'Full-on villain mode': Analyst rails against shocking new abuses by health insurers

The Affordable Care Act reined in many of the worst abuses of the health insurance industry, like denying people for pre-existing conditions or for meeting a lifetime coverage maximum — but it remains an industry where patients can be denied critical care for nonsensical reasons — and horror stories continue to abound, Arwa Mahdawi wrote for The Guardian.

The issue has sprung into national prominence following the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the arrest of Luigi Mangione for the crime. Many took to the internet to apparently root for the killer, with polling showing some 40 percent of young Americans found the shooting "acceptable" and 7 in 10 Americans believe insurance company greed played a role.

While murder isn't justified, wrote Mahdawi, what does seem to be true is that "insurers seem to have gone into full-on villain mode; just when you think you can’t hear anything worse about the insurance industry, a new horror story comes out. There’s been an uptick in stories about insurers limiting coverage of prosthetic limbs and questioning their medical necessity, for example. Mr Beast, an influencer with 343 million subscribers on YouTube, recently railed against the healthcare industry in a new video where he helped 2,000 amputees walk again."

In one of the wildest stories to hit national news, UnitedHealthcare recently forced a breast cancer surgeon to scrub out in the middle of an operation to interrogate her on whether the procedure was actually needed — because the different departments at the insurance company hadn't communicated with each other that the patient had breast cancer.

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The fact is, wrote Mahdawi, while Mangione will likely be put away for his crime if found guilty — and should be — "He should have known that if he wanted to murder someone – and get away with it – there were far more socially acceptable ways of doing so."

For example, she wrote, he could have taken "a well-paid job as a management consultant and helped supercharge the country’s opioid epidemic; chances are he would have faced little more than a slap on the wrist. He could have gone to Gaza and shot some Palestinian children in the head – in which case, not only would he probably face no consequences whatsoever, U.S. lawmakers would probably go out of their way to shield him from accountability. And, of course, Mangione could have gone into the health insurance industry himself, and routinely denied life-saving care to desperate people in order to boost profits."

"That type of violence is perfectly fine," she added.