What Ben Shapiro got wrong about the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting

Issue 146: Why CEO Brian Thompson's assassination triggered conversations about class solidarity in the U.S.

As we are learning more about the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, one of the most striking features has been the massive public response on social media. Within hours of his arrest, murder suspect Luigi Mangione gained hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and the hashtag #FreeLuigi was trending on social media platforms such as X, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit.

One prominent public figure came under fire for misconstruing the reactions of the general public. In reference to the assassination, Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commentator, claimed that the “EVIL Revolutionary Left Cheers Murder” and celebrates attacks in an attempt to villainize liberals. What he failed to understand is the role of working class identity.

While the death of Brian Thompson horrified some and seems to have pleased others, reactions to his murder do not break down on politically partisan lines. Instead, they appear to be about class. UnitedHealth Group is one of the biggest companies in the world with a market cap of $539 billion and provides health coverage to more than 50 million Americans on all types of plans—from employer subsidized plans to Medicare. According to reports, Thompson commanded a salary of $10m annually as CEO.

Like other American health insurers, UHC is often criticized for delaying and denying healthcare to patients. More recently, UHC has been sued for allegedly using AI to process patients’ health insurance claims and automate claim denials. Notably, one report suggests that UnitedHealth denies an estimated one-third of all claims submitted.

People from across the political spectrum are reacting to the assassination and finding commonalities in their experiences and grievances with the American healthcare system. But what encapsulates this moment of unity and class identity the best are the comments under Ben Shapiro’s videos.

So, why was there such a lack of empathy for the CEO?

Aside from the fact that Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare and ran the insurance division, it’s also important to consider how vast inequalities make it very hard for the working class to identify with and have empathy for rich CEOs. In 2021, the average CEO at America’s top 350 companies took home 399 times more money than the respective corporation’s average employee.

Research suggests that CEOs who run companies with vast income inequalities should be concerned about how they are perceived by their employees. Studies have found that CEO salaries impact how much people identify with them (and in turn, have empathy for them). Compared to those who are not as highly paid, those whose salaries are more modest (relative to their employees) are also more likely to be viewed as better leaders and more likely to create a sense of cohesion and shared identity in their organization.

In this case, regular people who have had their claims denied feel a sense of shared identity against a CEO who profits from their claim denials. Instead of empathizing with the CEO, people are empathizing with the estimated 68,000 people per year whose lives are lost due to lack of healthcare insurance, and the families who are negatively impacted by the decisions of healthcare insurance companies. These people feel like they have more in common with each other than a CEO who could obtain any healthcare procedure or medication they would need without worrying about how they would pay for it.

But Ben Shapiro’s quickness to label liberals as “evil” mirrors behaviors from people on both the left and the right. Oftentimes, people dismiss or distance themselves from those who don’t share common political identities with them (e.g. using filters on dating apps to only show people with the same political identities as you or cutting off family members because of who they voted for). But this event is a chance for people to realize that they agree on much more than they think—that they share common goals and identities.

Can class concerns unite us? Instead of celebrating someone’s death, now is the chance to find common ground and have deeper conversations because health care affects all of our lives.

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Catch up on the last one…

Also on the topic of health, last week we discussed how political polarization negatively impacts health and the implementation of healthcare-related policies in America.