Published on December 06, 2024

The New Gilded Age

By Popper's Ghost

Who expected a new Gilded Age was back in the cards? Workers rights eroding rapidly, a government packed with billionaire failsons and grifters. A president somehow worse than Woodrow Wilson. Isolationist foreign policy, a rumbling of a coming world war. Record corporate profits even as they lay workers off, and a record high stock market…

And now, wild-eyed anarchists are taking potshots at the filthy rich again.

Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a mom of 3 won't get her cancer treatment covered or a child cannot get the insulin she needs, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.” But when I say that one little old CEO will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
— The Joker, The Dark Night

Unless you’ve been in a coma, United Health CEO was assassinated on the street by a masked gunman a few days ago^[1]. The shell casings had the words “deny”, “defend”, “depose”. The first two were taken from a book with the title of “Delay, Deny, Defend”^[2], about how health insurance companies avoid paying claims.

There is some speculation the shooter may have a terminal or serious illness, or knows someone who does, and has had their claims repeatedly denied.

United Health Care has become embroiled in lawsuits over its denial of claims, as high as 1 in 3, more than double the industry average of 1 in 7^[3]. UHC also developed an ‘AI’ system to triage claims. By all accounts this system is buggy, but it seems they were happy with its 90% denial rate^[4].

Last month Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield announced they would no longer pay for anesthesia for the full duration of the surgery^[5], but only for some as-yet-determined ‘reasonable’ duration. This decision would have covered Connecticut, Missouri, and New York. This largely went under the radar until the CEO of UHC was assassinated, and that same day Connecticut said it will not allow Anthem to enforce their new policy rule in the state.

And now it seems Anthem has dropped the planned changes as well…

The problem now is this sets a dangerous precedent. Americans are learning politicians and CEOs don’t listen to their constituents^[6], but a guy with a gun changed things in a single day.

The ballot box was supposed to replace the riot and the revolution.

When the social contract breaks down, things snap.

I leave you with this from Frederich Engels:

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.

TL;DR: murder by omission is still murder.