DV Journal

The murder of a Minnesota legislator and the attempted assassination of another last weekend pushed the issue of political violence to the forefront.

On Monday, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives held a moment of silence for the fallen Democratic state representative killed by a politically-motivated assassin. And Philadelphia Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D) has proposed legislation designed to increase security for members of state government.

Kenyatta’s proposal would allow legislators to use campaign funds to cover costs of personal security and would task the State Police with providing security for the House speaker, Senate president pro tempore, governor, lieutenant governor, auditor general, attorney general, and state treasurer.

“Let’s be clear: what happened in Minnesota wasn’t just tragic—it was a deliberate, evil act of political violence,” Kenyatta said.

“This cannot become normal. No matter your party or position, no one signs up for public service thinking their life or the lives of their loved ones, will be at risk. We should be able to serve and engage with our communities without fear,” Kenyatta added.

The attacks in Minnesota are part of a rising tide of political violence that has already reached Pennsylvania.

An arsonist set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion in April while Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family slept. And last year, an assassin came within inches of killing President Donald Trump as he campaigned in Butler, Pa.

Now political observers are asking why political violence is on the rise, and why is so much of it coming from the left wing of American politics?

Experts at the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) say they’re seeing an “alarming rise in assassination culture.” The group, affiliated with Rutgers, studies hate, extremism, and manipulation on online platforms and tracks threats.

“Violence targeting figures like Donald Trump or Elon Musk has gone beyond normalization—it’s being sanctified as resistance by parts of the political left,” NCRI’s Max Horder told Newsweek.

Take the example of Luigi Mangione, the private-school graduate from a wealthy family charged with murdering a healthcare executive on the streets of New York City. The left-wing assassin was quickly embraced as a cause célèbre by some progressives. A poll taken in December found 41 percent of voters under the age of 30 found Mangione’s deadly attack “acceptable.”

Tal Fortgang, legal policy fellow with The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, told DVJournal the violence is linked to the polarization in American politics.

Trump is “obviously a polarizing figure, who clearly drives many people to despair, and to take drastic action,” said Fortgang. But polarization can’t be allowed to legitimize violence, he added. “Trump’s not the first unpopular president we’ve ever had, and the burning quality of one’s hatred of our president does not legitimize lashing out against anyone in any way. I mean, frankly, it doesn’t.”

Personalizing your polarized politics can lead to the sorts of violence targeting Tesla cars and Tesla showrooms. Elon Musk’s electric vehicles have long been popular with progressives; but once he joined the Trump White House, he became the target of protests and violent rhetoric.

Regarding Mangione, Fortgang said, “There’s a mass movement that celebrates the person they believe to be a killer, not because they think he’s innocent but because they believe he is the killer. They believe he committed homicide, and that’s why they love him.”

“I’m shocked but I’m surprised,” he said. He noted that few people are pacifists and most believe in self-defense. But “when is one justified in taking violent preemptive action? What’s disturbing about the Mangione incident is that there is a language of self-defense that arose around shooting an executive in the back, execution-style, that does not really match our traditional notions of self-defense here in the United States.”

Having such large groups of people believe Mangione was justified and even a hero is “an existential problem for a free society.”

Is political violence getting worse? In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, the Rev. Martin Luther King,  and Malcolm X, were assassinated. There were numerous riots against the Vietnam War, including a large one in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. Members of the Weather Underground set off bombs, including one at the U.S. Capitol.

Asked about whether there’s been more political violence lately than in previous eras, like the 1960s,” Fortgang said, “More people are quick to justify political violence for one reason or another. We’ve developed a more expansive vocabulary for justifying or dismissing political violence than we had in the past.”

Polls show the suspect in the ambush murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson may be emerging as a folk hero to college students.

Half of the 1,026 college students surveyed by Generation Lab had a favorable view of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of gunning down Thompson outside a New York hotel in December. An additional 48 percent said Mangione’s action was justified.

The statistics are in line with an Emerson College poll finding 41 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds thought the Thompson murder was acceptable. Nineteen percent had a neutral viewpoint.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., seemed to empathize with Mangione’s actions. “Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far,” she said. Warren later backtracked and said murder wasn’t justifiable.

While it’s easy to blame health insurance companies for ballooning health costs, there are plenty of questions regarding the role hospitals play in raising prices.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services statistics show Americans spent $4.9 trillion on healthcare in 2023. More than half of that went to Hospital Care and Physician and Clinical Services.

Meanwhile, hospitals collected $205 billion in profits, according to Rice University economist Vivian Ho. By comparison, health insurance companies earned $25 billion.

Ho said the data suggest “hospitals are overcharging patients.” She said people should be more angry at hospitals instead of insurance companies.

Ho co-authored an Oxford University Press study showing the hospital price index grew at a faster rate from 2006 to 2023 than insurance premiums or professional services. The study also suggested for-profit and nonprofit hospital profit margins were always greater than insurance company profit margins from 2011 to 2022.

With those increases in profits came accusations of bad behavior by hospital systems.

In 2021, a 72-year-old Ohio woman saw her $30 bill for steroid injections skyrocket to $1,394 after the hospital classified it as “operating room services.”

The hospital said it was a bill classification change from an office-based setting to a hospital-based setting. In other words, the same treatment would have cost $1,300 less if given in an office across the street.

A Michigan woman reported a similar problem. She was charged more than $1,100 for a hospital facility fee despite going to the same clinic she had been visiting for the past five years. The hospital defended the charge saying they have to charge for appointments taking place “in provider-based clinics.”

The billing increase is so bad that the federal government added pre-treatment approval requirements this year to tamp down on costs.

One problem could be the lack of independent physicians. The American Medical Association said last year that more than 50 percent of American physicians are hospital employees or contractors. It was 40 percent in 2012.

The federal government may play a role in the problem, too.

A Virginia obstetrician-gynecologist received 59 years in prison after prosecutors said he performed unnecessary surgeries on women between 2010 and 2019. Court documents said Javaid Perwaiz sterilized Medicaid patients “without consent forms signed 30 days in advance,” as required by law. Other procedures included hysterectomies and “other invasive and irreversible surgeries.”

Hospitals also benefited from federal COVID dollars, receiving about $84 billion from the Provider Relief Fund in 2020. About $2.6 billion in overpayments was expected to be repaid after an audit of Health Resources and Service Administration numbers. A Government Accountability Office report from 2023 said $1.356 billion of those overpayments had not been recovered. The GAO blamed HRSA officials for being too slow in establishing a timeframe for the repayments.

While major hospital systems said inflation and the pandemic caused financial strain, a 2023 JAMA Health Forum study found they’re doing fine.

The study reported 75 percent of 4,423 hospitals had a positive net operating income in 2020 and 2021. Of those 3,337 hospitals that ended up in the black, 78 percent did it without COVID assistance. The authors also noted that 785 hospitals saw their financial situation go from negative to positive during that time.

Coming out of the pandemic, multiple hospital systems and insurance companies engaged in contract disputes over reimbursement rates.

While insurance companies were mostly blamed for the disputes, hospitals demanded higher reimbursement rates. Two high-profile disputes in Colorado and Nebraska involved hospitals allegedly demanding three times the rate of inflation from insurance companies. One insurance company president called the demands “abnormal” and that employers and employees would suffer the consequences.

When the Thompson-led UnitedHealthcare negotiated with UNC Health in 2023, officials said the hospital system wanted a $570 million increase in costs. UNC Health officials claimed UnitedHealthcare refused to negotiate. A multi-year deal was eventually reached.

Despite all the complaints about health insurance, the American Medical Association noted in 2022 that insurance spending accounted for 6 percent of healthcare spending.

Health insurance companies may not be the real villains.