Factually! with Adam Conover - Why Everyone Loves the CEO Murderer

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!) Typically folks tend to be, uh, anti-murder... so what the hell is going on?Visit https://groundnews.com/factually to stay fully informed, see through biased media and get all sides of every story. Subscribe for 50% off unlimited access through my link.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Americans are so furious about healthcare that they are straight up murdering CEOs in broad daylight. Every fact about the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson is crazier than the last. Just to eliminate any doubt as to the motive, the shooter literally etched, deny, defend, depose on the bullet casings, a reference to the tactics insurers use to deny healthcare claims. He left behind nothing but a bag full of monopoly money, and then he disappeared on a city bike, and for five days he evaded the police like he was Jason frickin' Bourne. The only reason he got caught was because of this photo of his face,

which was taken when he pulled down his mask to flirt with a receptionist. Dude was having a meet-cute in the middle of a hit. Is this real life or the plot of a high concept 90s rom-com? Well, the cops have now arrested this absolute hunk and charged him with murder. His name is Luigi Mangione, and someone's gotta call Nintendo because the year of Luigi is back, baby.

Because instead of condemning this handsome hitman, the public loves this guy. He's become a virtual folk hero. I mean, just look at those abs. Can New York City even find 12 jurors willing to convict this dreamboat? That's two jurors per ab! Now, the public reaction to the murder isn't settling to some people, because you know, normally when someone is shot dead in broad daylight, people are afraid and demand justice. But health insurance companies are so hated in this country that Americans from all walks of life have actually been celebrating the murder.

A Facebook post by UnitedHealthcare about the shooting has gotten over 80,000 reactions, and over 75,000 of them were ha ha I mean imagine you're shot dead in the street and 70k Nelson Munces point at you and laugh even nurses and doctors whose entire job is to you know Stop people from dying are enjoying this particular death a thread on reddits Medicine had to be deleted because it had too many inappropriately gleeful comments. And it's not just the Libs cheering. Even R slash conservative and the comments on Ben Shapiro's YouTube videos are going

nuts right now. Hating health insurers is the last bipartisan issue in America. Now look, I know that to the more genteel soul, the New York Times op-ed columnists of the world, it might seem disturbing to see your fellow citizens react to a murder with delight and glee. But you know, instead of shushing this outburst, I think this needs to be taken as a warning because Americans are saying, loudly and unequivocally,

that we are fucking pissed about healthcare in America, to such an extent that we are now literally excited for murder. And if you actually take that in and internalize it, it explains a lot about our society, including the popularity of Donald Trump's favorite parasite infested anti-vaxxer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and it illuminates how the American health system's deep dysfunction

is causing our entire society to literally break down in a way that the establishment needs to reckon with before it is too late. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you that I am on tour with a brand new hour of stand-up comedy right now. The Nihilism Pivot Tour continues in San Francisco at Cobbs Comedy Club this weekend, December 13th and 14th. Then I head to Dallas on January 10th, Toronto on January 23rd, then Chicago, Boston, and all these fine cities.

I'm even going to London and Amsterdam in March. All those tickets available at adamconover.net and head to patreon.com slash Adam Conever to support this channel directly. I'll see you out there on the road. Now a lot of commentators and CEOs out there are wringing their hands about the celebration over Brian Thompson's death.

But the anger actually makes perfect sense if you just look at United Healthcare's business model. This company made $22 billion in profit last year. Not revenue, pure profit. And they got that money by denying people care. United has the highest denial rate of any health insurer. They deny one out of every three claims. They've recently been investigated by the Senate

for denying claims of elderly and disabled patients with the explicit intention to increase their profits. And they're even being sued for using an AI algorithm to process those denials. So, Brian Thompson wasn't an upstanding businessman. He was a mafia boss standing in between doctors and patients who made his millions by bankrupting people and letting them die. He may never have held a gun directly to someone's temple, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a

killer. In America, you are twice as likely to die from lack of health insurance than a bullet to the head. An NIH study in 2021 estimated that universal healthcare coverage could save 68,000 lives a year. 68,000 lives. That means just this year, insurance companies like United Healthcare are responsible for enough dead bodies

to fill the city of Flagstaff, Arizona. And Brian Thompson was personally paid $10 million a year for standing atop that system of death. The American people see that, unsurprisingly, as fundamentally unjust, unfair, and f***ed up. And so they are cheering for his death. Now, let's be clear. Thompson's death is not going to change the

American healthcare system for the better. There's already some other suit sitting in his chair signing off on more denials. And rather than change their ways, his fellow CEOs are busy hiring private armies to protect them from their own customers. It doesn't make the world a better place when people are gunned down in the street for any reason. And there's a lot of justifiable concern that this could lead to even more political violence in our culture, which would be a bad thing. But we have to acknowledge that this killing and the reaction to it are evidence of how our system is failing us. Healthcare is a fundamental human need. And when people live under a system that denies

their fundamental needs for too long, they start tearing that system down. I mean, it just makes sense. If you put people under that amount of stress, it provokes a reaction. One reaction might be shooting a healthcare CEO in the head, and another might be putting an insane conspiracy theorist in charge of our nation's health.

So when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was nominated to run the Department of Health and Human Services, the medical community reacted with shock. And I get why. I'm gonna lay off the stuff about his brain worm and him eating dead dogs and bears and the whale head in his car and just focus on his actual beliefs for now

because those are somehow even crazier. I mean, this guy thinks that 5G cell signals are controlling our behavior, that antidepressants cause mass shootings, and that chemicals in the water are turning kids trans. Okay, dude, we know it's not water that makes kids trans. It's repeated viewings of seminal classic, The Matrix. I mean, this guy has never met a bullshit conspiracy theory

he didn't fall for, but his worst ideas are about vaccines. RFK Jr. has said that vaccine scientists should be in jail, that vaccines cause autism, which they do not, and even that COVID-19 was genetically engineered to be racist. And this is the man who's about to run the Department of Health and Human Services, which doesn't just handle vaccines,

it's responsible for all of America's health. HHS is the largest department in the federal government. It includes the CDC, which is in charge of public health, including pandemics, the FDA, which makes sure your food and drugs are safe to consume. And you know, you can debate whether or not those departments have done a great job in the last few years, but he's also going to be in charge of the National Institutes of Health, which is simply

one of the best things that the federal government does. You know, we cover this on my Netflix show, The G-Word, but the NIH is the largest and most important medical science organization in the world. They're responsible for countless incredible discoveries that have saved countless lives. They invented chemotherapy, which has saved lives of my own family members, as well as gene therapy and the mRNA vaccine, one of the most profoundly powerful medical discoveries

of our lifetime. Because of the NIH, we as a species literally learned how to write code for our own immune system, then programmed it to fight back against a virus it had never encountered, and then deployed it to save millions of lives during the COVID pandemic. That is a f**king historic scientific achievement. It's Jonas Salk put it on the Mount Rushmore

of medical science s**t, and the department that created it, the most important funder of science in the world, is about to be run by a science denialist who thinks we should ditch vaccines in favor of ivermectin and raw milk. And if he succeeds in that, if he succeeds in convincing Americans to ditch vaccinations in favor of pseudoscientific quackery, it could lead to mass deaths. Measles is one of the most transmissible and deadly diseases, and we used vaccinations to virtually eradicate it in the US. But when we stop vaccinating against measles, that shit comes back, and a measles outbreak

could quickly infect, disable, and kill millions of children. Vaccines are good and important, and they have saved hundreds of millions of lives around the world, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either crazy or lying. But you know what? I don't even know why I'm telling you this, because I have spent my entire career as a comedian and communicator trying to dispel myths and conspiracy theories

exactly like these, and it hasn't fucking worked. It's just made me look like a condescending nerd. And you know what? It's not just me. A small army of science communicators have desperately spent the past few decades trying to combat medical misinformation like this, including people at the CDC and NIH. And they have failed so thoroughly in that goal that their boss is about to be the king of the anti-vaxxers. After all of our debunking, Mr. Bunk is in f**king charge! And that means he will now have the platform and the full legitimacy of the American government behind him

as he attempts to fulfill his mission of giving every single American brain worms. And unfortunately, Americans are already primed to believe misinformation like this because of the media silos we live in. Like, check out this article I found through our sponsor Ground News' blind spot feature. 23 right-wing sources have reported a false story that an NIH employee was saying the COVID vaccine doesn't work. Now thankfully I use Ground News because they have a factuality rating for every article so I could tell this wasn't true. And they also have a blind spot feature which I really love. You can see how different topics are being covered

in right leaning and left leaning news outlets. Like if you look up RFK Jr., you can see how differently different news sources are covering him. Conservative leaning sites only comprise 11% of the coverage of how dangerous and deadly his plans are. And if you're a liberal, there are plenty of stories that you're missing too.

That's why I really recommend Ground News as a way to get outside of your echo chamber and get every angle on a story and get those all important factuality ratings. And Ground News is entirely subscriber funded, so their only motivation is to give you the clearest, most helpful picture of the news. And even better, my viewers get 50% off unlimited access.

Just go to groundnews.com slash factually. So a lot of people in the medical establishment are asking, why is this happening? Why is medical misinformation ascending to the highest level of government? I mean, America has the most advanced medical science and technology on the planet. Even the Yakuza come here when they need a new liver.

So how did we end up in a place where our nation's healthcare system is about to be run by an anti-science, conspiracy-obsessed lunatic? Well, the answer is pretty simple. It's the same reason that Americans are celebrating Brian Thompson's violent death. It's because our healthcare system sucks ass.

Four in 10 American adults report being in debt due to medical bills. Half of Americans can't afford healthcare at all. In comparison to every other wealthy nation, we have the worst health outcomes and the shortest lives, and yet we pay more than anyone else. 17% of our entire GDP is spent on this shit, and we're still not fucking healthy.

In other words, while we might have the world's most advanced medical technology, we have the world's least advanced social technology for distributing it. What good is it to invent an incredible new medical therapy when no one but literal crime bosses can fucking access it? So, you know, the medical establishment might be shocked

that Americans are turning away from science and towards conspiracy theories and quackery, but honestly, it makes sense. If your whole experience with the system is jumping through endless hoops, being denied for coverage, and watching your friends and family members sicken or go bankrupt,

why would you give a shit what the NIH or the CDC say, even if they're right? Remember during the COVID vaccine rollout, we were all told to bring any questions about the vaccine to our doctor? Well, a third of Americans literally do not have a doctor because they cannot afford one. So of course conspiracy theories about the vaccine spread. Americans had no one reliable to talk to about it. Instead, we were all forced to do our own research on the internet. And when that research led us to quacks and grifters

like RFK, well, at least those quacks were acting like they cared and peddling a fake cure that didn't work. But hey, at least you could buy it at the local horse supply shop. they cared and peddling a fake cure that didn't work, but hey, at least you could buy it at a local horse supply shop. The desperation produced by the American healthcare system is causing Americans to take matters into their own hands, whether that means elevating a nut job like RFK

or literally grabbing a gun and enacting vigilante justice in the street. And let's be clear, neither of these things are going to do a wit of good. R.F.K. Jr. is not going to fix American healthcare, and murdering a CEO is not going to fix the health insurance industry. But both events are the fault of the entire American medical system, from United Healthcare

to the NIH to the politicians who refuse to fix the problem. They have failed to take care of the people of this country, and this is the result. But you know, it doesn't have to be this way. In this country, we have enough money, we have enough resources, and we sure as shit have enough science and technology to extend health healthcare to every citizen who needs it, regardless of their means. A majority of Americans believe that the government should do so.

All that we have lacked is the political will. Instead, we've spent decades allowing filthy, rich, out-of-touch wealth hoarders, like insurance executives and hospital chains, mine our bodies, our health, our very lifespans for their fifth goddamn yacht. And if we don't make a change, if we don't see the murder of Brian Thompson

and the rise of medical pseudoscience as the canary in the coal mine that it is and start listening to the people of this country, well, pretty soon, this whole place is gonna blow the fuck up.