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Yes, I stretched the headline for alliterative purposes. 

So sue me. I like alliteration. 

Yesterday, I wrote about the reaction to United Healthcare’s CEO’s murder and how disturbing I found it. Lots of people–almost exclusively on the left (and hence “sinister”) side of the aisle loudly celebrated the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. 

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A few of the reactions were sick jokes, and while I found them tasteless, I understand the impulse to dark humor, so I give those a pass.

I admit I laughed at that. Maybe I am sick too. 

But when the top reaction to the announcement of Thompson’s death was the laughing emoji, something was deeply wrong. 

I understand the frustration with the healthcare system, but cheering on political or economic violence is society-destroying. It is the stuff of the French Revolution and never leads anywhere good. If you think the healthcare system needs to be reformed–and most of the people cheering this on also cheered on the previous reforms that created the current system and made United Healthcare such a powerful force in the system–then use your voice and your vote. 

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But we live in the age of Antifa, BLM, Pussy Power, Trans violence, and assassination attempts on Donald Trump because he is Bad Orange Man. Societies that go down this path eventually wind up as failed states, and while the United States is a world away from being there, it sure seems like a lot of people are dying to get there and willing to say so. 

There are already T-shirts being sold with images of the assassination, and TikTok already has people cheering on the murder of other CEOs. Taylor Lorenz even slyly suggested that the next victim should be a Blue Cross exectutive., 

Now a lefty lawyer is suggesting that Democrats seize on the issue for electoral gains. What an opportunity!

Aaron may think that his circle of friends who are all yucking it up about killing CEOs are working class, but that’s not what I see. That’s as accurate as describing the kids cosplaying Hamas as working class or BLM grifters and Antifa terrorists as working class. 

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Heck, Luigi himself is an Ivy Leaguer. 

People want a healthcare system that works well, not a bunch of dead CEOs. And so far, every time the government has intervened in health insurance markets they have made things more expensive, not less. Back when I was buying my health insurance in 2010, I had good coverage for about $5k a year, including deductibles. When Obamacare kicked in it jumped to about $22k a year, including deductibles. 

Thanks, Barack Obama. 

I’m not defending United Healthcare’s business practices; I’m defending solving problems through civilization. This means understanding how things work, why they work as they do, what the costs and benefits of changes are, and how to deal with limited resources. 

Shooting people is not going to make things better. It is the adult version of a temper tantrum, only with dead bodies. See the French Revolution if you want to know how successfully a strategy of killing the rich solves problems. 

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People need a dose of reality, not an encouragement to indulge their darker desires. The problems we need to solve are how best to allocate resources to get the best results possible, not indulging in fantasies that the healthcare system sucks because Bad People™ make it so. 

Look around you: do you want Canada’s healthcare system? The person they kill there is you, not the executives. Great Britain’s? It takes about four hours to get an ambulance when you have a heart attack and months or years to get treatment for easily treated conditions. 

It is true that healthcare in the US is extremely expensive, and there are a ton of reasons for that, just as there are many reasons for our less-than-stellar rankings in outcomes. Some of the problem is inefficiency, some simply due to the ways that outcomes are measured (in many countries, infant mortality rates are hidden by labeling infant deaths as stillborn), some due to the US subsidizing pharmaceutical and medical device research that other countries don’t pay, and some due to providing care here that nobody gets outside the US and in private purchasing in other countries.

A lot is just lifestyle choices: Americans don’t eat well and exercise much. 

If you want to fix the system, you must understand the real problems and the costs and benefits of various policies. 

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Of course, shooting people is easier, and making political hay is more attractive. 

Remember, though, that Obamacare was the last set of reforms we experimented with, and that is what got us here today. 

No doubt there is greed, graft, waste (administrative costs…), and poor decisions. But the way to fix them is through reinforcing civilization and social trust, not tearing it down.