IHIP News - The Public’s LACK OF EMPATHY for Healthcare CEO’s Public Execution

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Join us by going to https://groundnews.com/ihip to get 50% off the Ground News Vantage plan that we use – a limited time offer that also makes a great gift during this time of year. Luigi Mangione has been arrested for the murder of Brian Thompson and the public is expressing a surprising amount of support for him and his actions. Aura Frames: Exclusive $35-off Carver Mat at https://AuraFrames.com. Use code IHIP at checkout to save! PRE-ORDER OUR NEW BOOK and find live tour dates + more by clicking here: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcast Follow Us: I've Had It Podcast: @Ivehaditpodcast Jennifer Welch: @mizzwelch Angie "Pumps" Sullivan: @pumpspumpspumps Special thanks to @cnraun for the IHIP Theme SongSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to IHIP News. Today we need to talk about Luigi Mangione, and he has been identified as the shooter that killed UnitedHealthcare CEO. And what I want to talk about is the reaction to all of this and how desensitized we all are about a couple of things. Number one, the killing was cold-blooded, execution style. And there seems to be people that are desensitized to this. But also, can we also look into that perhaps the American public is also very desensitized to the healthcare industry and the way they exploit the masses

to pocket billions and billions of dollars of profit. And this is going to be a tricky thing to navigate through because on the one hand, the killing of the CEO is wrong. We cannot live in a society where people can get gunned down in the streets. Full stop. That just cannot happen. But also, do we live in a society where people pay earnestly into their insurance and then they get really sick and they're denied? In fact, UnitedHealthcare brags about denying one out of every three claims. Wow. I had no idea it was that high.

No, it is. I think we're desensitized to killing by guns for two reasons. Number one, kids are killed in school throughout the course of the year in rates never seen in any other country. And we have this keyboard courage that people are able to say things on the internet that they would not say in real life. But what I found interesting is this is a crime. This is a very serious crime. It's murder. Like you said, it was execution style. What bothers me so much, and of course, Ted Cruz, the most unfuckable man in America, was the first one out that said, oh, well,

he's a leftist. This is what you get on the left. And I was just like, really? Murder is a political issue. The issue of health care can be political, but it shouldn't be. It should be human care. But I just thought, you know, people are exploiting the murder of someone who was in the health care industry to blame it on the left. I'm like, I'm sure Donald Trump's concept of a plan is going to fix all this. But I just feel

like until we do something about gun violence, until we do some regulation about health care, the American people are going to continue to still be so angry. Well, I think I want to go back to the very first thing that you said when I told you that one in three claims were denied. You said, oh, wow, I have no idea. And we're two white, privileged women who have always had access to health care, and it's never been an issue in our lives. But for millions of Americans, the denial of claims is something that has to be addressed. So we have active violence, which is the shooter getting shot. But is it passive violence for insurance companies to deny claims for people that have cancer? I saw a claim that was denied for a child that chemotherapy and the doctor wanted to prescribe anti-nausea medication. That anti-nausea medication was denied for a child by the healthcare industry.

If you're the parent of that child, does that feel like passive violence? Is that what that feels like when you get those letters? I would have to think it does at the very, very minimum. It's massive abuse for corporate profit. I mean, people, you know, their claims are denied. They're delayed. They go into medical bankruptcy. I mean, there is so much abuse by these big health care companies and nobody seems to

give a shit. Not that murder is the way to highlight it by any stretch of the imagination, but it does put into the zeitgeist how unhappy and how miserable the healthcare system in the United States is. I think about it like this. You see what happened. And when anytime you see anybody get gunned down, it's shocking. And then you see a huge reaction online from people on the left and people on the right, just Joe Q citizen, that are kind of like, screw these corporate CEOs. They exploit us. And the Luigi Mangione said in his manifesto that was found on him, he referred to them as parasites. And my question is,

Luigi Mangione was wrong in his act of murder, but are these insurance agencies, are they parasites? And I think the answer to that question is a resounding yes. And so when you have a lot of people who have zero empathy for this crime. Zero. This is an opportunity to look at this. And what we do as a country is everybody is consumed with culture wars, drag queens, trans people, gay marriage, book banning. In our state, you've got the Ten Commandments in schools, all these stupid wedge issues. Meanwhile, the real war is class warfare because you see billionaires at the top that are using parasitic methods to exploit people's suffering. And whenever you see a documentary about the opioid crisis and you see what the Sackler family did, you are enraged. And if you found out that one of the Sackler patriarchs was shot, my husband suffered from an opioid addiction, and I know how much they exploited people's addiction, I probably wouldn't feel that much empathy for him. I wouldn't like the crime, the vigilante aspect of it. But I certainly understand as a human being, when you see this profound exploitation of the

billionaire class off of the masses, and they use parasitic methods to exploit money from them, and to further cause suffering, I understand it. And with regards to Luigi Mangione's political leanings, whether they're left, whether they're right, from who he followed on Twitter, it seems like he's kind of all over the place. It seems to me like this is an issue that affects the overwhelming majority of Americans. And the Republicans have ignored it. And the Republicans have ignored it, and the Democrats have ignored it. We value profit over human lives. And so instead of us, oh, I had no idea that the health insurance companies denied claims. We need to know that. We need to understand that just because we haven't been affected by it.

We have to understand the suffering that is going on, especially probably in rural towns where there's a large concentration of right-leaning voters that ended up voting for a billionaire that's funded by a billionaire that's managed by a bunch of other billionaires that's probably managed by the richest man in the country, which by all accounts is more than likely Vladimir Putin. So this thing is something for the American public to really take a look at. And do we want to be a country that is wound up like cheap clocks over drag queens reading books? Or are we upset about the insurance companies exploiting human suffering, much like the pharmaceutical industry did, or the gun industry does? And so I think that's the larger narrative that we have to talk about here, is why don't

people feel empathy for that? And I certainly would not if somebody in the Sackler family got shot after the pain and suffering that I personally went through, watching my husband suffer from the opioid epidemic, and knowing how many hundreds of thousands of people died. I wouldn't like that somebody got shot in the street, but it'd be really hard pressed to pass a polygraph test saying that I felt empathy. It's really such a interesting that this Luigi Mangione was the shooter because in my mind, it was somebody that had, you know, poor, didn't have access to health care, lost a family member because of denied coverage, you know, whatever the narrative in my head was.

But you realize, to your point about how every American is affected by health care, this is by all accounts a very smart, employed, employable person from privilege that had a complaint with the medical industry. We don't know yet what that complaint necessarily was. There's a lot of theories online. But I think the larger point is every single American at some point will have someone in their family or they themselves will need health care coverage. They will need insurance because they will have a medical issue. And so the issue to me is, can this be an opportunity to look at the corporate profits

for these insurance companies? They're skyrocketing while coverage gets more expensive. And what they provide to the insured is far less. People are unable to get the treatment that they need, the medication that they need, and or go to the doctor that they need based on these health insurance company standards, which to my understanding, and I could be wrong, a majority of the requirements for certain care is made by people that are not medical doctors. And so I look at this and say, there is such an opportunity to address all of these issues

with health care. In the back of my head, I think we're trying to, I mean, the Trump administration wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. So where are we going on this? And then to your point about a billionaire sponsored by billionaires who's babysat by the largest billionaire, do you really think the billionaire oligarch class is going to say, you know what, we need to make insurance more affordable, better care, better options for the working and lower class people?

And we'll take several billions of dollars a year less. And I think probably the answer to that is no. I think another point to dive into here is when you see somebody get shot in the street, it's objective and it's verifiable that it's criminal. Absolutely. So then I go back to this passive violence. And that's what I really want to focus on is the passive violence of being a person that earnestly tries to do everything right in your life. And then you, by no choice of your own, get sick. And then you're denied health care. And then that denial can lead to a lack of treatment, which leads to death.

So why isn't that criminal would be my question. I think the larger thing here is to dive deep and get the right out of it and get the left out of it. And why hasn't either party really, you know, jumped off the diving board into this thing and really tried to roll up their sleeves and fix this because this affects every single person. The Affordable Care Act was written by the insurance industry. It was a full gift to the insurance industry. And we all pay so much money for health insurance. And at every turn, you see large corporations that are funded by these huge lobbies that have politicians from both the right and the left in their pockets.

Because in the United States of America, we worship capitalism and profit above and beyond anything else. And that is the meat and potatoes of this thing. Why is it that millions of Americans feel no empathy for this? That is a huge opportunity to have a big discussion about the millions of Americans that felt that the insurance company had no empathy for their suffering. Zero. Just like I felt like when my husband was suffering from an opioid addiction, that the pharmaceutical companies, that the government didn't care. I felt like they didn't care. And then you find out later, they knew how addictive it was. And you knew they did it on purpose. And they profited and profited and profited. It made me sick. And it felt like passive violence to me. So my big narrative in this

is you have active violence, and then passive violence from capitalism. Is it passive violence for the gun lobby to continue to put these politicians in their pocket and grade them from the NRA, A plus to F. And then they get all of these guns out in the street and then people get shot. Kids get shot in school. But oh, my gosh, you know, thoughts and prayers. We can't do anything about it. I think the biggest message from this is the American people, whether you're on the left, right or center, whether you came from a rich family or a poor family, are all affected by the exploitation and the passive violence of capitalism.

Absolutely. And I think hopefully this discussion will be opened up on both sides and it won't be so polarized. I don't have a lot of confidence in that, but we'll see. Yeah, that's not going to happen until the political narrative is taken away from these wedge issues and the culture wars. And it's really moved to a class war. And you see what Bernie Sanders did when he ran. And he really highlighted a lot of these discrepancies in the system and the disparity in the system. And he highlighted human suffering and exploitation and parasitic methods within the system. And he got a lot of traction for it.

And you see some other politicians, not a lot, but a few that speak out vociferously about this. But at the end of the day, even these politicians, both on the left and on the right, profit from their positions in Congress. And so it makes you feel helpless. And then you get lone wolf actors like this that go and do these things because there's only so much that people can take. There's only so much suffering and exploitation. You get one person, and apparently he had some sort of back surgery, cut off ties from everybody. His mother reported him missing November 18th. Just an interesting point about this. My son, if I said he's missing, and then I see all of the images from the New York Police Department online, you can't tell me that that

person at McDonald's is the only person that recognized him. I mean, this guy's cousin is a Republican in politics in Maryland. I can't remember if it's House or Senate or whatever. But I think that this conversation about active violence and passive violence is one that I want to continue to have here. And I think that's why you don't see a unilateral, oh my God, celebration. Yes, they found the murderer. Justice will prevail. It's quite the opposite. It's been interesting. And it is an opportunity for the American public to stop with the ridiculous, ridiculous culture war that only further marginalizes marginalized people. And everybody jump on board with the exploitation

and the parasitic practices from these corporations. Because one thing that the right has very successfully done has told the American people, we're your party, we're going to fight for you, and we're going to help you. And meanwhile, you have the billionaire class, Trump behind the scenes at Mar-a-Lago talking about giving people larger tax breaks. But this was probably the most interesting 28 seconds in television I've seen. And it just really, really personifies everything that is wrong over at Fox News, which I affectionately refer to as dipshit news. Here's Laura Ingram last night. We'll dig into it later. The Instagram posts from nutbag people, which I was sent in the

commercial break earlier. Crazy. Like he's cute. He's that and people celebrating this. This is a sickness. Honestly, it's so disappointing, but I guess we shouldn't be surprised. I mean, can you believe she can sit there and say that with a straight face? The moral high ground and the hypocrisy. I mean, it just makes me want to scream. When the white guy gets off killing the black guy, he's a hero. Absolutely. But when the billionaire gets shot by, I don't know what Luigi's motives were, but I do know

what the reaction that she was talking about Instagram and all of these people. A lot of these people have been affected, denied and seen human suffering because of the parasitic practices of corporate America. And they are exploitative and parasitic to the American public. There is no question about it. You can look no further to the gun industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the insurance industry and how they exploit and suck off of

the American public for their shareholders with impunity. And it is gross and it is disgusting. So this is a continued conversation that we want to have here. Please comment below and make sure you subscribe to our channel because I think that the American public these next four years needs to shift away from these stupid, stupid culture wars and really start talking about the class war. I absolutely agree. All right. We'll see you guys later.