Who Can We Murder To Change Social Policy?
Long ago, when I was younger and “Silent Cal” Coolidge was in the White House, there used to be a magazine called “Tiger Beat”. It was essentially a fanzine dedicated to showing lots of pictures of the latest cute boy celebrity. And no, I never made the cover, although, thanks for thinking “Is it even possible?”, if only for a second.
Each week there was some new, good-looking male singer or movie star staring out at the world from the magazine rack of the local Woolworth’s, complete with headlines promising to answer the pressing questions we were all asking: “Does Bobby Sherman have a girlfriend?” or “Does David Cassidy like eels?”.
I’ve been troubled over the past few days about how much the sometimes giddy social media response to accused health care CEO killer Luigi Mangione reminds me of the old Tiger Beats. He’s been called “The Hot Assassin” and “The Adjuster Stud”. More disturbingly, people are hailing him as some kind of folk-hero because he “stood up to” the evil health insurance industry. Although, there is some question as to how much wearing a mask, shooting someone in the back and then running away is “standing up” to anyone.
Let me begin by acknowledging that the health insurance industry can be truly horrific. It’s a terrible business model from a public policy perspective.
Insurance companies only make money by creating a gap between the premiums they take in and the health care they pay for. The bigger that gap, the better the insurance company does. The incentive is for the industry to deny as much care as possible, which, in the past, has led to such obviously evil practices as giving insurance adjusters higher bonuses for denying more claims than their colleagues.
If it were up to me (which nothing is), there would be no private health insurance. If we had Medicare for all, we’d have almost all of the premiums paid going towards providing care. There would be no need to create billions of dollars in profits for shareholders. All of that money could go towards removing your gallbladder, and then, perhaps, putting it back if it turns out it didn’t need to be removed in the first place.
Further, it appears that Mr. Mangione’s victim, Brian Thompson, was the CEO of a company, United Health Care, that denied coverage almost twice as often as the industry average. UHC showed a profit of about 34 billion dollars last year while telling millions of patients that they had to keep their gallbladders, whether they wanted them or not. I have no brief for Mr. Thompson or his company. I don’t deny that they are at least problematic, and quite possibly evil in their conduct of corporate affairs.
Some have argued that Mr. Thompson may be, given how he runs his company, personally responsible for the deaths of untold thousands of people. And that someone with that record deserves to die. Recently, I argued with someone who pointed out how I’ve previously said that I would have killed Hitler if given the chance. That actually was my ice-breaking line back in my single days. “How many people does someone have to kill before they deserve the same fate as Hitler?” they asked.
I argued that for reasons too obvious and too lengthy to enumerate here, Hitler is a special case. But the question is not frivolous. So I explained how I look at it.
The issue isn’t who does and does not deserve to die or face some other form of punishment. The relevant question for society is, as it is in many other contexts, “who decides”. In this case we have one troubled young man unilaterally acting as prosecutor, jury, and executioner. This is, to wax eloquent, not good.
Even if you believe that Mr. Thompson was the personification of evil human exploitation who deserved to be eaten by ants, this can’t possibly be the process we support. If someone stakes out an elementary school, kidnaps, and eats the livers of a dozen school children, we’d still give them a trial, a lawyer and a chance to defend themselves. We can’t bypass all of that just because the Hot Assassin is in a hurry for justice.
Other than being clearly unjust, supporting Mangione’s actions is plain dumb. If we allow him the right to make solitary decisions as to which people do and do not deserve to live based on his subjective views on how “evil” they are, how can we deny that right to anyone else?
Many of those applauding Mr. Magione’s handiwork seem to come from the left side of the political spectrum, which is where I also live. Big corporations,…bad. I get it.
But would we be OK with those on the right deciding that they’d like to eliminate some evil of their own? How about some right-wing Luigi Mangione rubbing out an abortion provider? Or a doctor who provides gender-affirming care? Or the CEO of a gun-control organization? Are we OK with that? If not, what is the limiting principle that allows Mr. Mangione to make these life or death decisions, but not his MAGA counterpart? If your answer is “we’re right, and they’re wrong”, I may agree with you, but I’m afraid they don’t see it that way.
The inescapable fact is that murder is murder. And it is never the appropriate way to change social policy. We need to treat Mr. Mangione accordingly, regardless of how self-righteous or cute he is, or how much he does or does not like eels.
