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| Pixabay: Valentime AI |
I was in Philadelphia visiting family last month when UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead on a Manhattan street in a carefully planned execution. The instant roar of approval that united an otherwise starkly divided America in the days and weeks that followed has been a notable reminder that people are feeling a little done these days.
Like everyone who has written about Thompson’s murder, I want to stress that in no way do I condone street executions. I’m sorry that he got killed, and that a young man whose own path seemed quite promising felt compelled to take such drastic action.
At the same time, I’m awed by the powerful rage that the shooting brought out in people, and the major conversations it is sparking. (I, too, burn with fury at what the CEO class has gotten away with, though I’d like to think I’d never settle it with a gun.) The killing lit a fire under the issue of health-care claim denials in a way that a thousand of the most heart-breaking tales of life shattered by a claim denied could never do.
When terrible things are happening to ill people with no hope of seeing justice done, how can anyone be surprised when a CEO at one of the most prolific claim-denying companies ends up killed?
It’s no way to settle scores in a civil society. I really hope we don’t start murdering each other. But that’s not to deny the power of Luigi Mangione’s alleged bullets to open up an urgently needed public conversation in the U.S. on the brutal outcomes when people’s health is pitted against ruthless corporate profiteering.
The U.S. health care system is so profit-oriented that the first thing a typical American has to think about when they get sick or injured is how much it’s going to cost them. Polling by Gallup earlier this year found half of U.S. adults reporting it was difficult to afford health care costs.
One in four said they’d skipped or postponed needed health care in the previous 12 months because of the cost. Two-thirds said they went without care to escape the expense.
Until Thompson’s murder woke up the health insurance industry around just much they’re despised, one of United Healthcare’s competitors was busy setting new time limits in three states on how long a person could be under anesthesia before the insurance coverage would run out. (Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield reversed that decision after Thompson’s death.)
A dozen years ago, my partner and I lived in Honduras for the better part of three years. Justice never got done officially in Honduras, which had a four per cent criminal conviction rate.
So it was rough justice in all directions at that time. People got killed in the street and at their homes for all kinds of reasons as citizens and gangs settled up debts, grudges and issues requiring vengence, rightly or wrongly. (But there was always a reason; Hondurans were completely baffled by the random gun violence going on in the US.)
Honduras came to my mind immediately when I heard the news of Thompson’s death.
What CEOs feared in Honduras in our time there was kidnappings. Every now and then I’d imagine how it must have felt to be a CEO in Honduras, with your kids being driven to school by guys with guns and the constant threat of something scary happening to you or someone you loved. I’m sure it must feel deeply wrong for a person who considers themselves law-abiding to experience that.
But I really hope that the Manhattan killing prompts deep soul-searching among a class of business executives who have divorced themselves from the moral impact of their business decisions. If Thompson’s death impacts such decisions in the future because CEOs start worrying that they might get killed, that would not be a bad outcome.
There’s no arguing that corporations cause the rest of us harm routinely in the course of doing business. Our governments are helpless before them, compromised by their vast economic power and political donations, and not nearly smart enough to catch corporations out on all the ways they’ve figured out to maximize profits.
What does justice look like for people irreparably harmed by corporate actions? Right now, it looks like a CEO killed in cold blood and the lionizing of the young man charged with the murder.
The ongoing rage of the American people after the killing of Thompson has not abated. Expert after expert has weighed in with comments that are prefaced with their abhorrence of the murder, but follow with a big “…but on the other hand…” analysis contextualizing the public’s fury.
In a recent poll surveying 1,000 people in 50 states, a fifth said Thompson’s killer bore only a little or no responsibility at all for his death. Almost 70 per cent put the bulk of responsibility for the killing on the health-care insurance companies that deny claims.
But of course, Thompson wasn’t doing anything illegal when he ran his company hard on health-care claims. His shareholders and his big bosses might have loved him for it.
Yet millions of Americans have died, grown sicker or been bankrupted by the decisions of their health-care insurance providers. One study found that 36 per cent of the Americans surveyed had had at least one claim denied, and most of them had been denied multiple times.
What justice exists in such a system? Most companies would have an appeal process for individuals, but this 2023 ProPublica article says the appeal rate is one per cent. There’s court, but that’s money and time that few have. In truth, Americans have virtually no chance of justice against corporate decision-making around health care, yet their very lives are being ripped apart by the corporate direction being set by men like Thompson.
I could hear the hurt feelings in the voices of the CEOs quoted after Thompson’s death. Most sounded completely taken aback that people could hate them that much. It was as though their gilded life had shielded them from the harsh fact that yes, it WAS their fault that people were being killed, sickened and bankrupted by corporate policies and decisions under their direction.
That’s the takeaway that I hope lingers on in the reverberations that the murder has set off. CEOs need to internalize that when the corporation they run is routinely hurting people in order to create profit, they carry the burden of responsibility. The rule of law breaks down in societies where there is no hope of seeing justice done, and they should know that all eyes are ultimately going to be on them.
In one sense, Thompson was an innocent man that day he got murdered. But in another, he wasn’t. Let that be a cautionary tale to CEOs who still can’t see the connection between their executive actions and the mayhem on the ground.
But I really hope that the Manhattan killing prompts deep soul-searching among a class of business executives who have divorced themselves from the moral impact of their business decisions. If Thompson’s death impacts such decisions in the future because CEOs start worrying that they might get killed, that would not be a bad outcome.
There’s no arguing that corporations cause the rest of us harm routinely in the course of doing business. Our governments are helpless before them, compromised by their vast economic power and political donations, and not nearly smart enough to catch corporations out on all the ways they’ve figured out to maximize profits.
What does justice look like for people irreparably harmed by corporate actions? Right now, it looks like a CEO killed in cold blood and the lionizing of the young man charged with the murder.
The ongoing rage of the American people after the killing of Thompson has not abated. Expert after expert has weighed in with comments that are prefaced with their abhorrence of the murder, but follow with a big “…but on the other hand…” analysis contextualizing the public’s fury.
In a recent poll surveying 1,000 people in 50 states, a fifth said Thompson’s killer bore only a little or no responsibility at all for his death. Almost 70 per cent put the bulk of responsibility for the killing on the health-care insurance companies that deny claims.
But of course, Thompson wasn’t doing anything illegal when he ran his company hard on health-care claims. His shareholders and his big bosses might have loved him for it.
Yet millions of Americans have died, grown sicker or been bankrupted by the decisions of their health-care insurance providers. One study found that 36 per cent of the Americans surveyed had had at least one claim denied, and most of them had been denied multiple times.
What justice exists in such a system? Most companies would have an appeal process for individuals, but this 2023 ProPublica article says the appeal rate is one per cent. There’s court, but that’s money and time that few have. In truth, Americans have virtually no chance of justice against corporate decision-making around health care, yet their very lives are being ripped apart by the corporate direction being set by men like Thompson.
I could hear the hurt feelings in the voices of the CEOs quoted after Thompson’s death. Most sounded completely taken aback that people could hate them that much. It was as though their gilded life had shielded them from the harsh fact that yes, it WAS their fault that people were being killed, sickened and bankrupted by corporate policies and decisions under their direction.
That’s the takeaway that I hope lingers on in the reverberations that the murder has set off. CEOs need to internalize that when the corporation they run is routinely hurting people in order to create profit, they carry the burden of responsibility. The rule of law breaks down in societies where there is no hope of seeing justice done, and they should know that all eyes are ultimately going to be on them.
In one sense, Thompson was an innocent man that day he got murdered. But in another, he wasn’t. Let that be a cautionary tale to CEOs who still can’t see the connection between their executive actions and the mayhem on the ground.
