True Bipartisanship! America's Ruling Class Joins Hands to Say Violence Against the Ruling Class is Never the Answer.
But the American working class isn't convinced.
I was not radicalized by the left. My socialist tendencies didn’t arise from reading Karl Marx or hearing the campaign speeches of Bernie Sanders. The pinnacle event that evolved my outlook on American healthcare, and eventually the entire capitalist system, was not a revolution, campaign, or charismatic leader decrying the bourgeoise beneath a flurry of red flags. While I wish my ideological evolution was a glorious tale fitting a Hollywood movie, in reality, it came from a depressing ten-minute conversation with a 78-year-old, Trump-voting widow in a trailer in Orleans, Vermont.
As a 22-year-old ex-frat boy, I had little concern for politics. Instead, I was looking to excel as a Medicare Supplement salesman, my first “real” job since graduation. The client, “Ellen,” as we’ll call her, had asked me to come by to discuss the Medicare supplement my employer had sold her thirteen years prior. These supplements, commonly called “Medigap,” are private insurance to cover the 20% of healthcare costs not insured by Medicare. Unfortunately, I had to tell her that my employer had rejected her claim for an upcoming surgery. The government would pick up 80% of the grossly inflated surgery cost, but the outstanding 20% would be her responsibility. The estimated bill was more than her life savings. It was the most difficult conversation I’ve ever had. As both the deliverer of bad news and the only one present, I sat with her and consoled her as she wept at a the rickety kitchen table patched together with duct tape. If she chose to go through with the surgery, which her doctor recommended, she would be bankrupt by medical bills, the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States.1
“I don’t understand,” Ellen said. “What do they expect me to do?”
I left without telling her the answer. They — the American government and the medicare insurance company I worked for — expected Ellen to die.
It is this story and the countless others like it that occur every day in these Blessed United States of America that explain the various reactions to the assassination of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson. Broadly speaking, responses to the killing have been divided along strict class lines. While many working Americans understand why someone would assassinate a health insurance executive, the American elite have shown they can’t fathom such a response. Politicians, pundits, and capitalists have set aside their Republican vs. Democrat competition to loudly condemn anyone who even likes a joke about Thompson on Twitter.
While the Assassination Discourse is currently dominating the news cycle, what we’re witnessing goes much deeper than jokes or statements of condemnation. It shows that, despite the two-party veneer prolific in America, the true divide in the nation is between those who live in the reality of American capitalism and those who live above it.
Class-Based Responses
As has happened at every point in history, as soon as news of a slain aristocrat reached the common people, they made jokes about it. While the usual suspects were quick to decry “the radical left!” the truth is such mockery was bipartisan. Below are screenshots of comments, overwhelmingly sympathetic to the gunmen, on videos from Fox News, Ben Shapiro, and Matt Walsh. As subscribers to some of the most reactionary voices in modern politics, I’d wager these commenters likely view socialists such as myself as the antichrist. Still, even they have no love for Brian Thompson and other healthcare CEOs who have profited off of human suffering.
As
pointed out, the responses to Brian Thompson’s last LinkedIn post (seldom a place for left-wing ideas) were pure animosity. Fellow CEOs and sales bros scorned Thompson for UnitedHealth’s business model. Like the social media comments above, these echo the tone of online leftist spaces, which have held little compassion for the assassinated death merchant.Just like the public’s response to the killing, the elite’s response to the public’s response was equally bipartisan. Republicans, Democrats, and nonpartisan (but still political) members of the political-media-business class took to social media to chastise we peasants for not being upset by the death of an American oligarch. The statements below from Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and Republican Failson Donald Trump Jr. illustrate just how united the ruling class is on the issue.
Given the bipartisan crossover between the responses, it might appear that the killing of Brian Thompson is a political wild card unexplained by our current partisan environment. While the responses might be confusing when viewed through a Democratic/Republican lens, they’re easily understandable when examined through a more material analysis that considers whether or not the commenter endures the indisputable reality of America’s economic systems, such as privatized healthcare.
The people who live within and experience the American healthcare system, whether they be Republicans, Democrats, leftists, libertarians, or just Normal Guys, recognize it for the evil beast it is. They’ve had to jump through hoops to access essential medicine, have had claims denied without explanation, and, sometimes, are directly told they will not be given necessary, even life-saving, medical care. This is not a bug in the American healthcare system. It is a feature specifically designed to confuse, delay, and deny people coverage. All of this is so that companies such as UnitedHealth can increase shareholder value. For working Americans, who, unlike their elite countrymen, experience this system first hand, Brian Thompson is the incarnate of their suffering. As the Chief Executive Officer of UnitedHealth, Thompson sought to become the decision-maker who worsens American lives for financial gain. I was reading
’s essay What’s a life worth?, which pointed out the findings of a recent Senate report criticizing UnitedHealth for increasing its claim denial rate by 14% under Thompson’s stewardship. The report also criticized UHC’s denial rate for skilled nursing home care, which increased by 900% during Thompson’s tenure.Let’s bring this number out of a white paper and into reality.
When UnitedHealth denies claims for private nursing homes, struggling families are forced to cover the average annual cost of $107,146.2 Beyond unaffordable, many families must choose between forfeiting necessary elder care for their loved ones or losing their homes. Forcing Americans to choose between homelessness and death is not a hypothetical, but a component of UnitedHealth’s business plan. A lawsuit brought against the company last fall alleges the UHC used faulty AI to deny nursing home claims for elderly family members. Both of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit are now dead.3 To the elite, UnitedHealth’s denial rates are statistics to be cited in New York Times opinion columns. To the working class, these policies aren’t measured in percentages, but in funerals. At the best, they’ve suffered inadequate healthcare due to denial. At the worst, they’ve buried family members. So, when working Americans hear that the man who earned $10 million every year to steward this system was shot, many of them were somewhat joyous. At the very least, they could understand why the killer did what he did.
On the other side of the coin are America’s elite. When I say “elite,” I don’t mean the vague notion used by J.D. Vance and other reactionaries to conjure an imagined liberal white woman to get mad at, but in the true sense of the word: those who exist above the realities of America’s healthcare, political, and economic systems. These politicians, pundits, and capitalists sit atop American society and approach it as a thought experiment, seldom stepping inside to experience the system they laude. To them, statistics such as UnitedHealth’s gargantuan profits and the 45,000 Americans who die annually4 because they can’t afford health insurance are unrelated. They can’t imagine themselves as one of those unfortunate souls sacrificed for profit because they will never be one. These people rarely have to endure scarcity or want. Matt Ygelsias will write fondly about the U.S. healthcare system, because what complaints he has can be voiced directly to the President, who frequently reads his work. Through connections and wealth, their children and parents will never go without food, shelter, toys, or healthcare. As a result, they earnestly believe America is a just country doing the best it can. And why wouldn’t they? The American system has made them rich, happy, and prestigious. Any person, regardless of the size of their ego, would welcome the idea that they are at the top of society because it’s a meritocracy, and they’re the most deserving.
This is the divide between those who are sympathetic to Thompson’s killer and those who think he’s the worst person since Osama Bin Laden — the former experience America for what it is. The latter are largely untouched by the systems they adore, commenting on and analyzing our lives and deaths like we’re ants in a fucking science experiment.
To the elite mind, private health insurance is the optimal solution to a tricky problem: America wants to give everyone healthcare access, but it is financially constrained. We can’t just give everyone healthcare because there isn’t enough! Therefore, we must ration it through costs and bureaucracy. (As someone who has worked in the insurance industry, I know this is how such companies view themselves.) If you need proof of this ideology, I’ll direct you to
’s latest article defending companies like United Health. I’m copying verbatim:First of all, insurance companies just don’t make that much profit. UnitedHealth Group, the company of which Brian Thompson’s UnitedHealthcare is a subsidiary, is the most valuable private health insurer in the country in terms of market capitalization, and the one with the largest market share. Its net profit margin is just 6.11%
Oh my god! Only 6.11% profit margin?!? How did they survive? That 6.11% came out to a mere $22 billion in profit for UnitedHealthcare in 2023. Perhaps we can set up a GoFundMe to help them see them through the winter.
From a thousand-foot view, it’s easy (but still insane) to say “guys, insurance companies only made 6% profit.” But from the ground level, for those of us who experience this system and have had a company like UnitedHealth look at an order from our doctor and say “no,” we recognize this system for what it is — the logical conclusion of capitalism, which restricts resources behind paywalls to generate profit. And no matter how many neoliberal bloggers claim otherwise, that system will always be evil. Working-class eyes see the direct line between UnitedHealth’s $22 billion in profits, Brian Thompson’s $10 million annual salary, and their denied insurance claims. It’s not something they have to be told about by their favorite partisan news channel, but a direct and justified anger from the realities of American life. People die because Brian Thompson made decisions that deprived them of healthcare. Speaking anonymously to the Financial Times, a former Cigna executive said:
“We’d have times when you’d deny proton laser therapy for a kid with seizures and the parent would freak out.”
So yeah, it’s not surprising Americans are somewhat jovial the man who denied claims to their child just so his parasitic organization could increase yearly profits from $21.9999 billion to $22 billion was shot. But to the elites, who submit to the AP History fantasy that America is Doing Its Best so they can feel good about occupying the upper strata of a morally bankrupt society, Brian Thompson was just a guy killed on his way to work.
And that leads us to the final dynamic of this discourse. While some of the pearl-clutchers acknowledge the genuine pain the medical industry has caused, they argue that Thompson and his ilk were “just doing his job.” Representative Dean Phillips released a statement stating companies like UHC and people like Brian Thompson were “playing by the rules.” Through this view, as long as someone operates within the legal confines of the current U.S. system, they are absolved of all responsibility for their actions.
Make no mistake — this excuse of “I’m just following my orders doing my job” is being promoted because certain people don’t want the American working class questioning the large delta between morality and legality. If we accept that “playing by the rules” is always okay, the guy who makes schoolbus-seeking missiles for Raytheon can say, “Hey, I’m just doing my job.” The health executive who institutes murderous policies can reassure themselves that “If I don’t do it, someone else will!” And the politicians who accept legalized bribes from said insurance industry can decry violence and proudly state, “We’re all just playing by the rules! If you don’t like the rules, you have to convince me to change them!” Bullshit. The elites can lie to themselves all the want. The rest of us know the game is rigged. People like Dean Phillips and Brian Thompson make the rules. The former takes lobbying dollars from the latter to create a legal structure in which it is perfectly fine for UnitedHealthcare to withhold medicine from dying children, but if a father breaks into a pharmacy to save his child’s life, he’ll be locked in a cage for a decade. And then they have the nerve to claim they’re the “civilized” ones.
However, those who live with the consequences of Brian Thompson’s choices — and they were choices — recognize the true motivation of the American oligarchy class. Thompson denied claims because he wanted to make UnitedHealth more profitable, elevate his career, and make a lot of money along the way. The American working class knows this because they’re forced to endure the harm of these choices. The elite tell themselves $22 billion in annual profits and 45,000 dead Americans is “the best we can do” because they don’t want to look in the mirror and see themselves for what they are: bastards who are okay with dead Americans as long as it’s within the “rules” they thought up and wrote down.
Unsurprisingly, I’ve been thinking a lot about Ellen today. Sadly, I expect she has passed. But, regardless of the fact she was a stern Trump supporter, I’m sure I could predict her thoughts on the killing of Brian Thompson.
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In Solidarity — Joe
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/this-is-the-real-reason-most-americans-file-for-bankruptcy.html
https://www.seniorliving.org/nursing-homes/costs/
https://www.newsweek.com/united-healthcare-ceo-shooting-ai-lawsuit-1996266
https://www.citizen.org/news/nobody-should-die-because-they-cant-afford-health-care/
My acquaintances in the (still existing piece of the) middle class think Obamacare has been a wonderful thing, & to be fair, to many it has been. But for many it has only been an extra expense without any added benefit as premiums & deductibles are still too high & then claims are denied. Only Bernie (of the Presidential candidates) had a political solution to this, but the corporate oligarchy (including Dem politicians in the pockets of said oligarchs) shot it down. Dems don’t fare any better on this subject than Repubs. It’s no wonder voters don’t see any difference between the parties & why Steve Banon’s message of destroying it all has had some sway. It’s a sad day today. I was hoping the shooter had gotten away.
It goes further- housing, food, education, debt service. We are all in the crosshairs of capitalism- except for the elites taking aim.