What The Reaction To The UnitedHealthcare CEO's Killing Tells Us

You don’t have to feel good about these reactions to a human tragedy to understand why anybody associated with the insurance industry would inspire such hostility.

The question of who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson ― and why ― is going to take a while to answer definitively, even if police in Pennsylvania now have a “person of interest” in custody. The question of how Americans feel about the health insurance industry, on the other hand, leaves little room for doubt.

On social media and in everyday conversations, Americans have joked about last week’s shooting in New York ― and in some cases even suggested that Thompson deserved to die ― because of what they say his company and his industry have done to stop people from getting health care.

As HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery and Arthur Delaney reported last week, lots of people wrote variations on “thoughts and prayers are out of network,” invoking a familiar piece of insurance terminology. Under an item where New York officials sought tips on finding the killer, one commenter said “my regular insurance doesn’t cover vision so I can’t really see” while another wrote “we need prior authorization first” — once again, using insurance company lingo.

You don’t have to be a corporate shill to find that reaction dehumanizing and disturbing. Taking satisfaction in somebody’s killing feels like the sort of thing that was clearly out of bounds before social media made it easy for people to express their worst instincts aloud and then be rewarded for it with even more attention.

“In some dark corners, this killer is being hailed as a hero,” Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) said in a Monday news conference detailing the latest developments on the case. “Hear me on this: He is no hero. ... In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to express policy differences or a viewpoint.”