America
By Sonali Kolhatkar
Desperately Needs A Solution To Healthcare Injustice
The December 4 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the public outrage over the state of healthcare it sparked , is a tale of many competing narratives : the killer ’ s story , the public ’ s story , the industry ’ s story , and the politicians ’ and punditocracy ’ s story . Which one wins out determines whether the United States ultimately replaces the healthcare system we know with a publicly funded version or continues to accept the flawed one we have .
Sweep away all the news spin , and at its heart , Brian Thompson ’ s killing has highlighted two crucial narratives , the first of which is that armed violence is a way to solve problems . Guns are a force so ubiquitous in our society today that we have become collectively numb to their destruction . It is a uniquely American act of desperation aimed at the industry that only someone like Mangione could be lionized for .
Secondly , the long-overdue prevailing story emerging from the incident is the injustice baked into our healthcare system that leaves nearly no one in the nation untouched .
The story that has yet to be embraced collectively is what a systemic solution to the crisis looks like . That solution must center on publicly funded healthcare and a complete dismantling of the insurance industry .
Luigi Mangione , arrested after a days-long manhunt , hardly fits the profile of a vulnerable member of society wronged by Big Health Insurance . White , male , physically fit ( other than the debilitating back pain he appears to have recently suffered ), born into privilege , and sporting a head of thick hair and a winning smile , he is a man whose political leanings don ’ t fit neatly into boxes that allow either the left or the right to unequivocally claim him or damn him . And yet he is just about the only archetype of a CEO-killer able to provoke the sort of public admiration in our white supremacist patriarchal world that Robin Hood would have been envious of .
I suspect that , like me , many people of color breathed a sigh of relief that the alleged killer wasn ’ t a Brown or Black man , or an undocumented immigrant . If he were any of those things , the narrative of a CEO ’ s murder would have been less about the CEO and more about the murderer . White men are allowed the space to be flawed human beings . Their motivations and mental health are interrogated since their race and gender absolve them of anything else . The “ ideal hero ” did the quintessentially American deed .
The fact that the CEO-killer wrote the words “ deny ,” “ defend ,” and “ depose ” on bullet casings — words often used to describe the health insurance
48 The Trial Lawyer