Public Enemies: Health Insurers and Tax Collectors
In an especially busy news environment, one story broke through that has nothing to do with cabinet nominations, Trumpian threats to jail his political rivals, or the fall of a despotic foreign dictator. That story, of course, is the brazen murder of the chief executive of the largest health insurance company in the US (and probably the world). A suspect has now been caught and charged, and the evidence at this point looks pretty damning. But the wheels of justice will grind through, and one never knows what surprises might arise.
My interest here is not in the criminal law, however, but rather in the noteworthy public reaction (and reaction to that reaction) that has followed the murder. Even before the apparent motive was established as almost certainly being tied to the health insurance industry, one could almost feel the righteous rage bubbling up, revealing in stark terms many people's lack of sympathy or sorrow -- and that is putting it mildly -- after the death of a top health insurance executive. And after the evidence did establish that connection (which was not subtle, with the bullet casings left at the scene bearing words evoking health insurers' tactics in denying coverage to sick patients), the word schadenfreude was wholly inadequate to capture the mood among some large number of Americans.
I am not "fully online" by any stretch, so it says something that even I have come across examples of this discussion and the backlash that it has spawned. Apparently, the employee at a fast-food franchise who called in the tip about the now-arrested suspect has been called a snitch and worse, and "Saturday Night Live" ran a sketch that has received blowback for apparently (I have not watched the clip) making light of the man's death.
This is all remarkable in many ways, but one of the emerging themes among those who are engaging in the let's-take-a-breath-and-ask-why-this-is-happening analysis is whether this public hatred toward an avatar of the health insurance industry should in fact be remarkable or even surprising. After all, health insurers have been on the public's most-hated list for decades. Even before the ultimately unsuccessful attempt at health-care reform began in President Clinton's first term in the mid-1990's, the movie "As Good As It Gets" included a scene that had audiences roaring with approval, with Helen Hunt's character unleashing an epithet-laced verbal tirade about HMO's. If the internet had existed back then, that scene would have been the first viral video.
There is thus no love lost on the public's part for health insurers, and many observers are now saying that it was of course predictable that killing the top guy at the top company would resonate in ways that display millions upon millions of people's lack of sympathy in the face of another human being's violent and merciless death. Those who are shocked by all of that unvarnished anger then point out that this man was a husband, a father, and ultimately human person with hopes and a future.
We thus have a death, the response to the death, and the response to the response to the death. I find the entire conversation interesting in that it contrasts different people's reactions and forces us to have an important conversation about how much one should judge others who are not in any way culpable but who are showing what can only be called the cold-blooded side of the human condition. The fact is that everyone -- certainly including me -- feels differently about different deaths. When O.J. Simpson died, I did not mourn. Same for Jeffrey Epstein and many others. Where does this fit in, if at all? This is very complicated, to say the least.
What I find especially interesting, however, is that there even is a reaction to the reaction. That is, after some people said "I'm glad he's dead" in various ways, there was a moment in which others asked pertinent questions: Why are people so angry? What does it mean when people celebrate another person's death? This person is not in the Simpson/Epstein category, but are his supposed sins less bad? Worse? And so on.
Again, those are useful and difficult questions. My interest about that more searching conversation (regarding the reaction to the reaction), however, is driven by my memories of an incident in 2010 when an angry man with a grudge and a manifesto flew a private airplane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, killing one employee of the federal tax agency.
At the time, I wrote an article for Findlaw's Writ ("The Austin Tragedy and the Dangerous Myth of the IRS Out of Control"). I wrote a subsequent column on Verdict in 2013 summarizing the facts of that tragic case and emphasizing my larger point, which was that the public's reaction to the death of an innocent victim was disturbing. Summarizing that earlier column, in 2013 I wrote:
I worried about the public’s tepid response to the attack (and especially to the death of an IRS employee, who was a grandfather and a war veteran). I noted in particular the palpable sense in much of the commentary that it was somehow understandable—if not quite acceptable—to attack the IRS. The ensuing Congressional resolution condemning the attack did not even pass unanimously, with two Republican congressmen refusing to vote for anything that might make it seem that the IRS is a legitimate part of our government.
My 2010 column had done nothing more than voice what I thought should be the bare minimum reaction from any decent human being, sorrowfully observing that many people instead treated IRS employees like hated enemies who deserve to die. That simple act of humanity on my part led to the column being forwarded around dozens of government agencies (obviously including the IRS), which led to an outpouring of grateful emails and even a phone call to my office from beleaguered government workers who wanted simply to thank me for treating them like people. That was both gratifying and terribly sad.
To my knowledge, there has never been a meaningful public reconsideration of whether the nudge-nudge-wink-wink "but the guy was an IRS employee, after all" vibe in 2010 was appropriate. A man died. People said -- at most -- that it should not have happened, ho hum. And on to the next story. Meanwhile, Republicans have continued to vilify government employees in the years since, with many now fearing being summarily fired by the Musk/Ramaswamy "it's easy to get rid of these losers" brigade, while others might be subject to far worse attacks and even prosecution for doing their jobs. Dr. Anthony Fauci is a particular target of vitriol.
Why the difference between the death in New York in 2024 and the death in Austin in 2010? After all, the public has viscerally negative feelings about both health care in the US and the country's tax system. If anything, sympathy for a murdered mid-level IRS worker should be greater than for a corporate CEO, because the IRS worker is carrying out the laws that Congress (including Republicans) have enacted over the space of decades, whereas a CEO has actual decision-making power. Yes, the CEO could claim to be a "slave" to the company's stock price, but that merely says that he could not suddenly choose to lose money, not that he had no power whatsoever to pursue the "enlightened self-interest" of his for-profit company. And if doing so resulted in his being fired, his years of multi-million-dollar paydays could cushion the fall.
Moreover, these executives will be able to protect themselves in ways that public employees could never imagine. The New York Times reported last Friday:
Allied Universal, which provides security services for 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies, said their phones were “ringing off the hook” on Wednesday with potential clients. Allied covers a wide spectrum of services — including stationing guards outside offices, chauffeuring executives, surveilling their homes and tracking their families.
Protecting a chief executive full time costs roughly $250,000 a year, said Glen Kucera, who runs Allied’s enhanced protection services.
Ask Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss what life is like for a government employee when someone directs an angry mob in their direction. Mitt Romney even pointed out that he was one of the few people in Congress who was rich enough to pay for private security after the second Trump impeachment trial, a trial during which Romney reported (much too late, but I digress) that his Senate colleagues were terrified of Trumpist violence that would be directed at them and their families.
And it is not as if the instances of public glee about the CEO's death have been ignored or universally approved. To repeat, there has been a reaction to the reaction. A New York tabloid reported disapprovingly on a shooter lookalike contest in Manhattan, calling the killing an "assassination" and added this: "Eight contestants donning hooded outerwear and face masks were surrounded Friday by dozens of onlookers, whose cheers amounted to votes in the nose-thumbing stunt." If every small gathering in the Village were to take on so much importance, hemp would have been legalized in the 1970's. More to the point, I strongly doubt that that tabloid was wringing its hands in 2010 about the death of "a tax man."
To be very clear, I am not approving of any acts of violence in these or similar cases. The persons who killed both victims should not have done so, and although the death of the Austin killer ended that case before it began, the criminal case of the arrested suspect in New York should move forward. The suspect seems likely to be able to mount a real defense, given his family background, so there is little reason to think that this will be a railroading.
I am saying that it is notable when people respond to murders with indifference or even approval, and it is especially important to compare how we react to those different reactions. The death of a CEO led to some glee but also push-back, because there were plenty of people willing to remind us that the victim was a human being who did not deserve to die, no matter what had happened to others whose fates were sealed by his company's decisions. The death of a regular guy who was living Justice Holmes's famous dictum that "taxes are what you pay for a civilized society" was met with shrugs at best. Because, you know, taxes.