Donations from the healthcare industry help fund colleges and universities that offer anti-capitalist courses, courses teaching that racism, sexism and systemic oppression exists in the industry, as well as those colleges that employ professors and students who expressed approval of the murder of a health insurance CEO.
In a recent poll taken by Emerson College, a high percentage of college-aged voters were favorable of the actions of the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s alleged killer, Luigi Mangione.
The majority of Americans found Mangione’s actions to be “unacceptable.” However, when split into age brackets, 41% of those ages 18-29 found his actions “acceptable.”
UnitedHealthcare, itself, has given large sums of money to a good number of schools, such as $600,000 to the University of Kentucky Research Foundation in 2020 and $441,249 to East Carolina University in 2022.
UnitedHealthcare did not respond to two requests for comment.
Notably, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s alleged killer, Mangione, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020, having received a Bachelor of Science in engineering and a Master of Science in engineering.
The New York Post reported that Mangione is an anti-capitalist. Additionally, law enforcement sources say Mangione saw his alleged actions as “a ‘symbolic takedown’ of the ‘parasitic’ health care industry,” according to his manifesto, the Post reported.
Penn Professor Julia Alekseyeva posted on her social media how she had “never been prouder” to be a Penn professor following the killing, and that Mangione is the “icon we all need and deserve.”
Alekseyeva later retracted her comments, and Penn opened an investigation into the professor.
Like many other elite universities, Penn offers courses infused with socialist ideology.
For instance, Penn’s “Families and Capitalism” teaches on the family’s role of “sustaining and organizing capitalist societies and inequalities by race, gender, and class,” according to its description.
Penn’s “Health and Social Justice” course “considers various theoretical approaches to justice and health,” in an effort to “address the ethical challenges posed by inequalities in access, quality, financial burdens, and resource priorities, as well as rising health care costs,” according to its description.
“American Health Policy” at Penn teaches that “20th-century U.S. health care policies both reflected and shaped American social relations based on race, class, gender, and age,” while “Health, Politics, and Social Movements” explores the “relationship between health and social movements for race, gender, or political justice,” according to course descriptions.
Penn has received donations from many different healthcare companies, including the Independence Blue Cross Foundation, a Pennsylvania health insurance company.
The Trustees of Penn received a number of donations totalling nearly $900,000 in 2022 from the foundation for things like “Health Equity – Medical Education” and “Access to Care – General Operating Support,” to name a few.
Neither Penn nor the Independence Blue Cross Foundation responded to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, in other donations to higher education institutions, the Regents of the University of California received $125,000 total from 2021 to 2022 from The Kaiser Foundation, a nonprofit health policy organization.
The Centene Corporation’s foundation, a healthcare provider, donated $100,000 from 2018 to 2023 to UC Berkeley.
Similar to Penn, Berkeley offered a class in Spring 2024 entitled “Sociology of Health and Medicine,” where according to its description students “examine contemporary health policies and practices and how racism, sexism, and other forms of systemic oppression became historically embedded within the American health care system.”
When reached for comment, Berkeley assistant vice chancellor of the office of communications and public affairs Dan Moguluf told The Center Square that all of its “donors must sign agreements which release their control of the funds and how they are spent.”
Moguluf also said that the school is “not aware of any current gifts from the foundation in question,” and that the “Sociology of Health and Medicine” course is “being offered this year.”
The Centene Corporation did not respond when reached twice for comment.
As previously alluded to, Penn and Berkeley are not alone in offering courses with a far left bent.
Brown’s “Health Care Politics and Policy” course explores the question: “why has the United States struggled to achieve universal health insurance?” according to its description.
Additionally, Columbia’s “Health and Human Rights Advocacy” intends to “lay the foundations for reimagining and rebuilding the field of public health and its institutions and systems on explicitly decolonial terms that simultaneously advance anti-racism, intersectional feminism and economic and climate justice,” according to its description.
