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On Balance | US must target Big Food and insurance industry to fix its healthcare
The only positive likely to come out of the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO is a national conversation about why US healthcare is so bad
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Why you can trust SCMP
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Political factions in the United States have argued about healthcare for decades. Like most others, this debate has become increasingly bitter over the years.
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With the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson – who was reportedly gunned down with bullets using casings inscribed with the words “delay”, “deny” and “depose” – the fractiousness appears to have turned deadly.
Whatever the outcome for the shooter – whose act should be condemned, regardless of how badly one has been treated by the health insurance industry – the killing of Thompson is likely to have only one benefit: a national conversation about why healthcare in the world’s richest country remains so problematic.
While most countries struggle to maintain a healthcare system that provides at least basic treatment for everyone, the US is unique in terms of the amount of determination needed to navigate the vagaries of health insurance coverage, especially for that vast category known as “the middle class”.
Even for those with full coverage and other hallmarks of higher socioeconomic brackets, horror stories about health insurance claims in any social setting are almost guaranteed to set off a round of one-upmanship with anecdotes of infuriating “delay” and “deny” tactics.
The fact that no one can know what a trip to an accident and emergency department will cost – let alone a course of chemotherapy or other, more advanced and targeted treatments that can save lives – shows insurers have got away with what few other industries have been able to manage. They enjoy a level of pricing opacity that leaves customers more vulnerable than borrowers from a loan shark.
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