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Amid the frenzied coverage of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson‘s assassination and the public’s troubling reaction to it were references to various polls, including one conducted in 2016 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, whose results suggested that Americans were content with their private health plans.

Similar stats had crept into the debate over Medicare for All—a proposed national health insurance program to cover all Americans, and with which private insurers would have to compete. A few weeks before Thompson was murdered, AHIP, the primary trade group for commercial health insurers, published a new survey it had commissioned. About three-quarters of respondents, a “strong majority,” the group said, were satisfied with their employer-provided plans and preferred getting their coverage this way, as opposed to through any government program.

“We’re living in a country where we have people who literally can’t afford to breathe.”

I found these numbers hard to square with the nonchalant—even celebratory—response to Thompson’s death. Until, that is, I spoke with Ed Weisbart. A veteran medical doctor, now retired, Weisbart serves as national board secretary for Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a nonpartisan organization of some 25,000 doctors founded in 1987 to advocate for a public health insurance program. (Disclosure: My late mother was a member.)

So long as you’re healthy, he told me, it is in your insurer’s best interest to keep you happy by delivering on small claims. It’s only when it looks as though you’re going to cost them lots of money that the denials start coming—and maybe by then you’re too sick to fight. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

What compelled you to join PNHP?

I was a practicing physician for decades and got fed up with seeing patients unable to afford health care—not in the broad, abstract way, but in the very real, nitty-gritty way. The Type 1 diabetic who has uncontrolled disease, and I prescribe insulin for him, and it would make a huge difference in his life expectancy, but he comes back a month later and his blood sugars are no better. And I ask him why, and he would say, “Well, because I’m taking my insulin every other day. It’s all I can afford.” I know he’s barreling toward dialysis.

A patient with end-stage emphysema came into the office without her oxygen, huffing and puffing, unable to breathe. She’s had portable oxygen at home and we know this because she had it previous visits. And I said, “Where’s your oxygen? Why are you so short of breath?” She says, “Oh, I can’t afford my oxygen anymore.”

We’re living in a country where we have people who literally can’t afford to breathe. I’ve got hundreds if not thousands of stories like that. It just drives me crazy, realizing you have to advocate for patients outside of the exam room as well, and then understanding that the reason it’s like this is because of the profiteers just leeching the blood and soul of everyday human beings so they can have the best returns on Wall Street.

What did you make of the reaction to the Brian Thompson killing?

It’s obviously a tragedy and a very wrongheaded move. I was aghast. And yet it was also not hard to understand the dynamics, when there are tens of thousands of people dying because of the profiteering—people constantly running into having some bureaucrat say they can’t get the lifesaving care they need. So, I was not surprised, but I was surprised.

What do you consider the biggest flaws of our health system?

As a medical director at various places, I'd say the biggest problem is that the system is designed to return profits rather than to improve health. And the programs that you would want to design to improve health are contrary to the business model of the people that could put........

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