MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Why so many Americans are celebrating ‘hot assassin’ who shot UnitedHealth CEO

It says everything when the brutal and apparently targeted assassination of a health insurance chief executive elicits cheers from sections of the American public.

No one even knew who UnitedHealthcare boss Brian Thompson was before he was shot outside the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday morning.

Not that people seem to care now.

No, many of my fellow Americans are more obsessed with the so-called “hot assassin”.

How young he is; how expertly he cleared his jammed gun to fire off multiple rounds in quick succession; his cinematic escape into Central Park on an e-bike after dumping a burner phone at the crime scene.

He has become a folk hero, something straight out of The Day Of The Jackal.

He is being celebrated on social media.

Yes, it’s a veritable cesspool, but the collective adulation of this killer – however deplorable – is delivering a bracing message.

For far too many Americans the rapacious healthcare industry had it coming.

No matter that Thompson, 50, was a father of two sons and leaves a wife who, despite their reported estrangement, lauded him as “’an incredibly loving, generous, talented man who truly lived life to the fullest”.

What so much US news coverage has focused on instead is Thompson’s salary (more than AUD$15.6 million), his alleged role in insider trading and a 2021 plan to refuse payment for A&E visits deemed “non-critical”.

UnitedHealthcare made $440billion last year. Meanwhile, many of its paying clients – average Americans scraping by – were routinely denied hospital visits, left facing sky-high bills or refused vital medicines.

That this was a factor in the killing seems increasingly likely.

The gunman left clues: Live ammo and shell casings with one word written on each – “deny”, “depose”, “defend”.

Those words echo a popular 2010 book titled Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims And What You Can Do About It.

Thompson was killed in the week another US insurer – one regarded as offering gold-standard coverage – announced it would no longer pay for certain “anaesthesia care” if surgery went beyond an arbitrary time limit.

This is the double-edged sword of America’s privatised healthcare industry.

At its best, it’s unbeatable. No country in the world can compare.

If you’re independently wealthy, famous or have a well-paying job with good employment benefits, you’ll be in the best possible hands for the least personal cost.

You can see consultants the same day – in swanky clinics more akin to hotel suites. But if you’re not a member of the one per cent, you’re liable to be screwed.

You’ll be caught in the maw of a heartless system that will determine what kind of tests you’re eligible for, where you’ll be treated and by whom, directed by faceless bureaucrats you’ll never meet and can never contact.

The system is designed to keep patients, no matter how dire their diagnoses, powerless to fight back or advocate for themselves.

Nearly six years ago, one of my best friends gave birth to twins by planned caesarean at Lenox Hill Hospital – one of New York City’s finest, where Beyoncé chose to give birth in 2012.

My friend suffered severe complications after the birth. But her treatment was lax and cavalier until a nurse recognised her as the author of a best-selling medical memoir.

Moments later, she was rushed up to the ‘Beyoncé floor’ to be swiftly tended to while patients strolled around in expensive pyjamas, sipped fresh orange juice and ate gourmet meals in capacious private rooms.

The entire experience left her outraged and, yes, feeling powerless.

It’s this callous bifurcation of America’s rich and poor in matters of life and death that evokes such revulsion.

It’s why Robert F. Kennedy Jr., despite his crackpot theories, is embraced by so many to lead America’s healthcare policies.

People are fed up.

They want a disrupter like RFK Jr. to take on Big Pharma, which they believe wants to make and keep Americans sick for profit.

It’s no accident that after Thompson was killed, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, the insurer that proposed limiting anaesthesia cover, reversed its decision.

The American healthcare industry has a lot to answer for, and it seems the death not of their clients, but one of their own, is the only thing that has them listening.