Transcript of ‘Deeply, deeply broken’: Kara Swisher on US healthcare system

Americans revealing pent up anger and frustration at the health insurance industry in the aftermath of the cold blooded murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO on the streets of New York City. The reaction is sparking a broader conversation about the industry's business practices and questions about how things might change. The suspect in the targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO with a message on his way into court. That message, not as clear as the 1 New York police say Luigi Mangione wrote down in a manifesto.

But it does seem that he has some, some ill will toward corporate America.

The NYPD says he saw the killing as a symbolic takedown and was driven by anger against the health insurance industry and corporate greed.

I think he'll go down as a hero in history.

That anti health insurance sentiment lit up the Internet with tweets, memes, and other social media posts expressing similar frustration.

I'm not saying what happened shoulda happened. For them to be like, oh, this is like, why would anybody wanna do this? They're denying claims and people are dying.

Fearing copycat killers, corporate America is responding. Some companies removing executives' bios and photos from websites, upping security for execs. And in what may have been a case of bad timing, Blue Cross Blue Shield also announcing fence scrapping plans to put time limits on coverage for anesthesia during surgery after getting major backlash.

If anything good is gonna come of this, it's gonna be policy change because you've basically got people lighting up their torches. They're gonna burn it down. And you gotta you gotta hear that.

Okay. Well, Nia, I wanna start with you about this anger. This is a big question, but what's your sense about, you know, is it warranted?

It is warranted. I mean, I think people have a legitimate frustrations at the insurance companies, the way they often deny, claims, how difficult it is often to even submit your claims and get the money back and even insure even understand your basic insurance policy. It's all very, confusing, but I think tying it to this act of violence from a sociopath, I think, is despicable, and terrible. And the folks who are sort of on TikTok talking about this, I think they should organize. Right?

I think they should organize. I think they should mobilize, and I think they should protest, in a pointed way, because I don't think change is gonna come because a bunch of folks are lauding this guy who did

this dis No. Just to be clear, I mean, he obviously because this is a person who's driven by something specific, writing on the bullet cases and literally injected this into the conversation very specifically. I've been watching Democrats kind of walk a line trying to appease this rise in a constituency. Here's a senator Elizabeth Warren, talking about it this week.

Violence is never the answer. This guy gets a trial who's allegedly killed the CEO of UnitedHealth, but you can only push people so far. And then they start to take matters into their own hands.

Terrible. Just terrible.

That response or just tell

me walk me through it.

Tell me your thinking.

Violence is never the answer, but Right. That's it. That's the end. I just I I think about this in terms of a lot of other issues on which Americans are deeply frustrated. Take for instance, colleges and universities, the number of Americans who are in crippling student loan debt.

If someone went out and shot a college president, we would not be having a conversation about, gosh, do we need to reform higher ed in America? We'd be talking about right wing extremism and look at what is this has led to and people would be yelling at congresswoman Stefanik for look at what you did, you caused this. And we're not having that conversation now. Instead, we're like, did this guy have a point? And to me, I think we absolutely need to have a conversation about our health care system Yeah.

And the

many other things around in

this country. I just wanna add this 1 thing because the UnitedHealth Group CEO, Andrew Witty, actually wrote in the New York Times that dropped, this week where he was talking about, basically saying, quote, we need to improve how we explain what insurance covers and how decisions are made, and also talking about the fact that the US, health care system is a patchwork and that they want

to improve.

Here's the problem. It's a for profit industry on something that's much more difficult to make of it it everything is about the shareholders just like a lot of companies, like tech companies, everything else. And so the way it is structured and that people cannot get health care without dealing with this, with the for profit corporations, their incentives will always be to behave like this and as and get as much of the, you know, of the money that they can from you. And that's the problem. It's like it starts there, and so we have to think about Medicare for all.

I just interviewed Ro Khanna about this and a bunch of other things. So you've gotta fig and he's a big proponent of Medicare for all. They're dropping the age slowly. And so I think this is gonna happen if we have these highly for profit companies that they are gonna be probably you know, they're gonna be villainized for sure, and then you get all these statements. The other thing is this is such an Internet meme thing where where there's probably a

lot of boys. TikTok images, the generation guy

was pretty by the people who have these stories, which I think are astonishing. But I think it it fits it. He's a the the the looks of this guy, the pictures they publish, it it's all it all fits in that sort of dunking culture that we have that doesn't talk about complex issues like this. Instead, you have to be on 1 side or the other.

Okay. I wanna, Rob, bring you into this conversation, because, you know, arguably, Republicans have had, you know, almost 15 years, right, to come up with something that is an alternative to Obamacare. They don't. They never have. So is this moment a moment that surfaces the issue in a way that puts it on their agenda?

I think Mia touched on something. I do think that if people come together and and speak out and and want to express some level of activism on this issue, yes, Perhaps it could. Remember in Donald Trump's 1st year in office, John McCain famously gave the thumbs down when they were trying to pass some health care reform. So it's not that they didn't have something. It just didn't get across the finish line to Trump's desk.

But remember, there's a couple of things here. Number 1, the way that we treat health insurance is different from almost any other type of insurance.

Yes. Somebody actually mentions this in his article of being a put on

the hatcher here. That's 1 issue. Kara, probably not surprisingly, I disagree. I don't think that more government role here is necessarily the answer because I think we can look at other countries and the delays that people have to wait to get the health care that they need. And and finally, I would just say that anybody since Obamacare was passed can probably share a personal story of how their health care experience has gotten worse as opposed to improved.

Except in other countries, the outcomes are better, and the cost is, like, a third of it. And so I I get your point of maybe not every country works perfectly, but ours is deeply, deeply broken. And a lot of these TikToks, they don't have a left or right thing. This is across

It is. And to point out another question around Obamacare, 1 of the things I found fascinating is over the more than decade is the thing that keeps people enjoying it when they do support it is the elimination of preexisting conditions as an excuse for denial of claims. This issue of being denied is very visceral for people. And I'm wondering, has this become another not 3rd rail, but are are the policymakers maybe a little bit taken off guard at the reaction here?

I do think that there's a big problem in that if you wanna solve every time you try to solve 1 of these problems in our current complex system, it creates a new problem. Right? So you wanna solve the problem of preexisting conditions. Right now, everybody knows it would be politically toxic to roll back protections for preexisting conditions. But at the same time then, okay, you try to press over here to change this.

Okay. Let's force companies to do x, y, and z. Does that then mean that their premiums go up elsewhere? Like, somewhere along the wet line, the the system needs such fundamental reform Yes. That that no politician wants to touch it because people in general, for all that you have these individual instances of so and so denied their claim, when you actually ask Americans, do you like your coverage?

You would be surprised at how good the numbers sometimes are, and that also adds the complexity to the issue.

Problem is it feels much more like a poor versus rich issue than anything else. And, like, look, we rich people can afford, even moderately rich people can afford. And I think I think it's a great thing to lean into for Republicans and Democrats, you know, this idea of reforming this and how to do it correctly, where you create good services but have better outcomes for it. Because the prices, if you go to any other country, are so much lower. I mean, I had a stroke in Hong Kong, and they get handed me the bill, and it it was 82,000.

I'm like, oh, yeah. Of course. It's that it's ridiculous. That was in their money, and it was it was, like, 8,000 for an entire process. And I was like, oh, yeah.

I'll pay that. Like, it was really an interesting thing because I was so used to ridiculous prices.

Yeah. Well, obviously, it's an interesting issue, especially, reading the witty op ed where he basically addressed this almost a little more than talking about, the executive whose life was taken.