POWERFUL Story from Polish Immigrant on U.S. HELL-care Industry

"Growing up in Poland, between ages 4 and 17 I was hospitalized for 3-5 days at a time, once or twice a year...it didn’t cost my parents a penny," Status Coup viewer shared in email to us

Hey folks, it’s Jordan.

I don’t often do this but I received an email yesterday from a viewer—a Polish immigrant now living in the UK—that really moved me. In the email, the woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, shares her lifelong health issues—ones that would have likely bankrupted her family in America.

Dear Jordan and the Team of Status COUP,

I hope you’re all well! Happy 2025.

My name is A, and I wish to stay anonymous, but I wanted to write to you to highlight how far into the world your news content travels and how big of an impact it is having.

I am a young female Polish immigrant (legal!) living in the UK and I have been very closely following the case of Luigi Mangione, which you have been largely reporting on. I have absolutely no personal experience with the American healthcare system, I have never even BEEN TO America, so if there is anyone who could say that this doesn’t concern them, it would be someone like me. And yet…

Growing up in Poland, between ages 4 and 17 I was hospitalised for 3-5 days at a time, once or twice a year, and attended monthly doctors’ appointments for check-up and administration of medication to manage my condition. During the longer hospital stays I would undergo X-rays, daily blood tests, DEXA scans, ultrasonography, you name it. I would also be provided with breakfast, lunch, and dinner (sure, no gourmet stuff, but it was there), and an entertainer was present in a small, designated area between breakfast and lunch to arrange educational play with kids. My family is working class. Now that I, myself, am and adult managing my own finances and reflecting on my upbringing, I see how tight money was at home at that time even though my parents never let me feel it.

All these years, all the medical care I was provided with - it didn’t cost my parents a penny. Nothing above the usual tax deductions that go from their monthly pay anyway, which are NOWHERE NEAR as high as I hear Americans mention that they pay monthly for their healthcare insurance. I imagine if I was growing up in the same circumstances in America, my parents would not be able to provide me with same care. My condition was not severe, was not life threatening. Would it affect my physicality and my well-being if left untreated? Yes. Would it lead to development of multiple other conditions requiring life-long medication and affect my quality of life? Definitely. Would it kill me if untreated? No. From what I gather from the conversations we are having now online, I can only assume my claim for above treatment would likely have been denied…

I’ve lived in the UK for the past 10 years. I work here, pay my taxes, and my NI – National Insurance contributions. My monthly NI contribution costs me 10% of my base gross salary. In those 10 years I visited the emergency room twice, I was seen by specialists on number of occasions, I had a surgery, I have a repeat prescription for 2 medications that renew monthly. There is a standard charge for prescription medication: £9.90. So, I pay £19.80 if I’m renewing my 2 prescriptions. My surgery, although performed under full anaesthesia, was relatively minor and not life-saving, but simply to improve my quality of life, and the decision regarding the surgery was solely between myself and my doctor. No insurance companies, no medically untrained middle man, no AI performed screenings making decisions on my health.

The horror stories that we’re hearing from real American people all over TikTok, YT, Instagram as a response to the killing of the CEO of one of the most ruthless of the insurance companies (according to reported statistics) are absolutely infuriating. As a total outsider to the situation involving the killing, the arrest of Mangione as the alleged shooter, with the information circulating in regard to his alleged reasoning behind the assassination I see a lot of hope in it. Very important conversations are happening around inaccessibility, unaffordability, and poor attitude towards healthcare, as well as CLASSISM, and the pure ignorance of the top 1% when discussing lives of the regular working people. It is all of course happening very slowly, and as expected, the law makers who also belong to the 1% club, are still living on their own planet more worried about their own interests and connections. Their ignorance and attempts to defame Luigi Mangione as a mentally unstable, privileged guy, whose popularity and support for his alleged actions are being attributed only to his good looks also shows ZERO understanding of the working-class people. Corporate news stations focusing on cherry picking photos, quotes, and totally out of context statements to fit their narrative is nothing new, and nothing short of a propaganda. I think we all noticed the eery similarity to the literary works of George Orwell in how the government and media are portraying the whole situation. The narration manipulation and the tunnel vision when discussing the matter on the news programmes are shocking. The rich sitting at the table with even richer, discussing issues of regular people, which quite frankly they’re unable to comprehend while looking down at us from their luxury cars, and their vacation homes. They’re so out of touch with reality that if you ask them what the current bread and butter prices are, they won’t know because they never had to look at them and compare prices. The people who say “sue the insurance company if they denied you coverage” need to check their privilege, take the red pill, and go touch some grass.

Once again, as a young European woman, as a Pole living in Britain, as someone who has no connection to the USA other than via film, music, and media, I haven’t heard anyone yet, in the ongoing debate talk about the fact that this insurance scam system has in a way become kind of a pop culture element in your country. It is so largely relatable for the citizens, that it is plainly portrayed in American-made films and TV series! I’ve seen films portray situations of people refusing to go to emergency rooms because they don’t have insurance, or don’t want their loved ones to end up in debt, couples told to divorce to afford treatment for their child because a single parent is more likely to be eligible for a cover, stories of war veterans struggling with PTSD harming themselves or others because they either couldn’t get coverage for the psychological help they needed, or the waitlist was impossibly long, people with chronic or autoimmune conditions having to go days without the necessary medication and consequently risking their lives because their insurance hasn’t been renewed yet? This is all shown in your movies, just like that, as if it’s a casual element of the culture, and these are often stories told now across social media. Isn’t it absolutely CRAZY that this tragedy of a healthcare SYSTEM becoming a healthcare INDUSTRY is normalised like that?

So, whether Mangione did, or didn’t do the shooting, he sure has become a face of a start of something promising. Despite coming from a privileged position, he understood the problem and applied drastic measures to address it. I’ve heard a woman quote a proverb saying something along the lines of “when working together, the ants ate the elephant”, and isn’t is very fitting? The reason I keep following the case isn’t for Luigi’s good looks, isn’t to find out if he in fact did it or not, but it is to see what the people across the country will do now that the door to the conversation had been kicked open by him. It is a chance for a systematic revolution worthy of history books, but whether that chance will be taken...? The police and government are clearly unsettled by the outpouring support for him already. Beside the perp walk, was his outfit and the outfits of the two police officers who escorted him into the New York courtroom also staged? They looked like they wanted to re-enact the happenings from Nov 24^th 1963! Instead of shooting him, though, they settled on yet another photoshoot, highlighting his prison glow up. NYPD is constantly serving the public with excellent photos of Luigi, he sure is a very handsome man, but this creates a big distraction on social media. It may well be their intention! But I would urge all my fellow young adults to take a step back for a minute once we’re done swooning over his pictures and thirst trap compilations on TikTok (don’t worry, I’m also guilty of that, I’m not a hypocrite lol), and shift your focus onto the problem at hand. If you want to “free Luigi”, do more to support the agenda spoken about in the “manifesto”. Turn the tables. Speak up. Organise protests, go to the protests, call for healthcare reform, if you work or have worked for those companies, expose them online for the cold-blooded practices and the “industry” that healthcare has become treating their paying customers like livestock, shame the media sources for their disgraceful, privileged, manipulative, narrowminded coverage of the topic. Anything and everything you can do. Tell them all that the reason you have no empathy for Brian Thompson is because he didn’t spare you his empathy when you were crying and pleading on the phone with the company that HE ran when you needed to use funds from those hundreds of dollars that you pay them every month to cover your health expenses, and he did it all for his own financial gains.

Thank YOU, Jordan, and your team, for covering this topic. I am glad to have stumbled upon your YouTube profile. Forgive me for not becoming a full-blown member, but you know, I’m still just an outsider peeking further West from home ;)

Please, if you wanted to share my words anywhere, feel free to do so, but I still wish to stay anonymous!

Take care!