On the morning of December 4, 2024, in midtown Manhattan, a masked male snuck up behind the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a health insurance company, and pumped three bullets into the executive’s back and leg. Brian Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two, was pronounced dead a few minutes later.

Celebrations of the murder broke out on social media almost as soon as the killing was reported. The unknown assailant had provided a public service by taking out a leader in a predatory and heartless industry, the killer’s fans asserted. The jubilation grew in fervor as each newly released surveillance video confirmed the original impression that the killer, still at large, was young and handsome.

Once an arrest was made, the lionization of the suspect, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, reached a frenzy. “Luigi”—always “Luigi”—was the “hot assassin.” Merchandise featuring his image and phrases from a handwritten manifesto he had carried with him sprung up on Amazon. A video projection of Mangione’s face was cheered at a rock concert in Boston. A crowdsourced defense fund quickly swelled with donations. Wanted posters appeared in Manhattan with pictures of other corporate CEOs. The names and salaries of health-care executives were posted on line. Private citizens who had helped with the manhunt were vilified as snitches; police officers involved in arresting Mangione received threats.

To the mainstream media, the question posed by this episode was obvious: Why are Americans so angry at health-insurance companies? And so reporters and opinion columnists got to work limning a portrait of the health-care industry—its profits, the salaries of its executives—and fleshing out the animus against it.