A week ago, people around the world were able to see a fifty-year-old man in blue sportscoat gunned down on the sidewalk of New York City by a hooded assassin standing in the shadows only several yards behind him. The video was in high demand. All most people saw was the grim reaper point his gun. They did not see the puff of smoke from the gun. They did not see the intended victim fall to the sidewalk. They did not see the assassin walk determinedly towards the wounded man from twenty feet away, clearing his gun which had jammed as he attempted to put another bullet into the helpless man. Altogether, he fired three times, hitting his target twice, once in the calf and once in the back. The man lying on the street outside the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel was Brian Thompson. He died shortly after being shot.
Brian Thompson was the son of a blue-collar family. He had graduated from the University of Iowa and married a fellow University of Iowa graduate. He and his wife had two sons, but Thompson and his wife were currently estranged as many American couples are.
Thompson, known as “B.T.” to his friends (and he had many) was a supporter of the Special Olympics and the honorary co-chair of the 2026 Special Olympics USA Games. He was remembered by his co-workers as an avid golfer, ambitious, but also friendly and a decent person to work with. He was also the head of UnitedHealthCare, said to be the largest health insurance company in America.
His murderer, subsequently arrested in Pennsylvania. was identified as twenty-six-year-old Luigi Nicholas Mangione. He was immediately treated as a cause célèbre, while the same people on social media vilified the victim. Critical comments were everywhere: “My thoughts & prayers were out of network” wrote one individual. Another wrote “He was CEO when he was shot . . .Preexisting condition. Claim denied.” Before we knew who the shooter was, there was a celebration of the event in Manhattan. Hooded jackets resembling that which Mangione wore that fateful day were rapidly selling out while a look-alike contest was held for people dressed up like the assassin.
The cold-blooded execution became, and continues to be, an indictment of the U.S. Health Insurance System. People with their own horror stories or other unsubstantiated stories they may have read online, are almost dancing in the streets over this killing. This is a psychological phenomenon called schadenfreude, and I discuss it in some depth here.
I do not know enough about the health insurance situation in the U.S. to comment on it. Health care is very expensive. I do know that doctors feel squeezed between the costs they assume and invest in patients and what they will be reimbursed. A physician might order an MRI on a patient, have the patient’s insurance deny the procedure, and then the (now dying) patient develops cancer two years later and sues the doctor for failure to diagnose. I don’t know if Brian Thompson was a decent person at heart, a “cog in the wheel” or a penny pincher. I do know that he was murdered and murder is a sin.
I also know that we’ve been warned many centuries ago about this lawless behavior we see in our society today. The prophet Isaiah wrote (5:20):
“Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!”
People of goodwill and Godly character need to separate themselves from antithetical tendencies such as this. We are not the judge and the jury. It is not for us to take revenge for perceived injustice. Everyone has an ax to grind. It might be over an intolerable neighbor, directed at an unfaithful spouse or a child molester. Perhaps a school official or college professor for suspending a student or awarding a failing grade? Perhaps this wrath is directed at a Republican or Democrat politician? It might be over sky-rocketing health insurance costs. But the solution is not to arm yourself and stakeout and stalk your prey. Settling scores on the street is a sign that society needs critical care, itself. At any price.