Insurance executive’s murder sparks online praise and hate

Tens of thousands of people have expressed support on social media for the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, or sympathized with it, in what at least one researcher is calling a worrying sign of radicalization among segments of the U.S. population.

“And people wonder why we want these executives dead,” wrote Taylor Lorenz, a former New York Times and Washington Post journalist, in a post on BlueSky a few hours after the CEO, 50-year-old Brian Thompson, was gunned down in Manhattan by a man with a silenced pistol. After a backlash, Lorenz later posted, “no, that doesn’t mean people should murder them.”

The Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University identified thousands of similar posts on X within hours of the killing. The posts, which could have been viewed by more than 8.3 million accounts, garnered 180,000 likes and 24,400 retweets, according to the institute. 

“The surge of social media posts praising and glorifying the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson is deeply concerning,” said Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser for the institute and a fellow at Rutgers. 

“We’ve identified highly engaged posts circulating the names of other healthcare CEOs and others celebrating the shooter,” he said. “The framing of this incident as some opening blow in a class war and not a brutal murder is especially alarming.”

Law enforcement officials have been warning for years of a heightened risk of political violence from a small minority of Americans, mainly on the right, radicalized on social media and marinating in conspiracy theories. (Police have not revealed information about the killer’s motive.)

These posts appeared to come mostly from accounts that have expressed far-left views, but some came from far-right accounts as well, noted Tobita Chow, a climate activist whose post summing up the sentiment reached millions of accounts.

“My notifications are mostly a cascade of populist rage,” he posted. “Checking people’s profiles, it’s coming from across the political spectrum: leftists, normie Dems, MAGA, a libertarian or two, and many people whose presence on here is otherwise entirely apolitical.”

The main theme animating many of the posts about the Thompson killing was that UnitedHealthcare and other insurance companies harm and kill Americans by denying coverage in the name of profit. Many posts raised an announcement last month by Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield — which covers consumers in Connecticut, New York and Missouri — that it would no longer pay for anesthesia care if a surgery or procedure goes beyond an arbitrary time limit, regardless of how long the procedure takes. (Anthem BCBS reversed course on the policy Thursday.) 

“Then people wonder why a health insurance CEO was gunned down … because insurance companies pull this garbage,” one X user wrote.

On the official Facebook post about Thompson’s death from UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, most people reacted with the “laughter” emoji. Out of approximately 40,000 reactions on the post, 35,000 used the “Haha” emote and 2,200 used the “Sad” emote.

Some of the top sitewide posts on Reddit after the shooting were celebratory, ranging from memes that congratulated the shooter to top replies in subreddits like “r/nursing” that created a mock coverage review and claim denial for Thompson’s care. “This fatal shooting has been reviewed by a peer and is considered a non-covered experimental procedure,” read a reply with over 2,400 upvotes.

Thompson was the father of two teenagers. Law enforcement officials told NBC News they found the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose,” written on the shell casings found at the shooting scene. Those words seem to echo the title of a 2010 book, “Delay Deny Defend,” whose subtitle is, “Why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it.” The author declined to comment. 

Lorenz, who was a technology reporter for The New York Times from 2019 to 2022 and a columnist for the Washington Post from 2022 to earlier this year, also posted the photo of another insurance company CEO with a birthdate and a blank date of death. (That post has since been removed.) And she reposted a post that said: “hypothetically, would it be considered an actionable threat to start emailing other insurance CEOs a simple, ‘you’re next’?”

Lorenz, who now hosts a popular podcast for Vox Media and has a Substack newsletter, said in an email to NBC News that she was not seeking to justify violence. She noted that she later posted: “I hope people learn the names of all of these insurance company CEOs and engage in very peaceful letter writing campaigns so that they stop ruthlessly murdering thousands of innocent Americans by denying coverage.”

In the email to NBC News, she said she didn’t intend to suggest that she personally wanted health care executives dead. 

“My post that you cited below uses the royal ‘we’ and is explaining the public sentiment surrounding the event. People absolutely want healthcare executives dead because these executives are responsible for unfathomable levels of death and suffering. … People have a very justified hatred toward insurance company CEOs because of the death and suffering they facilitate. It’s interesting how you don’t consider that violence.”

She added, “Me surfacing commentary that OTHER people post like Jenny, is not me endorsing those people and their posts. I can’t believe I have to explain to a reporter in 2024 that retweets are not endorsements.”                  

One of the most read X posts on the subject came from Chow, the climate activist. In an interview, he said he was not condoning the killing, but calling attention to populist anger about the private health insurance system.

“Saw mainstream news coverage about the killing of the CEO of United Healthcare on TikTok and I think political and industry leaders might want to read the comments and think hard about them,” he wrote in a post that got 137,000 likes.

“Compassion withheld until documentation can be produced that determines the bullet holes were not a preexisting condition,” one user responded.

“My take is that there is a great deal of populist anger about the way corporations in private health insurance are able to just abuse people and ruin people’s lives and in the case of health insurance even potentially leave them to die with impunity and for profit,” Chow said. “Obviously I don’t think the solution to that is vigilante assassinations, but I think business and political leaders need to take seriously where this sentiment is coming from.”

He said the killing produced an outpouring of complaints about UnitedHealthcare specifically.

Many social media users shared a chart from the finance website ValuePenguin that showed UnitedHealthcare had the highest claims denial rate among major insurance companies.

While the gunman’s motive is not yet known, health care industry professionals have experienced escalating threats, said Drew Neckar, a principal consultant at Cosecure, a security and risk management company.

“The health care sector specifically has seen a pretty significant increase in violence, whether that be physical violence, threats, et cetera. It’s been a problem for decades, but it has significantly increased since the pandemic,” he said.

Neckar noted that the threats are usually aimed at front-line providers such as doctors and nurses, though he said he has also noticed an increase in threats against health care executives.

“There isn’t a healthcare organization I’ve worked with in the past several years that hasn’t experienced at least a 25 to 50% increase in actual violence against staff and threats of violence against staff,” he said. 

Shannon Watts, founder of the gun violence prevention group Moms Demand Action, vividly recalls the endless, losing battles loved ones waged against UnitedHealthcare for coverage sought by her late stepfather, who was dying from glioblastoma in the early 2000s.

Despite her bitterness over UnitedHealthcare’s treatment of her stepfather, Watts was horrified to read the vitriol aimed at the slain executive. 

“You know it was really across all platforms. It was shocking to me to see prominent people, not just bots, defending, condoning, mocking, celebrating gun violence,” she said. 

“Two things can be true: The health insurance system is broken and must be fixed, and also gun violence and murder is wrong.”