‘Thoughts And Prayers Are Out Of Network’: The Cold Online Response To An Insurance Executive’s Killing

WASHINGTON — The brazen shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has prompted an outpouring of dark online humor from health insurance industry haters.

Many commenters online have responded to the news of his death with variations of the phrase “thoughts and prayers are out of network,” a reference to the language insurers often use when refusing to reimburse patients for their health care costs.

The motives of Thompson’s killer remain unknown, but police said shell casings discovered at the scene had been inscribed with the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose,” possibly a reference to health insurance industry practices. A manhunt is underway.

In response to photos of the suspect posted by New York police seeking tips, commenters on HuffPost’s Instagram used insurance jargon to explain why they couldn’t help.

“My regular insurance doesn’t cover vision so I can’t really see,” one poster wrote.

“We need prior authorization first,” wrote another.

Some prominent voices on the left, such as journalist Ken Klippenstein, suggested the morbid comments were a legitimate outpouring of discontent in response to the health insurance industry’s attempts to ration health care for millions of people. Others condemned the killing, but said the industry has escaped criticism that it deserves.

“Shooting the UnitedHealthcare CEO is a terrible thing to do. It’s deeply immoral and solves nothing,” Cenk Uygur, a host on The Young Turks, wrote on X Thursday. “At the same time, 76,000 Americans die every year because of the health insurance industry. I also mourn for them. And I don’t see any press coverage or concern for their deaths.”

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), the first public official to chime in, noted that UnitedHealthcare, which is based in his district, merely follows the laws written by Congress.

“Like other insurers, they play by rules allowing the industry to net >$100 billion/year while patients go bankrupt from medical debt,” Phillips wrote Friday on social media. “The real culprit is Congress and money in politics, and it’s time for change.”

Onetime Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang tried to remind gleeful followers that political violence is bad.

“Guys, defending or justifying shooting a man in the street is a path to hell,” he wrote on X. “Don’t do it.”

Thompson’s death also inspired people to share their own horror stories of having coverage denied, either for themselves, for family members or for their patients.

Though a vast majority of insured adults said their coverage was “excellent” or “good” in a KFF consumer survey last year, 58% said they’d had a problem with their policy in the prior 12 months, such as denied claims, provider network problems or trouble with prior authorization. Of those who had problems, half couldn’t get the matter resolved, with 17% saying they’d missed out on care as a result and 15% saying their health declined.

There’s no official repository of information on how often insurers deny health claims. ProPublica reported last year that limited government data suggest 10% to 20% of claims are denied, but those numbers are aggregates that don’t account for differences between insurers or plans.

Dr. Rachael Piltch-Loeb, an assistant professor at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health in New York City, offered a few reasons why people may feel justified using social media to convey “morbid glee” over the killing of an insurance executive.

For starters, she said, so many people in this country share the experience of an insurance company denying their health care coverage. That camaraderie stands in sharp contrast to the relatively small number of people who have ever personally known an insurance executive.

“People identify with their own emotive experience,” said Piltch-Loeb. “There is a level of ‘othering’ that is naturally occurring when we’re thinking about the murder of somebody, in contrast to this experience that many people have had.”

Beyond that, people tend to want to place blame on something or someone to make sense of a bad experience, she said, rather than try to address systematic reasons for why it happened. She gave the example of people’s very different reactions to a naturally occurring hazard, like a tornado, versus an act of terrorism.

“In the case of the health insurance industry, that blame is frankly being placed … on an insurance executive, to the point where it is seemingly justifying his murder,” said Piltch-Loeb.

There’s the added dimension of people feeling justified saying whatever they want online, thanks to their anonymity and freedom of speech. People have experienced so much negative rhetoric on social media, and so often, that our society has accepted this as a normal way to talk to each other on the internet, Piltch-Loeb said.

“I would have a hard time believing that these same people offline are going to be saying, ‘Oh I’m so glad that guy was murdered,’” she said.

Other observers suggested there’s a bigger problem going on here: the normalization of violence.

Laura Lyster-Mensh is a death doula at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. She helps people navigate their health insurance and finances to cover the high costs that come with death, like hospital care and funerals.

“I’m very concerned about the cruelty and depersonalization,” Lyster-Mensh said, noting she’s seen people posting laughing emojis on social media when talking about Thompson’s death.

“The health care system is a problem. The insurance system is a problem,” she said. “If their response is to normalize and to laugh, that’s not advocacy. That’s not trying to make the world better. That’s just a mob.”