Envy and the end of society

Less than a month ago, Brian Thompson was gunned down on a New York City street. Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, one of the largest health insurers in the nation, with revenues in 2023 of more than $280 billion. Police have since apprehended and charged a suspect, Luigi Mangione, whose motives apparently include reprisal for the victims of the American healthcare industry. The Ivy League–educated Mangione authored a manifesto in which he claimed health insurers “have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.”

Mangione includes some data points in his analysis, noting the size of UnitedHealthcare’s market cap relative to other companies and the amount of money spent on healthcare in the United States relative to life expectancy. He refers to targets, presumably including Thompson, as “parasites” who “simply had it coming.” The moral calculus here is straightforward: Health insurers, and perhaps especially executives, are immoral profiteers of human suffering. Mangione concluded there must be a reckoning for such bad actors: “Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

As shocking as such a murder ought to be, perhaps even more surprising has been much of the public reaction. It did not take long for many voices, especially those in online spaces, to mock Thompson and support Mangione, or at least to attempt to legitimize (if not justify) Mangione’s motivations. Frustration with the American healthcare system is indeed widespread, and Thompson’s murder has become an occasion for the expression of outrage at how healthcare functions in America. An example of the “Murder is wrong, but …” genre is a recent editorial from the Catholic magazine Commonweal, which concludes, “Americans are suffering too much, dying too soon, and going broke in order to prop up a completely unnecessary but very profitable industry.”

“Profit” is undeniably a key word in this discussion. For the Commonweal editors, health insurance is apparently a “completely unnecessary” industry, one that, as Mangione puts it, is simply parasitic and corrupt. The profitability of the industry as such is seen as obvious and incontrovertible evidence of this. The Commonweal editors might want to reconsider, however, whether profit as such is necessarily evidence of wrongdoing. As Pope John Paul II recognized, “The Church acknowledges the legitimate role of profit as an indication that a business is functioning well. When a firm makes a profit, this means that productive factors have been properly employed and corresponding human needs have been duly satisfied.”

Of course, profits are not the only relevant factor when determining the moral status and social significance of a firm or industry. But they should not be understood as inherently suspicious or dubious. It could well be that the profitability of health insurers is evidence of the good that they do rather than the evil that they inflict.

A more comprehensive conversation is needed about the roles of government and civil society in providing social welfare. John Paul pointed to an important legacy of the tradition of Catholic social teaching in the 20th century, especially in “numerous reforms which were introduced in the areas of social security, pensions, health insurance and compensation in the case of accidents, within the framework of greater respect for the rights of workers.” But before we can engage in more responsible discourse about the costs, benefits, and ideals of a civilized society, we first need to revisit some of the foundational principles that characterize such a society.

This kind of education is sorely needed, at least in part because younger generations seemingly no longer appreciate or value the basic norms that undergird a stable social order. A recent poll about Thompson’s murder found that 41% of those surveyed between the ages of 18 to 29 years old said that the killing was “acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable.” Such widespread approval of such a despicable act ought to serve as a warning about the state of moral reasoning in America.

The first sin in Mangione’s calculus was that of envy, defined classically as “grief at another’s good.” Mangione and others like him see the salaries of CEOs and the profits of healthcare insurers as ill-gotten gains.

An envious society cannot survive, and to the extent that Americans are increasingly suspicious of profit as such, there are correspondingly greater dangers to the survival of our society. Heinous acts of self-righteous and arrogant anger, like those Mangione is accused of, portend the end of a society when they receive widespread approval. These sins must be condemned by all and Christians must stand on the front lines of those teaching the consequences of such violations of the moral order.