The Murder of a CEO

I saw the story first when opening the Drudge Report the other day. There was a grainy video surveillance camera photo of someone in a hoodie firing a handgun at another man in front of a swanky Manhattan hotel. The assassin then ran off and hasn’t been found as of this hour. The dead man was the CEO of a big company who is under investigation for insider trading of his own company stock . My first thought upon seeing the story was —Why is this the lead story on Drudge? I mean so far this year over 12,000 people have been killed via guns in the United States alone. What made this guy so special? Over the past few days my question has been answered.

I’ve learned some things about the deceased, a well compensated (10 million in 2023) Executive Officer of a particular company which is part of perhaps the most despised business in America—health insurance. While the murdered executive was only 52 years old with a wife and kids, the internet blew up as soon as word got out that he had been gunned down in cold blood. The vast majority of people were positively giddy with joy at the prospect that the top executive at a health insurance company was taken out so violently. One of the most popular posts was—“Sorry, but my sympathy is out of network.” Stories began pouring in of families being denied coverage for their dying parents, the tediousness of the claims process itself and how its very design has the purpose of making the claimant eventually give up in exasperation. There were many comments about the billions of dollars in profit made by his company and the perverse incentives inherent in a for-profit health care system. There were even videos of joyous public gatherings celebrating his death and the promotion of the as of yet still unnamed assassin to hero status. The public reaction seems to be overwhelmingly pro-killer at this point, helped along by the only other photograph we have of him, smiling coyly from underneath his hoodie at Starbucks before the attack. More than one internet observer has made much of his striking good looks—for what that’s worth. So, what to make of all this?

I am very much anti-death. I generally am against going to war. I’m not a fan of murder. I’m even against capital punishment since I trust no one with ultimate power over life and death. We reluctantly give the police a limited power to use deadly force, but no one else. However, are there exceptions? For example, if I were transported back in time and given a chance to put a bullet through Adolph Hitler’s melon back in 1938 knowing what I know now, would I have done it? The answer is Yes. So, I suppose that makes me a hypocrite. But very few rules in life are exception-free. If someone broke into my home and was set upon doing violence to me or my family, I wouldn’t hesitate to defend my family—even if it meant killing the intruder. So, every rule has exceptions. The question is—should an exception be granted for the public assassination of CEO’s of unpopular and even villainous companies? And if so, which businesses would be on the exception list? The murdered executive’s company raked in several billion dollars worth of premiums last year. I have no doubt in my mind that they unfairly denied a lot of claims, causing many of their customers untold suffering and grief. But a quick review of the public record also shows that the company paid out billions of dollars worth of claims as well. If it turns out that he was guilty of trading his 120 million dollars worth of company stock on news not made public at the time of his trades he would have gone .to jail. But did he deserve a public execution and were those celebrating his death no more that lawless vigilantes? We hear a lot about how fragile our democracy is these days. Nothing would spell the end of democracy more than an angry public who anoints themselves judge, jury and executioner of any public official they think “deserves” it. Who’s next?

But, I don’t think it’s that. I don’t think that all of a sudden people have turned cold of heart. I think that we are at a fraught time in history. People are angry, restless, and disappointed in how life works out sometimes. Nothing is more upsetting than watching a loved one die for lack of medicines or treatment by an insurance company whose CEO makes more money in one week than his average policy-holder makes in a year of back-breaking work. For many people like that, news that a 52 year old multi-millionaire big shot at the insurance company got popped brings a sliver of satisfaction, a temporary balancing of the far too lopsided scale of justice. And while I can have sympathy for that sentiment I universally denounce it for the very simple reason that I have no desire to live in a country where vigilante justice becomes the norm. History tells us what happens next…(see Revolution, French…Revolution Cultural, China).

Having said that, I’m not sure I would want to be a fat cat working in the health insurance business about now…