The shooting of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan on Dec. 4 led not only to a days-long manhunt to track down the alleged shooter, Luigi Mangione. It also prompted a broad discussion of the shortcomings and failures of the U.S. health insurance industry that many speculate drove Mr. Mangione to pull the trigger. Yet beyond substantive critiques of UnitedHealthcare’s actions and policies, the online discourse surrounding Mr. Thompson’s death has frequently been characterized by indifference to the killing or even, across many social media platforms, outright celebration of the act and lionization of the alleged killer.
According to reporting from The New York Times, Mr. Mangione suffered from back pain and had undergone spinal surgery, although it is unclear whether he was adversely affected by his insurer’s policies. Yet the anger that many Americans feel toward the health insurance industry today is undeniable and reflects increasingly dire problems with the cost of health care.
In March of this year, nearly half of U.S. adults—including 47 percent of insured adults—reported difficulty paying for health care. An August study conducted by the Commonwealth Fund found that 45 percent of insured adults had received a medical bill or been charged a copayment for a service that they believed their insurance should have covered. The same study noted that among the U.S. adults who had been denied coverage by their insurer, nearly 60 percent claimed that their care was subsequently delayed.
But Catholic ethicists America spoke to in the days following the attack say these legitimate grievances with the American health insurance industry can never excuse vigilante violence.
The ethicists declined to make specific policy recommendations to address public discontent with U.S. health care. They were worried that even connecting the issue to the Midtown shooting would legitimize the attack. But both ethicists said the shooting itself and the public responses to it were predictable yet deplorable symptoms of a culture that fails to appreciate the Catholic principle of an inherent, inalienable human dignity.
Daniel Daly, a professor of moral theology at Boston College, pleaded for a strict separation between justifiable critiques of health insurers—and of the U.S. health care system more broadly—and value judgments about the state of human beings’ souls. “We should be able to hold two ideas in our minds simultaneously,” Dr. Daly told America. “One is to mourn the loss of a human being; the other is to have an ongoing conversation about the nature of health insurance in this country and the injustices embedded in the system.”
Dr. Daly attributed the flippant reactions to Mr. Thompson’s death to a judgment made by some that the insurance executive was a fundamentally evil man, based on UnitedHealthcare’s frequent denials of insurance claims. He said that this blanket condemnation of Mr. Thompson is misplaced. “Brian Thompson was a human being and fully imaged God with intrinsic dignity, as we all do,” he said.
For Michael Rozier, S.J., a professor of health management and policy at St. Louis University, the reaction to Mr. Thompson’s killing is a testament to pathologies unique to U.S. society. “I think there’s something particularly American about systems feeling beyond people’s control, feeling unresponsive to people in need,” he said.
Father Rozier also linked the unique national character of the incident to the American attachment to legal firearms. “The pervasive presence of guns in society has led to us broadly tolerating this kind of violence in ways that other countries do not,” he said.
He noted the relatively easy accessibility of firearms in the United States. According to police, Mr. Mangione was able to create a “ghost gun” using a three-dimensional printer. “We can’t seem to come to a consensus on legislation regarding these ghost guns, which is just one example of us broadly tolerating this kind of violence in ways that other countries do not,” he said.
Pope Francis has identified indifference to suffering as “the central moral pathology of our age,” Dr. Daly said. In Dr. Daly’s view, people who seek to justify Mr. Mangione’s actions might profess an interest in the suffering of people wronged by the health insurance system, but they simultaneously display an appalling indifference to the suffering of Mr. Thompson and his loved ones.
“I think there’s some indifference to suffering here,” he said. “People seem not to care that this man has died, that his wife and children are left without their husband and father. We’ve lost the capacity to ‘suffer with’ and practice mercy and compassion.”
Father Rozier conceded that many Americans’ frustration with the health insurance system is understandable. “In health care right now, people feel small and insignificant,” he said. “We’ve created systems that are confusing, complex and not human-centered, and people feel like they have very few options to resolve their issues.”
Yet both ethicists stressed that premeditated murder can never be justified, regardless of the alleged misdeeds or injustices committed by the victim, and that targeted violence can never be seen as a legitimate option for redress of grievances.
“The idea of schadenfreude, taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others, is rejected by Jesus in the Gospels,” Dr. Daly said. “He invites us to love all people, even those who have harmed us. He directs us to stop judging others. I think the expressions of joy at Thompson’s death reflect an implicit judgment of him—that he is wholly morally corrupt—and this is exactly the kind of judgment of the state of another’s soul that Jesus tells his followers not to make.”
Father Rozier describes U.S. Catholics as “embedded in society,” meaning that they have an important role to play in directing society’s moral compass. While the church does not advance a single clear policy solution to resolve the crisis of U.S. health care, Father Rozier suggests that Catholics in the United States can respond to Mr. Thompson’s death by committing to being instruments of peace and reconciliation in the public square and holding fast to the principle of universal human dignity.
“If we are living our lives from a place of faith, that’s going to have a leavening effect on the places where we work, where we study and where we gather,” he said. “The people of God absolutely have a role to play in reconciliation.”
