We didn’t need the murder of an insurance company executive to tell us America’s health care system is broken. Researchers, journalists, and activists have been chronicling its failures for years—the exorbitant costs, the middling outcomes, the inhumane and nonsensical complexity of it all. The need for vast improvement is something even health care executives will freely admit.
The system wears people down, which is maybe why, even in an election year, it has been largely absent from the public discourse. That is, of course, until UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered last week in Midtown Manhattan by a gunman who had inscribed shell casings with the words “Delay,” “Deny,” and “Depose,” apparent references to tactics the insurance industry is accused of using to boost profits.
