The Maccabi miracle and the Manhattan murder: On Hanukkah and healthcare

In Jewish history, the Maccabees embody the miracle of Hanukkah. In Israel today, Maccabi is one of the country’s health care organizations that manage to produce medical miracles every day.

The murder in early December of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan brought home how fortunate I am to carry Israeli national health insurance, which means that my family members will not be turned down by faceless corporate bureaucrats for critical medical treatment.

While Thompson’s killing was a brutal criminal act that must be punished with the full force of the law, it took the lid off the cauldron of rage that Americans have for their insurance providers whose rejection of health care claims has become painful and routine.

It’s not that medical treatment is perfect in Israel, but in my experience, Maccabi and its government-regulated competitors go to greater lengths than they seem to in the US to assure patients that they will receive all the medical treatment they need. In light of the healthcare executive murder in Manhattan, the contrast with Maccabi’s Israeli healthcare branding and its miraculous associations highlights an area of foundational distinctions between the United States and Israel that does not receive sufficient attention.

The Hanukkah holiday celebrates the victory in 164 BCE of Judah the Maccabee and his supporters against the Hellenist forces that had desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem and sanctioned core religious practices. As recorded in the Talmud, after the Temple was recaptured, a miracle took place when the one surviving tiny vessel of ritually pure olive oil for the sacred candelabrum sustained the holy flames for eight days.

There are numerous institutions and locales in the modern State of Israel that are named for the heroic Maccabees. Perhaps the most famous worldwide is the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team, well-known to sports fans as a perennial European League champion with an impressive list of players who starred on the squad before or after their NBA careers. Among local Israelis, however, the foremost ubiquitous and influential institution called after the Hanukkah heroes is Maccabi Health Services, the country’s second largest public medical provider, with hundreds of clinics, emergency centers, labs, testing services, and thousands of health professionals, spread across the map.

Ever since my wife and I moved from the United States to Israel in the late 1980s, we have been “protected” by Maccabi and value the comprehensive high-level health coverage that our family receives for an affordable monthly fee that is regulated by the government. Unfortunately, there have been times when we needed more intensive medical intervention to deal with severe illnesses. Maccabi and the entire Israeli health system were always there to provide the proficiencies that we needed. Like any bureaucratic framework, now and then we had to wait for official approvals for special treatments, and, at other junctures, it took some time to reach certain specialists. But we were never denied care, and never forced to pay more than the regular tariffs. We are no less proud of the fact that all Israeli citizens, regardless of race, religion, political sympathies, or financial ability, possess the exact same healthcare rights and receive equal treatment. A brief visit to a Maccabi clinic or large hospital will verify that this is the case.

The recent dramatic murder in New York, however, has amplified the degree to which the relatively minimal sum that we pay for contemporary Maccabi’s abundant health provisions, cannot be taken for granted. In fact, it turns out that this reality is actually a profound miracle, that conjures affinities with the powerful oil associated with its ancient historical namesake.

On the morning of December 4^th in midtown Manhattan, a gunman shot and killed Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the American-based insurance company that has the highest revenue of any healthcare company in the world. This was a blatant act of cold-blooded murder, and the offender must be punished according to the law. Yet along with broad-based recognition of his criminality, the media reported a parallel groundswell of sympathy for the perpetrator as a “folk hero” who represented millions of victims, standing up to the cruel immoral health insurance industry that charges so much and does all within its power to provide as little as possible.

The arrest of 26-year-old prime suspect, Luigi Mangione, an Ivy League graduate in possession of a written manifesto filled with diatribes describing the injustice of the American healthcare system that does not even guarantee basic medicines and clinical attention to those who cannot afford to pay, only buttressed his “Count of Monte Cristo”/”Robin Hood”/”the Joker” status. As the subtitle to a report published in the New York Times on December 10^th put it, “In some quarters, the suspect in Brian Thompson’s murder is being defended and even applauded by Americans who share his outrage over the insurance industry.”

Indeed, what comes across most profoundly from the article is the degree to which the authors work hard to validate the anger felt by so many. A Notre Dame professor is quoted declaring candidly, “People are legitimately actually pissed off at the health care industry, and there is some kind of support for vigilante justice.” Two experts who work for a non-profit health research foundation are cited, asserting that even those with good incomes are no longer getting proper treatment: “…there is no amount of money that can buy you good insurance… Once people get sick and need to use their plans, things can start to go wrong.”

Similarly, a professor from Santa Clara University Law School, notes that “Just about everybody has had negative experiences with health insurance companies that don’t pay the claims or pay very low amounts.” And most dramatically, a former senior insurance employee who now helps private clients file appeals, came close to drawing equivalency between the murder of Thompson and the practices of companies like his, when he shared: “No one is condoning violence against executives, but there are private tragedies happening every single day. For the most part, they go totally unheard and unknown.”

Simultaneous to the daily occurrences of these “private tragedies,” the indignation of the New York Times reporters is hard to ignore when they emphasize that “[m]eanwhile, health insurance companies are profiting. The division overseen by Mr. Thompson reported $281 billion in revenue last year…Mr. Thompson earned a total compensation package last year of $10.2 million.” A perusal of the over 500 reader comments, moreover, indicates that the vast majority share the resentment towards the insurance companies and the overall sense of injustice of the American healthcare system.

I certainly lack the qualifications to offer a detailed explanation for how this unequivocally misguided American state of affairs arose and why it has not been corrected, but it appears clear that money is a critical factor. What I can say with greater authority is that we in Israel often look to American democracy, and its legal and moral moorings, as an exemplary system from which to learn about the foundational value of core human rights and respect for the individual. In this case, America has failed its fundamental principles miserably.

At the same time, the picture of the ongoing American systemic contempt for human lives that emerges from the healthcare structure magnifies the irony of the many voices in the United States, with the New York Times as a critical player, that continue to reserve their most venomous self-righteous attacks for charges of Israeli disregard for human life. Unlike the greed that seems to underlie the American indifference to the physical and mental health of millions of its own law-abiding citizens, the Israeli situation is a wrenching response to the concrete carnage of its people on October 7, 2023, and the ongoing physical threat of violence to their living compatriots.

To be sure, others will strongly disagree with my interpretation of the political and military conflict. Notwithstanding, it would be far more difficult to discredit the contrast that the past week’s Manhattan homicide highlighted between UnitedHealthcare and its competitors who dominate the American health environment, and the contemporary miracle of “Maccabi” and its fellow Israeli health funds that safeguard and heal all its citizens.

The Maccabi “branding” of one of Israel’s premier Healthcare providers, draws attention to a concrete modern-day extension of the Hanukkah miracle, that is cause for pause and reassessment. Not only does it celebrate an aspect of Israel that is worthy of admiration at a time when so much focus is placed on calling out is misdeeds. It can also serve as a model to learn from, when the United States is finally ready to reinvent its health system such that its citizens receive the care they deserve.