Are We Finally At This Point? Capitalist Greed and Violent Pushback

December 9, 2024

Way back in the 90s I worked on implementing a large class action lawsuit against a large life insurance company. Basically, life insurance agents lied to policyholders for years about how their policies worked, and many found to their surprise that their policies had lapsed after years of payments. That’s not what this is post about, but it is how I came to find myself working in a cubicle among the company’s customer service department. Because it was a cubicle office layout - and because the staff there were insufferable gossips and complainers - I got a front row education of how policyholders were treated when they had legitimate complaints. In short, no one in customer service would lift a finger to help anyone until they brought a lawyer into it - and then they bitched to no end about people “lawyering up.” If it were not so infuriating, it would have been comical. It was certainly surreal.

This education was helpful when my mother-in-law told me about some problem she was having with her life insurance company. I don’t remember what the specific issue was, but I remember it being one in which there was no good reason for the company to be denying her claim. As I recall she could not even get them to respond to her. So I called them, but had to leave a message. I identified myself as her lawyer and demanded they call me back immediately and resolve this. They never called me, but the issue was magically resolved.

We have known for decades that life insurance, auto insurance, and health insurance companies were routinely denying good claims because they knew a certain portion of the claimants would not fight to the end and this portion represented a profit. I bet you either know someone who has had this problem or had it yourself.

Last week, it appears that someone had enough of these insurance games and killed the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a health insurance company that has denied over 30% of all claims, resulting in the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people who not only deserved treatment but paid for it.

Source: Boston Globe

The use of private insurance for health care provision in this country is beyond a scandal. No other advanced democracy handles health care this way. Zero. None. For years, the investor class that has benefited from profiting off the suffering and misery of others has screamed “socialism” every time anyone suggests fixing this problem. And you hear right wing shills use their talking points of “I don’t want to pay for other people’s illnesses” and “It will be expensive.” Well, you already are paying for other people’s illnesses (that’s what insurance does) and you are also paying for a completely unnecessary executive and administrative layer that exists just to profit off policyholders. Medicare shows that public health care is cheaper to provide than private insurance.

Oh, you’ll have to wait with public healthcare? Raise your hand if you have had to wait an eternity just to see your primary care doctor, if you even have one. And if we are serious about waiting, we should be counting all those people waiting for a job that has health benefits or a spouse with health benefits or just waiting to use an ER after a preventable illness becomes life-threatening. Those people are waiting for health care under our current system.

The corporate establishment is freaked out about last week’s assassination. And the liberal establishment is wagging its finger at people for “taking glee” in it. It’s hard to feel sorry for corporate executives feeling fear when they have done nothing but profit off of the fear and suffering of desperate people. As for the finger-wagging: I don’t see many people being gleeful; I see people sharing their stories of how much people like Thompson have destroyed their lives. I see rage at the system. Well-deserved rage.

What’s this have to with politics? Everything. The assassin was apparently captured in Pennsylvania today and had on him a handwritten manifesto against health care companies. So, it appears that this was indeed a political assassination. But even if there was some other reason for the shooting, it has triggered an overwhelming response from people who have been, or have had family members, denied valid health care coverage, often resulting in injury, bankruptcy, and death.

This is where we have always been headed while both parties and corporations have fought efforts to focus our economy on people instead of investors, capital, and profit.

We have seen it in history time and again. There is a point at which the rich take too much and people’s suffering breaks. That’s when it comes to armed struggle. Maybe capitalists have finally pushed people too far. Maybe not. But that is what is behind the “glee” people are showing for this assassination. They have had enough. But it is finally “enough” in the sense that they will fight back?

Corporate leaders continually push to see how far workers and consumers will take it. There is never enough money to pay workers properly or provide meaningful and honest customer service. But there is plenty of money for unprecedented profits and ever-increasing executive pay and benefits. There was a time when the idea of working hard was so that your progeny would have a better life. Now that productivity is at the point where we could have a universal basic income, instead capitalists expect the surplus built by workers to be redistributed solely to billionaires and the investor class. Protest is met with violence at the hands of the police and security services. Elections are shams in which even some Democrats modify their positions out of concern about Wall Street contributors and the phony right wing disinformation underwritten by many of those same people. At some point, someone will push back violently.

In a nation awash in guns, thanks again to corporate arms-dealing interests, armed struggle appears more and more likely as rational arguments about mitigating the excesses of capitalism are ignored or, worse, met with violence itself. Trump and his supporters are talking about repealing the Affordable Care Act - which just hit its highest approval rate ever according to Gallup - without anything to replace it. This means higher premiums, less regulation (resulting in more claims denials), and no protections for preexisting conditions. Basically, a much worse situation than the one facing us right now which will produce exponentially more aggrieved and desperate persons who have easy access to guns.

This is not an argument for armed struggle. If you have followed my work, you’d know I have long advocated working peaceably in a popular front with the Democratic Party to win democratic elections. But we have to face what’s ahead if we continue to allow capitalists to accumulate and concentrate more and more of the nation’s wealth in the hands of the few while the rest of us are denied basic human rights, as well as the services we are paying for. This will create a breeding ground for dozens of future assassins. This is not how a functional, rational democracy behaves.

There is little reason to believe that the fascist government elected last month will do anything but meet the moment with its own violence. So, we need to focus on taking Congress and state governments in 2026 through normal democratic means. It will not be easy. The Senate map is not a good one for us, but we are close to a majority right now in the House. Creating firewalls in the states is now probably more important than ever. However, to make meaningful changes for economic equity and public safety, it will take federal action. Hopefully, it will not be too late by then.