Flags fly at half mast outside the United Healthcare corporate headquarters on December 4, 2024 in Minnetonka, Minnesota. United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead on the street in New York City before he was to attend the company's annual investors meeting. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
As every human with access to a screen of some kind knows by now, Brian Thompson from UnitedHealthcare was recently shot dead on a New York street by an unknown gunman. But the most revealing thing about the shooting of Thompson is not the shooting itself but the approach that the media has taken to covering it.
As we know, the healthcare exec was shot in the street and died shortly afterwards. News channels have breathlessly covered the event, which has injected new life into news anchors who are visibly depressed after the recent US election.
The coverage reached ludicrous heights in an excited interview with a man who had once stayed in the same hostel as the shooter. We can only look forward to the exclusive interview with the vendor who might have sold him a hotdog. Did he have it with mustard? What? No ketchup? Is that un-American?? Only the upcoming and keenly awaited interview with someone who was almost certainly born in the same medium-sized city as the shooter could tell us more …
Every detail of the crime has been explored. Video footage. Potential clues. Everything excitedly examined.
Except for the most important thing about the shooting — why was the head of a medical insurance company shot dead in the street?
The neglected issue of motive perhaps tells a far greater story. One that affects the lives of millions.
The bullet casings left at the scene had the words “deny”, “defend” and “depose” written on them. These seem to be drawn from the book Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It by Jay M Feinman. This publication excoriated the US medical insurance industry for its failure to properly provide coverage for the millions of people dependent on it.
The privatised nature of the US healthcare industry makes it a moral quagmire that has resulted in the most expensive and worst healthcare in the developed world. Political opposition to government involvement in the provision of American healthcare is astonishing.
The average cost of healthcare a year in the US is more than $12 000 — roughly a third higher than in other wealthy nations. Healthcare costs the US about 17% of GDP which is 5% higher than the next-most expensive developed country. Mysteriously, an MRI costs about four times what it costs in other countries.
The reasons for this are legion. But the bottom line seems to be that the US system of privatised, and hugely profitable, healthcare means that patients get less of the medical care they need, and pay more for it, than in Europe.
As profits are maximised, this privatisation of healthcare has led to a situation akin to exploitation — privatisation without any of the usual benefits of the free market like transparency, competition and lower prices.
This has resulted in healthcare being a colossal business. Publicly listed US medical insurance companies had a revenue of more than a trillion dollars last year, growing by a (healthy) 10%.
UnitedHealth Group (for whom Thompson worked) made $324 billion in revenues and $25 billion in pre-tax profit in 2023 — only Walmart, Amazon, Apple and ExxonMobil made more money. Almost half of all Americans use the company and its market capitalisation has doubled in 5 years, to $486 billion, making it America’s 12th most valuable company.
Thompson himself earned around $10 million a year and, along with colleagues, was recently investigated for insider trading as execs sought to supplement this income.
As these profits are energetically pursued, US health insurance companies (even since the implementation of Obama’s Affordable Care Act) have worked tirelessly to ensure that they operate within a far lighter regulatory environment than in similar countries. This means that they operate with greater latitude when it comes to prioritising profits and not paying out claims.
Any government interference in this lucrative equation results in brutal political street fighting against gargantuanly well-funded lobby groups who defend this system as a bulwark against leftist, socialist, nanny-state incursion.
They position themselves as heroic defenders of “freedom”. Quite how this “freedom” plays out is often unclear. Freedom to die in the parking lot of a hospital because one cannot afford to go inside? Freedom to cut short chemotherapy because one is bankrupt? Freedom to skip that pesky MRI because one’s credit card is maxed out?
So, perhaps the bigger question is not why a (probably quite pleasant) accountant was shot dead in the street but rather why someone would shoot him.
But the media has no interest in this part of the story because sensational murder stories sell better than more complex ones about healthcare. And a sensational murder story is merely another commodity to be traded on the open market, just like healthcare and us as human beings.
Meaning that the most important half of the story about the murder of Thompson will never be told. There just isn’t money in it. And when profit is the only motive for doing things, they don’t get done if it doesn’t benefit the bottom line. Just ask any American who hasn’t had an operation that they really need, due to the structure of the healthcare industry.
John Davenport is executive creative director of Vice / Virtue London & Dubai.