Politics

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down while on a business trip in Manhattan on Wednesday, December 4th. Almost immediately, security camera footage was released of what appears to be a targeted assassination. All over the Internet, jokes and memes were made praising the shooter for what appears to look like an act of vigilantism by a citizen upset by American’s broken health insurance system. A narrative was built by the media almost immediately. The whole story, and the reaction to it, has really brought out the absolute worst in people and generally lowered my hope for humanity.

People are now enraged by a person they only learned existed five minutes ago, because the 24/7 media hate machine has turned the shooter into a hero by killing a rich CEO of a health care company. There are a few reasonable voices in this matter. Louis Rossmann spoke of his own experience with the insurance industry, condemning the entire process for being broken. Yet, he also condemned the murder.

“In Manhattan, there was a CEO of one of the largest healthcare providers in the US, and he was murdered. He was shot, and when you read what was on the bullet casings around the area, it is very obvious that it was somebody who shares some of my, and admittedly hundreds of millions of other peoples’, distaste for insurance. Not even just health insurance. Insurance in general. The fundamental scam of the idea that the person who chooses whether my claim is paid out, is the person who stands to lose financially if the claim is paid out: this is wrong. You can’t shoot people in broad daylight. You can’t shoot people you disagree with, and you can’t shoot people to solve your disputes. That is not the society that I want to live in. I hope the person who did it is found. I hope they are put in prison, and I hope they enjoy spending their life there because that’s the world that we should live in. We don’t. We don’t want to open that box that is a bad box to open…” -Louis Rossmann¹

Murder is not Justice

I’ve written before about how distasteful it is for people to revel in the deaths the famous. In the case of Brian Thompson, no one actually knows this person. All anyone knows is that he’s a CEO at a health insurance company. Everyone in America knows someone who was denied a medical claim. Some people have to fight for coverage, pay their expenses out-of-pocket, or even watch people suffer tragically without proper care. News agencies are reporting the assassin had written the words “Deny,” “Defend,” “Depose” on the shell casing of the bullets he used². It’s easy for Americans to relate to the alleged murderer as some form of justice against the health care system, by murdering a rich CEO raking in millions from a terrible industry.

I do not know Brian Thompson. The only things I do know are what’s being funneled through the Internet: news, memes, jokes and outrage. I have written about many of the issues in the health insurance industry back in 2007, while I was working for a BlueCross BlueShield. Despite the problems I had with the industry, I worked with a lot of good people at that company. While I worked there, we had two bomb threats. In a random Internet discussion, the following person said if a real bomb had gone off and killed myself and my coworkers, that we would have deserved it³.

In George Orwell’s 1984, people literally screamed hate at a screen, at someone they had never known, because the government told everyone to do so. We are seeing that today, with everyone screaming through the screens of the portable computers we keep in our pockets.

The Psyop

In the George Floyd case, body camera footage was withheld from the public for two months. When it was released, it painted a very different picture from the selective nine minutes published by the media rage machine. With the shooting of Thompson, security footage was released almost immediately. Details of the crime that police sometimes keep secret, like the writing on the bullet casings, were released to the public only days later⁴. Multiple news sites are reporting that United Healthcare was facing a lawsuit due to denial of medical claims due to AI⁵, with an alleged error rate of 90%⁶. It’s important to watch every instance where the media talks about Artificial Intelligence, as it is the newest boogieman that fills people with fascination and fear.

Thompson was reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for allegations of insider trading and attempting to thwart monopolistic practices within the healthcare sector⁷. Miles Mathis has suggested that the shooting was staged and Thompson is likely still alive, citing the DOJ investigation and very unusual media coverage⁸.

The shooting itself may be a manufactured incident, or the media may have jumped onto a very real event to capitalize on American outrage culture. Which version of events is true literally doesn’t matter. The conversation that is happening is over the story as it has been presented to us, without question. Emotions are high, and people from all political vantage points seem to be glorifying the calls for blood. Stories are being presented about AI based algorithmic denials of claims by the health insurance industry. Simultaneously, AI-based facial recognition is also being presented as the possible solution to finding the alleged assassin⁹. AI is literally being presented as both the case of, and solution to, the current problem¹⁰.

What Comes Next

Health Care in America has felt like it’s been broken for as long as I’ve been alive. Meanwhile, in Canada, their health system has had a massive increase in euthanasia¹¹. Doctors there are pushing assisted suicide instead of expensive care for many patients who have non-terminal conditions like autism¹². A woman, who is suing a pharmaceutical company for $45 million¹³ due to injuries from the least tested preventative in modern regulatory history, was also offered Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) to handle her post-vaccination paralysis¹⁴.

Socialized systems are not universally better. Having lived in countries with both systems, I can say acute care for an injury or infection can be very good everywhere. But chronic issues, either due to environment, circumstance or poor life decisions, are always a problem in any health care system. Our food supply and our world itself seem to be making us unhealthier¹⁵, increasing demand in a system with strict controls over the supply of doctors.

A story like the murder of Thompson is simply a precursor. It generates a little more outrage and divides an already fractured population over ideas of justice and vigilantism. It’s paving the way for radical proposals, and could be one of the many building blocks that convince people to give up more of their freedoms and individual rights in exchange for the promise of cheaper medical care. People may clamor for alternatives from the same broken systems that are making us sick in the first place. I can see the possibility of some type of social credit, or wellness credits, linked to carbon taxes and digital ID, heralded as a solution. Such stories are the first stepping stone to radically untested ideological changes that can be as disastrous as “defund the police.”

Is Murder Is Wrong?

Obama can lay waste to hundreds of people using predator drones after winning a Nobel Peace Prize. Yet no one speaks out with such vitriol at the president who tried to take America to war with Syria. It’s okay when he does it. There are no angry mobs and pitchforks when it’s “our guy,” and the people he leaves fatherless are in distant lands.

It should be deeply fascinating to everyone, or at least those who can break free of the emotional manipulation, that many people are clamoring around praising a murderer. The idea of Thompson (not the man himself) has no presumption of innocence in his trial by the propaganda media. He has been found morally bankrupt in the court of public opinion by people who literally knew nothing about him until the story broke on the shooting.

Their visceral anger at the general state of the health care system was directed and focused onto one man, ignoring any part of his person, the fact that he was a father, or the hundreds of people in the chain of decisions below him that are all complicity in making health insurance terrible. It is a reaction so utterly deranged that it shows how easy it is to manipulate large amounts of people. It is just another hammer on the psyche of America, inducing an undeserved trauma, to fracture and divide everyone further. It is this type of psychological manipulation that ultimately leads to increased authoritarianism as the answer to safety and medical security.