AI denying a third of claims often arbitrarily, literally kills people every day. He championed that policy. He personally fought the DOJ anti-trust investigation. Yes he’s a cog in the machine, but those decisions destroy lives and devastate families. This isn’t a normal profit motive, every dollar a health insurance company makes is soaked in blood and this company makes billions and billions of dollars in profit. His bonuses (on top of the millions of dollars he was already paid to do this) come directly from refusing a child the EpiPen that the doctor prescribed. I don’t hate people I hate systems, and this system is horrific. Removing the part he played in it is beneficial. I don’t think there is such a thing as deserving to suffer and I don’t take joy in suffering, but as a political act this was a good one. Yesterday the company reversed their policy on not covering anesthesia which they had gotten pushback on for months and were continuing with. A policy of denying people anesthesia- is that not fucking vile? This made people look at this company and the harm that his choices have done to us and the people we love. There is no way to legally get accountability here, the people are completely out of options. The system is Kafkaesque, have you read “In the penal colony”? Most dictators have only been removed through violence because they’ve systematically eradicated any other way of doing it. This was absolutely a vigilante, or a revolutionary, or a freedom fighter or whatever you want to call it when an oppressor is taken out by one of the oppressed. This is not to say I take joy in his suffering, and I’m glad he didn’t suffer much, just to say that we are already feeling positive effects from the assassination of a terrorist, through class solidarity and legitimate policy change that couldn’t have happened any other way. The exhaustion doctrine, we have exhausted all other remedies at this point.

You can’t do any of those things for healthcare though, that’s the problem. The demand is completely inelastic. People aren’t celebrating murder, they’re celebrating the possibility for change. They’re already changing policies and saving lives. You can think about it that way, covering anesthesia is a direct result of that action and probably thousands of people will not be murdered through that policy change. If you can’t imagine another way and everything you think of has been tried and has failed what do you want to happen? In the meantime I’m going to the hospital for asthma attacks and have 30% lung capacity because the insurance company copay for my corticosteroid inhaler is over $1000 a month. We’ve done this for decades now. We’ve lived and suffered and died under this system. They have systematically taken away potential remedies both judicial and political. This is not about killing one man, this is a political act which uses the only power we have left, if they had left us any other way we would’ve used it happily.

Do you think killing high level Nazis in WWII was also evil (I’m actually asking) that’s something you may have a frame of reference for as a German. If not I’d like to know the difference as you see it

Have you seen our system? First of all they are consistently begged by legislators to reverse policies and they don’t, but second we have decisions like Citizens United that allows our elections to be bought by corporations. I would say look at the Supreme Court cases Twombly and Iqbar as well, this is a corporatocracy. Even right now they’re fighting an antitrust case and they’ll probably win. Propaganda, gerrymandering, and mass incarceration, and a lack of class consciousness (which this is creating btw) also play a large role. If you want to talk about US politics look at some of those things and then come back to this debate, I would actually like to hear your proposed solution taking all factors into account.

Well said

And yet you said “you can find a way.” You don’t think we’ve tried/are trying? People are dying every day, accepting death because they can’t afford chemo, kids going without inhalers because there is no possible way for their parents to pay the $3,000 a month. I don’t think you understand, it’s not just medical debt (we all have a lot of that) it’s literally not being able to even access lifesaving healthcare. No one deserves death as a punishment, I don’t believe in suffering and retribution, but to me this isn’t that- this is a political act after exhausting all other processes. This is executing a terrorist dictator who will never see legal justice through the system he created. If there were any other way to get any modicum of change this wouldn’t be necessary and it wouldn’t be celebrated. This is not laughing at his widow, this is cheering for the policy change just announced that means insurance can cover anesthesia. Fucking anesthesia.