A Hit-Man Runs and Outrage Rises

The hit-man who took out United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson has left New York City on a bus, according to the police reports available as I’m writing this. Nabbing him will now be that much harder simply because there will be so many potential places to search.

He arrived in New York on a bus, according to a video reviewed by authorities. While the bus originated in Atlanta, police say he was first seen as a passenger as the bus passed through Washington. ABC News now reports that police believe he took a taxi from Central Park to the bus depot and left the city not long after the hit.

Bizarrely, this dude is being hailed as a hero in some quarters. Photos of people dressed as he appeared in NYPD videos have popped up all over the internet.

The New York Times ran with the headline: Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows C.E.O.’s Killing, a phenomena they could have picked up on earlier by visiting a couple of infusion centers.

• The author Joyce Carol Oates weighed in on social media, after an initial version of this story was published, saying that the outpouring of negativity “is better described as cries from the heart of a deeply wounded & betrayed country; hundreds of thousands of Americans shamelessly exploited by health-care insurers reacting to a single act of violence against just one of their multimillionaire executives.”

• The shooting has also prompted patients and family members to weigh in publicly, sharing wrenching horror stories of insurance claim reimbursement stagnation and denials — painful recountings of insurance company interactions that have become all too familiar in a nation facing a health care crisis.

We didn’t need the targeted killing of a United Healthcare CEO to know that things are out of hand. Chances are they’ll catch the guy eventually and the public might then get to hear his side of the event through media coverage.

What I want to see in the news is an assassin who’s not the Unabomber. I think the “mental illness” storyline is where authorities would like to see this end up. If the shooter doesn’t fit neatly into a vision of a mentally ill obsessed weirdo, a discussion of motive is bound to follow.

That any sort of “normie” would consider such an act is inconceivable because we have the Rule of Law, amirite? Except that Americans really hate the profit-driven health care systems.

And that we’re at a point in our national timeline where those who’ve been paying attention can feel the hairs on their neck rising as billionaires and their minions openly celebrate the impending destruction of our social and political order.

Let’s pause for a second so I can make myself perfectly clear: this murder was awful. It has also brought resentment into the open.

The gunman understands how technology is used and its limits and has succeeded in avoiding identification. The national surveillance network can be beaten. It doesn’t take a trained professional to figure out how to dodge it.

Right now, CEOs are ramping up security, in the hopes that they can protect themselves and their families. The CVS pharmacy chain has taken down a web page listing all their corporate executives.

A Washington Post feature documents how home security bunkers for executives are about to be widely available, featuring next-level technologies. Defense drones are on the horizon.

• In recent years massive investments have driven down the cost of drones, high-resolution cameras and lidar sensors, which use light detection to create 3D maps. Sauron uses lower-cost hardware and tools like facial recognition, combined with custom-built software adapted for residential use. For facial recognition, it will use a third-party service called Paravision, a company backed by Atomic. Paravision began as a photo storage app called Everalbum, which was temporarily banned from Apple’s App Store for spamming user contacts, and later settled with the Federal Trade Commission over failing to inform users about the pivot.

When he was killed, CEO Brian Thompson was minding his own business on the way to brag about the profitability of the company he runs, UnitedHealth Group is the largest employer of doctors, a giant pharmacy benefit manager, and technology firm.

The publicity over the assassination has given rise to discussions holding that the victim is a symbol of an oppressive system that denies life-saving treatments to sick children while celebrating cost-cutting measures with champagne and investor applause.

For some people getting the short end of the health care stick, Thompson stood for the modern corporate ethos that monetizes misery and reaps dividends from people’s despair.

United HealthCare has been called one of the most toxic and unaccountable companies in America, a $400 billion giant that systematically denies care to millions of Americas, played a role the opioid crisis, cheats the government, surveils its customers, harms independent doctor’s practices, and has executives who routinely engage in what looks like insider trading.

The company is the largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans, a privatized version of Medicare with additional benefits.

Reactions across the country indicate that there are a lot of dissatisfied customers. Privately-run ConsumerAffairs.com gives United a one star rating based on moderated and verified consumer reviews, drawing on over 4.5 million responses.

United denies 32% of claims, the most in the business. Their use of (error-prone) artificial intelligence reviews to determine length of post surgical stays has prompted scathing reviews and commentary.

Here’s Matt Stoller, who writes about monopolies and such.

• On the Daily Show, the joke was, ‘But now the cops just need to narrow down their list of suspects to anyone who hates their health care plan and has access to guns. It should be solved in no time.”

• At least some elites understood the problem. Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati told the New York Times there’s an issue. “There’s a latent undercurrent here of how frustrated people are with the health care industry,” he said. “I’m not condoning the action in any way, but there’s a lot of soul-searching we have to do about an industry that consumes nearly 20 percent of our G.D.P. and yet our outcomes are not nearly as good as countries that spend half as much.” Indeed, despite all the yawping about health care reform, Obamacare, antitrust, abundance, Trump, draining the swamp, whatever, the widespread and almost gleeful reaction to the murder shows that all of that political rhetoric is perceived as useless busywork. Americans didn’t exactly say ‘Just shoot the guy,’ but they came very close

By flipping the script, it’s conceivable to infer that the dead man could have had something to do with many deaths. It’s a gross inference that reveals an underlying dissatisfaction with a system that’s taken human sustenance and achievement out of its metric for success.

This type of analysis makes free marketers see red, as if there’s no connection between profit-seeking and poor patient outcomes. Certainly the dead CEO wasn’t being deliberate about patients' deaths and suffering, and, besides, people die all the time. We’ve been told through interviews with company officials that Thompson was one of the “good guys.”

Of course, the unsavory actions of his company weren’t his fault, even though he and other executives at UnitedHealth likely broke the law for personal gain.

From CNN:

• UnitedHealth Group in 2021 announced it would buy Change Healthcare. The Justice Department sued to break up the deal but a judge ultimately allowed it go through. But the Wall Street Journal in February 2024 reported the Department of Justice re-opened its case, even after the merger went through, to investigate whether the companies properly set up a so-called firewall to prevent customer information from flowing between divisions of the merged company.

• The lawsuit claimed Thompson knew about the investigation as early as October 2023 and sold 31% of his company shares, making a $15 million profit, 11 days before the Journal publicized the probe. The Journal report sent UnitedHealth’s stock sinking 5%.

• The revelation of the alleged insider trading led Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey to write a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 29, calling on Chairman Gary Gensler to investigate UnitedHealth for the executives’ stock sales. The senators noted Thompson faced up to $5 million in penalties and 20 years of prison time if convicted.

I could go on, but empathy less profiteering is being hailed as a virtue. The wealth gap in this country is driving us into a ditch. It’s insane. It’s not immigrants. It’s not DEI. It’s not trans humans. It’s the billionaire boys clubs drooling over tax cuts and bitcoin.

The wealth of the four richest Americans hit $1 TRILLION this week. It's the first time in history the net worth of just four men—Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Zuckerberg—has hit the trillions. These four men were worth $74 billion twelve short years ago.

We just handed the keys to the government to these guys and associates. Does anybody really think they’re going to put their interests first?

Trump's pick to lead the IRS wants to abolish the IRS—of course by Emily Singer at Daily Kos

• “Since leaving Congress, Billy has worked as a Business and Tax advisor, helping Small Businesses navigate the complexities of complying with the IRS Rules and Regulations,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “I have known Billy since 2011 - He is an extremely hard worker, and respected by all, especially by those who know him in Congress. Taxpayers and the wonderful employees of the IRS will love having Billy at the helm. He is the consummate ‘people person,’ well respected on both sides of the aisle.”

• Democratic senators are already concerned about Long’s work helping businesses scam the government.

• “There are a lot of reasons why former Congressman Billy Long is a bizarre choice for this role,” Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, told Roll Call. “What’s most concerning is that Mr. Long left office and jumped into the scam-plagued industry involving the Employee Retention Tax Credit.”

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Carl DeMaio Won an Assembly Seat but the Road to Victory Was Vicious by Deborah Sullivan Brennan at Voice of San Diego

• You probably know DeMaio from his soapbox on KOGO News or his crusades against taxes and regulations through his political action committee Reform California. You may also remember his single term on the San Diego City Council or his unsuccessful campaigns for San Diego mayor and Congress.

• News reports describe DeMaio as a “firebrand conservative” so often it’s become a cliche. But it’s evident that he likes to barbecue his adversaries, whether they are Democrats, journalists, firefighters or other Republicans. DeMaio refused to comment.

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The Musk Rat by Jay Kuo at the Status Kuo

• A group called the RBG PAC began running $20 million in ads just before Election Day. No one knew at the time who was behind the effort. The name of the PAC was no coincidence; it ran spots falsely claiming Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg believed the federal government shouldn’t dictate state abortion laws, and then sought to claim that Trump held the same view.

• The group’s website went so far as to portray Trump and Ginsburg side by side, saying “Great minds think alike.”

• The ads may help explain a big disconnect in the voting patterns in key battleground states like Nevada and Arizona, where abortion rights were on the ballot in the form of a constitutional amendment. Those measures won, but many of the same voters who backed them also chose Donald Trump over Kamala Harris.