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Comment by martythemaniak | Hacker News Reader

America sure is funny. They just happily elected an oligarchy that can't wait to very aggressively cut anything social spending they can (most government spending is pensions and healthcare, ACA subsidies are also expiring in 2025 and there's 0% chance they get extended), but they're also kinda gleeful about the murder of a CEO that is merely operating a company within the environment they so happily voted back in? It's just an absurd situation all around.

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Politics aside, the system is fundamentally broken when you have for-profit companies whose priority is maximizing shareholder value. Patients will always be second.

You can't equate the general sentiment of the nation with the motivations of the killer.

Though it sure would've added a lot to the media hype if the killer was wearing a MAGA hat.

Donald Trump won the election 77 million to 74 million, and that's only counting voters. 74 million is a lot of people who voted against that oligarchy and are likely ideologically aligned with being gleeful with health insurance CEO murder.

You can't elect an oligarchy. They have a four year term, and almost no one in the incoming administration has a long-term career in government. It's literally the opposite of an oligarchy, it's a republic.

Also, United Healthcare has no place in the incoming administration. Bobby Kennedy Jr is Trump's selection for Health Secretary, if anything is a spurn to the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance industry.

Growing up in a very conservative household, I was always told to look at what people do, not at what they say all my childhood. Now those same people are ranting about what Trump and his cronies say, completely ignoring what they do. It'll always amaze me how easy it was to convince people to ignore actions, and only pay attention to words.

RFK will only be able to propose plans within what Trump will allow; the overlap between their ideas is only bad things. If he tries to go any further he'll just end up like Tom Price did, and resign in six months.

You might benefit from a closer examination of what an oligarchy is and how the US political system functions in the context of campaign finance, lobbyist groups involvement with drafting legislation, and the conveyor between the legislative branch and private industry jobs. If you have the constitution for rummaging through tweedy academic thickets you might also consider reviewing the Princeton papers that deconstruct the US political apparatus and indicate pretty vividly that the US is, in fact, an oligarchy. Lastly, given the combination of wealth inequality in the US and the Supreme Court rulings on money == speech and political influence == speech it's pretty trivial to conclude that money == political influence and the top 0.1% has more of both. To be clear, this is an indictment of both major political parties in the US, as they operate functionally identical campaign finance strategies.

Are you referring to the Panama Papers? I searched for Princeton Papers but didn't find anything similar to you comment.

I am not, let me try to find you a link. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

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