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The justification of the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Brian Thompson, and the rapidly spreading support for the current suspect should be an alarming sign about our society’s current view toward political violence.
Thompson was shot and killed Dec. 4 outside the New York Hilton Midtown in New York City, where UnitedHealthcare was hosting an investor day. In the wake of his death, social media has been filled with not only a variety of jokes and comments celebrating the murder but also praise for and borderline obsession with the murder suspect himself, Luigi Mangione.
Candles portraying Mangione as a saint have been sold online, GoFundMe accounts have been created to cover Mangione’s legal expenses, and most recently, when Mangione pleaded not guilty to state murder and terrorism charges Dec. 23, supporters gathered outside the courthouse holding “Free Luigi” signs.
Despite all of the political polarization that exists in our country today, a majority of Americans can agree on their frustration with the U.S. healthcare system.
The American Academy of Physician Associates, in partnership with The Harris Poll, found 73 % of U.S. adults say the healthcare industry is not meeting their needs in some way, with 23 % citing insurance not covering the full cost of services as the reason.
UnitedHealthcare has been a major source of frustration for Americans as it has the highest denial rate for medical claims out of all major insurance companies, denying approximately one-third of claims as of 2024.
Young Americans have been the most outspoken in their support for Mangione as young adults are the most uninsured of any age group in the U.S. when it comes to healthcare.
The anger many have felt toward UnitedHealthcare has been directed at Thompson, leading to the belief that Thompson’s death was justice served for all the Americans who have suffered due to the high costs of healthcare in the United States.
The thing that seems to be missing in this rationalization, however, is the fact Thompson is only one individual among the countless people who have played and continue to play a role in the disaster that is our healthcare system.
Yes, Thompson was CEO of his company and could have attempted to make changes had he felt driven to. However, you could say the same thing about thousands of other people contributing to decisions that make the cost of healthcare so high in the United States.
Some factors that led to healthcare costs in the U.S. being so high were completely out of Thompson’s control. According to David Cutler, a writer for Harvard Magazine who has written extensively about the U.S. healthcare system, “the largest component of higher U.S. medical spending is the cost of healthcare administration.” Cutler then cites that approximately one-third of healthcare dollars in the U.S. pays for administration — a cost completely out of Thompson’s control.
For example, due to a lack of federal requirements standardizing the electronic health record systems in the U.S., occupations are required to exist that are not needed in other countries such as Canada (medical-record and claim-submission specialists).
All this information convinced me Brian Thompson was not the ultimate problem, and his death solved nothing.
Alongside the celebrations for Thompson’s death online have been very passionate defenders of Mangione, praising him as some sort of martyr — a young man willing to risk his freedom to do this supposed justice for society.
In addition to how strange an obsession with any murderer seems to me, it is also incredibly ironic in this case given the differences in Mangione and Thompson’s upbringings. Those who have been most outspokenly praising the killing of Thompson, have been individuals on the far-left who have labeled Thompson as another privileged, wealthy, greedy businessman, who in their view, deserved to die.
This is where the irony starts. Mangione, has lived one of the most privileged lives one could imagine, while Thompson’s upbringing was starkly different.
Mangione was born into a prominent Baltimore family known for their wealth and philanthropy, particularly within Baltimore’s Italian community. Mangione himself attended Gilman School, an all-boys private academy where fees can reach up to $37,690 yearly, for high school, and then graduated from the prestigious University of Pennsylvania in 2020. For someone who has such a strong vendetta against privileged elites, Mangione has surely benefitted from his family’s privilege in more ways than one.
Thompson, however, was born in Ames, Iowa, and raised on a farm between the Iowa towns of Jewell Junction and Stanhope. His father worked as a grain elevator worker to support their family. Thompson graduated from the University of Iowa in 1997.
Thompson was not responsible for the incredibly unjust healthcare system that exists in the United States today. He was an imperfect, complicated, hardworking man whose absence will not positively impact our world in any way.
We cannot as a society normalize a world in which individuals are praised for killing someone just because they think the world will be a better place without them there.
There are many people I could think of whom I believe the world would be a better place without. But I do not view myself as above the law.
Georgia Van Ness (she/her) is a freshman studying journalism.