Deny, Defend, Depose
For every violent action, there is an inevitable defensive reaction.
Dear Beloved,
You’ve seen the news: UnitedHealthcare’s (UHC) CEO was assassinated last week in downtown Manhattan while entering a Hilton hotel to attend the health insurance company’s annual investors conference. The bullets were emblazed with the words deny, defend, depose.
These words echo a common tactic utilized by insurers - health, auto, and property - to deny claims. “Delay, deny, and defend” against a cancer patient’s treatment so that they may increase shareholder value. “Delay, deny, and defend” against a diabetic’s insulin refill after a natural disaster left him without power so that the executives can have their bonus on top of their multimillion-dollar salaries. “Delay, deny, and defend” against basic preventative treatment so that the company can rake in yet more record-breaking profits.
I won’t debate an oligarch’s assassination. My compassion is limited to the millions left without health insurance; those chained to soul-sucking jobs to keep their shitty health insurance; and those who have to choose between being buried alive under medical debt or death. My sympathy is limited to those whose credit scores plummet because of obscene hospital bills, uncovered by their insurance, and whose financing options for housing are now limited. My heartache is for newborns denied life-saving medical coverage, forcing their parents to choose between paying $1-2.5 million for treatment or watch their babies die within 2 years, and for birthing people traumatized by stillbirth billed thousands afterward. My love is for those left behind after their loved were denied coverage, those who watched their family suffer and slowly die from treatable illness just to be rewarded coverage after death.
For the UHC CEO and all parasites of society, I have only contempt. And rage.
A few things about UnitedHealthcare…
UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurance company in the United States, encompassing 15.34% of the nation’s market share. It also has the highest claim denial rate.
At the expense of people’s health, UHC raked in $281 billion in revenue last year alone with $22 billion in profits.
The CEO had a $10.2 million annual pay package, including salary, bonus, and stock option awards. Meanwhile, the average salary for UnitedHealthcare employees is just $86,000 per year.
Under the now-deceased CEO’s leadership, it launched an AI system with a 90% error to deny claims, including necessary extended care for elders. This causes elderly patients to be prematurely kicked out of long-term care facilities nationwide or deplete entire families’ savings.
Said CEO drew criticism in 2021 when UHC announced a plan to start denying payment for “non-critical visits to hospital emergency rooms.” Meanwhile, please bear in mind that it is the most vulnerable of our community members who rely on emergency room visits for their care.
UHC has forecasted continued profits in 2025 with as much as $30 profit per share. With 920, 280,000 shares outstanding, UHC expects $27,608,400,000 in profits in 2025. This is a conservative forecast on UHC’s part “due in part to payment cuts from the government for Medicare plans and low state payment rates for Medicaid plans for low-income people.”
The Personal
A few years back, I worked as a residential assistant for individuals with developmental disabilities in the rural Midwest. Our disabled residents’ relied on Medicaid insurance through UHC
One resident in particular had severe cerebral palsy. Due to negligent care, he was unable to get out of bed. By the time he moved into the house, he gained so much weight that his care team could not lift him. We had to use a patient lift to get him into his wheelchair and assist him to the shower.
This patient lift was inadequate and unsafe.
Each time we used it, even with two staff members spotting him and minimizing the distance from Point A to Point B, it risked our resident’s safety and well-being. I will never forget the creaking of the patient lift, how it bent as the resident hung precariously from the sling.
Delay, deny, defend.
It was to the point that we limited how often this man could leave his bed for his and our safety. Even when he wanted to take a simple shower.
“This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” - Aaron Bushnell
The Outcome
Supposedly, the authorities caught the shooter. I have my doubts. After all, why would someone who meticulously planned out the execution step by step - paying for a hostel in cash, using a silencer, traveling via bus from Atlanta to NYC, disappearing into Central Park and only leaving behind a backpack full of Monopoly Money - just be walking around with the gun, a stack of fake IDs, and a handwritten manifesto?
I truly believe that there is more to come, but even if this does turn out to be a shut-and-close case, it’s too late.
It’s like the public has been lit on fire, something like hope billowing in the air like smoke.
And the ruling class know it. CEOs are shuttering their LinkedIn profiles and deleting Wikipedia pages. Companies quickly removed their executives from their organizations’ websites. They are running to increase personal security. The empire’s media is pumping out sympathetic pieces for the UHC CEO and condemnation for a hurting public’s celebration. More importantly, just a month after another divisive election, people across the American political spectrum have found common ground with deep roots of pain and exploitation.
One cannot strip the public of affordable shelter, healthcare, food, education, safety, and opportunities and expect no recourse. One cannot steal elections, block reform, lobby away progress, or punish protesters - depriving us of peaceful tools and non-violent means - and expect sheepish compliance as you rally us to the slaughterhouse. One cannot stop change. For every violent action, there is an inevitable defensive reaction.
Last week’s execution of a death-profiting CEO forever changed us. It removed the illusion that our hyper-surveillance state is omniscient. It abolished the myth that these people destroying our communities are untouchable.
We are forever changed.
The Allopathic Complex and Its Consequences
written by Luigi Mangione
The second amendment means I am my own chief executive and commander in chief of my own military. I authorize my own act of self-defense in response to a hostile entity making war on me and my family.
Nelson Mandela says no form of violence can be excused. Camus says it’s all the same, whether you live or die or have a cup of coffee. MLK says violence never brings permanent peace. Gandhi says that non-violence is the mightiest power available to mankind.
That’s who they tell you are heroes. That’s who our revolutionaries are.
Yet is that not capitalistic? Non-violence keeps the system working at full speed ahead.
What did it get us. Look in the mirror.
They want us to be non-violent, so that they can grow fat off the blood they take from us.
The only way out is through. Not all of us will make it. Each of us is our own chief executive. You have to decide what you will tolerate.
In Gladiator 1 Maximus cuts into the military tattoo that identifies him as part of the roman legion. His friend asks “Is that the sign of your god?” As Maximus carves deeper into his own flesh, as his own blood drips down his skin, Maximus smiles and nods yes. The tattoo represents the emperor, who is god. The god emperor has made himself part of Maximus’s own flesh. The only way to destroy the emperor is to destroy himself. Maximus smiles through the pain because he knows it is worth it.
These might be my last words. I don’t know when they will come for me. I will resist them at any cost. That’s why I smile through the pain.
They diagnosed my mother with severe neuropathy when she was forty-one years old. She said it started ten years before that with burning sensations in her feet and occasional sharp stabbing pains. At first the pain would last a few moments, then fade to tingling, then numbness, then fade to nothing a few days later.
The first time the pain came she ignored it. Then it came a couple times a year and she ignored it. Then every couple months. Then a couple times a month. Then a couple times a week. At that point by the time the tingling faded to numbness, the pain would start, and the discomfort was constant. At that point even going from the couch to the kitchen to make her own lunch became a major endeavor
She started with ibuprofen, until the stomach aches and acid reflux made her switch to acetaminophen. Then the headaches and barely sleeping made her switch back to ibuprofen.
The first doctor said it was psychosomatic. Nothing was wrong. She needed to relax, destress, sleep more.
The second doctor said it was a compressed nerve in her spine. She needed back surgery. It would cost $180,000. Recovery would be six months minimum before walking again. Twelve months for full potential recovery, and she would never lift more than ten pounds of weight again.
The third doctor performed a Nerve Conduction Study, Electromyography, MRI, and blood tests. Each test cost $800 to $1200. She hit the $6000 deductible of her UnitedHealthcare plan in October. Then the doctor went on vacation, and my mother wasn’t able to resume tests until January when her deductible reset.
The tests showed severe neuropathy. The $180,000 surgery would have had no effect.
They prescribed opioids for the pain. At first the pain relief was worth the price of constant mental fog and constipation. She didn’t tell me about that until later. All I remember is we took a trip for the first time in years, when she drove me to Monterey to go to the aquarium. I saw an otter in real life, swimming on its back. We left at 7am and listened to Green Day on the four-hour car ride. Over time, the opioids stopped working. They made her MORE sensitive to pain, and she felt withdrawal symptoms after just two or three hours.
Then gabapentin. By now the pain was so bad she couldn’t exercise, which compounded the weight gain from the slowed metabolic rate and hormonal shifts. And it barely helped the pain, and made her so fatigued she would go an entire day without getting out of bed.
Then Corticosteroids. Which didn’t even work.
The pain was so bad I would hear my mother wake up in the night screaming in pain. I would run into her room, asking if she’s OK. Eventually I stopped getting up. She’d yell out anguished shrieks of wordless pain or the word “fuck” stretched and distended to its limits. I’d turn over and go back to sleep.
All of this while they bled us dry with follow-up appointment after follow-up appointment, specialist consultations, and more imagine scans. Each appointment was promised to be fully covered, until the insurance claims were delayed and denied. Allopathic medicine did nothing to help my mother’s suffering. Yet it is the foundation of our entire society.
My mother told me that on a good day the nerve pain was like her legs were immersed in ice water. On a bad day it felt like her legs were clamped in a machine shop vice, screwed down to where the cranks stopped turning, then crushed further until her ankle bones sprintered and cracked to accommodate the tightening clamp. She had more bad days than good.
My mother crawled to the bathroom on her hands and knees. I slept in the living room to create more distance from her cries in the night. I still woke up, and still went back to sleep.
Back then I thought there was nothing I could do.
The high copays made consistent treatment impossible. New treatments were denied as “not medically necessary.” Old treatments didn’t work, and still put us out for thousands of dollars.
UnitedHealthcare limited specialist consultations to twice a year.
Then they refused to cover advanced imaging, which the specialists required for an appointment.
Prior authorizations took weeks, then months.
UnitedHealthcare constantly changed their claim filing procedure. They said my mother’s doctor needed to fax his notes. Then UnitedHealthcare said they did not save faxed patient correspondence, and required a hardcopy of the doctor’s typed notes to be mailed. Then they said they never received the notes. They were unable to approve the claim until they had received and filed the notes.
They promised coverage, and broke their word to my mother.
With every delay, my anger surged. With every denial, I wanted to throw the doctor through the glass wall of their hospital waiting room.
But it wasn’t them. It wasn’t the doctors, the receptionists, administrators, pharmacists, imaging technicians, or anyone we ever met. It was UnitedHealthcare.
People are dying. Evil has become institutionalized. Corporations make billions of dollars off the pain, suffering, death, and anguished cries in the night of millions of Americans.
We entered into an agreement for healthcare with a legally binding contract that promised care commensurate with our insurance payments and medical needs. Then UnitedHealthcare changes the rules to suit their own profits. They think they make the rules, and think that because it’s legal that no one can punish them.
They think there’s no one out there who will stop them.
Now my own chronic back pain wakes me in the night, screaming in pain. I sought out another type of healing that showed me the real antidote to what ails us.
I bide my time, saving the last of my strength to strike my final blows. All extractors must be forced to swallow the bitter pain they deal out to millions.
As our own chief executives, it’s our obligation to make our own lives better. First and foremost, we must seek to improve our own circumstances and defend ourselves. As we do so, our actions have ripple effects that can improve the lives of others.
Rules exist between two individuals, in a network that covers the entire earth. Some of these rules are written down. Some of these rules emerge from natural respect between two individuals. Some of these rules are defined in physical laws, like the properties of gravity, magnetism or the potential energy stored in the chemical bonds of potassium nitrate.
No single document better encapsulates the belief that all people are equal in fundamental worth and moral status and the frameworks for fostering collective well-being than the US constitution.
Writing a rule down makes it into a law. I don’t give a fuck about the law. Law means nothing. What does matter is following the guidance of our own logic and what we learn from those before us to maximize our own well-being, which will then maximize the well-being of our loved ones and community.
That’s where UnitedHealthcare went wrong. They violated their contract with my mother, with me, and tens of millions of other Americans. This threat to my own health, my family’s health, and the health of our country’s people requires me to respond with an act of war.
Seeds for Change
Start a harm reduction program.
Learn about Direct Primary Care. While this is not an accessible or sustainable solution, it takes money out of greedy third-party insurance companies bank accounts.
Go to a NARCAN training with a friend.
Equip yourselves and your communities. Host a Stop the Bleed training.
Learn about street medic history and read this comprehensive Street Medic Handbook.
Get to know the plant relatives near you and talk to your neighbors about community-supported herbalism.
Get involved in debt abolition.
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Thank you for writing this!! It’s excellent, I’m so glad you pointed out the media coverage/bias and I’ve been feeling the way this is affecting the collective energy.