Murder is Nothing to Celebrate
On the killing of Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare CEO
4 min readDec 7, 2024
This Wednesday, Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot dead in New York City. As of this writing, the suspect remains at large, but the motive is widely assumed to be frustration with the U.S. health insurance industry. In the days since, many people have openly celebrated Thompson’s demise on social media, venting their anger at the sorry state of healthcare in this country.
Whenever a controversial public figure dies, reactions like this are inevitable, and understandable to some extent. When former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger died a year ago, I wrote that I neither mourned nor celebrated his death, and that it wasn’t for me to judge whether those who were glad he was gone should voice their opinions publicly.
