Security camera footage of the shooting moments after the shots were fired on December 5, 2024, via Wikimedia Commons
Part VIII of the “Pocketbook Politics” Series
The New York Police Department (NYPD) reported that Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed outside an entrance to the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan, New York City, last Wednesday, December 4, 2024. Mr. Thompson was in the city to participate in an annual investors’ meeting of UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare. NYPD investigators believe the attack was not random and are pursuing it as an assassination. The deadly incident happened early in the morning, and the suspect was described as a white man. He fled the scene. As of December 6th, the suspect (or person of interest) has not been located. The suspect has apparently left the Big Apple by bus to another state.
This column, which appeared on February 5, 2023, in Part VIII of the Back-to-Basics Governance Series, discussed co-op capitalism and Medicare for All, which can be achieved by 2030. The article, Co-op Capitalism and Medicare for All Can Be Achieved by 2030, resulted from this journalist’s participation in a Webinar conducted by National Nurses United (NNU) on Jan. 31, 2023.
The NNU is busy rallying the public, especially patients and their families, to support “Medicare for All” as the foundation of a universal healthcare system (UHS) in the United States.
It is public knowledge that the private hospital system and the pharmaceutical industry are both real cartels. Both cartels prefer “Profit$ Over Patient$ and $ubscribers” (POP$)—just like the American big-oil industry. The NNU has developed a great slogan, “Patients Over Profits” (POP).
Here are the last two paragraphs of the said February 5, 2023, column article: “As this columnist has been saying, the economy — like the government — must also become of the people, by the people, and for the people. In reality, the bulk of taxes are paid for by ordinary workers and not by the billionaires and millionaires of the country because the filthy-rich corporate giants and capitalist bosses have so many tax loopholes and tax-deductible “investments” written in tax laws by their wards in the U.S. Congre$$ (sic).
“It is public knowledge that the private hospital system and the pharmaceutical industry are both real cartels. Both cartels prefer “Profit$ Over Patient$ and $ubscribers” (POP$)—just like the American big-oil industry.”
“The cartels’ exploitation of the working people and the prohibition by the corporate owners from forming labor unions (or labor cooperatives) have to end by November 2024. Ballots, not bullets, must be used to achieve a reVOTElution (sic), as this wordsmith coined in 2007.” The November 5, 2024, election results regarding the refusal of the majority of elected and reelected national and state officials to implement a viable UHS have not changed.
Was Brian Thompson murdered by the kin of a patient who died resulting from a denial of timely medical procedure by UnitedHealthcare? Then, this columnist’s “fear of bullets, not ballots,” becoming tools of protests against said cartels was prophetic. Was the violent act last Wednesday morning the beginning of an ill-advised and unlawful taking of the law by the hands of aggrieved medical patients and/or their surviving kin?
American policymakers, political parties, and national groups of voter activists must study this new series on Pocketbook Politics and its principles. As demonstrated by Swedish voters, “pocketbook voting” (its term in Sweden) has resulted in better and more affordable universal healthcare there. If it succeeded in Sweden, would it not also make it to New York, the other states, and the U.S. territories?
