A Luigi Mangione United Healthcare Thought
Maybe Luigi misguidedly convinced himself that that he could change the American Healthcare system in a single act. Maybe Master Mangioni was too smart for his own good, was influenced by in immense information diet, or had an accomplice. And maybe cheering the murder of anyone isn’t a great look.
Is there a reason people are cheering Luigi?
Yes, but it’s more of a feeling than a reason.
The feeling that maybe a profit motive actually makes healthcare worse in the long run. Maybe there are somethings that shouldn’t be incentivized to constantly grow.
Does a society go best when its doctors are incentivized to treat less?
Not necessarily, because that’s an over simplified question. The thing is a profit motive in medicine means that a company would want ever-expanding spending on healthcare. Profitable healthcare would mean your ideal patient pool gets slowly sicker causing the net revenue to expand as treatment costs rise so that you can take you can take legally mandated flat rate of profit but keep the net income growing for your stockholders.
Maybe that’s not a great system, and maybe that’s the reason people are cheering Luigi Mangione. Maybe they feel an injustice in their bones, but maybe the mechanisms of that actus reus, are so complex as to be indistinguishable from normal life.
But the system has innovated far beyond where those that aren’t profit driven. Being able to treat things we only dreamed of a decade ago. Maybe that’s a good thing, that growing profit is a good motivator to pioneers of pathology.
Should we incentivize innovative medical treatments?
Yes, of course, but the best treatment in the world is moot without access to it. And Maybe the feeling that Luigi seems to have provoked centers on the unavailability and cost of every kind of medical treatment. And maybe the fact 17.3% of our GDP consists of healthcare isn’t just the fault of insurers.
What if we wanted to decrease the total cost of our collective healthcare?
Well that would require a different set of incentives. Let’s hypothetically say that we were all paying in same healthcare pool and so as tax payers we all wanted those total cost to decrease without compromising coverage. maybe we still want the availability of helicopters to take us to the Shock Trauma in the nearest big city when a self-driving tractor trailer t-bones our compact SUV. Maybe we want comprehensive cancer care and some mental health coverage too. Maybe we’d want a healthier populace that are better able to make good decisions and feel motivated to vigor and athletics.
Maybe a costly tax-funded system would incentivize us to be a healthier nation with best outcomes in healthcare in the world, or maybe it would result in a bureaucratic nightmare that denies us and our doctors the most basic dignities.
Maybe Luigi was convinced that three bullets would change the conversation about healthcare in the long term; that this act would reveal the gulf between our rhetoric and reality. Maybe whatever convinced him to commit the vile act of murder was about something bigger than himself. And maybe that public feeling, that general angst isn’t a topic the media are equipped to handle, and that’s why they ignore it.
Maybe we shouldn’t encourage self-rightous vigilantes by analyzing their motives. And maybe ignoring the lesson they wrought only breeds more civil unrest. Maybe it’s a tragedy when someone’s dad dies, and maybe we should talk about this.
How do we even have a civil conversation about healthcare?
I’m not sure, but let me ask You a question.
What would a United States Health Service funded by paycheck deductions look like?
Lucian.
This Blog (“Unfiltered Human Thought”) is entered into cyberspace as of December 10, 2024 , and contains references to Luigi Mangioni AKA Luigi AKA The Adjuster, the alleged murderer of United Healthcare Executive Brian Thompson.