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brian thompson
Health Workers Plan Global Day of Action to Demand 'End to the Genocide in Gaza'
"After witnessing 15 months of relentless violence and destruction in Gaza, we can no longer carry on as if everything is normal," said organizer Doctors Against Genocide.
Jan 03, 2025
As Israel's 15-month annihilation of Gaza continues with intensified attacks on medical infrastructure and workers, an international coalition of advocacy groups is planning a
#SickFromGenocide global day of action on Monday "to take a stand against the targeted attacks on healthcare."
Organizer Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) and co-sponsors including Healthcare Workers for Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, Do No Harm Coalition, Labor for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council, and others are calling on healthcare workers around the world to take a day of mental health leave "to reflect on the immense moral injury of funding a genocide and engage the most important aspect of treatment: publicly demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza."
Monday's day of action is set to include a "Sick From Genocide" global vigil and pop-up clinics in cities across the United States, whose government gives Israel billions of dollars in weapons support each year.
"For 15 months, we have watched in horror as children and families have been obliterated by unrelenting attacks," DAG said in a statement Friday. "Hospitals, the bedrock of lifesaving care, have been turned into death traps. The recent bombing and burning of Kamal Adwan Hospitaland the arrest of our colleague, the pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya,exemplify the deliberate targeting of healthcare workers and facilities—tactics designed to accelerate the annihilation and forced displacement of the Palestinian people in Gaza."
DAG member Dr. Rupa Marya—a University of California, San Francisco professor of medicine who's currently on paid suspension after questioning how to manage students coming to U.S. schools from a zone with an active genocide where military service is mandatory—told Common Dreams this week that healthcare professionals should "take a mental health break to grieve and take care of ourselves. Let's call in sick on January 6th. We are sick from genocide."
"We are burned out from 15 months of these images and our humanity being denied in our places of work, where we are being silenced, we are being framed as 'haters' for standing against a genocide," she advised.
"What we're asking people to do, is get your friends together, and start a pop-up clinic, set up a free clinic in the street," Marya continued. "Are other people sick from genocide? Come, we'll take care of you. Do people need free healthcare? Come, we'll take care of you."
"We need to demand that our institutions of care cut off relationships with a nation that is actively committing genocide," she asserted. "We need to demand that the United States stop sending arms to Israel. We send billions and billions of dollars to Israel to arm itself while we have people not getting healthcare in the United States."
"We have record numbers of people in the streets, many of them who have lost their homes because the most common cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is medical debt," Marya noted. "So we can't even fund our own healthcare here, while we're sending money to Israel, where they have universal healthcare."
"Let's start showing people what a different healthcare system would look like based in a moral commitment to care, based on our love for our communities, and based on justice," she said. "That is the healthcare system that we need."
"Why are we spending our money destroying another people's healthcare when we can use that money to be taking care of our own here?"
Referring to last month's assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, Marya added: "And if you don't believe me, look what happened to that CEO. We don't want to see political violence here. We don't want people to have to get murdered for us to understand how desperate people are for healthcare."
"So," she asked, "why are we spending our money destroying another people's healthcare when we can use that money to be taking care of our own here?"
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Murder of Health Insurance CEO Exposes Depth of Rage Over Corporate Greed
The killing of Brian Thompson, as horrendous as it was, forced us to confront the injustices we’ve been taught to tolerate.
Jan 02, 2025
Call him a misguided hero or villain, but the man who killed the United Healthcare CEO struck a nerve, exposing a deep rage shared by many Americans across the political spectrum—anger at an industry that earns obscene profits from the suffering of others. His chilling act shifted the national conversation from immigration to corporate greed. Finally.
For too long, Americans have hesitated to criticize the super-rich. Chalk it up to our tribalist nature that has so many convinced that our financial struggles are caused not by wealth hoarding but by those we view as outside our clan.
History offers many examples. In Nazi Germany, Jews were blamed for a financial depression triggered by the American stock market crash. My parents and grandmother barely escaped; many in my family did not.
Decades later, Ronald Reagan handed the wealthy the largest tax cuts in U.S. history while vilifying the “Welfare Queen” who leached from the feeding trough of “Big Government.”
This racist caricature was meant to distract from policies that began a 40-year transfer of wealth from the 90 percent to the one percent, producing the largest wealth gap in a century. It’s a story about the undeserving poor vs. the deserving rich.
Today, we face a similar narrative. Immigrants are blamed both for stealing jobs and freeloading despite their essential role in propping up our economy given our shrinking workforce. After being fed a steady anti-immigration media diet, it’s not surprising that nearly four out of five Republicans support placing undocumented immigrants in internment camps.
The greater the wealth imbalance, the more the wealthy need to distort the truth. They peddle the long-discredited Trickle-Down theory, claiming that what benefits them benefits us all. But rising tides don’t lift all boats when some people have no boat at all, or when their boats are sinking because the superyachts are capsizing small craft in their massive wake.
We have to stop believing that billionaires have working people’s interests at heart. In fact, they’re mutually exclusive. A gangbuster stock market depends on keeping wages low and unions banished. Outsized campaign contributions ensure that corporate taxes are slashed and regulations meant to keep us healthy, safe, and not impoverished are gutted.
It makes complete sense that the wealth lobby exploits fears of “socialism” to keep people voting against their own interests. It’s no coincidence the U.S. remains the only developed nation without universal healthcare. This is where our anger should be directed.
But redirecting anger is not easy. Six of the richest US corporations control 90 percent of our media and their profits depend on algorithms and news coverage designed to keep us divided, misinformed, and distracted from this billionaire plunder. “You know the media has failed,” says essayist Rebecca Solnit, “when people are more concerned that a trans girl might play on a softball team than that the climate crisis will destroy our planet.”
During the next four years it will be critical to get people to see through this deception. When we start feeling the fallout from a second Trump term, the scapegoating will intensify. Tariffs, more tax cuts for the rich, and the loss of immigrant labor will send prices soaring and balloon the deficit. Many may lose healthcare, Social Security, and worker protections. The wealth lobby will no doubt point fingers elsewhere.
Change is possible though. As a grant writer for 30 years, I’ve seen campaigns shift public opinion on issues like marriage equality, net neutrality, and climate change. Recently, several states won historic economic reforms after decades of trying. In Massachusetts, RiseUpMass won the nation’s sixth millionaire’s tax by debunking claims it would harm retirees.
In Washington state, the Balance Our Tax Code, a coalition of over 80 diverse groups, from home health aide workers to members of the Yakima Nation, was able pass a capital gains tax, calling out Amazon and Microsoft for avoiding their share of taxes. “The biggest lesson we learned,” said campaign communications manager Reiny Cohen “was that when we come together and tell the same story, lawmakers have no choice but to listen.”
In other words, changing minds requires a coordinated echo chamber. The #MeToo movement showed how the right framing, amplified through the media, can shift perspectives and galvanize action. Imagine if we could help more people connect the dots between stagnant wages, failing schools, a burning planet, unaffordable housing, and the greed of the one percent.
But the message must go beyond bashing billionaires. It must present a compelling vision of what is possible if we stand up against the ultra rich. The We Make Minnesota coalition was able to pass a tax increase on the wealthiest one percent by countering anti-Somali rhetoric with a “We’re Better Off Together” message. Instead of using a “Stop the Cuts” framework, the campaign emphasized the subsidized health care, free preschool, and tuition-free college programs the state is now able to offer.
This isn’t about destroying capitalism. A healthy balance between a free market and protective government is essential. But when the richest among us prioritize profit over the well-being of the majority, it’s no longer about politics—it’s about survival.
The murder of the United Healthcare CEO, as horrendous as it was, forced us to confront the injustices we’ve been taught to tolerate. This moment must unite us against the true enemies of the American dream: unchecked greed and exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. We can either remain manipulated by scapegoating and fear or see the truth and demand change. Only then can we build a society where no one feels driven to such desperate measures again.
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Americans Are Angry About Their Health Insurance—With Good Reason
As a physician, I have seen patients suffer and die in order to pad the bottom lines of corporate health insurers—and in recent years I have seen this problem getting much worse.
Jan 01, 2025
How should we react when a man is shot to death on the street on his way to work? Our humanity tells us that we should be shocked and horrified—and feel that something is deeply wrong with such a brazen act of murder. Ideally, we would do what we could to help sooth the survivors, condemn the violence, and bring the perpetrator to justice.
So why did hundreds of thousands of people have the exact opposite reaction when UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was executed in New York City last month? Because Americans are furious with health insurance corporations—and they have every right to be.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, many Americans took to social media not to mourn, but to celebrate. Caustic posts about prior authorization and denied medical claims were common. Sympathetic statements were met with rancor—and in the case of UnitedHealth Group’s own statement, over 70,000 “laugh reactions” before the company made that tally private. Even verbose political figures like Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump declined to comment for days. This shooting touched a raw nerve.
The health insurance industry doesn’t have a communications problem, it has a profiteering problem—and no amount of marketing will convince people who have already been burned.
As a physician who’s treated countless victims of gun violence, and who’s life’s work is to care for all of my patients, I found this response to be deeply unnerving. But I also can’t waive it away with simple explanations like online radicalization or trolling. Something much deeper is at play.
For decades, health insurance corporations like United have been growing more powerful and more profitable. How do they generate these profits? By taking in as much money as possible in premiums and paying out as little as possible in medical claims. Over time, they have tried everything from requiring “prior authorization” of care, to excluding high-quality providers from their networks, to imposing a Byzantine series of charges including ever-growing copays, coinsurance, and deductibles. When all else fails, many insurers simply deny claims.
Behind each of these practices are millions of Americans who are made to suffer. I hear these stories routinely in my practice, and they never become easier to stomach. I have seen patients with aggressive cancer who avoided seeing a doctor for months because they feared bankruptcy; patients with chronic conditions like diabetes who are denied treatments that would improve their quality of life; and gunshot victims whose fight to recover and gain a semblance of normalcy is complicated by their health plans saying no, no, and no again.
I have seen patients suffer and die in order to pad the bottom lines of corporate health insurers—and in recent years I have seen this problem getting much worse.
These are the stories that Americans are sharing in this fraught moment. We have to ask ourselves: Are we listening? And what are we going to do about it?
Insurers like UnitedHealthcare will have their own responses. Their PR teams will no doubt work overtime to marginalize aggrieved voices and to highlight what they consider to be the “value” of their health plans. Expect to see glossy commercials and towering billboards touting the “peace of mind” that Americans should enjoy knowing that their medical needs are “covered.” But the health insurance industry doesn’t have a communications problem, it has a profiteering problem—and no amount of marketing will convince people who have already been burned.
Behind the scenes, corporate insurers will no doubt lobby for the preferential treatment they have come to expect. Our newly elected Congress may acquiesce, or they may decide that the industry needs to be regulated—a strategy that has failed to live up to its promise.
Republicans and Democrats have made separate attempts to combine federal requirements with federal largesse in order to make corporate health insurers play nice. But both the Affordable Care Act and the Medicare Advantage program have only succeeded in ballooning the profits of firms like United—without improving Americans’ health or sparing their wallets.
It’s also clear that violence is not the answer, both on a purely human level and because corporate insurers will simply not be moved. UnitedHealthcare will have a new CEO in short order, and it will be that person’s responsibility to boost profits and make shareholders wealthier. Responding to patients’ cries will not serve these ends, so it is not in the cards.
What would help is a proven reform proposal that is long overdue: a single-payer national health program. Such a system would provide universal coverage and comprehensive benefits—with zero out-of-pocket costs. It could be easily implemented given the gargantuan sums we spend on healthcare in this country, and it would be a boon for those who are suffering, and for those who are fearful.
Americans are crying out in pain—and are recognizing that they are not alone in their pain. We should listen to these cries and we should finally, after decades of delay, do something about it.
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