A LONG time ago, when asked about violence, Bernadette Devlin used to speak of the less-frequently mentioned violence inflicted on people’s lives by the state: discriminating in jobs, in housing, making sure the ‘right’ people were elected with carefully calibrated constituency boundaries. For the most part, people weren’t persuaded. The violence of petrol bombs and bullets seemed like real violence, while pointing to the impoverishment of people’s lives didn’t seem a justifiable counter-weight. 

One man has brought this notion of violence to centre-stage again. Lying in wait at the Hilton Midtown hotel in Manhattan in the early hours of December 4 was a masked man with a gun. As Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, was about to enter the hotel shortly before seven to attend his company’s investors’ conference, the waiting gunman opened fire, hitting Thompson several times and killing him. Police said the masked man’s motivation was unknown. However, the words ‘deny’, defend’ and ‘depose’ were scratched on the spent bullet casings. These words almost certainly refer to a book about health insurance titled   'Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claim and What You Can Do About It'.

A man called  Luigi Mangione has been charged with murder and the belief is that, by killing Thompson and leaving word-etched bullet cases, he was sending a message to those who control medicine – and so control life and death.

United Healthcare reported  2023 profits of $22 billion. Also in 2023, 17 per cent of US adults reported incurring debt from their own medical care or a family member’s. Nearly half of all US citizens now find health care insurance unaffordable. Nearly 45,000 US citizens die each year because of lack of insurance. Brian Thompson was believed to be worth $50 million at the time of his death. 

This is how American society is organised. Head honcho of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has just bought a second super-luxury yacht. It's not for him to sail in – he needs the second yacht to follow the first with provisions of one kind or another in case he feels a random craving.  Elon Musk is worth $230 billion. Meanwhile, near to 20 per cent of Americans live in trailers – ‘Trailer Trash’, as they are sometimes called. In 2023, 11 per cent of Americans lived in consistent poverty.

Can this go on? Will those ground down by poverty in the US  rise up and take reprisal on those who live in super-wealth?

Some would claim they already have. When Donald Trump says that he wants to make America Great Again, his followers in their desperation interpret that as meaning they will be lifted out of their state of vanished jobs and near serfdom.

It's against this background that the actions of the alleged killer of the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson must be judged. If the evidence shows that Luigi Mangione is indeed Thompson’s killer, then he will go to prison for a very long time.  In contrast, no one will go to prison for any of the  45,000 people in the US who die each year because they can’t afford health insurance.

"As far as motive, it looks like he had animus toward the healthcare industry," a spokesperson for the NYPD said of Mangione. Given that Mangione is on record as referring to people like Thompson as “parasitic”, that’s a reasonable conclusion.

If Mangione is tried and found guilty, does he deserve to go to prison? Well of course – he shot dead an unarmed man. But he has achieved his goal – he has focused the world’s attention on the bloated opulence of health insurance companies. These companies’ rates are simply too high for many, and as a result thousands die.

So will they have to build bigger prisons in the US, in which those responsible for the deaths of thousands  can be accommodated when they are found guilty of mass murder?

I think we can safely say No.