Class hatred and the assassination of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO

Wednesday morning, Americans woke up to the news that UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Brian Thompson, had been shot to death in a targeted attack outside a Manhattan hotel. The country’s capitalists and their representatives shed collective tears for the death of one of their own. One of the first to react was Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, Kamala Harris’s running-mate in the last election, who described Thompson’s death as “a terrible loss for the business and health care community.”

[Originally published 6 December at communistusa.org, although this was published before the arrest of Luigi Mangione, the analysis remains timely and relevant]

Millions of workers across the country did not share in that sentiment. Health insurance is one of the most hated industries in the country, having negatively touched the lives of nearly every single worker in the form of increased premiums, denials of coverage, and more. Medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US with 41% of the population in debt over medical bills and three million Americans in debt to the tune of $10,000 or more. This, despite 90% of Americans having insurance coverage.

UnitedHealthcare is among the most guilty, being on the leading edge of denials of care, denying 32% of all claims. To add insult to injury, the company recently started using AI algorithms to process health care claims which reportedly have an error rate of 90%. The result? Millions of people receive bills for care that should have been covered, even by the company’s own rules, but find little resolution without fighting it out through the company’s bureaucratic maze or taking it to court. Millions of Americans are routinely faced with the choice of either going into crippling debt or endangering their health and accepting the risks that come with not pursuing the care that they need.

At the same time, UnitedHealthcare has cashed in on the death and misery that underpins their business model. In 2023, the company’s revenues jumped 14.6%, or $47.5 billion, to $371.6 billion. According to Forbes, “UnitedHealth Group reported $22 billion in 2023 profits including $5.5 billion in the fourth quarter as its portfolio of health insurance and provider services grew by double-digit percentages.” There’s a reason it’s the fourth most valuable company in the country, bested only by behemoths like Walmart, Amazon, and Apple.

Kamala Harris’s running-mate in the last election, Tim Walz, described Thompson’s death as “a terrible loss for the business and health care community” / Image: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons

So we don’t need to speculate much as to the motives of Thompson’s killer. Three shell casings found at the scene reportedly had the words “deny,” “defend,” “depose,” written on them, presumably a reference to the labyrinthine nightmare that companies like United present to their “customers” during some of their darkest moments. For a man with an estimated net worth of $43 million and a salary of roughly $10 million per year, “grief,” “shock,” and “horror” are not the words on the minds of many American workers. Instead, it’s likely the first time in a while that many have felt a sense that justice had been served. After all, we aren’t asked to shed tears when mob bosses get killed—it’s just one of the risks you assume when you’re in the business of playing with people’s lives.

The class hatred is palpable in the comments sections of the thousands of articles and videos that have appeared over the last couple of days. A small sample of these comments was provided by the New York Times:

“Thoughts and deductibles to the family,” read one comment underneath a video of the shooting posted online by CNN. “Unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network.”

On TikTok, one user wrote, “I’m an ER nurse and the things I’ve seen dying patients get denied for by insurance makes me physically sick. I just can’t feel sympathy for him because of all of those patients and their families.”

“I pay $1,300 a month for health insurance with an $8,000 deductible. ($23,000 yearly) When I finally reached that deductible, they denied my claims. He was making a million dollars a month,” read one comment on TikTok.

Another commenter wrote, “This needs to be the new norm. EAT THE RICH.”

“The ambulance ride to the hospital probably won’t be covered.”

One woman expressed frustration with trying to get a special bed for her disabled son covered by UnitedHealthcare. Another user described struggling with bills and coverage after giving birth.

“It is so stressful,” the user said in a video. “I was sick over this.”

The practical response has been heavy as the NYPD takes an “all hands on deck” approach to find the killer. The message that would be sent if someone were to get away with such a high profile killing is extremely dangerous. Fearing that this act might inspire copycats, the heads of private security for dozens of Fortune 500 companies met via Zoom to discuss the dangers that they now see facing executives of their own companies.

NYPD is taking an “all hands on deck” approach to find the killer. The message that would be sent if someone were to get away with such a high profile killing is extremely dangerous / Image: Jason Lawrence, Wikimedia Commons

As reported by WUSA9 News:

[Executive protection firm] Global Guardian’s President and CEO, Dale Buckner, explained that in the first four hours following the incident, the company received 47 requests for executive protection. By the following day, that number had climbed by more than 20 additional inquiries, with expectations that demand would continue to rise.

“They are concerned, of course, you can imagine this is a bit of a bellwether event,” said Buckner.

“You’ve seen a material increase in, in requirements for these kinds of services. We now have two hot wars, one in the Middle East, one in Europe. In total, there are 56 wars right now going on around the world. 56. It’s the most since World War II,” said Buckner.

“Boards are finally realizing that to truly protect their assets, executive protection is no longer optional,” Buckner said. “In the world we live in, it has become a necessity.”

What would drive someone to carry out this murder? In many ways the question answers itself. But what is less apparent is that this killing has taken place in a period in which no meaningful lead has been given by the leaders of the working class to take the fight to the ruling class. Instead, most labor leaders lined up behind the Democratic Party, the party that is most obviously entwined with the health insurance industry. Others, like Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters threw his weight behind the RNC and Trump, legitimizing the president-elect who has an equally horrible record on labor issues and has family ties to health insurance executives.

The talk of “Medicare for All” during Bernie Sanders’s 2016 run, limited as it was, has given way, first to loyal defense of Biden and Harris, then to pathetic hand-wringing at the missteps of a party that never represented workers in the first place. In the absence of a mass working class fight against the ruling class as a whole, it’s no surprise that an individual would decide to take action against one of the capitalist class’s most reviled figures.

What is necessary is to build a mass working-class political force armed with a communist program to expropriate the wealth of the billionaires—to deal with the capitalist class as a class, not as individuals. Only through mass revolutionary action can we liquidate the capitalist class, not through individual violence, but through the seizure of their wealth and the retooling and reorientation of the economy away from the blind pursuit of profit and towards the betterment of the whole of humanity.