Acos­ta Hypes ‘Dis­cus­sion’ Sparked By Health Insur­ance CEO’s Mur­der

If a group of con­ser­v­a­tives took to social media to dance on the grave of some­one who was recent­ly mur­dered, CNN News­room host Jim Acos­ta would fierce­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly con­demn them, and right­ful­ly so. He cer­tain­ly would not hype how “an entire dis­cus­sion” had been raised in the after­math of their mur­der, but that is exact­ly what he did on Fri­day after Unit­ed Health­care CEO Bri­an Thompson’s recent mur­der.

After a mon­tage of social media clips of such grave danc­ing, Acos­ta wel­comed cor­re­spon­dent Clare Duffy by claim­ing, “Those posts are part of a grow­ing online trend of Amer­i­cans express­ing their per­son­al strug­gles with Unit­ed­Health­care insur­ance fol­low­ing the CEO’s death.”

Thomp­son didn’t just die; he was mur­dered. As it was, Acos­ta won­dered, “Clare, a lot of out­rage over denied insur­ance claims, and it’s just sparked an entire dis­cus­sion on social media. How big of a prob­lem is this?”

Duffy began, “Yes. Jim, look, I mean, obvi­ous­ly there is nev­er a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this kind of vio­lence. But I think what we’re see­ing in the social media reac­tion is this pent-up frus­tra­tion and anger and dis­trust that so many Amer­i­cans feel over the health insur­ance indus­try.”

A prop­er pair of jour­nal­ists would look at these peo­ple and first ask if they have no shame and sec­ond ask if they are aware that gov­ern­ment-run “uni­ver­sal” health­care sys­tems deny treat­ment all the time. Instead, Duffy con­tin­ued:

And it is a big prob­lem. I mean, look, we’ve spoke with health­care experts who say this is a thing that often—these health­care claim denials are a thing that often caus­es peo­ple anx­i­ety and frus­tra­tion. And it’s a real­ly com­mon prob­lem. More than half of Amer­i­cans, 58 per­cent say that they have expe­ri­enced some kind of prob­lem with their health insur­ance over the past year, includ­ing denial of claims, preau­tho­riza­tion issues, those kinds of things. And of that 58 per­cent, 15 per­cent of those respon­dents say that it actu­al­ly caused prob­lems with their health anx­i­ety or delays in the treat­ment that they received, and so this is an ongo­ing prob­lem, but I think we’re see­ing that real­ly bub­ble up to the sur­face in the wake of this news.

Lat­er Acos­ta wel­comed “for­mer health insur­ance indus­try exec­u­tive turned whistle­blow­er and the pres­i­dent for the Cen­ter for Health and Democ­ra­cy” Wen­dell Pot­ter and recalled:

You tes­ti­fied in front of Con­gress in 2009, talked about how insur­ance com­pa­nies were rou­tine­ly can­cel­ing the cov­er­age of pol­i­cy­hold­ers who got sick. You and I got to know each oth­er a lit­tle bit dur­ing that run-up to the pas­sage of Oba­macare. And I guess what goes through your mind when you hear some of these sto­ries today in light of the fact that, I mean, the dis­cus­sion dur­ing the pas­sage of Oba­macare, the sign­ing of Oba­macare, was that that leg­is­la­tion, the ACA, was sup­posed to fix a lot of these prob­lems, appar­ent­ly not.

After hyp­ing Oba­macare brin­ing “a lot of peo­ple into cov­er­age,” Pot­ter added, “what we heard this morn­ing, what we’ve been hear­ing over the past sev­er­al days, is this pent up frus­tra­tion.”

Pot­ter also claimed that “it’s notable that this occurred in New York City. This trag­ic mur­der was just before Investor Day for this big com­pa­ny. And the point I’m mak­ing here is that share­hold­ers and Wall Street finan­cial ana­lysts are the most impor­tant stake­hold­er for that com­pa­ny and oth­ers… the way that these com­pa­nies sat­is­fy those investors is by restrict­ing access to care and that’s why they’re using A.I. to deny access and why we’re see­ing so many peo­ple now not get­ting the care that they need, not get­ting med­ical­ly nec­es­sary care that they need in this.”

Again, gov­ern­ments, who have no investors or prof­it motives, deny health­care treat­ments on a reg­u­lar basis, so if CNN real­ly wants to have a con­ver­sa­tion about claim denials in the after­math of Thompson’s mur­der, they should have an actu­al con­ver­sa­tion and not a left-wing, anti-cap­i­tal­ism talk­ing points regur­gi­ta­tion ses­sion.

Here is a tran­script for the Decem­ber 6 show:

CNN News­room with Jim Acos­ta

12/6/2024

10:06 AM ET

JIM ACOSTA: Those posts are part of a grow­ing online trend of Amer­i­cans express­ing their per­son­al strug­gles with Unit­ed­Health­care insur­ance fol­low­ing the CEO’s death.

CNN’s Clare Duffy joins me now. Clare, a lot of out­rage over denied insur­ance claims, and it’s just sparked an entire dis­cus­sion on social media. How big of a prob­lem is this?

CLARE DUFFY: Yes. Jim, look, I mean, obvi­ous­ly there is nev­er a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this kind of vio­lence. But I think what we’re see­ing in the social media reac­tion is this pent-up frus­tra­tion and anger and dis­trust that so many Amer­i­cans feel over the health insur­ance indus­try.

And it is a big prob­lem. I mean, look, we’ve spoke with health­care experts who say this is a thing that often — these health­care claim denials are a thing that often caus­es peo­ple anx­i­ety and frus­tra­tion. And it’s a real­ly com­mon prob­lem. More than half of Amer­i­cans, 58 per­cent say that they have expe­ri­enced some kind of prob­lem with their health insur­ance over the past year, includ­ing denial of claims, preau­tho­riza­tion issues, those kinds of things. And of that 58 per­cent, 15 per­cent of those respon­dents say that it actu­al­ly caused prob­lems with their health anx­i­ety or delays in the treat­ment that they received, and so this is an ongo­ing prob­lem, but I think we’re see­ing that real­ly bub­ble up to the sur­face in the wake of this news.

…

ACOSTA: Join­ing me now is Wen­dell Pot­ter, a for­mer health insur­ance indus­try exec­u­tive turned whistle­blow­er and the pres­i­dent for the Cen­ter for Health and Democ­ra­cy.

Wen­dell, you tes­ti­fied in front of Con­gress in 2009, talked about how insur­ance com­pa­nies were rou­tine­ly can­cel­ing the cov­er­age of pol­i­cy­hold­ers who got sick. You and I got to know each oth­er a lit­tle bit dur­ing that run-up to the pas­sage of Oba­macare. And I guess what goes through your mind when you hear some of these sto­ries today in light of the fact that, I mean, the dis­cus­sion dur­ing the pas­sage of Oba­macare, the sign­ing of Oba­macare, was that that leg­is­la­tion, the ACA, was sup­posed to fix a lot of these prob­lems, appar­ent­ly not.

WENDELL POTTER: It was. And a big prob­lem then, as you recall, was we had about 50 mil­lion Amer­i­cans who did­n’t have health insur­ance. And this was, this did, that law did bring a lot of peo­ple into cov­er­age. But what we’re see­ing now is that peo­ple who have cov­er­age are not able to get the care that they need and that has become the big prob­lem here. And what we heard this morn­ing, what we’ve been hear­ing over the past sev­er­al days, is this pent-up frus­tra­tion.

And it’s notable that this occurred in New York City. This trag­ic mur­der was just before Investor Day for this big com­pa­ny. And the point I’m mak­ing here is that share­hold­ers and Wall Street finan­cial ana­lysts are the most impor­tant stake­hold­er for that com­pa­ny and oth­ers. I used to plan sick­ness investor days. And the way that these com­pa­nies sat­is­fy those investors is by restrict­ing access to care and that’s why they’re using A.I. to deny access and why we’re see­ing so many peo­ple now not get­ting the care that they need, not get­ting med­ical­ly nec­es­sary care that they need in this.

ACOSTA: And I remem­ber, Wen­dell, you were expos­ing a lot of this at the time in the late 2000s, ear­ly 2010s, as a whistle­blow­er in the indus­try.