A good litmus test to find out how much fun you have at a party is: When Dick Cheney received a heart transplant in 2012, did you root for the new, good heart, or the old one that was failing?
This is similar to the question posed in November 2023. It also happened on Spotify Wrapped day;There must be something in the water, then war criminal henry kissinger He died at the age of 100. Was it uncouth to laugh and ridicule the end of human life? So what if that human life itself was the cause of the deaths of millions of others? I’ve probably lived far less than Kissinger, and I never bombed Cambodia. , can’t you just enjoy your own stupid memes?
The squeeze began again Wednesday after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson took over. shot dead An incident involving an unknown assailant in midtown Manhattan. He was walking toward the hotel where his company’s annual investor conference was being held. We soon learned that authorities considered this a “targeted” attack, and shortly afterward it was reported that the bullet he was shot with had the following words engraved on it: delay and abdicate. This seems to hint at the “delay, deny, stop” modus operandi of American health insurance companies. This philosophy has made companies like UnitedHealthcare incredibly wealthy, while leaving the rest dissatisfied, undervalued, and mired in debt.
Countless questions remain about who the shooter was. Why did he do that? Why did he stop at Starbucks beforehand? It was Is it a targeted attack? So do other healthcare CEOs. Last year, he earned $10.2 million. Should I worry about being killed? Is the shooter hot??The answer will come out in time, but the most immediate reaction to this literal murder committed in broad daylight comes in the form of some of the funniest jokes I’ve ever seen on the internet… .
Within just one day, jokes about Thompson being shot went viral online. out of networkcracks open as to whether he will received treatment No questions were asked upon arrival at the hospital, and many Semi-joyful schadenfreude. Joking about Thompson’s death has become so widespread that know your meme We’ve already given you a complete breakdown of all the related gags and memes. While the deaths of other business figures and CEOs may elicit at least a few half-hearted condolences, the national consensus on Thompson’s death is significant. shrug.
Meanwhile, details about the brutality of UnitedHealth’s policies are resurfacing. Last year, the company was reported to have: Uses flawed AI Denying elderly people the medical insurance they need. In February 2023, ProPublica has been published An investigation into how UnitedHealthcare attempted to deny coverage to chronically ill patients. Thompson himself recently accused of insider trading In a Department of Justice investigation. According to his wife Thompson, was being threatened Regarding “lack of coverage”. UnitedHealthcare reported $281 billion in revenue Last year it made a profit of $16 billion.
So when you think about it, there’s nothing really interesting about this story or this company. but! We’re laughing anyway, like when Kissinger died, or when Jerry Falwell died, or even the queen. Mr. Thompson, like all those before him, was responsible for human suffering, but he was not a man worthy of mourning. Murder is not recommended.Please don’t deport me, I don’t support murder–But Thompson’s work was based on the most predatory, cruel and harsh aspects of capitalism. He was more than just a CEO of a private company. happened To make billions of dollars. The policies he authorized at United Healthcare are necessarily and directly responsible for whether people receive health insurance and whether they survive disease. The more money he made for himself and his company – the more needed coverage that United Healthcare denied him – the more people got sick and died. It may raise some eyebrows that someone planned a hit on Thompson, but it’s little surprise that the rest of us are laughing ruefully about it. What do you expect? A quiet memorial?
People online (or offline) make jokes like this not because they’re hungry or because they don’t understand the value of human life. In fact, the opposite is true. On the same day that Thompson was killed, Blue Cross Blue Shield announced that it would put time limits on anesthesia coverage — stupid me, I thought he would be unconscious for the entire procedure. How many people are denied access to life-saving and life-changing care because of these punitive policies? Healthcare companies are making many deaths completely unnecessary. Only in America is access to staying alive so expensive and plagued by bureaucracy and apathy.
But as always, there is a fear that joking about death, even in our own uniquely macabre national moment, is too creepy. It’s a particularly American ideal that even if something is morally wrong (like denying people health insurance just because they can’t afford $20,000), it’s infrastructurally right. . There’s some subdued sympathy and some outright support for Thompson, but that’s because he worked in an industry built on an absence of empathy. This seems to be something people agree on across party lines. No one likes having to call Cigna to discuss a claim. No one should have to choose between going into massive debt and staying alive, and UnitedHealthcare’s brutal indifference is legal, but that doesn’t make it defensible. No one is rooting for the man who killed Thompson, and no one is rooting for more chaos. However, we may recognize that chaos may be what we need. The system is inherently broken. It cannot be reformed. It requires something drastic, and most people are prepared for something drastic to happen in access to health care.
The same day Thompson was killed, two kindergarteners were injured at a small Christian school in California. Children survived, but even dead children, like those at Sandy Hook, move little when it comes to gun control. The current number of people killed in Palestine due to Israeli attacks is Just over 45,000. Death is a surprisingly common life event. It’s both expected and shocking. everyone has to do it. The rest of us are forced to witness it all the time. The best death you can hope for is one that is quick and slow, painless but meaningful, and that leaves behind a record that serves as an example to others. But guns aren’t the only way to kill someone, or even the most brutal way. Paper work.
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