On Dec. 24, 2024, a sunny day with temperatures in the mid-50s, on a New York City street, Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed by an unidentified assailant. The shooting happened in broad daylight in front of the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel. Thompson was in New York to attend an investor’s meeting when he was killed.
After an intensive, multi-state search, police apprehended a suspect, Luigi Mangione, 26 years old. On December 9, five days after the shooting, Mangione was charged with the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare.
Aside from being a capital crime, the murder of corporate CEOs is considered a political assassination, which automatically activates the highest law enforcement powers available to apprehend the perpetrators.
Unlike the shooting of an ordinary local shop owner who is not the head of a publicly traded company, the murder of one of the nation’s largest healthcare insurers has more business and corporate security ramifications than personal ones. Corporate America’s tremendous contributions and support of federal and state governments cannot function without state protection.
It’s no wonder that the arrest of Mangione after an intense manhunt was only the start of the shockwaves it sent through corporate America, especially in the multi-billion-dollar medical insurance industry that involves daily decisions about the personal medical care its participants will receive. Denying this care is always an emotional decision, and in some cases, it means life and death.
So, it is not surprising that after Thompson’s shooting, the news emerged that UnitedHealthcare had the worst participant denial rate in the health insurance industry. Much of their profits were driven by the company rejecting 33% of all claims, twice the industry average of 16%. (In 2023, AvMed and United HealthCare were the medical insurance companies with the highest denial rate for in-network claims in the United States, at 33% each.)
All of this was happening as UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurer in the United States, insured over 50 million people.
Since affordable health care has been a sensitive national topic for decades, the current debate over the extension of subsidies under the Affordable Care Act has sparked tensions between Democrats and Republicans. This intense debate was not lost on Mangione, a graduate of the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he majored in computer science and graduated in May 2020. He was also valedictorian of an all-boys preparatory school.
As an intelligent man, Mangione’s motive was clear: To focus attention on the inequitable healthcare system, its wasteful practices, and the need for revamping the national healthcare system.
The Murder Had a Definite Impact
The question is: How did this killing affect UnitedHealthcare and others in the healthcare industry?
Immediately after the shooting, social media reacted. UnitedHealthcare’s own bereavement message online was mocked by 77,000 laughing response posts. A Gallup poll in 2024 found that 51% of respondents had a somewhat negative attitude towards the healthcare industry, compared to 36% who had a somewhat favorable opinion.
So, it’s not surprising that after Thompson’s murder, corporations began spending “record amounts to keep their executives safe in response to rising threats,” according to a Reuters report. Corporations also began removing photos of their top executives from company websites.
But aside from the obvious, how did this murder affect UnitedHealth’s operational policies?
While UnitedHealthcare has not announced any specific operational or policy changes, the company is clearly re-examining its policies. At a Reuters NEXT conference in New York, in December 2024, Amazon Pharmacy chief medical officer Vin Gupta acknowledged the systemic issues fueling public anger. “Our health system needs to be better (…) There’s a lot of things that should cause a lot of outrage,” he said.
At the same event, Pfizer’s chief sustainability officer, Caroline Roan, echoed Gupta’s sentiments, as she said: “There is clearly a larger dialogue that needs to happen, and we’re going to be taking our time to try to understand exactly what happened and understand that feedback, and see where we can play a positive role.”
The murder also ignited a tremendous public response about the distrust of the federal government and the dominance of healthcare insurance companies when it comes to dictating federal health insurance policies.
In the video below, Vanguard Communication’s CEO Ron Harman King discusses the possibility of revamping the healthcare system as a result of the murder.
As Mangione recognized, healthcare reform will not happen as long as the Trump administration and its pro-monopoly Justice Department are in power. Second, Democrats are powerless, and in some cases spineless, to confront the healthcare industry.
So, while the corporate media downplays the importance of the Thompson murder, corporate America has been shaken and is reacting in private to this attempt to challenge its undisputed power.
