The Crank Is Back

In recent editions of this column, I’ve attempted to exorcise my curmudgeonly demons—writing a tribute to a retiring colleague, expressing hope for the outcome of the next congressional election, and most recently arguing that the brokerage industry won’t be felled by AI (as though I know a thing about technology).

In short, I’ve been nice for a few months. But like negative political ads, testy columns are most effective; nice seldom gets the message across. As we enter the swampy dog days of a Washington, D.C., summer, my crankiness is back.

In no particular order, here are some things that are ticking me off.

1. For 33 years of working for the world’s largest and most successful insurance brokerages, I’ve not invested in any of the public ones for fear, I guess, of being perceived as having favorites. But the indiscriminate sell-off of public brokerage stock in March amid fears of AI disruption deepens the frustration of not being in the game. Public brokers have been buying back their stock, and the near-consensus on Wall Street is to buy. Already the stocks have been bouncing back. Shoulda coulda woulda.
2. I got a pop-up ad recently promoting an AI note taker. Not only can it record, transcribe, and summarize every meeting you attend, it even affixes to your phone and can do the same with every call you place. They market this as your very own “Thought Companion.” That’s not what I would call it. Are all these transcriptions going to be discoverable?
3. All the tit-for-tat congressional district gerrymanders are going to make Capitol Hill even worse than it is today and make our job of effecting positive legislative advancements even more difficult. The Cook Political Report currently counts only 18 of 435 House races as “heavily competitive.” Members of Congress no longer feel especially vulnerable to the other party; they feel vulnerable to extremes in their own parties. This makes for lousy governance, as there is little incentive for lawmakers to cross the aisle to hammer out bipartisan consensus in the interest of the nation.
4. President Donald Trump’s demand that Senate Republicans abolish the filibuster (to enable passage of the SAVE America Act) is reckless. The Act would require proof of citizenship to register for all voting as well as a photo ID to vote. I have no problem with that. The mess would come when (not if) the pendulum swings and Democrats regain control of both chambers of Congress and the White House. In the absence of the filibuster, they will grant statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, pack the U.S. Supreme Court, eviscerate all right-to-work laws, and perhaps even eliminate the Electoral College. One can debate the relative merits of each of these actions, but I shudder to think about them.
5. The two Democrats headed to the November runoff for the California insurance commissioner election are Bernie Sanders-endorsed Jane Kim and state Sen. Ben Allen. Both ran campaigns trashing the industry. Kim, saying the insurance business model is “to avoid losses, not to reduce risk,” wants a state-run disaster program to replace private coverage. Says Allen: “Both of us have talked about taking on the insurance industry. I think I have a track record of really taking them on.” Welp.
6. In an Oval Office speech earlier this year, Trump took aim at health insurers: “I want to stop all payments to big insurance companies and instead give that money directly to the people so they can buy their own health care,” he said. Then he added: “My plan ends the giant kickbacks to insurance brokers and corporate middlemen that only drive up the costs.” He was referring to pharmacy benefit managers that often work with brokers. The problem is that “kickbacks,” by their very definition, are undisclosed and intended to secure an unfair advantage. Broker compensation for group health benefits via ERISA, though, is fully disclosed (both retroactively and prospectively) under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020. To borrow an idea from President Abraham Lincoln: calling a tail a leg doesn’t mean a dog’s got five legs.
7. The “Mangionistas” are a trio of social media influencers and vocal supporters of Luigi Mangione, who is charged with fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in 2024. Among their disgusting quotes, they have said that Thompson’s children are “better off without him,” and that he was responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden. The group—Ashley Rojas, Lena Weissbrot, and Abril Rios—garnered national attention when they were granted official press credentials by the New York City Mayor’s Office to cover Mangione’s trial (a decision that Mayor Zohran Mamdani later said was a mistake). Lord have mercy on my sanity.

There, I feel better. Do you?