Still no arrest in the murder of UnitedHealth healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Investigators have been scouring Midtown security cams, but this morning they're focusing on writings left on the shell casings at the crime scene, according to investigators briefed on the situation. [00:00:17] The NYPD believes the gunman may have written messages on those casings. Officials say the writings found said defend, deny and depose, which may potentially go to a motive for the shooting. [00:00:34] So the words defend, deny and depose were written on the shell casings found at the scene of Brian Thompson's shooting, bolstering the theory that the targeted attack did have something to do with Thompson's role as UnitedHealth CEO. The words were written on the casings in Sharpie, and according to CBS news, [00:00:53] investigators believe they could reference the three DS of insurance coined by the industry's critics, which are delay, deny and defend. The alliteration is a comment on the tactics that opponents say insurance companies use to delay or deny policyholders claims. [00:01:11] It's also the title of a book delay, deny, defend why insurance companies don't Pay claims and what you can do about it. I don't think this was recommended in the book. An attack against the insurance giant from a disgruntled patient or family member would be consistent with the comment from Thompson's wife, [00:01:30] Paulette, who told NBC news that he had been receiving threats. We spoke about this yesterday, she said. There had been some threats, basically, I don't know, a lack of coverage. I don't know details. I just know that, he said. Some people that there were some people that had been threatening him. [00:01:47] As we talked about yesterday when the story broke, UnitedHealthCare is the largest private health insurance payer in the United States, and they've been widely criticized for their frequent denials of health care claims. In fact, they're reportedly the worst offenders when it comes [00:02:02] to denying in-network claims. Their denial rate this year is a whopping 32%, compared to the industry average of 16%. In a recent Senate report slammed Medicare Advantage insurance insurers, including United, for using predictive technology to deny claims. [00:02:22] Between 2019 and 2022, Unitedhealth's post-acute services denial rate increased from 8.7% to 22.7%, the report found. Meanwhile, UnitedHealth skilled nursing home denial rate increased nine fold. [00:02:40] Meanwhile, they have been raking it in. UnitedHealth ranks as the nation's fourth largest company by revenue this year, just behind Apple and ahead of tech giants Alphabet and Microsoft. Last year, they brought in $376.6 billion in revenue [00:02:57] and reported $22 billion in profits. Jake, you weren't here yesterday when Jordan and I first spoke about this story, but we did our best to present the story without speculating too much about the shooter's motive, but admittedly, that was a bit tricky to do because it [00:03:12] felt like the motive was quite obvious. The victim's wife's comments about how her husband had received threats from people who were disgruntled about their health care coverage seemed to confirm what everyone was already thinking. And now we have these shells, and I saw an article earlier that referred [00:03:27] to the public response to the shooting as, quote unquote, shockingly celebratory. Jake, what do you make not only of the situation itself, but of the overall response to it? Yeah. So you have to separate out two different things. [00:03:43] One is, was this attack justified in any way good? And the answer to that is obvious. No, vigilante justice is never the right answer. Violence is never the right answer. Assassinations are never the right answer. So now the second part of the question, the topic is why? [00:04:03] And that's a very legitimate question. We ask that anytime there's any kind of shootings, mass shootings. ET cetera. And so the reason we asked why is not to justify it, but to learn from it so that we can prevent it going forward. And so the why here is to me enormously obvious. [00:04:18] So I would be shocked if the person who did the killing didn't have a family member who died because they were denied health insurance, and they would be among over 76,000 Americans that suffer that fate. So guys, we, as you hear me say all the time, and this is unfortunately [00:04:37] an excellent example of it. We live under corporate rule, and the corporate rule is squeezing in this case with health insurance and drug companies, etc., literally squeezing the life out of us. Right? So the press will make a giant deal out of this story. [00:04:53] And I get why, and it's understandable. But it's of course, because someone powerful and wealthy died and they shouldn't. And that's terrible. And your heart should go out to them and he's got a family, etc. But no one ever notices the 76,000 people dying every year [00:05:10] because we don't have universal health insurance in this country. Meanwhile, as he has told you, they're making $22 billion in profit. We're going to get into some more numbers in a second. He is going to share with you guys to give you a sense of how oppressive our system is, how inefficient it is, how full of waste, fraud and abuse it is. [00:05:28] Because when you privatize health care, you give two clear incentives. One is maximize your revenue, which means take as much from the American people as you possibly can. But also, and this is the really terrible part, minimize your costs, which means [00:05:46] deny as much health care as you possibly can, because those are your costs. So give as little as you can to the American people and take as much as you can. And that's why you lead to that leads to these horrible, horrible results. But since mainstream media is a propaganda machine for corporate rule, [00:06:03] they never talk about those people dying in in quiet misery and those families that are destroyed, let alone the fact that 40% of the bankruptcies in this country is because of medical bills, because again, insurance is being denied. So we should say that what happened to this gentleman is an absolute tragedy, [00:06:21] because it actually is. And we should also talk about what happens to the average American that no one cares about and no one talks about is a massive tragedy that is 76,000 times worse. Absolutely. [00:06:37] And yeah, to that healthcare industry data, we do have some of that for you. Just to give you an idea of how bad things really are in the health care industry and how badly people are suffering. If anything, I think that this this incident has really sparked a national conversation about just how disgruntled and how desperate people are, [00:06:56] because I think that's something that just gets overlooked so often in the stories. But yeah, so for that data, let's see the revenue of six largest insurers anthem, Centene, Cigna, CVS, Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth. They have more than quadrupled from 2010 to $1.1 trillion combined revenues [00:07:15] with the three biggest United, Aetna and Cigna have quintupled. And in 2022, UnitedHealth Group made over $20 billion in profit. Cigna made 6.7 billion, elephant's health made 6 billion and CVS health made 4.2 billion. [00:07:32] All told, America's largest health insurers raked in more than $41 billion in profits in 2022. Then we can look at per capita spending. Get that graphic up there. Let me see. The US has the highest health care administrative costs per capita [00:07:50] compared to other OECD countries. And people die in America because of our health care systems. Researchers of a 2022 Yale study this to say, our calculations indicate that 76,064 [00:08:05] lives would have been saved by universal health care among individuals of all ages. In 2019, we found that single payer universal health care would have saved $439 billion in 2019. So, you know, even the cost savings would, you know, like the lives aside, [00:08:23] the lives that they obviously already don't care about. The cost savings would have been there too. But it's about, you know, whose pocket do those those does do all those savings end up in. So, Jake, any final thoughts on this story before we move on? Yeah. So guys, the reason why all this exists and and the reason why none of [00:08:40] the problems that America ever gets solved is because these same companies then go and donate to politicians. So they're not making an extra trillion dollars, because, oh golly gee, that's just the laws of the universe. No. In fact, all other developed nations have universal health care [00:08:56] for a reason because they know that privatized health care does not work. Remember, when you have universal health care, you could layer on private health care on top. Okay. So it doesn't mean that you don't have any other options. But under our system there is no guarantees. [00:09:11] And people are denied, care and often die for strictly profit motive. So someone makes way more money when your family members die, and that sucks. [00:09:26] That's totally and utterly unacceptable in a normal democracy. If the people were really ruling, but we are not ruling. Corporations have taken over politics. They've taken over mainstream media. And and it's like a they have a vise grip on us. [00:09:43] And so you should be absolutely outraged that our healthcare system that even though we're the richest nation on earth, we we have one of the worst life expectancies. We have one of the worst cost per capita. So last thing on the on this to give you a sense of how stark it is. [00:10:01] So not only do 76,000 people die, but we pay twice as much. Why do we pay twice as much? It doesn't go to healthcare, it goes to their profits. And so that's why they made $20 billion in one year in profit, [00:10:19] not in revenue and profit. That's $20 billion that could have been spent on you and your family to treat you. If we were doing health insurance in the right way. And not only did those people die on average, now Americans live four years less than other developed nations that have universal health care. [00:10:39] So they're actually taking four years off of all of our lives, all of our lives, so they can make $20 billion in profit. Is that a sane system? No. That's a system that the American people should absolutely end. The only reason we don't end it, because every liar in mainstream media [00:10:58] never tells you how grotesque and unjust this system is. They love that injustice. They propagate that injustice, and they keep the truth from you. That's the reality. You could look it up and and guys, when that happens, when a system is that unjust, whether we like it or not, [00:11:15] and no matter how much we condemn it, it leads to this kind of wrong headed vigilante justice. Because when the government doesn't do anything. And why did we have all of these protests, etc.? You remember when people were costing the politicians in public? Why? [00:11:30] Because they never allow us to talk to them. There's the only way you could talk to them is by bribing them, giving them a giant check, and then they're like, oh, you can't accost me in public. But then you never listen to us, so I don't want them accosted. But I do want them challenged verbally, not physically. [00:11:46] And so now you can't touch any of the overlords. You can't speak to the overlords, and then it gets bottled up, bottled up, and then it gets released in all the wrong ways because that pressure is inevitable. So they can keep ignoring this. [00:12:01] But we're just going to have more and more vigilante violence as this system is so unjust and so oppressive. Yeah. And I think especially now since the shooting has come out, there's a lot of people who are just like, you know, can't be bothered to feel bad for the guy. [00:12:17] And, you know, however you feel about vigilante justice and like the fact that someone was killed and the fact that they have a family. All that aside, people have known people who have died because they didn't get the health care coverage that they needed. And those those stories aren't making the headlines. So it is it is really, really distressing to see all of this, but I think it is [00:12:37] indicative, this entire response to it. I think it is very indicative of the fact that people are tired of being told, you know, now is not the time to talk about this. We have to be respectful of this and that and that and that all these, you know, semantics and politeness and niceties. [00:12:52] Right? Because we're a civilized, country, right? We're a civilized society. We have to we can't condone this type of behavior. But at the same time, it's like it's really hard kind of to feel bad for certain things in certain situations because at the end of the day, you know, other people have died because of the decisions that that man has made. [00:13:11] And not only that, he's he's at the head of this company. He is the figurehead for it all. But there are so many people working beneath him who work for these type of companies. And they're, you know, they're not really doing their jobs. At the end of the day, they're not doing the job that they have to do, which is to help the American people. [00:13:28] To. Get the health care coverage that they need. But the flip side of that is that, no, their job isn't actually that. Their job is to make more money for the company and to increase the shareholder value. So with all of that said, I think this is just like putting such a spotlight on what [00:13:44] is wrong with this country and the fact that people are going to act desperately. They're going to act in more and more unpredictable ways because they're desperate, because they feel like they have no way out from these situations, and it has to be dealt with. They can't just keep sweeping this under the rug and telling us, just deal with it, [00:14:02] just deal with it and then hoping we'll forget about it by the by the time, you know, some next headline comes in the in the papers or on YouTube or wherever you're watching it. So hey, thanks for watching the video. We really appreciate it, guys, and we appreciate it if you become members, [00:14:18] because that allows us to be independent, honest, progressive, all the things that you don't get from corporate media and all of that is because of you guys. Hit the join button below and become one of us. Become a young Turk.