The Killionaire
Here's why the man who gunned down UnitedHealthcare's CEO became an instant folk hero
“Behind every great fortune is a great crime.” – A popular misquotation from an 1834 French novel by Honoré de Balzac
(UPDATE: Just as I hit the publish button, news broke that police have a suspect.)
I wrote a novel in the early 2000s about an assassin who was knocking off the nation’s billionaires because their unbridled greed was destroying the American Dream. My anti-hero’s name was the Killionaire.
Little-advertised fact about me: I am a failed novelist. I’ve written four book-length satires, but I could never beat them into something I’d be proud to publish. I also learned that I couldn’t invent characters and plot lines as incredible as news I was covering as a business writer.
Whoever gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week revived memories of my dark literary attempt. Like the suspect still at large six days after his exploit, the Killionaire became a folk hero, especially to those who’d lost their livelihoods, homes, health care, and ultimately their lives, to corporate looting.
In addition to murdering overpaid corporate overlords, the Killionaire demanded that his wealthy oppressors fly helicopters over large crowds and drop millions of dollars in $100 bills. The little people cheered. The big people hired private security. The FBI was all over the case. And I was never sure quite how to end the story.
Now there’s a better story unfolding in the real world, every major media outlet is chasing it, and people are not only cheering on the killer, they’re emulating him.
A fashionable homicide
The jacket that many online observers think that the gunman wore is reportedly flying off the shelves.
On Saturday, about 30 men gathered for a suspect look-alike contest in Washington Square Park in Lower Manhattan, The New York Times reported. Organizers advertised the event with fliers and social media posts.
One contestant had “deny, defend, depose” painted on his jacket – words reportedly inscribed on the shell casings found at the crime scene. (Other reports say the shell casings contained the words, “Delay Deny Defend,” like the title of this 2010 book on health care insurance industry abuses.)
Online commentary has compared the suspect to movie stars Timothee Chalamet and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Social media has exploded with horrifying tales of denied medical care, obscene profiteering in the health insurance industry and praise for the killer.
Much of it centers around the theme, “sympathy denied,” and quips like, “I hope his ambulance service was in-network.”
"When you shoot one man in the street it's murder. When you kill thousands of people in hospitals by taking away their ability to get treatment you're an entrepreneur," a user wrote on X.
United outrage at UnitedHealthcare
As of this writing, we don’t fully know the motives of the suspect. We only suspect he’s suffered a dreadful loss from a denial-of-care issue. The shell casings inscribed with “Delay Deny Defend,” were enough of an artistic touch to raise this possibility.
The Killionaire I created considered his murders performance art.
He fitted a Cayman Island banker with concrete boots and tossed him over the rails of a yacht. His message: “Now, he really is an offshore banker.”
He decapitated a billionaire tax cheat. “Now, he’s paying a head tax.”
He gunned down a merger mogul on an Aspen, Colo. ski slope and covered him with snow on a black-diamond run. “Now, he really is a mogul.”
What I liked about my anti-hero was that he directed his rage at appropriate targets.
Too often, those who’ve been left behind in the rolling brown-outs of our economy don’t know what hit them. They think it’s the liberals, or the immigrants, or some godless class of people they can’t stand.
They randomly harass, and sometimes even shoot, people who have nothing to do with their misfortunes. On all sides, there are the useful idiots of an uber class that reigns by turning everyone against each other.
One thing Americans share is a corrupt health care system bent on making big Wall Street money at the cost of human lives. This is why the dark commentary about the United Healthcare shooting cuts across partisan lines.
The first response from corporate executives, however, was no such introspection. It was to spend more of their shareholders’ money on security. But whatever threats they’ve been receiving are not likely to disappear once the suspect is finally apprehended.
Capitalizing off the sick and dying
Thanks to a lone gunman, the world has become acutely aware of the abuses at UnitedHealthcare and the broader denial-of-care industry.
We’ve learned the company uses artificial intelligence to deny claims, has the highest denial rate in the industry, 32%, and has been under a Justice Department investigation for antitrust practices.
The company enjoyed $281 billion in revenues and $16 billion in profits in 2023.
Thompson, who who became CEO in 2021, took home more than $10 million last year. He also sold more than $15 million in stock and has been accused along with other executives of insider trading.
Fellow Substacker Ken Klippenstein has dutifully chronicled Thompson’s flaws well before most other media, including a drunk driving charge that sent Thompson to jail.
"I do not like celebrating the death of anyone,” read one comment under UnitedHealthcare’s post lamenting the shooting. “But that doesn't mean I can't celebrate justice. And for those who want to argue justice, the law isn't what defines justice. This is a man whose led a company invested in killing people for profit . . . his death is justice."
The Killionaire was not ready for prime time
The anti-hero I tried to create at the beginning of this century would not have earned as much popularity as the UnitedHealthcare gunman.
I struggled with moral issues as I wrote. The Killionaire’s victims were getting away with crimes but was vigilante justice really the answer?
I struggled with mass communications. I was writing after the Nasdaq peaked and the Internet busted in 2000. There were no social media platforms for ordinary people to vent their anger at a system that was incrementally robbing them.
I struggled with ideological issues. I champion free markets, but I also believe in checks and balances, the rule of law, freedom and economic opportunity. And I despise liars and cheats.
To maintain free markets, disputes must be litigated; harmful activities must be regulated; criminals should be prosecuted; monopolies should be challenged; and, those who lobby Washington D.C. for unfair advantages and use them to exploit the population will naturally face reprisals.
I learned as a business columnist that to express such sentiments is to invite labels such as “socialist,” and “communist.” It’s also to suffer insipid straw-man and ad hominem attacks from people who: A) Do not know how to construct a logical argument; and, B) Do not realize that they are being fleeced themselves.
In the end, I could never decide what I should do with the Killionaire so he remains on a hard drive collecting digital dust.
It is just as well. I do not condone violence. I don’t believe in dancing on graves. But I do know that playing financial games while your customers die is a recipe for revolt.
We are a sick nation. We’re armed to the teeth and thousands of us have denied mental health claims.
Too often what we get is, “Delay Deny Defend.”
What did anybody think was going to happen?
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You should pitch the Killionaire book right away, to TV. Its time has come.
Excellent appraisal, Al...have you on the calendar for mid-January. Happy Holidays...