Delay, Deny, Oppose.

The words written in marker pen on the shells casings of the bullets that killed insurance boss Brian Thompson, 5th December, 2024

And instead of Americans being up in arms about the cold blooded killing, it has opened up a much wider debate about the state of American healthcare.

What do you do when you pay for health insurance, you need care, your insurance company denies you the care you need?

This appears to be the scenario for hundreds possibly thousands of United Healthcare policy holders making claims only to have the care they need denied, with reports of up to 90% of United Healthcare claims being denied.

All of this has come to the front of people’s consciousness, a system completely broken when CEO’s are being gunned down in broad daylight by disgruntled customers.

This week’s fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson has unleashed a wave of public feeling, not dissimilar in sentiment to that portrayed in Todd Philips film Joker, where a man marginalised by the system, snaps, killing three people on the New York subway — of course this is reality not a movie, where public sentiment should be with the victim and the cold blooded way he was murdered and yet exasperation, resentment, helplessness have replaced anger — Americans are seeking a different kind of justice, sharing personal stories of interactions with insurance companies, often seen as faceless corporate giants.

Unlike many others I don’t have a nightmare healthcare story to tell.

I actually can imagine what it is like to be denied healthcare because of no insurance in the US because I have witnessed it happen to someone close and experienced how scary that is for real.

Mr. Thompson looked after and over saw the healthcare for over 49 million Americans and took care of assets producing 74 billion dollars in revenue last quarter.

We also have all the resources of the NYPD, a photo of the person thought to be responsible in circulation and no sign of a suspect.

We have no idea why the person was driven to do this and of course no one deserves to be shot in the back and killed in such a horrific way.

I can feel the immense pain of what is a broken system bearing down on all of us, where making money has over taken the point of the business in question at the cost, the suffering of it’s clients, in this case the policy holders.

The bigger issue for me is when the people turn against the protection of the state or the system and feel the need to take matters into their own hands, whether that be harming someone out of complete frustration and helplessness or empathising with and or protecting someone who has done something usually inexcusable our society lines may have blurred beyond the clarity of simple right and wrong.