Don't act like Republicans

Focus on health care, not vigilantes.

Progressives cheering the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson need to quit acting like Republicans. Regardless of his job, he was an unarmed man shot down in cold blood, leaving a family behind who loved him. Show a little empathy and a little self-awareness.

Conservatives are the people who routinely cheer murderers who see themselves as vigilantes. It’s been going on since the days when conservatives considered lynchings as warranted extrajudicial punishment. That history has continued with a long list of white guys who feel justified in killing unarmed people and Republicans hail them as heroes. Think George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse, and, now, Daniel Penny. Cheering the deaths of people is a sociopathic response that’s defined the GOP. Progressives don’t need to go down that road.

Besides, the guy alleged to have killed Thompson is an unsympathetic character. He’s an Ivy League-educated rich kid who seems to view himself as a crusader. At best, he should be pitied for his some form of mental illness, but he’s just as likely some sort of narcissistic killer. Making him a hero and setting up a defense fund is terribly misguided because, as I said earlier, that’s what Republicans do.

That said, Democrats should also see and grab the political opportunity. The cheering response is misplaced frustration with a broken health care system that’s causing people to go bankrupt or live with treatable, but often debilitating, illnesses or injuries. Health insurance companies make their money by denying treatment to average citizens while the health care industry is making record profits. It’s a broken system.

Right now, I’m paying about $15,000 a year in insurance and out-of-pocket medical expenses for myself and my kids. That’s without a lot of services. It’s my largest single expense besides my mortgage. It’s enough to be painful.

Last year, my doctor ordered “imagining” for what she thought was a kidney stone. UNC Hospitals charged $5,150 for the scan but insurance only covered $3,367 of cost. Of course, I didn’t find out any of this information for about a month until the bill came. Blue Cross Blue Shield said that’s all the money they allowed for the procedure. UNC refuse to reduce their price.

Maybe I could have gotten it done cheaper somewhere else, but my insurance pays nothing for out-of-network providers. So much for competition keeping prices down. I fought them for several months but finally gave up. As a consolation, Blue Cross informed me that they would generously apply the cost to my deductible and would not charge me interest if I pay it off within two years. Of course, if I actually met my deductible, I would taking out a second mortgage. Instead, I still have almost $800 to pay on a scan that found nothing.

Democrats should be grabbing the health care issue before Trump does. It’s a salient issue. They won on it in 2006 and 2008, pledging to fix the system. Obamacare was a start. It slowed the rise in health care costs and dramatically expanded health care coverage. Now, it’s time to make another leap forward. It’s a step toward regaining the trust of working class voters and an issue on which Democrats have a track record of success.

That said, focus on health care and insurance companies, not some two-bit vigilante. The problem is not just health insurance executives. It’s Republicans who want to return to a model that will bankrupt families and go back leaving tens of millions of Americans without health care. Democrats need to move forward, not backwards.