The shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson ignited a firestorm of public anger towards the US medical insurance system, highlighting the struggles and frustrations faced by ordinary Americans.
The most remarkable thing about the shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York street in early December was the reaction. Most comments on social media blew past the horror of the killing to express outrage at our medical insurance system. Everyone, it seemed, had a story of a family member’s being denied coverage for serious problems. These reactions were doubly surprising since we’d just been through an election where the issue barely came up.
Yes, there was vague talk—recall Trump’s “”—about expanding or cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, but directed rage against companies like UnitedHealthcare had been nowhere to be seen. I can see how Luigi Mangione—who was arrested last week and indicted Tuesday on charges that include first-degree murder—has personalized a big, amorphous issue, crystallizing it into a clear moral parable. Suddenly it was no longer the language of. It was the language of heroes and villains, the shooter as cold-blooded killer or culture warrior, Thompson as money-grubbing CEO bleeding Americans dry or good family man bleeding out on the street. Overnight, a faceless corporation, made invisible by arcane laws and corporate jargon, stood exposed, naked in its greed. We like to think of American history as orderly, democratic, fair. Actually, violent episodes often drag issues people would rather avoid into the public forum. For decades, politicians contrived compromises to keep the issue of slavery from exploding, but Nat Turner’s bloody rebellion in 1831 jolted Southerners into an awareness that slaves might wish to cut their throats. A wave of repression followed. About 30 years later, John Brown’s bloody plot to foment a slave revolt awakened many Northerners’ rage against the “slaveocracy,” ratcheting up the momentum toward civil wa
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