Luigi Mangione BLEW UP Predatory Healthcare System, Protest Leader Vows

I think the killing of that executive, Brian Thompson, and the rage of people in this country who've seen their families, who themselves have been subjected to privatized health care denials, that blew up. And the entire majority of people, I mean, even people on TV, commentators on CNN were complaining that they couldn't get, they were being denied. And these are not poor people. Hey, it's Jordan. I am in Flint, Michigan, East Palestine, Ohio, Tumwa, Iowa. Please support the only independent outlet on the ground covering what the corporate media covers up. Hey, it's Jordan with Status Quo. I am delighted to be joined by Steve Zeltzer, you're the chair with the United Front Committee for a Labor Party. And I wanted to talk to you because there is a pretty big conference in the Bay coming up, a health care conference, they're calling it, that J.P. Morgan is putting on. J.P. Morgan, infamously one of the criminal corporations that tank the global economy. And all the big boys and gals will be there, including UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Aetna, although the list of, you know, executives and players that will be there is not public. I wonder why. But I wanted to have you because your organization is organizing a protest outside this health care conference, which I think is important. Why don't you tell us first? I know you've been in this fight for a long time against the for-profit health care industry. What made you want to organize this protest and why this conference in particular? Well, we found out about it because the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union, Local 2, had a long strike, in fact, 93 days. And a key issue in their strike was their union health care benefits. And the hotel companies Hyatt, Hilton and Marriott wanted to take away their union run health plan and put it under a private health plan run by some of these insurance companies. So as a result of that, the union actually said that unless the, you know, they got a contract and the strike was settled, they would be having mass picketing at this J.P. Morgan Health Investors Conference, Health Care Investors Conference. Now, this is the largest health care investors conference in the United States, in the world. There are over 8000 corporate people that come, investors who want to make money off health care. And at these conferences, they discuss how they can basically privatize and profit off of the developments in health care. For example, AI, the use of AI, how they can use that to increase their profits. And of course, we know that at United Health Care, they used AI to kick people out of getting health care in nursing homes to increase their profits. People died as a result of that. So we felt that it would be important to have a united front rally against basically capitalist control of the health care industry. And this is a good example of what's going on. The development of technology, development of health care for these companies to make more profits, not for people's needs. And we can see that with so many millions of people without health care or being denied health care, the question of taking away control of the health care from these profiteers is critical for survival, really, of working people in this country. And I want to read the description JP Morgan put out, which is kind of laughable. This premier conference is the largest and most informative health care investment symposium in the industry, which connects global industry leaders, emerging fast growth companies, innovative technology creators and members of the investment community. It's a lot of neoliberal mumbo jumbo. But essentially, what it sounds like to me is this is a gathering to basically see what's working for them in terms of profit and come up with ideas to further squeeze American patients, seniors, but all people that are paying into this rotten system. It's interesting. Luigi Mangione, the alleged shooter of Brian Thompson in his manifesto, talked about, you know, these parasites had it coming. Well, JP Morgan and these Wall Street banks are the ugly stepbrother and sister of United Health. Hasn't gotten as much attention, but these Wall Street firms are heavily invested in all of these companies. These Wall Street firms are very connected to what United Health is doing, which is, you know, buying up the providers, buying up local hospitals, buying, you know, buying up AI. Can you kind of talk about the it's not just symbolism that this is a JP Morgan conference, but Wall Street is very involved in this system. Well, the takeover of health care from beginning to end is controlled by Wall Street. They're making determinations. The so-called nonprofits like Kaiser, HMOs are also profiteering. Their executives make millions of dollars and they also deny health care or they limit health care benefits. For example, there's a strike going on right now in Los Angeles of mental health care workers, National Union of Health Care Workers, and they have not been providing health care for mental illness. As a result, people commit suicide and under federal law, they're supposed to provide these services. They're not doing it. They stall. They prevent you from getting appointments. Now, mental health, particularly look at this fire that we're having now in Los Angeles, stress, mental health. You need health care professionals, yet these companies, HMOs, which say that they're going to provide the health care, they don't. So the whole HMO, the whole health care system in the United States is molded around profiteering and making more money from health care. And that's why you don't see that on TV. For example, corporate TV is not covering this conference. They may cover it as a result of our rally that we're going to have, but they're not covering it because these same companies, television, the main corporate companies are controlled by these companies. It's like workers' compensation is another whole area. Many workers get injured. They're targeted. They lose their jobs. They fight for their treatment. They're denied. If you don't get treatment and you get injured, you can become permanently disabled, which happens to large numbers of workers. You have to be treated promptly. Otherwise, the injury deteriorates and you become permanently disabled. They become homeless. People lose their families. They commit suicide. A lot of homeless people are injured workers, as a matter of fact, in the United States. It's a profit-controlled industry. And again, the union leadership have accepted capitalism. They've accepted corporate control, and they're making the best of it. Some officials are actually on boards of insurance companies. Imagine that. You're on the board of an insurance company, and you're going to defend your members? Well, that insurance company wants you to limit benefits and make it more profitable for the insurance company. How can you be on an insurance company board and say you're going to represent your members? It's a contradiction in terms. Insurance industry, like the healthcare industry, is about making more profits, not providing better healthcare for working people. Also, I want to point out, you sent this to me, that a lot of these unions, including one of the biggest ones, AFL-CIO, has been basically funneling their members into privatized healthcare. And these privatized healthcare plans, namely Medicare Advantage, are linked to Wall Street too, bringing it back to JP Morgan. Why is the AFL-CIO and these big unions, why would they be putting their members, retirees, on privatized Medicare Advantage? Because they're corporate unions. They're business unions. The unions accept corporate control, and they want to be partners. They want to get a bigger piece of the pie. That's their idea. Our view is, the United Front Committee for the Labor Party, is that working people should have their own political party, a labor party, not based on corporations. If you look at the Democratic Party, they take money from Uber. They take money from private insurance companies. In fact, they just released, who are these people in the Democratic Party? A lot of them are connected to big business, connected to the corporations. So that party is really not representing working people in this country. And that's why the Democrats, for example, Nancy Pelosi, she's in San Francisco. And when she was running for control of Congress under Obama, they promised, if we get control, we're going to control the pharmaceutical companies. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. Well, they got control. They had control at one time of the legislature, the executive, and they did not have national health care. The drug companies still control the drug industry in this country. So the reality is, is that Democrats and Republicans, both political parties, are controlled by these drug companies, are controlled by the health care industry. And that's why we don't have Medicare for all, as they do in Canada, as they do in Japan, as they do in the UK. And even the companies here, for example, Kaiser, have companies in England that want to privatize the health care. So privatized health care companies in this country are going to other countries to privatize to make more profits. That is what's driving them. And politically, the union officials are not fighting for Medicare for all. They're fighting for a better privatized health care system. We don't believe that a better privatized health care system is going to benefit working people and the majority of people in this country. People, the highest. And you also you also you also saw the gap between the rank and file of the unions and leadership in 2020. Bernie Sanders in Nevada in particular, he was popular among a lot of the union members. But the unions there, particularly the casino, the worker, the leadership was coming out against him because they didn't want Medicare for all. But a lot of the union members ended up voting for him because they do want Medicare for all. Well, in the last election, Bernie Sanders was MIA as far as Medicare for all. He dropped any kind of demand that we have Medicare for all. And that wasn't part of the Kamala Harris agenda. The reality is, is Kamala Harris's brother in law works for Uber. She's part of the corporate structure in this country and the leadership of the Democratic Party. They've allowed Medicare advantage to take over Medicare and privatize it. Now, if they were really defending, they could have hearings. They could have called for hearings in the Senate. What's going on for Medicare for all? Why are people being ripped off on this Medicare for all problem? There's nothing. There's been no national story, as a matter of fact, about what's going on in New York, where there's been a virtual rebellion among teachers, among workers, AFSCME workers and others against this Medicare for all. In fact, the president of the AFSCME put their senior local chapter in trusteeship because they were supporting a lawsuit to protect their Medicare and not be forced into Medicare for all. So here we have the national union leadership of the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters unions, SEIU, going along with privatization of Medicare. And under the Trump administration, that's going to escalate because their view is everything should be privatized. We shouldn't even have Medicare. We really don't believe in Medicare. They don't believe in Social Security. Let the private industry take care of Social Security. And that's how they can make more profit, privatizing these services. Basic human rights is what we're talking about. The right to health care, which you think everyone should have. No, you're only going to make health care available if you have money to get it. And that's going to destroy our health care system. Our public health care system is destroyed. We have a pandemic now with the bird flu, and we're being told that they don't even do the testing to find out if people have it. I mean, part of public science, test to see where it is. Why wouldn't they be testing? They don't want to find it. I mean, this is the insanity. They've already found a few. They've already found a few human cases. That is true. I mean, it's dangerous. It's a health care emergency. But public health is not a priority in this country. You can't make money from it. California, Gavin Newsom has cut back on private health care. In fact, even during the pandemic, they were giving money to Blue Shield and private companies rather than having public facilities do it. It's a profiteering. That's what happened during the COVID pandemic. These companies were making massive profits, and the government was shuffling billions and billions of dollars to them instead of putting it into public health care to prevent the pandemic and to even learn about where the pandemic was. And bringing it back to the conference and the protests you're doing, I find it quite interesting. It's not public. You know who's going to be there, what executives are going to be there. Obviously, we've seen since the murder of Brian Thompson. These CEOs want their own personal hotline in New York to send in threats. They're hiring up an army of private security. They want to build their fortress higher. Obviously, everyone feels differently. I've said, I've been clear. I'm not advocating, go get your guns and shoot down anyone. With that said, clearly, what happened and Luigi Mangione has opened up the floodgates, honestly, all over the place, left, right. I'm seeing people of all political perspectives, not exactly crying tears for Brian Thompson, and expressing outrage at this predatory system. Can you kind of talk about from your vantage point, has this been surprising to you that across both political perspectives, people, I mean, a new poll came out that 50 percent of college students favor Luigi Mangione. I think the killing of that executive, Brian Thompson, and the rage of people in this country who've seen their families, who themselves have been subjected to privatized healthcare denials, that blew up. The entire majority of people, I mean, even people on TV, commentators on CNN were complaining that they couldn't get, they were being denied. These are not poor people. They make hundreds of thousands of dollars. But we're talking about a system. That's what we're talking about. It's not one person. It's not Luigi. It's not Brian Thompson. It's a system of how our society is organized. And that's why the solution is not individual. I don't believe in individual action. That's not going to change the system. But what that murder did show is that millions and millions of people in the United States, the vast majority of people in the United States, are fed up with this capitalist control of healthcare. That's what it showed. And that's why we have to have a political party that has, as its program, get the insurance companies, get the privatizers and the billionaires out of our healthcare system. That's a fundamental thing. You can't put a Band-Aid on a cancer and think that it's going to get better. If the system, and that's what we're talking about, a cancerous system that is eating away people for more profits, continues, it's going to get worse. And it is getting worse. I mean, you have a shutdown of rural hospitals. I mean, poor people, working people in rural areas, the hospitals are being closed down in California and around the country. They're not profitable. What sense does that make for people in rural communities? It's against people. It's for the increased profit of these companies. And that's why we need a political party of labor and working people. That means confronting the union leadership, and they have money and resources, and saying we have to get rid of privatized healthcare. We have to have a healthcare system for all. Doctors don't want to practice anymore. Doctors and nurses are leaving. The stress of being a healthcare worker in this privatized system. You can only spend a limited time with a patient. You really can't take care of patients and do your job. It's driving healthcare professionals away from the profession that they've spent their lives doing. And that is a terrible thing. You spend your life trying to be a professional healthcare person, and then you can't do your job. This is a systemic contradiction, really. It has to be resolved politically by working people fighting to have a party, actually, that says we're going to get the insurance companies, privatizers, out of healthcare. And that means fighting not only the healthcare companies, JPMorgan, but the Democrats and Republicans who represent these banks and billionaires. I think that's where the rubber meets the road, because it's not just the direct donations that politicians are getting from the healthcare company PACs and the executives. It's Wall Street. It's the same reason, you know, Obama, when I was at Standing Rock, was allowing Native Americans to get the hell beaten out of them by police, because all the Wall Street banks were heavily invested in Dakota Access Pipeline and all these fossil fuel projects. So when Wall Street has their tentacles in everything, including fossil fuels, including the private healthcare industry, that's kind of Democrats and Republicans. That's their sugar mamas and sugar daddies. So I think people need to realize it's not just trying to reform the predatory healthcare industry. Got to do something about Wall Street's control over our government. And I mean, this climate crisis, the fires, all these things, they're putting more money into military. I mean, think about this. Trillions of dollars are going to military. They're spending, on the way out, Biden wants to give another $8 billion for the genocide in Palestine. And yet the people in East Palestine can't even get healthcare. They went there and refused to even provide healthcare, institute the Stafford Act, which we've been demanding. I support the Stafford Act be implemented in East Palestine. They would get healthcare and money to move out of their homes. They're actually living in contaminated, poisoned homes. They should have been implemented in Flint too. Same thing. They and their families are being poisoned and they don't have money to take care of them. People are angry. People, Republican, Democrat, whoever they are in East Palestine and Flint are angry. This country is spending trillions. Well, why? They're making money off the wars. Every bomb that drops is more profit. These war profiteers, it's money is big business. What's destroying our country is destroying the world, as a matter of fact. Climate is getting worse. I mean, think about this coming summer for the hurricanes in Florida and Texas, what that's going to do to people in those states. There's no plan, emergency plan. What are we going to do to get ready? The same in California. The speculators build wherever they want to build. They don't have a real plan for water, to provide water. It's not one person. It's not one fire chief. It's a system. If you're facing a global climate change, you have to systemically understand how that is taking place and get ready for it. There's none of that. There's no emergency. There is an emergency of climate. And that's what we've seen in this Los Angeles fire. That's what we see when people are dying, when they shouldn't be dying in this country because they're being denied health care for profit. That's what's going on. These are both crimes, actually. Tell people in the Bay Area or driving distance how they can get involved, where the protest is and all that. Well, it's going to be at the St. Francis Hotel, which is in Union Square in San Francisco. It's going to be Monday, January 13th at 4 p.m. And you can find out more about it by going to ufclp.org, United Front Committee for Labor Party. There are other organizations that are endorsing. Health care workers are going to be there from the University of California and others who want to oppose privatization of health care and want to provide health care. And that is what we're talking about. We want to have health care for people, not for profits, because as long as it's for profits, they're going to get denied. You're not going to get the best health care you need and you deserve. And we're entitled to. Yeah. And guess what? If you're a greedy capitalist watching a healthier society in less debt, it's actually going to make you money, too. Look at that. They look at the short range. How much can they increase their profit by next year? How can we use A.I.? And that's another thing. A.I. is going to get rid of, according to Goldman Sachs, 350 million workers. They're getting rid of nurses. They're getting rid of doctors in order to increase their profits. The introduction of A.I. in the health care industry is to increase profits by getting rid of labor workers, medical care. I want to see a doctor. I want to see a nurse. I don't want a machine taking it. It's like in school. I don't want to just be looking at a computer screen, which they're forcing young people to do. Have the teachers do this. And yet that's contradictory to increasing the profits for these corporations. Absolutely. Thank you, Steve Zeltzer, chair of the United Front Committee for a Labor Party. We will be paying attention to this big, big protest. I know mainstream media will not. So thank you for telling us more. Thank you. And we'll videotape it and get it out. And we'll be interviewing some of the people there. Thanks a lot. Thanks.