I have been thinking about response to the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. The NY Times refers to the response as “a torrent of hate.” Perhaps more accurately, other references refer to the response as “backlash, anger, and frustration.” The shooting happened the same day I was having a conversation with my daughter about a $900 bill she was incorrectly billed for healthcare services one year ago, because the provider billed the wrong insurance company. After calling and being on hold for almost 30 minutes, health insurance company A decided that they needed to get health insurance company B on the line. With the two companies on the line, they began to argue, while my daughter was on the line, about fault, responsibility, blame, etc. After one company acknowledged it was their responsibility, they said it could not be paid because it was outside of the time for payment of claims. The resulting is still uncertain.
What is interesting me (as a sociologist who thinks about people and society, and issues of race, class, gender, and justice) in this murder case is that there was a murder in daylight – a murder of a 50 year-old White man, with a net worth of $40 million, and annual salary of $10 million.
While most murders generate a typical “outpouring of compassion” and “expression of condemnation and horror” at the taking of a life, this one was different. The magnitude of a contrary response was seemingly unexpected.
In response to this murder, despite some sympathy, there was perhaps a surprising and unexpected response of almost celebrating perhaps not the murder, but of a killing of what the individual symbolically represented – coverage denials, suffering, huge medical bills, uncovered care, uninsured Americans, long waits for pre-approval requirements. He represented the oppressive, capitalistic, and inhumane healthcare industry. Perhaps he was also seen to represent a bit of the American corporate culture that is focused on earnings for shareholders, often at the expense of consumers and workers and humanity, decent wages, benefits, and meaningful health coverage.
As one article notes:
“Several factors have contributed to that resentment. Roughly 25 million Americans remain uninsured. Tens of millions of others have health insurance but can’t afford their deductibles, coinsurance, or copays due to the high prices of tests, surgeries, and prescription drugs. Insurers have tried to root out unnecessary procedures, but that sometimes results in inappropriate care delays or denials and excessive paperwork. These barriers aren’t just a nuisance — they can have real effects on patients’ health. After care is provided, patients are inundated with medical bills they don’t understand — perplexed why their insurer isn’t advocating on their behalf, and fearful that hospitals and other providers will send them to collections or sue them.
“Lawmakers and federal regulators have accused UnitedHealthcare of systematically denying authorization for procedures and treatments,” https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/04/nyregion/brian-thompson-uhc-ceo-shot
So, as NBC news noted, there is a lack of sympathy for this particular victim – a wealthy CEO of a company associated with denying coverage for medical claims, impacting life and health.
While most American people did not know who Brian Thompson was before he was murdered, what they did know and do know is their horrendous experience with the United States healthcare system. It is a complicated and intricate system based as almost all United States industries are – on capitalism and profit, necessarily at the expense of individuals, equity, fairness, the every-day worker, poor and working-class, and middle-class Americans. It is not just UnitedHealthcare. A day after the shooting, Blue Cross revoked a plan to limit coverage for anesthesia after a particular time: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/health/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shield-anesthesia-claim-limits/index.html
Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser at the Network Contagion Research Institute, which tracks online threats, said the internet rhetoric had left experts “pretty disturbed” by the “glorification of the murder of Brian Thompson” and the “lionization of the shooter.” This “glorification” and “lionization” is because of representation and symbolism.
The CEO represented the injustice of the healthcare system and the shooter, rather than symbolizing violence, represented liberation and vindication and validation to those who have been impacted by the injustice of health care system. He in a sense came to represent justice.
The response to Brian Thompson’s murder and the hope of some that the attacker might actually escape and not be caught caused me to flash back to the OJ Simpson acquittal.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/nyregion/unitedhealthcare-ceo-shooting-suspect.html
In 1995, OJ Simpson was acquitted of the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The reaction on the streets in 1995 (when there was less social media) reflected the celebration of Black Americans of the acquittal.
What could this celebration be attributed to? Some suggest that the celebration was not necessarily that OJ was not guilty, but rather, that “it really had to do with Johnnie Cochran: Johnnie Cochran commanding that courtroom, being brilliant, beating the system. That’s really what it had to do with … And here [comes] on TV a black, brilliant attorney winning the case against all the odds. That’s what the black people were cheering about.” Shawn Chapman Holley – lawyer at Cochran law firm
Kerman Maddox reflected that the response was also about the criminal justice system:
“I was really conflicted because: 1) I thought he was guilty, and 2) it troubled me that a person who I felt was guilty got off with it. However, on the other hand, I saw this incredible excitement by these young African Americans and some of the older ones as I drove around the community. It was sheer excitement. So then I thought, “Well, God, this is bigger than O.J. This is something where people feel it is really a part of them.” They really became attached to this case because of their life experiences and their families and the whole experience of African Americans with the criminal justice system. “
This is the criminal justice system that three year prior had acquitted 4 officers of the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles.
The OJ Simpson verdict at the time came to symbolize and represent victory against “a legacy of racist policing” and racism in America.
And through out the history of African Americans in the United States, they have and continue to experience “a legacy of racist policing.” The list of acquittals, decisions not to indict or charge White men for lynchings and murders of Black men, boys, girls, and women, encompasses thousands. Some victims are well known and some are lesser known, including Travon Martin, Eric Garner, Dontre Hamilton, Michael Brown, and Rumain Brisbon. Organizations like the African American Policy Forum and #SayHerName continue to call attention to the murders of Black women by police. The “legacy of racist policing” has also included overly aggressive prosecutions of African Americans, resulting in disproportionate sentencing and wrongful prosecutions.
Individuals often come to symbolize causes and issues impacting morality and humanity. For me, this is about the value and quality of life: What is the impact of race, of gender, or class, of nationality, of accents on who gets taken care of, who gets access to health care, who gets access to justice? It is also about gun violence and access to weapons.
I’m intrigued by what dominates headlines. The CEO murder obscured the school shootings on the same day where two kindergarten students were shot at a school in California.
The focus on chasing a sole gunman obscures a discussion about gun violence in America:
- The mass shootings occurring this fall on college campuses during homecoming, resulting in deaths and injuries.
- That “In 2024 there were at least 200 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, resulting in 55 deaths and 147 injuries nationally.”
- That: “Every year, more than 4,300 children and teens are shot and killed and over 17,000 more are shot and wounded.”
- That: “An estimated 3 million children in the US are exposed to shootings per year.Firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens.”
- That “Witnessing shootings—whether in their schools, their communities, or their homes—can have a devastating impact. Children exposed to violence, crime, and abuse are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol; suffer from depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder; fail or have difficulties in school; and engage in criminal activity.”
- That “Every day, 125 people in the United States are killed with guns, twice as many are shot and wounded, and countless others are impacted by acts of gun violence. The gun homicide rate in the U.S. is 26 times higher than that of other developed countries, but research shows that common-sense public safety laws can reduce gun violence and save lives.”
https://everytownresearch.org/maps/gunfire-on-school-grounds
Who or what will represent and symbolize gun violence in America?
Who or what will represent justice, fairness, equity, and morality?
Who or what will represent humanity?
Who or what will represent the value of life?
Who or what will represent the lives, especially women and children’s lives in Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, Haiti, and other countries where there is no or few hospitals, no health insurance, no to little healthcare?
Perhaps those investors and executives who seemingly gathered carefree for a discussion of money and profit on the day of the CEO’s murder on the third floor of the hotel during the company’s annual investor conference, mingling “over cups of coffee, shaking hands and talking shop,” gossiping that “Someone got shot outside,” as they made their way up from the lobby; taking “photos of the news crews gathering outside on their phones,” until the news reached them of the impact, might begin to have different conversations. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/04/nyregion/brian-thompson-uhc-ceo-shot
What should we be talking about? What should we be teaching? An alternative curriculum?
Check out my letter to higher education and many others in Dear Higher Education: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain.
Also, learn more about me in my new memoir, Blackwildgirl: A Writer’s Journey to Take Back Her Superpower and companion journal, available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook (recorded by me).
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