Murdering insurance CEOs is wrong. Reforming health insurance is overdue

Good morning. It is Saturday, Dec. 14. Here’s what we’ve been doing in Opinion.

At a time when the savvy opinion to have is that norms are so passe, that pearl clutching over flagrantly awful acts is for naifs, I feel duty bound to write: Killing is wrong.

I say this because of the disturbing spate of giddiness and “OK, but” reactions to UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Brian Thompson’s horrific death in New York on Dec. 4, allegedly at the hands of a gunman disgruntled by the profit-driven medical insurance industry. As someone who’s experienced years-long chronic pain and paid $1,200 for Tylenol and suture glue at a hospital, I too feel angry and deflated and betrayed and all the terrible things when I think of health insurance in this country; what I don’t feel is remotely homicidal, nor do I feel even a smidgen of sympathy for anyone tempted to resort to vigilantism. Murder is wrong, whether or not you like the victim.

That said, plenty of good can come from a discussion on the audacious unfairness of the kind of profit-seeking insurance practices demonstrated by UnitedHealthcare, which as columnist Robin Abcarian writes, “is infamous for high denial rates and low reimbursement levels.” She talked to a mother forced to pay $900 per month for her cancer-stricken daughter’s nighttime feeding tube because UnitedHealthcare refused to cover it.

It’s this aspect of health insurance, the denial of valid claims, that insurance industry watchdog Jamie Court says in an op-ed article is particularly ripe for reform. In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people with employer-provided policies do not have the right to sue for damages over a denied claim. They can sue for the value of the benefit, but if the covered person dies, the suit is rendered moot.

“Insurance companies pay attention to whether patients can take them to court,” Court writes, and the possibility of paying damages is a powerful incentive against unjust denials. Congress, he says, should restore the right to sue for damages.

California’s Latino voters are shifting toward Trump and Republicans. Thirty years ago, California’s anti-immigrant Proposition 187 caused Latinos to coalesce into a voting bloc. Author and political consultant Mike Madrid says it was a mistake to believe these voters would always prioritize immigration, and their dramatic shift toward President-elect Donald Trump in 2024 is proof. “The Proposition 187 era is over,” Madrid writes. “The campaign for that initiative was an ugly stain on the state’s history, but it no longer defines our politics today.”

How could Trump 2.0 make mass deportation a reality? Jennifer Lee Koh, a law professor at Pepperdine University, says that “a one-time operation that targets the entire population of more than 11 million who lack legal status is an unlikely scenario.” But that doesn’t mean Trump won’t get his way: “If ‘mass deportation’ means a reshifting of core government priorities, reflected in countless actions, then we are indeed on the brink of an era of mass deportation.”

Trump’s predatory Cabinet choices are added proof that #MeToo is over. Jackie Calmes pens a powerful column where she recounts her own mistreatment by a male superior years ago, her worry for her daughters and the plain facts of Trump’s adjudicated sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll and his open embrace of predatory men. “Despite that and so much more, he was reelected last month, and with the support of a majority of white women,” Calmes somberly notes.

The TikTok court case has staggering implications for free speech in America. UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says that in upholding a federal law that could soon require TikTok to stop operating in the United States, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision “is the first time in history that the government has ever banned a medium of communication. It is not simply outlawing a single newspaper or publisher, which itself would be deeply troubling under the 1st Amendment, but banning a platform on which billions of videos are uploaded a year.”

More from opinion

From our columnists

• Robin Abcarian: This is why Donald Trump just doubled down on mass deportation of millions of immigrants
• Jonah Goldberg: The headlines said Amnesty International accused Israel of genocide. Here’s what they missed

From guest contributors

• Not another revival of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
• Evangelical Christians once agitated for women, prisoners, the poor and ending slavery. What happened?
• Conservatives targeted LAUSD’s Black student achievement program. The district shouldn’t give in

From the editorial board

• Los Angeles can find a fairer way to raise the rent
• It’s past time for city officials to let Venice Dell homeless housing move ahead

Letters to the editor

• I was a small landlord who gave up on L.A. because of draconian rent rules
• Was Biden really lying when he said he wouldn’t pardon his son Hunter?
• Social Security can be fixed easily, but it would upset the rich