The targeted killing carried out in the early morning in Midtown Manhattan was shocking enough. The top executive of a major health care insurance company gunned down on his way to an investors' meeting. The reaction on social media was swift and cruel, the collective wrath of Americans fuming over too many medical claims denied by an industry that cashed in on their misery.
As Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson noted in her blog, Luigi Mangione, the alleged young killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, became an instant folk hero. Days later, when he was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, police found in his backpack a three-page handwritten note that expressed remorse but said, “These parasites had it coming.”
The manifesto noted that the U.S. has the most expensive health care system in the world but is 42nd in life expectancy. (Actually, it’s worse: America ranks 64th in life expectancy, behind Chile, Costa Rica, Saudi Arabia, Kosovo, and Sri Lanka, according to data from the World Bank.)
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Mangione, the 26-year-old, Ivy League graduate and former high-school valedictorian, in his twisted way, has put health care coverage and its rising costs at the center of our public dialogue. President-elect Donald Trump has given Robert F. Kennedy Jr. permission to “go wild” on reforming the health care system if he becomes secretary of Health and Human Services, a nomination that unnerves both Democrats and Republicans.
But first, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist has to be confirmed by a majority of the Senate. His long career as an attorney and activist who confronts corporate power could boost his chances. He meets the moment that is now before us. “I always had the feeling that we were all involved in some great crusade,” Kennedy once wrote, explaining how his early fights as an anti-corporate environmental lawyer led him to become an anti-government health crusader.
In the Trump era, there’s a market for speaking truth to power if power is defined by elite Democrats or the Deep State. Challenging the existing order is what Trump wants Kennedy to do, and it’s what Kennedy wants to do. The fury over UnitedHealthcare’s 32 percent denial rate—high by industry standards—cries out for someone with the courage to defy the existing order and its army of well-paid lobbyists. Deny, depose, defend—the watchwords of an insurance industry that did well for itself, but not enough for others.
RFK Jr. has stayed quiet during this interregnum while his record is being scrutinized and senators weigh their options—except to promote his daughter-in-law as CIA director to investigate the agency’s possible involvement in his uncle’s 1963 assassination.
Democrats are not going to save Kennedy if Republicans are willing to sink him. It would take four Republicans to short circuit his nomination.
But if he’s going to win anyway, I could see some Democrats rolling the dice. Maryland Sen. Cory Booker, for example, loves the healthy living agenda that RFK Jr. celebrates. Vermont’s Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are natural fits for his anti-corporate positions.
Paul Equale, a longtime lawyer and former lobbyist parts company with RFK Jr. on vaccines but, like others randomly questioned, is “right there with him on corn syrup and Big Ag and unhealthy food.”
“During the Trump era, if someone is half right, liberals have to be a little bit gratified,” Equale tells the Daily Beast.
Whether RFK Jr. makes it through the gauntlet depends on how much political capital Republicans will expend in their face-off with Trump. “RFK Jr. has such a wide range of toxicities, I can’t imagine any sane Democrat going for him,” Jonah Blank, a former Senate staffer, told the Daily Beast.
“If Jared Polis were a senator, maybe,” he added, referring to the Democratic governor of Colorado who has cheered Kennedy’s nomination.
Polis took heat for telling CNN, “I truly believe that RFK is not beholden to big pharma.” He also called the Kennedy scion “somebody who means what he says when he cares about reducing chronic disease through better nutrition” who can “do some good for public health.”
Democrats lost the presidential election despite a strong economy and a legislative record that rivals FDR—not to mention a GOP presidential candidate who was a convicted felon, serial fabricator, adjudicated sexual abuser and an anti-immigrant conspiracy theorist, among other things. Trump did what Democrats failed to do: He tapped into the anger that our political and economic systems are not working for most Americans.
“Trump cynically fuels the flames of discontent so he’s both the arsonist and the fireman while Democrats are just looking at the fire and saying how awful it is,” says the former Democratic Senate staffer.
After Jan. 20, Trump will bear the burden of all the problems he blamed on Biden, including the accessibility and cost of health care. If RFK Jr. is confirmed as HHS secretary, will Trump give him free rein to assail the health insurers in charge? Where will budget cuts be made so Trump can fulfill his promise to extend tax cuts for billionaires?
At last count, Trump has named eleven billionaires to his Cabinet. One thing we know, he’s not going to make them worse off. Will he listen to the multitude of voices on social media demanding change when that change could be costly for himself and his party?
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