Potential Talking Points
- Mom’s stroke and recovery
- Denials, delays, appeals, hearings, other hurdles faced
- Medicare Advantage Plans vs. “traditional” Medicare
- Citizens United, corporate personhood, Tillman Act of 1907
- Class-actions lawsuits against Humana and UnitedHealth
- Pulitzer-nominated series on MA Plans’ usage of unregulated AI
- “Deny,” “Defend,” and “Depose”
Fun Facts About Jeremy
- Was the referee for the 2019 LSU Football Spring Game in Tiger Stadium
- Once opened for Weird Al Yankovic with a twenty-minute comedy set that felt like five
- As a seventeen-year-old high school junior, got his FCC license before his driver’s license after his hometown’s oldest radio station hired him as a DJ
- Is surprised by people who think he had enough pull to get his now-retired satire site used as a clue on Jeopardy!
Sample Q&A
If 90% of Medicare Advantage appeals are successful in overturning denials, why do you think less than 10% of them are appealed?
It’s like the class-action suits assert: Just like UnitedHealth, “Humana banks on the patients’ impaired conditions, lack of knowledge, and lack of resources to
appeal the wrongful AI-powered decisions.” And even if someone does have the time, resources, and support system—as I write in the final chapter—”they might lack the will to fight” because they’re too ashamed to admit they signed over their Medicare benefits to a soulless entity dispassionately seeking to dispose of their life for profit.
Are you concerned about any blowback from Humana for InHumana?
As I write in my preface, “If the folks at Humana have a problem with me publishing a story they forced us to take part in, I would not have a problem with that. I’m a firm believer in the Streisand Effect, and I’d relish the opportunity to partake in PR jiujitsu with the soulless monstrosity that repeatedly tried to throw Mom’s life away for profit, all while gaslighting us with completely contradictory cover stories.” Besides, “The same parody protection law that gave us Dumb Starbucks permits this tenured cynic—whose satire site was an $800 Jeopardy! clue—to lampoon the brand of a human-made, undead entity that derives more than 83 percent of its name from the word ‘human.’ Meanwhile, only 75 percent of ‘InHumana’ comes from Humana’s name, for whatever that’s worth.”
What do you mean when you say that “humanity’s most altruistic endeavor is forced to operate within the most Darwinistic of modern economic models”?
As I write in chapter 3, “Ever since the Soviet Union broke up, the unofficial tagline of American healthcare has been ‘Capitalism: If it was good enough to beat the Commies, it’s good enough to fix Grandma.’” A century earlier, “In the decades after Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, proponents of capitalism repeatedly cited his evolutionary theory of natural selection as validation of free market competition for limited resources. If you can’t turn a profit, you die off in an economic jungle, especially in the corporate age. This is the eat-or-be-eaten environment in which American healthcare is forced to operate. There’s no room for human compassion on the ledger sheet. Stockholders want dividends, not sob stories.”
Can you talk about your use of an obscure Sesame Street skit to illustrate how humanity’s relationship with corporations is one of “asymmetrical warfare”?
Back in the 1970s, Ernie once took a job answering The Count’s phone, only to be physically blocked from doing his job by his employer because The Count was getting off on counting the rings. As I explain in chapter 5, “Ernie thought he knew what he was getting into, but soon found out that undead, soulless, bloodsucking, number-obsessed entities far too often prevent healthcare workers (metaphorical or otherwise) from doing their jobs” because they’re “more interested in counting denials of service than answering the calls of real human beings” in need of help.
What prompted you to write an epilogue addressing “Deny, “Defend,” and “Depose”?
As I mention in the preface, my first draft was written, edited, and peer reviewed months before UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed in early December 2023. When people began clamoring for me to publish my next book because a man was murdered, I knew I couldn’t proceed without addressing the suddenly angry elephant in the room. Like a massive tectonic event, the killing shook the upper crust and created a “fissure,” allowing volumes of long pent-up subsurface anger and vitriol to finally vent.
Why do you think so many people are voluntarily putting up InHumana QR code stickers all around the country?
I’d say folks are joining our “Stick it to ’em” team for three main reasons: It’s easy, it’s effective, and it’s empowering. Every time someone sticks up a 2-inch InHumana-branded QR code, leading to our homepage, it offers everyday people who’ve had enough with the medical-industrial complex a chance to passively fight back with a tacit “F–k those guys.” I think even the folks at Humana would have to admit that it’s a much more constructive way for Americans to express their collective anger than idolizing the alleged murderer of an insurance CEO.
You open chapter 5 by revealing how much PBS influenced your upbringing, going so far as to say that Jim Henson and Fred Rogers raised you as much as your parents did. What are your thoughts on the ongoing efforts in Washington, DC, to defund public media in America?
With all due respect to my family, I shudder to think what kind of person I would be without PBS as an integral part of my childhood. For starters, I likely wouldn’t have a traffic light in my office, like the one Mr. Rogers had in his place. For my money, Fred Rogers was—and still is—the most Christlike person in my lifetime, which is why I see what’s happening in DC as part of an ongoing anti-empathy movement in this allegedly “Christian” nation. I write about it in the final chapter, where I explain how empathy is the lynchpin of all Christian doctrine.