Horrifying response to United Health CEO murder reveals fractured US health care system, fractured US society

 

Horrifying response to United Health CEO murder reveals fractured US health care system, fractured US society

 

 

Within hours of the murder of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson, a Facebook (not a real) friend posted “finally some good news.”

 

 

That was just the start of the avalanche of vicious cheering over the 50 year old family man being shot in the back on a NY street about to enter a business meeting. The Highfivers took no pains to hide their identities as they gloried in Thompson’s death. Today 3 businesses in Chicago were defaced with the cry “Kill your CEO”.

 

 

Companies are recoiling from this onslaught by deleting personal executive info from their websites and taking other measures to protect their now vulnerable top officers. Many execs are likely beefing up their personal security systems as well.

 

 

Among the many millions of disaffected Americans rallying over this unprecedented tragedy, no doubt a few, maybe many, are planning a copycat CEO execution.

 

 

That alone should shock everyone involved in the worst health care system in the industrialized world to re-evaluate their contribution to both creating and maintaining America’s failure to provide its most crucial human service: full and affordable health care for all.

 

 

That must provoke a total reexamination of how affordable health care is provided by everyone involved: insurers, medical profession and especially Congress. It took President Obama 14 months to pass a watered down improvement to America’s heartless health care delivery system in 2010. Little has been accomplished in the past 14 years to improve Obama’s health care babysteps, while the opposition party tried dozens of times to abolish it altogether. Back in power…they just might succeed next year.

 

 

That obstruction keeps over 25 million Americans without any health insurance. Tens of million less affluent remain hostage to a bureaucratic, often conniving, greedy insurance colossus making hundreds of billions in profits from their Byzantine structure and practices.

 

 

With the likely perpetrator of Thompson’s murder in custody, we cannot waste another 14 years, 14 months 14 weeks, even 14 days before grappling with a people-made problematic healthcare system that than can be made humane by the same people responsible for it.

 

 

Sometimes a horrific murder galvanizes society into action to improve American life. I still recall the horror of JFK’s assassination 61 years ago. At the time Kennedy was struggling to pass comprehensive civil rights legislation as America teetered on the edge from a century of unfulfilled freedom and equality for blacks.

 

 

With his reelection bid just 11 months away, JFK remained stymied from achieving any civil rights progress by his Southern congressional opposition and his focus on reelection. After his assassination, southerner Lyndon Jonson took office and utilized both the enormous good will following the assassination and his unprecedented political muscle to achieve within 2 years what JFK may not have.

 

We must use that lesson from 61 years ago to finally join the rest of the industrialized world in delivering decent, affordable health care to all.