
When I saw the news of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s stunning killing in Manhattan on Wednesday, my mind immediately went to the television show “Mr. Robot,” Sam Esmail’s dark, dramatic FX thriller series that had nothing to do with health care.
“Mr. Robot,” which aired from 2015 to 2019, starred Rami Malek as Elliot, a reclusive hacker who spends the show’s first season attempting to hack Evil Corp., a mammoth conglomerate that owns the bulk of the world’s consumer debt. The end goal: purging everybody’s financial records with the company, effectively erasing the world’s debts and freeing individuals from an exploitative behemoth.