Americans React to UnitedHealthcare CEO's Murder: 'My Empathy Is Out of Network'

Our collective reaction to this event makes it clear that there is substantial support for massive changes to the for-profit insurance industry. But every time we've tried to make it a public benefit, those attempts have fallen flat. Sure seems like the industry is able to lobby and market it's way to staying alive, despite the ire of the people paying them.

Decades ago I recall a previous attempt at moving towards a one-payer system, and it having some traction. My mother had some fairly serious health issues, and had many battles with getting insurance claims paid, living month to month in a single mother salary. Yet she also was firmly of the opinion that a one-payer system would be terrible, parroting the marketing of the industry advertising campaigns. Despite having a daughter in law that was Canadian, who's mother went through cancer and had superb care under a single-payer system.

>"The sometimes celebratory attitude of such a broad swath of Americans on Wednesday felt like an embrace of that same sort of nihilism."

I couldn't disagree more with this facile comparison. The thing is, we all are someone's loved one, beloved father/mother, etc. And yet the people decrying these reactions shrug and walk away when the victim is anonymous and the violence comes in the form of denying people life-saving care--for profit--something that happens routinely in this country. It isn't a 9mm bullet, but it is just as deliberate and every bit as devastating to those involved, as all too many of us are. And it sure doesn't help matters when peaceful political attempts at solving this problem are constantly derailed by this powerful industry's lobby.

If one goes to subreddits or forums where nurses and doctors hang out it quickly becomes obvious why a large majority of people reacted the way they reacted.

When I read about unitedhealthcare and their practices, I always wonder if their offices are guarded by snipers and swat teams 24/7. If someone paid insurance for decades and gets denied treatment they need, then what is to stop anyone? Obviously most (by far) people aren't criminally insane, but you would think 1 or 2 per 1000 denials would think 'screw this; I go, you go'. Kind of a win for humanity in the face of pure evil I guess; people are far less willing to react with violence.

I'm not really all that clued up on all of this, but overall seems like a Shinzo Abe-type situation: no, we shouldn't be assassinating people. But also: you can't just wreck people's lives for a living and expect no consequences. This seems just as much of a failure of society in dealing with these kind of nihilistic parasites sucking our society dry as anything else.

I hope this is a sign the people have realized democracy has failed, they have no real power, and that we need to fight the oligarchs

UnitedHealthcare knows about HIPPA but somehow this past year or so leaked (through one of their business partners iirc?) the Social Security Numbers PII of 100+ million Americans, an act which while perhaps inevitable can never be undone, also leaking the numbers of my three young kids which as a dad I now have to mildly worry about for the next few decades.

Nobody deserves to be murdered, there are way worse things where life itself is at stake as described in this article, and as someone working with databases and security over decades I know people in glass houses shouldnt throw stones.

But I am not a fan of these guys and I thought perhaps a few on this forum would appreciate this nerdly? petty? but also slightly serious vent and point.

If they manage to catch this guy, it would be fascinating to watch jury selection. Trying to find people who haven’t been fucked by health insurance will be near impossible.

I would bet he walks regardless of evidence.

Atomized violence like this is pure adventurism and does nothing to improve the lives ruined by men like Brian Thompson. If anything, this event will serve as a catalyst to expand the police state. There is nothing to celebrate here.

There's a bit in Dickens's Christmas Carol where Scrooge sees the generally pleased reaction to his death.

Wonder if any other CEOs are seeing this reaction today as a visit from the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

The stock went slightly up after the murder. I guess he is replacable. Rest in peace. The company will do just fine.

Anyone wanna guess how many deaths this guy was responsible for?

Understandable reaction. Leadership of totally unethical companies deserves no sympathy.

I feel similarly. I don’t want the guy to die, but I’m not shocked that he was murdered. I’m not sure that anyone feels UnitedHealthcare as a for profit health insurance company really helped them in their life besides their employees.

Most people I know feel their company adopted them as a cost savings option and severely degraded their plans from a BCBS plan.

The murder could have been avoided if the bad guy had a gun.

Has anyone claimed responsibility for what appears to be a well-planned assassination?

As America moves further towards a billionaire-controlled system that disregards conventional norms of democracy, I wonder if there will be a rise of militant leftist groups, like in Italy and Germany in the 1970s (Red Brigades, Baader-Meinhof). These groups also targeted industrialists and executives.

It's extremely difficult to have sympathy for this person, just look at the data. They were the highest by percentage of claims denied of any company. They were being investigated for fraud, corruption, _and_ monopolistic behavior. Many people (including myself) have had family members killed by the state of Healthcare in America. Just last week i was wondering to my friends how things like this don't happen more often!

Healthcare companies are run by their executives and their shareholders. Those people have been actively pushing our passively watching extremely harmful policies get enacted month after month. Another company just announced it'll only pay for the estimated amount of anesthesia for a surgery, and not the actual amount needed (you know, when you live in reality and not on a spreadsheet).

I'll say, personally, i watched my own mother slowly die because:

1) she was afraid to go to the doctor for fear of having to use my father's insurance which i needed very badly and which she had to use after being laid off from a highly profitable corporation in 2009

2) when she did use his insurance (she was right) they fought very very hard to not cover the necessary treatments. The amount of anguish and terror they put my father through was equal to that of watching his wife wither and die, he'll say that himself

3) the _only_ reason she even got what she did was that he was high enough in _his_ work position and there long enough to have significant pull with the tpp guys, who are the only actual human beings in the entire story. They fought for him and the entire company switched health providers because of the cost of one man's wife.

Every human you talk to on the phone will try to help you and genuinely wish you well. All the people in the doctors office and so incredibly kind and helpful and knowledgeable. What we have, is a group of blood sucking number-brained vampires, running these systems. I watched my mother die because she was scared to use a healthcare system that she had worked for, paid into for the vast majority of her life. The system didn't care about her, the system wanted her to die because it would save a couple thousand dollars on a 20 billion dollar balance sheet.

How many of us have seen this happen. I think we Americans tend to kinda forget that we can choose a different system, we can fight for a better reality. And the assassination, practically ritual murder in the eyes of some, of this man, this executive that represents the worst of the worst of the system, his death brings us back to the reality which we actually can change. The high guard of Healthcare aren't invincible, maybe the system isn't either. We all just watched a man die in the street, but most of us have watched people far more important to us die before, sacrificed for people like him. A lot of us have had to fight endless pointless hours to receive something which _every single human around us_ believes and knows is completely necessary, just to eventually be allowed the privilege of being charged impossible amounts for treatment your need. Die or debt, the system says. It's just so nice to not be the one in the system that's scared, even if only for a moment.

Life is not neal breen, most likely this won't trigger a revolution or any lasting change, besides executives becoming harder to kill and more detached from regular life of normal people. But could this work? If our political system is have a hard time making bastard megacorporations treat us like people, we'll executive assassinations work? What kind of fear will happen and is it the kind that will make them want to fix problems? Seems like that might require some kind of movie-esque hacking the tv channels and presenting your demands along with actions to back it up. Will this change anything?

Don't leave a trail of bodies behind you if you want me to care when you die. Some of those bodies were friends, family, and members of my communities.

The business model of insurance is no more exploitative than that of big tech. One needs look no further than profits to verify this. With the number of corporate tech people here, I would expect more reservation over corporate guys getting capped.

Besides, the big money settles to specialists, hospitals, & pharma (remember Shkreli?). Unless this was a competitor’s hit, the killer went for the wrong target.

When is Nadella going to get popped for draining a redacted amount of water from a desert town for model training? When are Cook and Zuckerberg going to get drive-by’d for eavesdropping on your conversations so they can target ads?

The most shocking aspect of this murder is the fact that I S&P 100 CEO did not have any kind of security around, especially being from an industry that deals with so sensitive business like insurance.

It's bonkers to me that the board of this company did not know that he did not have any personal security, and definitely someone somehow will open a lawsuit to uncover that.

If a S&P 100 CEO is so approachable like this, what this company board thinks that it would hold someone to threaten or kidnap the CEO himself or it's family members to get some advantage?

As TwoNineA posted in another thread:

"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow, often misattributed to Mark Twain

An amusing side-story:

> Normally, trolling and sadistic glee over a person’s death are relegated to the margins on extremist sites like 4chan or X ever since Elon Musk purchased the platform.

Media outlets are now outright referring to Xitter as an extremist site.

I'm not sure why anyone would celebrate this, a father was executed in daylight and left a mourning family. Regardless of what you think of a man's deeds, his life had value.

If he had done wrong to people, he should be brought to justice via the court of law (in a democratic nation at least..)

To me death sentence should be denied, in any form and for absolutely any reason.

Also why _health insurance_ needs to have profits ?? It's just like basic school education.

Denying some procedures can be rational becouse unefective.

But pleas do make health NOT A BUSINESS !!

funny that he gets all the blame

as if any other insurance company can do any better, in a broken system

but the system, those that created it (politicians) and those that exploit it (non-medical hospital staff) get off

To paraphrase Clarence Darrow, "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

Instead of “Americans” this should say “selected social media posts”. It’s not indicative of any consensus among Americans.

Although this looks like it could be a professional hit, possibly part of a bigger and more hidden issue, I always wondered how long before people start taking the vigilantism road especially in countries with extensive gun ownership. And how will those CEOs react to this.

I'm going to call the bluff of everyone who condones this (save for the sociopaths) and aver that they are "LARPing".

As keen as their justifications may be in hinging on the non-ethics of Brian Thompson and UnitedHealthCare, I think that quietly, most people are relieved that this is an event among countless events that will wash away with time and the cycle of news and that they are afforded this brief flame of solace to voice their frustrations from the comfort of their own homes, minds and devices, without having to practically consider the dissolution of society that the crime represents and advances.

People on the internet seem to have a problem differentiating between companies and human beings.

If you find pleasure in the death of a human, you need to reflect on what inside you is broken.

It’s possible to have no love for insurance companies and still regret a tragic loss of life.