Will The Claims Adjuster Kill Privatized Healthcare, Too?

I still don't like seeing anyone shot in the back, but what if...?

Image by New York City Police Department

One of the most successful Democratic presidents in modern history, Bill Clinton, became so by bending to the will of Reaganomics.

For example, in 1997, Clinton signed the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which created Medicare Advantage (Medicare Part C). It was the first step in an ongoing effort by Republicans that continues today to privatize Medicare, the federal national health plan for seniors.

This was part of a more general acquiescence by Clinton to the very Republican notion that government should be run without a deficit, which is a ridiculous concept. It’s also an extension of the myth that government should be run like a business, which is one reason (among many others that make less sense) that Americans keep voting in large numbers for a carnival barker for president (they’ve done this now for three elections, FFS).

The idiotic concept that government should be run like a business also once threatened us with another big-mouth businessman, Ross Perot, a populist who fantasized about turning the government into a profit center. Although Americans weren’t quite ready for his general idiocy, he helped lay the groundwork for the even bigger idiot, so his emergence was a net loss of now epic proportions.

Americans appear to increasingly be buying the concept of government as business. Many low-information voters looked upon Leon Musk (I call him Leon, like Trump did, instead of Elon, because my respect for him is far less than zero) and became fascinated by the concept of the pairing of two hucksters that scared the shit out of many of us but thrilled the bejeezus out of others.

Some of that fascination is attributable to the ability of men with crazy ideas to spread their virus of disinformation across several layers of media. But some of it is also attributable to the fact that many Americans now believe that government should, indeed, be run like a business:

“Look at us! Two successful hucksters! We can save the government from itself and the price of those eggs will drop!”

To be clear: Government should never be run like a business. There’s a good reason that there is no international conglomerate that specializes in firefighting or roadbuilding. There’s no money in those endeavors.¹ They are, by definition, money-losing propositions that must be funded by taxation.

Weather forecasting may seem like a tempting business to get into, but Accuweather, one of the world’s largest and most profitable weather companies, gets much of its information from a government agency, the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).

If you don’t believe me, I’ll refer you to Accuweather’s CEO in remarks made about Project 2025’s stated desire to privatize the weather service²:

“AccuWeather does not agree with the view, and AccuWeather has not suggested, that the National Weather Service (NWS) should fully commercialize its operations. The authors of ‘Project 2025’ used us as an example of forecasts and warnings provided by private sector companies without the knowledge or permission of AccuWeather.”

NOAA/NWS’ value to the American people and businesses is maximized when the government maintains a strong focus and performance on its important core role:

Maintaining the most comprehensive weather infrastructure for the United States and developing the world’s best numerical weather prediction models and forecast guidance.³

If Accuweather wanted to collect the information they now receive from NOAA, it would cost enough money to sink their operation.

Similarly, there is no money in tagging whales, another NOAA gig. Your beloved humpback whales would simply disappear once and for all if the NOAA was torn asunder by Project 2025. There’d be nobody tracking them, and they’d be gone in ten years. They’ll probably be gone soon anyway, but at least they got a brief reprieve before 78 million Americans voted the climate-denying conman back into the Oval Office. Again.

Photo by Nico Agnello on Unsplash

Republicans have, however, discovered that there is money to be made in privatized healthcare (but not by the government), and they’d like to expand opportunities for healthcare insurers to pursue more profits as much as possible. This desire has long been part of Republican DNA.

As such, they doubled down on protecting privatized healthcare, with the help of centrist Democrats like Clinton, by establishing Medicare Advantage and Medigap.⁴

Medicare Advantage is similar to Obamacare (aka the Affordable Care Act, aka ACA), which in turn was inspired by a Republican concoction invented by, believe it or not, the same folks who gave us Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation.⁵

The Heritage version of the plan featured most of what we currently see in Obamacare. If you think of it, it makes sense that a conservative “think tank” (I use the words loosely here) would want to pawn off a national bourse of healthcare companies on an unsuspecting American public. What could be better than an online marketplace run by the feds that features a listing of private insurance companies? One that the insurance companies don’t even need to pay for? This online marketplace is paid for by the government. It’s like printing money for insurance companies.

This is obviously not a case of the government being run like a business. There’s nothing profitable going on here for the feds. It’s all about private insurance companies milking taxpayers dry.

The Heritage plan became a template for RomneyCare in Massachusetts, which in turn gave birth to Obamacare.

Insurance companies loved it because the government offered them a free listing machine where people could choose a healthcare plan. Even better? The Heritage proposal included the famous mandate requiring Americans, under penalty of a higher tax during income tax filing time, to pick a plan or face a tax penalty.

That’s right friends and fellow mystified citizens, not only was Obamacare originally a Republican idea, but so was the hated mandate that Republicans screamed foul about to President Obama when he dared present their own idea for healthcare reform to them.

Obama originally made noises about passing a universal healthcare bill, but he was up against a recalcitrant Congress, so his favored strategy for addressing the healthcare crisis of his day quickly pivoted to a plan similar to the Heritage plan (he never seemed too keen on universal healthcare, anyway).

Obama, being a sharp guy, was pretty sure that by adopting a plan Republicans conceived, his dream of purple states would come to fruition.

After all, the Feds were now making available an insurance marketplace! A free bourse for the insurance companies on a website!!! How does it get any better than that if you love capitalism?!? Republicans should have been falling over each others’ Stefano Ricci sneakers to pass the thing.

Instead, Republicans ultimately weaponized healthcare and turned the ACA into a poster child for socialism. You can guess at the motives, but, just because I tend to profile these idiots, I’m gonna say it’s because Obama had brownish skin. A slightly less dark epidermal hue would have probably led to a compromise and maybe would have even delayed for a few years the platform of hate that became the Republican Party.

These days, whether we are scanning through ACA, Medicare Advantage, or Medigap listings on government-provided marketplace websites for private insurance companies, we’re all looking for the least awful plans to get us through another year.

Meanwhile, the horror stories roll in. Stories about delayed payments, denied payments, resistance at all levels from insurance companies. Almost everyone has their horror stories.

We can be sure that one young man, a man who shot a healthcare CEO in the back on a busy Midtown street in New York City, has his story to tell.

Reports coming in suggest he had serious back issues. If he’s the man who was apprehended in Pennsylvania, and that sounds like a reasonable likelihood, we can imagine what he went through if he felt obliged to shoot the CEO of United Healthcare in the back with a ghost gun and silencer.

His approach was methodical and well-planned in advance. This was something he had been planning for a long time. He was in pain in more than one way.

As the police hunted for him, his popularity grew, like a modern mashup of John Dillinger and Robin Hood. Names like “The Claims Adjuster” took hold on social media. I got into trouble with more than a few followers of my Substack account by saying it’s never cool to shoot someone in the back. He became a hero to many.

The Claims Adjuster became a symbol for both all that is wrong with corporate America, especially for-profit healthcare, and a dark way of fixing it all. More than a few have called it the first shot of a coming revolution.

I stand by my comments that it’s never okay to shoot someone in the back.

But maybe something good can come of it. Maybe, even, we can find some common ground with those who voted for Trump, many of whom are not MAGA, but are instead frustrated by the high cost of living and the same inequities that rankle progressives.

This is an opportunity to demand Medicare for All. Americans on both sides of the political divide are frustrated by the huge cost burdens of American healthcare. As someone who is dealing with a major health issue for the first time ever, I understand the reluctance of some to perhaps lose their doctor during a transition to a new plan. But there’s always a good chance of that happening anyway. It can’t be a deal killer to reform.

In my opinion (and I seem to be in the minority here), a murder on the streets of America is always a tragedy. But I agree with those who see this murder as a symbol of the larger tragedy of people dying at the hands of healthcare companies who don’t approve procedures, who delay access, and who stick people with impossible bills.

If I’m reading social media correctly, everyone in the country is fed up with healthcare costs. The Claims Adjuster brought this out into the open. We’ve been presented with a rare opportunity to make the kind of change that can alter millions of lives for the better.

Can we find a way to reach across the aisle, which is lit by a fire of distrust and anger, to make it happen?

Notes

A little more research suggests that the Federal government does take a tiny percentage as a fee for insurance company listings. Not enough to make a profit, of course.

1. Unless you’re in a place like Texas or Illinois, where corrupt politicians have turned the construction of toll roads into an art form.

2. Page 664: The Heritage Foundation. 2023. “Project 2025 PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION PROJECT.” https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf.

3. “AccuWeather Does Not Support Project 2025 Plan to Fully Commercializing NWS Operations; NOAA Has Critical Role in American Weather Enterprise.” 2024. Accuweather.com. 2024. https://www.accuweather.com/en/press/accuweather-does-not-support-project-2025-plan-to-fully-commercializing-nws-operations-noaa-has-critical-role-in-american-weather-enterprise/1670156

The National Weather Service (NWS) is part of the NOAA

4. You can learn more about these programs in this long screed I wrote about the joys of navigating through Medicare options here:

Medicare’s Open Enrollment Feels More Like Open Season on My Brain

Medicare Advantage, no matter how it’s described by corporate foils like the Clintons, is a privatized version of Medicare that Republicans would like to expand. Their goal is to remove the word “Medicare” from the American lexicon completely.

5. Stein, Eric. 2024. “The Heritage Foundation’s Plan for Health Care.” Scribd. 2024. https://www.scribd.com/doc/184434511/The-Heritage-Foundation-s-Plan-for-Health-Care.

Unsurprisingly, the Heritage Foundation has taken the link to the original PDF down, so the only way to read it is to uncover a PDF version from somewhere else, such as, in this case, Scribd.com.

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