Brian Thompson Was a Killer Too

If you are running a company that prides itself on denying people medical care, you have blood on your hands.

CBS New York

As Katherine wrote yesterday, the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has prompted an outpouring of morbid glee, as people pointedly refuse to mourn for someone who sat at the apex of one of the cruelest industries in the country.

But with that outpouring has come an inevitable backlash, as pundits and commentators recoil at the reaction to Thompson’s death. This is understandable in part—cheering on a brutal assassination is distasteful on some basic level. But the people complaining fail to grapple with a crucial part of this entire saga—how we define what counts as violence and what doesn't. More specifically, they fail to grapple with the reality that the healthcare industry is itself a pillar of American violence, and that, as a main cog in that industry, Thompson was as much of a merchant of death as the person who killed him.

Take this piece in The Atlantic by Nicholas Florko. It’s a strange article, because Florko lays out in some detail the many depravities of the American healthcare system, and then fails to make some very obvious conclusions about that system.