The apparent targeted murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was a notable act in itself. But more important from the perspective of class struggle has been the outpouring of mass satisfaction for his slaying, and anger at the profit-gouging healthcare system underlying this reaction. (One survey found that a full 41% of young voters thought his killing was “acceptable.”) Indications are that this reaction comes from a wide range of political opinion, meaning that even many working-class supporters of Donald Trump can identify with an elementary example of retaliation against oppressors.
The main reason so many young people, workers and others think that Thompson had it coming was that he had it coming. He oversaw the largest healthcare insurer in the country, with profits of $16 billion in 2023 and with the most notorious reputation in a sector of the economy already noted for its blatant pursuit of profits and its consequent denial of actual care. “Delay, Deny, Defend” are watchwords for the industry’s methods, and Thompson personified them. He was even criticized by the American Hospital Association for his plan to deny payments for “non-critical” visits to emergency rooms, and he was investigated by the U.S. Senate and ProPublica. He found other ways to enrich himself, allegedly dumping millions of dollars worth of stock prior to an anti-trust investigation by the Department of Justice.
Democratic Party politicians and prominent media columnists almost all expressed horror at the killing. That is to be expected when violence is directed against one of the ruling class’s own members. Other corporate executives have reportedly increased their** security precautions. Their high-end form of cowering is a back-handed way of admitting that blatant exploitation can have its consequences. Of course, bosses and their politicians and pundits are hypocrites when they condemn violence: they live off their own system’s reliance on the organized violence of courts, cops and prisons.
Capitalism made great advances in healthcare over its history, but it now stands as an obstacle to fundamental improvements for the mass of people. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the United States, the premier imperialist power, whose standard of healthcare is below dozens of other countries and yet whose costs are far higher. It is no accident that the U.S. is where private capital has such arbitrary power to determine treatment, pricing and access to care. Many vital procedures are subject to pre-approval, which in many cases means delays or denials and further suffering if not death. And nowadays such approvals are handled not by actual people, “customer service agents,” but rather by computerized algorithms that do not respond to complaints.
We do not know the motives of the alleged assassin, Luigi Mangione. His handwritten manifesto seized by the cops and largely suppressed by the mainstream media refers to the health insurance giants as “parasites” who “continue to abuse our country for immense profit.” That suggests a leftish attitude, but his social media posts apparently reflect a variety of right-leaning political beliefs. There may also be a link between his physical and mental condition and his alleged actions.
While we shed no tears for the killer’s victim, we are not advocates of a strategy of assassinations or other acts of individual terrorism. Such efforts have generally had a poor track record: they have invited repression and sacrificed militants to prison and execution without compensating gains in mass anti-capitalist consciousness and working-class cohesion. Specific incidents of revenge against class enemies may have a positive effect, but it is extremely hard to determine where or when.
The whole episode is a potent reminder that the U.S. healthcare system is broken, a leading edge of the capitalist system that underwrites it. Meaningful reforms have been introduced by some politicians, including Medicare for All; Medicare, despite its gaps and other problems, is a blessing for patients to deal with compared to private insurance companies like United Healthcare. One struggle that LRP supporters have joined in is the campaign by New York City public-sector retirees to keep Mayor Adams and the Municipal Labor Committee bureaucrats from forcing them out of Medicare and into profiteering “Medicare Advantage” schemes. The campaign has organized protests and has won several significant victories in court. Not even the most militant reform struggles can be expected to fix a system in which profit rather than human need is given priority. But such struggles can help revolutionaries argue for a broader condemnation of the capitalist healthcare system and of capitalism itself, and therefore for working-class revolution and socialism.
We stand for mass action rather than targeted assassination, but we have to acknowledge that this deed triggered not just widespread sympathy but also awareness that we’re all in this together. It may not be too great a distance from “we all hate corporate healthcare” to growing anti-capitalist consciousness.