitis B.
Continuing, Mr. Siri is also representing ICANN FDA to pause distribution of 13 other vaccines. Combination products that cover tetanus, diphtheria, polio, and hepatitis. I mean, that's a, I mean, I think mandates are a good idea and I think choice is overrated in this aspect, but that is a long way from even that.
That's. Stop the government from like revoke.
FAIZ SHAKIR: It's all of them, Chris. It's all of the vaccines. There is not a vaccine that Kennedy thinks is safe or effective. These folks don't believe the polio vaccine actually stopped polio. They think it's true. They think it's a combination of sewage, better sewage of refrigeration.
Yes, absolutely. They are polio truthers. That is what they Robert F. Kennedy has told me this. And so Absolutely. They want to get rid of all of them and not just get rid of all of them. They say, we don't want to get rid of any vaccines. We just want to test them. Well, let's talk about what [01:01:00] their testing is.
CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Yeah. What is it? Because today Kennedy comes out with a statement being like, Oh, again, there's all this like weird doublespeak. Yeah. Oh yeah. We just, we should just, it should be studied. That's what he said. I was like. Yeah. I think we've got the studies, like, I think we've studied it pretty damn well. Do we have iron lugs in America?
No, we don't. Okay.
FAIZ SHAKIR: This is the only thing that we'll do for Kennedy and the folks that he surrounds himself with. These double blind, controlled studies, which means that he wants to get a big group of kids together and give, you Half of them, the vaccine and half of them not, but not tell anybody which is which and then determine on a longitudinal basis.
So follow these groups for 20 years, their whole life and decide if there's any more positive outcomes for the people who've gotten the vaccine versus not the vaccine backs versus unbacks. The problem is. Quite obvious with that, right? Who do you withhold the vaccine from? That is completely unethical.
CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Right. The other thing is that we do randomized control trials and double blind randomized control trials in the process of approving all the [01:02:00] time. That is how we get them. That's how we know if they're safe and effective.
FAIZ SHAKIR: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And we can talk about like the trials that happen along the way and it's very complicated and that's why thankfully we have scientists and doctors and public health officials who study these things very, very closely.
And the problem is you have folks like Del Bigtree and Robert F. Kennedy and they're through their lawyer, Aaron Seery, who come and dismantle that using the courts as a weapon.
CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: But this, I mean, this is not, it's one thing if you've got a guy filing things in court. This could be the general counsel at HHS.
HHS oversees the Food and Drug Administration, if I'm not mistaken, and the National Institutes of Health and the Centers on Disease Control. That guy is the chief lawyer and the brains overseeing the federal health infrastructure.
FAIZ SHAKIR: I wonder if he would let go of his payday that he certainly has right now to come work for the government.
But having said that, I do wonder that. But, um, I, It's [01:03:00] terrifying. Terrifying.
SECTION B - Luigi Mangione
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B Luigi Mangione.
These Guys Are SO Out Of Touch On Healthcare CEO Shooting - The Majority Report - Air Date 12-9-24
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And, and then that's where we can bring it back to what the reaction was.
The reaction of universal, like, meh, let them get away with it from a lot of people I think took some folks, liberals, by surprise. But also conservatives. Because everybody in this country has to deal with, unless you're incredibly wealthy, a for profit healthcare system that in some way has affected their family.
Maybe you, your family member had cancer and they had to go through all their savings to undergo treatment. Maybe you were denied care because of a pre existing condition prior to Obamacare, which by the way did ban that and the Republicans tried to repeal it, um, and you were thought you were eligible for this kind of surgery, and then you weren't able to get it.
But although that kind of stuff still happens to this day, just via other means as well, everybody has a kind of understanding about how [01:04:00] messed up this system is, unless you're a guy like Ben Shapiro. Now let's read the comments before we get to his commentary on this front. Um, he's not really ready to meet any of, uh, the real realities of the people in his audience that aren't making millions of dollars every year like he is at the Daily Wire.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: That's his job not to.
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Um, so his, his reaction, the evil revolutionary left cheers murder. We'll get to his reaction to Daniel Penny getting off in just a second, but anyway. These are some of the comments to claim. It's just it is just the American left. That's been cheering this on social media is delusional.
I don't know what you're trying to keep why you're trying to keep pushing. This is a left issue. It's clearly across the board. These are separate Ben Shapiro fans.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Another one. I'll you could we can rotate a sorry Ben lifelong conservative and don't have an ounce of sympathy for the CEO. How many Americans have died because of this company's greed a very good question for even a lifelong conservative to wonder
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: [01:05:00] exactly.
Um, this isn't a party, uh, base issue. This is a class based issue. I don't like violence, but let's not pretend that the insurance companies haven't been committing some, blah, blah, blah.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Matthew, agree with Engel's point there?
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, go to his actual video and we'll see. Are these comments because, hey, Matt Bernstein of, uh, he screenshotted that on December 6th.
Today we're, it's December 9th. Perhaps the Ben Shapiro, these were not real Ben Shapiro fans, and now The real ones are trickling in to give up, give their guy support. Whoops. Nope. Uh.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Top one. We got conservatives and liberals hugging each other in a comment section before GTA 6. Yeah. Saw my lifelong hard, this is, this is why people who think that there should be some kind of temperance about this.
Saw my lifelong hardworking father become bankrupt as a result of claims being denied after getting cancer. You are out of touch, man.
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yep. I mean, we can ignore the one with, you know, like, that may, here we go, it's not left or [01:06:00] right, it's black or white, it's rich versus poor, your true colors are showing.
Um, the comment section is humanity making sense for the first time in years. Remember guys, Ben has more in common with that CEO than he has with any of us.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: True of anybody in media who is trying to, uh, take this tack.
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Um, Wow, I don't think I can justify supporting Ben anymore.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I also just want to ask, like, hey, what were you thinking you were watching when you were watching Ben Shapiro?
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, they were in it for the racism and the resentment towards liberals, sure. But this is a universal experience for Americans. So now, with all of that context and with everything we've said about the systematized violence that our healthcare system really, In, uh, in genders and in bodies. Here is Ben's commentary.
Facts don't care about your feelings, he says.
BEN SHAPIRO: The real question in all of this is how Americans respond. So Taylor Lorenz, we talked about her yesterday. She is a psychotic former [01:07:00] reporter for the Washington Post and the New York Times. She's totally insane. She was insane on COVID.
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: So you know what, Ben?
Here's why the comments section has a complete disconnect with what you're trying to do here. Is because he's trying to put Taylor up there because she's been, she's had some takes I disagree with, but, but largely, she's mostly just been an object for the right to hate on as some sort of liberal woman that they can attack.
He is trying to make it as, He's painting a narrative that it's just like these liberal women, coastal elite reporters that are, or people that you already have resentment towards are the ones that are making this case. But as was clear in his comment section, and as was clear in the reaction to this video, it's not just like that.
It's liberal Taylor Lorenz. It's your viewers.
BEN SHAPIRO: The Washington Post and the New York Times. She's totally insane. She was insane on COVID. She was insane when it came to the supposed predations of people on the right who ought to, [01:08:00] she said, be shut out of media and particularly social media. Now, she's
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: full scale.
So again, like there are certain takes, I've seen Taylor runs call people COVID deniers. I don't think we're COVID deniers. With regards to what she's saying about this, um, uh, Uh, issue. She's exactly right that the rage is justified. And I'll just say, when we're talking about people being, uh, I don't know, is what Ben Shapiro is saying, hysterical or lunatics.
Ben Shapiro said that the majority of the world's Muslims are terrorists, are radical extremists that want to kill people for believing in Judaism or Christianity. He is the hysterical loser in this proximity right now.
BEN SHAPIRO: out of media and particularly social media. Well, now she is full scale rallying in favor of the murderer.
So she tweeted yesterday on Bluesky, which is a weird left wing echo chamber form of Twitter. There was a [01:09:00] post put out by blue cross and blue shield, all about whether it was going to pay for anesthesia under its healthcare coverage. And she then tweeted out quote, and people wonder why we want these executives dead.
So openly. Cheering the death of Brian Thompson. That wasn't her only post. Somebody put out a statement saying, quote, Legislation idea. Healthcare executives and their families must be on the cheapest plan their company offers and they aren't allowed to seek other care. And she wrote in all capital letters, Endorse.
Then, she put out a post that showed a graphic of a happy star. A star with a happy face and balloons and the caption CEO down. And she wrote, Woke up to see this spammed in my group chats. She said, I am not alone, that other people were doing the same thing. Then she reposted a post from left wing agitator Ken Klippenstein saying, Today we remember the legacy of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
And what exactly was that legacy? He claimed denial rates by insurance companies. And of course, it's not just Taylor Lorenz, [01:10:00] socialist. It's your comment section. Nathan Robinson, a complete useless leech on the ass of society, posted himself, quote, Live your life in such a way that people will be sad when you die.
That was above a screencap of a New York Times headline. It's a torrent of hate for health insurance industry follows CEOs killing. That piece from the New York Times is all about people who apparently were perfectly fine with the murder of Brian Thompson on the streets of New York City. According to the New York Times, none of this stopped social media commentators from leaping to conclusions and showing a blatant lack of sympathy over the death of a man who was a husband and father of two children.
Thoughts and deductibles to the family. Read one comment underneath the video of the shooting posted online by CNN. Unfortunately, my condolences are out of network. A TikTok user wrote, I'm an ER nurse. And the things I've seen in dying patients get denied for by insurance that makes me physically sick.
I just can't feel sympathy for him because of all those patients and their families. Yeah. And these sorts of messages were incredibly common. But, sorry. Across the internet.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I, uh, this is what people need to [01:11:00] hear that, uh, and I'll agree with Ben Shapiro's, uh, perspective on things. When you tell me, That I need to think about the families of that fucking, uh, freak.
Uh, I think, what my brain does, is think about all the people who lost somebody, or saw their dad go bankrupt because of decisions by these parasites. And just one thing to deal with the Blue Cross Blue Shield sort of pedantry thing, that I'm sure some people are in on, like, Actually, they wanted to do this, blah blah blah.
Not their fucking decision. They shouldn't exist. None of these institutions should exist. There should not, this is not an antitrust problem. This is a, there should be one insurance pool. And it should be controlled by the government. And no decision, whether it's technocratically good or not, is valid by any of these leeches, to use Ben Shapiro's word.
None of them.
Weekly Roundup Luigi Mangione and the End of Civilization Part 3 - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 12-13-24
BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: (The) author goes on to say, "Over the centuries, humanities become more civilized, largely drifting away from violent conflict revolution. And to be clear, I mean, [01:12:00] civilized in the spirit of Elias's definition, the process by which The use of violence shifted to the state and de-civilization to suggest a condition in which it shifts back to individuals." So, just to be clear, if you read the article the main source here is a 1939 book by a medieval scholar, a scholar of medieval Europe.
So A- there's been a lot of books written about medieval Europe since 1939, and it really is one of the, if not the only, source that's referenced in the entire article. Nonetheless, this idea of violence being shifted to the state, I think reflects the privilege you're talking about because you're basically saying, 'Well, society is civilized as long as the violence that the state perpetrates is not aimed at me or people like me. It may be aimed at those incarcerated at rates that are disproportionately high. It may be aimed at those who the state sends to bomb or to drone. It could be [01:13:00] any number of people, but as long as the state is doing the violence, it's okay.' There's nothing here that questions, like, whether or not that the state itself might be uncivilized because of the way that it commits acts of violence, whether internally or abroad. So I think that's there.
The author goes on then to talk about society reaching a point at which public, people publicly celebrate the death of a stranger murdered in the street. That is the point, Dan, of de-civilization. They do mention January 6th, the US Capitol, and people playing that down, but I'll just go to the end because we're going to run out of time.
So, you cannot fix a violent society by simply, let me actually read a different quote, because it's just too important. So let me just back up. Here we go. "In the weeks after a sharply divided election ahead of the return to power of a president who has repeatedly promised to unleash a wave of state violence and targeted retribution..."
DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Sorry, a wave of what kind of [01:14:00] violence?
BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Yeah, civilized.
DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: State violence. Civilized violence. Yeah.
BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Civilized. Civilized violence. "And targeted retribution against his enemies. Also civilized, since he is the state. Americans have a choice to make about the kind of society we are building together." Now who's the we and who are the Americans, if not the state?
Is the state not the Americans? Okay. "After all, civilization is, at its core, a question of how people choose to bond with one another and what behaviors we deem permissible among ourselves." So, The state is civilized if it does violence, but we have to be civilized apart from the state and bond with one another and among ourselves, like some kids in a tree house whose parents are gone for the weekend, you know, figuring out what's permissible and what's not.
There really is this sense here of like the kids need to behave. If we want civilization to survive, because the state is going to do what it needs to do to survive, and that [01:15:00] may mean violence and retribution, as just mentioned. But we are the ones that really need to stick together here and not let things get uncivil.
Let me read one more sentence, Dan, and I'll shut up and it's all yours. The process of de-civilization may begin with profound distrust in institutions and government, but," children, sorry, the children was me. "That distrust gets far worse in a society where people brutalize one another. Take it away.
DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I don't even know where to start. So if I was like, I mean, you mentioned grad seminars, right? One of the things you would do is one of the things I say, this is not grad seminars. I work with undergraduate students, but one of the things I often say is don't make huge grandiose claims you could not possibly defend, right? I teach in religious studies. You teach in religious studies, which means you've gotten essays, Brad, that start the same way that mine do, sometimes, from students that say, "For as long as human beings have stared into the sky, they have pondered the..." I'm like, stop. Stop. You don't get to say things about all human beings, you don't get to say things about all time, you don't get to [01:16:00] make big statements about... right?
So, what the hell is civilization here? What qualified we've seen it's equated with the state. Here it seems to be equated with "the people," which seems to imply some sort of notion of popular governance or maybe democracy. That would lead into what Rousseau and others identify as the paradox of democracy and the people, right?
That a democracy can only work. With the authorization of the people, but the people itself is constituted by democracies. You have this kind of chicken/egg thing that comes along. We were making fun about the statement of Trump, right? Who's going to use state violence. If you're going to say that violence by the state doesn't count as uncivilized violence or somehow not violence, how can you criticize Trump if he has the mechanisms of the state, like on and on and on and on.
Another sentence that you didn't get a chance to throw in there says, "You cannot fix a violent society simply by eliminating the factors that made it deteriorate." Really? It seems like that would [01:17:00] be a really good place to start fixing a violent society, to me. You identify the factors that made it deteriorate and you address those factors.
I mean, maybe it's not going to be automatic and things like that, but it sure sounds like that would be something that you could do. Just on and on and on this is just a bunch of I think you know words that sound good; "civilization," "violence," "choosing to bond with another," "what behaviors we deem permissible among ourselves," and so forth.
A last point, back to this point about elitism and what counts, is a lot of Americans seem to deem mass shootings as permissible. They don't want to do anything to stop them. A lot of Americans deem transphobia and violence against queer people as permissible. They don't want to do anything about it.
Right? So don't give me this stuff that that just automatically makes us a civilized society just because there's some sort of majority view or consensus about, you know, what is permissible among ourselves. That's why I say this is not about neutrality or [01:18:00] any of that. My, my vein's going to pop on my forehead, so I'll throw it back to you to let you go apoplectic now.
SECTION C - United Health Care
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next section to see United healthcare.
Was United Healthcare CEO a Psychopath - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 12-9-24
THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Uh, three days after Brian Thompson was assassinated. The CEO of UnitedHealth Group, which owns UnitedHealthcare, uh, Andrew Witte, uh, told, uh, circulated a, uh, two and a half minute video, um, to his employees.
Uh, which is kind of bizarre. I mean, it's it's, uh, the independent is writing about it. Just Justin Rorlich. He writes, um, United Health Group CEO Andrew Whitty told underlings that their work was quote critical in preventing the U. S. medical system from providing quote unnecessary. care he claimed would eventually drive up costs to a quote unsustainable level as he complained about the quote vitriolic media coverage of the shooting.
Of course, he's talking about social media where, um, it seems I, I [01:19:00] haven't seen any official numbers. I'm not sure any, there's any official agency that tracks this kind of stuff, but it certainly seems to me like 10 of the social media posts I've seen that have to do with the assassination of Brian Thompson have been, Basically cheering on the shooter, which is a really sad commentary on the state of the American health care system that so many people are so angry about this system that basically has turned, you know, the fate and future of Americans lives over to, you know, unelected corporations who then extract literally billions of dollars in profits and pay their executives literally millions of dollars, uh, in order to, uh, uh, You know, have their profits, I guess.
The two minute 45 second speech, you know, as I said, followed the assassination. UnitedHealthcare reportedly has one of the highest denial rates in the entire healthcare industry, was last year sued, [01:20:00] I'm reading from the Independent here, for allegedly using a flawed AI algorithm to systematically deny care coverage to seniors.
That would be through their Advantage program. Aye. The Mr. Whitty told employees that Thompson was dedicated, uh, to the goal of United Health Care's mission, which he says is to truly make sure that we help the system improve by helping the experience of individuals get better and better. I'm guessing many, uh, United Health Care, uh, policy holders would, uh, disagree with that.
Probably many would agree with it as well. It's, uh, if you're not in the 32 percent who've been, or the, the, I don't know what percentage have had denials. It's apparently it's 32 percent of all claims. Um, but he claimed few people in the history of the U. S. healthcare industry have had a bigger positive effect on American healthcare than Brian.
And I can just see people kind of gagging all over the country as they, as they hear that. [01:21:00] He said, we guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care, Or for unnecessary care to be delivered in a way which makes the whole system too complex and ultimately unsustainable. Well, the system is too complex and is unsustainable.
It's going to cost us 55 to 60 trillion over the next 10 years if United Healthcare and their peer companies continue to play the major role in providing our health care and paying for our health care. Whereas if we went to Bernie Sanders, single payer health care system, it would cost 32 trillion.
There's a big difference between 50 trillion and 32 trillion over a decade. There's a huge difference. By the way, we also learned that the backpack that the shooter left, uh, in Central Park apparently, had, uh, was filled with Monopoly money. Now what's that about? My guess, if I had to make a guess, and I suppose I might as well, is that he intended to sprinkle the money over the body of the guy he shot, but that he [01:22:00] just, you know, decided to flee instead.
Yeah. by way of saying, I'm killing you because of what you did for money. You know, we'll see. I mean, you know, in, in my, in my article today, there is a one sentence that I really struggled with. But ultimately, this is how I wrote it. Essentially, United Healthcare's CEO, Brian Thompson, made decisions that killed Americans for a living in exchange for 10 million a year.
He and his peers in the industry are probably paid as much as they are because there is an actual shortage of people with business training who are willing to oversee decisions that cause or allow others to die in exchange for millions in annual compensation. And this is a, this is a theme that, you know, we've delved into many times in this program, including with.
Uh, a number of guests who were psychiatrists, which is that, you know, there are studies that show that as many as one in five American CEOs are actually psychopaths, that [01:23:00] psychopaths become some of the most successful business leaders because they just don't care what their actions do to average people.
They only care for themselves and their company. They're singularly focused on that, which is, you know, in essence. Capitalism or corporate capitalism is psychopathic. It doesn't care. Corporations don't care what happened to their customers or what happens to the people that they interact with, or even their impact on the local community environment until or unless it impacts their profits.
It's the only context in which they care. And I think that you could correctly define that as psychopathy.
You Dont Actually Need to Condemn the Murder of the CEO Guy Part 2 - Serious Inquiries Only - Air Date 12-12-24
THOMAS SMITH - HOST, SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY: So just to, you know, I don't want to bum you out too much. It's sort of a happy ending for this person, I think. But this, this poor guy was a college basketball player, um, tall, athletic, you know, and I only say this because, you know, the contrast when, when, you know, terrible healthcare stuff happens is very sad.
Tall, in [01:24:00] shape, fit basketball player develops. severe ulcerative colitis. This is, this is horrible. This is just one of those bad fucking moral luck things. You know, it's just, it's just bad luck. This it's precisely the reason we should all want. To be covered health care wise, we should all want to be covered health care wise, because there, but for the grace of the fucking spaghetti monster, go I there, but for the grace of God, go any of us, we could just one day be like, boop, alternative, all sort of colitis or whatever, any number of things.
But in this instance, it's that this poor guy went from being a college athlete. To not being able to leave the toilet. It's, it's horrifying. It's, it's, it's absolutely horrifying. You know, bloody diarrhea 21 times a day. Uh, or more this poor guy, um, real, really shit stuff to, it wasn't even trying to make a joke, shit luck.
[01:25:00] I'll say, and like, this is, this is so sad. It's the kind of thing that like, if this happens to you, your life is so fucking ruined. You know, you go from living a normal life to like, this guy can't leave his house. This guy can barely function. This guy has lost weight. He's got other really bad, you know, there's all kinds of bad health outcomes from this.
Now you'll never guess what happened. See. United Healthcare was looking at their fucking spreadsheets, looking at their numbers, looking at their financials. It was like, Hmm, we love this part where people pay us money. Love that. That's great. Well, isn't that such a great part of it where they're like, Hey, we'll pay you money just because we want to hopefully someday get coverage for our healthcare.
That's awesome. A plus love that. We're looking at this other line item that says where we pay for people's healthcare, but that's, well, it's not as fun. We don't like that part. That part, it's like a, it's a red number. It goes down for us. We don't, we don't like our numbers to go down. And, uh, they identify in their spreadsheet.
This one guy on this Penn state health [01:26:00] plan was costing them a lot of money because he had a really bad condition. And so wouldn't you know it because of that. And because of nothing else, because of no medical reason, because of no moral reason, because of no good fucking reason, but because of a number reason, A bad number for them.
Lots and lots of money it's costing this this health insurance company. You know health insurance companies? The company whose entire purpose is to provide money when you need health care because what you've done and what others have done have paid into the system when you don't need it? Yeah, they don't like that second part, the part where they have to pay back out.
They don't like that. Ah, that sucks. Ouch. Owie. Don't like that part. Not as good as just receiving money. And so they found, started finding all kinds of ways to get rid of this guy. They're like, this guy's costing us a lot of money. If we can get rid of him, we're making more money. Now, what complicates this a little bit is, unfortunately, the only thing that was working for this guy, after going through lots of treatment, this guy's life was, again, ruined.
Imagine it. I mean, this is [01:27:00] ulcers, like, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcers in your digestive tract, it's got no cure, and ongoing treatment to alleviate symptoms, that's all you got. It's all you got. Otherwise this person, he lost 50 pounds, bloody diary up to 20 times a day, severe stomach pain. I mean, if you've experienced some, some small amount of this, you, it's, it's life ending.
I mean, just, if, if, if you have that kind of bowel pain, which I've had a time or two, uh, because of my, not this, but like other digestive problems I've had, you're not living, you know, you're not, you're just, You're just on the floor. You're just curled up. You're just waiting for it to go away. It's it's horror.
It's awful It's really sad and it's something that could just happen to fucking any of us And so like once again, that's a reason we should you know Have a system where anyone would be covered for the few unlucky people. There's no [01:28:00] moral thing This guy did there's no thing, you know, even if there were by the way, I wouldn't care But like for those who think there's always odd people always deserve it.
Nope, just You It happens. Shit happens. God, I keep accidentally making a pun. I'm not even trying to do it. Uh, stuff happens. Now, he goes through a lot of treatments. They don't, they aren't working because he has a severe case. For some mild cases, these treatments do work, you know, reasonable enough. When you have a more mild form of it, the normal medications might work.
This guy, wouldn't you know it, mathematically, there's always going to be some people who have the worst kind of thing. That's just how stats and people work and math and numbers. This person happens to be the unfortunate. Person who has a bad kind of this and so with a doctor who seems to be really good, they're trying to figure out what to do and eventually his doctor says, Okay, we've tried a lot of stuff.
We tried the usual stuff. Not working. This is awful. Let's try. A certain course of treatment that has potentially worked in other [01:29:00] cases, where you take these biologic drugs that I don't totally understand, uh, and pin in this for, I don't know, someone who knows more about this, I don't think these should cost so fucking much.
I don't know why they do. That's another question. Um, but that's a separate issue because for now, the important thing is these biologic drugs, as they call them, for some reason, they cost a shitload of money. There I go again, not even trying to do it. I just, I'm now realizing how much of my normal speech involves shit related words.
So I will try to cut that out. So I'm genuinely not trying to do it. Um, but for some reason, these costs a bunch of money and, um, another unfortunate thing. In order for this treatment to work, they have to do very high doses of them that are not the normal amount. So already, I'm sure anyone who's had experience with insurance companies is thinking, Wow, this is, you're fucked.
Like, because those exact things are the kinds of things that are very hard to get insurance companies to cover. It's a, it's not the usual drug. And furthermore, it's [01:30:00] two of not the usual drug. And furthermore, they're doing high doses. But here's the fucking thing. This works. It works. He tries this treatment.
This very expensive treatment and it works. The guy starts having a normal life. Can you imagine going from bloody shit 20 times a day, not living to having a life that's priceless for any human, for any person, uh, not priceless for an insurance company that has a cost to it. But wouldn't, but boo fucking hoo because hey, that's the job you're in.
That's the industry you're in. That's the sector you're in. Sometimes, you get people who do nothing but pay into your little system, to your little fucking scheme. They do nothing but pay you money all their lives, and then maybe they're hit by a car and die, never having used their health care treatment.
Do we ask for their money back from you? No, that doesn't happen. Sometimes health insurance companies, I [01:31:00] know this is hard to hear, but I got to give you a little, like, no nonsense brass tacks, you know, sometimes health insurance companies, you have the opposite where someone hasn't paid in very much, but they have a very expensive treatment and hey, It ultimately all works out in the end because mathematically you make sure it does.
That's how your business works. You make sure that you always make money. You mathematically make sure it's called whatever the factuarial tables or whatever the fuck that is. That's how you do it. You will always make money, but that's not enough. That's not enough for these companies. They always, because of capitalism, Have to be trying to make more.
And because of, you know, CEOs that get paid hundreds of millions of dollars in stock options and all that, they have to be trying to make more. How do you make more? Well, let's find a way to get rid of the ones that are on the other side of the thing. Don't want to get rid of the ones that just pay us money and then don't use the stuff.
That they're great. Let's find more of those. Um, but let's get rid of the ones where we have to print money out. Cause that isn't as fun for us. And so they start doing these reviews over and over this poor guy. Who's finally living his [01:32:00] life again.
These Guys Are SO Out Of Touch On Healthcare CEO Shooting Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 12-9-24
BEN SHAPIRO: We discussed yesterday a Columbia professor who wrote something very similar. Unfortunately, bubbling under the surface of all this is something very serious. Really serious. What is that serious thing? The revolutionary left. It's creeping into the mainstream. Yesterday, we talked about liberals versus the left. Liberals are people who disagree with me on public policy, but aren't in favor of, you know, the murder of their opponents. The left is a different thing. The shooting of Thompson has unleashed a wave of evil from members of the left. Thompson was not a criminal.
He wasn't even an advocate of death, the way, for example, abortion or euthanasia advocates are. And by the way, murdering an abortionist or an advocate of euthanasia would be unjustifiable morally in a democratic system. Brian Thompson's great sin, according to these people, is that he was the head of a company that exists within a mix of private/public healthcare framework.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, that's just one question. That actually led to get passed unremarked. Ben Shapiro cutting in close because I think they had to film it later where he said, by the way, don't go kill abortion providers. Violence has been used against abortion providers. [01:33:00] Where pro life movement is right now, it would not be if it wasn't for the use of violence.
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, and, I mean, let's just pull up his tweet from this morning because we had two breaking stories in these cases. Daniel Penny, who held down unhoused Jordan Neely on the subway for over five minutes in a chokehold, and that resulted in the death of Jordan Neely, has been acquitted after, like, nearly 24 hours of deliberation by the jury.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: A long time for deliberation, I'll say that. Wrong decision.
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, I mean, it's a high standard, I understand, but yeah. Ben Shapiro, there's video of this, of Daniel Penney holding down Jordan Neely for over five minutes and it becoming clear as his body goes limp what is happening.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Thanks to all the people who never ride the New York subway for telling us how to feel about that shit, by the way.
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah "America needs more men like Daniel Penney. America needs fewer prosecutors like Alvin Bragg." So, [01:34:00] which one is it, Ben? Is killing somebody wrong? Is killing somebody wrong? Or, do you confer a humanity onto wealthy people, onto wealthy white people, that you don't confer onto someone like Jordan Neely, who has been failed by society, who has had issues himself, but whose humanity is no lesser than the United Healthcare CEO just because he's a wealthy person. And you see, like, this is the divide, oddly.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yep.
EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Like, this is the real divide. And for all the talk of right wing populism, I think it's completely insincere because it's really Ben Shapiro's mentality is what Republicans really think and what right wingers, power players really think, but let's talk about the voters here.
If you are somebody who, is uncomfortable with the reaction to the killing of the United Healthcare CEO, but you are also somebody [01:35:00] who is making some case that Daniel Penney needed to get off and was innocent or was doing his civic duty for society. You're just a racist. That's the reality.
Because, you see the audience, his Ben Shapiro fans, they understand why. They've had that experience, and I'm sure some of them were cheering on Daniel Penney, and all of that, but they still, at the very least, at their core, know the pain that's behind our healthcare system. If you're an elitist and you're a racist, if you're having- you are pro Daniel Penney and then also like chiding leftists about their reaction and other people, just regular people about their reaction to this killing.
SECTION D - Health Care History
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally section D healthcare history.
The Health Care Crisis Is The Democracy Crisis Part 2 - The Lever - Air Date 12-17-24
CLIP: Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Kennedy was recognizing a universal truth in human history. Social [01:36:00] stability, the rule of law, and civilization itself will eventually break down if a population is immiserated for too long while a handful of elites profit. And just two months after that speech, JFK honed in on the healthcare crisis in America, pressing for the passage of what would become Medicare.
CLIP: The fact of the matter is that what we are now talking about doing, most of the countries of Europe did years ago. The British did it 30 years ago. We are behind every country, pretty nearly, in Europe in this matter of medical care for our citizens.
DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Kennedy's speeches on the survival of democracy and the need for health care reform seem more relevant than ever right now. The connection between the two seems more obvious than ever. Think about what's happened in the last few [01:37:00] weeks.
All of a sudden, after the murder of United Health CEO, Brian Thompson, everyone seems to be talking about healthcare and yet a discussion of healthcare was almost completely absent from the presidential campaign. This is the democracy crisis staring at us in the face. A public that is rightly angry at a massive policy failure.
And yet politicians and the media making sure that that failure is not even being discussed in the election that's supposed to be where we the people make our voices heard. It all feels like what JFK was warning about. As evidenced by all the anger expressed at health insurers after the shooting, many Americans clearly believe that elections and the political process have become so corrupt, so overrun with health care industry campaign cash, and so broken, that [01:38:00] democratic institutions like Congress and the White House have become obstacles to fixing something like the health care system. And that has prompted some to cheer on vigilante violence.
CLIP: The shooter got out from behind a parked car, pointed a gun at Thompson's back, and then shot twice.
DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Let me be absolutely clear. Extrajudicial murder is not good. It's not laudable. It's not justified. Violence is not justifiable. The shooting is not something to be cheered on. There is no rationalizing, excusing, or honoring murder. And there is no virtue in getting yourself social media clicks by cheering that kind of thing on.
Nobody should be valorizing anyone who engages in vigilante murder. Democracy and civilization itself is based on the idea that we do not settle our differences through violence against people we disagree with. [01:39:00] Violence is not only vile and immoral, it makes it more difficult to achieve progress. But I also fear that JFK's warning is relevant here.
While the shooting is deplorable and heinous, and unacceptable and counterproductive, I fear it's also an example of the kind of chaos that may become inevitable in a country whose political establishment has spent decades tearing up the social contract, legalizing and normalizing another kind of violence: Murder by Insurance Industry Spreadsheet. Murder by Spreadsheet may sound like an exaggeration. But it IS our reality. Right now, studies suggest around 60,000 Americans die every year because they lack access to decent medical care. We have insurance companies using artificial intelligence to systematically deny their customers medical claims, even as the [01:40:00] average family premium in an employer based health care plan now costs more than $25,000 a year.
14 years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, 100 million Americans face a combined total of $220 billion of medical debt as just one of many horror stories. A recent study found that 42% of cancer patients see all of their life savings depleted within two years. This is horrendous for most Americans, but a jackpot for the health insurance industry.
As The Lever reported this week, the largest insurers raked in $371 billion in profits since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and they also spent $120 billion on stock buybacks, enriching their shareholders and their executives. Amid increases in premiums and increases in [01:41:00] claim denial rates, seven health insurance CEOs were paid $335 million in a single year.
Credits
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics: Trump antagonizing our allies, and the role of the billionaire bros on our politics. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].
The additional sections of the show included clips from The Majority Report, All In with Chris Hayes, Straight White American Jesus, The Thom Hartman Program, Serious Inquiries Only, and The Lever. Further details are in the show notes.
Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for the research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet, Ken Brian, Ben, and Lara for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes [01:42:00] and her bonus show co-hosting.
And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by sending up today at BestOfTheLeft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads, and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with the link to join our Discord community where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all new social media platforms you may be joining these days.
So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay!, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestOfTheLeft.Com.
Showing 1 reaction