Image by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP through Getty / Futurism
Congress is pushing to interrupt up the nation’s largest insurance coverage monopolies after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s homicide final week sparked widespread anger.
As the New York Times stories, a pair of bipartisan payments search to power insurers and different healthcare corporations to dump their so-called “pharmacy profit managers” or PBMs — which corporations and authorities businesses use to handle their workers’ prescription advantages — throughout the subsequent three years.
Named the Patients Before Monopolies Act, the Senate invoice, sponsored by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), has a sister proposal launched within the House of Representatives.
Though neither invoice names any corporations particularly, the NYT indicated that together with UnitedWell being Group — the mother or father firm of UHC and its PBM Optum Rx — CVS’ Caremark and Cigna’s Express scripts collectively account for 80 % of all prescriptions within the United States.
Crucially, these payments signify the primary laws focusing on the insurance coverage business after Thompson’s assassination final week.
In a handwritten manifesto, suspected murderer Luigi Mangione railed in opposition to the American healthcare business and asserted that “these parasites” — that means, it appears, insurance coverage executives like Thompson — “had it coming.”
Though not one of the Congress members concerned within the introduction of those payments cited Mangione or Thompson of their statements concerning the laws, Warren instructed in a HuffPost interview earlier this week that the general public response to the CEO’s homicide represented a boiling level for the American folks.
“The visceral response from folks throughout this nation who really feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance coverage corporations must be a warning to everybody within the well being care system,” the previous presidential candidate stated.
“Violence isn’t the reply,” she continued, “however folks might be pushed solely to this point.”
As of now, it is unclear whether or not the invoice has any likelihood of passing, particularly within the lame-duck Congressional session throughout which it was launched.
Still, it is a fairly large deal that it is making the rounds in any respect — and particularly whereas Thompson’s physique has barely had time to chill.
More on insurance coverage anger: Leaked Video Shows Insurance CEO Gloating About Denying Care, Calling Critics Delusional
