Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists Michelle Goldberg, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Zeynep Tufekci about the reaction and backlash to the killing of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson and the murder charge against a suspect, Luigi Mangione.
Patrick Healy: Zeynep, Michelle, Tressie, the three of you think and write a lot about ruptures in society — especially how people react, recoil and rationalize online. For the last week Americans have been processing one such rupture — the explosion of disdain toward health insurers after the assassination of an industry C.E.O., Brian Thompson, and the intense interest on social media in the alleged killer, Luigi Mangione. What has struck you most about the reaction of Americans and how it differs from reactions to other high-profile incidents and ruptures in society?
Zeynep Tufekci: I was struck by the broad outpouring of the sentiment, “I don’t condone murder, but I understand why someone might be so angry at a health care insurance company.” It’s been far more than the usual edgy or extreme comments you see after a big incident. It showed up in conservative and liberal communities; it showed up in many corners that were not that political.
Michelle Goldberg: I was more struck by the number of people who do condone murder! On my TikTok feed, someone posted a photo of a tattoo they’d gotten of three bullets labeled “Deny,” “Defend” and “Depose” — the words Mangione allegedly wrote on his shell casings. Another posted a prayer candle with his image; apparently $5 for each one sold will go to his legal fund. There are links online where you can donate to his jail commissary fund. It all feels like something out of a cinematic dystopia, the degree to which he’s become a folk hero.
Healy: Mangione keeps getting called a “folk hero” — I understand it, but assassinations perpetuate a culture of violence and fear. Why are so many people still talking about this shooting as if it’s justifiable, which “folk hero” seems to imply?
Goldberg: The question isn’t whether he should be a folk hero — it’s why, to some unquantifiable number of people, he indisputably is. Obviously, it speaks to the intense rage people feel toward these insurance companies, which I understand and share. But it’s also part of a broader societal embrace of vigilantism, which until now was mostly a right-wing phenomenon, and which derives from a collapse of faith in the institutions that are supposed to provide redress.
Healy: I’ve been struck by how much people are projecting their individual “what these guys mean to me” opinions onto what is, in fact, a coldblooded assassination. You see that in Mangione being lionized in part because he’s handsome, with people already fantasy-casting Dave Franco to play him in a Ryan Murphy streaming series.
Tressie McMillan Cottom: Criminals have been celebrities since the dawn of mass media. Public trials are some of the earliest forms of celebrity culture.
Goldberg: His looks are definitely part of it, but I think the choice of the victim is more important here. A huge number of people feel — with good reason — that they’ve been personally injured by the insurance industry, and by coverage decisions that seem highly arbitrary, impenetrable and unfair. So people feel like Mangione’s avenged them. Then there’s the fact that the shooter initially got away and left behind a backpack full of Monopoly money — again, like something out of a movie. So many people were already projecting a kind of outlaw glamour onto him, and the fact that he’s hot only multiplies it.
Tufekci: Dealing with health insurance companies when you are vulnerable — facing illness, pain and loss — and knowing that such a company is profiting off you is a visceral, enraging experience. Some people want to be rescued, even by an outlaw. A recent Senate report says UnitedHealthcare more than doubled the rate of denials for post-acute care for the elderly as it pressured the company’s human reviewers to strictly hew to the algorithmic recommendation system that it had introduced. The sense that a cold, calculating, profit-making automaton can come at a person when they feel the most fragile, and without accountability and recourse, is the type of environment that can find people cheering on vigilantes.
Goldberg: Whenever I’ve had a health scare, or am waiting for the results of routine tests like mammograms, I tend to be as panicked about all the potential paperwork as about, you know, dying. And the thing is, these companies are purely extractive. Relative to a single-payer system, they create no value whatsoever.
McMillan Cottom: Yes, Michelle. Every week there is a story about a well-informed, insured person fighting with their insurance company. This is one of the few vulnerabilities that cuts across education and class in our country. Only the very rich can buy their way out of our health care morass.
Healy: Tressie, what has struck you most about Thompson’s killing and what followed?
McMillan Cottom: I thought about how we have an economy with perverse incentives and impact. If billionaires and C.E.O.s want to enjoy the spoils of power, visibility and access in our celebrity culture, they have to understand that they are in essence a public entity — a stand-in for industry but also for politics. I make this point because the moralizing about the public response to the killing conflates a personal dimension of this story — a murder and the fallout for the victim’s family — with the public dimension, about industries that affect and control our lives, our futures, our pain. A family lost their kin and a community lost a member. That is a personal tragedy. At the same time, a public actor was presumably targeted because he had a tremendous amount of power over people’s well-being. The system has to make a profit and, in doing so, the system victimizes a lot of people.
Tufekci: I think we should also look at the stories we tell ourselves about how to solve systemic problems. In Hollywood, it’s the lone-wolf vigilante or rogue C.I.A. agent who breaks the rules, takes revenge and makes things better. People are naturally drawn to a character they can cheer for, rather than analyses of power and policy and prolonged slogs to change how the system works. People with wealth can hire people to do that work for them and use their money to change the system to their advantage, over time, while the public is left with some popcorn and the chance to cheer for the movie vigilante.
Goldberg: We’re also in a moment where there’s a distinct lack of heroes, especially for those uninspired by the right. (Not that Mangione is a leftist; he appears to have had pretty typical heterodox podcast guy politics.) People are hungry for someone to root for against the huge, implacable systems they hate, and unless they’ve thrown in with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, they really don’t have many options. The idolization of Mangione is a dark sign of just how yawning the void is.
McMillan Cottom: In its simplest terms, we could call this class warfare. That is how a lot of people see it. And to be clear, even with one egregious violent crime committed for the populist class’s interests, the other side has significantly more marks against it. Our own Opinion colleagues have, rightfully, described the incoming administration as crony capitalism coming to the White House. I would only argue that crony capitalism has been the modus operandi for many decades. This week we reported on Wall Street’s excitement about Trump’s election. We are decades into the golden age of scam culture. Decades of failing systems and institutions that don’t live up to their end of the bargain created the legitimacy crisis that Trump exploits. And, it has created a perverse set of incentives for rectifying that crisis. A lot of people feel like no authority defines or defends the interests of American consumers from grift and abuse.
Healy: Tressie, you mentioned “class warfare.” I felt after Thompson’s killing that what I was seeing was a kind of populist rage, something we saw after the Great Recession (in the rise of the Tea Party) and during the Covid lockdowns. Michelle, I know you saw this as a kind of impotent rage, though. I wanted to dig into the reaction supporting, defending or trying to rationalize Mangione. Is it about disdain for health insurers? Does it go deeper?
Goldberg: I think health insurers distill so much of what feels cruel and broken in our system. They are cold, remote and impossible to navigate in a way that seems deliberate. (I know I’ve given up on certain reimbursements because the administrative burden wasn’t worth it, but not everyone can afford to do that.) When you’re dealing with them, you’re constantly reminded that decisions about your health and well-being are being made without regard to your best interests — it is literally the opposite of being cared for. They exemplify the heartless precarity that underlies so much of American life.
Tufekci: People are angry and disappointed in many institutions, and the mood around the world is more burn-it-all-down than fix and strengthen, and there’s no shortage of politicians and demagogues who channel this rage on their way to power.
Healy: But does it make things better for most people, Zeynep?
Tufekci: Even when the anger and disappointment have understandable causes, it doesn’t guarantee that the consequences of the rage will end up making anything better. If one wanted to explain, say, the interregnum between World War I and World War II, this would be an apt description. That didn’t end well, either.
McMillan Cottom: It goes much deeper. You call it populist rage, Patrick. I’m not against that description. But it doesn’t quite capture that the other side stokes that rage. The reaction is a defense of one public who is at odds with the interests of another public. Markets create moral economies. Whether you call it crony capitalism or just an unfair economy, the market sets the rules for which lives matter. We have set up a system of interlocking ninth circles of hell for all of our basic needs. Housing is a noose of landlord interests, developer exploitation and rising costs. Transportation is a Gordian knot of failing infrastructure and limited vision that traps us in neighborhoods and lifestyles that make us sicker and meaner. Our moral economy is trash.
Healy: And how does the health care industry fit in here, Tressie?
McMillan Cottom: Nowhere is the perverse nature of our moral economy more evident than health care. It is not just expensive. It is often tied to jobs people either cannot get or cannot afford to leave if they want to be able to see a doctor. Health care is one of the biggest reasons that Americans file for bankruptcy. The incentives are to put profit over people. We know this and yet we also gaslight millions of Americans. We tell them that the system is fair and meritocratic, that their quality of life is not deteriorating and, if it is, then they did not work hard enough. Scam culture makes everyone a mark. The moral economy of a scam culture says that everyone deserves to be a mark. That is dehumanizing.
Goldberg: And scam culture thrives amid the insecurity our health care system creates! One thing alternative medicine does is make people feel like their needs are being seen and addressed, even if they’re being addressed in bogus ways. There’s a direct link between people’s disgust with the health care system and the dangerous rise of R.F.K. Jr.
McMillan Cottom: Exactly, Michelle. What we should be debating is how alternative medicine, alternative news, alternative truth — alternative everything — have come to feel less risky to people than our systems tasked to care for them.
Tufekci: Less risky, as well as more understanding and more human. The medical doctor may have 10 minutes for you while the insurance company has a cold, typed denial letter. Alternative medicine practitioners, though, often take cash, have time and lend an ear.
Healy: Mangione had a manifesto, and a notebook that talked about the desire to “wack the C.E.O. at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise and doesn’t risk innocents.” What do you think truly matters about Mangione and his motives, and what is just noise?
McMillan Cottom: This gets at the difference between what is important personally versus societally. It is ultimately more important what society makes of Mangione’s motives than what Mangione intended to do.
Tufekci: Agree with Tressie here. People snap according to currents of their era, rather than in a vacuum. What’s important is how the act — the target, the “delay, deny, depose,” the manifesto, etc. — is perceived by the public. We don’t even truly know the individual story yet — there is talk of chronic pain and a complicated surgery, interest in psychoactive drugs, his involvement in various online tech and self-improvement communities, and a young man at the general age for adult-onset psychosis. Who knows, right? But even as I know all those personal, specific aspects will get much attention, I think that’s more heat than light.
Healy: Michelle, do you see Mangione as a vigilante? As someone akin to the Unabomber? Something else? Or, to Zeynep’s point, if we simply don’t know enough about him yet, what do you think is most important to learn about him or his motive?
Goldberg: I think, from what we’ve learned so far, he sees himself as a vigilante. His motive matters inasmuch as it reinforces the cult that’s growing up around him. If we’d discovered that he had some personal beef with Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O., his fandom would probably dissipate.
Tufekci: Michelle, I think you underestimate the stickiness of the story and the social groups forming around it. If such evidence emerged, it would probably get dismissed as a conspiracy or misinformation, or folded in somehow to the grand narrative. But since when did a troubled young American man need a coherent political theory to start shooting? On the other hand, politically motivated vigilante assassination attempts are historically common and potent. Where this falls, exactly, will be in the eye of the beholder more than whatever facts may eventually emerge from the investigation.
Healy: Is the backlash a reflection on our health care system, or where we are as a society? In other words, would we have seen the same reaction if the victim were the C.E.O. of a different major company?
Goldberg: I don’t think the reaction would be the same if the victim was part of a different industry, or if so much of the country wasn’t black-pilled about both the status quo and the possibility of changing it. Some of the TikTok videos that have stayed with me are from women who look like ordinary suburban moms celebrating the assassination while talking about how their kids were denied coverage in horrific situations. What other kind of company inspires that sort of hatred?
McMillan Cottom: No one is under the impression that murdering a health care C.E.O. will make insurance more affordable or accessible. Some people are relieved to see their experiences reflected and to see the moral rot of our system exposed. That is a public response to a social problem that pits one public’s needs against profit. Is it unfortunate that this happens because of a terrible crime that will certainly impact a family? Certainly. It is also unfortunate that we do not see the pain and illness and death of millions of people as a crime against our moral economy.
Healy: More than 60 percent of U.S. adults say it is the federal government’s responsibility to ensure all Americans have health care coverage. That 60-plus percent is the highest percentage in more than a decade. Will we see any movement anytime soon toward ensuring better coverage?
Tufekci: I have family and friends in countries where there is some form of national health care, sometimes with a private insurance option as an extra. They all have some complaints, too, and there are trade-offs to any system. But the key difference in the U.S. system is the sense that there is an unaccountable, cold, calculating entity profiting from one’s misery and vulnerability. The vibe this gives is Terminator coming to hunt you, personally, just so that some people can have bigger bonuses at the end of the year. Unfortunately, Terminator also donates handsomely to people in power and undermines efforts to fix the system — which would inevitably be tumultuous and cause at least a short-term backlash, as we saw after the Affordable Care Act. This isn’t a setup where our shortsighted political system shines.
McMillan Cottom: Here’s the thing about health care. Even the wealthy are afraid of dying. The industry creates a unique flashpoint for converging interests and deep, systemic differences in who can win. I’m not surprised that this case captures our imagination.
I would be surprised if the Trump administration makes any positive movement on health care’s many problems. Trump failed to repeal the A.C.A. in his first term. His “concepts” of a health care plan seem like a joke. But it speaks to his penchant for being a political opportunist. If the next Congress manages to put a health care proposal in front of him, he will likely take the chance to claim a victory. I don’t expect this to be a functioning Congress. So, no movement on ensuring better coverage and many aborted attempts to make health care worse.
Goldberg: Ha! No, we will not be getting better coverage out of Congress or the next administration. If anything, they’re going to try to kick a bunch of people off Medicaid and try to gut the Affordable Care Act.
Healy: A final question. Where do you think the anger among many Americans might go next in terms of health insurers, medical care or, ultimately, justice — in however you choose to define that word?
Tufekci: There is a story that a newspaper confused Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, with his brother who had just died. Thus, Nobel got to read his (premature) obituary where he was called a “merchant of death” who had amassed wealth by developing new methods to main and kill more people — which dynamite was certainly doing. Supposedly, that’s the wake-up call that made him devote his wealth to the Nobel Peace Prize, instead, so he’d be remembered differently.
The health insurance executives are reportedly in shock by the response to this killing, and I presume many politicians are, too. What do I expect here? They’ll hire more security firms, travel more on private jets, live in gated communities and interact even less with the public. As I said, this period feels like the era between the two world wars in terms of the shortsightedness of people with power who should know better and the rise of demagogues who successfully exploit the rage and anger. Unlike most Hollywood movies, not every story is guaranteed a happy ending.
Goldberg: I think the reaction to the assassination shows there is a political opportunity for anyone who can harness all this free-floating fury toward the health care industry and plutocracy more broadly. Right now it has nowhere productive to go.
McMillan Cottom: I agree with Zeynep and Michelle. We already see a security market for the very wealthy who fear the consequences that come with their wealth. The moralizing about angry populists will justify more spending on rich people’s security apparatus. It will also be used to justify more abuse of poor people. That always happens. We may also see someone emerge who speaks to the rage and disaffectation that this story exposes and that our recent election highlighted. The only question is whether such a person or party or movement will move us forward or further into authoritarian waters.
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