A Crippling Cry for Help

Murder is bad. Let's start there. It's unequivocal. It's not a solution, not even close.

The recent killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is a brutal reminder of just how broken our society feels—how a healthcare system engineered to prioritize profits over people has pushed so many to the edge of despair.

This guy was my age and had a wife and two children.

Let me be upfront: I'm framing my perspective on an unconfirmed assumption that this murder may have stemmed from a personal vendetta—a grieving individual whose loved one died due to a denial of care.

I could be horribly wrong.

The truth may ultimately have nothing to do with UnitedHealthcare's policies. But this interpretation frames my take because whether or not it's accurate, it reflects the collective anguish of millions of Americans who are suffocating under a system that profits off their pain. And it highlights the alarming reaction from the public, which must not be ignored.

The Fight Club Finale Is an Unrealistic Fantasy

Let's get this out of the way: life is not a Fight Club sequel. If we blew up all the unoccupied corporate headquarters of health insurers today, those companies would be back in business by Monday morning. Tyler Durden may have thought destruction was a solution, but as anyone who lived through 2008 can tell you, big companies are like cockroaches.

They survive.

Likewise, life isn't a John Wick movie. Health insurance companies aren't The Continental. There's no secret underground network of highly trained corporate assassins plotting in mahogany conference rooms. What we have instead is worse: a perfectly legal, finely tuned machine designed to churn out profits at the expense of real lives.

The reality is far more banal but no less insidious.

The bureaucratic web of prior authorizations, denied claims, and endless appeals isn't exciting enough for a blockbuster, but it kills just the same.

A Nation's Unfiltered Reaction

In the hours following Thompson's death, social media exploded. Tweets like "health insurance is worse than murder" trended, while articles such as "Americans Have Little Sympathy for Murdered Health Insurance CEO" painted a grim picture of public sentiment. This wasn't merely shock at the crime. It was catharsis. It was decades of frustration with a system that feels like it's actively harming us.

UnitedHealthcare isn't exactly a beloved institution.

A ValuePenguin report ranks it among the worst offenders, denying nearly 32% of claims. Worse, insurers collectively delayed or denied over 46 million prior authorization requests in Medicare Advantage plans alone in 2022, according to KFF.

This is the fuel behind the public outrage, the anger that led some to call Thompson's murder karmic justice—a horrifying indictment of where we are as a society.

Not the First, and Likely Not the Last

The anger that drove this reaction isn't new.

Wendell Potter Potter's story is a chilling reminder of how personal tragedy often exposes systemic rot. In his book Deadly Spin, Potter recounts how witnessing the fallout of a denied transplant for Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old leukemia patient, shattered his faith in the industry. Cigna initially refused to cover the liver transplant that could have saved Nataline's life, reversing course only after public outcry. But the decision came too late, and Nataline died hours after the policy change.

Potter didn't respond with violence. He responded with truth, becoming a whistleblower and one of the industry's fiercest critics. His testimony to Congress and Deadly Spin laid bare how insurers prioritize profit over patient care.

But Wendell Potter's revelations haven't stopped the cycle of denials and death. A Harvard study estimated that 45,000 Americans die annually due to lack of insurance coverage—a number that hasn't shifted meaningfully since the study was published. These statistics underpin why Thompson's death feels, to so many, like a microcosm of a larger injustice.

The System Isn't Broken—It's Built This Way

Health insurance isn't merely broken.

It's functioning exactly as it was designed: to generate profit at the expense of human lives. This profit-first ethos is why healthcare in America costs more and delivers less than in other developed nations. It's also why public trust in health insurers is now lower than that of Congress—an almost unfathomable feat.

Even those who survive the system often do so barely. A PBS/AP-NORC poll revealed that a majority of Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the healthcare system. The sentiment is bipartisan: no one is happy with a system that bankrupts families while CEOs take home tens of millions annually.

This Moment Must Be a Turning Point

Regardless of what the investigation reveals about the motives behind Thompson's murder, the reaction to it exposes a nation at its breaking point. What will we do with this moment? Will we allow the system to continue churning, as Wendell Potter warned, or will we finally demand something better?

We must start by addressing the structural inequities at the heart of the problem. This includes:

• Transparency in healthcare pricing to empower consumers and reduce financial abuse.

• Oversight of claim denials, with penalties for insurers who deny coverage unjustly.

• Elimination of prior authorization hurdles that delay or deny necessary care.

These reforms aren't revolutionary—they're the bare minimum in a system that should serve patients, not profits.

Beyond Anger: A Call to Action

Let me be clear. This isn't a time for cheering.

It's a time for reckoning. For channeling our collective grief, rage, and frustration into a fight for systemic change. Healthcare reform has been on the table for decades. This moment demands that it becomes more than just rhetoric.

Brian Thompson's murder is a tragedy.

Let it be the last.

\Let it also be the moment we decide, finally, to fix the machine. Because the real crisis isn't just the one man who died outside a New York hotel.

It's the millions who die silently every year, denied care by a system designed to fail them.