A Shocking Assassination — And The Left Celebrates

On Wednesday, a shocking assassination occurred in New York City, and the Left celebrated. 

Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare’s insurance arm, was fatally shot outside a hotel in Midtown, the center of Manhattan’s business and tourist districts.

Police said it was a targeted attack. The video footage makes it seem clear this was a professional hit. Thompson walked past the shooter, who appeared to emerge from the shadows. The shooter shot Thompson, shot him again, then calmly walked by him and appeared to shoot him a third time. 

The suspect fled on foot after the shooting. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said this was not a random act of violence, adding:

It appears the suspect was lying in wait for several minutes. And as the victim was walking to the conference hotel, the suspect approached from behind and fired several rounds, striking the victim at least once in the back and at least once in the right calf. … I want to be clear — at this time, every indication is that this was a premeditated, pre-planned, targeted attack. 

Paulette Thompson, Thompson’s widow, told NBC News, “There had been some threats. Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.” 

There are at least two things to be said about this.

First: New York City is governed horribly. When assassinations occur in public places in New York City, that reflects how law enforcement is deployed and what law enforcement is allowed to do. When violence is commonplace on New York streets, that goes to governance. 

Take, for example, the case of Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who took down a crazed drug abuser named Jordan Neely with a submission hold on the New York subway as Neely was threatening other members of the public in this subway car. Despite the fact that Neely’s death could be attributed to drugs in his system or his reaction to the lack of air to the brain, New York City is bringing a manslaughter or murder charge because the city is governed horribly. 

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But second, something else is going on here: the left-wing reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson. 

Anthony Zenkus, a social work professor at Columbia and Adelphi University whose X bio reads, “Trauma expert. Anti-violence. Commie,” a Communist who’s apparently against violence, reacted to Thompson’s death this way: “Today, we mourn the death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down…. wait, I’m sorry – today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.” 

Today, we mourn the death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down…. wait, I'm sorry – today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.

— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) December 4, 2024

So he sounds like he’s implying Thompson deserved to die because UnitedHealthcare is a mildly profitable company. 

They are a mildly profitable company — meaning, when it comes to the health insurance industry, the profit margin is generally below 2%. This is not an industry in which the profit margin is 10%, 15%, or 20%. If you take issue with American health insurance and how it is run, that is because of the legal structure that has been set up for health insurance in America.

We could note that health insurance should not be tied to employment, that you should be able to opt into various levels of health insurance rather than basically being shoveled into one of a few categories. We could talk about the fact that an enormous amount of health care should actually be provided just on a pay-for-play basis as opposed to via insurance.

It’s bizarre that a normal checkup should be covered by insurance. What are you insuring against? That’s not typically what insurance is for. Insurance is for an unexpected situation you are betting might happen, while the insurance company bets it probably won’t happen, or at least not in the timeframe you’re thinking. That is why you have fire insurance; not because you know tomorrow you’re going to set your house on fire — which would be arson and would violate your insurance policy.

It’s bizarre that health insurance in the United States works such that it is called insurance, when in reality, it’s just a kind of subsidized form of group coverage. 

You can have whatever arguments you want with the system. But the idea that because you don’t like this system, the CEO of a private health care company deserves to die, or at least it is his fault if 68,000 Americans “needlessly die each year so that he can become a multimillionaire,” shows a dramatic lack of understanding of not only markets but of morality. 

Taylor Lorenz, once considered a well-respected reporter at The Washington Post, reacted, “People have very justified hatred toward insurance company CEOs because these executives are responsible for an unfathomable amount of death and suffering.”

Screenshot: BlueSky. Taylor Lorenz.

“Executives are responsible for an unfathomable amount of death and suffering”? That’s not true. You might not agree with how the insurance companies run their business. You might think the insurance companies go too far in attempting to restrict coverage or find loopholes in their policies that prevent them from having to issue coverage. 

But that’s what insurance does. It’s what they are.

What you’re really criticizing is the system, the system of private health insurance in the United States, which is a bizarre amalgam of government subsidies. 

Nearly all health care coverage in the United States is, in some form or fashion, government-involved. Even private health care systems are heavily government-regulated.

But that is not UnitedHealthcare’s fault. Stating it is their fault is like suggesting that if a grocery’s price on bread is at a particular level because the markets have determined there is only that much bread available, that is somehow the grocery’s fault when people can’t afford that bread.

The idea that if you work for a private health care insurance company you should be murdered is astonishing.

Lorenz concluded, “As someone against death and suffering, I think it’s good to call out this broken system and the people in power who enable it.”

I have a question. Why is Thompson the one who enables it? I wasn’t aware that Brian Thompson was a public policy professional working in an arena in which consent was not actually the keystone. What I mean is that if you don’t want to buy health care insurance via United, don’t do it or don’t work for a company that does.

This says something deeper about the far-Left. There’s a reason why a Venn diagram would show only one circle including people who are fine with Brian Thompson getting murdered on the street and people who are pro-Hamas: That reason is the baseline belief of the far-Left’s system that if you are working within a system they have deemed morally inferior, you deserve to die.

That belief says if someone kills you, you probably had it coming. You are a Kulak, and you deserve to die.

On the other hand, if you work within a system that the hard-Left deems morally praiseworthy or you’re a member of a “morally praiseworthy group,” you can literally do anything. If your grievance aligns with the view of the Left as they deem in any way legitimate, you can do anything.

This is the same group of people who will suggest, for example, that if you are in the Gaza Strip and you don’t like your situation, that justifies you raping women and murdering babies.

That is the far-Left’s full-scale belief system.

And Thompson’s death is a perfect example of the Left’s beliefs and how they play out.

What’s astonishing about this is that the way the Left adjudicates whether a system is morally praiseworthy or morally blameworthy is not based on a utilitarian calculus.

The professor from Columbia who suggested that the private health care system in the United States is responsible for 68,000 deaths doesn’t actually believe that if you work for an alternative health care system that is government-run and it kills more people, then you deserve to die. He doesn’t think that purely because his belief is not about a utilitarian calculus for what’s best for humanity. 

For the Left, it never is. For the Left, it is all about the central moral principle.

What the Left actually cares about is power and control. If the Left controls the system, the system is good. If the Left does not control the system, the system is bad. And if you are a member of that system, then maybe, just maybe, you deserve to die. 

It’s all a power game. If you’re a prosecutor and you see a Good Samaritan on the street trying to stop a violent act on a subway, the person who tried to stop the violent act is bad because that person is not of your political ilk. They’re not part of your team, and so that person ought to be prosecuted for felony murder. 

But if that person is a member of your team, you do your best to let that person off the hook because it’s all a team sport.

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The subjugation of basic liberal principles by Left-wing principles is perfectly obvious here. It’s the great untold story of the last several decades in American politics.

It used to be that liberals in this country were people who you or I, as a conservative, might disagree with on tax or health care policy.

But as I’ve said my entire career, there’s a difference between a liberal and a leftist. A liberal would never argue that because someone works for UnitedHealthcare, that person ought to die or at least be shot. They might say, “This company needs to be run better.” They might object to that particular CEO. But they would never argue that person ought to be morally dispensed with and just shot on the street in the way some of these members of the radical Left are. 

For leftists, all dynamics are power dynamics. To them, the only thing that matters is that their allies control the government gun. Murder is, in their view, just part and parcel of the system.

Sometimes to cook the Left-wing omelet, you have to break a few eggs.

Even if that means murder.