If we had a functioning rule of law, murdering the CEO would not be seen as an acceptable proposition for redirecting the insurance companies.
But we have an increasingly shoddy pretense of law, so here we are. It is astonishing to see how many people on the Left and the Right are cheering about this assassination. That is a big trouble indicator right there. I guess too many people across the political spectrum have been screwed over by the health care system.
The assassination was effective too, at least in the short term. Anybody notice how quickly Anthem-Blue Cross Blue Shield reversed their policies on limiting payments for surgical anesthesia? What a coincidence! [NOT!]
But this will have unintended consequences in the long term, and they will not be good for anybody. Do we really want to see corporate assassination teams denying claims?
"Health insurance" is basically an extortion racket, supported by the government. The insurance companies got what they paid for when they rented all those politicians to create this system. They are not blameless victims of the government. They are cooperating predators.
We already have 100-year-old consumer protection and antitrust laws which could be used to correct this problem, but they are not enforced. They should be.
Laws are a better way to control corporations than assassinations.
There is a big problem here, right on the ground floor, as usual: Our kids are being brought up to not value life, be it this CEO’s, or an unborn child. Many would argue that the latter was the crossing of the Rubicon.
There is a basic monetary problem too: By getting into a buyer-seller system with 3rd and 4th parties involved, cost control has been lost, even though that is supposedly a great deal of the reason for having insurance companies and the gov’t involved. Plus, we have literally miraculous medicine / care, but it is too expensive for most to afford, and almost everyone expects someone else to pay for it. One could plug UHC’s entire profit for a given period, say, the last 10 years, into claims payments for that period, and it would barely improve the situation. Toss in anything above, oh, $200k of Thompson’s income from UHC, and that doesn’t even move the needle.