Welcome to this throwback edition of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast, where we remember the past and choose to repeat it.

Today's episode was published just over a year ago when we used the occasion of the death of Medicare for all activist, A.D. Barkin to highlight the ongoing fight for a just health care system. We're playing it again

today after the occasion of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson being murdered, with bullets

inscribed with the words, delay and deny, the foundational policy of for-profit health insurance

companies, which seek to maximize profit by denying care to their

policyholders. It's been pointed out by some that Thompson is survived by a family that loved him

as a way of highlighting the injustice of having the sins of an industry fall on the shoulders

of an individual. It doesn't take too much imagination to realize that the vast majority of people who have suffered needlessly, weathered stress, bankruptcy, and sometimes died from having to fight a health insurance company to have their care covered, also have families that love them.

As far as I'm concerned, assuming for a moment, that Thompson really was targeted for his role

as CEO rather than a personal grudge, he should be considered a victim of the system

more than of the individual, because a health system, as unjust as ours, is bound to cultivate

such levels of resentment that violence should be understood as a predictable outcome.

The biggest difference between Thompson and the health care victims of his insurance company is not that one was killed with a gun while all the others were killed with paperwork.

The biggest difference is that Thompson was in a position to help change the system.

One of our mantras here at the show is to aim higher.

If you're angry at a customer service rep, aim higher.

The manager, aim higher.

The CEO?

Maybe you're getting there.

Is there anything higher?

Maybe the board of directors.

But ultimately, it's the system itself.

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