RALPH NADER: The ‘silent violence’ of corporate greed and power

For decades consumer groups have been sounding clarion calls for action against the “silent violence” causing massive casualties that arise from the unbridled power of corporate greed, criminal negligence or indifference. They cite statistical and case studies that the media and lawmakers mostly ignored or relegated to low levels of enforcement.

Corporate bosses just have their corporate lawyers and public relations hacks brush away such warnings and pleas. One-day stories they knew would not have legs if they just kept quiet or mumbled some general words of regret, promising some vague improvements to their products and services.

But year after year, the deadly toll goes up, not down, and the horrors continue. For example, at least 5,000 people a week die in hospitals in the U.S. due to “preventable problems,” concluded a peer-reviewed study by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine physicians in 2016.

There has been no mass mobilization by either government officials or industry executives to address this staggering toll of at least 250,000 fatalities a year.

Behind these figures are real people with families, friends and co-workers shocked, incensed or despondent over avoidable losses of life and preventable harms. Some of them undoubtedly knew the specific causes and demanded correction and compensation, to no avail.

Avoidable casualties also arise from the sweeping denial of insurance coverage for ill or injured patients by greedy unregulated or underregulated health insurance companies maximizing profits and bonuses for CEOs. Many insurance companies are now using AI to help wear down consumers.

About 2,000 Americans a week lose their lives because they cannot afford health insurance to cover prompt diagnosis and treatment costs. System-driven patterns of denial of benefits by health insurers also cause deaths and injuries. The companies have algorithms that automatically delay or deny needed procedures without even seeing a patient’s medical records or speaking with the patient’s physician.

Insurance policies are full of fine-print deductibles, co-pays, waivers and exclusions that drive consumers and their doctors up the wall. Insurance premiums are paid by patients or employers ahead of time with advertised assurances.

In the past two months, consumers have been overwhelmed by a blizzard of television ads by giant insurers e.g., Aetna, Cigna, and Humana for their Medicare (dis)Advantage plans aimed at elderly beneficiaries. The ads are loaded with “freebies” that paint the companies as charities instead of cunning commercial marketers. In reality, denial of benefits is higher for these plans than for traditional Medicare. 

An Oct. 31, 2023 NBC investigation titled “Deny, deny, deny: By rejecting claims, Medicare Advantage plans threaten rural hospitals and patients,” by star reporter Gretchen Morgenson exposed another deadly impact of Medicare (dis)Advantage programs on rural hospitals in America.

These companies are so entrenched that they have become largely immune to exposés. They have gamed the system to straitjacket both patients and health care workers. The health care industry gets away with about $360 billion in computerized billing fraud and abuses every year. Prosecutions are minimal, and lawmakers are mostly indifferent as they count their campaign cash donations.

Just under the surface is a seething whirlpool of resentment, anger, frustration and bitterness about corporate abuses. Such reactions are often most pronounced in poor areas or workplaces, where people are subjected to choking pollution or exposure to carcinogenic toxins leading to cancer, heart disease and other organ ailments.

The corporate perpetrators, however, are remote from the impacts of their operations and policies. Their hugely overpaid bosses rule from elaborate suites and enjoy unimaginable luxuries. Very few people know the names, even of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies like ExxonMobil, Aetna, Humana, Duke Energy, Bank of America, and so on. The lethality, the theft, the domination, and the escape from the rule of law are rendered impersonally by the corporatists who are now investing huge sums to go even more abstract and remote with tyrannical generative AI algorithms.

This week, a man, still on the run, made his anger very personal. Around 7 a.m., he singled out, in front of a busy midtown Manhattan hotel, the chief executive of the giant UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, and shot him. Police collected the bullet casings from his pistol. On these casings were the words, “deny,” “delay” and “depose.”

As news of this fatal shooting spread over social media, a torrent of angry or morbid comments flooded the Internet. The New York Times reported a few, to wit:

“I’m an ER nurse and the things I’ve seen dying patients get denied for by insurance makes me physically sick. I just can’t feel sympathy for him because of all of those patients and their families.”

“Thoughts and deductibles to the family,” read one observer underneath a video of a CNN picture. “Unfortunately, my condolences are out of network.”

Tragically, Mr. Thompson, according to a company employee, was one of the few executives who spoke of changing the culture of the company.

But corporate culture, marinated to the core with endless cravings for ever-growing easy profits, is very hard to change – especially when it is so easy to extract more and more premium dollars from powerless consumers who lack adequate regulatory protections.

And so, the social media explosion included this typical comment on TikTok: “I pay $1,300 a month for health insurance with an $8,000 deductible. ($23,000 yearly). When I finally reached that deductible, they denied my claims. He was making a million dollars a month.”

One wonders about the reaction if this were to have happened four months before the November election. Could the uproar have transformed the slimy rhythms of the Harris campaign, orchestrated by the Democrats’ corporate-conflicted political consultants who manage the candidate messages and who definitely don’t listen to the warnings and popular proposals by Senator Bernie Sanders?