Dem
47
GOP
53
The peasants have grabbed their pitchforks and they are angry. Very angry. Last week, Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, the biggest health insurance company in the U.S. by market share, was gunned down in cold blood outside the hotel he was staying in while attending a conference in Manhattan. It was clearly carefully planned. The weapon was reportedly a veterinary gun that is typically used to euthanize animals. It fires 9 mm rounds but is virtually completely silent. The spent cartridges had the words "delay" and "deny" and "depose" scratched onto them. The police investigation is ongoing and the killer is still at large.
What is interesting (and political) here is the public reaction to the murder. Normally, if a famous person is unexpectedly shot, there are endless requests for "thoughts and prayers." There is none of that this time. In fact, a large number of people on social media are outright cheering Thompson's death or celebrating it. This is virtually unheard of after what was basically a planned assassination. It is widely assumed that the killer (or a family member) had been insured by United Healthcare, had requested some health service (or filed some claim), and the company turned it down. Many of the people posting on social media are relating their experiences with health insurance companies that can also be summed up as "delay" and "deny" and they think Thompson's company caused many preventable deaths by denying care so he deserved what he got.
What is also interesting is that when there is a major crime in the news and the perp is at large, Internet sleuths go to work to harness the power of the Internet to try to track him down. Even when it is not clear if there is a crime but someone disappears, the Internet often goes to work. When famous computer scientist Jim Gray's boat inexplicably vanished on a clear day off the coast of California with no mayday call or flares, a massive search operation was immediately organized on the Internet, with sections of the ocean assigned to people with private planes to search for him and much more. The possibility of his high-tailing it to Mexico for some reason was thoroughly discussed. In Thompson's case, the top Internet sleuths are pointedly refusing to help find the killer. Michael McWhorter, who posts true crime stories on TikTok for his 6.7 million followers, said there was nobody on TikTok interested in finding the killer, something that would certainly have happened in other situations. Also, Savannah Sparks, who has 1.3 million TikTok followers for her account where she tracks down the identity of people who do racist or criminal things, said she isn't interested in helping the police on this one. Her words: "Absolutely the fu** not." Yet another TikTok sleuth, thatdaneshguy, who has 2 million followers, also refused to help.
All of this is astonishing and shows how hated the health insurance industry is. This incident could be a warning to Donald Trump not to monkey with the ACA and make people even more dependent on private health insurance companies, which are so unpopular that the assassination of one of its leaders is a cause for joy for many people. Also, the pent-up hatred about health insurance could be an issue the Democrats could grab onto in 2026 if they can come up with a program to reform the industry. It is even possible that lowering the age for Medicare from 65 down to, say, 50 and then continuing to lower it over time could be a huge winner. The phrasing is crucial, though. "Socialized medicine" is wildly unpopular in the U.S. but Medicare (which is a form of socialized medicine) is wildly popular. In particular, this is an economic issue which speaks to white working-class men, many of whom have had care or claims denied by big insurance companies. A pitch like a "public option," in which people from 50-64 could be allowed to opt into Medicare++ if they so desire, could be a big electoral winner. If the Republicans opposed it to help companies like United Healthcare, well, good luck with that. (V)