12.12.2024

Organisation, not assassination

Killing of UnitedHealth boss has been the cause of widespread celebration. However, Australian communist Martin Greenfield argues that CEOs should be made to fear not the bullet, but working class collective power

“Deny”, “Defend, “Depose”. These three words - reportedly on the casings of bullets used to shoot dead US health insurance chief executive officer Brian Thompson - are a chilling message that seem to refer to methods used by the industry to refuse to pay claims.

While a motive for the killing is yet to be formally established, it does appear that, for one armed American, the inhumane nature of the US health system drove him to extreme measures. On December 9, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione was charged with the murder of Thompson after being caught by police in possession of a 3D-printed ‘ghost gun’ and a short document that reportedly included the phrase “these parasites had it coming”.

The December 4 killing has unleashed a “torrent of anger”, as The New York Times reported it, which had long been bubbling under the surface, at the depravity of the private health insurance system in the US.¹ For many others, there has also been a “morbid glee” in response to the murder.

Such a response should come as no surprise, given the large numbers of Americans denied payments or coverage at all from a highly profitable insurance system. Some estimate that more than 60,000 people a year die due to denied claims.² In recent weeks, one insurance company announced it would limit the cover for anaesthetic procedures - meaning that if your operation went over a scheduled time you would be out of pocket. An outcry has forced the insurer, Anthem Blue Cross Shield, to delay the plans, which were due to roll out in Connecticut, New York and Missouri.³ Examples like this litter the US health system.

In July, demonstrators gathered at the Minnesota headquarters of Thompson’s company, UnitedHealth, to protest at its pattern of coverage denials - 11 were arrested. The Boston Globe reported that UnitedHealth denied more claims - up to a third of all lodged - than any other medical insurer.⁴ The system average is that 16% of claims are denied, according to data from ValuePenguin, a consumer research group. In 2023, Thompson ‘earned’ $10.2 million. Since his killing, the company’s share price has dropped by 10%.

The US medical system is clearly in crisis - one that neither the Democrats nor Republicans want to remedy. Per capita health spending in the US is 1.5 times that of the next highest in OECD member-states (Switzerland) - and is 2.5 times the OECD average.⁵ Yet it is the only country where there is no last-resort medical safety net.

And life expectancy in the US is 77.4 years - going backwards from 78.8 years in 2019, just before Covid hit. For black Americans it is about 73 - even lower for black men. This means life expectancy in the world’s wealthiest country is far behind other advanced capitalist nations, with more than 25 having life expectancies above 80, including the United Kingdom.

The New York Times reported that Mangione’s short manifesto noted that UnitedHealth’s profits had grown while US life expectancy had not. The private health insurance system knows it is deeply unpopular. The estranged wife of the slain CEO said that Thompson had received threats in the past, while personal security companies, like vultures, have started talking up their services in reaction to the killing.

Thompson himself posted on LinkedIn a year ago: “We work every day to find ways to make healthcare more affordable, including reducing the cost of life-saving prescription drugs.”⁶ The responses were damning. Andrea Huspeni replied: “UnitedHealth Group is failing my mother by not providing her the basic care to get better and back her life. You continue to delay any decision-making and authorisations, which is compromising her health even more …”

Nicholas Kalman, a car sales manager, said: “The only thing this company is good for is screwing their customers”, while Jessica Grennan, campaign director at Colorado Reproductive Health added: “You are doing a great job cutting your costs. Not having a single anaesthesiologist in network in the entire state of Montana is a great policy to save you money.”

There were dozens more. Mangione himself is reported to have suffered a back injury that was refused cover by his medical insurance.

That someone seems to have been driven to such a drastic and hopeless act as gunning down a corporate CEO is a terrible indictment on the US medical system - but also the lack of power that people feel in being able to challenge a system that benefits the wealthy and screws over the average working class person. Communists, of course, oppose individual acts of terror and violence like this killing, but we recognise they are often desperate acts born of helplessness. Social media is full of memes reflecting gleeful Schadenfreude at the murder. Such banality ultimately reflects a deep alienation from human life.

While the murder has sent a shock ripple through US society and illustrated the crisis of its healthcare system, certainly on its own it cannot change anything. As pathetic as Obamacare was, it is clearly over and, with Trump back, it will become ancient history.

The working class has no interest in private health schemes, but in a completely socialised health system that removes private insurance altogether. This will not be achieved by the murder of insurance executives. It would be concerning for the ‘progressive’ movements - either environmental or anti-capitalist - to see these individual acts as a path forward. While they might grab momentary sympathy and be seen as some sort of ‘Robin Hood moment’, they are in fact dangerous and reactionary dead-ends for the workers’ movement.

Victorian socialist laughs out loud

Marxists have a long record of opposing individual terrorism

You would think this obvious for socialists, so it was shocking to see a prominent activist here in Australia - the lead Senate candidate for Victorian Socialists - effectively glorifying the killing. Jordan van den Lamb posted a stream of memes doing just that.

One read: “Make capitalists afraid again” on top of a blurry image of the alleged shooter holding a gun, while another was headed “CEO blasted” across a photo of Brian Thompson. Then there was: “Let me get this straight: you think that killing ‘a health insurance CEO’ is funny? … I do. And I’m tired of pretending it’s not.”

Of course, the killing of a capitalist CEO in an isolated act of terror is, in fact, not funny. At best it is a misguided action of a deranged person. At worst, it opens the door to state repression against the left. Fundamentally, it is alien to the politics of working class liberation. It should not be given any credence by the socialist left.

We do not want CEOs to fear they will be taken out by terrorists or lone shooters; we want them to fear the collective power of the working class and our ability to overthrow their system of kleptocracy.

It is one thing for ‘idiots on the internet’ to post memes, but for them to be shared by someone meant to be taking the Marxist programme to an election campaign is beyond childish. It is moronic and displays the complete lack of seriousness that Victorian Socialists represent. Yet this has been the act of its lead Senate candidate for the 2025 federal election.

The election project, dominated by the ‘post-Cliffite’ Socialist Alternative group, did reasonably well for a small outfit at the recent local elections, getting an average of 10.8% of the votes where it stood in 78 council wards. Its sole councillor, Jorge Joquera (formerly of the Democratic Socialist Party, now Socialist Alliance), failed to get re-elected, but the Vic Socialists did win a seat in the regional town of Bendigo, where 40.7% of first preferences elected Owen Cosgriff. A significant result, even if there was no Labor or Green candidate in the ward - effectively leaving the field open to the only ‘progressive’ candidate.

However, Victorian Socialists did not take a Marxist programme to the electorate - rather warmed-over social democracy. You would not know that councillor Cosgriff was a socialist from his blurb on the Bendigo Council website.⁷ There he says he is interested “in planning and where people will live”. He also wants the council to ensure that “everyone feels welcome and has access to the services they need, and wants to explore ways Council can support the development of more affordable homes in Greater Bendigo”. Storming the gates of heaven he is not.

The political platform of the Victorian Socialists is the reformist gruel of the type we are used to seeing from lowest-common-denominator unity projects. The platform is largely indistinguishable from the petty bourgeois reformist platform of the Green Party.

Vic Socialists’ platform was for “real action on housing costs”, “councils that put people before profit”, “local and global solidarity and justice” (solidarity with Gaza, opposing racism and supporting the LGBTIQ+ community), “no more sell-offs of council services” and “transparency and accountability” in council decision-making.⁸ Meanwhile, the middle-class Green Party stood for “social justice”, “climate action”, “housing affordability and cost of living action”, “greener communities”, “improved public transport” and “accessibility, diversity and inclusion”. Spot the difference.

For Socialist Alternative, Victorian Socialists seems to be another incarnation of a ‘united front of a special kind’ - like Respect in Britain was meant to be for the Socialist Workers Party under John Rees. In reality, this means an amorphous sub-reformist election outlet designed to give the inner sect access to a wider circle, from which to recruit.

The fledgling Revolutionary Communist Organisation in Australia is set to join the Victorian Socialists, to campaign for what is really needed - not a sub-reformist group in a single Australian state, but a united communist party organised nationally around a republican-democratic programme: a weapon for the working class to win power.

They will have their work cut out to overcome what is a decidedly childish political culture, if the response to the killing of Brian Thompson from the lead Vic Socialists candidate is anything to go by.