The Executive and the Gunman
I n the first week of December 2024, just as the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was going up, shots rang out on the quiet — OK, the godawful noisy — streets of Midtown Manhattan. A gunman had stalked an executive on the way to an investor conference, fired two bullets into his back and leg with military precision, and fled on a bike into Central Park. There he ditched his backpack and hightailed it uptown to the bus terminal near the George Washington Bridge, where he boarded a bus and vanished.
The victim was the CEO of United Healthcare, the nation’s largest private health insurer. Who the gunman was, and what motivated him, were unclear as I wrote this a few days later. As I find my way through this noteworthy event, there are two potential responses I’d like to cut off before they metastasize:
1) “Gunning down this dude on the streets of our city is unacceptable — but…” No buts, people. It’s just unacceptable, period. Whether the victim is a CEO in one of the most predatory industries in the United States, or a kleptocrat bent on wrecking the government and wreaking revenge on his adversaries — or a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, someone who cleans offices, or a harmless word-spewing semi-retiree like myself — it’s just wrong to shoot people. It can only lead to more violence and chaos. That’s why there are laws against it. Even abusers are entitled to equal protection under the law. No buts.
2) “The health insurance industry is pretty evil. It’s caused actual physical harm to so many people. So we shouldn’t be surprised when it gets a violent and irrational response.” As a gay man, I won’t go for this one either. It’s chillingly reminiscent of the papal encyclical that brought violence against LGBTQ people into the conversation expressly to excuse it, calling it “a disordered sexual inclination” and insisting that “when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.” To hell with that guy and his little red shoes.
It’s a crime that United Healthcare exists at all. It denies 32 percent of all claims, according to in-network data analyzed by Value Penguin. That’s twice the industry norm, at 16 percent. Compare that to Medicaid and the public-option version of Medicare, A and B, whose denial of claims are in single digits — though higher for the privatized Medicare Advantage plans, in which United Healthcare is a major player.
It’s worth noting that Brian Thompson was paid $10.2 million per year. He received tens of millions more in stock options, including the $15.1 million he dumped amid an insider-trading investigation. Compare his compensation to the salary of Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, who heads up the Medicare and Medicaid programs within the Dept. of Health and Human Services and is paid $168,400 per year. Is one of him worth sixty of her? Or is something wrong with this picture?
In the final analysis, when confronting harsh realities, it is necessary to hold two thoughts in mind at the same time: No one ought to be murdered in the street. And (and, not but) private health-insurance executives are filling their pockets with money that ought to have been paid out to their customers. It is not necessary to link these two thoughts, to weigh one against the other, making slippery arguments about the lesser individual harm and the greater collective harm. Many individual harms add up to a collective harm. And every collective harm is comprised of many small acts of cruelty, including those committed by UHC’s claim-denying algorithms, with the support of Brian Thompson.
I hope the police don’t shoot the shooter. I’d like to see him caught, unarmed, without resisting arrest. I would like to see him tried for his crime and tell his story to the cameras. We know a lot about the what, where, and when, and presumably the who will be revealed in due course. But what about the why? Something moved him to erase another human being and I would like to hear him explain it, in his own words. I’d like his words, his experience, his story, and presumably that of his wronged loved one(s), to get equal time with the privateers, the kleptocrats, and the pundits who tell us the time still hasn’t come for Medicare For All.
It’s unfortunate that Brian Thompson, on his way to an investor conference, cannot give us his input. What would he have said to the investors he was about to address? Would he speak of providing high-quality healthcare while maximizing market share and return to investors, holding together these two contradictory thoughts at the same time while keeping a straight face? Within hours of the shooting, executive bios and mugshots vanished from the websites of health insurance companies, the way the shooter vanished into the bus terminal. Mass gun ownership and health insurance rackets are a combustible combination.
Healthcare horror stories are legion. Maybe the gunman’s story will be the one that sticks. Until he tells it, the story of the executive and the gunman will never be complete.
Postcript: The killer was identified as Luigi Mangione, 26. The outline of his story became apparent within 24 hours of his arrest. He has suffered from a longterm back problem. Before police arrested him, I had wondered if he had been motivated by the mistreatment of a loved one at the hands of the health insurance industry. A parent? A grandma? There was certainly plenty of showmanship in the objects left for the police to find: the coded messages on the bullet cases, the Monopoly money left in the backpack abandoned in Central Park. As it turned out, the denial of claims may have centered on his own young life, the pins embedded in his lower back, and a lifetime of physical pain. He had an elite education at a prep school and the University of Pennsylvania. But perhaps the ultimate privilege is a healthy back. I will follow his trial, and his story, with interest.
