Powerlessness, Violence, and the Murder of a Health Insurance CEO
People are hungry for accountability. Desperate for it. Aching for it. We don't have to condone or glorify the assassination of Brian Thompson in order to stop and listen to hear what some of the reaction to this violent and desperate act is trying to tell us.
The killing of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson was wrong. Vigilante justice is wrong. Dangerous. Bad. Scary. Let the record show, I was not among the people who celebrated the killing of Brian Thompson in any way whatsoever. But I have a few ideas about why some folks did celebrate it. And I have no desire to shame them for it. I want to listen. To understand. Just as I did years ago, working with the violent offenders who were court-mandated to see me.
Violence can be the language of the unheard or oppressed, a statement so “loud” it can no longer be ignored. It can be a way to try to bring balance to an imbalanced power dynamic when one feels powerless. I’d argue the gleeful memes and the posts, celebrating the horrible murder of a health insurance company CEO, come from the same place, albeit vicariously.
Many people have been horrified at the celebration: “My God, have we lost our humanity?!” But those same people don’t seem to also clutch their pearls when an unknown medical reviewer in a health insurance company keeps us or our loved ones or our friends or neighbors or co-workers from getting the care we need because it doesn’t fit their treatment algorithm, despite what the licensed medical doctor who knows us says. Some reviewers have admitted they don’t even look at a doctor’s clinical notes, solely making approval decisions based on that algorithm.
You can deeply listen in an effort to understand something and effect change without excusing it or condoning or glorifying it, and also without shaming it.
Health insurance companies market themselves as being there to help us when we need it most—when we’re sick, injured, dying, at our most vulnerable, or when we’re trying to stay healthy. But at the same time, the fact that lives are ruined or lost or our savings are drained because of denials or delays is seen as the “cost of doing business.” A private health insurance company’s reason to exist is to make money for itself. It doesn’t expand coverage, it most certainly doesn’t expedite care, and ultimately it doesn’t appear to give two shits about us. We, the collateral damage, know this. We live this.
Preventing access to timely healthcare because you’re more focused on making money for shareholders and CEOs is inhumane. Profits at the expense of people, especially in a care-based industry, are inhumane. Having to spend untold hours and days and weeks and months navigating health insurance obstacles, literally begging for care, especially when one is ill or taking care of someone who is ill, is inhumane. And when one feels so totally devalued, it’s easier to not be our best selves—or to be our shittiest selves—and devalue others in one way or another. When this human devaluation is couched in business, it’s okay, but when it’s a meme or a post, it’s not. And that double standard, that inequity, is more evident by the day, and has pushed some to their breaking point.
People are hungry for accountability. Desperate for it. Aching for it. We see what’s all around us and we know what’s coming. We want someone to fight for us.
It’s crazy-making, watching the old guard Democratic leadership not meet the moment as they work to maintain the status quo with platitudes and calls for playing nice when mere weeks ago they were calling U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his Project 2025 fascist. We’re seeing corporate media completely fail us, continuing to describe the horrifying things Trump and his minions are saying and doing with vague euphemisms, if they cover these things at all. We’ve watched Trump’s slam-dunk court cases go away one by one. Sure, he’s an adjudicated rapist, but as I wrote here, what does it say that an adjudicated rapist can win an election to become the most powerful person on Earth after he was found liable for rape? Not exactly accountability. Corporations and their CEOs are making huge profits, often by price gouging the masses. They’re using that money to enrich themselves with staggering salaries and bonuses, and they’re buying elections in hopes of further enriching themselves. All the while they can’t seem to find the money to pay their workers a livable wage.
And so, the violent, horrible murder of a man whose company represents the literal pain and suffering and sometimes death of countless thousands, as he allegedly participated in insider trading, living the millionaire good life, represented a form of accountability for some. As perverse and skewed as it may seem, it was David defeating the bully, Goliath. It’s decidedly not how I want accountability, but as a psychotherapist I totally get where the sentiment comes from.
If we’re not going to be heel-dragging Democrats, liberals, or progressives who keep us forever stuck in a status quo that clearly isn’t working, if we truly want to help people, if we want to win elections, we need to take the energy we’re spending clutching those pearls and actually listen to the folks who are gleeful because of Brian Thompson’s death.
We need to hear the decades-in-the-making frustration, the unmet needs, the longing for a decent life, the pain, the fear, the stories of untreated illness, the loss, the profound feeling of powerlessness, the anger at the breathtaking inequality, and, most importantly, the seeming unwillingness of our leaders to do anything meaningful about it, that is bubbling just below the surface of all the gleeful memes and posts about a rich health insurance company CEOs murder.
You can deeply listen in an effort to understand something and effect change without excusing it or condoning or glorifying it, and also without shaming it. I’ve done it for decades in my psychotherapy practice.
Let’s give it a try.
