Danielle, thank you so much for this.
I want to start with a few key points:
1. The healthcare industry (and other industries) are filled with kind, well-meaning and smart people like yourself.
2. Brian Thompson—and in fact, nobody, deserves to be shot.
3. Health insurance IS a business, a complex one, and it does approve a great number of claims...even though it denies others.
In my view, we need to (almost always) focus on fixing problems and not the blame.
Nobody believes that they are "the bad guy" and in an important sense they are right: people very rarely have bad intentions. And their motivations are rarely cruel.
But we are all born into societies with rules and norms and values and our civilization is deeply flawed.
It's not that Thompson or United Healthcare is good or evil. It's that really important things, like healthcare, and food and shelter should not be businesses. Once something becomes a business, morality and human decency takes a back seat.
That's a really big mistake. Our systems bring out the worst in people and then we confuse their bad behavior with human nature. But humans have a wide variety of potential behaviors. Often, as a species, we seem evil and this can be deeply disheartening.
I believe you have described health insurance accurately. But I also suspect you underestimate how cruel health insurance and the healthcare system is in practice. That's because we are following rules—rules the require us to maximize profits—rather than our hearts.
Few other modern developed countries have for-profit healthcare. Pre-existing conditions are simply someone's medical history—not a problem that endangers profits. Really, in the United States and everywhere there should be universal healthcare.
Although I have written about this issue, my focus has been broader. I am an activist for protecting the climate and promoting human dignity and wellbeing.
We are building radically kind and benevolent communities, trying to bring out the best in people. We believe that something is fundamentally wrong, not just in the United States, but worldwide—with virtually all systems and countries.
Our civilization is literally consciously destroying itself with fossil fuels and CO2 emissions. This is insanity.
That's why our group calls itself The Saners. We intend to use extreme benevolence and ultimately nonviolent noncooperation to fix what's wrong. We intend to refuse to cooperate with or perform any seriously destructive activities. We will stop the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. We will refuse to produce useless commodities and products that waste our lives in senseless labor. We recognize that producing crap that ends in landfills also contributes to ruining the climate and dooming everyone's children.
As a Saner, I don't hate oil company executives. Darren Woods, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, like Brian Thompson—and like all of us—is a person born into a certain kind of society with specific roles to fill. He has no evil intent and deserves a life of dignity and kindness. We all do.
Our group believes we should protect and value everyone, and focus on preventing deadly behaviors.
We are inclusive to the extreme. We don't choose sides in war or other violent conflicts. We choose peace and nonviolence. Remember, every soldier, every worker, every executive, every CEO is just another person. We all live on the same Earth, and are 100% dependent on it for our survival. We all have common interests and as human beings, the common experience of short precious and miraculous lives.
We have invented ideas that are now endangering us. Dictatorship, plutocracy, communism. Money. Guns as an unlimited right. And we've lit the fuel of anger and hatred under all of it.
The Saners are the alternative to all this.
Again, I can't tell you how grateful I am for your clear and accurate explanation of the world of health insurance and the viewpoint of providers. To end the hatred, we need to humanize everyone. There is no "other."
