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I will admit that it takes a lot to shock me, and I don’t expect much out of social media. I’ve written before about how toxic it is. But even I was taken aback by the reaction I saw, particularly online, after the cold-blooded assassination of Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare chief executive cut down in broad daylight last week.
In the wake of what was obviously a premeditated murder, one would think that the victim of that murder — who has a family, and leaves behind two children — would be a sympathetic figure, and that his killer would be viewed as a dastardly villain.
But not so. The assassin, now identified as 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, has very quickly turned into some kind of pop icon, and an anti-hero to some very, very disturbed people. Social media users have become obsessive about his looks, calling him the “hot assassin,” and even mainstream writers admit to being “captivated” by him.
Beyond the infantile drooling over his supposed handsomeness, many are also expressing sympathy with his attack on an American health care executive, declaring their “admiration” for a man who snuffed out a life, because of his apparently politically motivated act and the target of his murder being supposedly evil.
Mangione left behind a short handwritten “manifesto,” if it can really be called that, explaining his crime and his motivations. Those reasons betray what I consider his preposterously simplistic view of the American health care system and pathetic justification for the crime.
“Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming,” he wrote. “A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. … These [companies] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.”
I have no love for the health insurance companies, nor do I have any impulse to defend them, but this kind of argument is remarkably superficial, incomplete and ultimately grossly misunderstands what is really wrong with American health care.
Arguments, like this one from Mangione, that blame health insurance companies for America’s costly, underperforming health care system ignore the full truth: The components of the system (hospitals, conglomerates, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals) are broken, and make Americans angry, because of the intentional decisions to create the system the way that it is.
As uncomfortable as it will be for some to hear, it is the never-ending government intervention in the market that has distorted every aspect of this sector. The United States does not have anything resembling a free and open market in health care. Instead, decades of regulations, mandates and bureaucratic tinkering — often born of good intentions — have ensured that insurance giants occupy an outsized, warped position.
Congress and federal agencies have piled on complex rules that stifle competition and force Americans to rely on a few bloated insurers. Licensing barriers, state-level coverage requirements, and countless compliance costs have replaced consumer choice with political micromanagement. Instead of letting providers, patients and insurers freely negotiate prices and services, government meddling creates artificial incentives and protects entrenched interests.
But worse — far worse — is the opaque nature of prices. Health care costs in the U.S. soar largely because the system intentionally obscures clear price signals and results in layers of middlemen between patients and providers. Consumers rarely see a straightforward cost for services because hospitals and insurers negotiate complex pricing agreements behind the scenes, bundling fees and applying discounts that have no relation to actual value.
This negotiated pricing creates a distorted market where no one pays attention to efficiency. In turn, hospitals and other providers face incentives that reward higher charges rather than better care. Patients often lack meaningful choices and do not feel the impact of true costs, as expenses are concealed under premiums, copays and deductibles. The result is a Frankenstein monster: a bloated, convoluted industry in which price transparency vanishes.
You might think the answer to this is to tinker more, or create a massive, centralized, single-payer system in the U.S. But if you, like Mangione, are mad about denied claims and a lack of health care service, you need look no further than the health care “delivered” in single-payer markets.
The politicians broke the system, and they are not going to fix it.
Which brings me back to Mangione and his complaint, and the sick, twisted admiration of the simplistic complaints of a murderous assassin. He is angry at the wrong target, and so are you. His toxic misapplied rage resulted in the murder of a father who should be alive today. Shame on anyone who applauds that.