Cliffs Notes

 

 

As I've said before, I am a graduate of Wheeler High School, which is located in East Cobb County, Georgia.

(Cobb County has four sections: East, West, North, and South. In the 70s when I was going to school, East Cobb was the Le-Te-Fricken-Da section of Cobb.  Parts of it still are to this day, but parts are not.)

My only real problem was that most kids at Wheeler ( school motto: "Where the leaders of tomorrow are smoking cigarettes between the classes of today"), were very smart.

Some of the kids in my class were so smart they would actually READ AN ASSIGNED BOOK and be ready for a test.

However, others were like me-hindered by a genetic defect called being a total dork. If not for Cliffs Notes*, I'd probably would still be in school.  A sixty-five year old high school junior.

In case you don't remember, Cliffs Notes is a "popular tool for many students seeking a shortcut to understanding complex texts. These condensed summaries provide a quick overview of books, plays, and poems, allowing students to grasp the main ideas and themes without reading the entire work." (Faster Capital Blog: The Pros And Cons of Using Cliffs Notes)

Simply, Cliffs Notes allowed the 70s high school student a shortcut in understanding complex literature that was "boring as all get out" as we would say back them.

Cliffs Notes were controversial.  I had one English teacher (not Roger Hines, although he probably agreed) say the Cliffs Notes had  "intentional errors," and you shouldn't rely on it.

In other words, you are supposed to read all of Tess Of The D'Urbervilles and not just the Cliffs Notes like "that Manis kid."  

On my Facebook page, I decided to give everyone a break about the pros or cons of the orange man and asked if anybody used Cliffs Notes.   A lot of people, now that they are long past high school, confessed that they used Cliffs Notes and tried to bull their way through the book reports.  God bless America.
 

One Facebook friend of mine, the incredible Terry McCoy, who didn't go to Wheeler, but he could have, wrote about another product that I missed:

"Monarch notes were my book summaries of choice. Cliffs notes (sic) were too common and teachers could smell a book report written from them a mile away. Monarch notes were more obscure. But let’s be honest, any teacher who assigned Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray was just trying to take the semester off and discourage any kid from reading one more word for the rest of their life. It almost worked on me."

(Why am I just now learning about Monarch Notes?  What a rip.) 

Terry is right about teachers and Cliffs Notes. Back then you did not have computer programs in which the teacher could load your book report on to sniff out Cliffs Notes usage and plagiarism  although it wasn't necessary for my reports.

"Tess of The D'Uberviiles is about a girl named Tess who lived in a house in the town of D'Urberville. It may have something to do with sex, but I couldn't tell. There were no good parts that could have spiced things up like 'Tess walked in buck naked'.  I know I would have enjoyed it more. Please give me a passing grade on this. I would hate to go to summer school." 

I will say this: sometimes a student must take a short cut because school is interfering with other parts of their lives like work, dating, and sitting around listening to records.  

I knew someone who took a short cut. 

I knew this guy in college.  He was a biology major and was an outstanding student. He had to take a French class for some odd reason. The professor gave an assignment: a book review of a classic in French literature.

My classmate chose "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."  The reason:  he had a collection of Classic Illustrated Comics and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" was in his collection. So, he reviewed the comic book. He also had to include a biographical essay on the author.  He copied the biography, from the comic book, word for word.  He made an A with a "great job" notation from the professor.

He has had a successful career as a physician.  Currently, he is a professor at a medical school associated with a large state university. He did it all without Cliffs Notes.  I think. 

 

*It should actually be "Cliff's Notes" because they were notes from Clifton Hillgass, a great American.

 

 

Things Have Changed

 

 

As you get older, you realize things change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

We used to go out without our phones. There were two reasons for this. One, the phones were attached to our houses. Two, they had "pay" phones in which you could drop a dime (hence the lyric from "Operator": "you can keep the time") or, later, a quarter (from the Travis Tritt song, "Here's A Quarter, Call Someone Who cares.")*

Now, we make sure our phones are with us all of the time, and we are naked without them. 

I took my wife to an appointment and accidentally left my cell phone in the car.  I had to wait for a WHOLE 15 MINUTES without something to look at.  I don't know how I survived.

I thought about how things had changed when I watched the confirmation hearings on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. becoming the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

There used to be something magical about being a Kennedy.  They were part Beyonce, part Taylor Swift, and part Timothee Chalamet.  They were always the best and the brightest for reasons we just can't explain.

Of course, John Kennedy was the youngest President of the United States when it was cool to be young.Unfortunately, he was assassinated and succeeded by Lyndon Johnson, who, let's be historically honest, was ugly. 

History buffs remember that Kennedy's Attorney General was his brother, Robert. That could not happen today, although it would have been a hoot to have Billy Carter as Attorney General.  (Nobody under 60 understands the humor of this past sentence.)

Then, in 1968, which I contend is the year everything went to the septic tank, Robert ran for President and was assassinated, too.

You had this aura of sympathy for the family because of all the tragedy, the glitz, and the glamour.

Shoot, a Kennedy could drive a car off a bridge, leave a girl (who was not his wife) in the car to drown, and still run for President.  You can't buy that type of magic.

However, history has caught up with the Kennedys.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was carrying the torch by being an attorney, of course.  He made a pretty good living suing companies over something called torts**. According to a major legal scholar, Wikipedia, a tort is a "civil wrong that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act."  

What distinguished Kennedy from all of the other lawyers, besides his last name, was he spoke out against Big Pharma and vaccines.

For years, he said vaccines caused autism. Apparently, this is not true, and apparently, he doesn't care.  He has said he wants improved science and information so people can make informed decisions.  Which means he doesn't want people to listen to a physician about a vaccine, but rather, listen to a lawyer.

I've been hearing about the evils of vaccines for years because we have a chiropractic college in Marietta and knew a lot of students who said vaccines were terrible. I also listened to the Imus in The Morning radio show, and he used to say vaccines caused autism. 

But still, as for me and my family, we chose to listen to physicians instead of chiropractic students and disc jockeys.  I know, I'm a chump.

Kennedy has been saying all of this for years.  I never heard one word. Nary a peep. Not a grunt from our friends on the left bank of politics. 

 But things have changed. One of the marvelous, wonderful, perfect Kennedys has aligned himself with one of the true all-time icks of the world, Orange Hitler himself, Donald Trump.

Kennedy endorsed Trump, and as payback, Trump nominated Kennedy to be Secretary of Health And Human Services.

Suddenly, Kennedy became enemy number one of the Democrats.

Last week, his cousin Caroline Schlossberg, the only living child of John Kennedy, said, "I have known Bobby my whole life; we grew up together. It's no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because he himself is a predator."

 It is well known that RFK, Jr. likes the ladies, and he had a well-known sex-texting affair with a young reporter last year.   All I can say is that it is a family tradition.

At his confirmation hearings, the Democrats followed the tried and true method of yelling at people they disagree with, especially about things that seem odd.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont noted "The gist of what you are trying to say today is you're really pro-vaccine, you just want to ask questions," Sanders said. "Yet your organization is making money selling a child's product that casts fundamental doubt on the usefulness of vaccines."

The onesies have anti-vaxx slogans like "Unvaxxed and Unafraid" and "Get you dirty paws off of me you dirty ape". ***

Elizabeth Warren wanted Kennedy to promise he wouldn't sue a pharmacy company for five years after he left office.  That's his jam, Liz.

I've never seen a Democrat treated in such a way  years.  It was like he was almost a Republican, which he is not. Or a conservative, which he is not.

He's just on another team.  Things have changed.

 

 

* Travis Tritt is from my hometown of Marietta, Georgia and went to Sprayberry High School. Fun fact: "Remember The Titans" was filmed at their football field. 

** The Torts was the name of Travis Tritt's band in high school.   Just kidding, Travis.

*** Just kidding again. Although, that would look good on a onesie.

First Draft

 

 

I have obtained a rough draft of President Again Trump's inaugural address on 1/20/25.

 

"Vice President JD, Vice President JD's hot wife, Little Speaker Johnson, Tall Senator Thune, Chief Justice Roberts who probably won't give me time to put my hand the Bible, justices of the United States Supreme Court including the ones I don't like, President Horndog Clinton and his awful, terrible wife, President Kid Bush, President Big Barry Obama, President Biden (if he's awake), Vice President Harris (ha, ha) and my fellow citizens:

I'm back, baby!

You thought you got rid of me, didn't you? Didn't you?

Well, you didn't.

And I'm back with something I didn't have before: A mandate!

Suck it, losers!

Anyway, the golden age of America begins right now. From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again by all of those dumb-dumb nations that despise us except when they need a little cash. We will be the envy of every nation just like I'm the envy of every fat 78-year-old man when they see my arm candy, First Lady Melania Trump.

Yeah, we ought to call her Dr. Melania Trump because she has a Ph.d in Hubba-Hubba. Remember, she's all mine President Clinton!

During every single day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply, make sure I'm on TV a lot. I will be interviewed by Hannity. I will have a press conference every 15 minutes even if I don't have anything to say. I'll just drop in the press briefing room, just to say howdy. I won't use buzzwords like 'circle back'. If I don't know the answer to something, which is unlikely, I will make it up.

Even though I'm in my late 70s, like somebody else up here, you will not have to worry that the President of The United States has wandered off somewhere in his pajamas like Uncle Junior did on The Sopranos.

I will issue an Executive Order to find out if Tony Soprano was whacked. The American people deserve to know!

America will soon be greater, stronger, and far more cooler than ever before.  Have you seen me dance?  How many 78-year-old men start a dance craze? I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we can put "Y.M.C.A." back on the charts. A tide of change is sweeping the country.  Pretty soon, even Americans will be answering customer service calls.

But first, we must be honest about the challenges we face. We must admit that we have a truckload of goofy people trying to lead our country. We have to stop listening to them, no matter how awesome their bosoms are. We need to listen to the ugly people who had to study in their younger years because other kids wouldn't play with them.  They might have some good ideas.  

Our country can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency because it is really hard to do.  It is also hard to do when the mayor of your city is in Ghana and not out fighting the fires—just a little beautiful editorial comment from your favorite president. 

My suggestion: if wild fires are threatening your community, you should have a lot of water around to put out the fire.  This is just a little of the common sense I'm bringing back to our country. 

Later today, I will sign some four thousand executive orders that will make America great.  I will rename the Gulf of Mexico "The Gulf of America" because we need to have our own gulf.  Let Mexico go out and get another gulf. Geez, do I have to think of everything?

I will sign an executive order stating we have only two genders and not the twelve hundred genders all the college kids think you should celebrate.

You no longer have to put your "preferred pronoun" in your email address. You can thank me later.

Yes, I'm still thinking about Greenland. Here's a fun fact about Greenland.  It is mainly ice. Isn't that wild?  And Iceland is mainly green. Crazy.  

I'm going to pardon the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, but remember, President Grandpa pardoned everybody in his family and Anthony Fauci, who honestly wasn't even on my radar. Still, it would have been a good idea to go after Big Dr. Tony because he made everybody wear a mask and stand ten yards apart.  But what are you going to do?

In conclusion, I will ask one question: Are y'all ready for this?  We're going to have a ball."

The Lonesome Death Of The Mall

 

For people of a certain age, you can remember the first time you went to a mall.

Around the Metro Atlanta Area, most people went to the Lenox Square Mall, which is in Buckhead, a section of Atlanta known for its traffic, offices, and people who are better than you.

But not us at Manis Manor.  My father could think of nothing worse than traipsing around a building of stores with his wife and his feral children.

My mother was raised in the Mississippi Delta, where going to town meant going to the store. There, you would meet somebody you knew. It was a social occasion. It was different in suburban Cobb County, Georgia, where it was just like Ellis Island with all the new people who moved here from far away lands like Indiana.  She always said, "I went to K-Mart and didn't see anyone I know."

Therefore, we didn't go to the mall.

One day, a friend took my brother and me to Northlake Mall.  A whole new world was presented to me. They had a store that only sold Levi's Blue Jeans. They had a store that just sold records. The big album on sale was Neil Diamond's "Hot August Night" to show you how long ago it was. 

Northlake had big department stores: Rich's and Davidson's. Those store sold name brands.  The clothes were fancier and didn't look like the clothes we bought at K-Mart.

Soon, we wouldn't have to go to Northlake Mall. We would have a nice mall of our own: Cumberland. 

Cumberland Mall had Rich's and Davidson's, too, but also had a Sears and J.C. Penny for us lesser folk.  It had a store called Spencer's Gifts which was full of tacky, naughty, and gross stuff. On top of that it had two bookstores: B. Dalton and Walden Books. 

There was a Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor.  Do you remember Farrell's?  Before we knew it would kill us, they served all kinds of ice cream treats.

One of the treats was a sundae called "The Zoo" and was meant to be shared by a group. The Farrell's employees, all who just happened to be attractive high school girls, delivered "The Zoo"  with a big hullaballoo, sirens blaring, the whole nine yards.

I found this from Wikipedia: "Another menu item that was served in a mini pig trough was the "Trough". If the person who ordered it ate the entire sundae, employees would come out banging on a drum, announce the accomplishment to the entire restaurant, and present the customer with either a ribbon or a pinback button that said, "I made a pig of myself at Farrell's!"  I remember the "Trough" with great fondness.  I remember they oinked at you, too, but maybe that was just a Cobb County thing. And no, I never had a "Trough".

Next to Farrell's was a little shop that sold chicken sandwiches. It was called Chick-fil-A.  I wonder what happened to them.

Well, time passed on. Farrel's went away. I would go to Cumberland a lot, particularly when I was dating my wife. I also worked near Cumberland and spent my lunch hour there. Once, I went to Walden Books, and the great writer Pat Conroy was there.  I talked to the son of The Great Santini for 15 minutes because nobody showed up for his book signing.

The month my wife and I married, they opened another Cobb County mall: Town Center.

Town Center was newer and bigger than Cumberland. They had the same stores, but it was 80s bright.  It was a fun place to go. 

And at Christmas time, it was packed.

We went to Town Center during Christmas time this year. It wasn't packed.

People have, for whatever reason, given up on Town Center.  It needs a touchup and some paint. The parking lot hasn't been paved and restriped in years.  They have a lot of stores you have never heard of and kiosks out the ying-yang.  I will say, if you need a baseball hat, you can find it at Town Center.

There are many reasons for the decline of Malls.

One is that going to a mall is a great big pain. You have to fight traffic to get there, and then you remember you can order it online.

Two, and I'm going to sound like the old fuddy-duddy I am, but the youth of America killed the mall.  Roaming in packs, looking like they are part of some punk rock band from the 70s. 

It became a hangout, and many people decided not to hang out there anymore.

Rich's and Davidson's were bought out by Macy's. This week, Macy's closed three stores in Georgia, but the Cumberland and Town Center stores were safe.  For now.

There's talk of repurposing Town Center with apartments. There's also talk of turning it into classrooms for Kennesaw State. Who knows?

James Lileks said about malls: "It was wonderful! People loved it!  Until they didn't."

It is kind of sad because nobody will have a fond memory of adding something to your cart and then clicking for checkout. 

 

Do Better

 

Like most of you, I spent a good part of the holiday season thinking about the H-1B Visa Program.

Sorry, I was pulling your leg. I spent a lot of time thinking about the College Football Playoffs which is almost as complicated as the H-1B Visa Program.

The H-1B Visa Program allows US employers to hire foreign works in specialty fields like IT because Americans are fat lazy doofuses.  (This is not true.  Some Americans are skinny.)

Who is to blame for Americans being dumb-dumbs while all foreigners are really smart?  Well, according to Vivek Ramaswamy (you remember him?) it is all our culture's fault. 

In a 12/26/24 post on "X" (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter), Ramaswamy said, "The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture."

Our culture "has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer)." 

He says, "A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers."

Okay.

I went to Wheeler High School in the 70s and we celebrated our prom queens because they were easier to look at than the Math Olympiads. We were really shallow people back then.   

I'm not so sure our culture "venerates" Cory from "Boy Meets World because I'm not sure which one was Cory.  Americans do venerate Urkel because he is the only funny one on "Family Matters."  If Americans actually do not venerate Urkel, it is because he spent a good part of his time trying to get smacky face from Laura Winslow instead of trying to become an engineer.  Not that I would know that. 

Ramaswamy adds, "(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates)."

Here's a "fact".  "Multiple sets" of immigrant parents in the 90s could be two, twenty, four hundred, or a million people.  I'm unaware of any study that blamed American Youth Dumb-Dumbness on too much "Boy Meets World."  I'm not sure that this argument proves proves Hal and Helen's kids were successful STEM graduates because they didn't watch "Family Matters". But then again, I watched a lot of "Gilligan's Island" growing up and I didn't become a wildly successful STEM graduate. In my defense, I can talk for hours about why Mary Ann is way hotter than Ginger. 

Ramaswamy goes on to say, "More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.'” 

You hear a lot that adults are "stuck" in the decade they came of age in.  This is not the 90s. I'm not too sure Ramaswamy has been to the mall lately. You don't see a lot of kids just "hanging out" at the mall.

In fact, you don't see a lot of people in the mall anyway.  

On top of that, there aren't Saturday morning cartoons anymore. We have entire channels devoted to cartoons. You would think Vivek would know that. 

Ramaswamy is right to the extent that there is a culture problem.  We put too much emphasis on sports, particularly "travel" ball, which separates the talented kids from the less talented kids.  We place too much emphasis on entertainment as a career when entertainment is just as iffy as sports as a career because, often, it is just a matter of luck rather than talent.

But, as Jack Butler of National Review says, "We won’t solve these problems by disdaining possible sources of virtue, by misapprehending contemporary social realities, and by mechanistically funneling more and more people toward preset pathways of supposed success."

In the television show "Young Sheldon," ten-year-old Sheldon Cooper is placed in the local high school because of his "once in a generation intellect" (his words, not mine.)

His only friend is a South Vietnamese immigrant named Tam.  Sheldon and Tam eat lunch in the library because the East Texas high school crowd shuns them.

One time, Tam's mother left a note in Tam's lunch.  It said, "Do better".

We need people to push us to do better. And sometimes, we need to tell them to chill. 

 

2024: Good Days And Bad Days

Here we are at the end of 2024.

2024 felt like it was twelve months long. Then, on the other hand, it felt like it was 365 days.

It was a year like President Biden. It had its good days, and it had its bad days.

You remember President Biden.  They said he was sharp as a tack, depending upon you definition of "sharp" and "tack".

I had several favorite President Biden moments.  One was when he called a news conference to dispute the Hur report that the President was really a nice old man but still thinks he can play "flanker" for the Delaware Blue Hens.  He yelled at the White House Press Corp and referred to Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the "president of Mexico."

Then Biden agreed to debate Donald Trump in June and taunted Trump before the debate. Then the debate started, and Biden looked like Floyd R. Turbo.  It was so bad it made Trump look good. Think about that. 

This caused the Democratic Party to panic because Trump is an existential threat to democracy, the earth, sun, moon and all things bright and beautiful so the big boys in the Democratic Party pushed Biden out and put Vice President Harris in as the nominee because she was A) so brat, B) born in a middle-class family and C) joyful.

Donald Trump had good days and bad days, too.

He was indicted on several major felonies, the main one being a "big poopy head." This caused Trump's poll numbers to fall.

Ha, ha. Wrong. As Dana Carvey once said, Trump is like a Batman villain.

BATMAN: "I have you now, Trump!"

TRUMP: "I don't think so, Batman."  (A rope ladder from a helicopter drops  down, and Trump grabs it and flies away.)

If I may toot my own horn, I noted at the time Trump was a parking ticket away from winning the election in a landslide. I was close to being right. All of the lawfare had the opposite effect, making Trump more popular.

Trump had a very bad day in Pennsylvania was he was shot at by a young man who did not have the wits to be rich and handsome.  Trump survived.

After Kamala Harris wowed everyone with her brattiness, she picked (check notes) Tim Walz to be her running mate because he was what some people (snotty young college graduates) think a white man should look like.

This caused a chain reaction of Zoom calls:  "White Men For Harris," "Older White Men For Harris," and "White Men Who Mow Their Yards For Harris."  

The national news media, coming off of their hard-hitting, dogged reporting of President Biden's cognitive abilities ("He looks fine to me"), tried for most of the summer to get an interview with Vice President Harris to ask her out her middle-class background.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump picked a new running mate, JD ("JD") Vance of Ohio, who once wrote a book called "Hillbilly Elegy". Somebody posted on Twitter that Vance wrote about his sexual attraction to couches in his book.  Of course, the book did not mention couches, but several people noted that he didn't mention he wasn't sexually attracted to any other type of furniture. Which meant Vance was"weird".  Then, the country met Tim Walz, and soon learned what weird looked like. 

A big issue in the campaign was if Haitian refugees were eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio.  Finally, our American news media jumped at the opportunity to make Trump look like a goob, which he happily provided to them.  It turns out the refugees were not eating dogs or cats or couches, for that matter. 

The election finally came, and as a citizen of a "battleground state," I was glad it was over. I expected a close, tight election result. The opposite happened. Trump won around 2:00 in the morning and began to make America Great Again by selecting Matt Gaetz as Attorney General and annexing Greenland. 

Robert F Kennedy, Jr. had good days and bad days, too.  He announced that doctors had found a dead worm in his brain.  He also announced he had "hit" a bear and decided to drop it off in Central Park. (Of course, why not?)  But then, Trump nominated Kennedy as the Health and Human Services secretary.  So, in a short span of four years, we've gone from "you're fired if you don't get the vaccine" to "Hurray for Polio" because Kennedy, a lawyer, knows all about vaccines.

Some had bad days, like the Boeing Corporation, which apparently has no quality control manager because every plane that suddenly fell out of the sky was made by Boeing.

Other people had good days, like the actors who won Academy Awards, whose names I have forgotten.

The Atlanta Braves had mainly bad days because all of their good players were injured with season-ending injuries, which never happens to the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

Bill Belichick had good days. He has a new job as the Head Coach of The University of North Carolina and a new girlfriend who is way too young for him.

I had good days, too.  I retired from my paying job on September 1st. I highly recommend it.

There were some bad days, too. My brother-in-law died after a two-year battle with cancer.  He was a good guy. 

 

Comments From A Health Insurance Worker Bee

 

Just so you know where I'm coming from, I wrote this about a week ago on Facebook.

"I worked at United Healthcare from 1995 to 2002. They bought the company I worked for, Metrahealth, which was a merger of the health insurance divisions of MetLife and Travellers. I worked for Metlife on The General Motors Informed Choice Plan. The merger took place on 1/1/95. Which means by September of 1995 when we were bought by UHC,  I had worked for three companies and never left my desk."

 
I was posting about the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare. He was shot in the back, walking to the entrance of a Hilton Hotel before 7:00 in the morning.

I have walked past this Hilton several times during our various trips to New York.  If my memory serves me right, it is where Don Draper would meet Conrad Hilton on "Mad Men."

The killer hopped on a bike, rode away, and eventually caught a cab, which took him to a bus station.  This guy ended up in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where somebody recognized him at a McDonald's, called the cops, and he was arrested. 

We found out that his guy is a scion of a very wealthy family and wasn't some workin' class Joe killing THE MAN because United Healthcare denied Memaw's heart surgery.  

He attended a tony private school and earned a bachelor's and a master's from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school. 

In comparison, Brian Thompson comes from a small town in Iowa, and his father was a grain elevator operator.  He graduated from The University of Iowa.  The fact he rose to the top of the healthcare insurance industry from relatively modest beginnings is something we used to celebrate in this country instead of shooting in the back.

Like many, I have been disturbed by the reaction of some, mainly on social media, regarding this murder. But social media is social media and you have to take it with a grain of salt.

Instead, I was really taken aback by what some "smart" people said, like a former Harvard law professor (Elizabeth Warren) said.

She said, “Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far. This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”

It is not the answer but a warning to go ahead and pay for non-covered services because the boss man may get shot over it. 

In a column in "The Guardian," Arwa Mahdawi wrote, "If you spotted the person who shot Brian  Thompson, would you a) turn them into the police or b) continue to go  merrily about your day? Judging by the gleeful reaction to the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s murder, 99% of the United States would choose option b."

I know it is a column, and hyperbole is a tool of the trade, but I seriously doubt 99% of the United States would choose option b.

Mahdawi goes on to describe health insurance as a "racket" whose primary goal is to maximize their profits by killing people. Oops, sorry, that is hyperbole again.  The goal is to maximize their profits by denying claims.  Mahdawi links a CNN article about people complaining about when United Healthcare rejected a claim. Graciously, CCN notes, "stories could not be independently verified by CNN."

 I can only tell you my experience working in the health insurance industry for 17 years and working in the revenue cycle of a large health system for 21 years.

We never had a meeting where we were chewed out about paying too many claims.  Nobody ever said, "Go out and deny those claims!"  A denied claim meant a phone call from the insured, which was almost always difficult. 

One time, I took a call that started like this: "I'm going to say this very clearly. If you don't say that Metlife is going to pay my claim, I'm going to take this gun in my other hand and kill myself".  (I said, "Can I put you on hold for just a second?" The person explained their issue. It wasn't something to kill yourself over.)

Another time, an insured was upset regarding a claim denied after being medically reviewed by a clinician.  He told me, "I hope you have someone you love in the hospital and they die."  At that moment, my nine-month-old son was in the hospital with Pneumonia. (By the way, this was about a podiatry claim. And before you can say it, this was long before HIPPA was ever thought of.)

So, no, the people in the insurance companies never denied a claim with glee.

During my time with the insurance company, one of my duties was to process claims for expatriated General Motors employees. I worked on claims from all of these other countries, which are supposedly so much better than the United States. 

First of all, you would be surprised how much the charges were similar to those in The United States. The total wasn't as much, but they paid upfront in taxes by the citizens of that country.

Secondly, some countries have a two-tier system in which, yes, you can go to The British NHS hospital, or you could go to the fancy-schmancy hospital Charles and Camilla go to. 

When I went to work from the hospital system, I worked on many accounts covered by United Healthcare. United Healthcare has many people covered under self-funded plans provided by the company they work for. This means United Healthcare only administrates the "contract" from the company.

Most of these plans do not have a "pre-existing" condition clause. Some do. It may sound mean, but insuring someone has a pre-existing condition is like selling homeowners insurance to a house that has already burned down. 

United Healthcare also owns several smaller companies that sell to small businesses (like UMR and Golden Rule).  They tend to have large out-of-pockets, and some have pre-existing condition clauses. 

For my United Healthcare accounts, sometimes they paid quickly, and sometimes they did not. (My advice: do not give birth to twins if United Healthcare insures you. Trust me.)  But for the most part, I don't remember a delay with many United Healthcare accounts. Maybe I have just forgotten. But they tended to pay the high dollar and the low dollar claims in about the same amount of time. 

I would never say the healthcare system in America is perfect.  I will say, it seems like every time someone steps in to "fix" health insurance, it seems to get worse. 

Healthcare is a complex issue. The idea that it can be fixed by shooting executives is a mental healthcare issue more than it is anything else.