There’s something grotesquely poetic about America—land of the free, home of the brave, and the place where assassinating a health insurance CEO apparently lands on the moral spectrum somewhere between jaywalking and double-parking in front of a fire hydrant during church hours. Sixty years of policy, countless billions in lobbying, and enough think-tank white papers to deforest the Pacific Northwest have achieved something truly remarkable: they’ve redefined villainy. Osama Bin Laden, meet... uh... Kim from Blue Cross? David from Aetna? Gail from Anthem?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. This isn’t about Kim, David, Gail, or whatever the name is on your latest “denial of coverage” letter. It’s about the system—the system—that great Rube Goldberg machine of human suffering dressed up in patriotic bunting and sold as “healthcare.” Somewhere in the sweaty haze of 1973, when Nixon rubber-stamped the HMO Act, the American Dream mutated into something more accurately described as a corporate fever dream. “Innovation” stopped meaning “a better way to heal people” and became “how many middlemen can we cram between a patient and their insulin without anyone storming the building with pitchforks?”
But we’re getting away from the poetry. Let’s zoom in.
On a bitter December morning in 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead outside a Hilton in Manhattan. The assailant is described as calm, methodical, and disturbingly efficient—like someone who’d spent years arguing with customer service and finally decided to escalate to the manager’s manager’s manager. The gunman, dubbed the “Claims Adjuster” and the “Co-Pay Killer” by the internet within hours, fled the scene on an e-bike, as if paying surge pricing on an Uber was one indignity too many.
In the aftermath, UnitedHealth employees were sent home early, presumably to fill out bereavement claims that would later be denied because the CEO’s demise wasn’t considered “catastrophic enough.” Cable news went berserk. Panels of serious-looking pundits debated whether this was the logical endpoint of America’s violent video game obsession, completely ignoring the decade-long boss fight against health insurance that left half the country screaming, “Press X to not die.” Surely, surely, it wasn’t the decades of policy decisions that normalized treating human lives as line items on a balance sheet.
On social media, the reaction was a masterclass in gallows humor. The hashtag #ThoughtsAndPremiums trended, alongside memes of Thompson Photoshopped into famous Bond villain lairs, complete with captions like, “Pay no attention to the laser beam, Mr. Bond—it’s out of network.” When UnitedHealth’s corporate account tweeted, “We are shocked and saddened by the loss of our beloved CEO,” someone immediately replied, “Define ‘loss.’” It got over a million likes. Meanwhile, law enforcement and investigators are still stumbling over themselves “searching for a motive,” as if the entire history of American healthcare isn’t written in blood and bankruptcy documents. What possible motive could be more transparent? Might as well ask if water is wet. This isn’t a mystery; it’s a statistical inevitability.
But here’s the thing: the jokes weren’t just jokes. They were pressure release valves for decades of rage. Because while Thompson’s death was a tragedy for his family, it was catharsis for everyone else. This wasn’t random violence; it was a cosmic invoice marked “past due.” And a large swath of the public wasn’t just unbothered—they were smugly satisfied, like they’d finally gotten to watch the season finale of a long-running series where the villain gets exactly what’s coming to him. No one cared who the shooter was. What mattered was what he represented: an answer to a question the system refused to even acknowledge.
The elite scrambled, of course. Not to solve the problem, but to ensure no one gets any ideas. The FBI launched a full-court press, not out of moral outrage, but out of sheer terror that someone might think, “Hey, that worked pretty well.” Their press releases screamed deterrence, as if the threat of prison holds any sway over people who already can’t afford to live. Pro tip: when someone’s facing a lifetime of debt, shame, and untreated illness, threatening to take away their freedom isn’t a deterrent—it’s a retirement plan.
And the system? Oh, it carried on, a wounded beast snarling at the crowd. But here’s the catch: when you strip people of options long enough, you’re not just creating desperation—you’re creating justification. As JFK once warned, “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” And when an entire industry profits off denying people the right to survive, where human dignity is reduced to an insurance code, what exactly do you think is going to happen?
And that’s the true reveal. Not just the death of one overpaid CEO, but the unmasking of a truth so ugly it makes a root canal without anesthesia seem charming: a critical mass of people—maybe not a majority, but definitely enough to fill a stadium—don’t just feel okay about it. They feel fine. Better than fine. Righteously vindicated. This isn’t some moral conundrum or a “we need to have a national conversation” moment. This is full-blown “pass the popcorn” unleashed Schadenfreude.
And why not? The system spent decades training people to see suffering as a moral failing, to blame the victim, to kneel at the corporate altar. So when someone finally snaps and takes matters into their own hand, it doesn’t feel wrong—it feels like the plot twist everyone saw coming and many were secretly rooting for. Call it an “act of God” not covered by your policy. Call it a pre-existing condition for a broken system. Call it whatever you like, but don’t call it surprising. Because when enough people stop believing in the system, the system stops believing in itself. Cracks deepen into fault lines, and those fault lines start swallowing up the Goliaths who thought they were untouchable.
The system wasn’t built to save you. It was built to bleed you dry. Stop paying into it. Quit feeding the beast. Just don’t. Every time you hand over that premium, you’re not buying insurance—you’re buying a ticket to the world’s most expensive theme park, where the only ride is “How Much Can We Charge You Before You Notice You’re Not Getting Off?” If they’re feeling generous, you might get a free Band-Aid with a $200 co-pay.
The only way to win is to stop playing the game. If you want to see change, you have to make these leeches irrelevant. The system’s not going to fix itself, and if you wait for it to, you’ll be dead (if lucky), bankrupt (if not), and maybe in need of a good lawyer before it finally admits it’s broken. So take your power back. It’s time to start playing them at their own game. And no, it won’t be easy—but then again, what’s the alternative? A lifetime subscription to the Health Insurance Grift? No thanks. We’ve been played long enough.