After CEO slaying, vitriol toward health care insurers goes viral. Is it unprecedented?

The offices of major Minnesota-based health insurance companies Medica and UCare remain closed to the public Tuesday after the shooting death of Brian Thompson of Maple Grove, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, in New York City last week.

The alleged suspect, Luigi Mangione, is in a Pennsylvania jail facing several charges. He was on the run for six days until a McDonald’s employee recognized him and called 911. During that time, Mangione became somewhat of a folk hero online among those who harbor their own animosity toward health insurance companies.

At a news conference Monday night following Mangione’s arrest, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro called the online celebration of the alleged shooter “deeply disturbing.”

“In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint,” Shapiro said. “We are all less safe when idealogues engage in vigilante justice.”

Christopher Snowbeck covers the Minnesota health care industry for the Minnesota Star Tribune. In his decades on the beat, this kind of vitriol is unprecedented, he told Morning Edition Host Cathy Wurzer.

“I started writing about all this in the 1990s and, you know, in the wake of the Clinton reform push and all that, there was a lot of pushback about HMOs nationally. A lot of animosity, a lot of concern about denials,” Snowbeck said. “A lot of the anger that we’re sensing right now or seeing… is unusual to me.”

Listen to Snowbeck and Wurzer’s full conversation by clicking the player button.