CEO murder sparks national discussion on privatized medicine

“They own sweat shops, pet cops, and fields of cola

Murder babies with they molars on the areola”

The Coup released the song 5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO in 2001, outlining ways one could bait a greedy CEO into doing something that would result in their own demise. The recent killing of the Unitedhealth care CEO Brian Thompson has sparked a national conversation on health care in the United States–and a wave of sympathy–shocking to defenders of the health care-for-profit system–for the suspect in the murder, Luigi Mangione.

Did these corporations change their behavior in response? No. We still don’t have national health care, but in the days after the murder, Anthem BCBS did reverse a recent decision to limit reimbursements on anesthesia procedures they believe last too long, as the public outcry was deafening. The bottom line is that ending America’s unique for profit health care system will take the mobilization of millions. This sick system goes deep into the capitalist economy and the halls of political power.

As a registered nurse who works in public schools, I come across many students who don’t have access to basic health care. Just this semester I’ve already met several families whose children do not have health insurance and therefore very limited access to health care. I had a student who ran out of his seizure medication and another who hasn’t had a basic physical exam in years. I recently spoke with the mother of a child with ADHD, struggling both at home and at school, who hasn’t had his medication since the start of the school year, due to not being insured.

I also work part-time in the emergency room of a public hospital that serves those who have nowhere else to turn. I have seen countless numbers of people who have been given life-threatening cancer diagnoses, but who, because they are poor and uninsured, have entered the crowded halls of publicly funded health care, desperate to get some kind of assistance. Already stressed out by their hard medical road ahead, considering the imminent destruction of your family’s meager finances is the last thing they need added to their plate.

A lot of media energy was spent on the national hunt for Brian Thompson’s killer, apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Mangione apparently suffered from debilitating back pain and had gone missing from family and friends after a recent surgery.

We were getting daily updates from various news organizations, images of a person we had to keep an eye out for. Relatively zero energy was expended by the same media towards finding out who is to be held accountable for a health care system in shambles, because everybody already knows the answer to that.

Life expectancy in the United States is on par with countries with much lower standards of living. Racist health care disparities mean African American women are 4 times as likely as their white counterparts to die during childbirth. Chicago is home to one of the greatest national gaps in life expectancy, where rich mostly white people who live just north of downtown on average live to be 90, and 8 miles away in a neighborhood suffering from decades of disinvestment, people there on average live to be 60.

The irony of being asked to find one killer of a CEO, when we exist in a profit driven system which kills people unnecessarily every day, has not gone unnoticed. Prior to the last round of health care reform in 2010, it was estimated that 45,000 people unnecessarily died every year, due to a lack of health insurance – why was that story not on the front cover of every major newspaper?

The opening scenes of Michael Moore’s film Sicko clarify that the movie isn’t about the millions of Americans who don’t have health insurance, but about those who are already insured. The entire movie is an indictment of the health insurance industry, one in which the business model isn’t about providing health care: Profit margins are directly tied to denying health care. As we already understand, having health insurance doesn’t mean you actually receive health care. Only in America does an AI algorithm, not a human health care provider, get put in charge of what health care you should receive.

In the wake of this murder, people in the U.S. were all asked to assist in seeking justice for a head of a company with the highest rate of denying claims–about a third of them, in fact–without concern for the millions who go without adequate health care, despite being insured, in the wealthiest country the world has ever seen. Health care costs cause 66 percent of personal bankruptcies in the United States, ahead of both credit card debt or mortgages. One hundred million Americans carry some amount of medical debt.

The linking of health insurance to employment has only been a boon to the bosses, keeping us in crappy jobs with the fear of going uninsured.

The sick relationship between work and health is no better outlined than the opioid crisis. Many people injured while working dangerous jobs were prescribed OxyContin, an opioid painkiller made by Purdue Pharma. When the practice of handing out these highly addictive painkillers was restrained, many turned to street drugs to feed their addiction, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The Sackler family, who owned the drug company, will never serve a day in jail for the harm they have caused to all these individuals and their families.

For anyone who has ever dealt with a health insurance or pharmaceutical company, concern for the safety of CEOs who are in the business of heaping bankruptcy on top of misery, is understandably low on the list of most people’s priorities.

A major cause of chronic health conditions in this country is poverty. Diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure, and obesity are all diseases linked to being poor. Not having access to living wages means people don’t have access to healthy foods, clean air, and also have high levels of stress. Poor people don’t have as much access to health care and health care providers are pushed to see as many patients as possible in as short a time as possible–a terrible combination.

The profit system gets everyone on both ends: First they make them sick, and then make more money on you after you get sick. This country spends more on health care, per capita, than any other country, and has some of the worst health outcomes internationally, by almost any measure.

This government cannot find resources to help people who are suffering with the diseases of poverty – but has resources to supply Israel with and endless supply of weapons to kill tens of thousands of people, and maim even greater numbers – there are more children with amputations in Gaza than anywhere else – many of these procedures completed without anesthesia.

The U.S. federal budget has almost two trillion dollars to spend on the military, and already has sent over $20 billion to Israel alone, but we are told that there simply aren’t enough resources for health care, education, or housing.

Deep class anger exists in this country, as evidenced by the 90k laugh emojis on UnitedHealthcare’s Facebook post announcing the death of Brian Thompson. (Facebook eventually changed the post settings so that it wasn’t publicly viewable.) A wave of mass sympathy for the murder suspect Luigi Mangione produced countless social media posts and memes expressing no sympathy for Thompson.

What doesn’t exist, unfortunately, is an organized outlet for the mass anger given expression in these posts.

The last election could lead one to believe that most voters love Donald Trump, but if the Democratic Party had run on a platform of health care for all–something every other industrialized country has–it might have been a landslide for the Democrats. The basic idea that health care should be a human right, just like public education or a fire department, is something they could have easily campaigned on.

Unfortunately, the two-party duopoly meant that Trump could use racism and blame people’s suffering on immigrants, while Harris said very little about how most people are doing, offering a bizarre mixture of the “most lethal” military, protecting democracy, joy, and Liz Cheney. Health care for all was not on the ballot, so people stayed home, or voted for “the other guy,” uninspired by what they got under Biden, and therefore uninterested in Biden 2.0.

Of course, the Democratic Party was not about to offer a change to how health care is distributed, since the insurance industry has an army of lobbyists swarming every hall of power.

The last major Federal reform of health care was the Affordable Care Act in 2010, which enshrined the current business model, required people to purchase a terrible product or suffer a fine. It’s no surprise that after the passage of the ACA in 2010, stock in health insurance corporations went up.

The lack of sympathy many people have shown for this CEO’s passing, and an even greater disdain for the health insurance industry, is therefore unsurprising.

One could even argue that it is unsurprising, in a country which is awash with deadly weapons (there are 120 firearms for every 100 people in the US), that one would take violent action in response to the violence we witness every day. Our culture glorifies outrageous violence; the United States perpetuates murderous systems at home via the state sanctioned-violence of the carceral state. It spreads violence abroad via endless wars and genocides.

For anyone who has ever tried to solve a problem they have had with an insurance company (or a credit card company, or any large corporation for that matter),  you know the frustration of navigating the byzantine maze of 1-800 numbers and fake “customer service” AI-programmed robot voices who inexplicably drop your phone call after a 30-minute hold, putting you back at square one.

Mangione’s taking individualized violent action did not solve the underlying problem of capitalism. This profit-motivated system is just that, a deeply enmeshed network of economic relationships and social norms. The vast majority of us work for a wage, and those who own these workplaces reap most of the benefit–so much so that the three richest individuals in the United States hold as much wealth as the bottom half of the population!

Since we are approaching Christmas, consider the following fact. If you started working the same year that Jesus Christ, the historical figure, was born and made the outrageous pay of $2,500 an hour at 40 hours a week, you would earn $100 thousand per week. If you never took a break from the birth of Christ until now, December 2024, and never spent a dime of that money–despite that sizeable bank account, there would still be 91 Americans even richer than you.

The capitalist system that created this wealth inequality isn’t controlled by one person and can tolerate the death of one or even many CEOs, no matter the cause of their passing. UnitedHealthcare will find a new leader to make the “tough decisions” needed to satisfy their shareholders. This system can only be dismantled through mass action by the very people who created all this wealth.

A recent example was the massive uprising in South Korea, following the attempt to instill martial law by President Yoon Suk Yeo. When the union federations called a general strike and thousands amassed by the capitol building, it was clear that this edict would not stand, so martial law was lifted.

History has demonstrated time and again that when masses of working people collectively stand up for themselves, the economic system and the governments that support it cannot ignore them.

How could a health care system which met the needs of people who live come about? It would take mass action by health care workers, patients, and unions, who would have to force the politicians and the corporations they serve to acquiesce. Following the lead of the UAW, many unions are lining up their contracts to all expire on May 1, 2028. Could a mass strike for health care be a leading demand?

It’s understandable that some would not shed a tear over the death of one greedy CEO, who literally got rich off the misery of others. But a better world won’t come about because of the actions of a lone assassin, it will take a mass movement in the streets. Public sentiment has shown us the anger that exists, and history has shown us that fightback can bring about change. It’s up to us to build on the outrage that the vast majority of people feel over this unjust system and build the kind of struggle that can win health care for all.

Featured Image credit: WhiteEyedFrog; modified by Tempest.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”