Ramstad: Murder of UnitedHealth exec incites anger — not at the killer, but at him and the company

For many people, the slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson became a tale of just deserts even before police found evidence the killer saw him not as a man but as a symbol of injustice.

In the minds of those people, I wonder: Which paycheck did Thompson get that made his life expendable? Or after which of his seven promotions did he stop being a person with a successful career and come to represent the problems with American health insurance?

Social media and the comments sections of news stories covering Thompson’s slaying in New York filled with vitriol Wednesday and Thursday. Nearly all of it was aimed at Thompson, Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth and the broader insurance industry, rather than the killer.

Often, these commenters made puns or other references to insurance industry lingo. In one such example, a commenter with the handle “Nate” wrote on a TikTok post about the news: “Unfortunately my condolences are out of network.”

This absence of empathy for people is happening so often now that it doesn’t even qualify for the cliché “shocking but not surprising” descriptor. We see it after mass shootings at schools, after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump or even when Gus Walz cheered his father Gov. Tim Walz at the Democratic National Convention. It happens in countless more mundane moments; many college and pro athletes have had mistakes dissected and mocked on social media.

I’m not a big user of social media. I can’t express myself well on X or TikTok. I know that the majority of Americans do not use those platforms, and I believe that too many of their users, including journalists, think social media is more representative of public sentiment than it is.

Meanwhile, as evident as the anger at Thompson and UnitedHealth is on those platforms, so have there also been expressions of sympathy for Thompson’s family and the company. And there were some public critics of insurers, including doctors, who appeared on social media explaining that Thompson is simply doing his job and that the financial ails of health care and insurance are far bigger than any individual can influence.

All that said, I’ve never seen such a display of schadenfreude for a business executive’s death. Thompson was not well known outside the industry. He was relatively anonymous even in the Twin Cities, hardly ever pictured in the Star Tribune or other local media. He was not even the top figure at UnitedHealth Group.

As I wrote this on Thursday afternoon, the shooter was still at large, and the only thing known about him is that he appears to be a white male with a calm authority around guns. Police on Thursday morning, a day after the shooting, announced one of the bullet casings found had the word “deny” inscribed on it, a word that tends to represent rejection in regard to insurance claims.

That only reinforced the comparison by some social media posters of the shooter to Robin Hood, the fictional character who “stole from the rich and gave to the poor.”

“The elites have been warned. If you keep taking and taking and taking,” said a woman with the handle “Allegra” on TikTok. “History has shown us that the peasants are going to eventually revolt,” she added, making the air-quotes gesture as she said “peasants.”

It’s risky to make too much of this harshness, or what the New York Times on Thursday called “a torrent of hate,” so soon after the shooting and with so much about it unknown.

If there’s any signal to be found in the noise, however, it’s that many Americans feel powerless about one of the most important services in their life: health care. And some feel so powerless about it that they are willing to shunt aside good manners and simple decency to lash out over a tragedy.

It is not surprising that UnitedHealthcare is a recipient of that anger. The company is not just the nation’s largest health insurer, it is also the one that denies the most health claims, nearly 1 out of 3, according to Value Penguin, a financial advice site operated by Lending Tree.

Many Americans have had difficulties getting reimbursements from insurers. They are also seeing insurers pull back on coverage. Earlier this week, for instance, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield said it would limit the amount of time it’ll pay for anesthesia during surgeries and medical procedures in Connecticut, New York and Missouri. And all through this year, hospital systems around the country opted out of Medicare Advantage networks set up by big insurers.

The tensions between the American health system and its users are evident. Is this a moment when the participants will listen to the anger?

It may not be. Killing people and acting out rudely online seem unlikely paths to progress.

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