A Homeless Man, an Ex-Marine and a Health Insurance CEO
The fates of the late Jordan Neely, Daniel Penny who killed him, and the slain United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, were all connected, and say a lot about America.
The CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson, was assassinated at the crack of dawn on Wednesday. To many public commentators’ dismay, the response on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Facebook ranged from indifference to outright glee. Coincidentally, the day before, less than 4 miles south of where this took place, prosecutors had concluded their closing arguments, culminating the 7-week trial of Daniel Penny, the former Marine who snuffed the life out of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old, mentally ill and homeless Black man who had been acting erratically and screaming of despair on the train. Being in New York City during a life-altering or ending moment is the main thing that connects these three men. Still, together, the lives they lead — and the public’s reaction to Neely and Thompson’s deaths and Penny’s jury decision— paint a bleak picture of inequality, failed governance, and the unraveling social fabric in America.
When I woke up on Wednesday, my Twitter feed and group chats were filled with commentary about Brian Thompson’s assassination, including this “CEO DOWN” cartoon. Ken Kipplenstein shared a now-viral graph of UHC having the highest rate of insurance claims denial compared to its peers. Among physicians, many of us speculated that the shooter might be someone who had been on the crushing end of United’s denials. I am so used to seeing colleagues go viral on X (Twitter) with posts shaming them for declining to cover things as banal as anti-nausea medications or chemotherapy for someone with cancer. Only later did I see others speculate about this being a “setup” by another rich person, a rival, as was the case in the murder of Bob Lee, who was killed in San Francisco by his co-founder. A firefighter pension fund had filed a lawsuit against Thompson and other United Health executives for alleged insider trading. The Department of Justice was investing them for potential anti-trust violations. From various angles, many see the assassination as a kind of comeuppance. Perhaps for this shooter, whether a disgruntled patient or a shareholder who lost a lot of money, government accountability wasn’t swift enough. UHC is being sued for Medicare fraud and for using artificial intelligence to deny care to older adults, and there are still not strong enough mechanisms to regulate and penalize such greedy behavior, such as how the FTC regulates telecom companies.
Various levels of government seem to lack teeth when it comes to holding perpetrators of crime accountable, white-collar or otherwise. Where Thompson’s assassination took place, New York City, is a prime example. The Mayor, Eric Adams, is a former NYPD officer embroiled in a corruption probe after accepting bribes from foreign governments in exchange for administrative favors. He still won’t resign, and Governor Hochul remains silent. His beloved NYPD, the rare branch of the city government whose budget he wasn’t keen on cutting aggressively, has a murder clearance rate below 50%. They have been caught in many corruption scandals. However, public transit riders are used to metro stations crowded by errant police officers, who are there primarily to deter fare evasion and are not effective at much else. The fact that those tasked with maintaining order and ensuring safety for New Yorkers, from the Mayor down to everyday police officers, are so corrupt and not good at their actual jobs sends a message that New Yorkers are “on their own.” They embody it in their frequent expressions of New Yorker-to-New Yorker solidarity. But this widespread solidarity is a double-edged sword. It also means that some people may feel encouraged to take charge of others’ safety, as Daniel Penny did, ultimately killing Jordan Neely, despite fellow passengers’ pleas to stop the gruesome strangulation.
Freelance journalist Juan Vazquez happened to be on that train. He filmed the incident and reported that Neely was screaming about his desperation. He was hungry, thirsty, needed a job, was “not afraid of going to prison,” and was “ready to die.” He acted erratic and may have thrown some objects at other passengers. But nothing that warranted a death sentence. It’s been reported that Neely suffered from severe mental illness, something that is highly prevalent among homeless people. Neely cried out of despair and frustration because his basic needs were unmet. How could that be in a city with as much wealth concentration? New York is a profoundly unequal place. One in four children is food insecure, and one in eight public school students experienced homelessness this past year. Housing is so expensive, and homelessness has reached some of its highest rates since the 1930s Great Depression. Much like some take it upon themselves to regulate the public sphere when they see the government failing (or when they feel deputized to do so), in such an unequal system, others may feel encouraged to take what they feel is owed to them by society, laws and etiquette be damned. If they can’t afford transportation, they may jump the turnstiles in the subway. This is not precisely Neely’s case, but his cry for help to his fellow citizens was likely fueled by a sense of dispossession and indignity imposed on him by the unequal landscape that New York is and the erratic behavior due to him being more disinhibited than others in a similar position because of his severe mental illness. And he was killed for it.
New York City represents much of what is going on across America. It is a profoundly unequal city with an ineffective government that sides with those who are more powerful than the little guy. The social decay that many decry when they witness antisocial behavior on the subway or see fellow citizens express their schadenfreude after the murder of an insurance company CEO because he was an innocent man and a father is a consequence of antecedent decay: the decay of the state’s ability to help the poor, make the rich pay their fair share, and hold accountable those who cheat or defraud others. The state could not help Jordan Neely fulfill his most basic needs or help his subway co-passengers feel safe around him at his lowest point because it caters more to the interests of wealthy corporations and their representatives. This near-abandonment of its duties to everyday people is, perhaps, what rendered Brian Thompson prey to a yet unknown guy’s decision to deliver his version of justice to himself and his fellow citizens, suffering under the boot of for-profit health insurance companies, much like Daniel Penny, who felt the need to protect his fellow co-passengers from what he and others perceived as danger from Jordan Neely’s cry for help, tragically.