The Politics of Vigilantism

The assassination of United Healthcare's CEO has unleashed a torrent of celebration online. But are we letting ourselves off the hook?

It’s all too understandable why a lot of people would not be terribly sympathetic toward Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO who was gunned down outside a Hilton in midtown Manhattan. Countless lives have been lost and financially ruined by the policies of insurance companies like Thompson’s.

But a growing number of online voices from across the political spectrum are celebrating the assassination and saying other business leaders should take it as a warning that they could be next.

I think this kind of talk isn’t just dangerous and irresponsible. I think it’s a cop-out.

Stipulated: Health insurance companies often operate like criminal enterprises. They take your money and deny you the services you paid for. It’s sickening, literally and figuratively. If you haven’t experienced murderous rage after opening an algorithm-generated denial letter or being kept hold for more than hour to talk to a “customer representative,” you’re not human. Or at least not an American.

But at the risk of stating the obvious, it’s a slippery slope when you start legitimizing murder as a tool of dissent. You start with the CEO, and then what? You target the customer service rep? The marketing director? Your mortgage lender? The branch manager of the bank where you have your checking account? The rep from the cable company that screwed up the pay-per-view event you were looking forward to?

Seriously, I get it. It feels like the bastards are the ones getting away with murder and no one’s holding them to account. Forty percent of Americans are dealing with some form of chronic illness, while the average household spends nearly a fifth of its income on healthcare. One bad break can destroy a family. The corporate gangsters should be quaking in their boots, because soulless capitalism is out of control. And there’s reason to believe that Thompson’s murder has already had an effect: Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield has backed down on a policy refusing to pay the cost of additional anesthesia if a procedure takes longer than the time allotted.

But is that how we want to function as a democratic society? It’s true that we were born from a revolutionary war. It’s also true that everyday gun violence has pretty much become an accepted part of the American way of life. But do we really want to replace the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with a guy firing a ghost gun at a CEO?

I’m exaggerating, of course. Most people cheering on Thompson’s assassin don’t have the wherewithal to buy an untraceable weapon, use it to kill a CEO, and then plan a getaway – or accept the legal consequences. It’s easier and more fun to post about it on X and Reddit.

The problem is, it’s also kind of bullshit. Because it evades the reality that the American electorate had a chance to hold the health insurance industry to a higher standard of accountability.

And it declined.

Both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders made reforming the healthcare system a centerpiece of their campaigns. You’ve probably heard neither got enough votes to make it to the White House. Not to mention that guy MAGA people and many progressives profess to disdain now – Barack Obama – who got the Affordable Care Act passed. But in 2024, majority of the electoral vote and popular vote went to Donald Trump, who has said he has “concepts of a plan” to replace it with something better. You may love Trump – I’m not here to debate that right now – but does anyone really believe he’s thought seriously about this issue? Here’s his current nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, giving Trump a sound thrashing on this subject in a 2016 debate.

So okay, the majority of eligible American voters either didn’t vote or voted in favor of the candidate who has promised to reduce regulation and oversight. In fact, most surveys I’ve seen don’t even mention “healthcare” as one of the top voter concerns. I’m not saying Warren or Sanders would have revolutionized the system overnight – I had problems with both as candidates – but people like Brian Thompson would have to answer some harder questions if American voters really held them to account, instead of just posting snark under pseudonyms. But, as Dostoevsky says at the end of Crime and Punishment, that’s a story for another day.

UPDATE: Since this was originally posted, police in Pennsylvania arrested Luigi Mangione, 26, after he was recognized at a McDonald’s and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office charged him with murdering Thompson, among other crimes. In his possession, allegedly, Mangione had a manifesto that condemned “companies that “continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.”

On the same day, Daniel Penny, also 26, the so-called “subway vigilante,” was acquitted of all charges for choking homeless man Jordan Neely to death on an F train in Manhattan.