The People Cheering the UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting
7th December 2024
New York Magazine, a Voice of the Crust.
After her mother was diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer, Anna watched for years as she fought both the illness and the health-care system until her death in 2020. “The fight with the insurance companies was, in many ways, worse than cancer,” Anna says. “It took over my entire family’s life.”
She recalls her mother’s time-consuming struggles to get new treatments approved. “It was just so maddening to know they were shaving years off my mom’s life because of the paperwork,” Anna recalls.
So on Wednesday morning when she heard the news that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead in Manhattan, she had a perverse reaction.
“I am ashamed to admit it, but there was a little surge of Schadenfreude,” says Anna, who, like several others in this story, asked to use a pseudonym to protect her privacy.
In many cases dealing with insurance companies is like dealing with welfare-state agencies: Charged with providing benefits but fenced around to make sure that such benefits don’t go to enrich the Undeserving, it too often winds up as a mud-wrestling match between bureaucrats and the underclass who depend upon assistance to get through life.