Rage over the nation’s health-care deficiencies is justified. Cheering on a murder is not.
Two very ugly, uniquely American things happened yesterday: A health-care executive was shot dead, and because he was a health-care executive, people cheered.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered yesterday outside his hotel in Midtown Manhattan by an unknown assailant. In response, a post on X wishing that the murderer would never be caught racked up 95,000 likes. Social media was littered with jokes about Thompson’s pending hospital bills, and the tragedy of him not returning to his “mcmansion.” The mood was summed up by the journalist Ken Klippenstein, who posted a chart on X showing that UnitedHealthcare refuses to pay a larger percentage of users’ health-care bills than any other major insurer. “Today we remember the legacy of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson,” he wrote.
There’s no excuse for cheering on murder. But Americans’ zeal for the death of an insurance executive demonstrates both the coarsening of public discourse and the degree of rage Americans feel over the deficiencies of the U.S. health-care system. Gallup polling shows that just 31 percent of Americans have a positive view of the health-care industry. Of the 25 industries that Gallup includes in its poll, only oil and gas, the federal government, and drug companies are more maligned.
