Young men should not have access to guns. It's tragic that the CEO healthcare is dead but it's also tragic that the shooter's life is effectively over now. He never should have been able to get a gun. He should have just been punching holes in walls and listening to depressing music and so on.The people angry that health insurance company executives dehumanize people and treat them as mere objects, are more than happy to do that to the alleged assassin of the United Healthcare CEO.
THIS:
I'll end with this. Next term I am taking a pastoral care class. I was thinking this weekend about what would I say to Mr. Thompson's family if they belonged to my congregation. To behave in any way like commentators on the internet would make me a monster. On the other side, what would I say if the family of the accused killer, Luigi Mangione was in my congregation? If I don't think I can provide comfort to both families in my future role as a pastor, then I should quit seminary right now. This is the requirement of caring, responsibility and love.Reinhold Niebuhr wrote about his experience as a pastor in Detroit in the ‘20’s (I’ve mentioned this before). He preached a scathing sermon after a Christmas time (IIRC) layoff of auto workers. Goo, prophetic stuff. Until a church member on the way out after the service told his pastor how it had gutted him to fire those men.
When I was a pastor I strongly supported the UCC stance on capital punishment (I’m agin it). But a couple in the church had lost their only son to gun violence (a truly senseless street crime; being in the wrong place, wrong time). They departed the church when they found out the national posture. They were waiting long years for their son’s killer to die.
They also told the congregation, in an open meeting, that they weren’t leaving because of me, that I had been fully supportive of them.
You care for the people, not for the ideas. Ideas don’t matter; things don’t matter. People matter.
This murder has exposed any number of unpleasant realities of our national culture. I've been watching the reactions of our elite media and some acquaintances that if they aren't in the 1%, they are are 1% adjacent by income or culture. The Washington Post editorial board published a response to the outpouring of at best indifference to the death of the United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, ranging to outright hostility and glee. That was fine, but then the board went on to euphemistically defend the decision making process of UHC. The comments were scathing. What I have always known, but has come into much sharper focus from my seminary studies (particularly Christian ethics this term), is how tilted our national cultural ethics are tilted to the benefit of the dominant class and the wealthy. Wage theft dwarfs property theft in this country, but a poor person stealing a bike gets jail, whereas the wealthy stealing the wages of poor is almost universally ignored. On the rare occasion wage theft is pursued, the only consequence is paying the money due and perhaps a modest fine. What has become clear from reading those normally at the margins of our society, is how not only the legal structure, but all our ethical structures are pervasively bent to the benefit of a privileged group. Business ethics and legal ethics are just more systems that allow the wealthy and powerful to exploit the the rest of society. As an extreme example, the Sacklers killed tens of thousands promoting Oxycotin. They will never face any criminal penalties, and the civil penalties will still leave them with billions of dollars of profits. The practices of UHC are just different in scale, not in kind. The Editorial board is promoting our dominant cultural ethics, and doesn't understand the reaction. Whatever frustrations we all may have with this ethical system, vigilante justice is immoral and won't change it. Killing Mr. Thompson or the Sacklers accomplishes nothing. The solution to UHC is already at hand. The ACA requires insurers to payout a minimum percentage of premiums for services. If an insurer is over-aggressive in denying claims, the insurance company doesn't get to keep the money, instead it is refunded to the customers. Under the ACA, a company gets more profitable by being more efficient and turning more of of the overhead into profits, not by denying care. The current problem with UHC is that they have a lot of plans not under the ACA. Apply the same rules as the ACA to all health plans, and most of this issue goes away. In other words, we need more regulation.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the last election, the problem is we have met the enemy and they are us. We have elected an administration that is planning to gut these kinds of regulations and wants to repeal the ACA. We are in the obscene ethical position of the richest man the world, Elon Musk, telling the poorest people in the country they need to suffer so he and those like him can pay less taxes. We voted for this.
ReplyDeleteThinking back to my friends and acquaintances, many are successful attorneys, business folks and the like. They have benefited under our current system. They are also caring people with families and want to feel good about themselves. The current ethical system allows them and people like the Editorial Board to go into the office and make decisions and actions that are beneficial to them and the privileged, and also to see themselves as ethical under the current system. They can defend the multinational, and justify it as that everyone has rights they are entitled to . The reaction in the comments sections everywhere, call that into question. The corporate lawyer isn't protecting the poor individual from the pervasive and limitless power the state, but instead they are protecting the wealthy from accountability, all while collecting four figure hourly fees. The reaction at the top is a defense of the dominant ethical structure, otherwise the behavior of those at the top might really be called into question. My friends, acquaintances, and Mr. Thompson all operated within a system that rewards them well for their behavior all while telling them they are ethically clean. The issue isn't them (I am assuming Mr. Thompson is like those I do know personally, caring for his family and thoughtful in his actions.), none of them deserve to be threatened with violence. The issue is what we want as a society and how to change that.
I'll end with this. Next term I am taking a pastoral care class. I was thinking this weekend about what would I say to Mr. Thompson's family if they belonged to my congregation. To behave in any way like commentators on the internet would make me a monster. On the other side, what would I say if the family of the accused killer, Luigi Mangione was in my congregation? If I don't think I can provide comfort to both families in my future role as a pastor, then I should quit seminary right now. This is the requirement of caring, responsibility and love.