The Gaping Wounds of American Health Care System Exposed

The UnitedHealth Group’s 2024 Investor Conference which was slated to begin at 8am on December 4th in New York City with remarks from the company’s CEO Brian Thompson was called off this year. Just before sunrise Thompson was shot and later pronounced dead. The suspect, 26-year old Luigi Mangioni, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania 5 days later on the 9th of December after an employee tipped off police after Mangioni was spotted in the fast food restaurant. The case has pulled the bandaid off of the gaping wound that is impacting millions of Americans—-dissatisfaction with the American healthcare system. 

 

As national, state and federal resources were deployed to find the alleged killer of Thompson, the case has further illuminated the discussion over which lives are deemed valuable and who is and isn’t protected in the country as a 17 year old boy named Yeremi Colino was fatally stabbed the same week and Daniel Penny, a 26 year old former US Marine was acquitted from charges of negligent homicide after holding Jordon Neely in a chokehold for 6 minutes.

 

With this as the socio-political backdrop, today I’ll talk with LaTanya Richard, a mental health advocate who struggles with chronic illness and has become all-too-familiar with the navigation of the American healthcare system and Dr. Hank Abrans, a retired physician who is now a member of Physicians for a National Healthcare Program.