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LEGALIZED MURDER  
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Charles Taylor
December 6, 2024
Dissent Magazine
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_ I do not want to live in a world where the rich are dragged from
their limos and beaten. But I do think that world is a lot more likely
to be realized because of the modus operandi of UHC and its cohort. _

UnitedHealthCare logo, Cypress, California headquarters building
(Reuters photo),

 

Apart from the executions of certain notorious criminals and the
deaths of certain despots and terrorists, I can’t recall any public
death provoking the approval that has greeted the murder of
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City on December 4.
There’s no way to applaud the death of a human being and not seem
callous. And I wonder if those reacting that way would feel the same
after watching the video of the murder itself—not the edited version
playing on TV news, but the full version. It begins with the killer
calmly walking up to Thompson and shooting him in the back,
Thompson’s stride suddenly breaking as he stumbles to the ground,
and the killer following the fallen Thompson to empty his gun into him
before coolly walking away. They should also read the quote from
Thompson’s widow, soon after his death, saying she was trying to
figure out a way to explain his murder to their children.

It’s not like vast swaths of a population are immune from giving in
to their cruelest impulses—that’s what the November 5 election was
about. But when a business executive is publicly murdered and the
popular reaction ranges from disdain for the victim to outright
approval, there’s something unprecedented going on, and cursory
condemnation won’t get us close to understanding what that is.

The man who murdered Thompson, for whatever reason, deserves to be
punished. But if we’re going to be honest about the public’s utter
lack of sympathy, we have to acknowledge that it springs from the
legalized murder practiced by all the Brian Thompsons who run the
American medical insurance industry. The last thirty-six hours have
seen an outpouring of statistics, personal testimony, and news stories
that I find perhaps even more coldly upsetting than the footage of the
murder. The statistics include UnitedHealthcare having the highest
denial rate—32 percent in 2023—of any U.S. insurance company. The
personal testimony includes an outraged letter from a pediatric
oncologist to UHC about their decision not to cover anti-nausea
medication for a child undergoing chemotherapy, and a woman describing
how the company claimed that an overnight hospital stay was not
“medically necessary” for her twelve-year-old who had just gone
through heart surgery. A colleague of mine whose late father was a
doctor told me that the man regularly had to fight with the company to
get approval for the most routine procedures. UHC was sued last year
by the families of two deceased Minnesota patients who claimed the
company used an AI bot that routinely denied doctor-approved claims.
The plaintiffs alleged the bot had a 90 percent error rate, and that
UHC knew that.

Can anyone seriously doubt that Thompson approved this way of
business? Not when the company’s 2023 revenue was $371.6 billion, up
$47.5 billion from the previous year. How much would the company still
have made if they actually provided people the care they promised?

You don’t have to approve of Thompson’s murder to be disgusted by
these stories. But I do think you’d have to be more than a little
naïve to think that you can, as a matter of policy, deny people
healthcare (some of it lifesaving) and bankrupt many of them in the
process, all for the express purpose of making money, and not have
someone take potentially lethal exception. I can’t pretend to think
that the fear Thompson’s murder is causing in the insurance world is
a bad thing. Just before I wrote this, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield
announced it is abandoning its plan to strictly limit the time it will
pay for people having surgery to receive anesthesia. A corporate world
that isn’t shy about the sheer arrogance of denying coverage for
anesthesia during surgery is not one that incurs sympathy for a dead
CEO. That may be why the initial reaction some had to the news that
the police had a photo of the shooter’s face and a smudged
fingerprint was disappointment.

It may be that if the shooter is found, he will make us recoil. It may
be that he’s a lone nut, not acting to avenge a loved one, not
striking out in bloody-minded objection to the insurance industry,
possibly even acting in response to the news that Thompson allegedly
dumped $15 million in stock before a federal antitrust
investigation—an investigation he did not reveal to shareholders.
But it’s hard to believe so after the news that the bullet casings
left at the murder scene were marked by three words—Deny, Defend,
Depose—that are supposedly the insurance industry mantra for wearing
down claimants.

I do not want to live in a world where the rich are dragged from their
limos and beaten. But I do think that world is a lot more likely to be
realized because of the modus operandi of UHC and its cohort. If the
motive for the killing really is an insurance company denying
essential medical services, what does it say that there could be tens
of millions of suspects?

_[CHARLES TAYLOR lives in New York. He writes a Substack
called Crackers in Bed [[link removed]], where a
version of this article first appeared.]_

* UnitedHealth
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* UnitedHealthCare
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* Healthcare
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* Health Care
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* health insurance
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* Medicare
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* Managed Care
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* Medicare for All
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* Health Emergency
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* Health Care emergency
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* health care coverage
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* Health Care crisis
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* Private healthcare
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* essential medical services
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* For Profit Health Care
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* Luigi Mangione
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