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By Stephen Soukup(American Greatness)
In the wake of the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, many on the political left have demonstrated a level of moral degeneracy that is, paradoxically, both shocking and entirely unsurprising. The celebration of the murder, of its perpetrator, and of the violent populist spirit that animated him has been both off-putting and edifying. They have exposed certain influential figures among the American media and political elites as incorrigibly depraved. More to the point, they have exposed these same figures as monstrously ignorant, not just about the moral necessities of a functional society but also about the fundamentals of governance and finance.
Let us stipulate a few things upfront. First, the most important aspect of this story is the moral dimension. Those who celebrate the premeditated, cold-blooded murder of any individual—and a father of two children, in this case—are wicked. Second, attempting to veil one’s support for murder by first offering a pro forma condemnation of violence is worse than inadequate. It is every bit as monstrous as simply supporting the murder and the murderer outright—maybe even more so. Third, although it is her moral weakness that matters most in this discussion, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (as well as New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) has also shown herself to be far too ill-informed ever to be taken seriously again.
Warren, as you may know, got caught the other day with her “but” hanging out. “Violence is never the answer,” she conceded, “BUT….” She then went on to explain why she didn’t really mean that violence is never the answer:
…people can be pushed only so far. This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.
What, one might wonder, does Senator Warren mean when she says that this will “ultimately be a threat to everyone”? Does she mean that other CEOs should be worried about being gunned down on the streets? Should all healthcare providers be likewise concerned? Or does she mean to include everyone, everywhere, all people on the face of the earth? Does she think that health insurance is going to be the impetus for global Armageddon?
One supposes she has a specific population in mind, health insurance company CEOs, presumably, but she doesn’t say. Those who understand how government and finance work might wonder if she includes herself on this list of people who should feel threatened. What about AOC and other members of Congress? How about former President Barack Obama?
The simple truth of the matter—which both Senator Warren and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez choose to ignore—is that health insurance in this country is anything but a “private” industry. Indeed, it is almost certainly more a product of government than it is of markets. The American healthcare system—such as it is—had its origins in the wage caps imposed by the National War Labor Board on American business in 1942. Companies could not lure employees with higher wages, and so they did so with fringe benefits, the most notable of which was health insurance. In short, then, the government created the system more than 80 years ago and has been meddling in it ever since.
Today, health insurance is one of the most aggressively micro-managed industries in the country. In large part because of Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, insurers are told what they must cover, whom they must cover, when they must provide coverage, and at what price they must do so. In this sense, the ACA seems like a horrible imposition on health insurers. In truth, however, the companies supported the scheme when it was enacted and are even more enthusiastic about it today. It has been a boon to their operations.
“Obamacare” mandated by law that every single person in the country become a client of a health insurance company (unless they happened to be covered under one of the government’s own price-setting, cost-cutting programs). It created a massive pool of new customers and, in so doing, enhanced insurers’ bottom lines significantly. Because of the massive amount of regulation involved, the ACA also created significant barriers to entry into the industry. What that means is that, in addition to providing insurers with millions of new customers, the federal government also, essentially, killed any potential new competition for the insurers. Nice work, if you can get it.
I have spent the last roughly five years of my career focusing on the government and corporate collusion that is best described as “corporatism.” This sort of corporatist collusion is probably nowhere more developed and burdensome than in the health insurance industry. Or to put it more bluntly for Senator Warren: any problems with health insurance are as much the fault of the government as they are of industry.
Senator Warren and her cohorts celebrating Brian Thompson’s murder also seem to be more than a little confused about who and what UnitedHealthcare is. When they complain about the company, its policies, and especially its profits, they speak of it as if it were some living, breathing entity. Obviously, it is not. The “company” is comprised of millions of different people. When UnitedHealthcare earns a profit, for example, that profit doesn’t go to some big, otherwise empty building somewhere, and it doesn’t go to Brian Thompson or any of the other executives in the company. It goes to the shareholders, both in the form of dividends and (usually) higher share prices. Thompson was merely the agent for the shareholders. Everything he did that benefitted “the company” benefitted its shareholders. That’s how publicly traded companies work.
Who, then, are the shareholders of United Healthcare? Well…given that it’s an S&P 500 company, almost anyone who has a 401(k) or an IRA that invests in index funds is a United Healthcare shareholder. Interestingly, because she joined Congress after January 1, 2013, Senator Elizabeth Warren is a member of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System (FERS), which includes a basic retirement annuity, Social Security, and mandatory participation in the Thrift Savings Plan. The Thrift Savings Plan, in turn, has one “fund” that is its most popular and generally produces its best returns. That is its “C Fund”—a common stock fund that is built to “match the performance of the Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) Index.” We can safely assume that Senator Warren has some of her TPS money in the C Fund, which means that we safely assume that Senator Warren is a shareholder of United Healthcare. Brian Thompson may have done some things as the CEO of United Healthcare that made people angry or unhappy, but he only did so as the agent of people like Elizabeth Warren. She, not he, was the ultimate beneficiary of whatever the company did to “push people” too far.
Elizabeth Warren is not stupid. One would presume that she knows all of this. And yet…
One has no choice but to conclude that Senator Warren is incredibly ignorant, incredibly manipulative, or some combination of the two.
If I were a betting man, I’d bet on Option 3.
