MICHAEL USHER: The murder of health insurance chief Brian Thompson is a grim warning to corporate America

The assassination of the health insurance CEO, Brian Thompson, has not only shocked a crime-hardened city like New York, but sent a long, cold shiver down the spine of corporate America.

If this was a targeted killing — a very personal revenge attack over a health insurance grievance — then this a deeply disturbing moment of reckoning on many levels.

It’s emerged that the killer — who is still on the run as I write this — inscribed the words “deny”, “defend” and “depose” on the bullets he fired into Mr Thompson’s back. The words are frighteningly similar to a book published in 2010, that carried the title “Delay, Deny, Defend.” That book’s subtitle was “Why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it.”

Thompson was CEO of United Healthcare, a corporate giant in the United States with 440,000 employees and a market capitalisation of $475 billion dollars.

There are multiple reports that Thompson was due to testify before Congress over United’s business practices. It has also emerged that he had recently received death threats.

The assassin has been tracked on many security cameras around New York, at one moment smiling with his face clearly seen under his hoodie. He can be seen using fake ID to check into a hostel, and police seem certain they now know where he brought the silenced handgun.

All of these details will be clearer, very quickly I’d imagine. I can’t see the killer being able to hide out for too long. If he stays alive, we’ll understand the true motive.

But I just spent a few hours deep diving into every news article and social media post I could find on the murder of Brian Thompson.

Some of it goes down conspiracy rabbit holes, but a lot of it will horrify corporate America, especially in the deeply contentious and very personal world of health insurance claims and disputes.

We’ve seen a little of this anger and upset here recently with Cbus Super and its practices. But the deep anger over health insurance costs and disputed claims in America is next level.

As appalling as it sounds, there is a strong chorus of people who believed this CEO deserved what he got. A multi-millionaire corporate high-flyer who profited personally and was rewarded for rejecting or fighting insurance claims.

If all the reports out of the US are correct, United Healthcare had an industry leading 32 per cent denial rate on claims. But many of the comments taking this angle on the assassination are too vile to quote.

The Washington Post has even disabled the comments section on its coverage of Mr Thompson’s death to block the sort of comments I’m referring to.

But one comment I found is probably worth quoting, because it seems to capture what the “haters” are feeling about this appalling murder.

“His leadership and direction…let people die stay sick or go bankrupt so he and his investors could get rich.”

This is why many reports in the U.S are referring to Mr Thompson’s murder as an earthquake moment for corporate America.

A CEO who felt safe enough to stroll out of his New York hotel at around 6.30am, to casually walk to an investor meeting taking place at 8am, unaware that white hot anger over his company’s practice that until then had remained contained in written words in angry emails or legal exchanges, was about to manifest in bloody murder.

If indeed that is the motive being reported after this terrible attack.

Does this also play into fears in America at the time of the recent Presidential election that all the angry and anti-authority rhetoric was going to lead to disturbing civil unrest?

You can’t help but think that moral and civil lines have been crossed or at least blurred in America right now.

There’s very much a fight back and rise-up sentiment, that Donald Trump stirred and harnessed.

Does that in some way contribute to the motive of a man driven to kill a CEO? It could well be he was already on a mission and didn’t need empowering. But emotional temperatures have been raised, and enemies declared.

Nonetheless a corporate leader of a multi-billion-dollar company has been targeted like a political leader. And without the security protection of a President, this CEO was hit and killed because he represented something that seems to have caused someone, and perhaps many people, such deep grievances that murder was the only way to make them feel better.

It’s chilling and ghastly, and more truth will emerge, but you can guarantee that corporate America is in deep shock, and looking very differently at security threats from easily dismissed angry customers.