Follow Europe’s lead on health care

On Dec. 4, UnitedHealthcare’s co-CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated amid the huge and intrusive open enrollment campaign, which comes to entertain us at the beginning of each holiday season.

The 9mm bullet-casings found at the crime-scene were marked with three words, certainly quoting Jay Feinman’s book “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.” This clue may indicate the perpetrator’s motive.  

This murder evokes state official’s and CEO’s assassinations in the 1980s by Action Directe, a far-left, libertarian anarchist, urban-guerilla organization subsequently banned by the French government. 

Whatever the assassin’s motives were, his populist or vigilante type of justice cannot be condoned. But socio-political crimes do not come out of thin air. They partly feed on anger and frustration against “the system” — in this case, the American privatization of health, which does not respect distributive justice.  

American health care is too expensive, penalizing the middle-class and the working-class. It turns the sick body into big profits, leaving many in the lurch. Is this why 63% of Americans want a single-payer health-care system? 

Readily available statistics demonstrate that Americans experience more health problems than other developed nations. While U.S. health-care spending is the highest in the world ($4.8 trillion in 2023) Americans are more likely to die from avoidable causes than people in peer countries. America has the lowest number of hospital beds and the shortest hospital stays and fewer doctors than other similar countries. Americans visit their physicians four times per year — much less than residents of other affluent countries.  

They also suffer from debilitating health related debts contrary to other First World countries’ inhabitants: 100 million people in the U.S. live with medical debts, and 17% of Americans with medical debt have lost their home or declared bankruptcy. To pay them, millions have no other recourse than high interest rates credit cards, generating huge benefits for the banks.  

An extremely profitable health care debt recovery industry, capitalizing on patients' insolvency, has popped up in many states. Adding insult to injury, these debts also feed shadowy collection agencies who harass debt dodgers. 

Affordability is the main reason why many Americans have no health coverage or are underinsured. When premiums are lower, deductibles are higher: expensive out-of-pocket costs cause half of working-age adults to avoid, or delay visits to doctors. While half of American adults don't have the cash to cover an unexpected $500 health care bill, in 2023, one in seven adults was denied access to hospital care because of unpaid medical bills. 

UnitedHealthcare (the biggest American health insurance company with net earnings of $22.4 billion in 2023) has the largest proportion of denied claims, especially since the company’s new AI system incorrectly denied 90% of insurance claims in the past. Its CEO, Andrew Witty, received a salary of $23.5 million in 2023; its co-CEO, Brian Thompson, had a salary of $10 million, with a net worth of $43 million. To top it all, in 2023, Big Pharma’s market was worth around $1.6 trillion, with total earnings of $559 billion. 

The solution is to adopt a modified European/Canadian health care system and adapt it to the complex American economic reality. If not convinced, consult health care statistics and ask Canadians or Europeans if they would want to swap health care systems.  

Michel Valentin is a retired professor at the University of Montana. This opinion article is co-signed by Fazia Aitel, Claremont College professor; Diane Gray, Vision Rehab therapist  in Missoula; Maria Bustos, University of Montana retired professor; Mladen Kozul, University of Montana professor; Christopher Anderson, professor at Pont-Saint-Martin, Aosta Valley, Italy; Clare Kelly, health care reform advocate in Missoula; and Frances Tallarico of Missoula.