Americans have every right to be furious about the cost of care. In 2023 health spending hit about $4.9 trillion, roughly $14,570 per person, and around 17% of the entire economy, far above any other rich country. Around one third of adults say they skipped or postponed needed care in the last year because of cost. That anger is real. It is justified. But it does not turn Luigi Mangione into a hero.
Mangione stands accused of stalking and murdering UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street in December 2024. Police say they later found a pistol with a suppressor, a loaded magazine hidden in wet underwear, and a red notebook that prosecutors describe as a manifesto against the insurance industry, along with a so called escape plan mapped out on paper. Mangione has pleaded not guilty, and the government is seeking the death penalty. He will have his day in court. That is what a civilized country does.
What is sickening is what has grown up around him. Even before his arrest, parts of the internet were cheering the killing of a health insurance executive as if it were a form of working class justice. Since then Mangione has been remade into a kind of outlaw saint. There are Saint Luigi candles, altar art and satire merch that treat him as a patron of rebellion. There are shirts that literally call him a hero for the working class or a modern Robin Hood, sold with tags like anti capitalism and anti Trump. His online fan communities have raised more than $1 million for his legal fund and chant Free Luigi outside courthouses as if this were a music tour, not a murder trial.
This is not justice. It is moral rot dressed up as politics.
Yes, the system is broken. The United States spends roughly double what other wealthy countries spend on healthcare, yet ordinary families still drown in premiums, deductibles and surprise bills. Nearly half of adults report struggling with medical bills or debt, and major shares say they are cutting back on food, rent and other essentials to cover care. This is why so many people feel no sympathy when they hear about a health insurance executive being gunned down. They see a system that has treated them like numbers and they are tempted to applaud anyone who punches back.
But once you start cheering an assassination because you hate the victim’s industry, you have crossed a line that a free country cannot cross.
We have seen where that road leads. In June 2017 a man who had volunteered for Bernie Sanders opened fire on Republican lawmakers at a baseball practice, nearly killing Congressman Steve Scalise. In 2011 Gabby Giffords was shot in the head at a constituent event in a grocery parking lot, six people were murdered, and she barely survived.
This year Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated at home and Senator John Hoffman and his wife were wounded in a related attack that authorities describe as a politically motivated assassination. In September, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed by a sniper while speaking to students at Utah Valley University, another grim marker in an escalating cycle of political violence.
Different victims. Different motives. Same poison.
A serious populism does not worship assassins. A serious populism fights rigged systems with votes, organizing, pressure on lawmakers and real policy reforms. If the insurance industry is squeezing families, then the answer is to smash monopolies, cap abuses, force price transparency, simplify plans and demand that the president and Congress focus on the cost of living across the board: premiums, prescriptions, rent, groceries, power bills. That is the work that actually helps the family that is skipping insulin or postponing surgery.
Assassinating a chief executive does not cut a single bill by even one dollar. It gives security firms more contracts, gives government more excuses for surveillance and lets corporate lobbyists point to one deranged gunman and say that all critics are dangerous extremists. It also hands the enemies of real reform the easiest talking point in the world.
There is a standard that every person of good faith should be able to say without qualifiers. There are no good corporate assassinations. There are no righteous political assassinations. We can recognize that the healthcare status quo is an outrage and still say that Luigi Mangione is not a hero and never will be one. We can mourn Brian Thompson and Charlie Kirk and Melissa Hortman and Gabby Giffords without checking which party they belonged to first.
If we let this country slide into a place where people settle policy disputes with rifles instead of arguments, ballots and boycotts, then the American experiment is finished. This is the path taken by countries that lead to Civil War. Aim your anger at the laws, the lobbyists and the cowards in office. Keep the guns out of our politics.
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